We were lucky to catch up with Katy Allen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Katy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I have always loved paper planners. Brands like Lily Pulitzer made gorgeous ones with fun designs, and other brands like Emily Ley’s Simplified and Erin Condren created planners that were thoughtful, aesthetically pleasing, and focused on empowering users to live their best lives. I wanted to be able to use planners like that, but as life went on, I had more and more of a need for digital. My husband is a musician and was touring all the time, and everything he did was in Google Calendar. I needed to be able to see his calendar, and I needed him to be able to see mine. I tried to make a paper planner work, but it required double entry: write down all of his tour stops in my planner, write down everything I’m doing in my planner, and then enter them into our shared Google Calendar. It was too much to keep up with!

I gave up on the idea of using a physical planner and switched fully to digital (Google Calendar was my go-to), but I still wished for something better. I remember searching in the app store for a “cute calendar” and found something to download, but I quickly realized it wouldn’t work because it didn’t sync with any of the major calendar platforms. At my daughter’s baby shower, the lack of aesthetically pleasing digital options came up, and I realized I wasn’t alone in my desire for something better!

Once I made the decision to pursue it, I created a closed Facebook group and added 10-12 friends who were interested in the idea. I posted mock-ups and got feedback to make sure I was on the right track with my ideas. As time went on, I added more interested people to this group and continuously asked for their input as we brought it to life. I also created a video explaining the idea and sent the video and a survey around to everyone I know asking for feedback and thoughts on pricing.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am someone who has had several different careers! I worked briefly in data marketing out of college, but I left that job after my husband won American Idol and we moved to Los Angeles, CA. I briefly pursued professional acting (I was very into theater in high school and college, so it made sense to give it a try while we were in the city for it!). Once we moved back to Arkansas, I worked for a few years as a high school drama teacher.

When we moved to Nashville in 2014, I knew that it was time to get back into marketing or business. Acting and drama were fun, but I had always wanted to be a business owner. I joined a children’s book company as a salesperson and grew my team to thousands of people. This job was really important in my journey because it gave me a lot of hands-on experience with video editing, graphic design, sales, and marketing. Feeling confident in these areas made it so much easier to make the jump into starting Artful Agenda because I felt comfortable pitching ideas and mocking things up. I didn’t have a background in tech, but selling children’s books online meant that I was comfortable learning and implementing new tech.

Artful Agenda is a combo of an app and SaaS (software as a service) product. Our users pay one annual fee for access to Artful Agenda on all of their devices. We offer a mobile app, tablet app, browser-based web app, and computer apps in the Mac and Microsoft stores.

Artful Agenda is set apart because it’s the only aesthetically focused calendar that fully syncs with all three major calendar platforms (Apple, Google, Outlook). Our users are able to have the best of both worlds. They can choose their cover design, choose from hundreds of fun digital stickers to place on their calendars, choose a custom handwriting-inspired font, write on their agendas with a stylus, and so much more! But beyond this, they have all of the benefits of a fully integrated digital calendar as well as several Artful Agenda-specific productivity add-ons like rollover tasks, habit tracking, and custom task lists.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I first started Artful Agenda, I hired an app consultant to help me shop the idea around to developers for quotes. The company he helped me choose ended up being a terrible fit. I spent over $100,000 dollars with them and still didn’t have close to a finished product. It was scary and demoralizing at the time, but I made the decision to leave that company and find a new one to finish the product. I’m so glad I did because I’m still partnered with that new company, Twin Sun Solution, today!

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I first came up with the idea for Artful Agenda, there were quite a few naysayers. People told me it would be too hard, too expensive, and too much to tackle. I think it would have been easy to let that get to me and change my mind, but there was something inside of me that just knew I could do it. I knew if I kept meeting with people, I would find those who believed in my idea and me. Sometimes someone would think it was a great idea but not really know how to help, so I would ask them if they could think of anyone else I could meet with. I’d take their recommendations and keep moving forward. Eventually, I was able to find the right team of people willing and able to help me bring the idea to life!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://artfulagenda.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artfulagenda?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

Image Credits

Artful Agenda