Today we’d like to introduce you to Antoinette Alexander Adefela.
Hi Antoinette, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
I was working at a bank overnight while an undergrad and doing an internship during the day. I was focused on a career in marketing after I obtained my degree. I was learning Adobe tools and building a portfolio by creating flyers and other collateral for my friends and non-profits I supported. The bank I was working at only had 2 people in the marketing department and from talking with them, they were not going to change that anytime soon. I reached out to people in the field at companies I wanted to work at (like Ebony Magazine and Black Enterprise in NY) and they provided advice mostly sounding like this: start with an unpaid internship and work your way up. I re-thought my position and goals. Honestly, working at an unpaid internship and possibly working at night at a bar in NY wasn’t appealing to me so I started to think about how could I utilize my skills and transfer them to other roles outside of marketing. Then, I saw a position in Learning and Development at that bank that utilize tools like Adobe and went for it. I got the interview and the hiring manager looked at my portfolio and gave me the opportunity to work on the team.
From there, I went to learn more about the L&D industry and obtained certificates and took courses, and worked in the energy, oil & gas, and tech industry. Fast forward to today, I’ve been able to take my experience and education to start my own creative learning agency. This has been a deep-rooted dream for years and the toxic environment at my last job as a Training Manager at a consulting firm allowed me to focus on that dream again. I took a break from working to focus on my health, talked to a potential client, attended a business conference, and applied for my LLC right after that. It’s been an adventure ever since.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I wish I could say that it has been a smooth road but it definitely hasn’t been. In the beginning, I was the only employee and I’ve built a team of consultants over time. Finding the right people that love what they do at a reasonable rate was a struggle along with obtaining new clients and ensuring all of the major areas of the business were covered (operations, accounting, etc).
I would have to say one of the major struggles was my mindset and how I felt about myself as a business owner. For the longest, I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing. After connecting with other business owners, and joining different collectives and programs, I’ve been able to combat those negative thoughts and realized that a lot of business owners feel that way but we are all learning and growing as we go.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Exp.Design LLC?
Have you ever started a new job and had to take new hire training online? Well, the training team who created that was most likely small and didn’t have a full creative team to support them. Now, that’s where we come in to help quickly scale their training output but creatively with videos, custom illustrations, and interactive eLearning for their employees and customers.
Supporting Training Managers and Directors at tech companies like Apple, Meta, and Riot Games, we are a full-service creative agency that designs and develops performance-driven learning solutions through eLearning development, learning design consulting, and learning platforms and system support. We act as an extension of a small training team and bring in our Instructional Designers, UX/ Visual Designers, Animators, Illustrations, eLearning Developers, Voice-Over narrators, and LMS admin to create something amazing out of their course idea. We’ve researched and created scenarios for an unconscious bias web app at Apple, an interactive eLearning program about career coaching conversations for Riot Games, animated instructional videos for the potential small business vendors that want to work with the City of Austin, and interactive eLearning courses for Black and Brown content creators about how to use Instagram and Facebook as a Creator for Meta.
Since starting in 2020, we have become a certified minority-owned business through the National Minority Supplier Development Council, been awarded Forbes Next 1000, and participated in Goldman Sachs’s 10K Small Business and Dreamers and Doers Collective. We strive to continue to do great work and change the way people think about learning.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs, or other resources you think our readers should check out?
YES! I love Notion and use it as my primary project management tool. Dreamers and Doers offer a lot of public relations opportunities and ways to connect one on one with other amazing members. My cohort in my Goldman Sachs small business program has been beyond valuable and supportive of my business.
I also love podcasts like How I Built This with Guy Raz, Your First Million with Arlan Hamilton, and The Futur with Chris Do which I learn from and am inspired by. I love a variety of books from Dare to Bloom by Zim Flores to Unapologetically Ambitious by Shelly Archambeau. The Lit Videobook version is amazing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://expdesign.co/
