Today, I’m talking to one of my favorite female entrepreneurs in Chicago: Mana Ionescu. Mana is a spunky Romanian who lived the American dream by starting her own successful marketing company: Lightspan Digital.

Stella: What’s the 30 second elevator pitch for Lightspan Digital?

Mana: We are a digital marketing company focused on the social media and email marketing aspects of inbound marketing.  We help businesses make profitable connections online. Why? Because we love this work and because we see people as the most important asset, for any business. We design, we teach, we plan, we execute digital marketing.

Stella: What’s the most common objection you hear from people regarding your concept?

Mana: Often businesses think they want to use social media because it’s free, so we often hear price or budget objections. Marketing is never free, the trick is to put our marketing dollars where we can get the most value. And social media marketing, when done with purpose, and with the right targeting and time commitment, by people who are well trained and capable, can bring tremendous value to a business. Through our work we’ve seen sites double their traffic, fan-communities turned into main-stream movements, and in the past year our social media work led to multiple news articles and TV mentions for our clients, from Crains’ to the Sun Times, from NBC Chicago news to WGN TV. That’s social media marketing done with purpose and that doesn’t come for free.

Stella: What do you wish you had known before you started a company?

Mana: I wish I knew better how to separate the useful (to me) networking events from the ones that were not of high value to me (I am sure they were of high value to many people, just not to me as related to my business goals). We all have a limited amount of free time during the week so it becomes critical to use that time wisely. I am now very selective about the networking events I attend. At first I felt guilty for turning down invitations, but I had become exhausted by trying to be everywhere and do everything. So I looked at where our best results came from and decided to focus on those kinds of networking and allow myself to also have nights with my friends or to myself. Also instead of networking through events I realized that building relationships through people I admired with other people they admired was a lot more interesting to me.

Stella: What’s your favorite place in Chicago?

Mana: I love Chicago so much I could list hundreds of places. But two places probably take the lead, I love my neighborhood, Ravenswood. I have a 20 minute walk from home to the office and it takes me 40 minutes some days because I stop to take pictures of every single little pretty thing. Someone on google+ said I was the “Google+ flowers lady” because over the summer I posted a picture of flowers almost every day. My other favorite place is the Lyric Opera. I’ve been a subscriber for years, I always go by myself, and that’s my time to me. I was an opera minor in college and although I don’t sing any more I will always love opera. The Lyric hall is beautiful and unique, and being alone there allows me to relax more than any spa could.