Today we’d like to introduce you to Aliyah Graham.
Aliyah, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
It all started in August 2022, when God asked me to do something that made absolutely no sense: break my lease, quit my corporate job as a business developer, and move to Atlanta, Georgia. I’d been in Austin a year and a half, with my first apartment and a new car, so the thought of blowing my life up felt extreme and scary, to say the least. But over the span of one week, He made the message very clear, an actress sharing her own move to Atlanta on a podcast interview, then the very next day, a Voyage Atlanta interview with a woman who’d had a similar journey and would go on to become a business mentor to me. Within three weeks, I dropped everything and moved, no plan, just trust. Two weeks after moving to Atlanta, I was sitting across a table from that same actress, telling her how the Lord had used her testimony as a message to me.
In Atlanta, the skills I’d spent years cultivating as side hustles, social media management, design, and dance, turned into a business I never saw coming. What began as volunteering for an organization called Tabitha’s Tea Party grew into (Blue)m. Design Co., offering brand coaching and design services for creatives across creative industries. I named it (Blue)m. after a self-portrait I created, inspired by Billie Holiday’s story, a reminder to share my gifts no matter what I’m going through, the way she did. Having faced my own struggles with depression, I designed it blue to reclaim a color so often tied to sadness. That piece was later featured in the Lovers and Fighters art show in Atlanta, put on by Little Brown Book Editorial. I also fell in love with the city’s coffee shops, which inspired my first podcast, Cup of Joye’, and kept training in dance with Ace Studios, which led to me appearing in the music video for “Gumbo” by Big Breeze ft. Porsha Love.
Six months later, God called me back home to Houston. Since then, I’ve built (Blue)m. Design Co. into a brand and web design studio for Christian-based brands, published a spoken word book, Bluem. It’s Already in You, and started a podcast called The Late (Blue)m.er, because I know firsthand that God’s timing is never late. Today, I’m also a Christian hip-hop dance choreographer, hosting pop-up classes throughout Houston and Dallas.
If I’ve learned anything through it all, it’s that trusting God can feel a lot like walking on water. It rarely makes sense until you’re already standing on it, but you can’t even fathom everything waiting on the other side of that kind of obedience. It’s always worth it.
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?
It hasn’t been easy. Being an entrepreneur will have you evolving, pivoting, and self-realizing in ways you didn’t initially sign up for, because building a brand has a way of showing you parts of yourself you would’ve never had to face otherwise. For me, that part was the self-sabotage, and realizing how much my belief in myself was tied to whether other people believed in me first. Honestly, I had it backwards for a long time, just sitting here waiting for confidence to show up as a gift from other people, like I needed their permission before I could fully step into who I was called to be.
But that’s not how it works, and honestly, it’s not fair to the one’s I’m called to serve. Motivation comes and goes, but commitment to yourself and to God is what keeps you locked in no matter the highs and lows. And if I don’t believe in what I have to offer, people feel that, if I don’t believe in me, why should they? A brand is supposed to solve a problem for somebody, but if I’m not showing up confident, why would anybody trust me to help them with theirs?
So that’s the work I’ve been in, confronting the parts of me that shrink, that care too much about how I’m being perceived, and choosing instead to stand in who God sees me as and who He says I am.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m the founder of (Blue)m. Design Co., a brand and web design studio built for Christian-based brands. So much of what I do comes from watching people get crippled by the fear of failing at the vision God gave them, they sit on it, years pass by, and they’re still yearning for purpose they never gave themselves permission to chase. My mission is to guide them past that fear and into the reality of it, to help their God ordained purpose (Blue)m. out of them, however it’s meant to come out.
That mission doesn’t just live in the design work though. It’s also why I choreograph Christian hip-hop, hosting pop-up classes in Houston and Dallas, and why I host a podcast called The Late (Blue)m.er. I don’t really separate any of it, design, dance, podcasting, because it’s all just different rooms in the same house God built me to live in.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Obedience rarely comes with a plan attached. I’ve learned it works in the going, not the knowing, you take that first step, and He reveals the next. But staying in that obedience takes more than motivation, because motivation comes and goes. What actually carries you to the other side is commitment, showing up on the days you don’t feel like it too.
Part of what makes that hard is waiting for other people to believe in you before you let yourself believe in you, that alone kept me small for way too long. So instead, just be as authentically you as possible. The people you’re called to touch will naturally gravitate toward that, you don’t have to chase them or force it.
And once you’re moving in that obedience, remember the outcome was never yours to control anyway. Your job is only to plant the seed, how it lands and how it grows is up to Him. His timing is never late, even when it feels like it. Keep going.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bluemdesignco.wixstudio.com/home/growing
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aliyahjoye/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bluem.designco/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AliyahJoye
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/thelatebluem.er/
