Meet Mary Devlin

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mary Devlin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Mary, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

My resilience comes from the memory of my grandmother Rosalie Devlin Rothwell, aka “Rody” or “Mom Mom”.

My Mom Mom raised eight children on her own, with the biggest age gap being 19 years between the oldest and youngest siblings. She did this while working at a candy shop, standing on her feet for hours each day with little to show for it.

Mom Mom was the most warm hearted person I have ever met. When she greeted you, she spoke to you as if you were the most important person in the room. She overcame criticism towards being a single Catholic mother with eight children in a small shore town in New Jersey in the 1970s (honestly, they should’ve had their own sitcom).

Whenever I feel like I can’t handle a situation, when my anxiety starts to get the better of me, I think of Mom Mom. I think of how she couldn’t take a break, and how hard she worked to give each and everyone of her children a good life. Her memory gives me the strength to get through some of my tougher days, and I try to channel her level of cool and refined nearly everyday of my life.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Although I began my professional career in music performance, I have been working in the world of social media and content creation for just about five years now. What began as an obsession with my high school Tumblr blog devoted to Beatles history has now turned into a genuine career that I get to witness growing everyday.

I truly believe there is no better time than right now to start a career in social media. For me personally as an artistic individual, social media management and content creation allows me to funnel my artsy side into something productive and lucrative. As more and more businesses start to respect the profession and world of social media, more and more opportunities have been opening up for full time and appropriately paid positions in the field. One great thing about this career is that it is also super easy to start your own social media management business and build clientele if you so wish, so the entrepreneurial advantages of a career in social media are really in abundance.

Initially, I began my career in social media by offering to manage platforms such as Instagram for the businesses I worked for during college. I knew I had a natural talent for recognizing trends and and eye for detail, all I needed was the professional experience behind that. This led me to take on internships where I managed social media pages for South Jersey businesses, which led to my first paid position as a part-time social media manager just after graduating from college.

I am now working full time as a Social Media Specialist, in addition to running my own personal social media pages where I post content about music, history, vintage fashion, and more. On my personal TikTok I have managed to accumulate just under 46,000 followers, and on my Instagram just over 9,200 bringing my total follower count across platforms to just about 55,000. Although these are my personal pages, I still run them professionally and engage in collaborations with brands I know and trust. I have also been able to successfully leverage my follower count and engagement on social media to secure paid gigs and positions in social media management and content creation.

This career path is special to me because it feels like something I created all on my own, something that I can feel confident in, and something that I can grow and evolve with as trends change and technology advances. I feel so lucky to be involved in an industry that allows me to be creative while gaining absolutely invaluable experience in the professional world.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Patience, perseverance, and poetry.

Patience – Things will very rarely go exactly as you planned them. In fact sometimes, things might even go horribly wrong and you’ll feel like you’ll absolutely never recover. I’m here to tell you that in most cases, this isn’t true.

I have always had a problem with being patient, which is why I know it’s a skill that I need focus on more. Looking back, if only I had allowed myself some patience in certain situations I would’ve had a much easier time.

Perseverance – If you start with patience, you can move onto perseverance. Sometimes you have to keep moving, sometimes you can’t stop. Sometimes life gets really hard and it feels impossible to get back on your feet but the point isn’t to get back up and run a mile, it’s to simply get back up.

Poetry – Like the Robin WIlliams speech in Dead Poets Society, poetry is one of the things we stay alive for. You don’t have to be a poet, you just have to find the poetry and the beauty in the everyday mundane. It’s a lot better than thinking life is dull and grey.

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?

The ability to be a collaborative team player is really, really important to me. I would never consider myself a natural leader, even though I am an extrovert and like to loudly share my opinions. I just don’t have what it takes to be a leader in a calm and collected way. I thrive in collaborative environments and have a really difficult time being left on my own. I used to view this as a weakness, but as I’ve gotten older I have found an appreciate for knowing what I need and understanding what my limits are.

There needs to be mutual respect between myself and a client as well. They have to remember that they hired me because I can supposedly do the job better than they could do it for free. They have to be willing to not only listen, but to truly consider my ideas.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beatledirt
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-millar-66b741219/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/beatledirt

Image Credits

Rebecca Henry (Photo of Mary Devlin)

Nurtured Minds Counseling

Island Music