We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Mistyre Bonds. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Mistyre below.

Mistyre, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?

I love this question! Almost a year ago, I left corporate to revolutionize marketing for mission-focused businesses. While assisting nonprofits with fundraising, I realized the corporate approach to advertising was flawed.

In the corporate world, I felt chained to my desk, constrained to repetitive digital-first strategies that felt disconnected from meaningful engagement. Companies poured funds into ads hoping to grab fleeting attention, just in the hopes that someone would care about the problem they were solving.

But people already care about the problems being addressed. That’s evident in the existence of your business, your team, and your competition. While traditional marketing often fixates on highlighting problems and making immediate requests, I adopt a more human-centric approach.

Picture this: in real life, someone abruptly confronts you with your biggest issue and then asks for money.

…It just doesn’t work…

Instead, I collaborate with arts and cultural institutions to seamlessly integrate their messaging into people’s lives, shifting from “look at me” to “connect with me.” By leveraging customer feedback, we craft valuable moments that make opting into offers a natural choice.

Mistyre, 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?

Of course!

I’m Mistyre, a big sister who savors oat milk lattes from Namu, spends her spare moments writing poetry, and dedicates her professional life to helping organizations build meaningful connections within their communities.

My journey began as a UX designer, where I crafted user-friendly and visually stunning apps for North Carolina’s government. From there, I designed apps for the “better blue” university (Go Heels!), orchestrated fundraising efforts that amassed over $2.5 million for various nonprofit organizations, and facilitated a company’s first multi-million dollar year. Today, I help companies thrive by connecting them to their audience and leaving them with systems that help them understand more about their customers in the process.

For photography studios, this manifests in crafting bespoke photo sets that help them stand out from their competitors; Arts institutions benefit from strategies that transform online followers into foot traffic through pop-ups and community collaborations Many of my clients benefit from websites enriched with quizzes or gamified elements, enabling them to gather valuable user data for targeted marketing campaigns. Others seek my expertise in optimizing retail spaces to enhance the overall shopping experience for their customers.

Whether working behind a screen or in a physical space, my passion remains centered on using customer insights to design experiences that make people feel truly understood, inspired, and engaged, regardless of where they are in their purchasing journey.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My mission is to humanize marketing and redirect the industry’s attention from ‘acquiring customers’ to ‘cultivating community.’ By helping owners deeply comprehend their customers, they spend less time on irrelevant offers and more on positively impacting their target audience. This shift not only minimizes waste but also fosters greater empathy.

Personally, I was also seeking more time freedom, (to spend napping and creating!) when I started this business. I am proud to report that I have gotten my weekends back, and even some weekdays on occasion

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Actually, yes! I mentioned this earlier, but I used to pull 70+ hours a week working in the corporate space. Even while pulling those hours, I still made time to work on my creative pursuits: writing poetry at night, designing the homes of family and friends, and creating photography sets in my living room during lockdown.

The big aha moment came when I worked on my first fundraising campaign. It was like all those skills I’d been honing, both in the corporate world and through my creative endeavors, suddenly came together. We were tasked with fundraising for a program aimed at empowering Black communities. At the time, their fundraising efforts looked like much of what I described before– sending out a few emails asking for money– and I was able to collaborate with them to develop a donor-centered campaign.

By implementing a few things, like soliciting community feedback, using that feedback to create an event, and adopting a multi-channel marketing approach, we exceeded our fundraising goal by 500% and garnered over 100 new supporters.

That’s when it hit me: this idea I’d been toying with for ages about starting my own brand experience practice? It had legs. So, a year later, I took the plunge.

And man, what a ride it’s been so far! I’ve gotten to partner with awesome businesses like Charmant Studios, create an Augmented Reality photo experience for Pop Swap Fest, and cook up killer marketing plans for local concert venues. And trust me, this is just the beginning!

Looking ahead, my focus this year is to fully settle into my business and continue to grow it with clients who are as committed to arts and community as I am.

Contact Info:

• Website: madebythelab.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madebythelab/?hl=en
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/mistyrebonds

Image Credits
Headshot shot by Damola Akintunde (IG @damolaakintunde) In Bloom & Barbie shoot: Shot by Barbara DaJour (IG @charmantstudios) Pop the Bubble Shoot: Shot by Ashley (IG @lebootss), makeup by Barbara DaJour (@charmantstudios)