Where My Self-Employment Journey Started
Avi Fox Creative grew out of my love for being self-employed and my passion for helping others thrive through designing and building their own businesses.
In hindsight, my journey of self-employment really started almost 20 years ago while I was still in college at Temple University studying sustainability. I wanted to make an impact outside of the classroom and I founded a local environmental organization in my hometown of Narberth, Pennsylvania called Narberth Greens. Through this, I discovered my knack for building and mobilizing community around a mission, built my first little brand, made a website, and won the Morris K. Udall Scholarship for the impact we made in the community.
My Photography Era
After graduation, I found myself more excited about self-employment than job interviews, and in 2011 ended up opening a wedding photography business with my older brother, where I unearthed a love for creativity, storytelling, and human connection. We worked together until 2013, when we closed our joint venture, and I kept going on my own as Avi Fox Photography, moving more toward event and commercial work.
This business has stayed open the whole time since, a steady anchor of work running quietly in the background while I explored other ventures. I loved creating imagery of people and businesses that illuminated the beauty of their lives and work.
One fun highlight was getting to photograph Kylie Kelce's wedding rehearsal dinner in 2018, before she launched her podcast and blew up. I was tickled pink when, in 2025, my childhood friend Kat Dennings, who I was homeschooled with, appeared on Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce, and the two of them realized they both knew me from Narberth. It was so nice that they gave me a shout out; they even pulled up some of the photographs I'd taken at that rehearsal dinner.
Although exposure like that is fun, the most satisfying parts of my photography career have been photographing the same family for ten years running, watching their kids grow up, or capturing images for a small business that genuinely helped them grow. That commercial shift ended up serving me well: photography and website design blend together naturally now, and I can offer both in the same package for clients.
My Wild Mantle Era
Then in 2014, I created the brand Wild Mantle and launched a Kickstarter campaign to see if it had legs, starting with a line of hooded scarves I called mantles. We set out to raise $30,000 and ended up closer to $40,000. Wild Mantle was born. The brand's three pillars were sustainability, empowerment, and adventure. The word "mantle" means both a loose fitted cloak and your role or responsibility in the world, which is exactly the meaning I wanted behind a brand built on sustainability, empowerment, and adventure.
The launch landed on the cover of the Philadelphia Inquirer's business section and was picked up by the Associated Press nationally, and I gave a TEDx talk about the whole journey, from quarter-life crisis to building something real. Wild Mantle went on to sell thousands of pieces worldwide and gave me connections with customers I still value greatly to this day.
Throughout the journey, I gained a big education on design, manufacturing, website design, wholesale, ecommerce, PR, product photography, brand partnerships, sales, and more. Eventually, scaling the business meant taking on investors who wanted to move production overseas, switch to synthetic materials, or otherwise compromise what the brand stood for. In 2018, I decided to start to transition towards closing, a choice that would in a few years be validated when COVID halted global shipping and manufacturing entirely.
My Avi Fox Creative Era
Also around that inflection point in 2018, I was walking with a friend who had a growing gardening business. Our chats led to brainstorming for her business, and after she liked some of the ideas that were excitedly flowing out of me, she asked me if I had interest in coming to work with her as a consultant. I didn't really even know what consulting was at the time, but I was excited for the opportunity so I said yes. That first project included a new website, sharper marketing materials, and a deep dive into operational structure so she could stop working around the clock.
The strategies we implemented helped grow her business 35 percent. It also became the real starting point for Avi Fox Creative, even as I spent the next few years quietly winding Wild Mantle down, selling through existing inventory, before officially closing it in 2022. Word of mouth led to more clients, and my suite of services began to unfold: coaching through blocks and challenges, creating a strong brand rooted in the person behind it, building the systems to support that brand, transforming the online storefront, and shoring up visibility through the right marketing mix for that specific business, not a template.
Formative Influences
There were a few early experiences from my own self-employment journey, and those experiences of my earliest clients, that shaped the Avi Fox Creative ethos that has formed in the years since.
The first was realizing, only in the past few years, why self-employment has always meant so much to me. Discovering that I have autistic and ADHD characteristics reframed everything, including things I hadn't thought to connect before.
I was homeschooled from second through eighth grade and learned early to design my own education. Looking back now that I understand my own brain wiring and high sensory sensitivity, I'm grateful my parents recognized I'd thrive more in an independent environment.
That pattern, of building the structure that actually works for how my brain works instead of the one I was handed, turned out to be the first version of a skill I'd use for the rest of my life. It's not a coincidence I've ended up building a business around helping other people design work that fits how they actually think.
So many of my clients are neurodivergent too, and we're in a moment where more adults are discovering this about themselves than ever before. It's part of why real choice matters so much to me: what work to take, how to do it, and who to work with, the kind of independence that women and neurodivergent people historically haven't had.
The second was noticing that a lot of marketing agency offerings weren't really built around what a small business owner needed. They were built around what kept the agency profitable, often through ongoing retainers the client didn't actually need.
Website design is a good example. Agencies built websites, often on WordPress, that got called free but that most business owners couldn't actually edit themselves, so clients paid for hosting and maintenance long after the build was done.
It never made sense to me for a solo business owner who needed real agency over their own website, so I started building on Squarespace instead, handing over full ownership after the build and training clients to make their own updates. Website rescues from WordPress became one of my most repeated offerings.
That experience shaped a clear philosophy: clients own everything after the build, and I don't offer a default retainer either. Work happens project by project, as needed, unless a client wants ongoing, regular support.
The third came from moving through my own self-employment journey, and from working with my earliest clients, and realizing how entwined personal development is with self-employment. My own history, my energetic blocks, my belief system, all of it has shown up in the way I've built this business.
I learned that sometimes the most valuable thing I can offer a client is practical: a website build, photography, coaching to get to inbox zero. Other times, it's helping someone identify and shift an energetic block that's the actual thing standing between them and their goal, not a strategy problem at all.
Between 2022 and 2024, I went through all three levels of Reiki training, and I now weave that energetic lens into my coaching and strategy work when needed. I also work with Reiki clients when they find me through word-of-mouth, offering both in-person sessions in the Pond House 30 minutes North of Portland, Maine as well as distance reiki sessions over the phone for those further away.
From Narberth, Pennsylvania to Portland, Maine
After growing Avi Fox Creative out of my hometown of Narberth, Pennsylvania (located on the Main Line of Philadelphia), an unexpected but wonderful plot twist found me spending all of my time in Maine between 2023 and 2024. In 2025, I formally relocated and moved my business (and backyard chickens!) up to the greater Portland area. I was fortunate to discover a wonderful community up in Maine, from pig yoga and goat yoga to many thriving networking events to new like-minded friends who wove sustainability and wellness into their lives in beautiful ways.
Since moving, I've also launched a number of extracurricular offerings towards the end of building community and combining my many interests. In 2025, I started hosting quarterly Moon Circles through Portland Women's Social Circle. In 2026, I started Wellness Business Owners, a community for entrepreneurs who help others heal to connect, support each other, and do the work on their own business, from practical to spiritual and everything in between. I also most recently launched the Portland Networking Roundup, which is a bi-weekly newsletter that summarizes all networking events happening in Portland in the next 2 weeks.
Throughout all of my work, I've maintained the belief that businesses can do good and make money at the same time, and that the people running them, especially small, mission-driven, or solo operators, deserve tools they actually own, marketing strategies customized to their business and the way their brain works instead of a generic package, and someone who listens closely enough to catch the wisdom and business instinct they already have, but haven't yet been able to articulate or operationalize.