Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicole Ellis.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I didn’t exactly take the traditional route to get where I am. I came to the DFW area 14 years ago from Northern California to attend TCU. I majored in Kinesiology thinking I was going to be a Physical Therapist. After the first year, I realized that it wasn’t a good fit and decided to give Advertising a try because it seemed interesting.
Graphic Design didn’t even cross my path until my junior year when I had to take some basic design courses. Even as I entered my senior year and started thinking about graduation, I still thought I would work on the business side of things for an advertising agency. It was one elective design class that changed my mind. I had a fantastic professor who saw something in my work and encouraged me to pursue design further. Since I really didn’t have formal graphic design training, I knew I was behind my peers and had to hone my skills on my own.
After graduating, a new sports publication took a chance on me and hired me as their sole designer. After a year and a half, the publication folded and I was out of a job—this was right in the middle of the economic crisis in 2008. Few jobs were available and the ones that were wanted someone with more experience and a background in web, which I didn’t have. So I took out more student loans and went back to get my Associate’s degree in Web Design.
Two and a half years after losing my job, I was finally offered a position at a small ad agency in Granbury. While there I taught myself how to use WordPress and gained some valuable branding design experience. In 2012, Fort Worth agency, Immotion Studios, reached out via Facebook and asked if I was looking for a job. I jumped at the opportunity to work for a bigger agency and learn from a group of talented designers.
By 2015, I started to get restless. I spent my days creating hyper-masculine branding and food packaging and just got to a place of feeling unfulfilled. I knew that even if I went and tried working for another agency or company, I still wouldn’t find what I was looking for.
Working for ad agencies opened my eyes to just how underserviced female entrepreneurs were. I wanted a chance to help them create visual brands that were powerful and professionally done, but still beautiful and feminine. So Sweet Southern Pixels was born. I worked 40-50 weeks at my main job and then once my son was asleep, I would work a few more hours on my SSP projects. This past summer, my husband supported me in taking SSP full-time.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Smooth…no. I have always felt behind other designers. Not having a more formal design education forced me to learn a lot of things on my own and for the first few years of my career, it was a huge hindrance.
Being out of work for over two years left me behind in my career. I watched people climb the corporate ladder, and there I was going back to waiting tables. I kept waiting tables for almost two years after I got an agency job because I was terrified of being broke and jobless again. That fear still cripples me sometimes and really influenced me waiting so long to start own business and then taking full-time.
I can say though that I’ve learned to flourish in adversity. If I don’t know something, I will work hard to learn about it. If you tell me I can’t do something, I’m going to do it.
Please tell us about Sweet Southern Pixels.
Sweet Southern Pixels is a boutique branding agency based in Fort Worth, that works with great companies all over the country. I collaborate with stylish, women entrepreneurs to design professional, cohesive visual brands.
I specialize in working with established female entrepreneurs to rebrand their businesses from start to finish—logo to website to social media, and everything in between. My goal is for these women to walk away with a cohesive visual brand identity that reflects the quality of their services and allows them to confidently market themselves to the clients they want.
I am known for being able to decipher what people dream up in their head and put it into a design that makes sense for their business. Many of the women that I work with have gone through the branding process at least once before and didn’t get the visual brand they wanted out of it. I believe in a collaborative process that allows us to work together to develop a visual communication style that permeates every aspect of their business. In the end, if the client isn’t totally happy with their visual brand and doesn’t believe that it 100% authentically communicates to people what their business is about…then I haven’t done my job.
I am proud to say that each client that I have worked with continues to come back to me for additional work. I have a 100% client retention rate and many of those clients have referred additional business my way.
My husband tells me what sets me apart is that I actually listen to people. In this business, everyone thinks their way of going through the branding process is the right way, and I won’t argue one way or the other. But what I will say is that taking the time to truly listen to people goes a long way in getting to the heart of their business.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Don’t ask me why I was watching Dirty Dancing at three, but it was my favorite movie. I used to ask my big brother to do the lift that Baby and Johnny do at the end of the movie. He was so sweet to oblige, so I would run down the hallway of our apartment and he would lift me up as high as he could. I probably made him do it hundreds of times.
Pricing:
- Visual Branding starts at $1800
- Visual Branding + Website starts at $4300
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.sweetsouthernpixels.com
- Email: nicole@sweetsouthernpixels.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sweetsouthernpixelstx/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sweetsouthernpixelstx/
Image Credit:
Jessica S. Irvin
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