I’m Janelle
I’m a designer, artist, tinkerer, crossword puzzle-doer, passport stamp collector, lover of good bourbon and bad reality TV.
In 2009, I graduated from Pratt Institute's Communication Design program. As soon as the cap was in the air, I knew that I wanted to focus on creating branding for small companies and non-profits. I loved design, and I loved helping people put their great ideas into the world. I was amped to start my freelance business… I was just pretty fuzzy on the details.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that making great work wasn’t going to be the hardest part of running my own business. It wasn’t the design skills that were going to trip me up—it was all the other stuff. Contracts, pricing, time management, client processes, taxes—all of the unsexy, boring, overwhelming, pull-your-hair-out parts of business that no one tells you about when you decide to be a creative entrepreneur.
And it’s not like there weren’t resources. There were tons.
Books, productivity systems, time trackers, organizational frameworks—so much advice from people who seemed to have it all figured out. The problem was that those people didn’t feel like me. They felt analytical, structured, and methodical in a way that made all their advice feel mysterious and impossible. No matter how hard I tried to follow systems, it just translated to shame to my messy, creative brain. And because they didn’t work, I felt like I was failing. For years, I struggled, missed opportunities, made mistakes, and felt like quitting more times than I can count.
Over time, I found a way to make it work—on my terms. I figured out how to build systems that fit my mind instead of fighting against it. I learned how to make structure work for me instead of stifling me. And the more I refined my approach, the more I realized that it wasn’t just possible to run a creative business without feeling like a failure—it was actually freeing. Having templates, rate sheets, workflows, and processes didn’t kill my creativity. It freed up my brain space for the fun stuff.
I’m here to help you build whatever is in you to make in a way that makes sense for you. I want to give you the tools and the guidance to make your business sustainable, structured, and scalable—without sacrificing the creativity that made you want to do this in the first place.
If that sounds good, you’re in the right place. Let’s do this together.
