We were lucky to catch up with Braden East recently and have shared our conversation below.

Braden, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

Today I run a one-man branding agency for churches, but how I got here was pretty unexpected. In fact, if you told me this was possible 5 years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Growing up Christian, I thought that I had to be a pastor if I wanted to work for the church. The problem was that the idea of preaching sermons terrified me. So I decided to focus on something I actually enjoyed: creative stuff. I started doing logos for friends, watching case studies from big branding firms, and designing concept rebrands for my favorite companies. While this was going on, I was working as a web designer for parachurch (church-adjacent) nonprofits.

There were two things that had started to weigh heavily on me. The first was finances. If you’ve worked in the ministry world or in the creative industry, you can probably guess that a ministry designer role doesn’t have a huge salary attached to it. I had realized that I was never going to reach my income goals staying on this trajectory.

The second thing gnawing at me was a desire to work directly with the people whose lives would be impacted by my work. My 9-5 job was still somewhat meaningful, but I couldn’t help but daydream about a day when I would see my work make a direct, tangible difference for people I knew and cared for.

So, between falling short on my financial goals and my day job feeling totally empty, I was second-guessing my career choice. Looking 5 or 10 years ahead, all I could see was a burnt-out, depressed version of myself, like so many people we all know.

But in 2023, I got a glimmer of hope.

Three pastors called me within the span of one week. None of them knew each other, but they all had found me through random connections in our networks. They all said the same thing: “You do graphic design, right? Can you help us with a new church logo?”

I had done logos for random other businesses, but working with churches was a new, and I had to ask the hard question, “What’s your budget for something like this?” I cringed waiting for the response, but the number they came back with didn’t just ease my concern, it made me realize that I could do just this for a living.

My dream of working for the local church started to show signs of life.

With three successful church rebrands under my belt I threw together a website and social media presence to post case studies. Slowly but surely, other pastors started to reach out. Soon it wasn’t just one-off logos anymore, but retainers, websites, and complete rebrand packages. I had no idea what running a real business looked like, but I knew I could learn.

In 2025, I made the jump out of my day job into this church branding agency endeavor. I’m excited for the adventure of owning a creative business, but what I’m most grateful for is that my expectations of what was possible were totally shattered by those three phone calls.

Braden, 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?

I’m a self-taught designer that loves the local church. Specifically, I do branding for churches through my agency, Restore Graphics.

My mission is to help church leaders galvanize their people to make a tangible community impact. To do this, I use a kingdom-first brand framework that makes Christ the cornerstone of the entire brand, grounding each church’s unique story in God’s archetypal story of redemption.

I’m proud of the successful rebrands dozens of churches have had with me, and it’s a privilege to see lives being changed all over North America through these individual congregations.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

I set follow-up dates for every contact in my mailing list, whether they’re past clients, new leads, or just lurkers.

That sounds like a lot of work, but to me it’s worth the extra 30-60 minutes once a month to keep those relationships warm and stay top-of-mind.

There’s no way I’ll ever remember to do this on my own, so I use reminders to make sure I don’t drop the ball. I also use templates to make the whole thing easy on myself. I’d never be able to do this if I was hand-writing every note from scratch.

For past clients who have done a larger project with me, I’ll also send a small gift once a year around Christmas time, just to say thank you and to build up good will.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

All three of Alex Hormozi’s books ($100m Offers, $100m Leads, and $100m Money Models) have been life changing for me from a business ownership perspective. Freelancing and scraping by is one thing, but building a serious, long-term profitable business is another.

I’ve also really enjoyed reading StoryBrand by Donald Miller.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://restore.graphics
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/restoregraphics
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/restoregraphics