Good Neighbor Podcast: Auburn and Opelika

Ep. #59: Building a Strong Brand: Eloise Stewart's Journey from Fashion Design to Business Branding with Eloise Design Co.

• Susannah Hodges at Village Centre Press

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Unlock the secrets to building a powerful brand with Eloise Stewart, the mastermind behind Eloise Design Co.! This episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast promises to equip you with actionable strategies to enhance your brand's messaging and cut through the noise of today's saturated marketplace. Eloise's unique background in fashion design and consumer behavior has given her an edge in the branding world, and she’s here to share her journey—from her unexpected start as a one-woman show to leading a dedicated team helping small businesses thrive.

We'll explore Eloise's fascinating career path, including her time teaching at Auburn University and her pivotal decision to transition from personal branding to business branding. Gain insights on how to achieve clarity and consistency in your brand messaging, and learn from Eloise’s experiences and expert advice. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or an established business owner, this episode is packed with wisdom to help you connect more effectively with your audience and elevate your brand to new heights. Join us for an inspiring conversation that could transform the way you approach your brand strategy!

Speaker 1:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Susanna Hodges.

Speaker 2:

Welcome, and with me is Eloise Stewart with Eloise Design Company. Welcome, eloise, I'm so excited to have you with me today.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, I'm excited to chat chat about business and yes and all the things you want to talk about.

Speaker 2:

Now. You, your company, is basically, from my knowledge is a branding company. So tell me a little bit about what you do.

Speaker 3:

Yes, so about it was nine years ago. I started the business Eloise Design Co. And it was just me, as many businesses start as a one woman show, and thankfully today I don't have to do it alone anymore, and so I have a team of women that work for me and we help guide small businesses in building their brands and their business as well. And so what that looks like in service-based is that we're doing a lot of brand development, a lot of rebranding of existing businesses, a lot of design work whether that's website design or graphic design, brand photography. But really where I think we've been hitting a pain point for small businesses recently is in the messaging and brand messaging, because you can hire a lot of people to design logos and brands, but you want to get really clear on who you are and who you're talking to. That's where we're helping a lot of businesses in the messaging and strategy areas.

Speaker 2:

And that's critical because you're right you have to control what you're saying about yourself to the masses that you're trying to reach, and especially those customers you're trying to reach.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, we got a lot of noise coming at us, and so if you want to break through that noise as any type of business in any industry with any target audience, you've got to be really clear yourself and you've also got to be really consistent in saying it over and over and over again.

Speaker 2:

Well, tell me a little bit about you, Eloise. How did you get into this type of work? What's been your journey?

Speaker 3:

Well, I do not have the typical, maybe career path or journey that maybe someone would think I would have being in the branding realm. My undergraduate was in fashion, design and production and my master's in consumer behavior, and really at that time, yes, branding existed, but the idea of even personal branding, like branding an individual, was not as popular when I was in college and so back then I was not thinking, oh, I'm going to go into branding, I just knew I wanted to be in a creative design space and I was fascinated by understanding why we buy what we buy, why we love certain brands, why we want to wear a Nike swoosh versus an Adidas logo right Target and carry around a Starbucks cup and use that as retail therapy, but people don't do that in Walmart. Why is that? And I was always fascinated by that and didn't know where that was going to lead me. And I graduated, I ended up teaching at Auburn University for some time and really thought that was where I was going to be for my career. I loved the teaching and that door actually shut because I wasn't wanting to get my PhD to stay, and so you know, as we all get to it as place in our careers where we say, okay, what's next? And I didn't have that answer. I couldn't figure out what was next. So I asked the next question was what is working Like? What do you love to do? And I was working with students that I'd been teaching on their personal brand, their resumes, their design portfolios, getting them in touch with people for internships and developing them, and how do they communicate who they are so they can get the job or internship that they want?

Speaker 3:

At the same time, I started dabbling in helping people family members with their small businesses. I was using kind of the design skills that I had, some of the web skills that I had, and started helping them. And you know, it's when you first start a business, it's the people that you know, you know your circle, that's right Word of mouth and things like that. And so I just kept walking through the open doors that were opening for me and the business began to grow and grow and I got four years into the business and I had to make a big decision of are we going to go the personal branding side with career, with the individual? Are we going to go with the business side? And really back then I would have thought we would have gone career wise. I think it was more comfortable to me and I think I had a mindset that I was not a marketer quote, unquote or I wasn't an advertiser, and sometimes branding and branding people think of it as marketing and advertising and they all connect, they all work together.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and so I decided to go the business route. That's where the doors were opening again, and, and so that's that's where we, that's where we went and that's where we are today.

Speaker 2:

So you've been doing this for quite a while now. Tell me what some of the misconceptions you come across when business owners are approaching you about getting help with their brand. What are some of the misconceptions people have?

Speaker 3:

I think it goes back to what is branding, what is PR, what is marketing, what is advertising, and I think we finally have the right messaging. You know, we're figuring it out. As we go to um, I tell people we are the step before marketing and advertising, because if you don't know who you are, who your audience is and what you're saying, you are throwing away time and money in advertising dollars or marketing whatever you're marketing. So we really are the foundation before the marketing and advertising and we. The other misconception is we don't offer social media marketing services. A lot of branding businesses do offer all the things, but we've decided not to. We've decided to kind of stay in this first foundational area of development, brand development and strategy. But as cool as we have built up a freelancer program where I mentor and train up freelancers that then will work with those businesses on social media marketing, on paid advertising, PR, those types of things.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely it's. You got to get to take it by steps, right, yeah, you got to get your brand right and then you can branch out and use your brand like you want to, right? So tell me a little bit about you, know, being a business owner. Part of the reason I do this podcast is to encourage other people that may be thinking about going into business for themselves or are in the process or the early stages of it. What are some of the challenges that you've had to overcome, either personally or in your business, that has made you a better person or made your business stronger?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I love owning a business. I can't visualize myself doing anything else, but it is hard, absolutely it is, it's hard and it's it's. It's hard from a lot of different angles, and that doesn't mean you shouldn't do something just because it's hard, but it is, it's, it's. It can be emotional Sometimes it can, you know. You second guess yourself at points, and this last year we took a lot of risk to branch into a lot of education areas of our business, and anytime you decide to take some risk, you're nervous, you're hopeful, you're all these different emotions, and you know some of the things that we did. They worked out really well.

Speaker 3:

Some of the other things, to be honest with you, we spent a lot of money on, and I don't haven't seen the return on, and I'm just going to that right Cause that is part of business, and so I think that's that's. One of the hard things is you will need to take risk in order for the business to grow, and I would not have been able to take those risks if I didn't have a support system, though. So I would say that's probably the point of advice in the business journey is we were never meant to do this alone and we have to have those people, personally and professionally, that are coming alongside of us, because it's hard Right, it is hard and it's scary when you're first getting started out because you're everything's new.

Speaker 2:

That learning curve, absolutely. I know exactly what you're talking about and you need you need a team, don't you? You need some people to back up as employees.

Speaker 3:

You need some kind of team around.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, well, what's one thing that you wish people knew about your business that they may not realize?

Speaker 3:

um, I think it's the education side. I think people easily, you know, are like oh okay, you have branding, services, logos, strategy, you know, but my heart is in education. You know, I was teaching at Auburn before I started this business and really thought that that was going to be my career in teaching and it's been really cool for me to bring and really infuse education into this business. That is service-based and we do a lot of in-person workshops and we do online offerings for education, like courses and things like that. Then we also have our Build Well program. That's a year-long membership with a small number of female entrepreneurs, and then we also teach and train up freelancers.

Speaker 3:

So I love the education side of it. I love any time that I can come and speak and teach through something, because a lot of times we don't, you know, when we're a small business, when we're starting out, we don't have the funds to pay someone to do it all for us, and sometimes you just got to, you know, get scrappy and do it yourself and learn some of the pieces to get started. And if I can do that so that someone will at least start, then that, even if they don't come back to us later for our services. That is a win for me that they at least started.

Speaker 2:

Excellent. Well, tell me a little bit about you personally. What do you do for fun when you're not working on branding for other businesses?

Speaker 3:

Well, this is probably something I should put on my to-do list. Yes, find something fun to do, no, but I so. I, I love, I love historic homes. I love interiors and, to be honest with you, when I first went to college you know at 18, when people were like, what are you going to do with the rest of your life, I really thought it was going to be an interior design. I love it.

Speaker 3:

So my husband and I work on our historic home. We actually have an Airbnb with that. I know that sounds like work and not fun, but in some ways that's fun to me. But also we are moving into a new office for the business in downtown Opelika and so we I've gotten to do the design work of, of decorating our space, and so that that is fun to me. That's a creative outlet that I'm the client. But no, my husband and I love cooking. We um, we love trying new restaurants and, uh, once we can get this office done, hopefully we can travel a little bit. That's, that's where you find your inspiration for for any creative work you do, and I think travel is the one way for you to kind of get out of a rut if you're ever stuck creatively, or even if you don't count yourself as a creative person. Travel is the best way to get unstuck in your work, so I am looking forward to doing that a little bit more.

Speaker 2:

Sounds awesome, I agree. I find that, even if you're just traveling to Birmingham and getting a hotel room for a few days, it's something about that that's psychological, that stepping away physically from your business allows your brain to relax a little bit, a little bit, and then you come up with great ideas when you're when you're away. So that is, that is good advice. And let me tell you what I enjoy about you, eloise okay, we are friends on facebook so I get to see your weekly meal planning and that's always fun. I say, okay, I know what Eloise is eating this week.

Speaker 3:

So our meal planning and our meal prepping started out of not necessarily something fun, but a necessity for actually eating at night yeah, going out to eat every night and not throwing away so much food at the end of the week. So we've done it. It's like four or five years now that we plan out two weeks at a time and then my husband and I cook on Sunday nights together for the week, and it really is fun to do together and most people ask me like can you make double and deliver it to my house?

Speaker 3:

And I'm like oh no, not another business.

Speaker 2:

That's hilarious. Well, Eloise, how can people find out more about you and get in touch with you?

Speaker 3:

I think you know a fun way to follow along is on our Instagram. We're at Eloise Design Co. And then our website gives you all the information, whether you're looking for services or you're looking for education and free resources. Our website is eloisedesigncocom.

Speaker 2:

All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, eloise. It's really been a pleasure. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast, auburn. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpauburncom. That's gnpauburncom, or call 334-429-7404.