Excited to talk digital marketing, business and entrepreneurship? Let's go! I'm your host Carlie Robinson and with my guests we'll uncover digital marketing tools and trends, and gather insights into how to make your business more successful. We'll also hear stories from successful business owners on what helped or hindered them along their path. This year marks 21 years in advertising for me and I'm celebrating by sharing my passion for digital marketing and my studio in Barbados with all of you!
Meet Carla Bellot, the creative powerhouse behind Barbadianista and Zephyr Creative, who's rewriting the rules of digital storytelling in Barbados.
Carla's entrepreneurial journey began unexpectedly when friends dubbed her the "Barbados encyclopedia" for her extensive knowledge of local attractions and hidden gems. This sparked the creation of Barbadianista in 2018, an Instagram platform showcasing authentic, local perspectives on Barbadian life that has since grown to include branded merchandise. When COVID hit and she lost her job as a videographer at a publishing house, Carla pivoted skillfully, launching Zephyr Creative to offer content creation services that help brands craft compelling digital narratives.
What makes Carla's approach special is her philosophy of "collaboration over competition" and her willingness to break conventional rules in service of creating more impactful content. She views video editing as a creative puzzle, taking raw footage and transforming it through thoughtful transitions, sound effects, and innovative approaches that clients might not have initially envisioned but come to appreciate. Looking ahead, she plans to expand Zephyr Creative into a full-fledged content creation agency, bringing on additional creators to tackle larger projects and further elevate Barbados in the digital space.
Welcome to Talk Digi to Me. March Forward, a women-only series in celebration of International Women's Day. We're talking to women in the field of marketing, media and technology, Women who make an impact, Women who dare to march forward. Presented by Carly Robinson from Robinson Creative.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to Talk, digi to Me. March Forward, I'm your'm your host, carly, and today I've got a very special guest, carla Bellet. Carla is both a creative and a professional. She has a BA in Cinema and Audiovisual from the Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil, where she both honed her skills in video editing and production and got the chance to become fluent in Portuguese at the same time. Definitely very jealous. There, portuguese is my favorite language, carla, by the way.
Speaker 2:
Good to know, don't speak very much of it, but I just love how it sounds. So she has a strong background in filming, video editing, animation and social media management. Carla founded Zephyr Creative, offering content creation services to help brands craft compelling digital narratives and connect with their online audiences. Now, Carla, you're also the owner of Barbadianista, which I absolutely love. Lots of people have probably heard of it. Where did you get the idea to start Barbadianista?
Speaker 3:
Okay, well, I started Barbadianista back in 2018. And my friends would always joke saying that I was like a Barbados encyclopedia or Wikipedia, when they would say, oh, carla, where could I go this weekend? Or I need to buy a gift for a friend, where would you suggest? And I would always have ideas or suggestions to share with them. So I said, you know, you should do something where it's like an online source of information they can go and find out stuff about Barbados, not the typical you know stuff you would see. So I started thinking about it, this to make a do, and I didn't want to like do a whole website for it. So I said, let me do a little simple Instagram page where I would just post on it every now and then. People could, you know, share ideas and stuff, and that's where it pretty much took off.
Speaker 2:
I was gonna say I feel like it's really taken off.
Speaker 3:
Thank, you, thank you so I guess you took your, your content creation, your storytelling background and you put that into something that you love yeah, I think that was essentially it, because my my, my thing with barbara nice is always how can I show things to see and do in barbara's from a local perspective? But also that's engaging and it's fun and people look forward to watching it or look forward to seeing new content yeah.
Speaker 2:
So the content is really good and, for those of you who may not have seen it yet, you've also got really cool stuff, like I've got some scrunchies from you that have the barbados trident on them. I think they're so cool hats, shirts with sayings, like really cool, cool things, thank you, yeah, um. So let's go back a little bit. If you, um could sort of walk into a room and encounter primary school carla, what would you say to her? What advice would you give her?
Speaker 3:
um, well, I think my first thing would also be tell her. Tell her carla trying to go and buy a piece of land in a house, because a lot of the prices back then are not where they are today. But in all seriousness, if I saw primary school carla, I would tell her to absolutely, you know, keep doing. You know, because back then I really really loved art, I really loved painting and drawing. I said, you know, absolutely, keep working on that, because that's something what you're eventually able to use for one of your businesses, and just keep trying different things, because you never know where they're going to take you when you were a little girl.
Speaker 2:
When you were at that age, what did you want to become?
Speaker 3:
I wanted to be everything honestly there was. If there was a job out there, I wanted to do it. So, like I wanted to be a dentist at one point, I wanted to be a vet, I wanted to be a tattoo artist, at one point I wanted to be a marine biologist. I even wanted to be a marine biologist, even want to be a firefighter at one point. I want to do like all these different industries.
Speaker 2:
That's quite, that's quite varied, I have to say firefighter slash tattoo artist, slash dentist, right Person of many, many, many, many talents, many skills. You could have done all of them. Did you have any female mentors? Maybe that helped steer you down the path that you ended up taking.
Speaker 3:
I would say yes, I have two of them come to mind. The first one would be Anastasia Young. We met through AnimeCon many, many years ago and I always thought, and I still think, that Anna is really cool and she's amazing at what she does and I loved how, you know, she will always carry herself with this tact and professionalism, you know, and always getting the job done. So I would say, definitely her. She also taught me a lot about, you know, dealing with clients and you know how to manage business and stuff. The second one I would say is also Christina Hunt, also someone I'm happy to say is a good friend of mine today. Um, once again, I love how she handles her business, as she handles her clients. Everything is very professional and you know, and she also just full of so many cool ideas. That know, I'm happy that I have her as a friend as well and I love just bouncing ideas because she always has these cool ideas and suggestions.
Speaker 2:
So I'm really glad that and it's kind of ironic that you said both of those people. We just had Christina on the show actually. And I have to say I totally agree with you. She's lovely Spoiler alert for everyone. I'll let you know Anna's going to be coming on later as well, I guess we've got a good cast lined up here today We've got the.
Speaker 2:
Carla stamp of approval. So that's good. So I guess I have an opposite question for you. Then we talked about your female mentors, and you know that you had so many great ideas for careers you wanted to have. Did you find yourself being told no, like when you said I want to be a firefighter. Did you find Not really.
Speaker 3:
I'm very, very fortunate that I have very supportive parents.
Speaker 3:
So when I said, you know, I wanted to study initially, I wanted to study animation.
Speaker 3:
I want to say more things with video editing and such, my parents were always well, you know, absolutely, if that's what you want to do, give it a try and also just see how you can make yourself stand out in your field, where you know you make yourself maybe like a niche business or something for it.
Speaker 3:
So I never really I'm happy to say I never really had any, you know negative things said towards me. I think maybe one or two times I had like a relative say, you know, oh well, when I said I wanted to do video editing and photo editing, that sort of thing, they said, oh, you know, but like everybody has their own digital camera these days it's back when you have like little points and shoots, yeah, where everybody now has phones, you know they can do it themselves. Like why would someone hire you if they could do it themselves? Yeah, but if I do it and offer a really good, clean product at the end of it, that's what people would pay for. So I'm happy to say I didn't really have much pushback on those things.
Speaker 2:
So when did you decide to start your own company? When did you decide to start Zephyr Creative?
Speaker 3:
um, well, that basically started in covid, like mostly most businesses and barbados. It started in covid where I had been laid off for my job, where I worked as a videographer slash social media person as well, for a publishing house, and um I was laid off from that and I had a lot of time at home and I would say, okay, well, maybe I can do something. So it started off with um me begin to work for my own clients. So it wasn't really me say, hey, I'm going to start a business today. It was more so, like you know. Ok, well, I need to make money and this is something I'm good at, something I enjoy. Maybe I can try working with a couple of clients for social media management. And then it went from there and I said, you know, this is maybe I should actually turn this into a formal business, get a business registration, business that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:
So what's your favorite aspect of it? You do video, but you also do animation, yes, and I guess editing we could call. Can we call that? Yeah, editing for sure separate as well. So what's your favorite part of the whole process?
Speaker 3:
um, I don't get to do as much animations. I used to back back in the day, but um.
Speaker 3:
I, I think I absolutely love the editing aspect. Um, I've always played around with video editing. From when I was like 14 I used to use like that I can't remember the name right now, but it was a windows like built-in. Um, it was this windows built-in like video editor that was so glitchy it would freeze every 10 seconds and oh, it was awful. But I learned on that and then I moved from there to um iMovie and then I moved on to um Adobe, adobe Premiere Pro and from there on. But I absolutely love the video editing. I love the challenge of like taking raw footage and putting it together and making like a puzzle, like a finished piece from the bits and pieces, and sometimes you can get really creative of it as well.
Speaker 2:
Add in little sound effects, add in little cool transitions to make it really, really compelling so what are your favorite types of projects to work on, or what are some of the cool projects you've worked on recently, or challenging even, some of the things that have really pushed you to kind of beyond the limit? Um, because I'm sure software is constantly changing. Yes, absolutely, trends are even changing, visual Trends even for sure for sure.
Speaker 2:
So what are some of the challenges or cool projects you've worked on recently? I mean, we just had Valentine's Day. I'm sure you had like 10 requests for all kinds of ridiculous videos.
Speaker 3:
Well, would say that we had some like we had, for example, for a client. We have a video did very, very well online, which was? You know those? You know that trend right now where you take established video like a meme video and then you insert your right. So we had one where it was a bottle. So is this lady kicking this bottle? So then the client kicks back the bottle. So it almost is like having a little mini football session.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, those are fun.
Speaker 3:
Right. So stuff like that. I say that's actually really fun. Very simple to put together, very simple to film. I just love seeing the reactions of people to that online.
Speaker 2:
What do you enjoy most about your day to day? Because it's, I mean. Video shoots can be fun. Yes, they can also be very long. Yes, very very long, uh.
Speaker 3:
So what do you enjoy most about the day-to-day that you have? I would say, what I enjoy today is definitely the editing aspect where, as I said, you know, um, I say, okay, well, I have this vision in my head, let me let me start working on this editing, but then halfway through the edit, so you know, I think actually this piece fits here better. Or let me try adding in this transition here, or let me sometimes, you know, you end up almost I don't say breaking the rules, we end up almost breaking the rules to um, to make it a little more interesting, a little more impactful, and it might not be what the client 100 wanted, but it might end up having better results. So when I give it to the clients, all right, hear me out, it's not it's not abc like we said.
Speaker 3:
I've had to do def, but I think def will will get your message across better and are you getting a lot of positive feedback on that?
Speaker 2:
Are they like yes, actually you've read my mind and I didn't even know that I wanted it?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I would say so. I've been getting pretty good feedback on that. I'm happy to say. Not too many are upset that I break the rules every now and then.
Speaker 2:
You've got to know the rules to be able to break them and then make your own new ones, I think. What do you think are some of the challenges that women face in the workplace or face in their careers? Of course it's International Women's Month this month and that's sort of the theme of the whole show. So what do you think are some of the challenges that women face?
Speaker 3:
That's a really good question, I would say, amelia, off the top of my head, I would say sometimes, quite frankly, we're not taken as seriously. And there's always this thing where you have to be nice, like as a woman, you always have to be nice, you have to be friendly, you have to. If you want something, you can't ask for it directly because they're immediately say oh, she's rude, who does she think? She is that sort of thing. And I don't think men get that same thing treatment, you know.
Speaker 3:
So I feel there's almost like there is some level of gender inequality there where women always have to, like, be perceived to be nice or polite or whatever, where men, they don't really have to deal with that as much. I think that's definitely a challenge and of course, as I said, sometimes you're not taking it as seriously. As you know, a man would be, um, especially when you're in a field that might not be not, might not have so many women in it, um, and then of course, you're also the the thing of like, sometimes even unequal pay yeah, now, you were just a speaker at a, at a panel, weren't you?
Speaker 2:
yes, um, for I am a girl, ngo.
Speaker 3:
Yes tell me about that. That was. That was a really, really lovely event. Basically, they had 50 girls from different schools in barbados, I think they were all about 14 to 16 years old, and it was a day basically like it was like a workshop to help empower them, to help them believe you know what I can do whatever I set my mind to, and the panel I was in, they had myself and I think it was seven, six or seven other ladies, where we all were from different fields one was a doctor, one was a psychotherapist, another one was a manager at a body work workshop and we all basically spoke about our experiences and like how we try to encourage them, say you know what, if you have a dream, just go after it. Like don't, don't try and limit yourself. And that was a really, really lovely event that's good.
Speaker 2:
So anything new and exciting coming up for you or you know what. What is your plan for the next couple of years do? Do you have that set in stone as yet, or do you kind of just take it as it goes?
Speaker 3:
Not set in stone. I do have some ideas I really would like to come to life. I'm trying to work towards them. So, for example, as I said, I work with Zephyr Creative and I do content creation services there. I would like to expand it to where I take on some other content creators, so that there but I would like to expand it to where I take on some other content creators, so that we be able to take on bigger projects or almost become like a content creation agency of sorts here in Barbados.
Speaker 2:
That's really cool, that's really different. Thank you, I thought so that sort of approach. I love that approach where it's more of a collaborative approach. Yes, absolutely. We're all stronger kind of together.
Speaker 3:
Yes, I always believe in collaboration over competition. I love that collaboration over competition.
Speaker 2:
Carla, I want to thank you for coming and sharing with us all of your insight. It's been a really good chat, so thank you very much.
Speaker 3:
Thank you for having me. This was really really fun.
Speaker 2:
Well, that's been Talk. Digitomeet March Forward featuring Carla Bellet. I'm your host, Carly Robinson.
Speaker 4:
Do you have questions about your digital marketing toolkit? Contact Carly directly via WhatsApp at 266-4847, on Instagram at Carly Talks Digital, or send your email to carly at myrobinsoncreativecom. That's C-A-R-L-I-E at myrobinsoncreativecom.
