We’re (business) married now!
After more than a decade working closely together, Madelen and I finally took the big leap and got business hitched! We’re now the proud co-owners of iilo Creative Alliance inc., our reimagined virtual creative services agency.
New company name, same awesome team
We’ll continue to lead a collaborative group of creative professionals and help progressive impact businesses and organizations like yours to simplify and amplify, so you can rock your world-changing social and environmental initiatives. The idea of interdependence and the “threads” that connect people to each other has really inspired us.
“iilo” means “thread” in Spanish (spelled “hilo”) and is pronounced “ee-lo” in English. We believe we can all be part of the solution, connecting people and impact, to work on the issues we care about.
Our business love story
Madelen and I met when we both worked at a sustainability consulting agency about 14 years ago. We bonded when we each launched our freelance businesses around 2010, and we’ve been collaborating and business “dating” ever since.
Over the years, we’ve shared four funky office spaces in four years (we kept losing our subleases!) We moved out of Vancouver at the same time (Madelen left for Edmonton and I came to Nanaimo in 2013). And we supported each other during our maternity leaves.
With four kiddos between us, we’ve talked constantly about work/life balance and how to thrive as working mamas. And we helped a lot of clients solve their communications and design challenges under Backyard Creative, my previous business. Madelen led project management and communications and I led graphic design and a team of freelance creatives.
The “proposal”
In the fall of 2020, we took Decade Impact’s awesome Getting to 80 workshop. We wanted to get Backyard Creative on the path to becoming a B Corporation. It was a long-term goal I never seemed to have time for (thank you 2020 slow-down!). In the midst of that workshop, we decided it was the right time to join forces formally. We started exploring how much of an impact we could make in the world by going into business together.
Ours has been a long business courtship. We’ve spent the last year talking, dreaming, strategizing, asking ourselves a lot of questions, and making sure we want the same things out of our values-led careers.
One of the fundamental decisions we made is registering iilo Creative Alliance inc. as a benefit company in BC. This designation commits us to conducting our business in a more sustainable way by promoting one or more public benefits. Social and environmental sustainability, in our case. We’ll also report on our impacts annually. We’ve set the foundation to use our talents and new business as a tool to further our clients’ missions. And, it sets the stage for iilo to become a B Corporation in the near future.
A match made in heaven!
We had a blast collaborating under Backyard Creative. Now we’ll have even more fun as iilo (it’s one of our core values!). Becoming business partners feels like the next natural step for us. We’re excited and marking this moment as we transition out of our solopreneur businesses and start this new chapter of entrepreneurial adventures together.
We know there are challenges ahead (we’ve decided to launch a business in the middle of a pandemic!). One of our daily mottos is, “We can do hard things.” We’re ready and more committed than ever to making a positive impact as a duo — with an immensely talented team by our side.