Other Women's Jobs // A Day In The Life Of Rhia Woodall Co-Founder Of Beyond The Mall

NAME: Rhia Woodall

AGE: 34

INSTAGRAM HANDLE: @rhiawoodall / @beyondthemall.me

JOB TITLE: Co-founder, Beyond the Mall

MOVED TO THE UAE IN: 2016

Rhia was born and raised in the UK and started her career at Ogilvy, working out of their Guildford office. When the chance came up to transfer to Dubai at 23, she took it. The plan was two years here, then Singapore, then Australia, chasing a bit of adventure and a life built independently outside the UK.

Dubai had other plans. Rhia met her husband not long after arriving, and what was meant to be a stepping stone quietly became home. Ten-plus years on, she's still here - and she means that in the best way.

Since then, Rhia built a career in marketing and communications, working with some of the region's best-known brands and getting an up-close view of just how entrepreneurial the UAE really is. Today she still works at We Are Social today, in a leadership role, alongside building Beyond the Mall.

Living here has meant meeting people from every corner of the world and watching founders build genuinely brilliant things from scratch. After becoming a mum, Rhia started noticing incredible local brands everywhere - through friends, through Instagram, through word of mouth - and falling in love with the products and the stories behind them. The trouble was, there was never one place to find them all in one go, especially when you needed something meaningful, fast. That gap is what became Beyond the Mall.

Let's discover a day in the life and career of Rhia:

People often ask how I manage running Beyond the Mall alongside my full-time role, being a mum, and, well, having a life. The honest answer is: some days are better than others. But here's what a fairly typical day looks like for me.

6:45am – My alarm doesn't actually wake me up (I don’t even set one), my husband does, with a coffee in hand. It's a small thing, but those fifteen minutes before our son stirs are some of the most valuable of my day. No phones, no to-do lists, just us catching up on whatever needs catching up on. It's a quiet way to start before the noise begins.

7:00am – Our son is awake, and with him comes whichever toy has won favourite status that week. This is non-negotiable time. I'm not checking Instagram messages during cuddles, this bit belongs entirely to him.

7:45am – Dressed, coffee refreshed, and at my desk. This is when my founder's brain switches on properly. Before I open a single email, I usually spend a few minutes just looking at my list from the night before and deciding what actually matters today versus what feels urgent but isn't. Running two things, my job and Beyond the Mall, means I don't have the luxury of reacting to everything; I have to be deliberate about where my attention goes first.

7:30am to 11:00am – This block is entirely about clearing the decks. Emails, Instagram DMs, partner onboarding questions - anything where someone else is waiting on me. I learned early on that if I don't get things back into other people's court first thing, I lose the whole day chasing my own tail. So, my rule is simple: anything I can hand off, I hand off before 11am. That way, whoever's waiting on me; a new brand, a supplier, a colleague - has the whole day to respond, and with a bit of luck, I can close the loop before I switch off in the evening. It's not glamorous work, but it's the engine room that keeps Beyond the Mall moving.

11:00am – By this point, everything that needed to move is moving. It's a genuinely satisfying feeling to hit inbox zero, even if I know full well it'll fill back up in a few hours.

12:00pm – A quick bite with my husband. We don't always manage a proper sit-down lunch, but even ten minutes at the table together, away from screens, resets me for the afternoon. When you're building something from scratch, it's easy to let every meal become a working lunch. I try not to let that happen every day.

12:30pm – This is the block I protect most fiercely: my thinking time. No calls booked, no admin, nothing reactive. This is when I actually get to build Beyond the Mall rather than just run it - researching new ideas, designing campaigns, thinking through what's next for the brands on our platform, or simply sitting with a problem long enough to actually solve it properly instead of firefighting it. Founders talk a lot about hustle, but for me, this quiet, undistracted stretch is where the real strategic work happens. It's the part of the day that's mine, and I protect it like it's a client meeting, because in a way, it is - with the future version of the business.

4:30pm – Back to the list. A lot of the brands we work with are running Beyond the Mall alongside their own day jobs, so this window tends to be when people are quickly checking in on their side hustle before they properly clock off. I've learned it's a key moment to get back to them - a prompt reply here means they can action things that evening, rather than losing a whole day waiting on me. It's a small bit of timing that makes a real difference to how smoothly onboarding goes.

5:00pm – The final stretch of admin. Payments processed, loose ends tied, anything outstanding cleared so it's not sitting in my head overnight. I've learned that if I don't close things out properly here, they follow me downstairs, and that's not fair on my family.

5:45pm – Laptop shut. This is the hard stop, and it's one I take seriously. Downstairs it's Luca and Larry time - our son and our dog, in case that wasn't obvious. Toys scattered across the garden, a dog who's convinced every ball throw could be his last, dinner as a family, then bath and bed. This is the best part of my day, hands down, and there is nothing that will allow me to miss this.

7:30pm – A quick walk with Larry to shake off the day, then back to the sofa with my husband for some telly. If I'm completely honest, my laptop is usually within arm's reach (old habits) but it's more "half an eye on an idea" than actual work at this point.

9:30pm – Winding down. My mind doesn't always cooperate here, I'll often find myself turning over a campaign idea, a new brand I want to reach out to, or a problem from earlier in the day that I didn't quite crack. I've made peace with the fact that building something from nothing means your brain doesn't always clock off on schedule.

10:30pm – Lights off, properly this time.

It's a full day, most days. I won't pretend it's always perfectly balanced - some evenings I'm in the garden with Larry with one eye on my phone, and some mornings the to-do list feels heavier than others. But building Beyond the Mall in the gaps between nappy changes, bedtime stories and a full-time job has taught me more about resilience than any job title ever could. Every small UAE brand that finds a home on our platform is a reminder that the hustle is worth it, and honestly, I wouldn't trade a single messy, full, wonderful bit of it.