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

Desireé E. , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

After several LONG years of heightened emotions, long nights, and early mornings, I was able to launch my digital branding and design agency, Designed 2 Honor and ended up going viral on a platform called Fiverr. Fiverr is one of the largest marketplaces for freelancers in the world and here I was with a Rising Talent badge on a Social Media Management gig and a heavy influx of potential clients waiting desperately to work with me. My business, Designed 2 Honor was created after my mother passed in 2020 from Breast Cancer. She was extremely gifted, caring, and had many dreams and aspirations that did not come to fruition in this lifetime. However, my success as an entrepreneur was one that did. I can only imagine her seeing her daughter shine bright like a diamond in the business world and her leaping for joy! Since I am the only child, I wanted to create something that honored her and could be left as a legacy for my children when the time was right. I am Designed 2 Honor and I made a promise to myself that everything that I did would honor the time she spent nurturing and encouraging me to pursue my dreams of being an entrepreneur and that’s just what I plan to continue doing.

Desireé E. , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

After changing majors a few times, I decided that marketing was what I wanted to study in college. The idea of helping businesses reach their most valuable customers by identifying and cultivating unique audiences gave me a thrill. During my junior year at Cal State Northridge, I joined a club called the American Marketing Association and became the Director of Careers and Placement. My key focus within this role was to assist with hosting “lunch and learns” with highly sought out agencies and companies, to develop a newsletter that would reach a whole network of individuals even outside my university with a goal of placing my colleagues into their desired employment positions before they graduated.

A year into this role, I found myself in the process of finding a job before the clock ran out. I was graduating! One of the most exciting and memorable times of my life. My mother – at the tender age of 60-something was able to attend my graduation and it left me with tears of joy! At the same time, I had received an offer letter from a digital media agency in Beverly Hills. I had never seen $35,000 with a sign-on bonus in my lifetime! It might not seem like a lot now, but coming from someone who experienced what living paycheck to paycheck was like, it was a come up!

I took it without question and started a month after graduation. Within this agency, I came to become familiar with many roles which would in the future help me become the CEO I am today. I worked as an Ad Sales Coordinator, which I believed to be the heart of the agency because we were responsible for persuading major companies to work with our list of clients in a world where influencer marketing had just begun. Many companies were new to influencer marketing and hesitant to spend such a large amount on it but they also knew that they had to get ahead of how the digital media industry was changing! At the time, we represented clients like Lea Michele, Ashley Tisdale, Shawn Johnson and Bethenny Frankel – all powerhouses of female talent made it easy for our team to market.

After generating over $200,000 for our clients from working at a digital media agency as an Ad Sales Coordinator on sponsored digital campaigns and activations, I transitioned into the role of an Editorial Coordinator, where I assisted with the creation and syndication of blog content for our client’s digital brands. This was a fun role!

This is also when I began to realize that there were lots of people who I felt needed these digital media services within the community that I identified with the most, and that was the Black and Brown communities. There were times when I felt like there was a lack of diversity and representation when it came to these communities within our company. I am saying this not to discredit their efforts in trying to capture these audiences, but I knew it was going to take a lot more people who looked like me working there to be in positions of influence with creative control. One day, I met with the CEO, Luigi Picarazzi and told him that I would have my own digital media agency. He asked me kindly, “Are you sure you want to, though Desiree?” and that led me on a five-year journey to discover that I had what it took to have my own successful business.

What sets Designed 2 Honor apart from the rest in my industry is our unique drive, intuitiveness, and ability to stay relevant with our knowledge of industry trends and digital tools. Designed 2 Honor is strategic with our offerings and how we help our clients “brand” themselves online. I am most proud of the partnerships that Designed 2 Honor has been able to nurture throughout the time we have been in business. With the support of Fiverr, I have been able to publish my first book, Influential Essentials: Keys to A Successful Digital Media Agency and host several events for the San Diego market as a Community Leader, Virtual Coach, and Speaker. I would like potential clients to know that it is never too late to start over. When something is no longer working for your brand and you need to pivot to digital solutions, Designed 2 Honor is agency you want to call.

Have you ever had to pivot?

A time when I had to pivot in business is when I had to move away from having multiple gigs in the digital marketing category and begin to focus on social media management (SMM) as my key service. On Fiverr, you are allowed to have about 7 active gigs. I thought to myself, “Why not maximize my opportunities and focus on mastering multiple gigs at once?” After a couple months on the platform, I went viral and realized 90% of my clientele was coming as SMM. Now that I have established myself as a reputable business owner, I have expanded but at the time, I needed to pivot in order to truly maximize my best opportunity. My business coach told me before I started that it was ok to start off offering multiple services when you start your business but I would eventually learn that being the go to for a couple is perfectly fine and it worked out great for my business.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn was that I can do everything on my own. There was a time where I was managing almost 10 clients at once on my own and honestly could not effectively manage it all on my own so I did what any smart business owner would do, give a referral to the best people I knew for the job. I went from 10 to 5 so that I could dedicate more time and effort into those. How I chose those 5 was based on longevity they had been with me and need.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.designed2honor.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/designed2honor
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/desiree-e-jordan/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=JWdbUiHl_Qys5TKLW8DOpw&utm_source=ishare
• Other: instagram.com/iammelodicdee www.fiverr.com/designed2honor

Image Credits
Antwone Adams