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

Alright, Nicole thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about making remote work effective.

What I actually love about my job is that it is fully remote and has been since the very start. After I had my daughter almost 8 years ago, I found myself in the position of many other new mothers, questioning my future win the job force. I did the math and found that after all costs, I’d be making only $50/week sending her to daycare and working so for our family, it made more sense for me to stay home. Either fortunately or unfortunately, I am not someone who likes to just take care of the kids and clean and cook and those things became incredibly monotonous to me very quickly so I needed another way to challenge my brain. I started offering simple logos for $100 to fill my time, my creative brain and bring a bit of money in. This has transformed into my current business where I help other women build their businesses with their babes on their hip. Working remotely has it’s downfalls and my fiance gets an earful every day when he gets home but it allows me to own my time. If the house is a wreck, it’s a cleaning day. If I’ve got deadlines, the day will be spent with coffee at my computer. I work hard to balance out all of my responsibilities and I still have weeks where things get all out of wack. My biggest tip would be to create a dedicated work space so that you can be in work mode or out. I used to just work from my couch in the middle of the chaos which caused a lot of anxiety and little productivity.

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

My business started as a side-gig while I was home with my newborn daughter, bored as shit with my endless days of cooking, cleaning and changing diapers. I needed something to occupy my brain so I didn’t waste away watching tv all day. I felt the need to create so I started offering simple (not very good) logos for $100 to friends of friends. Through years of trial and error, paid courses, networking groups, YouTube University, and constantly ingesting more info and knowledge, I now offer full branding packages as well as web design to other small, typically female-owned, businesses. I like to take a no bullshit approach to the process and tell clients up front that this is a collaborative experience where we will both put in work and effort to create the true foundation of their business. I feel that my experience running a household while building a business gives me an ability to understand the struggles of other women and moms doing the same. I’m not your typical corporate, very formal professional design business and I love it. I have built my business to be true to my own personality and push all of my clients to do the same because that’s what makes them different, what makes them memorable.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Community forums! For the longest time, I felt that my competition was exactly that, competition. Throughout my years in this industry through, I’ve found some major ride-or-die communities full of amazing creators that have helped me through many growing pains or difficult situations. There will always be the gatekeeper assholes but in reality, most other creators want to help each other succeed. My favorite resource for any designer is The Designer’s Cohort created by Melissa Perkins of Sweet Daddy Designs. It’s full of other designers and web developers who share knowledge, advice, rants and more which really helps you not only build your business but keep your sanity within entrepreneurship. We just got back from our second retreat, this time to Nashville where we have made lifelong friends on top of fountains of information and support. So yeah, find a great community and utilize all of the facets of it.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I often see clients or new designers thinking they have to have the newest or best gear to get started. I started on a $300 refurbished 2008 MacBook that took an hour to turn on and didn’t even upgrade my Adobe software until 2019. You can do amazing things with cheaper or older gear if you have the drive to do so. If anything, you will make even better content because you have to find workarounds that give you a unique edge to your products. Most of the early years building my business, we were scraping together funds for groceries so new gear was not in the cards. I was able to continuously get leads and new clients while simultaneously raising my prices as my work improved and put as much of that money back into my business. Don’t fall into the imposter syndrome trap of thinking everyone is working in incredible, insta-worthy offices swimming in cash, all the newest shit and are doing so much better than you. Most entrepreneurs I know have a corner of their living room and taped together gear just doing the damn thing.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.soulscorestudio.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/soulscorestudio
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/soulscorestudio
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-anderson-3b1511227/