Octavia Gilmore is the CEO of Creative Juice, a minority and female-owned creative agency, disrupting marketing the millennial way. From discovering her passion for graphic design at 14 to founding her agency at age 23, Octavia’s journey epitomizes creativity, determination, and entrepreneurship. With a mission to promote diversity and empower minority and female-owned businesses, she has transformed Creative Juice into a thriving enterprise while actively mentoring youth and advocating for leadership opportunities. Recognized as a Power 30 Under 30 recipient and honored with the Emerging Alumna award from the Savannah College of Art and Design, Octavia continues to inspire and lead by example in both the business world and her community.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- What inspired Octavia Gilmore to pursue marketing and branding?
- Top things Octavia learned from running her business
- Challenges that Octavia faced in her entrepreneurship journey
- The value of building trust with clients
- How does Octavia stay updated with the latest technologies?
- Balancing creativity with being strategic
- How to measure the success of a marketing and branding campaign
- Top marketing and branding mistakes to avoid
In this episode…
Marketing and branding are indispensable pillars for businesses to establish their identity, connect with their target audience, and differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace. Effective marketing strategies not only generate awareness but also foster loyalty and drive sales. Similarly, a strong brand identity communicates values, builds trust, and ultimately influences consumer behavior. How can businesses harness the power of marketing and branding to unlock their full potential and stand out in today’s competitive landscape?
Branding and marketing expert Octavia Gilmore, emphasizes the importance of understanding the target audience’s pain points and delivering value through clear brand messaging. Octavia also shares the challenges she faced as a young entrepreneur, including breaking into the corporate space and earning the trust of renowned brands like Home Depot. Despite the obstacles, her dedication to learning, adapting, and staying up-to-date with the latest trends, including the integration of AI, has been key to her success. Octavia’s advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to be resilient, embrace continuous learning, and not be afraid to pivot in the ever-evolving landscape of marketing and branding.
In this episode of the Top Business Leaders Show, Rise25’s Chad Franzen sits down with Octavia Gilmore, Founder and CEO of Creative Juice, to talk about how to elevate your brand marketing. Octavia discusses lessons she learned from running her business, the value of building trust with clients, and how to balance creativity with being strategic.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Chad Franzen on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Email the team at Rise25: support@rise25.com
- Octavia Gilmore on LinkedIn
- Creative Juice
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show. Powered by Rise25 Media, we feature top founders, executives and business leaders from all over the world.
Chad Franzen 0:20
Chad Franzen here, co-host of the Top Business Leaders Show where we feature CEOs, entrepreneurs and top leaders in the business world. This episode is brought to you by Rise25 We help b2b businesses reach their dream relationships and connect with more clients referrals and strategic partnerships and get ROI through done for you podcasts. If you have a b2b business and want to build great relationships, there’s no better way to do it than your profile, and the people and companies that you admire on your podcast.
To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at support@rise25.com My guest today is Octavia Gilmore, a visionary graphic designer and founder of Creative Juice. She discovered her passion for design at age 14 and honed her skills with a BFA from Savannah College in Georgia. Savannah College of Art and Design, which is two years post-graduation, Octavia boldly launched Creative Juice in 2013, transforming it into a cutting-edge multicultural marketing powerhouse, specializing in branding, web design and digital marketing.
Creative Juice brings a diverse global team dedicated to breaking barriers and fostering wealth and equity and communities of color. As a celebrated 30 under 30 awardee and an emerging Alumna Award recipient from her alma mater Octavia’s commitment extends beyond business beyond business business success, to empowering and mentoring the next generation of leaders, Octavia, that was easy for me to say, how are you? Good.
Octavia Gilmore 1:53
Thanks for having me. Hello,
Chad Franzen 1:54
Appreciate you for joining me. I’m looking forward to talking to you. Tell me as we get started here, what kind of inspired you to pursue a career in marketing and branding?
Octavia Gilmore 2:04
That’s a great question. So I’ve come from a family of creatives. However, no one necessarily pursued a creative career. So I knew pretty early on as a teenager, I wanted to do graphic design. So my uncle actually gave me Photoshop when I was 14. And I pretty much fell in love with it. And I decided I wanted to pursue it as a career, though I always knew that I would own an agency. I would say when I got to college, I told everyone, I’m going to start my own agency when I’m like 30 years old, because I thought that was so old. Who back then? But yeah, I went to school and really utilized my school’s career website.
So different businesses around Atlanta would post you know, if they needed something like a logo design or website design on scans career site, and I was one of the only students that really took advantage of that. So I started freelancing probably like my junior year of college. And by the time I graduated, I had a pretty decent clientele. This was back when also Craigslist was more popular, I would even post ads on Craigslist, about my services to get some clients. So fast forward. After graduation, I took a role at a large corporation as a graphic designer. I absolutely hated it. And I said, “Okay, what am I going to do now?”
So I was looking for some jobs at some agencies here locally in Atlanta. And I just noticed that there wasn’t much diversity. There weren’t many people that looked like me in terms of agency ownership. And that’s kind of what sparked me to launch Creative Juice just to bring some more flair into this space. So I pretty much started it as a one-woman shop at home with my laptop. And about six months later, I had so much work to do actually hire my first contractor. And then fast forward to today, we’ve blossomed into a boutique, branding and marketing agency working with some pretty large clients. And yes, since COVID, we were able to pretty much close our physical office in Atlanta.
And that allowed us to build a more global team, which pretty much is representative of what the world looks like today. So one of our unique values that we bring to the table is having this global team with truly unique global perspectives all working with, you know, our client on their branding. Yeah, that’s pretty much the story of how I got started. So yeah, I always knew I wanted to own an agency and didn’t expect to start it at 23. But you know, the universe had other plans and here we are today. So that
Chad Franzen 4:44
That is awesome. Amazing. So why, you know how did you know you always wanted to own an agency? What about that was attractive to you and is it still attractive to you for that same reason?
Octavia Gilmore 4:54
Well, I think that I was always more of a leader. Whether it’s with my friend group, or just different things that I did in high school. So yeah, I think just being a leader, having those leadership qualities, and then wanting to have something to call my own, that I could pass down in terms of legacy. One of the things that, you know, has been challenging, or what is challenging was I’ve never worked at an agency, and then I started one. So a lot of it was like trial by fire, as most entrepreneurs know, you are literally building the plane as you’re flying it, which is not always fun. But yeah, I had a lot of challenges, a lot of wins and successes throughout the journey that I’m super proud of.
Chad Franzen 5:39
What did you learn? I mean, before you started the agency, what did you learn, kind of in your early work experience that maybe has helped you, you know, with creative juice now beyond, beyond the fact that you didn’t necessarily care for working in corporate America?
Octavia Gilmore 5:54
Well, I would say one of the things that from a cultural perspective, we are really big on customer service. And I think it’s because I used to work at, like Toys R Us during the holidays. And I used to get like, angry customers with toys thrown at me all types of crazy things. Um, but I really realized actually, more recently, one of the reasons why we’re so much on our professionalism, and really trying to anticipate our client’s needs before they do is that customer service background. Also, I’m a pretty detail-oriented person.
So in terms of our culture, making sure that we are crossing every T and dotting every i is really, really important. Making sure that we, you know, execute at the highest level, that is the expectation of everyone at the agency. I think that also comes from just me personally, my experience, as well as my personality wanting to be like an overachiever, which is what I was in high school in college as well.
Chad Franzen 6:56
So I want to get into some of the biggest challenges you face as a marketing expert. But in terms of being an entrepreneur, what would you have maybe learned, or what has surprised you the most about running your own business beyond just being a great, you know, agency leader? What about running a business has surprised you? Or have you learned from,
[continue to page 2]
Octavia Gilmore 7:16
I would say one of the things I didn’t realize was I went to school for graphic design and branding so that I started a branding and you know, web agency, and you don’t realize that in order to scale, you don’t actually do the work anymore. So right now, my job is in sales, right? In operations and really overseeing the agency. So I’m not necessarily able to always be as creative as I would like to be. And that kind of sucks. But I am still the visionary, right, I do a lot of creative direction and kind of overseeing the team.
So I would say that the second piece is really understanding like the numbers. So one of my challenges early on was I was a freelancer, when you’re a freelancer, you know, you have an hourly rate, however many hours it takes, that’s to quote the client, you get paid whatever. But as you start to scale, and you have people on the team that aren’t necessarily billable, then you have to understand profit margins, and things of that sort. So that was kind of like a really big aha moment. When even if it’s something that looks like a really good deal that you might close, you have to literally do the math and accounting for all of your overhead, whether it’s software, people, things of that sort. So that was something that I really had to learn in terms of how to price accordingly, obviously, to make money.
Chad Franzen 8:38
Are these things you never would have learned if you just hadn’t done it? Exactly. Right. You mentioned you had to face some pretty big challenges early on, can you share what some of those might have been? Especially, you know, when it comes to bounding creative juice, or just marketing and branding in general? Yeah,
Octavia Gilmore 8:56
I think one of the biggest challenges was being a 23-year-old, pitching large corporate clients, going up against agencies that had, you know, 20, 30 years experience. So you know, obviously, our work was good. We were able to be in those same rooms, but I think there’s a lot of bias there. I’m a young, black millennial, female, right, and I’m going up against these larger agencies. There was one point of time where I just literally contemplated, like, how do I make myself look a little bit older and more mature? Because, you know, it’s like, oh, you’re cute, right?
So just getting people to like, really take me seriously early on in my career was a little frustrating. Now that I’m a little bit more seasoned, and have much more experience, I’m able to, you know, speak to that experience and really build more trust with clients up front, but it was more of a challenge just being so young. Just trying to run this agency and really grow it and you know, making sure that I was able to articulate the value that we could bring at such a young age.
Chad Franzen 10:08
When you, when you were pitching to a big, big company, or somebody you may have been, you know, as a young person kind of intimidated by, what kind of mindset did you have? And who was the, if you can mention them, or somebody who was like, the big, kind of like a big fish like, Whoa, yeah, I got that one,
Speaker 1 10:25
I would say we’ve worked with some pretty large clients. So we’ve worked with like, Home Depot, Chick-fil-A, Equifax, and Goodwill of North Georgia, I would say, Home Depot was probably the hardest client, I worked with a client for about two years before I was able to close them. And that’s when I really learned that sometimes it’s more about relationships, right?
So less about what you can do and more about how you are really nurturing again, these clients and building trust with them. So I would say that’s something that I had to learn, you know, they’re the cliche, your net worth is your network is really true. And I would, I would also say that I’m one of those people that, you know, as I’ve excelled in my career, I have made it a point to really focus on building my network, to a point where I’m able to get clients or whatever I need, I’m able to just ask for referrals. So that was just really like something that I learned was key early in my career.
Chad Franzen 11:29
So, being able to work with Home Depot, that was something that kind of developed over time, it wasn’t like you went in there and, and blew the doors off, and then they joined up with you.
Octavia Gilmore 11:38
Right. That was a lot like, showing up to their events, showing up to different conferences, putting them on our email marketing list so that we’re staying relevant, or that they can keep us top of mind connecting with people in the department on LinkedIn. It’s like a multifaceted strategy. Again, to just keep us top of mind.
Chad Franzen 11:59
How do you stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies in what you do?
Octavia Gilmore 12:04
That’s a good question. Um, I am the type of person that I love to learn. So even now, we are revamping the agency, and really developing a model where we’re integrating live ChatGPT and MidJourney into the work that we do. So I would say from an agency perspective, it really does come from me top down, and then I’m kind of deploying that into my organization. But yeah, I love to stay up to date with the latest and greatest trends.
And I think being a millennial-owned agency with all millennial employees, it’s important for us to keep our ears to the ground, because clients are going to see something new and shiny, and come to us and ask for and I think it’s important that we know what they’re talking about. So yeah, I just think, whether it’s social media, listening to podcasts, I do a lot of things like YouTube University, just making sure that I’m staying up to date personally, and then deploying that with the rest of the team.
Chad Franzen 13:00
Where are you at? In terms of your integration of AI? Have you fully embraced it? Like it’s a major tool? Are you still figuring out how to use it? Where are you guys at
Octavia Gilmore 13:09
me, I would say we’re like, 80%, fair, um, we are training ChatGPT to really understand the nuances of what we do, as well as like our tone. So it helps us now like draft proposals or things of that store manager. And it is something that I’ve started exploring, like, probably last year, and one of the reasons why that really excited me was because in our industry years ago, if I needed a black person holding an iPhone, you go to istock.com, it just didn’t exist. Unfortunately, now it’s a little bit better with diversity.
But with the power of MidJourney, I’m able to create diverse imagery that is limitless, right? So if you need somebody, you need a man walking on the moon, I can create a visual of that. So I’m one of those people that I’m really embracing AI, I think you can either let it dumb you down or let it make you smarter. So I’m on ChatGPT, almost every day. I’ve pretty much integrated it into my daily life, not only from a business perspective, but personally like if I’m hungry, I actually actually drink tea. Here’s my ingredients, the ingredients are like developing two or three recipes of what I can make today with these ingredients. And I really think it’s a powerful tool. And I’m really excited to see how AI continues to get smarter, how we can continue to use it in our business to move faster, and to help give our clients more value.
Chad Franzen 14:39
Have you gotten some good deals out of it?
Octavia Gilmore 14:42
Yes, we have. Whether it is creating custom imagery for clients or again allowing us to maybe give them more concepts in terms of like strategies. It also helps us think outside the box so you can ask it like, Hey, what are some super creative off the beaten path marketing strategies that we can implement for this client. And it really does come up with some good good options, of course, we customize it and tailor it with our own expertise and put our own little spin on it. But it does give us a pretty decent foundation in terms of what we can use, which is exciting.
Chad Franzen 15:20
I know in marketing and branding, you have to be really creative, which you clearly are. How do you kind of balance being creative, but being strategic at the same time?
Octavia Gilmore 15:31
That’s a good question. I think I’m just one of those people that has a little bit of both sides of the coin. I think about being a business owner and going through different business classes. So for example, I did the Goldman Sachs 10,000, small business programme, which again, was like really teaching me how my numbers and my agency tell a story. And then also, as my agency continues to grow and understand, again, I’m going pitching against these really large agencies.
You do have to be strategic, you do have to understand, you know, what is my unique value proposition? What is my target audience that I’m going after, because that helps you really like tailor your messaging from a marketing perspective. So these are just all little things I’ve learned along the way like business classes. So you know, I went to art school, I didn’t learn the business of an agency, there’s always just again, Trial by Fire speaking to mentors, and then just making mistakes and saying up guess I can’t do that anymore. It’s interesting, because we even have our contracts, right?
When I first started out, I downloaded a free contract online. And then over the years, right, you get smarter. Things happening, you’re like, oh, I need to add that in the contract. So now you have like this, you know, like a pretty robust contract that client signs. And it really just comes from experience.
Chad Franzen 16:53
Is there a project that you have worked on during your career that’s particularly particularly memorable? Like, like, whoa, like I did that? Or maybe, maybe it was early on? And you thought to yourself, you know, I did this? I’m actually pretty decent at this.
Octavia Gilmore 17:09
Oh, that’s a good question. One of the projects that I’m really proud of was I’m a client in a multicultural hair space. They sell different products like a beauty supply store. And they wanted to take their products, which are typically sold between like three and $10. And like, revamp the look and feel so that they could put it in more big box retailers like Target and CVS. So I worked very closely with them, redeveloping their packaging to make it more like luxury upscale. And you know, now that the actual products are in Target in CVS, so when I walk in there, and I see that package design, that’s what I’m like, Okay, this, this looks amazing, it looks really good. And like I actually created this. So
Chad Franzen 18:02
yeah, awesome. How do you measure the success of a marketing or branding campaign?
Octavia Gilmore 18:07
That’s a good question, what we like to do is try to really define KPIs of a firm based on the client’s goals. So you know, if it’s a certain percentage of how much they want to increase leads, or feeding the funnel, or you know, if they’re starting out and want to grow, like their social media following we set those KPIs upfront, and then we just measure against them, essentially. And we’re pretty, a pretty robust team, but we move very nimbly. So essentially, if something isn’t working, we’re able to pivot fairly quickly, in terms of like a strategy, but our goal is always to make sure that client sees some type of ROI, with anything that we work on with them.
Chad Franzen 18:52
As kind of an observer of business in general in the world. Are there some big mistakes that you see businesses make when it comes to marketing and branding that where you’re like, I don’t know what they were thinking?
Octavia Gilmore 19:04
Yes, I think the biggest mistakes that I see are not understanding the pain points of your target audience. And like really understanding why they would purchase from you. So we really stressed the importance of having a really clear, brand strategy, and really clear messaging. Because if you’re able to communicate to your ideal audience in a way that truly resonates with them, your services or products will essentially sell themselves.
And I think that a lot of businesses, especially small businesses, don’t really understand the power of branding. You know, a lot of them think it’s just the logo, but it really does go into everything, how your employees communicate what they’re wearing, right. What is the expectation that this client Kenny anticipates when working with you all. That’s part of your branding. So I think that is the piece like not spending enough time on your branding and messaging and really understanding the audience and their pain points and how your services or products can benefit them.
Chad Franzen 20:14
How do you kind of maintain relationships with your clients beyond just making a one like transaction?
Octavia Gilmore 20:21
That’s a good question. I think for me during our discovery process, getting to know them a little bit more personally, we just worked with a nonprofit that specifically targeted victims of endometrial cancer. But one of the things I asked all the people on the team that we were working with was Why do you work here? Tell me about your personal story. And that was able to help us translate that into the messaging and into the why, to really highlight the impact that that organization does. And then I asked them, I tried to ask questions that clients don’t necessarily think about.
So you know, maybe you have these core audiences, but who else might be interacting with your brand? So I think, getting to know the clients personally, and then also asking questions that maybe you know, another agency might not have asked because again, it goes more into like that strategy. We want our partners to see us more as partners, not as a service provider, essentially. And I think the best way to do that is to just really understand the nuances of what they do and why at a personal level, and then that helps us translate it into their marketing.
Chad Franzen 21:35
Do you take an intentional approach? We’ve talked a little bit earlier about diversity and inclusion at Creative Juice.
Octavia Gilmore 21:44
Oh, absolutely. We strive to hire diverse top talent. In terms of our culture, we encourage people of different walks of life, because we really do value those unique and different perspectives. I think that also might be like a millennial thing. So I’ve worked with clients, and they’re just like, I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I’ve never seen it done this way. Right. And it doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it’s just a different way to look at something that is a fresh approach. So I really do value having a diverse team, because you do get those different approaches that make you think outside the box. And that’s really important to us.
Chad Franzen 22:27
I have one more question for you. But first, tell me about how people can find out more about creative juice.
Octavia Gilmore 22:33
Yeah, so you can visit us online, our website is itscreativejuice.com. That’s the best place to find us to see some of our samples in our amazing global team that we have.
Chad Franzen 22:46
If a millennial younger than you or somebody in Gen Z, or somebody said that they’ve always wanted to run an agency and they were young, or they have a bunch of great ideas. What advice would you give them just because that’s based solely on what you’ve done? They haven’t?
Octavia Gilmore 23:04
I would say, don’t, don’t give up. Like resiliency is like the top core. To me being resilient is why some entrepreneurs make it and others don’t. When you have what we call a failure, it’s really not necessarily a failure. What did you learn from this to not do that again? Or what would you do differently, and that, to me, is the best teacher-right experience. So again, I don’t have an MBA, I didn’t go to business school, and here I am, running a successful agency for 11 years. So it’s really just about not giving up.
Understanding that the mistakes you made are like, you know, learning steps for you to get to the next level and just continuing to be resilient sometimes. You know, entrepreneurship does beat you up a little bit, but you just have to dust your shoulders off, get back up and keep going. So I would say that, and then not being afraid to pivot, right? Um, the landscape is always changing and branding and marketing. Even with us. We’re like, Okay, now how do we integrate AI into this, right? There’s always something new that you have to kind of learn or understand. So just not being afraid to continue to learn and be like a sponge and just soak everything up and then understand how you can apply that to your business to be successful.
Chad Franzen 24:23
Okay, fantastic. Hey, Octavia, it’s been great to talk to you today. Thank you so much for your time and all of your insights. Congratulations on your success so far.
Octavia Gilmore 24:30
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Chad Franzen 24:33
So like everybody,
Outro 24:34
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