Then & Now: Dyer says ‘no’ to things to experience success
Allyson Twiggs Dyer is good at saying no. She adheres to Warren Buffett’s mantra, “the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
Because of that philosophy, Dyer’s bank marketing agency, the Twiggs Group, has grown year over year since its inception in 2014, some years more than doubling growth.
“In the beginning of my business, I think I said yes to too many things and didn’t really understand what our niche was. Now my funny name for myself is ‘the queen of saying no’,” she said. “Now I’ve defined it well – we’re a bank marketing agency – so it makes it easier for me to grow this business and figure out who we are and where we’re going.”
The Twiggs Group works with community banks, ranging in size from $1 billion to $3 billion in assets all over the country, with clients in Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Indiana, and as far away as upstate New York.
“There’s a lot of competition in the banking world, so we help banks stand out through their marketing and their advertising efforts.”
When Dyer was chosen as a member of the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s 2007 Forty Under 40 class, she was in tourism marketing, working for Fayetteville’s Visitor’s Bureau. In 2010, she became the director of the Rogers Convention & Visitors Bureau. Wanting a new challenge and more flexibility, she left to start The Twiggs Group, thinking she’d continue doing tourism marketing. However, due to an introduction to local banker Natalie Bartholomew, she began working with Bartholomew’s bank and then helped Bartholomew develop her Girl Banker brand.
“Then I just kept signing up banks,” Dyer said. “That’s when we decided we were going to really niche down and pretty much only work with banks. Today 90% of our clients are banks.”
The Twiggs Group’s six-person team typically works with banks with one person in marketing, “who is completely overwhelmed and wears a lot of hats at the bank,” Dyer said. “We’re able to really help them with marketing, social media and email marketing.”
This year, the Twiggs Group branched out to help banks with marketing and communication during core conversions, an update of the internal software that runs bank operations.
Dyer, 52, enjoys speaking at women in banking conferences around the country on bank marketing and on her passion project, Reject the Hustle.
“That’s a movement I started in 2019 to help myself and my friends remember to set boundaries and practice self-care and learn how to say no. I don’t like the term ‘work/life balance’ because I don’t believe it’s ever really a balance. I try to reframe that as ‘work/life alignment,’” she said. “It’s taking a personal audit and saying, are the decisions I’m making in my life what I want to be doing? Are all the people in my life the people I want to spend time with? Because at end of day, it really is a time game, and we’re all running out of it. So, we want to make sure we’re spending time doing the things we want to be doing with the people we want to be doing it with.”
When starting a business, find a lawyer and accountant first and then “lean into experts,” she advised.
“You’re starting a business because you’re an expert at something, but remember to lean into the folks who are experts in areas that you’re not and let them guide you and help you in those areas.”
A star basketball player in high school, Dyer lettered at the University of Arkansas. Now she spends her time in the gym cheering for her son, the assistant basketball coach at Fayetteville High School.
“I get to be in basketball gyms for the rest of my life, which I’m thrilled about because basketball is such an important part of our family.”
Dyer hopes to restart a sports podcast with her son because “his dream is to be a head coach, and I think it would be cool for the head coach to have a sports podcast with his mom,” she said.