We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kelly Thomas a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kelly, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I’ve always been a highly creative person. I sing and play several instruments; I love to do all types of crafting and woodworking and refinishing furniture. At one point I owned a Home Staging Business and then my love for colors and textures worked into graphic design and then eventually web design. I worked as a Director of Communications for a large church in the Houston area for several years until 2017 when my husband unexpectedly passed away. It was at that time that I had to make some decisions on what was best for my family and left my full-time job to stay home to spend more time with my children. After about a year of being home I ran into a friend, Pastor Bryant Lee, who I had known from my time working at the church. He had started a church plant and wanted to know what I had been doing. I had just finished volunteering my time designing a website for my church home and as I showed him the work I had done he quickly followed up with, “my church needs a new website.” And that is how it began. His church website lead to another and then another and before you knew it I had a business. Initially, I worked with just churches but then members of these churches with small businesses started contacting me for help and that is when I grew into assisting small businesses. After our first year in we added more graphic design and branding services and then we added in social media management services. Here we are today at 3 years in and we have gone from a staff of just me to a staff of four, we have designed over 50 websites and have helped over 30 businesses and nonprofits brand themselves. One of my biggest supporters starting out was my dad, who encouraged me daily. When I first started the business, I was still in a tough place emotionally, I had just lost my husband, and was trying hard to find my new normal for myself and my family. I think in a lot of ways starting this business helped me move forward. I know that my husband would be so proud of me and the legacy I am leaving for my children. I want my kids to know that no matter what life throws at you – you can do anything and you can accomplish your dreams.

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 an entrepreneur, a web and graphic designer, a homeschool mom with four amazing children, and owner of Designed by Kelly. I love helping small businesses, nonprofits and purposeful entrepreneurs find their brand and teach them how to develop and use an online presence to reach their target audience. We offer three main services: website design, branding and graphic design and social media management. We help our clients stand out by creatively and visually telling their story through building a brand that customers will come back to time and time again.

I would say there are two things that I feel really separate us from other designers. First, I am affordable to everyone. That was the concept I built my business on, everyone should have access to high quality affordable design. I tell clients when I meet them the first time that I’m in the business of helping people. Second, I really get to know my clients. I really want to know them and their business. I start with a no-pressure, free consultation via zoom first to see if we are a good fit for each other. I ask a lot of questions and typically they ask me just as many. I look at their social media presence and what people say about them. If they are a local place of business I will stop by and visit or if they are a local church I may even attend a worship service to see what they are all about. You can’t market a client’s target audience if you don’t know the client first. My clients are a part of the design process from day one, and while I will give you professional advice and tips, their feedback is always welcome and heard. Best of all once they become a client, they are always a client. I’m always just a phone call, email or text away when they need advice or help with a quick question.

One of the things I am most proud of is how we give back. I wanted a part of this business to be about giving back to the clients who have helped make us successful. So, I always look for opportunities where I can do that. One of my favorite ways is I teach a 6-part class to students ages 14-18 on how to design a mock business. They learn the basics of graphic design along with naming a mock business and writing out their business goals and then I teach them to design a logo, business card, website, and a business presentation throughout the process. I do this completely for free and many of the kids I’ve taught still come to me with questions and I mentor them. I’ve had the opportunity to teach this course with Coming Out Ministries and GFC We Care Connection, both nonprofit ministries located in St, Louis, Missouri that work with underprivileged youth in the city. I’m also excited that this fall I will be teaching a 13-week Graphic Design Course at Homerun Ministries which is a homeschool group local to me. We also offer free giveaways through the years and have given away a few branding packages and website designs.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

We started building an online presence through social media on day one. We began with one platform and then slowly added in more as we learned and grew. Some things we learned early on are the quality of your social media content mand consistency in content matters to establish your credibility, build trust, and strengthen your reputation with your followers. How and when you post also plays a big part. We follow an 80/20 plan which is 80% engagement and 20% business promotion. The more authentic we were about ourselves and our business the more people loved us and engaged with us. We quickly found social media was about building relationships and staying in front of those relationships. The biggest tip I can give businesses on social media is your end goal in social media should never be vanity metrics. It’s not about how many people follow you, it’s about how many people engage with your content and turn into leads. Also, you don’t own your social media followers. Your social media should work along with a cohesive website and email marketing to build and scale a successful business.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

This year we started an online design store. We wanted to find a way for clients and the designer to work more closely together in a more affordable way. This is where we found the Canva software most successful because it makes design accessible to everyone and the majority of our clients were already using it. Canva works for beginners and experienced designers. It eliminates the complexity of design while still keeping all the things that count in good design. And most importantly it changes how clients and designers can work together. So traditionally a client would have to go to a designer to get what they needed. And that whole process can take a lot of time and money. Which isn’t something you have a lot of as a small business owner. Canva allows us to create things simply and really well together. In our online store we sell pre-made Canva template sets that allow you to easily edit them to your brand and use them in marketing and social media. We also create Canva templates branded to our clients specific needs upon their request that they can edit and re-use across several applications. But in the spirit of giving back we also have several free templates available in our design store as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.designedbykelly.org
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/designed_by_kelly
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/designedbykelly
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/designed-by-kelly
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOBO6d-FsKZXX6nsMNSy1Rw
• Other: Podcast: www.designedbykelly.org/podcast Canva Shop: www.designedbykelly.org/shop

Image Credits
Shelia Hebert Photography