We recently connected with Brianna Coleman and have shared our conversation below.
Brianna, so happy to have you with us today. You are such a creative person, but have you ever head any sort of creativity block along the way? If so, can you talk to us about how you overcame or beat it?
As a creative entrepreneur, I have to be at the top of my creative game all the time. Whether it’s marketing concepts for my social media management clients, growing my own personal brand, or at photography shoots, it’s vital my creativity stays sharp. A way I help beat creativity block is exercising with no music. My favorite. version of this is swimming laps. Obviously, I’m not going into the pool with my Air pods. I’m so intentional with my time in the pool. I like to swim a mile so I’m typically in the water for around 50 minutes. I set up my watch for exercise mode to help me count my laps so I don’t have to, then I just swim. I’m a Christian so I use this time to pray and thank the Lord for the day. I have received my best creative ideas just letting my mind wonder or go blank while exercising. The key really is no distractions, being alone, and getting away from your phone. This works great walking inside or out with no music on.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
My name is Brianna Coleman. I’m 25 years old living in Cincinnati, Ohio. I originally grew up not too far from Cincinnati in a small town in Indiana. I moved to St. Pete Beach, Florida in 2017, lived there for 6 years, and recently moved back to Cincinnati with my husband.
I always knew I would be an entrepreneur, but never knew what that looked like. When I first moved to Florida, I started working as a real estate assistant. With my brief background in photography I had, that quickly turned into me taking photos for the agents of their listings. I saw how much extra money I was able to bring in from photography. I was in college at the time and felt not ready to step out in business by myself just yet. Photography turned into content creation because the rise of the influencer industry was happening in 2018.
When I was posting on Instagram constantly back then, I grew my audience to 17k organically. With my started success on the platform, I was invited to an opportunity that I had no idea would change my life drastically. I joined a network marketing company. Everyone told me to avoid it, I would loose money, “no one is ever successful at those things”. I didn’t care. I worked relentlessly for 5 years. I made it halfway up the compensation plan. It quickly became my identity. In 2021, everything came to a screeching stop when my business fell off the deep end.
2021 and 2022 were really hard years. I felt like I was mourning a loss. I was mourning who I thought I was. I tried to jump back into the entrepreneurial world but it felt too fresh of a wound. I had all these good ideas but never acted on them. I quickly spiraled into depression. I hated the fact that I had to admit that I “failed” at that business. When in reality it was the biggest wake up call I needed. In January 2023, I started working with a therapist to get my life back on track.
Fast forward to June 2023, I passed by a small shop on St. Pete Beach. They had just opened up and I thought to myself, “I hope they don’t rely only on foot traffic to get sales. I wonder if they have any social media pages?” I quickly decided to jump head first into the world that is social media management. October 2023, my husband I made the 2 leaps of faith to move across the country to be close to family and to go full time in my social media management business. B C Visual Solutions was born!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
My resilience in growing my network marketing business has helped me so much. Nothing was going to stop me. I was stubborn but the best kind of stubborn.
I just so happen to take a year long photography class my senior year of high school. That unfolded into so many avenues in my career. I had no prior knowledge of photography before then.
Creativity is a huge skill. I say skill because yes you can be born and have natural talent of creativity. For most people, it’s a muscle that has to be worked every day to make it strong.
For people just getting started, the road is not linear. on the road to success. You can see in my own story that I was in a completely different career ballpark and somehow I ended up where I am. I started in a real estate office, I worked in a tanning salon, a roofing company in the middle of a hurricane, a beach resort, and now I run my own business. Follow your heart and work hard. You never know where you’ll end up.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
Hands down it’s the “Power of One More” by Ed Mylett. That book changed my life. I read it conveniently when I was in the middle of the 75 Hard program to grow my self discipline. Power of One More, is simply that, The power of one more rep in the gym, one more phone call for business, one more day sober. The compounding effort of just one more turns into infinite number of possibilities. That one more rep over time could help you reach your health goals. That one more phone call for business could lead you a dream client or opportunity. The effect of this book was so great on my life, I put it in my wedding vows. 50 years of marriage doesn’t happen all at once, but one day at a time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BriCDesignCo
- Instagram: @itsbricoleman @bc.visualsolutions
