Client Profile: Hoot Design Co.

Kristen Graham-Brown, owner and founder of Hoot Design Company, built her business from the ground up. The growth, perseverance, and new creative space are just tiny snippets of the lasting legacy she is carefully designing. However, when she faced some severe challenges in running her business, she turned to The Callaway Bank for help. What she found was more than a bank. She found a partner.

Over the years, Kristen worked to develop a company culture that supports her staff to ensure they can bring their best selves to work daily. For example, they can run errands on Tuesdays because she understands her responsibility to her employees and actively helps them balance work and life to ensure a happy and productive team.

She’s grown her business steadily, but no amount of growth was able to prepare her or the world for the 2020 pandemic. She had a staff to lead, business and personal bills to pay, and her bank at the time could not help her in her time of need.

She had worked with Jeff Jones, CCO of The Callaway Bank, on previous creative projects, and calling him was all it took to quickly get The Callaway Bank team working for her.

The team at the bank worked to help her secure funding through a Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loan to continue paying her staff. The Callaway Bank team understood how critical it was to secure the PPP funding for all business owners, new or existing, that needed this urgent financing help. The years Kristen put into building her business would not be undone.

Legacy

As Hoot Design Co. was approaching its tenth anniversary, it had experienced a lot and was still growing. But, after paying rent that whole time and making it through a global pandemic, it was time to build an office space that embraced and supported how Hoot does business.

She again turned to the team at The Callaway Bank. It was a potentially stressful time when financing a commercial property, but The Callaway Bank team listened to her financial goals, developed a plan just for her, and moved at the pace she needed. She still had a business to run, and the bank team quickly answered her questions, even on the weekends. Her company is now in a new space tailored to their needs, and Kristen continues to build her legacy.

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