We recently connected with Ramon Peralta and have shared our conversation below.

Ramon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Everyone has crazy stuff happen to them, but often small business owners and creatives, artists and others who are doing something off the beaten path are often hit with things (positive or negative) that are so out there, so unpredictable and unexpected. Can you share a crazy story from your journey?

There’s one particular moment in my business development that I can look back on and point to as a turning point. One that, as I like to put it, ‘got me out of my basement.”

I am what I often call myself, a reluctant entrepreneur, and I say this because i never set out to build a business full time. It was always, at least in my mind, a side gig and for most of my early career, I kept a corporate job while also doing freelance design projects on the side. In 2008, I was part of a massive wave of layoffs at my former employer, a startup incubator most famously known for starting priceline.com. When I got laid off, I was of course afraid of the uncertainty and my first instinct was to try and find gainful employment. The reality was, that no one was hiring at the time, so I found myself working from home. It definitely had its perks because I no longer sat in my car for several hours a day commuting, and I could enjoy the company of my frenchie: Handsome Rob.

One day, my old boss called me with a referral. He connected me to an attorney friend of his in Dallas who was in need of a brand overhaul. I negotiated the terms and began working on a full rebrand for this high end law practice. Well into the project, the client reached out and informed me that he was going to be visiting my old boss, and that he wanted to come ‘check out my operation.’ I was billing him a full agency rate, and didn’t think I would make a good impression having him come visit me at my home office. The local coffee shop or diner wasn’t going to cut it either. I wanted to really come across as the brand agency that I felt I was, even if it was just a one-man shop. So I looked into some local furnished office space and secured a 6-month contract for an office that I had access to just 5 days per month. The day my client was in town, I was ready: fresh blazer, practiced his name (and mine) with the receptionist, and rehearsed the office ‘tour’ i was going to give him upon his arrival. I waited all day for him and at 5:30pm he called me to inform me that he was no longer going to be able to make it.

I now found myself with a 6 month contract that I could not get out of so I made the best of it. Once a week, I would go ‘into the office’ and when clients wanted to meet with me, I would meet them at the office and something crazy happened: I began to believe it was my office and that I could build an agency. Little by little I started to staff up and quickly outgrew the office and moved into the conference room (which was expensive). I even had an Open House and a Ribbon Cutting with the local chamber there. I shot a promo video and used the space as my new mailing address until eventually I moved into my own space. Today, almost 15 years later, we occupy 3,000 square feet of office space in a beautiful agency environment complete with our own podcast studio.

This crazy story proves that we don’t dream big enough. My message to you is whatever plans you have for your business, think bigger!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

At Peralta Design, we provide the rocket fuel to grow and scale businesses through branding, web development and digital marketing strategies. We have clients in over 40 states, and work with startups, non-profits and Fortune 500 brands. This past year, as Founder, I authored a book called Launch Your Brand which is available on Amazon and is based on my workshop and lecture series called BrandU where I teach personal and corporate brand strategies to other small business owners. I also delivered my first TedX talk called Be Yourself to Succeed. At Peralta Design we are dedicated to the micro-businesses and other reluctant entrepreneurs just starting their journey to launching their own brand.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I initially funded my business with my severance package. A total sum of $60k dollars was what I started out with. Since then, I have learned to seek capital before I need it and secured a business line of credit through my local bank partner that has helped lower the blood pressure with accounts receivables. i highly recommend small business owners get comfortable with funding resources so that they can have the confidence to expand or simply make payroll even when a large client is slow to pay. Offering prepay incentives or discounts is also another great way to maintain healthy cash flow in the business. Be disciplined to ask for deposits or full payment in advance of starting work, and stay vigilant with any delinquent accounts receivables. Sometimes entrepreneurs can be too trusting. Make sure you have a legal team review your contracts so that they are iron clad as well.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

There was one opportunity that came across our desk in the early stages of the business. We were small at the time, with only 3 employees and we had to turn down a six-figure project and although it was difficult to do so, it proved to be a priceless lesson in integrity for our growing staff. A woman and her son wanted us to fix a broken mobile application that they had built overseas. They had spent their entire life savings on the project and it was a mess. They had what we call technological debt. Our advice to them was that they let us rebuild the entire platform for a sum of $150k and they were only interested in fixing what they had for a budget of $100k. We could not in good faith, fix their platform for $100k because we knew that the end product was not going to provide a good user experience. We would not have been comfortable standing behind someone else’s work, so we advised her to work out a deal with their vendor to complete the project on their own. We basically turned down a $100k project because we knew that the final outcome was not going to be up to our standards. Our team realized right there that it is not always about the money with me and it made them want to work for me. It is a lesson that many founders need to live and learn.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.peraltadesign.com
• Instagram: @peraltadesign
• Facebook: facebook.com/peraltadesign
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/ramonperalta
• Other: www.peraltadesign.com/mission-ctrl