We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brittany Lander a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Brittany, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.
Your family and friends are typically the first to support your business ventures and lucky for me, many did. Lot’s of family/friend discounts but I saw these projects as resume building and skill honing. As my portfolio grew I built myself a website in hopes of being seen. Even with 15 years experience, its hard to fit that into a neat little pdf and stand out in a stack of resumes. Fast forward to meeting my future husband at none other than a Jewish Fraternity party (AEPi for those curious.) This also led to making many friends down the road with a goldmine of business opportunities. Many years after all had graduated and left college to nurture our careers, my husband and friends remained connected to their Fraternity through a nationwide Facebook Group. They use this group to share projects, business opportunities, and stay supporting one another. As luck would have it, my best friends both tagged my husband in a post made by a fraternity brother on the group. He was looking for a whole startup guide to launch a business idea and wanted to start with a logo. Immediately my husband reached out to him and sent him my website. Not even an hour later I get a inquiry on my website form from this gentlemen and within a couple days, we signed the design contract and a loyal referral was made.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I grew up an only child so my parents shared everything with me. My Dad was very interested in computers and technology in the early 90’s so when we bought our first family PC, it was a big deal. Soon after, my Dad decided to teach himself how to program and design. His first job in this tech world was a graphic design position for startup company. He was teaching himself Photoshop 5.0 and along the way, was teaching me at only 8 years old. It was a creative outlet and so much better than Microsoft Paint! A passion was born and following in my Dad’s footsteps, I took on jobs in the marketing/graphic design world. What started as simple digital photo editing for photographers, turned into Logo design, and eventually Website Design. This is where I found my passion for Branding. We live in a time where everyone wants to start a business but most have no idea how to begin or even how to sell themselves or the product. That’s where I come in and I guide these small businesses to create a Brand for themselves and reach their audience with their best foot forward. My goal is to make things simple and transparent by setting these small business owners up with tools that give them control of everything and keep startup costs from being overwhelming. It takes money to make money but some can only start with a small sum. I want these great ideas to find their way into the market and not be held back by startup costs that take advantage of many in the beginning. Their success is my success and together we “Started from the bottom, now were here.”
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Honesty is such a common used word in marketing. So many large businesses claim to be and yet are taking advantage of clients. Working in many Marketing Agencies over the years, I started to see common business practices that made it hard to want to be a part of the team. Business owners fueled by poor spending choices and clients unknowingly paying costs to bail these business owners out of debt. Low quality customer service and high client turnover or chargebacks because these services the businesses claim to provide are lacking. I decided to go on my own and provide what I knew was truly needed. To provide services that were tools for clients to use to grow and not have to worry about paying these crazy costs just to make a website or get a logo. I become friends with many of my clients and I love to watch their businesses grow and thrive. Knowing I helped them from the bottom up makes taking on new projects so exciting for me.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
I have found that my best source of new clients comes from my past ones. There is no better marketing than positive word of mouth and referral based business models.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.atomicpopstudios.com
- Instagram: atomicpopstudios
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/brittany-lander/