Description:
Building a creative business rarely follows the path you imagine when you start. For Rachel Lee, co-founder of Neo Genesis, it began with a love of making things, a degree in design, and what was supposed to be her dream job. A few weeks into that job, though, she realized something was missing. She didn’t just want to make things look good. She wanted to be part of solving the problem.
That realization eventually pushed Rachel into freelancing, entrepreneurship, partnerships, joint ventures, branding, coaching, strategy, websites, and plenty of experiments that didn’t quite fit. Along the way, she learned that building the right business isn’t always about knowing exactly where you’re headed. Sometimes it’s about trying things, paying attention to what gives you energy, and being willing to remove what doesn’t belong.
In this episode of The Builders Podcast, Matt and Rachel talk about the messy process of turning creative skill into a sustainable business, finding a partner whose strengths complement your own, and gradually narrowing your focus until the work starts to feel like yours. It’s a conversation about creativity and branding, but underneath it is a larger builder lesson: you don’t have to have the whole path figured out before you start building.
Key Takeaways:
- Your craft and your business are two different skill sets. Being great at the work doesn’t automatically mean knowing how to build the systems, workflows, sales, and structure around it.
- Finding the right fit often requires discovering the wrong ones first. Jobs, services, projects, and experiments can all teach you something about the work you actually want to do.
- Design is a problem-solving tool, not just an aesthetic one. Rachel’s approach grew from wanting to understand the problem behind the work and create something specifically designed to solve it.
- The right partner can complement what you don’t naturally bring to the table. Rachel’s creative strengths paired with her business partner’s systems and business mindset helped create a stronger foundation.
- Experimentation creates clarity. Freelancing, joint ventures, coaching, strategy, messaging, and web work all helped Rachel gradually sharpen the focus of the business.
- A business doesn’t have to emerge fully formed. Neo Genesis grew through years of testing, refining, removing, and rebuilding until Rachel and her partner found a model that fit their strengths.
Rachel Lee
Rachel’s the creative force behind every brand Neo Genesis puts out — and she’s helped over 100 clients with their brand throughout her career. She’s an artist and designer who makes “professional” and “weird” work together without even trying. She shows up in all black, treats everyone like a bro, and carries herself like a skater chic who squeals over cute things. Her dream is to make art that inspires people to be their boldest, messiest selves — and do that for a living.
Outside of work, she creates characters — strange, exaggerated, slightly unhinged little beings that each represent a different part of her personality. Beyond that, it’s EDM runs and being bossed around by Levi — the studio cat who genuinely thinks he’s in charge.
THE MEAT OF IT!
- From Creativity to Problem Solving
- Discovering the impact of making things for others
- Growing up with an engineer and “OG builder” for a dad
- Learning to see design as more than aesthetics
- When the Dream Job Doesn’t Fit
- Landing a design job and quickly realizing something was missing
- Wanting to solve problems instead of simply “pushing pixels”
- Discovering there might be another path
- Taking the Leap Into Entrepreneurship
- The conversation that changed Rachel’s view of what was possible
- Leaving the traditional career path without having everything figured out
- Learning business through curiosity, experimentation, and stubbornness
- Trying Everything to Discover What Works
- Freelancing across different types of creative work
- Finding branding and the desire to create work with lasting impact
- Adapting through COVID and experimenting with new ventures
- Finding the Right Business Partnership
- Combining Rachel’s creative strengths with her partner’s business strengths
- Learning through joint ventures and helping build other people’s businesses
- Recognizing when it was finally time to build something of their own
- Sharpening the Focus
- Experimenting with coaching, strategy, messaging, websites, and branding
- Learning what Rachel enjoyed by discovering what she didn’t
- Narrowing the business around visual branding
- Building Neo Genesis
- Moving from Rachel’s personal brand to an agency
Developing a focused one-week brand intensive - Building a creative business that finally feels like the right fit
- Moving from Rachel’s personal brand to an agency
Check out these related Episodes:
- Episode 289: T. Christian Helms – Building Brands and a Creative Life Through Relationships and Resilience
- Episode 279: Shaun Modi – Building Products at NASA, Google, Airbnb & Beyond Before Founding Capitol AI
- Episode 273: Silyana Bojilova – Building Without a Blueprint: Turning Instinct and Curiosity into a Career
