We were lucky to catch up with Teela Caldwell recently and have shared our conversation below.

Teela , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. So, we’d appreciate if you could open up about your growth story and the nitty, gritty details that went into scaling up.

Although my business may be a success today, it was not an overnight glow up! I started Bossy Marketing in 2017, but it was just an idea, I’d only be offering logos and helping new owners decide on branding styles. I did this for about a year until I became a full time brand manager for a medical office. I was still designing logos and taking online brush up courses, but I thought $50 logos were a thing of my past. Unfortunately, the medical office no longer needed a brand manager and I was left trying to figure out what my next path was.

During this time of waiting for another marketing or branding opportunity, I began taking brush up courses just to keep myself busy. I found myself putting in over 50 applications a month, and being left with only $50 in my bank account. My love of branding was still in the back of my mind, but I was so scared to truly start my own business and rely solely on this as my main source of income. It’s not that I didn’t have confidence in my talent, I was just raised old school and starting a business with only $50 didn’t seem possible.

Once I got the idea in my head I went into planning mode. What was going to be my name, what would I sale, what my strategy be, how do I get clients! I remember sitting at my dining room table writing out plans, scribbling things out and writing new ones. I probably did that for 3 weeks until I had my master plans finalized and I was ready to start the long process of branding myself. It took my 3 months to create my logos, code and design my website, and get myself a social presence going. In late September of 2019 I officially launched Bossy Marketing! I was ready and eager to take on the world and have these brands created by my company, the only problem, I didn’t have one client to my name. I was coming up on Thanksgiving and still not official client. It was at this moment I started thinking about how these “Insta-gurus” make it seem like all you need to do is hit “launch” and everyone will be flooding your inbox with orders. These are actually times that those people gloss over. I had help from my parents, brother, and now husband to stay afloat, I had so much help from them I still had the $50 in my savings account. I was going on month 3 of being open for business but still no clients. Finally the new year was coming up and I created a service that I felt at the time you could only get here. I created a branding package for well below the average cost, and created an ad on social media for it. I was confident in that branding package and my talent I took that final $50 and put it all towards that ad.

I woke up the next morning to 6 new clients! Here I was in under 24 hours with a surplus of clients, and my ad budget hadn’t even hit $10 yet. From that $50 I made $5,000 that month! To the outside world it would look like I truly had overnight success, but it wasn’t over night for me, it was years in the making. It was outside help and motivation, it was failure and being laid off, it was everything the media doesn’t show about success. There is no easy way to true success, and if it is easily gained it can be easily lost! I wouldn’t trade those dark tunnel days for an elevator to success, those days made me into a branding beast, and that’s what makes Bossy Marketing so different from the rest.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I originally went to school for medicine. I wanted to be a pediatrician, but I ended up getting sick my sophomore year of school and took a semester off. During that semester my advisor wanted me to keep some credits active and told me to switch my major to business. I took her advice and enrolled in business courses, and that’s when I met professor H. He got me into graphic designing, business, and branding and I didn’t look back!

Once I created Bossy Marketing, I was finally free to create my own style of branding. I would classify my style as urban elegance. I have a little street flare, but it’s very refined and can adapt to what ever type of client I’m working with. Whether it’s a logo or custom website, style and flare are going to be incorporated.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding thing about being creative is being able to truly share what’s on my mind with the world. I have the ability to have a design idea and make it come to life, and not many people can do that.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I built my social media presence organically, and I think that’s very important. I didn’t pay for followers or have a company boost my accounts. I connect with my audience by just being myself, posting behind the scene footage, sharing recipes, and sharing life events. Not everything I post has to be about business because my whole existence is business related. I’ve shared some very personal things, losses and my wedding, and that’s where I think my audience really connects with me and each other.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bossymarketing.com
• Instagram: Bossy_Marketing
• Facebook: Bossy Marketing
• Other: TikTok: BossyMarketing

Image Credits
Theon Marley