We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Eva Smith. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Eva below.
Hi Eva, so happy to have you on the platform and I think our readers are in for a treat because you’ve got such an interesting story and so much insight and wisdom. So, let’s start with a topic that is relevant to everyone, regardless of industry etc. What do you do for self-care and how has it impacted you?
I mean, on the surface, you might not think that this is a self-care act, but it has been instrumental in my mental health and helping me feel like I make time for myself. My biggest act of self-care are the boundaries that I implement in my business.
Clear communication is incredibly important to ensure my workflow and client projects run smoothly. In the interest of clarity, I have created a set of short and sweet boundaries that I share with my clients at the start of every new project to help start us on the right foot. Here’s a little sneak peek at what those boundaries look like.
My most important boundary: where I receive messages and communication about project details. The easiest way to get a hold of me is via my email address. My inbox is searchable and organized by client, so nothing ever goes missing and I can recall previous conversations efficiently, and with ease. DMs don’t really work for me because I don’t always have all the apps on my devices and those notifications get lost. And then there’s the added complication of the possibility that I need to pull up your message to refer to it, I have to remember which platform it was sent on and then go searching for it. That process doesn’t work for me and I’ve been so lucky to have clients that respect this boundary of mine and understand that it helps me be a better designer for them when I can use my time efficiently on things that matter rather than hunting down messages.
My other favorite boundary that drastically improves my self-care are my office hours/response times. I let all my clients know that if they need to drop in for a meeting or hop on a call, I can usually do that most days during my working hours. And if they want to reach out via email, they can expect a response from me only during my working hours, and I don’t reply to messages outside of those hours. This seriously helps me turn my brain off at 5pm so I can enjoy the other parts of my life without feeling guilty about an email sitting in my inbox overnight. This has been a life-saver for my mental health.
Those are just a couple of the boundaries that I implement to help with my work/life balance and give me the space to make time for self-care and the things that fill my cup outside of work. I cannot recommend doing this enough, whatever it is for you. You’ll thank me later.
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?
I am the founder and principal designer at Odd Poppy Brand Co. Odd Poppy is a boutique brand design studio, I partner with badass business owners who want a thoughtfully designed brand identity. We’re a small, woman-owned design studio working with other small business owners in the Metro-Detroit area, and across the States. I take a strategic approach to design and branding, solving problems with well-designed solutions that help you achieve your business goals. My goal for all my clients is that by the end of your project, you’ll have a brand that not only looks great, but out-performs the competition.
Most of my clients are people who’ve been DIYing their brand for a few years and they’re ready to establish a professionally designed brand identity to gain legitimacy as their business grows. I also help my clients solve problems they may have about brand awareness or develop marketing campaigns with them. Really, whatever they need in the brand/design umbrella I can help them with. And if they need something that isn’t in my wheelhouse, I have a handful of contractors that I love to work with who can help them. I really love working with people who are the best at what they do and partnering up to create a team of professionals that can help my clients with all their goals.
I’m most excited about a couple of new offers I have (hopefully coming at the end of the year) which include semi-custom brand identity suites, to help clients with smaller budgets achieve the same high-quality design of my bespoke brand clients. I also have a strategy consulting offer in the works and I’m not sure which I want to launch first, so you’ll have to keep your eyes peeled for those. It’s all very exciting and I can’t wait to expand my services to help more people with different needs/budgets. Everyone deserves a well-designed brand.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Oof, this is a tough one but I have to say the number one thing you gotta be is tenacious. It isn’t easy to make a career as a creative and it is even more difficult to start your own studio. I’ve been working the freelance-to-business owner thing for like 7 years now and I still have stretches of time where clients are hard to come by and it can be so discouraging. I’ve had horrible client experiences, moments of confusion, and doubt. But through it all, I remember that nothing worth having is ever easy and I have to push through.
It has absolutely crossed my mind to close up shop and go back to a corporate job with regular hours and a steady paycheck, but that isn’t what I want in life. I have to remind myself that when it gets tough, or business is slow, that isn’t a direct reflection of me or my worth. Sometimes it’s just slow because the economy is doing jumping jacks and small business owners don’t always have the extra cash flow to invest in themselves and that’s okay.
I guess something that goes hand-in-hand with being tenacious is also being patient because sometimes you just have to ride out the storm and there isn’t always a solution. That part isn’t easy for me because I am very solution oriented and I always want to be able to work toward or through something but it doesn’t always work like that. You just have to be patient and wait for the tides to change.
And the last thing I’d say is not to take yourself too seriously, and remember to have fun. What’s the point of freelancing or running your own business if you aren’t enjoying it?
What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?
Ahh okay this is an exciting one! I just finished my first year of teaching at my alma mater, Wayne State University. Lots of people I’ve talked to about it jump right into how impressive it sounds, to be a professor at a university, but that’s the farthest thing from my mind.
My motivation to go back to school, but to teach this time, was to be the person that I wish I had when I was in school there. I absolutely loved all of my teachers but something I felt like I lacked was exposure to working designers too. Most of the teachers do that full time and some of them had other endeavours they did on the side, but for the most part they’d been teaching for longer than they’d worked as graphic designers. It was so scary to graduate and not know what life had in store for me, and that’s not a problem I expect to solve for my students now. But I do hope I can be a resource for them about what life after graduation can look like, what the current job market is like etc. I want to be the kind of teacher that they feel comfortable asking anything, even well after they graduate and begin their lives as professional designers. My hope is to be a mentor to them in the classroom and out. Because I wish I had that kind of mentorship as an emerging designer.
Selfishly, I find teaching so rewarding and I’ve met some incredible people in my classrooms that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. My students are benefitting big time from me graduating from that same program too, because I know all the way it worked and where there was room for improvement. I see their appreciation of that every day too, it warms my heart and as much as I’m teaching them, I’m growing and evolving too. They don’t know it but they are helping me become a better designer and communicator, and they really do test my patience sometimes but I think that’s a lesson I have to learn too.
Anyway, I feel like I’m getting off track a little. Teaching has been such a huge accomplishment for me because of the impact I’ve been able to have on my students’ education, and no doubt, their careers. I’m still quite emotional about the school year being over, and my first batch of students graduating, so I am going to wrap this up before it turns into another crying session. Because, yes, my students and I did cry on our last day together. It was really touching and I will remember it forever.
Contact Info:
- Website: oddpoppybrand.co
- Instagram: instagram.com/oddpoppy
- Linkedin:linkedin.com/in/eva-d-smith/
Image Credits
Headshot photo by Alexis, AC Backus Photo.
