We recently connected with Melissa Kandel and have shared our conversation below.
Melissa, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?
I was working in corporate communications for several years and even though it was a solid job and a great position within a large organization, I felt like I needed to stretch my creative muscles and really dig into my writing. I started a blog and called it little word studio, reaching out to different artists on Instagram and asking if I could create a short story based on one of their works. It was fun and interesting and creatively satisfying but it definitely wasn’t anything close to a job. Then, I decided to use my journalism background to cover some local events around my coastal Southern California town. I went to wine and food festivals, surfing competitions, film festivals and began meeting new people and expanding my network in ways that ultimately would lead me to leaving my job and starting a business called (yep!) little word studio. Some of those local stories turned into clients, my former company became a client and the agency organically grew from a deep passion for writing and sharing cool stories with the world.
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.
The first story I wrote was in the third grade. Our assignment was to write a one-paragraph short story and I walked into school the next day with a 20-page book (typed up and bound with ribbon) about wicked witches who got power from their shoelaces and the brave children who finally put a stop to their evil ways. I also grew up around the theater – my grandpa and his two brothers built and managed pretty much all the bars on Broadway and in the major concert venues like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center – so I was around very creative people from a very young age, which helped me develop a longstanding love for the arts. I studied music for many years and wrote songs with my band, which we performed in different clubs around New York City. In college, I sort of shifted gears and focused more on my writing, then wound up getting a masters in journalism and going to work for a B2B magazine in Chicago. It was there that I was recruited to work at my former company, and flew to California to start a communications job writing for a new, national (now global) real estate brand. After five years there, I left in 2018 to start my own company, and today we work with clients around the world, providing services like writing, strategy, PR and social support. Everything we do is rooted in really high-quality production – it’s a no fluff, all-value approach to content creation that our clients appreciate. We’re also a 100% referral-based business, and I’m really proud of the network we’ve built and the way one project seems to organically feed into another, giving our team even more opportunities to work with awesome people and help grow their business through storytelling.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I love the idea of creating something from nothing. I guess that is creativity at its very essence but it can happen in ways that may not necessary seem creative. A client comes to us wanting to take all that she’s learned through her passion for organic gardening and turn it into an email campaign. We break down the email cadence, the source of each weekly topic, the distribution method, the way we’ll write the subject lines … and from this amorphous idea springs an entire campaign that allows the client to share their message with people who care about receiving it most. Entrepreneurship, if you think about it, is an entirely creative process where someone (or a group of someones) take an idea and bring it into the real world; they give it a name, put structure around it; and figure out that perfect balance between creativity and commerce, so the two can profitably yet thoughtfully combine. It’s such a fun way to think about business and life, and it’s what I enjoy most about the creative process – the act of creating.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Notion has been such a game-changer for us in the way our team collaborates and in the way we organize the client content we create. It’s an intuitive program that allows our team to edit in real-time, know the status of various projects and juggle a lot of complex, moving parts in a way that doesn’t feel hectic, and instead feels totally doable and fun! I wish I knew about it when we launched but business building is all about being open to new ideas and committing to continual improvement, right?
Contact Info:
- Website: www.littlewordstudio.com
- Instagram: @littlewordstudio
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/littlewordstudio
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/littlewordstudio
- Twitter: @lilwordstudio
- Other: Email: [email protected]
Image Credits
Michael White, White Filmm Photo