Her Story
About Tana
After graduating from Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in graphic design, I spent a couple years abroad in Europe working for small boutique design firms, famous illustrators, and studios in different languages. When I returned to the U.S., I relocated to Miami where I started working for boutique studios as an art director, orchestrating photo shoots and building websites while always maintaining freelance projects on the side. I always joke that I was never a good employee because I always wanted to do things my way, so I finally bit the bullet when a big client came in and went off on my own. Within 30 days, I had partnered up with another gentleman and we lasted 10 years together. When it was time to move on and look at new services and branding, I wanted to do something on my own, which is when I rebranded to Brand Poets in 2016. We really built our business on education, healthcare, and nonprofit work. Over the years, we've helped small businesses, large businesses, government municipalities, and nonprofits. We've done pro bono work and earned awards for our work in both digital and print. My team has ebbed and flowed from large to small, local to abroad, but I'm still the constant here. We partner with a lot of local nonprofits to help them set up templates, best practices, and automations internally so they can work more effectively.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Tana
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to having a tough stomach and a pragmatic approach to business. It's not always been easy, and I go to sleep at night and sometimes I worry, but I always say that tomorrow's gonna be a different day, it'll all be better tomorrow. Over the years, going through a lot of challenging times, you just have to put one step in front of the other and take one challenge at a time, not get overwhelmed. My very pragmatic approach to how to do business is like, you know, if I keep running into a wall, there's gotta be a better way. If we're not getting things done fast enough, then is there something wrong in the process? So always just trying to get through one challenge at a time has been really important, because it can be very overwhelming to handle a lot. We handle HR, we handle legal, we handle negotiations, and then on top of that, the actual work of putting out stellar high-quality campaigns that touch multicultural, multi-generational audiences is really what we do.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge right now is keeping up with technology changes, especially with AI unleashing on us. Half of my job is just organizing, looking at the new platforms, playing around with them, seeing what works for us, or should we switch the whole team over to this platform. I make sure my team has the tools they need to be efficient. Even through all the technology challenges and AI, our team has been able to adapt and change our services so that they're more needed and desired by small businesses. I stress with my team and with everybody that curation and taste is really important when you're using these tools. I look for people with great taste and great aesthetics, and then I can train them on the AI. The technology's changing and we have to change with it, or we are dinosaurs.
Keep Exploring
More Influential Women · Florida
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.