The Hustle
Years in Tampa Bay
0.5! We just moved here but Emma is a Florida native, she grew up in New Port Richey!
Hustle (job)
Co-founders and designers at EF.IT Design.
What do you do?
Every day is its own adventure but we’re constantly working to create impactful design to help businesses in our community grow. We work with our clients to tell their story by crafting a dynamic brand and launching a website that’s one of their biggest brand assets.
Why do you do it?
Seeing our clients’ reaction when they finally have this visual representation of the business they’ve been building is what inspires us. We’re able to help them bring their business to life and feel confident that they’re ready to take on the world. Being able to work with people who are turning their dreams into reality while we’re doing the same – we couldn’t imagine a better life.
What was your Catalyst? (How did you get started?)
A serious heart-to-heart about what we wanted, a second cross-country road trip from Portland, Oregon to St. Pete and semi-gentle pushes from past professors who believed we could do it. We had always talked about opening our own studio but we always said it would be later in life.
What’s a common misconception or unknown aspect of what you do?
The biggest misconception is that branding is just a logo. We’re not here for quick and dirty logos, we work with our clients to build a brand that is the foundation for their business. Branding doesn’t stop at a logo and a pretty color palette. Every aspect of a brand has a purpose from the colors to the navigation on your website.
What’s the most challenging part of your Hustle?
Our biggest struggle is balancing our love of physically creating while working in an ever-growing digital world. As graphic designers, we’re chained to our computers most of the time so we’re constantly trying to find ways to bring the two worlds together.
What’s the most valuable piece of business advice/insight that’s helped you?
It’s a tie between a question that helped us start and a piece of advice from Emma’s dad. The question was, “Why wait?” and we didn’t have a good answer so it gave us that extra push to just do the damn thing. The advice was to know our worth and get comfortable charging it – our passion for helping people makes it difficult to not just work for free.
