A Reintroduction — And the Investment That Changed Everything

When I first started this blog, it had a different focus — more personal, more artistic. But what that season did was ignite something in me. It made me want to actually build something. A real business. One my husband and I could run together while we worked toward a bigger goal: becoming debt free.

We had a plan

We had a budget. A timeline — two years. That serious conversation we had, living on one steady income, moved something in me. I wanted to contribute more. We have four kids, we live in Oklahoma where the cost of living is significantly less than other states — our house that's market valued around $332K here would run $1.3M to $2.5M in Miami. All four of our kids have a 529 plan. We love to travel. We have goals. And yes, that means we have a budget, and we stick to it.

Having a budget doesn't mean you're broke. It means you're intentional. And who cares what anyone else thinks about that.

One night I said let's make this official

After dedicating eight years to being a full-time mom — with the exception of scattered freelance projects that came in inconsistently — my husband and I spent an entire weekend building a website and business model. Because we're both web people, we got something up fast, reached out to past clients, got them on board, secured a few more, and suddenly — we had something running.

Okay. Now what? Lol.

The build part was easy. We had the skills and the experience. What we didn't have was a boss telling us what to do. No roadmap. No process. Just a flood of unlimited ideas and zero structure for executing them.

Did I know how to use social media? Yes. Could I post? Absolutely. But did I know know — like, what actually converts? What onboarding looked like for ourselves? How to generate leads for our own business, not a client's? That part was different. For clients it's easier because they already have the business side established. We were building the plane while flying it. It was a Hells Kitchen situation — we had the restaurant, we were the chefs, but our menu didn't reflect our actual skills. We could do anything. The problem was communicating that clearly without confusing people.

So I did what I do: YouTube rabbit holes, courses, email templates, all of it. And then the algorithm did its thing.

The Brief Collective kept showing up

It kept showing me The Brief Collective.

Kenzi Green kept popping up before I even followed. And once I did follow, something in my gut said you have to join. I was already in another community — a great one for social media creation — and I learned a ton there. But it was geared more toward social media managers working with coaches, dentists, speech pathologists. Her energy was incredible, but I needed something more specific to the business side of being a designer.

I messaged TBC that I was interested in joining soon. Kenzi reached out first — offered a new rate for the community — and I jumped in. I was in the community maybe two months before I officially joined the DBA course.

When I tell you I will recommend this program to anyone in a similar situation — I mean it. It's about putting pride down and humbling yourself. We can be incredible chefs and still know nothing about running a restaurant. There is so much happening behind the scenes, and if you don't have things in order, you will burn your kitchen down. Contracts that actually protect you and your client. Ours felt thorough before — turns out they were leaving us exposed in ways we didn't even realize. Now they're tightened up.

The DBA program doesn't tell you this tool, that tool. You see what works for different people. Kenzi and Marisa run their own agencies and do things differently from each other — and both have successful businesses. The onboarding alone is thoughtful: you get quizzed on your personality, how you want feedback, how you handle situations, and then get paired with a coach based on that.

Think Chef Ramsay — but make it warm, make it kind, and nobody's crying into their risotto. They both reviewed our work throughout the program, called out what wasn't working, and pushed us to get our kitchen in order. The feedback was real. The growth was real.

I probably would have cried if I'd been paired with Kenzi at the time. I wasn't ready. But now — I'm good lol.

Scattered brain and all

Marisa lovingly reflected back to me where I was missing the mark. She saw what I hadn't quite admitted to myself: I was scattered. My focus was everywhere.

One thing I've noticed over the last year and a half — watching cohorts move through this program — is that the growth is real and it's universal. We all go through it. I think sometime think that we're gardeners and we're all blooming. Which is funny to me personally because when I first launched Creative Pea, a garden and growth was actually the internal metaphor I was working with. Beautiful and transformative. But also — I cannot keep a plant alive. That's my husband's department. He is the plant daddy of this house. So while the concept felt meaningful, I had to be honest: I am not a gardener, lol.

What the course gave me were things I hadn't even thought to look for. A brand guideline. An onboarding process for team members. An elevator pitch. The things I needed for myself — the same things I was building for clients — I hadn't built for my own business.

Every client had been fully custom, start to finish, with a ton of time poured in at prices that didn't reflect what we were actually delivering. And before resentment set in, we needed to define and document a process that could repeat — something scalable that still felt like a custom experience for each client.

Could I have figured all of this out through trial and error? Probably. Would it have taken years and a lot of headaches? Absolutely. But I'm a mom with four kids, three dogs, and a cat. I didn't have years of headaches to spare. This course stripped that away and has continued to grow with us.

The community is where it really compounds

Meeting other designers — some further along, some just starting — and watching what happens when people genuinely root for each other is something I didn't expect. The Social Butterfly Club, hot seat coaching, bi-weekly calls, Discord — Kenzi and Marisa have built something that raises the standard for designers as an industry. The accountability alone is worth it. Share your wins. Share your losses. Share what's inspiring you. Working as a designer can be lonely. In this community, it doesn't feel that way.

Last year I went to their second retreat and it was life-changing. (That experience deserves its own post — coming soon.) And this May I'll be at the upcoming retreat again. Shannon Mattern from Profitable Web Designer and the Web Designer Academy is a keynote speaker and I am already full fan-girl mode. I will try to keep my cool, lol. A weekend away for this mama, investing in the business. Win-win.

Today we had a hot seat coaching session — same familiar faces, a few new ones. And the thing about that room is that what you see publicly on social media and what happens in that space are two different things. The most successful people at the table are still asking for input, still showing up vulnerable, still sharing hard things. That's community. Real community.

Here's my honest recommendation

If you're a designer — seasoned or just starting — and you're in a similar boat to where I was, look into The Brief Collective.

If DBA isn't the right investment yet, start with the Social Butterfly Club at $29.99/month. Try it for a month or two. Do the playbook. Do the prompt journals. Share your work. Get everything you can out of it.

They also have a free group on Skool — Six-Figure Graphic Designers — if you want to start there and get a feel for what they're building.

And here's the thing I'll leave you with: if you want your potential clients to take a leap of faith and invest in you — you have to be willing to take that same leap and invest in yourself first.

This isn't an "enroll and coast" situation. You put in the work. But when you do, it ignites something. And that's why so many of us are still here — still on the calls, still in Discord, still showing up — long after the course is done.

My affiliate link is in this post. Even if you don't use it, I hope reading this shifts something for you.

It did for me.