Episode 4: How Graphic Designer Ashley Shelly Trotier Built a Planning Company

Welcome back to We Built This Life. Episode 4 is about Ashley Shelly Trotier. Ashley is a graphic designer who has had a product-based planner business called Ashley Shelly. Ashley sells really beautiful planners, budget notebooks, daily peace journals, lined notebooks, which she calls notebook besties, even t-shirts sometimes. She runs her business out of her home in Florida, where she lives with her husband, and her little dog, Evie.

In this episode, Ashley talks about her early jobs in the corporate design world, how she originally started a business on the side selling baby shower invitations and party décor items on Etsy, and how her first side business turned into the stationery business she has today. Ashley is very candid about the challenges that are involved with being a small business owner—the fluctuating sales and paychecks, the fact that you are required to do so many different things as a business owner, some of which may not be your natural strength—but she is also completely clear this lifestyle works for her. She said something when we were talking that really stuck with me, and it is this: “I would absolutely 100% rather do this and have my own brand, to have the ability to affect my lifestyle and every choice that I make then go back to the 9-5 thing working for someone else and building their dream. I want to do my own thing.”

Let’s get into Ashley’s story.

Getting Her Start

On Ashley Shelly’s Instagram page, under her Story Highlights, there’s a button called The Dream. Click on that to reveal a short video of Ashley’s office. Her camera pans around the room, displaying all of the products that are part of her stationary business: There’s this giant shelving unit, it looks like 4 units, each with 9 cubes, that are stacked on top of each other, and that seem to be filled with paper, and you can see some of Ashley’s signature colors—aqua blue and dusty purple—can be seen peeking out on those shelves. There’s a big wheel of bubble wrap—it’s almost like a tractor wheel in size—balancing on a chair on the left and about a couple dozen boxes stacked on the right. And over this scene, this video of her office space, Ashley wrote this: “Just sitting here after a long day of work, realizing I’m literally sitting in my DREAM. Every craft I did as a child, every painting I made and hated or loved…6 years of college for design, 5 years in the corporate design world, all led me HERE. Surrounded by beauty and bubble wrap and boxes of planners that contain my whole being.”  

So Ashley’s first experiences that led her to this point in her life began when she was young, and craft and design were a big thing in her family.

Ashley Shelly Trotier: “My dad’s very creative. He painted all kinds of Disney characters and things on my wall when I was born in my nursery. Like Dumbo and all kinds of different characters. And he very realistically painted them. We have pictures of that so I can see. I obviously don’t remember that because I was so little. But he’s very creative so I got that from him. My grandpa is also very creative and my mom was great about always buying me craft supplies, whenever I would have parties as a kid, like slumber parties, she would always get crafts for us to do. My birthday is in October, so it would usually be Halloween related stuff. But she always facilitated that. I was always making something or creating some kind of decorations or things like for holidays and making homemade things. It was something that was always around and always available to me. So huge thanks to them because as a kid, that’s a big thing if you’re parents are supporting your natural talents.”

Years later, when Ashley was a college student studying graphic design at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, her goal was to work for a fashion company. She wanted to design the marketing collateral that goes along with promoting a brand, so the posters and labels, and do the photo editing. She had an internship with Body Central, a women’s clothing retailer that isn’t around anymore, but Ashley worked for them for three years after her college graduation, from 2009 to 2012.

Ashley: “I’ve always had an interest in more female driven brands and audiences. I just feel like naturally, I’m more drawn to pretty things, pretty colors, and beautiful patterns, which I use a lot in my brand now. And all through college, my dream was to work for a fashion company. One of my huge dreams back then was to work for Victoria Secret Pink or a company like that where it’s very feminine and fun and uplifting, like positive vibes, that kind of thing. That was always what I was drawn to. Having that first job in the fashion industry and doing design was perfect for me because that’s exactly what I wanted to do at that point in my life.”

After that, Ashley took some other graphic design jobs. Some were in the political world—an area she isn’t really interested in, but the jobs paid well—and she took a position as a creative director at a weight loss company. It was while she was in this role that she began designing her very first items as a side hustle.

Ashley: “I was in my mid to late 20s at that point. My friends had started having kids. One of my best friends had her first baby. And I designed—I think it was the first time I had ever done this—but I designed baby shower invitations for her son that was being born. I really liked doing that. I didn’t realize how much fun that was until I did it. I made all kinds of things for her baby shower, like little flags that went on the cupcakes and decorations and thank you cards that she could send. All kinds of stuff like that. When I did that, everyone complimented those things so much that I started thinking that maybe I should try to create a little shop and just sell those things on the side. That’s when I opened my Etsy shop after doing some research into where people sell those kind of things and how I could do that myself. I made a few different versions of invitation sets and put them on Etsy. I actually started selling quite a few of those and it was really fun. Not super difficult work once the initial designs were done. It was just customizing them for each customer. So that got me started on Etsy. But once I learned that platform and realized pretty much how easy it was to sell something, to put something out there, create it and sell it, it was an easy way to have a business. Etsy was really good for the beginning stages of my business because it helped me learn that process and learn about pricing and shipping and getting things printed. I was just doing that on the side, like on the weekend or at night after my day job, for a little while.  And it built up over time. But it wasn’t a huge thing with the invitations. IT was fun, it was nice, extra cash here and there. But what really got me going in my business now, the brand I have today, which is Ashley Shelly, is the budget notebook.”

The budget notebook is a 5 x 8, 48-page notebook that is for tracking finances. There are 13 two-page spreads and the idea is that you get your paycheck and you write down the amount you got paid on one of these spreads at the top of the page, and then you budget out exactly what you are going to do with that money. There are also some extra pages in the book a savings tracker, a purchase wish list, and several debt repayment plan pages. When Ashley was first designing this notebook while working full-time at the weight loss company, she originally created it as a tool for herself.

Ashley: “I was still working at that job trying to get my own finances in order. Working on all the different bills I Had, keeping track of everything. And I used to just write all that out in a plain lined notebook that I had from Rifle Paper Co. I love their notebooks. They’re really pretty designs and good quality. So I used to use those and just write out my budget every 2 weeks when I got paid. I started doing that because at that age, my money was coming in, I was making a good amount of money, but I didn’t really plan anything. I just paid the bills I needed to pay and whatever was left was left. But typically I would think more about how can I be saving more money or what could I be doing with my money to better invest for my future and get things in order. In my mid 20s, there’s where my mind was going, was thinking more about the future at that point. So when I was doing that, after so many months of writing it out by hand, I kind of got to a point where I thought, I’m a graphic designer, I could design this. I think I designed it in Adobe Illustrator originally and just did the main two pages that I always would write in a notebook, but made it into a chart that I could fill in. Then I started adding other pages to it and testing it out, printed it just on loose paper I’d print it out and use it to make sure that it worked, that the layout was good. I edited things I didn’t like and kind of got it edited down to a good spreadsheet of two pages that worked really well. I was like, well, let me see if this is something that other people would like because it helped me so much.”

Ashley turned those budgeting pages she had developed into a notebook, and she added it to her Etsy shop, where she was also selling the baby invitations at the time. This was in 2014, and It took her six months to sell her first 100 notebooks. It seems like it would be all too easy to get discouraged by this. But Ashley wasn’t put off by the sales. She believed in her product.

Ashley: “I think in the beginning of anything, I notice with me anyway, you have a lot more motivation. It’s almost like not having the experience yet is a good thing because you don’t know what to expect. Every sale is super exciting. And if one person is buying it, it’s like, okay, one person likes it, somebody else is going to like it and it’s worth doing it. This is going to work.”

Now that being said, Ashley did do a few things to boost those early sales. At the time, she was paying for promoted listings on Etsy for her baby shower invitations so people could find her products more easily. But she didn’t think that people would be coming to Etsy to search for a budget notebook, so the promoted listings didn’t feel like the best fit for this particular product. Instead, to boost sales when she was staring out, she did two things. First, she started a business Instagram account. Today, that account has more than 20,000 followers, so this has been a marketing method that has worked out really well for her. 

Ashley: “Starting the Instagram account was probably the best thing ever. Because that way, I was able to go and look through hashtags and things like that to find people who were budgeting, who were trying to budget, or find specifically women because my products are specifically designed for women with the look and feel of them. Everything is feminine colors and patterns and things like that. I was looking for women who were on that same journey of trying to keep their bills in order and get organized, but who were struggling with that and needed something like the budget notebook that could help solve that problem. Instagram was the way to do it. And it grew really fast. With Instagram being free and not having to spend extra money, that was great for starting out in business. As a small business, a marketing budget is something that people don’t even have.”

The other thing Ashley did when she was first trying to sell the budget notebook was play around with the price of the notebook.

Ashley: “When I first put the budget notebook up, I was charging, I’m pretty sure the original price was $18. That was on the Etsy shop. Of course everything now has been moved over to my own website. But I still have my listings on etsy too. It’s just a nice platform for people to be able to search.  It’s pretty much the same product…And I got like no sales for a long time. I think I might have sold one or two at $18. And I started thinking, well, maybe I’m charging too much. I 100% feel like that product is worth every cent of $18. But if the audience doesn’t feel like it is or they’re not willing to put $18 towards that, then I can’t sell it. It’s not going to be a business. I tried testing out different price points early on. I think I went from $18 to $14.99. And I started selling more of them. So I said, okay, that’s a comfortable price for people. I think I sold, I think I went down to $12 as the final price for it. At $12, I was selling a good amount. I think that was the price throughout the rest of those first 100 that I sold on Etsy. Once I got to $12 and that traffic picked up, the sales picked up, it got more frequent, I was also building everything on Instagram at the same time. That was a big part of driving people to Etsy was through the Instagram account and having that link on there for people to go and shop. That price point was good. The second round, I ordered, I wanted to order more quantity, but I changed some of the paper quality. I think I got thicker covers and adjusted some things. I started doing full color on all the inside pages. I upgraded some of the things. So then I ended up going up to $13 because of the price I was paying a little bit. I think I added some extra pages in as well. Like debt repayment pages. So I had to go up another dollar. So it was like $13 for the second launch. So that second launch was awesome. And ever since then it’s been consistent with the sales over those next couple of years.”

As Ashley built a base of customers for the budget notebook, they began to ask her if she would design a planner. Now planners are big at the moment, and they have been for the last several years. But this wasn’t something that Ashley had thought about designing before because she hadn’t planned to start a stationery business. That budget notebook she designed had been just for herself, and even though she listed it on Etsy, she hadn’t thought of expanding her product line beyond that. But when her customers began asking for this additional product, this planner, Ashley started to think, hey, maybe this could be a business.

Ashley: “It’s almost like my original dream was to work in fashion and do graphic design for companies that were fashion related. And it took a huge turn with the budget notebook and it gave me this spark, like wow, I could actually do this and work for myself. Work from home nad have more flexibility. So all of those things were going through my mind and as the sales were doing really well for the budget notebook, I really took that into consideration for the customers who were asking about the planner. So I started looking at the planners that I was using, the ones, I have used a planner since middle school. I love planners and I always have. So it’s kind of funny that it wasn’t something I decided to do on my own, it came out other people asking me to do it. So I started going through all the old ones I have—I usually save my planners like a scrapbook to look back on and see what I Was doing that year. It’s kind of fun to look back on those that were 10 years ago and see what you were doing and how you wrote, what kind of things you planned. So I looked at those and different layouts and tried to nail down which one worked the best for me, what kind of layout worked the best for me. Once I got to that point, I started thinking is this layout the best for women out there? What’s so great about it? How does it work and is it going to work for others? And would it be something that would work in general for other women? And Just started designing things in the Adobe Creativre Suite…basically narrowed it down to all of my favorite things in one planner.” 

A little bit about Ashley’s planners: Like the budget notebooks, they are designed in very pretty colors—there’s aquas, dusty purples, some teals, blush, black and white. They have all the standard planner features: the monthly calendar spreads, the Monday through Sunday weekly pages where you can write down your schedule. She also has some extras in there like her monthly creative spreads. They are two-page spreads, one for each month, where people can write down their goals for the month, they can reflect on what they’re grateful for, what is causing them stress, what makes them happy. It’s a place where people can get their thoughts together and plan for a successful, fun month ahead.

It was around 2015 that Ashley began designing this planner, and then in May of that same year, she decided to leave her corporate job with the weight loss company. The budget notebook sales were doing well at the time, so that was encouraging. But Ashley also picked up a freelance design job with a makeup company. The income from those two projects was enough to make up the money she was earning in her full-time job. For the five years since she graduated from college, Ashley had always worked full-time, so this was a pretty big lifestyle change and one that took some time to adjust to.

Ashley: “It was amazing in a lot of ways and also scary in some ways back then because I’m very much a planner, I like to know what’s coming, I like to know what to expect. And starting a business and working for yourself is absolutely giving all of that up. You don’t have any idea what every day is going to be like. Every day is different. You have to create your own income out of thin air. And I had never done that before. It was definitely a total 180 in my lifestyle of my finances and knowing every two weeks I’m going to have a paycheck. That’s not what it’s like at all. It’s every single day checking on your sales and seeing how things are going. Some weeks are great and some weeks are just downright scary. And you have to jump and try to figure out something quickly when things are slow. But that freelance job for the first—I had that same freelance job for the first year and a half, I believe, maybe almost two years—so that helped me with the consistency. But that freelance job was not paying all my bills. I needed those sales from my own products to be able to pay everything. So I still had that push to work as hard as I could in the beginning to get my brand going.”

Today, in addition to planners and budget notebooks, Ashley has added a few other products and her brand her grown. Looking back at the four years she has had her business, Ashley says she is most proud of the relationships she has built with her customers. This has been primarily through Instagram. People write comments on her static posts, or reply to her Instagram Stories, or send her direct messages, and Ashley responds to them and she’s has developed a lot of relationships this way.

Ashley: “The women who buy from me are so awesome. These women are just my kind of people. We get each other and we all like to bre organized and why have similar personalities in a lot of ways, but then we are also very different in the lives that we live. But there’s just that thing that connects all of us.”

“I think just talking about the people, that would probably be the #1 thing. [But it also] is knowing that I can use a talent that I feel like I was just born with. I love being creative and I always have. So I feel like that was just given to me. And I’m glad that I’m able to use that to put things out there into the world that actually make a difference in other women’s lives. There’s people I know that have used the budget notebook that have paid off all of their debt. It’s just so crazy to me to think I created something that helped them do that. They’re doing the hard work, they’re the ones out there budgeting their money, they’re the ones putting it in the right place and they’re the ones paying off this stuff. But they’re writing all this stuff down, like their dreams of becoming debt free. Or the planner, just every day they’re writing on this thing that I just had in my mind at one point. And that’s so cool to me, that connection that I’ve been able to have with people around the world just trying to do their best just like me ,we’re all just trying to do the best we can each day, and having these tools to do that, it’s just so cool. So I think that’s the thing I’m most proud of to be able to use this talent I have for something good and make an impact on these people.”

Ashley is also very candid about the challenges she faces as a creative business owner, and by that I mean someone who is naturally creative but maybe not naturally drawn to all of the tasks that come with running a business. But for her, she knows what kind of lifestyle she wants to live, she knows what kind of work environment makes her happy, so despite the difficulties in running a business, it’s just a good fit for her. 

Ashley: “Because I didn’t go to school for business so I’m learning all of this as I go and watching YouTube videos and listening to podcats and reading articles. I’m pretty much teaching myself business. The first year with production was a total circus: learning how to get things produced, getting samples, trying to explain to a printer what I wanted. I learned so many things that first year about production. That can only come from experience unless you have someone who has already done it sitting there with you just telling you what to do. But I didn’t have that.“

“I’m a designer. That’s my talent. Being a business owner is not my talent. That’s a struggle. I think that happens to a lot of creative business owners. We have a talent that we know a lot of people would like to have and we know we have a skill that can be used to create an income, but beign able to do it for yourself and all the sudden now you’re a business owner and you have all these different things you have to manage, it is hugely overwhelming in a lot of ways. I’ve had a subscription box company steal my design and reproduce it. That happened last year, at the end of the year in DEcembrer. And I found out through social media, somebody was tagging me saying your planner is in a subscription box and I said, What? I didn’t sell anything to them. So I never thought I would have to navigate a lawsuit and I’m right in the middle of that. That’s been very ugly and stressful and it’s just crazy. So there’s tons of things like that that will come your way as a business owner that you will not necessarily be able to prepare for I guess. There have been times, more recently too, where the income has been different than what I expected it to be and my husband has been hugely helpful with that. I’m not doing this myself, Like 100%. I’m not just running a business and making tons of money and able to do all this stuff. I’m a normal human being, just like everybody else, and there are months when things are slower. Like right now, it’s the middle of the year, people aren’t buying planners, they’re buying them in the fall. I have to take on more freelance jobs. My husband helps out and we’re working on all of this together as a team and he really believe sin my business. He is 100% supportive of me keeping this up and he knows it’s going to pay off for both of us in the future b/c it’s going to keep growing. But I would absolutely 100% rather do this and have my own brand, to have the ability to affect my lifestyle with every choice then I make then go back to the 9-5 thing working for someone else and building their dream. I want to do my own thing. So you have to realize that as a person if you’re thinking about starting your own business, that everything has challenges. You’re going to have challenges if you go to yoru job 9-5. And you’re going to have challenges if you work for yourself. And there’s going to be just as many challenges if not more. But if you love something so much, it’s probably worth it. It’s probably like babysitting for someone else’s child and that child is being like a total hellion. It’s stressful and you just can’t wait for your parents to come get them. But if it’s yoru own children, it’s different…If it’s your own baby, you are willing to put in that work and deal with the bad times because you know htat you love that thing so much it doesn’t matter.”

For other would-be small business owners, Ashley recommends finding a way to make a business out of something you love. Not necessarily building a business solely because you think it will make a lot of money, but figure out what your passions are and maybe one of them could be a business. Ashley loves designing. She could have built a business based on designing anything, and she did try other things with the baby shower invitations in her early Etsy days. But Ashley found that stationery was something that she could build a business around and it incorporated design, which is one of her passions. Once that business idea is put in motion, then you can think about what your priorities are and that will shape your business. Is money and financial comfort really important to you? Is a certain lifestyle really important? So Ashley thought about that. What are her priorities?

Ashley: “For me, I need that balance. I want to make good money, but I also know I’m not going to become a millionaire. And that’s okay. My husband and I just talked about it last night. We both know we have it in us as people to come up with a plan to become millionaires. But we also know what sacrifices that would take and what stress we would have to be under to get there, and we don’t want that. We don’t even want any part of that. We just want to have a comfortable home, we want to have our family and be able to have some flexibility and afford the things that would basically make us happy. Travel a little bit and be able to comfortably pay for our bills and not have to worry living paycheck to paycheck. Just like that, the basic things in life make both of us happy. So that’s a huge part of it: really getting to know yourself and what you need to feel fulfilled and feel happy and then go after that.”

As she has built her business, Ashley has also come to own the part of her that loves the lifestyle she has built. Ashley likes to be comfortable, she likes to dress in comfortable clothes, and she’s an introvert so she likes quiet time. And she has built a business that honors those parts of who she is. She designs on her own, she has built an online-based business, she connects with people through social media or email, she wears whatever she wants while she does that, and that fits that introvert/comfortable part of herself. In honoring that part of her personality and building a business with that in mind, she has essentially brought her idea of success to life.

Ashley: “Really the world almost celebrates being an extrovert and it seems like being an introvert is being a bad thing. But it’s not. It’s just that obviously the extroverts are out there in the world, they are socializing, they’re having fun b/c they love it. Whereas for an introvert, we enjoy the quiet time we have to focus and just have a conversation with one friend or two friends. But The thing about owning what you love as part of that, once you know that that’s who you are, I feel like we are always feeling guilty about who we are. Like I’m an introvert. I love being home, I love designing at home where it’s quiet. I love being in comfortable clothes. I wear yoga pants nad I wear a comfortable shirt. My idea of success was that literally my idea of success is being able to sit at home in my own comfort, my environment, the way I want it, designing on my computer, bringing in an income, and I’m not wearing a bra. That is living the dream for me. Most women know when you come home, the first thing you want to do is get in your comfy clothes, get that dang bra off and just be relaxed and comfortable and just take a deep breath. And I feel like if I can do that while I’m working, oh my gosh, I could never do that at an office, you know. I wouldn’t have that freedom to be able to do that. So that was just me joking about it, but it’s so true, that’s who I am at the core. I want to be comfortable, I want to be relaxed, I like a quiet you know environment to just focus. I don’t want to have a bunch of distractions. That’s me. And that’s why the products I’ve created have come into play where they do is that they’re designed for that.”

That is Ashley’s story. What I am taking away from this conversation with Ashley is this idea of building a business that suits who you are as a person and what is important to you. It seems like simple advice but it is so easy to forget this when you’re dealing with all the tasks of running a business and just life in general. So like Ashley did, really think about your priorities, whether it is making a lot of money so you don’t have to worry about finances or building a business that allows you to spend more time with your kids or do more of the activities that make you happy, whatever it is. Think about what you want your life to look like, what your idea of success is, and work that into your plan for your career.

So a big thank you to Ashley Shelly Trottier for taking the time to tell me her story. Ashley’s 2020 planners, which are beautiful, will launch on Friday, August 4^th, and the price for them will be $44.95. Ashley’s planners actually used to cost closer to $50 but as she has been ordering more of them, the price of each planner has gone down and she wanted to pass that savings on to her customers so more people who wanted to try out her planners would be able to do so. I love that she did that. Head to the show notes for all of the links mentioned in this episode: all of Ashley’s products and where you can find her on Instagram. Also, if you want to come follow We Built This Life on Instagram, I’m going to do a walk-through of the budget notebook—the product that started it all for Ashley—and I’ll share my favorite parts of her planner on there. Ashley also does some great walk throughs on her Instagram page, so check out her Story highlights for that.

As always, thank you so much for listening today, and I’ll see you soon.