Ten Years of Savvy & Style

Ten years ago this week, I walked out of a job for the last time.

I'd spent my whole career in higher education before that, and then landed at a beauty company for what turned out to be four months. My office there was a converted closet. No window, just a desk crammed into a room that used to hold supplies. I remember sitting in there thinking, this isn't it. So on August 31st, I left.

I didn't have a huge plan. I didn't have a business name, a website, or an email list. I'd never opened Canva or HoneyBook in my life. What I had was a few executives at Stella & Dot who needed help with gift buying, handwritten notes, and hostess packets. I charged $25 an hour and figured I'd see where it went.

Three months later, I was fully booked. Every single client came from word of mouth. No ads or fancy funnels, just people telling other people.

I don't think I understood at the time that I was starting a business. I think I just knew I didn't want to go back to a closet.

The two people who've been here the whole time

If I had to point to the thing that actually proves ten years, it wouldn't be a number. It would be two names: Krista and Lori.

I met both of them back in those Stella & Dot days, helping with their teams behind the scenes. Krista became my first-ever website client, and I'll be honest, I had never built a Squarespace site before hers. I figured it out because she trusted me to. Since then I've helped her rebrand her programs, learn new software when she needed it, and these days I help produce her podcast.

Lori was right there too. When she left to start her own boutique, Joie de Vie, she asked me to build her first website, which was my first ecommerce site. She's still with me now as a subscription client, and I handle her weekly updates and customer emails like clockwork.

I didn't plan for either of those relationships to last a decade. They just kept growing because we kept showing up for each other. That's the part of this business I'm proudest of, more than any project I've delivered.

The year everything shifted

2020 changed things for everyone, and Savvy & Style wasn't an exception. When the world moved online almost overnight, I watched visual branding stop being a nice extra and become something that actually determined whether a business looked legitimate or got scrolled past. That's the year I built my first offer outside of retainer work, and while it's changed a lot of names and shapes since then, the instinct behind it hasn't moved: give people something they can actually use, not just something pretty to look at.

Ninety-nine percent

I still haven't run an ad for this business. Ninety-nine percent of my clients have come from someone who already worked with me, a chain that traces all the way back to those first Stella & Dot referrals. It's rare that a stranger finds me cold. Usually they've already heard my name from someone they trust, and by the time we get on a call, half the trust-building is already done.

I don't take that for granted. Ten years of people vouching for me is the kind of thing you can't manufacture, no matter how good your marketing is.

Then and now

That closet office is still vivid to me. No window, no plants, a commute that ate up my mornings and evenings.

Today I work from a desk with a window on my left, coffee within reach, and houseplants everywhere I look. No commute. Just the work, and the people I get to do it for.

Ten years in, I'm not the same as when I was when I started, and Savvy & Style isn't the same business either. But the part that hasn't changed is the part I care about most: people trusting me with something that matters to them, and me trying to do right by that every single time.

Thank you for being part of this decade, however you found your way here. Here's to the next one.