Karie's Burning Bush Story

My parents love to tell stories about how creative I was as a kid. The one about how I refused to draw a spider with eight legs and made mine with six is usually a crowd pleaser. This incident (along with many others) earned me the label of ‘stubborn’ by my kindergarten teacher and parents. Thankfully I was able to channel that creativity in high school by taking some commercial art classes. I loved to draw and I was fascinated by art as a means of communication. There was even a period where I sat under a professional photo touch up artist and learned the basics of airbrush techniques. Interestingly I was also taking some college level writing and marketing classes as well. My best grades came from these two classes. It was at a DECA marketing competition that sold me on the idea that I wanted to do something in advertising.

So I went off to art school down in San Diego thinking I was there to develop my skills as a graphic designer. What I didn’t realize was that there was another side of advertising that required writers – copywriters! My first copywriting class was so much fun that I changed my mind about pursuing design and turned my focus on writing. I had loved my writing classes in high school and even excelled in them. It just never dawned on me to pursue it until then.

Things happened and I moved back to Portland without finishing my degree. After several years in sales and taking business classes at PSU I couldn’t get rid of the desire to be a copywriter. I moved to Seattle to take some portfolio classes and then the Lord led me to go back and finish my degree (which is still in progress!) A fellow copywriter suggested I start looking for freelance work until I have my portfolio built up. This changed my focus and I began seeing what a need there is for copy writing services by small business owners.

Now the wheels were really turning and I started thinking about an ebook that could help small businesses tap into their creativity and mold their companies into strong brands. This was about the time that I became a member at the city church. Right after I mentioned the idea at a small group I realized one thing holding me back was time and knowledge of how to sell an ebook online. I didn’t want to pay to have someone design a simple website. A few weeks later my next class in school was, you guessed it, website design! I was able to get the skeleton version of the site done.

During this time I had also gone to a service where Rachel Hickson spoke on hope. In the middle of it the Lord spoke to my heart saying, “I’ve called you to speak hope into people and teach them how to develop their creativity.” Shortly after that I was at the YP retreat. One of the nights I stayed and lingered in His presence and began writing in my journal. He again began to speak to my heart and said “you are a writer. I want you to write and I will speak through you and people will be set free.” These two statements are what I believe I'm called to do. Not too long later I was encouraged by a friend to join the inspire group and immediately knew this was where I needed to be.

What do I have in my hand? Knowledge! My heart is bursting at the seams with what I’ve learned in the area of advertising, branding, and creativity. I can use that to help people not only with their marketing but to also speak into their dreams and help ignite some hope in their ideas. I am also active in using my gifts at the church by creating signs, flyers, and helping with other design and writing projects. Plus I’m still in school and beginning to set aside time to focus on writing for my portfolio again.

The two websites I’ve begun for my business are:

www.catinadryer.com (this is where I’ll sell the ebook on creativity/advertising). I was inspired to use this name at first simply because I enjoyed it! But then I realized there was some meaning behind it. Like cats we all have natural curiosity within us and we’ve all heard stories about cats jumping into dryers. The trick is to stay away from the cookie cutter dryers (businesses or marketing ideas) that leave us hot and dizzy. But the dryers teach us something - they show us what taps into the curiosity we all have. This is one key to effective marketing and branding. I want the ebook to help develop their creativity and either start a business or create a strong brand.

www.deerguin.com - for my freelance marketing projects – it stands for the definition of creativity: to create something new from things previously unrelated. I even thought of making a line of greetings cards and tshirts with this name.

Verses the Lord has given me surrounding these ideas:
Romans 4:18 – against hope, he believed in hope
Hebrew 6:19 – hope is the anchor for the soul
Ezekiel 37:11 – speak to the dry bones
1 Corinthians 13:13 – these three remain: faith, hope, and love (hope is connected to creativity and it will always remain!!)
Proverbs 15:23 – it is wonderful to say the right thing at the right time (NLT)