Entrepreneurship and Building Life for YOU with Elliot Olson

Photo by Katy Weaver Photography

A. Elliot Olson (she/her) is the founder of Studio Anansi, a women-led creative team specializing in website design for small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs. She named her business after a god of storytelling, and she’s on a mission to help small businesses and nonprofits tell their stories online. Since 2013, Elliot has grown the studio into a boutique team of copywriters, graphic artists, and digital marketers serving an international clientele. She lives in the hipster capital of Portland, Oregon, with a scrappy garden and three chickens.

 Who is your top role model?

I was fortunate to grow up with small business owners and entrepreneurs as role models. My mother started her own small business, so I knew firsthand how hard this path would be. Her determination has always inspired me — and even today, my team knows that I still hold our work to 'top-level standards!

When I’m running on fumes at the end of a long project, I ask myself…would I be happy with this level of service for her? If the answer is no, then it's back to the drawing board.

Why did you start your business?

I believe that every business deserves an elegant and effective website, regardless of its size or budget. While attending college in Portland, I began designing websites for local businesses and nonprofits. I was continually frustrated by the lack of affordable, professional website options.

I kept meeting all these amazing small business owners without websites. They knew that they could grow their business and reach more people online, but they just didn’t have the budget for an expensive agency website.

Some people were resigned to not having a website, even though they wanted one. Others built a website themselves on the weekends...but it was a laborious process that wasted their precious free time. And because they didn’t know what to look for in a website builder, they usually had to rebuild the whole thing soon because it didn’t actually do everything they needed!

I thought it was ridiculous that so many passionate people were hampered by the lack of affordable website help. So I founded Studio Anansi as an affordable alternative to traditional agencies with high rates.

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

My biggest challenge was getting started. I wanted to be sure I was ticking all the right boxes, so I completed a crash course in small business management. My website design time totally tanked, since I (like almost everybody!) wildly underestimated the amount of work that goes into starting a business.

Fortunately, I quickly adapted and learned to juggle the admin and design sides of the business. Since then, I’ve grown Studio Anansi into a creative powerhouse serving an international clientele.

How do you differentiate your business from the competition?

I’m truly committed to empowering small businesses and website owners to manage their websites without needing a developer. I know this is kind of making me obsolete, but I just can’t help it! I really believe that people should be able to update their websites themselves, without having to stall or wait on an expensive developer for days or even weeks after inspiration strikes.

Besides video training and one-on-one coaching, I also publish free weekly web design and tech articles for small business owners. These resources have been especially relevant in the past year. The pandemic was a huge wake-up call for so many small business owners and entrepreneurs. Everything was suddenly online. People went from ‘meh, at least we have a website’ to suddenly ‘oh wow this has to be our main storefront.’

Not everyone had the budget to invest in a custom professional website, but I wanted to give people the tools to get started. So, I started creating guides and even videos to demystify website design.

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

I’ve had the most successful networking through professional groups in my geographic location. I’m in several Facebook groups specific to the Portland Oregon area. In these groups, I’ve been able to connect with other professional women and business owners. It really helps to have that personal connection and share a similar geographic space.

Other than social media, contact marketing has been very effective for me. I publish one new blog article every single week, no matter what type of week I’m having. In fact, I usually have several blog articles ready to go in advance just in case we get super busy and I don’t have time to write a new one.

By having a consistent schedule and publishing regularly, I’m boosting my SEO, demonstrating my knowledge, and helping other website owners manage their sites more effectively. 

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

Just get started. It will never be the perfect time to take a risk or jump into entrepreneurship. Set yourself up with a financial emergency fund, since you don't want to abandon everything without a plan. But give yourself a finish line, such as having a certain amount of money saved for your financial cushion.

Then do it — take the risk, start the transition, and start building a life for YOU!

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

I have so many favorite business tools. When I first started as a website designer, the first months were…well, haphazard is putting it nicely.

I loved designing and building websites, but the admin side of the business wasn’t my favorite. I sent proposals via Google docs, tracked invoices in a spreadsheet, and even asked clients to print and physically mail me their signed contracts.

My current, digital-only self shudders just remembering those times.

As I scaled my business, I found new and better ways to organize my business:

Dubsado

No exaggeration, Dubsado is the #1 most crucial tool in my arsenal.

Dubsado is an online platform that handles so much of the busy work in my work life. I use it to send contracts, questionnaires, proposals, and even invoices. It helps me stay organized, manage clients and projects, and eliminate repetitive tasks.

Asana

Asana is perfect for managing specific tasks and to-do lists. Having a clear timeline of tasks and next steps in Asana helps me stay organized. And it helps the client see where we are with the project! No more emails or phone calls asking “What comes next?”

WordPress

Of course, no list of top tools in my biz would be complete without WordPress. I originally started building on WordPress waaaay back in 2013. Since then, I’ve tested many of the newer website builders, from Weebly to Shopify to Squarespace.

I always come back to WordPress for a few reasons.

First, it’s open-source — aka free. The core WordPress software is 100% free. The only costs are your domain and hosting. This is fabulous for small business owners or startup teams that are strapped for funds.

Second, WordPress is powerful. Like, really really powerful. WordPress powers sites including Zillow, TED, Etsy, and even the White House. So while it’s simple enough for basic websites, it’s also powerful enough to scale.

Yes, I’ll still work on Squarespace or Shopify sites if someone contacts me with an existing site that they love. But ultimately, I’ve found that it’s best to switch over to WordPress. For the customizations, flexibility, SEO, and so many more reasons — WordPress is my website builder of choice.

Inbox When Ready

This ingenious extension hides your email inbox. When you open your inbox, you see an empty page with the option to “show” your messages. The extension is easy to install, and I can’t stop raving. I only started using this tool in the past few months, but it’s absolutely transformed my workdays. Before, I was losing hours in my day to checking emails. Now, I schedule my email time into blocks.

Dictate to Text

There’s one final tool that many people overlook. I’ll absolutely love dictate to text. I use an app on my phone to convert my spoken words into text, and then automatically sync with my computer. It makes it so much faster for me to write articles drop-down notes or remember things throughout the day, especially when I don’t have a chance to write a long note to myself or article on new topics. 

How do you balance work and life?

This is such a hard question! Especially during the pandemic, balancing work and life didn’t really seem feasible for long stretches of time. Suddenly we were all working from home offices, living rooms, or kitchen tables.

Personally, I had a hard time turning off my “work brain” at the end of the day and relaxing into “normal life” mode. It helped when I literally turned off my work computer at the end of the workday and put it away. By visually removing my work tools when I wasn’t in work mode, I was able to better relax into normal life. 

What do you have planned for the next six months?

In the next six months I’m hoping to grow my business even more! We had incredible growth over the past six months, and I want to continue that momentum. I’d like to add a couple more designers and developers to my team, so that I can focus on the actual website designs and growing my business while handing off a lot of the building and development work to team members.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love coding and building website! But I find it’s a better use of my time to focus on growing my business, engaging with clients, and developing new offerings — rather than getting bogged down in the development and building work. 

How can our readers connect with you?

I’d love to connect! I publish weekly articles about entrepreneurship and website strategy over at studionanasi.com. Or reach out anytime at hello@studioanansi.com or Instagram @aelliotolson.