We were lucky to catch up with Alex Tillard recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Alex thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Taking care of customers isn’t just good business – it is often one of the main reasons folks went into business in the first place. So, we’d love to get a conversation going around how to best help clients feel appreciated – maybe you can share something you’ve done or seen someone do that’s been really effective at helping a customer feel valued?

We believe in showing our clients how much we love them an appreciate them all the time! We will send handwritten notes frequently, with fun little free stickers or other details. We know their birthdays and their kids’ names. We celebrate their successes, whether it’s because of something we did or not.

But most importantly, we always do our best work for our clients. We look at it as if their business is also our business (because it kind of is!), and we hope it feels like we’re just an extension of their team. And if we don’t reach a goal, or we make a mistake, we always own it and apologize.

I know that’s all not a big, grand gesture, but honestly, I think it’s these small daily things that really matter for a good, long-term relationship.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

When I was growing up, I never once said, “You know what? I want to be an entrepreneur.” No siree. My dad was an entrepreneur, and I watched it and thought to myself, “Self, that looks stressful and overwhelming and I could not do it.”

In college I decided to get a fine art degree as well as a degree in Spanish literature. My first job utilized that Spanish degree, and then I moved on to graphic design and copywriting.

From working in marketing and communications at a church for eight years, to getting a job at a marketing agency as a graphic designer, to becoming a creative director, I learned a lot about marketing. Then the agency I was at was bought by a larger company, and our team slowly got pulled into that direction, and away from our clients. And I was sad.

Because for me, no matter what job I’ve had, it’s always been about relationships.

I didn’t want to let go of the relationships I had built over the years with some really amazing people—people on my team, and people at the companies and organizations I worked with.

That’s when I decided to buy the book of business from that larger company that had bought the marketing agency. (Cue scary music.) I had not planned on being a business owner. I thought maybe I’d just be a freelancer of sorts. I talked to my clients, almost all of whom decided to stay with me and take a leap of faith together. To those of you who jumped with me, thank you 💛

Having worked at/with a few different agencies, bringing a whole slew of clients along for a wild ride, and now having hired my first employees, we continue to provide excellent marketing, creative, and communication services to all our clients, and hopefully many more in the future.

We build everything on the foundation of strategy, to make sure we have our goals and desires well defined. From there, we do anything marketing: branding and logos, graphic design, websites, copywriting, advertising (digital and physical), social media, and photography. We also work with partners to help us with PR and video.

We work with clients big and small, from mid-sized local businesses, to one-person entrepreneurs who want a partner to bounce ideas off of and take marketing things off their plates, to nonprofits who fill gaps and make our communities better.

Staying local is one of our most important values, so we focus on working with local organizations in a variety of industries. We pair our marketing expertise with the expertise they have in their particular industry.

We love our clients, and we love what we do!

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We’re still relatively new as we are now (a team of 4), but in the last year we’ve worked hard to build our reputation locally. That starts with doing really great work. When you do your best for your clients, they’ll talk about you very naturally, and our clients do that for us! (They’re amazing).

The next thing we do is build our digital presence. We built a website this year, and we post regularly on our Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. And we don’t just post what we do/salesy things. We really focus on showing who we are on social media, so that if you find us there, if you’re the right kind of person, we seem like a fun team to work with :) We also ask our clients to give us reviews so that for those who don’t know us, they can read through how others have experienced us.

We also are a part of a few local organizations and attend events (the West Coast Chamber and Holland Young Professionals). These events are a great way to have fun, and network with people.

Sponsorships are another thing we believe in. It’s a small way we can give back to our community, and we do sponsorships for events, as well as yearly sponsorships for organizations.

I think we have more we can still do, but I think we’ve done really well in the last year of getting our name out there in a positive way!

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I do a combination of creative things and business/administrative things. And I have skills in both areas, so I can do that. But the creative part always means there’s something visual (or words) that you can SEE when you’re done. When you do things that are more behind-the-scenes, they so often go unseen. But when I do a logo, drawing, or other design, it’s absolutely so rewarding to have a complete, visual piece that you can see with your eyes.

Contact Info:

• Website: yellowlimecreative.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yellowlimecreative/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yellowlimecreative
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/yellow-lime-creative/
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@yellowlimecreative

Image Credits
Tantzi Kuyers, Sang Kim