Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ellie Brown. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Ellie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

I was once asked this same question in an interview I was doing for a kindergarten teaching job, and I remember saying that I wanted the students who left my classroom to feel like they mattered. I left the interview and began to reflect on my answers, as I’m sure most people do, and I quickly realized that that answer was true, but not exactly quite right.

I hope my legacy will be to help others realize how capable they are of pursuing their big, audacious goals. This pursuit began inside the classroom and continues to hold true as I’ve built my design business.

I’ve found that many of the small business owners I’ve worked with really struggle with self-doubt (myself included). Instead of seeing their unique life experiences as part of what makes them great, or that making mistakes is, in fact, how we learn and grow, they get so discouraged that they aren’t farther along in their journey, or don’t have it all figured out yet. I hope to empower others to know that they don’t need to have all the answers figured out before they begin going after their goals.

Ellie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My business all started as a pursuit to supplement my teaching salary…

I always knew that whatever I pursued, I wanted to help people. In my mind that meant things like being a nurse, teacher, social worker, etc. So I graduated with a degree in social work and a minor in psychology. In fact, it took a lot of unlearning to finally realize that helping business owners with branding and websites is extremely helpful to them! During my last semester of college, I quickly realized that a traditional social work-type job was so not going to work for me. Fast forward a few years after college, I had worked at a homeless shelter with toddlers and a family law office before I decided to move from Missouri to Colorado in 2016. After arriving in Colorado Springs, I thought I might as well give social work one last try since, hey, I was still paying off the student loans and all.

Again, being a child welfare caseworker completely validated that this type of work was not what I was meant to do. My favorite part of the job was the 15-minute face-to-faces I would have with the kids on my caseload. Enter my brilliant plan to cold-turkey quit being a social worker and dive head first into a 4th grade classroom. My then boyfriend, now husband, was an 8th grade social studies teacher and made it seem really fun, and I would be with children all day, which again, was really the only part of my caseworker job I liked.

Wow, was I naive. On a Wednesday in August of 2017, I was smacked in the face with the hardest thing I’ve ever done: teaching a room full of kids. Due to the teacher shortage in Colorado, I was able to obtain an alternative teaching license that allowed me to take the necessary coursework to become a teacher while also teaching during the day. In 5 years I taught 4 grades and managed to obtain some of the highest growth scores in my district. To this day my time in the classroom is the thing I am the proudest of. I attribute much of my success in the classroom to my background in sociology and psychology, I just didn’t know that a the time.

It is no secret that teachers don’t make a lot of money so during my first two years of teaching I began looking into different side-hustles that I could do. Originally I thought I would become a photographer on the side and even bought a DSLR camera for myself!

Then on a fall evening of 2019, I see the Instagram ad that will go down in my autobiography as a game-changer. The photography endeavor never really took off (which totally makes sense looking back seeing as I barely even take pictures on my phone) and I knew that I wanted something that allowed me to work fully remotely since I wanted an opportunity to travel during the summers. The ad was for a design and tech skills course that promised to teach me how to work online and travel the world. This was before I had learned anything about the power of great copywriting, but I literally thought this Instagram ad had been written just for me! I purchased the course during Black Friday.

Fast forward a few months later, I had found a photographer who needed a logo, as well as a local graphic design opportunity and I was absolutely hooked! I loved designing and felt like I was finally picking up some traction when March 2020 shut the world down. I remember I had just secured my business name (Ellie Brown Branding) through the secretary of state a few weeks before the initial lockdown. Immediately, my business was pushed to the side as the entire teaching community pivoted to teaching online.

When school let out for summer that year, I finally landed my first web design client. I remember telling my husband how nervous I was but also felt confident that I could create something awesome for the local painter who had hired me. He paid me half of the project total and I spent hours sketching out his logo and researching what needed to be included on his website, and even offered to help him take photos to be featured on the website! And then I got ghosted. I hate to admit it, especially now that I know how common this can be, but it really shook the little bit of confidence that I had back then. I didn’t know anybody else who did this type of work and had no way of knowing that sometimes projects fizzle out.

I didn’t completely throw in the towel on my design business, but I have no doubt that it slowed down my progress. I assumed I wasn’t any good and that nobody else would want to hire me after that. Typing this out, I realize how dramatic that way of thinking was, but that’s how I felt. When I pursue something, I pursue excellence, and I wanted to give my client’s a logo/website that would help their business.

Even though I was totally downplaying it, I continued to tell everyone I knew that I was designing brands and websites: girls at the gym, my hairdresser, friends, co-workers from school, family, etc. I was able to take on a few more projects while still teaching during the day. I loved the work but quickly realized when projects were taking 6 months to a year to complete that my process needed some (a lot of) streamlining.

All the while I was still teaching. My first year I taught 4th grade an hour away from my home. For the following three years I taught a multi-age classroom of 1st and 2nd graders and concluded my time in the classroom as a kindergarten teacher (my fav!). As my confidence grew inside of the classroom, I was able to spend more and more time on Ellie Brown Branding. I invested in a business course (Booked Out Designer with Elizabeth McCravy) that helped me create backend systems for the business, and further hone in on my client experience. It wasn’t until I took that course that I finally felt like I was ready to take my business full-time. I could picture myself really old completely regretting it if I didn’t go for it. So even though I was crushing it inside the classroom and really loved my job, I decided to resign from teaching.

I am a perfectionist. They say the first step is admitting it, right? Well, as hard as teaching was in the beginning, I know in my heart that I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t been inside a classroom. I still struggle deeply with not thinking that I am good enough, but I also learned that with competence comes confidence, at least for me anyway. The more I knew about the science of reading, the more I began to see my student’s not only test well, but actively engage in classroom conversations. This has also been true with my business. The more clients I’ve been able to help and the more I’ve studied marketing and branding, the more my confidence in my abilities continues to improve. And mind you, these are all self-imposed thoughts! No client has ever told me that I’m the worst or unhelpful!

I learned more lessons about business inside the schools I worked at than I ever could have imagined. I had the opportunity to cultivate communities; prioritize having fun; learned how to prioritize the work that needed to get done first; worked on releasing control; lived through many hard conversations; and continued to show up day after day even when I didn’t feel like I had it in me. I gained a self-confidence that I don’t think I ever would have anywhere else.

I used to view my career switches as a sign that I couldn’t stick with anything. I don’t view it that way anymore. I read a lot of personal development books and am so grateful that while I was teaching I was able to recognize that everything I was doing was meant to teach me something.

I am meant to be an entrepreneur. It excites me and challenges me in a way that I’ve never felt before. And I now realize that all of the experiences I’ve lived through are what make me an incredible brand and web designer. My unique combination of experience in psychology, sociology, education, and artistic endeavors allows me to help my clients create brands and websites that showcase their own strengths and abilities! On the surface, I provide my clients with visual branding and websites, but I also help them learn to show up confidently online and when it comes to talking about their business. I specialize in helping perfectionist business owners with service-based businesses recognize that they don’t have to do it all and get out of their own way when it comes to launching their brand and website.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Without a doubt, I would say striving to do my best no matter what I was doing, whether it was while I was teaching or designing. A majority of my beginning business has come from word-of-mouth referrals from people in my community who knew me when I was a teacher. If I had slacked off on any of my teaching duties, I don’t think potential clients would have thought highly of me.

I believe that branding at its essence is trust. Due to this fact, I’ve always strived to over-communicate. I never want a client to feel the need to reach out to me about project deliverables. I always try to set the expectation of when I plan to deliver something, or when I will be in touch with them. If I am not able to meet that deadline for whatever reason, I try to communicate that to them. I’ve found that clients are almost always understanding as long as they know what the situation is!

In addition to continuous communication, I also strive to surprise and delight my clients! This can mean extra deliverables they weren’t expecting, additional revisions, and my favorite, gifts! I believe the client experience is one of the most important things I provide.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

As I mentioned in the previous question, I always assumed that “helping” others essentially meant working in a martyr-type job. It took me a really long time to reframe and relearn what helping others could look like.

I would literally walk myself through scenarios like this: A business owner needs a website in order to make enough money to feed their family and pay for their home. If they don’t have the skillset or time to create a website for themself that could negatively impact their whole life!

A pretty extreme way to think about it, but I didn’t grow up knowing any entrepreneurs and always just associated being your boss with being unstable and a little greedy. I have wholeheartedly changed my mind about that! I was also raised by a very security-oriented parent, so entrepreneurship was completely foreign to me!

Contact Info:

• Website: elliebrownbranding.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elliebrownbranding/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elliebrownbranding

Image Credits
Kira Goff