Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in marketing but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Edward Campbell, founder of Edward Campbell Studio, located in Calgary, AB, Canada.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Edward Campbell Studio is the only professionally run design studio that assists businesses to grow authentically and sustainable by evoking timeless brand strategies and identities for geeky creators, against the grid leaders and energetic marketers, in Calgary and the world, looking for the visual articulation of their mission so that they can gain the clarity and quality their vision requires.
Why:
Because in the journey of creating businesses, there are milestones that avoid growth. There are a lot of products that are amazing and help people on a daily basis, but some companies lack to express those needs to their customers. A factor that, in the long term, generates a disconnection of interest in what a business does. Creating strategies for companies helps get a deeper structure that identifies core values, beliefs, and purposes that become a valuable connection with customers. As marketing focuses on spreading the word or, in some cases, the trend says it aims more into sales, with my studio, I get the chance to evoke that connection visually with brand identity design and the research to develop strategies for brands to have a structure that better the marketing efforts businesses with an authentic, distinguish unique creative concepts for their offerings with visual storytelling that sparks and ease that connection.
Tell us about yourself
I have been a designer since my childhood, making murals for school, clothing, and other visual mediums. What got me into design was a neighbor, one of my elder brothers called Eduardo Feullebois, about 2003 when I got graduated from high school. As I was a dancer simultaneously, I got this fantastic idea I could do both and live as a creator. I got enrolled in the university of Panamá and got lucky could find work right away as an undergraduate in a print shop and entertainment company in Panamá, where I got the opportunity to see and appreciate branding applications. Those experiences shaped me and introduced me to other ventures such as working on local and international advertising agencies such as Cerebro Young & Rubicam, J. Walter Thompson, CR8 where I grew from junior designer and senior designer and conceptualized to art director from 2008 to 2014. Moved to Canada in 2014, and by learning all the fabulous codes, and manners of embracing Calgarian culture decided to serve with the talents I'd developed, but now in a way, I could add my beliefs and values to the equation, so I started Edward Campbell Studio in September 2017, and it has been an amazing journey by helping Calgarian companies to achieve their business goals but also be part of their journey and storytelling.
What motivates me every day is the opportunity to help my clients in ways that can bring sustainability and direction to their future state and be able to guide them until we hit those important milestones. To have an amazing community that sees and feels value in my creative take and effective problem solving to achieve that next level, a community that is willing to invest in visual transformation but also in mindset, that wants to a dream live by design and find value in that growth process.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Being able to help position a startup among other top competitors in the tech industry with UX facilitation practices for the company and a holistic approach to a rebrand such as Untethered Technologies. Serve as art director and brand consultant for a marketing company that doubled revenue in 1.5 years with strategies and brand identity design for their accounts, such as The Art of Business.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
Learn about management. As a creator, a struggle and a huge part of doing a business is the inner structure of a corporation. Learning the Canadian ways to become a small business owner was definitely a challenge. Still, today learning more and more.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- To learn what you don't know and to do what you haven't done.
- Be consistent enough to dream daily and be curious enough to find growth.
- Seek help. Mentors and friends who support you want to see you win. Surround yourself with the ones who add value to your venture as much as you do for them.
Is there anything else you'd like to share?
As a designer and a dance instructor of Hip Hop and breakdancing in several studios in Alberta, I want to share that there are a lot of ways to leave something good in this world. Despite what the conditions of life are in the present, another motivation is the fact that we all are impacted or inspired by someone. Leaving this better than they were is a big belief I have, and I have witnessed it can shape and shift our mindsets mostly as developing a business when the end goal is to serve others. Not everything is easy on the business journey or any journey, and when it is not, choose to inspire because for somebody will mean the world, or it is a good reason for those to embrace their journey harder. It's a full circle.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://edwardcampbell.studio/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/edwardcampbellstudio
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ecstudio_inc/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwardcampbellstudio/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solopreneur that you'd like to share, then email community@subkit.com; we'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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