Rockaway-based Digital Marketing Company Committed to Quality and Community

she was amazed at the thought that someone could take a concept near and dear to their hearts and transform it into a successful business operation.

“It didn’t matter if it was something as small as a local hardware store or something as big as Disney,” says Fico by phone, “what mattered to me was that someone once had an idea and was able to make money out of it. It’s something that’s always stayed with me my whole life.”

She tried her hand at several business models herself, including stints as a personal stylist after brushing up on her own interest in fashion by taking a course. In the end, however, the real lesson she took away from the experience was that the fashion world was not for her.

“It was fun. I learned a great deal and kept myself busy, and also made a few bucks, but in the end it wasn’t what I really wanted to do.”

By Alexander Rivero

Gina Fico did not originally plan to get into digital marketing when she graduated from County College of Morris with a degree in journalism and media marketing, but she knew she always wanted to open up her own business. As a child, watching her parents go to their jobs during the day and return during the evenings,

It was just as she was coming out of her stylist business that the COVID-19 pandemic took the world by storm. She was already fiddling with the idea of putting her journalism and marketing knowledge to direct use and start up a digital marketing business. Her family was supportive but cautious.

“They told me to be careful and to start it when I was absolutely ready,” she recalls the conversations with her parents in May of 2020.

By late November of that year, she committed herself to the idea, and the early stages of Bay Rock Digital Marketing were set.

The first two years of Bay Rock—which is an homage to Bayonne, the city where Fico’s family are from originally and where she spent the first year of her life, and Rockaway, where she was raised and currently resides—ran according to plan. Which is to say, with a lot of ups and downs. Fico expected all this, though, and was ready for it. Looking back at it now—the building, the searching for clients, the planning—she sees it all as a part of a necessary process to where she is today.

“Everything is significant in the building and growing continued on page 9

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