We were lucky to catch up with Jayde Deonna recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jayde, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?
To be very candid, my parents didn’t teach me much, and I think that’s one of the best things they’ve ever done for me because it made me have such an insatiable craving for knowledge. From a very young age I understood that I was a lot different than the people around me in terms of how I thought, what I wanted and how I liked to express myself. Being so different led me to isolate myself a lot because I felt that no one understood me and I, like anyone else, hate the feeling of being misunderstood but that isolation led me to digging into more books than I can count (somewhere up in the hundreds) and spending a good portion of my adolescence on the internet consuming as much information as I could.
With my head stuck between pages or jammed under the blue-light of a computer I found my peace, an endless bank of knowledge I could feed off of and improve myself with, something I did not receive from my family. As I grew older and my need for connection grew I found myself on sites like MEEZ where you could interact with people from all over; who usually were also very different than the norm. On MEEZ I found forums and within those forums I found my love for design by editing people’s avatars, then making maps and now over a decade later I’m using the skills I fostered in my isolation to create my freedom.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Jayde Deonna and I’m the owner of Jayde Deonna Designs. I live in NY, Upstate – not the city, and I’m a 23 year old single mother to a 2 (almost 3) year old boy. Before my son was born I was in a very unhealthy relationship I felt I was finally making my way out of when I found out that I was experiencing a cryptic pregnancy and was 5/6 months pregnant. Yes, you read that right, 5/6 months pregnant. After I found out how late I was in my pregnancy I was hit with the decision to either try to make things work and raise our son or give him up for adoption because there were no other options. After a few months of trying to make it work I quickly realized after my son was born that things would I needed to get my son and myself out of that environment so he wouldn’t grow up thinking unhealthy relationships were normal. A couple months after that, COVID locked the world down and I needed to find a way to make money from home without being chained to phone calls for hours on end so I could take care of my son properly while still covering us financially.
As I mentioned earlier I began designing about 10 years ago but after the sites I mostly used fazed out I found my way to Tumblr. Now, Tumblr may be one of the biggest reasons I’d never allow my son to be on the internet unsupervised, but it did allow me to continue expanding my design skills and pick up a new skill: coding. When I had to figure out a way to utilize my skills from home my coding knowledge was the first thing that came to mind. The Tech Industry was booming and became a hot topic on Twitter with hashtags like #BlackWomenInTech, I was on Twitter A LOT those days as most people were because quarantining had lost it’s charm very quickly so I was constantly seeing women that looked like me getting these high-earning remote positions. The appeal of the Tech Industry was hard to ignore and I started to pursue a Software Engineering bootcamp so I could clock enough hours, skills and certifications to break into the industry. I bought a Macbook so I’d be able to keep up without my systems crashing and started retraining myself on basic HTML so I could apply to bootcamps that ranged around $7-12k for a self-paced course that would allow me to still take care of my son instead of sitting in a class all day. I quickly realized that the time it would take for me to finish the bootcamp (8-12 months) and find a role in the industry was far too long for me to be able to cover our living expenses so I had to go back to the drawing board.
I suppose my drawing board is Twitter because that’s exactly where I stumbled upon two amazing black female designers (@realjayelaine) and (@miahardencreative) who showed me that I could use my design skills to build up a high-earning business that would allow me the time freedom I so desperately wanted while also providing a good life for my son. With COVID booming and seemingly never-ending a lot of people were turning towards entrepreneurship to recover lost income and I noticed that almost all of the businesses I saw popping up in my area were owned by women but I also noticed the lack of professional and high-quality branding. Even if their businesses were amazing with high-quality products the branding was almost always lackluster so I knew that people were in need of the services I could provide. After that, I spent at least 6 months (half the time I would’ve spent just finishing the Tech bootcamp) studying the art of branding, dusting off my design skills and forming my business; Jayde Deonna Designs.
Jayde Deonna Designs was launched January 1st, 2021 and is coming up on it’s 2nd year anniversary! My mission is to help established female entrepreneurs enhance their brands and attract/retain their target audience with the use of intentional and high-quality branding or design. With over 10 years of experience in multiple medias I have a broad range of skills that ensures my clients satisfaction and enough knowledge to make even the simplest brands standout. When most of my clients come to me they have a very small understanding of how branding affects the consumer journey and how it could be deterring their target audience if it wasn’t crafted with strategy in mind; and I fix that! Few things make me happier than asking my clients if they need any more information or if they’re confused about anything at the end of our consultations and hearing a relieved sigh before they say I gave them everything they needed and more to take their brand to the next level.
Earlier this year I shut down my business for a 1/2 months and rebranded from the ground up because I realized my target audience had elevated and I wasn’t attracting them anymore. After documenting + sharing my businesses results since my rebrand I’ve gained a ton of clients, a growing loyal audience and an immense amount of confidence that I share with my clients through the rebrands I create for them. I’d be lying if I said business was easy, I didn’t experience weeks where I didn’t see a single dollar or I have everything figured out right now but what I can say is having a strategy and staying consistent even in the moments I didn’t want to has given me the ability to take care of my son and that is something I’m immensely proud of.
How did you build your audience on social media?
I honestly struggled in the beginning to build my social media presence because I was coming out of a very traumatic period and I just wanted to isolate myself and fly under the radar until I felt like me again. I knew I couldn’t do that if I wanted to build my clientele so I began taking in any and all marketing tips I could from the elite black female marketers of IG and started implementing them on my IG page. From posting 3 times a day, using hashtags on my story, engaging with people in their comment sections and all of the usual things you hear I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere and got very discouraged quite quickly. At the same time I was having success trading and the market had entered a bull run (a period where HUGE profits can be made very quickly) and I was bringing in enough to supplement the income I would’ve gotten from my business so I allowed it to take a backseat while I focused on the thing I knew I was good at. This is something I definitely regret now seeing where my audience is after I simply pivoted, started listening to myself more and implementing the proper strategies.
A big part of the reason I struggled so much with building my online presence was the fact that I was not confident in my own branding. After spending months studying and taking in as much business+branding knowledge as I could I quickly threw my own branding together a week before I launched (very ironic isn’t it) just to have something to present to customers with the idea that I’d rebrand a month or two down the line but as any business owner knows when you plan for something without actually sitting down and making real plans for it-it’s never going to get done. And it didn’t. As each month went by I lost more and more confidence in my business even when I was booking clients because I simply didn’t want to show my own low-quality branding. Nearing the end of my first year in business I realized I hadn’t hit almost any of the goals I’d planned to because I’d directed my focus elsewhere when things got hard or weren’t immediately perfect instead of doing what a business owner has to do and taking the time to fix the issues that were making things hard.
That’s when I decided enough was enough and I stopped taking clients to focus solely on my rebrand which has been one of my best decisions in business thus far. After my rebrand I was confident enough to show up everyday and really put my business out there knowing that if I stayed consistent and pivoted when something wasn’t working an audience would come. And it did.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I’d say my entire journey these past 2 years could illustrate my resilience. There is not a day that goes by that I’m not handling something while still trying to show up as my best whether it be a toddler using me as a jungle gym as I’m trying to complete my work, systems/programs malfunctioning, my mental health acting up or a laundry list of all the other things I constantly deal with. I’ve wanted to give up and almost have more times than I can count, I’ve been burnt out to the point of no return and still somehow I get myself up the next day and push myself to work just a little bit harder than I did the day before. And every time I do that, I remind myself that it’s so my son won’t have to and can simply enjoy life when he’s my age because his mother already paved the way for him.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jaydedeonna.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaydedeonna/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jaydedeonna