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

Paola, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?

In 2020 my husband and I bought our first home. In the process we spent ALOT of money because I wanted to buy cute decorations for the house, to include a sign for almost every room 🤣 I would go to retail stores almost every day and buy cute signs with sayings for around the house and for the porch area. During that time I had also looked into getting a Cricut but would always blow it off until one day out of the blues I went to the store and bought a Cricut along with all the supplies that I needed. I always wanted a cute wood porch sign for the entrance but noticed that everywhere I looked it was either extremely expensive for a cute personalized sign or it was just a very basic sign. I then got the idea to make our own welcome porch sign! Just like with anything else there was a lot of trial and error and frustration but I did not give up. I stained the wood to our desired color, was able to get the sizing of the letters correctly and finally complete my first ever porch sign project. I slowly began making other signs for the rest of the house as this was always something I wanted to do for ourselves and our house never did it cross my mind to start business out of it until two close friends put their trust in me to make each one their own personalized porch sign. And thanks to them I stepped out of my comfort zone and began my own small business

Paola, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a full time police officer and Design’s by the Oberto’s was just a side thing I liked to do for fun and when I had free time. My small business slowly began to grow as friends would place orders and then spread the word to their friends! At design’s by the Oberto’s we can customize/personalize about anything you’d like. We offer a variety of appeal (gender revel shirts, pregnancy announcements onesies, school spirit shirts, holiday shirts, etc), tumblers, door hangers, porch signs, charger plates, etc. If you can picture it Design’s by the Oberto’s will make it happen. I like to have my clients be very involved in the process from start to finish. We want our clients to have the best experience possible and feel like their vision came to life. Our clients are able to customize and personalize each project to the T.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

At Design’s by the Oberto’s our best source of new clientele is word of mouth. Although we use social media platforms to promote our business, most of our new clients have been referred by friends, family or previous customers.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I began building my social media by just following random accounts that were similar to mine and then I would have some of their followers start to follow our social media account. I also decided to invest in business cards that contained a little information about our business along with our social media accounts that way people could go check out our social media platforms, see our products and give us a like/follow/share. Also, once again word of mouth. At first I was a little shy about taking about my business as I didn’t know how people would react but I learned that word of mouth is a big audience builder. When I would hear people talking about similar products that we make I would tell them to check out our pages and contact us if there was something they wanted us to make for them.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Designsbytheobertos
• Facebook: Designsbytheobertos
• Other: TikTok: @Designsbytheobertos