Exploring Life & Business with Billy Rae Whittaker of BRIM DESIGN

Today we’d like to introduce you to Billy Rae Whittaker.

Hi Billy, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers?
My story starts very early in my life, as I knew I wanted to own my own business from my elementary years. Though neither of my parents were entrepreneurs, both of them held every characteristic of a self-starter and they were intentional to instill in me a belief that I could be achieve anything I wanted to with hard work and the Lord’s blessing.

I’ve always had a little “business bug” if you will, but the business I launched at 14 was the one I knew I would pursue in some variation for the rest of my life. Like most creative outlets, it started with just a desire to do something productive with my time and interests. Through a desire to expand another business venture I had as a kid, I discovered a love for storytelling through design and photography.

It was actually first working on my own brand that I realized these particular interests would bring together all the passions I had in me as a child – creativity, entrepreneurship, and serving others. I started doing small jobs for the people I knew and got my foot in the door with several pro-bono projects, but as time went on, the Lord, my family, our amazing clients, and a fantastic team have grown my little business into what it is today.

I maintained BRIM DESIGN as a side-gig up to and through college and even when I began working corporately after receiving my BFA, I freelanced on the side while that company used my photography skills as their own incentive services. I have always been blessed with opportunities for unconventional growth, this was just one of many.

After two years of corporate work, I knew the time had come to step away from the security of a 9 to 5 and trust that God would take care of the details and bless the hustle I had put into making this dream a reality. It had always been my desire to sustain my lifestyle on a business I had built and now the time had come.

Since the day I left my 9 to 5, I have worked at and grown BRIM DESIGN full-time alongside my amazing team. It has been our great privilege to serve small businesses of all sizes and professions.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The obvious challenges with starting a business at 14 would be financial and experiential, and that was very much my situation. There is a certain etiquette you need to have when running a business. That was something I learned the hard way being a teen and running a small business.

It is not that I wasn’t trying to be professional, it’s just that there are skills (such as how quickly you return an inquiry, how you communicate with the client, and how you handle invoicing) that you learn through other life scenarios (most of which you encounter when you’re older usually) and those skills can really set you apart as a professional.

It wasn’t until much later in my career and unfortunately some hard-learned instances that brought those skills around. Of course, as financial obstacles go, most 14 don’t have a huge bit of funding to put towards their endeavors. My parents tried to fund my learning and advancement of my skills but when it came to my little business venture, they encouraged me to take responsibility. In the long run, this helped me immensely because it taught me how to scale with what I had. It taught me that the best tools are the ones you already have.

Outside of those specific early-onset learning challenges, though I was probably one of the first people in my generation to realize you could make an entire business digitally, there were many times when I had to stick to my gut and be sure what I wanted out of life regardless of what everyone else was saying.

This is not an experience unique to me, all entrepreneurs go through this, but at the time it felt unique to me, even though the nation was on its way to widely accepting remote businesses, side gigs, and entrepreneurs alike, we had come out of a generation of capital investment and brick and mortar. Few people believed the 14-year-old who was convinced she could build a business from scratch with the tools she already had.

Covid-19 was one of the most proving seasons of all, as we not only had an initial drop in clientele, but experienced, learned from, and eventually thrived during what was arguably the hardest challenge we had to face as a business since our founding. We successfully completed some of our largest projects, added team members, grew 300%, and finished off our most successful and unexpected year as a small business.

Today, we continue to take everything we’ve learned over the years and turn those lessons into refining and improving experiences in our business, for our clients, and for our team.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about BRIM DESIGN?
BRIM DESIGN is an internationally awarded full-service branding agency with over a decade of experience building custom brands and coaching small businesses. Our goal is that everyone who encounters BRIM DESIGN will go away more personally and professionally enabled than before.

Our standard of excellence and building life-long relationships with our clients is not only our highest priority but our deepest passion. Our team makes their dreams more tangible with award-winning branding, design, photography, videography, social media, and coaching.

The reason people come to us above other businesses is that we are a one-stop-shop (full-service) agency. Building an amazing brand is not enough. You and your marketing team have to know how to safeguard and utilize the brand as you develop your marketing materials, digital assets, platforms, and spaces. Not every branding agency is a full-service agency. We offer our clients a full range of services to kick-start and maintain their businesses in-house.

This means from your logo to your headshots, your brand remains cohesive and impactful. It also allows us to provide our clients with bundle rates rather than spending hundreds to thousands of dollars worth of resources on multiple vendors who will break down your brand anyway. We literally build businesses from the brand up.

We have the experience to back it up with over 1K clients served – both big brands and mom and pop shops, 21 awards & honors and counting, have been in multiple publications, speak at marketing events by universities, and more.

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Personally, I have already lived through some intense things in my life which have only shown me that, commitment to the Lord, perseverance, self-awareness, consistency, and service to others are the keys to success.

Pricing:

• Photography is $350 per hour
• Videography is $275 per hour
• Branding Packages start at $3,000
• 10 Section 1-on-1 Coaching $2,500
• Social Media Packages are custom pricing

Contact Info:

• Email: hello@brimdesign.com
• Website: https://www.brimdesign.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brimdesign/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BRIMdesign
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6zaL7ZB_kAC_UuSbdEqryg