How She Got Her Start with Jerri Hemsworth—De Ivett

Announcer 0:02
And now from the Echelon Studios in Los Angeles, California, is the How She Got Her Start podcast. So let’s all get started with your host, Jerri Hemsworth.

Jerri Hemsworth 0:16
Hi everyone. It’s Jerri Hemsworth, and today I have a privilege. We were just chatting about this. I have the privilege of interviewing somebody I really consider a friend and colleague. And we’ve gone back a number of years, right? We I mean, how long have we known each other?

De Ivett 0:34
I think over 15. Yeah, working together. Yeah.

Jerri Hemsworth 0:38
This is De. I vet. De has a company called 5D Spectrum. How you doing today?

De Ivett 0:45
I’m doing great. Thank you, Jerri, for having me on your show.

Jerri Hemsworth 0:49
Oh, of course, of course. I’m like, I gotta get De in here. I gotta get De in here because she’s got such a great story. She’s made it so far. And it’s like, it’s amazing. So first, tell me about 5D Spectrum. What is it that you and the team at 5D Spectrum do?

De Ivett 1:05
So 5D Spectrum is a full service digital marketing agency. We have a focus on technology. I have a passion for technology, so I like to be developing challenging projects, and we have a couple areas of expertise in E commerce and marketing. So when we build something, we like to make sure our clients are doing a full 360 it’s not just about building a website, it’s how are you going to market your business and your services to customers? So we offer marketing services. We do search engine optimization. We also do pay per click. We have all kinds of social media marketing, you know, contracts where we’re kind of doing a lot of different things, content strategy and photography. We love getting out there and shooting. You know, real world photography

Jerri Hemsworth 1:58
isn’t that fun.

De Ivett 1:59
Absolutely. And get out of the stock imagery. But, yeah, yeah, and, and then also creating really compelling video content. So we love working with our customers who are not afraid to be on camera. And we have a couple who are kind of shy, but we’re, you know, we love helping them pull themselves out of their shell and and get their message out there in a video format.

Jerri Hemsworth 2:19
Yeah, I, you know, it’s interesting, because you and I and your team, my team, we met like you said, about 15 years ago, maybe even more, and we were introduced through networking organization and, and I was struck right away. And you know, we do marketing as well. And, and a lot of people out there might think, Oh, two marketing chicks, you know, don’t they compete because we do full service stuff as well. But no, we really don’t compete because you have strengths, and we have strengths, and we ended up working together

De Ivett 2:59
Absolutely.

Jerri Hemsworth 3:00
And that’s, that’s the beauty of it. And then if any of us get stuck on a on an issue, we just pick up the phone. Well now we pick up zoom and say, Hey, what do you know about this? Or is, you know is, do you have bandwidth to help with that? But we the first thing I was struck with you, De, is you had done some you’d done design, but you spoke tech in plain language, and it was so refreshing, so refreshing to have somebody that we could call on and work with, that we could Understand and we could work together to solve a client issue. So how did you get there? Okay, let’s back up even more. Where’d you grow up?

De Ivett 3:51
I was born in Glendale, right here in California.

Jerri Hemsworth 3:53
Wait, wait, wait, I was born in Glendale. Wait, we just learned something new about each other. I didn’t know you were born in Glendale.

De Ivett 4:00
yeah, Glendale Memorial

Jerri Hemsworth 4:02
Oh crap. Wow.

De Ivett 4:04
Okay, and actually, that’s second generation. My mom was also born at the same hospital.

Jerri Hemsworth 4:10
Oh my, yeah, the hospital I was born at, they tore down after but that’s another story.

De Ivett 4:19
Yeah, so I’ve been here my whole life.

Jerri Hemsworth 4:21
Wow. So once you were born, and then where did you move when you were teenager, young kid?

De Ivett 4:29
So I growing up, I actually remember moving, like probably every two to three years. And I used to kind of brag about that, like, I’ve never lived anywhere longer than two and a half years. She’s worldly, but in when I was about to go into high school, we had some some family issues, and I ended up moving to Crestline, which is up in the mountains. My grandma had built a cabin up there. It was one of my favorite places to go. Mm. Hmm. I have such fond memories, childhood memories of going up there and spending time with my grandmother, and all of a sudden I was living there. So I went to high school. I started 10th grade, so my in my sister ninth at the same high school up there. It’s called room of the world,

Jerri Hemsworth 5:19
Room of the world,

De Ivett 5:20
Rim of the World

Jerri Hemsworth 5:23
okay, sure.

De Ivett 5:24
And you know, all new friends, it was, it was a start over. But I always tell people, I really felt like I was on vacation for three years. Wow, because it’s just, it’s such a nice place. And I actually just got back from a vacation, I went up there for a week to

Jerri Hemsworth 5:42
You go out there a lot, don’t you?

De Ivett 5:44
Yeah, I really do. I try to go back. I still have friends who live up there who never left the mountain.

Jerri Hemsworth 5:50
Come down the mountain. No, yeah, it’s it’s interesting, because I don’t run into too many people that grew up in the mountains or spent lived in the mountains, and when you finished high school, where what did you know, what you wanted to do?

De Ivett 6:07
I actually, I didn’t really know, and I didn’t have a lot of I didn’t have a lot of help from the school or my parents trying to figure out what was I going to do. I was a math science major. I was the top third student in math in my school

Jerri Hemsworth 6:24
Okay a bit of a nerd.

De Ivett 6:27
and I loved it. But what they told me I should be when they do the tests in high school, and they said you should be a naval architect. And I was like, What is a naval architect? I have no idea what that even is designing ships or, yeah, you know, is it boats design? But if you think about it, a naval architect, whatever that is, it sounds like something very techy and maybe very creative, which is probably the only thing they really got right, is that I’m actually one of those weirdos,

Jerri Hemsworth 7:00
you and me both. I know where you’re going.

De Ivett 7:03
I do both: technical and creative.

Jerri Hemsworth 7:04
Right brain, left brain,

De Ivett 7:05
yeah. So I got a scholarship to a college, UCR I was going to go for an engineering degree, and it just didn’t sound very fun to me. And I was always very creative, and I was on the yearbook staff in high school, and I did a lot of the photography for my senior year, their staff photographer had gone MIA, and they’re like, can you help us out? Sure, I started shooting and having so much fun going to all the events, and I decided I wanted to do a creative career path. So at the last minute, I canceled my interest in the engineering position, which sometimes I kick myself for not having pursued that, but I I decided I didn’t want to go to four years of college, and I just wanted to get a trade degree in graphic design. And somehow I ended up at the Fashion Institute for Design and Merchandising,

Jerri Hemsworth 8:02
FIDM

De Ivett 8:02
which, yeah, it was, they had a graphic design pathway at the time, but it was too I don’t want to say it was too easy for me, but I wasn’t. I didn’t feel like I was learning enough, and it was intense, and it was great, and I’m glad I did it, and it actually opened my eyes to other things that I think impacted my career long term, like I had to do some really interesting studies in textiles and fabrics and color trends, and I think that actually supported my graphic design career in ways I never would have imagined.

Jerri Hemsworth 8:39
I 100% believe that?

De Ivett 8:41
Yes, but I didn’t complete the program. I left with a 4.0 and I went to Valley College, which was right down the street,

Jerri Hemsworth 8:48
sure

De Ivett 8:49
from where I lived at the time, and I found the most inspirational teachers that I’ve ever had in my life.

Jerri Hemsworth 8:55
Wow.

De Ivett 8:56
And in the art department there Tom Mossman, I’ll go ahead and name drop. Tom Mossman was my graphic design instructor, and I live by the things he taught me. Still to this day, I still have his little voice in my head saying, what would you know? What would you do?

Jerri Hemsworth 9:13
Good mentors do that.

De Ivett 9:14
Yeah. Great mentor. And then Joe Bavaro, which is, this is so funny. He was my three dimensional art teacher, and he was just fantastic. But he also redesigned the Metropolitan Museum, which is on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in North Hollywood. And so he he built the museum like he designed that space. And I actually owned a 59 metropolitan so I was actually thriving at the time I was in college, and so I thought that was such a weird coincidence, but working through his processes and his his critical thinking on art projects, just those are lessons that were so valuable. I carry them with me today, and I I’ve encouraged other people over the years to go through the junior college system and get get the education that they deserve at the price they can afford.

Jerri Hemsworth 10:08
Absolutely.

De Ivett 10:09
and and I, you know, I’ve no regrets, yeah, so I left there with with a high GPA, fully intending to move on to a university to finish my my degree, when I got sidetracked. So and, you know, photography was always a passion. I was still doing that. I actually shot real estate photography while I was in college, and that was helping me pay my bills. I had three jobs, but that was my favorite of the three. And that’s that’s

Jerri Hemsworth 10:41
interesting, because I also worked my way through college, and I didn’t have three jobs. I just had one. But it’s kind of, I always think of of you being scrappy, like you knew where you needed to be and what you needed to do, and put your head down and go for it. You have that brain that lets you do that

De Ivett 11:02
scrappy. I like scrappy.

Jerri Hemsworth 11:04
She’s scrappy.

De Ivett 11:05
Well, one of my jobs was I was a cashier at Lucky supermarket. Yeah, it was right here in the valley.

Jerri Hemsworth 11:11
Yes.

De Ivett 11:12
And that actually helped me the most, I think, because I got my health insurance and it was a union job, and it was well paying at the time, and I knew, you know, friends in high places, I worked my way up pretty quick, so it was a nice, stable part time job.

Jerri Hemsworth 11:31
Nice.

De Ivett 11:32
And it also gave me some insight as to what type of career path I might actually want to be on, and I knew that customer service on the front line in the grocery store was not in my future, especially I actually got held up working there.

Jerri Hemsworth 11:54
Oh crap. Oh, something happens.

De Ivett 11:57
It happens, but it happened three times before I left that job. Oh, so that that was kind of, I put that all in my past. I probably won’t ever do that again.

Jerri Hemsworth 12:05
Yeah, that’s been there, done that. Don’t need to go back.

De Ivett 12:09
And then the third job was really interesting. So I was shooting photography, working at Lucky and then my mom and her boyfriend at the time, had started a company in technology and they were developing, they actually were building chassis for hard drives for Apple computers.

Jerri Hemsworth 12:28
Get out.

De Ivett 12:29
And so I actually, I had a good fortune of having an early Apple Computer. I remember when I graduated from college, there was one computer in the art department, and nobody used it. Nobody knew how to use it

Jerri Hemsworth 12:46
Gathering dust in corner.

De Ivett 12:46
It sat on the desk and and Tom Mossman was, you know, he was learning as as he should. You know, we are all trying to figure out, what do we do with this computer? So I had a, I think it was a 512k plus or something with the floppy disk, sure, and I started teaching myself how to do graphic design. And I remember going back to Tom after I graduated, and I said, I love these computers, and I know you’re getting them this semester. Let me help you. And so back to what my mom was doing. So we were, we had access to all kinds of Apple computers as prototypes, because we were building chassis and hardware and doing all the trade shows and,

Jerri Hemsworth 13:30
oh, my God.

De Ivett 13:31
I got to help with the photography for the brand. We had a really good photographer, so I was learning from him, we had a trade show booth that, you know, I got to help design, and then work, I got to work at the trade shows, and I actually wrote all of the installation manuals

Jerri Hemsworth 13:49
You’re kidding.

De Ivett 13:49
and shot all of the photos for how to install your hard drive. So all those technical documents and all that boots on the ground experience I got working for my mom’s company, you know, again, invaluable.

Jerri Hemsworth 14:05
Oh, yeah.

De Ivett 14:05
And so I always look back at that like, you know, on the job, training has been the best thing for me my entire career path.

Jerri Hemsworth 14:15
Well, also, wouldn’t you say curiosity. You have, you’re very curious how things work. And, like, delving into that.

De Ivett 14:25
Yeah, I do. I have to understand how things work, yeah. And, you know, I’m not afraid to take something apart, yeah, try to fix it. Like I’m, I’m a big advocate of, let’s not, like, throw everything away that’s broken, try to fix it, you know, yeah, I love trying to fix things, rather than putting it in the landfill. You know, it’s mechanical. My dad was an engineer, and he didn’t go to college, and he had his entire career path running a printing press, you know, starting with the small printing press right out of college. And. Eventually he was running a 16 color, two story, quarter mile long press. Press, yes. Oh, and he was thin and in shape, because, yeah, that’s all he did all day, was run, you know, round and forth and up and down. And he, as an engineer himself, with an engineering brain, invented several parts that he ended up patenting and getting put into production on the web press. So he created a press dampener was to keep the blanket wet longer. He created a what he called a sucker foot, like a little suction cup that picks up the paper. Yeah, and he invented one that actually lasted longer than, you know, a few weeks. And because he got so frustrated constantly having to change out parts, yeah. And so in his final career days, he ended up being a consultant with Creole, which is out in Vegas, and, you know, it’s one of the bigger shops. And he doesn’t get the computer technology, but he knows how to run a press,

Jerri Hemsworth 16:03
yeah

De Ivett 16:04
And, you know, so all those things sort of they’re

Jerri Hemsworth 16:07
building blocks for you

De Ivett 16:08
They are building blocks

Jerri Hemsworth 16:09
you were absorbing and you probably didn’t realize it.

De Ivett 16:11
And every single printed thing I ever brought home, my dad would get out his loop, and he would look at it, and he’s like, wow, this is really great. Who did the printing on

Jerri Hemsworth 16:20
the registration type.

De Ivett 16:23
And then when we started getting digital printing, and you know, I was using a company called four over for production, and it’s very low cost. They do batch runs like they’ll throw probably 100 business cards on a sheet and run the

Jerri Hemsworth 16:38
gang printing,

De Ivett 16:39
gang printing. And he could not believe the quality of the printing. It just completely blew his mind. So it was really fun interacting with him over the years on the different projects that I got to do, and especially when I worked in more print, graphic design and doing annual reports, and we had bigger budgets for printing, and we were doing really fancy stuff using the high end printers in LA.

Jerri Hemsworth 17:04
Yeah. well, you ended up doing a lot of work in the entertainment industry, didn’t you?

De Ivett 17:10
Yeah, I did, actually. So in in the beginning of my career, I worked in the small ad agency and got a lot of experience in every area of the business. The only thing I never did, I still, I still kind of shy away from, is, is the actual copywriting. We had a great copywriter at the agency I worked with, and I’m like, That’s your job. I’ll make sure it gets done. And the, I think the first year that I took the my very first agency job i They, I begged my production manager to let me use the computer to do the layout, and she didn’t know if it was a good idea, because, you know, we’re on a really critical deadline, and but she trusted me, and we had done enough small projects where she was starting to see the advantages of using the computer and and I think at the end of the day, we saved about $30,000 in production costs that year. So the owner of the company was thrilled, wow, at the time. You know, that was a big deal. And we, of course, went on the path to convert the what was the traditional on the board to digitals.

Jerri Hemsworth 18:22
Yeah, yeah, that transition in the late 80s, early 90s, to go and I went through the same thing in in publishing, to go from traditional typesetting and art, art tables and paste up to convert was very high stress for a number of creatives, and not all creatives made it. So a lot of people suddenly were out of a job because their brain wouldn’t shift. Yeah, and

De Ivett 18:52
I saw that firsthand, and in the very same agency, there was a production person working there, and I was really knocking out the work pretty fast. And I’m pretty fast, anyways. But she said, you know, you really need to slow down, because they’re gonna expect you to be this fast all the time. Oh, boy. And I said, What do you mean? Like, we could do so much more free time to be creative. Yeah, you know. So I was, like, I was really turned off by that, like, slow down comment, yeah, I, you know, I sure we can slow down a little bit, but if the computer is going to give you, you know, an edge on the production value, Yep, yeah, and you have more time to be creative.

Jerri Hemsworth 19:38
Why not? Yeah, I know I ran into some of that too. So how did you decide to go out on your own? What was that to have your own business?

De Ivett 19:48
Yeah that was that was a big decision point. I had a really great job at the time, so I worked for a company called DZN the design group, and that’s where I caught. At my chops in the entertainment industry, because we, we had a, they had a small interactive division. I came in as a programmer, so I had gone off on a tangent of my design, you know, background, and through a state funded programming went through a programming program, and actually became,

Jerri Hemsworth 20:22
It’s like coding and all of that, like, yeah, learning how to program.

De Ivett 20:25
Yeah. It was for making, you know, children’s games, interactive CD ROMs today, right? So it was a language called Lingo. It was Macromedia Director. Was the program, and I it just resonated with me at such a high level, I was so fun and easy for me, and I had such a great mentor. We had a female led group. Kathy Kozel. She was amazing. She used to teach a class at UCLA for multimedia, and she was the leader of a group in Hollywood. We used to meet once a month, and it was probably 100 people would come together, and she would share her ideas on object oriented programming. And this is a community where, typically, people were hoarding information and they didn’t want to share their knowledge because they were afraid they would lose an opportunity and

Jerri Hemsworth 21:20
Competition.

De Ivett 21:21
Kathy came, you know, to this group with the concept that, hey, there’s enough work out there for all of us. Let’s share our knowledge and learn together. And I have, I stole her attitude, and I’ve always loved teaching. Yeah, I love sharing ideas. I love teaching anything challenging, art programming. So I ended up, ultimately, ending up taking over the group for her, and they took over her class at UCLA for a semester as well. And and, you know, so I’ve kind of so I came into DCN as a programmer and and I actually ended up running that division eventually. So we kind of branched off when CD ROM was getting it was too small, posted stamp sized videos. And it was, it was, it was a tough medium to work with, sure, and DVDs were emerging. We actually our studio was one of the very first. Actually, we were the first studio to show Warner Brothers what would a DVD menu look. How does the remote work with the DVD interface? And we got to design that, and I programmed it as a simulation, and we went and presented it, and ultimately the agency won the Warner Brothers DVD account, and we also had the universal DVD account and a couple others. So my little team in the interactive division went from a few people, and we quickly, over a couple years, grew to 70.

Jerri Hemsworth 22:59
Wow.

De Ivett 23:00
So this experience was, it was incredible. I mean, first of all, my boss, great mentor, and you know, gave me the reins, and, you know, let me in on every part of the process, including hiring people, managing people,

you learned.

and being, you know, I was overseeing that the technical side of the project and the creative team so and we worked on great projects like the Matrix is probably so cool, the best known of all the titles, but, you know, being involved with the creative concepts that went into that DVD project.

Jerri Hemsworth 23:39
That’s literally the cutting edge, the beginning of UI/UX. I mean that now people call it UI/UX,

De Ivett 23:48
Web enablement, right? That was a big term.

Jerri Hemsworth 23:51
web enablement.

De Ivett 23:52
I met, I met the person who invented the web TV, and I was obsessed with, I was like, Really, so you can get the web on a TV? And he was so, like, I guess my enthusiasm was over the top. And he said, Let me send you one of those, you know, web TV units. So he sent one to me, and we we set it up for my grandfather, who was in his 80s at the time. Oh my, and had never used a computer, and I taught him how to use it, and he was all of a sudden engaging in email communication and all sorts of things that he was never going to do because of this crazy web TV device.

Jerri Hemsworth 24:34
So, you know, so you’re leading, like a group of 70 people, where did the idea of like, okay, I need to do my own thing come from?

De Ivett 24:43
Yeah, so, and I really, I enjoyed, I love that job. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t that I didn’t love that job, right? I had an opportunity that presented itself. It was not competitive with what I was doing. And I was like, well, in a sense, it was a totally different, you know, line of business. And it was, I kind of always did moonlighting.

Jerri Hemsworth 25:04
Oh, we all did. You all had a freelance and moonlight?

De Ivett 25:08
Yeah. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t for the money. It was more for the variety of project,

Jerri Hemsworth 25:13
variety, creativity.

De Ivett 25:15
I got pulled in on one year. One of my clients who I still work with today, pulled me in on creating graphics for the Democratic Convention. I got to work on so many cool projects outside of my day to day job that kept me learning. Like one of my moonlighting gigs was working on a DVD project that was an interactive project, and so I was doing coding and moonlighting and meeting people outside of work.

Jerri Hemsworth 25:44
this is so funny, because you’re while you’re doing that that side, I was moonlighting designing point of sale displays for Disney’s DVD collection of Lion King and Aladdin. And it’s like it was mind blowing to me, that I, in my moonlight, could design for Disney.

De Ivett 26:10
yeah.

Jerri Hemsworth 26:11
And that’s what that freelancing, or, you know, being eager, just for the creativity and the variety, that’s what it brings, yeah. And

De Ivett 26:21
so one of my favorite moonlighting gigs was for BBDO

Jerri Hemsworth 26:25
Oh, ad agency.

De Ivett 26:27
They had the Apple account, of course. And I’m always been an apple person, right? So from beginning days with my mom.

Jerri Hemsworth 26:36
Don’t bring a PC near me.

De Ivett 26:39
So I got to work on one of the campaigns. I was creating the animated graphics that went on the screen during the commercial shoot. So I got to be on set with the team, the BBDO creative team. Joe Pytka was the director. It was an intense, fun, awesome experience, and I will never forget it, and it actually kind of draw it. That’s where I got my interest in working in television production, which I’m currently trying to pivot into more production at this point in my career, because I love it. I’m good at it. I’m, yeah, you know, I’m, I’m happy to be part of a team. So I am part of a networking group that’s dedicated to women in film. And, you know, I’m looking for those kind of projects. But to go back to the like, how did I start my business? Yeah, I had one of my freelance buddies, you know, moonlighting buddies, came to me and said, Hey, I need you to design this mini CD ROM interface for I think the first one I did was for hockey, and I was a hockey hockey fan, so it was fun, and I got to design it. And she said, you know, we really would love for you to be come and work for us and design these mini CDs and and I was like, well, that’s I would love to do that. But I don’t want to just come be your designer. I would love to, let’s start a business. You know, they have, at the time the upper deck account, they were doing baseball, hockey and all the sports. And then some opportunities came up to do Pokemon and some movie related and, and I actually did a Tiger Woods prototype.

Jerri Hemsworth 28:29
Wow.

De Ivett 28:30
And, you know, so we, we did. We decided, let’s start a business. So we wanted to do our own agency, and, and that’s how we started. I gave three months notice. Wow, that’s pretty nice. I well, I was, you know, running a big show there, and I wanted to make sure that they found the right people to replace, replace me. And you know, that’s when I moved. Now, moved on.

Jerri Hemsworth 28:53
Did you have your son, Arthur, by this point?

De Ivett 28:56
No,

Jerri Hemsworth 28:57
Not yet.

De Ivett 28:59
no, but I had moved to Burbank, and my agency had moved to Marina del Rey, and if you live in Los Angeles, that is not a nice commute. There’s no easy way to get down there. It’s at least minimally an hour, if not two hours each direction. And I was super against the carpooling. Well, I couldn’t carpool, but I just the commute was killing me, honestly. So I was actually going into work early every day and leaving late. So I was working way too many hours, and which, you know, I’ve never been afraid of hard work, and I am kind of workaholic, so I I was putting in too much, too much time, and just the commute, I felt like I’m wasting three to four hours a day on the road. And this is before we had, you know, cell phones, and so we weren’t, like, communicating that way. I did have a walkie talkie when I worked cool so they could catch me when I was at Warner Brothers, they would, you know. Know, the Nokia walkie talkie, sure, but, you know, I really needed to make a change, and I had a couple other opportunities, but starting my own thing, it was the right time, and it was the right, you know, opportunity. So we formed a partnership. There were three of us, and that’s how it all began, and, and we, you know, that was the beginning of our journey. We had a different company name at the time, yeah,

Jerri Hemsworth 30:29
yeah. But then you get into websites, you get into all the program, all that back end, yeah, knowledge and programming obviously evolved into all things that have to do with that, including websites and marketing.

De Ivett 30:47
And I really, we really had a focus on technology when it first started. So in this was in the end of 1999 2000 and our first big web client was Trillium, and that was a Intel company. They got bought by Intel while we were working with them. And we also worked with American Express company called Workadia. And we just had a lot of clients at that time, Tibco in Infosys that were very techie at the time.

Jerri Hemsworth 31:21
right

De Ivett 31:22
So, and I my background for the, you know, prior four years was in DVD and CD ROM. So, so I actually didn’t pursue the DVD work right away, because I, you know, I cared about my non compete agreement, even though, I guess they’re not legal in California.

Jerri Hemsworth 31:42
Not anymore. I don’t know. Yeah, they

De Ivett 31:45
Weren’t at the time either. But, you know, I didn’t want to step on these toes. I think everybody

Jerri Hemsworth 31:50
there’s an ethic thing.

De Ivett 31:50
Yeah. Back to Kathy Kozel. There’s enough work out there for all of us.

Jerri Hemsworth 31:54
And there’s a core ethic responsibility in you, yeah, that you’re like, that’s just not cool to do.

De Ivett 32:02
But when the opportunity presented itself, and I was past that time, I did start working with universal, and we landed the most of the kids titles. So we were doing Land Before Time, and we were doing the children’s titles, they would put a little bit more effort into making them interactive. So we were designing set top games, and it was so much fun.

Jerri Hemsworth 32:30
I bet.

De Ivett 32:30
So, you know, we got into the catalog work for them, and it kept us busy for many years. So we were doing web development also, but we were also, like, back into the DVD world.

Jerri Hemsworth 32:43
And what year was, was Arthur born? So

De Ivett 32:46
So he was born in 2002.

Jerri Hemsworth 32:48
Okay. So two years into it, how was it being a business owner, and being a mom.

De Ivett 32:54
Very fortunate to have had my own business, right? Because, you know, I got to make my own rules, and I got to have whatever help I needed that I could afford. Also, Arthur basically started coming to the office with me from day one.

Jerri Hemsworth 33:11
Libby too.

De Ivett 33:11
I think I took less than two weeks off work, and I was actually working the night I went into labor. Yeah, funny story. I was at Laser Pacific, which was a Kodak Company, later bought by Kodak. They they were working on a DVD project for me, and it was like two o’clock in the morning, oh God. And they said, you know, De, and I’m, you know, huge. I was huge. And they said, you know, you should go home and rest for a few hours. This isn’t going to be ready, you know, we’ll call you when it’s ready for you to come back. And I said, Okay, so I went home to rest, and at four o’clock I went into labor.

Jerri Hemsworth 33:49
I’m not coming back.

De Ivett 33:50
I called my partner at the time, my business partner, and I said, I’m not going to be able to finish this project tonight at Laser Pacific. Can you go in and QC this DVD for me,

Jerri Hemsworth 34:02
Please. Pretty please.

De Ivett 34:04
of course, of course, she did. And so that’s when it started. But Arthur, he was so lucky, because he would come in, you know, to my office, and we had a bungee jumper in my doorway, so he was, like, always hanging around, you know, it was literally active, busy, and I had several people working for me at the time that would just take him in the stroller, and there was a park around the corner, they would take him out, and that was my opportunity to work. So I think during those first couple of years, I didn’t work 80 hours a week, but it felt like it probably got two hours a day done.

Jerri Hemsworth 34:40
I know, and I was the same. I brought Libby. She came to the office every day, you know, her pack and play was right in my office, and it was just take them along and and I think our kids are better for that, honestly, because we were present their whole lives. And. Now, Arthur is thriving, and I think he got a bit of the brainiac stuff from you. Don’t you think that math?

De Ivett 35:09
He definitely is strong in math. Yeah, he gets that from me and his dad, yeah. And he he loves his passion is political science, and he is on his path now, and he’s working on his PhD.

Jerri Hemsworth 35:23
Fabulous, fabulous and real briefly. I don’t know how briefly this can be. You’re into you’re also a musician.

De Ivett 35:34
I am

Jerri Hemsworth 35:34
on top of all this other tech and design and all of that. How often do you get to play?

De Ivett 35:43
Not enough

Jerri Hemsworth 35:45
guitar, bass.

De Ivett 35:47
I play bass, and, you know, mostly electric. I do have a stand up bass that I’m I’m guilty of not having really learned that instrument, you know, well enough to play it. But it’s pretty. It’s gorgeous, purple, built by one of my clients at the time King Double Bass. They actually built it custom for me and and it’s beautiful and I will. It’s on my list of things to learn. The problem is the style that I want to play. I just I need a mentor. I need a good mentor for that. So I will probably be taking some music lessons, but I am primarily self taught on the bass. I have a very good friend who needed a website or a web page or something, some help, and he came and graciously trained me how to play with a pic, which I never knew how to do. But he said, if you’re going to be in punk rock,

Jerri Hemsworth 36:41
right.

De Ivett 36:42
You’re going to need to play with the pic, okay? And, and he’s a very he’s

Jerri Hemsworth 36:47
Saves the fingertips too,

De Ivett 36:48
yeah, yeah. I wish I still, I wish I could play with my fingers better, too. But I love the the sound that I get. And, and I do play kind of hard, I guess, because of the the genre. But my band that we put together in, I think 1998 or nine is when we first started playing out. We played out in Hollywood for almost five years. That was during even when Arthur was born. I had to take a small hiatus and brought in another bass player to stand in for me, and but we kept it going, and it was really fun. And it was never for the money, it was always for the fun. And we got to go to Mexico, we played down, we did fundraisers, you know, we got to help some kids in Tijuana get bicycles. Oh, that’s fabulous, yeah. So and So, that was the first band. And then I started another band that played out for a couple years. We did two big fundraisers. It was really fun. We got to open for the bangles, nice one year. And you know, it was a really great experience. And it was a whole new lineup of songs, and it was the singer from the first band that came along too. But at that point, there were three of us who were singing up front. So that was fun. That was my first time actually singing and playing.

Jerri Hemsworth 38:10
Did you get any stage fright? or no?

De Ivett 38:12
I actually, I never really had bad stage fright when I played music like I would get. We would all get nervous. You might have done a shot of tequila, have some tequila, get on stage and play. So I think after the first year of playing out with the punk rock band, it became more like, okay, when are we gonna get up there and go like we were excited. The only time we got really nervous is if we were opening for one of our bands that was, like a bigger band that, you know, we were like, got it, oh, what if we, what if we mess up? Someone said, slop and roll, you know, whatever it was, we were having fun, and we had a lot of people coming out to our shows. And, you know, I do miss that, and I do still currently work on some writing projects. So I’ve been writing, not enough. Again, not playing enough, not writing enough. But I do have one in the queue that I’m kind of finishing up now. I think

Jerri Hemsworth 39:10
I think that’s fabulous, because you keep your creative spirit alive at the same time you’re feeding your technical brain and spirit, yeah. And I think you’re in the perfect industry for that.

De Ivett 39:26
It’s a true multimedia. Like, yes, there was ever a person, like that was my draw to interactive in the first place. So, like, wow, you can do video, you can do audio, you can do animation, right? All the stuff, all in one place, and

Jerri Hemsworth 39:43
that’s where 5d spectrum is the culmination of all of that. And I mean, having worked with you on projects for clients, I’ve really gotten to see how your brain works

and likewise,

and projects management and the creativity, and it’s actually quite a gift. And I’m

De Ivett 40:06
Oh, thank you,

Jerri Hemsworth 40:06
so appreciative of the relationship we have.

De Ivett 40:10
Yeah, no, it’s definitely been mutually beneficial working relationship over the years. So

Jerri Hemsworth 40:17
now I I can’t wait to see where 5S Spectrum goes next as technology evolves and, you know, you talk a lot about SEO, and also, even recently, talking about, you know, the fraud that’s out there, and be educating clients like we don’t need to, you know, don’t do this. Pay, pay per click, all of the skills and the knowledge that you and your team have, I’m really I, when technology changes, as we know it will, I have no doubt. You know, 5D is going to be like, totally there. Real quick. What does 5D stand for?

De Ivett 41:01
So 5d is, it’s not my name, but everybody thinks,

Jerri Hemsworth 41:06
Are there five of you?

De Ivett 41:07
There’s not five of me. I just work five times faster.

Jerri Hemsworth 41:11
You just have five different, I have five personalities.

De Ivett 41:14
Yeah, the 5D stands for our process, and I developed in in 2010 I had separated my partnership and started the 5d spectrum brand on my own. And 5d stands for a process that we apply to every project, big or small, and it is what allows us to do the good work that we do, because we follow this process. So the first step is discover that’s the first D that is the most important step in the process, that is us getting to know our clients intimately, their business inside and out, so that we can do a good job for them. We don’t do any design until we do discover,

Jerri Hemsworth 41:57
Right. You can’t.

De Ivett 41:58
So the second D is design. Once we’re through those two processes, we can do development and deploy and deliver the last two and they’re, they’re all very important, each step in the process. And, you know, it doesn’t matter if it’s a print brochure or it’s a website, right? All of those steps have

Jerri Hemsworth 42:22
Internal under, as I call it, a back end system that you guys develop. Yeah, you have to have those. De, thank you so much for being with me today.

De Ivett 42:34
Oh my gosh, thank you for having me. It’s so cool because we still learn about each other, and it’s so fun.

Jerri Hemsworth 42:40
Yeah, I’m so grateful.

De Ivett 42:42
Glendale.

Jerri Hemsworth 42:43
Glendale, yikes.

De Ivett 42:45
Thank you Jerri

Jerri Hemsworth 42:46
We’ll talk to you soon. Take care.

De Ivett 42:48
Bye, bye.

Announcer 42:55
You’ve been listening to the How She Got Her Start podcast brought to you by Echelon Business Development. More than just networking. Way more.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai