Our History

On October 1, 2006, Berry Interesting Productions Inc. officially came into existence, though nobody involved at the time realized it would still be around 20 years later.

At the time, D'nelle was working at The Williamson Herald in Franklin, Tennessee, and volunteering at Nashville's legendary Hatch Show Print. Through volunteer work, she met artist and printer Jim Sherraden, who became BIPi's first client. Together, they produced a self-published memoir of Jim's father's life, titled World War II Remembered.

The galley proof from that project still sits above D'nelle's desk as a reminder that behind every website, marketing campaign and technical system are real people with meaningful stories.

In August 2007, D'nelle built her first website for a client: the Bulloch Hall Quilt Guild in Roswell, Georgia.

The site was hand-coded in HTML with inline CSS, built page by page. Looking back, the technology feels ancient. However, the project planted a seed that would shape the next two decades.

What started as a favor for a local organization quickly turned into a realization: helping people connect, communicate and solve problems online was work worth doing.

By 2011, D'nelle had spent years managing websites and watching other agencies build increasingly complex online experiences using WordPress. It was time to try building one herself.

Using WordPress 3.0, early e-commerce tools and a healthy amount of courage, she launched a full e-commerce website for a Tennessee soapmaker called Alchemy of Sol.

The project was quoted at a flat rate of $550 and took far longer than expected. The hourly rate was terrible. The education was priceless.

More importantly, it introduced a platform that would eventually become the foundation of Berry Interesting.

On September 12, 2012, D'nelle officially transitioned to running Berry Interesting full time.

For years, BIPi had existed alongside other jobs, squeezed into evenings, weekends and whatever energy remained after the work that paid the bills. Thanks to the advent of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and a growing client roster, it became possible to focus on the business full time.

The move was equal parts exciting and terrifying. There was no guarantee it would work. No road map. No safety net.

But it marked a fundamental shift: BIPi was no longer a side project. It was now responsible for its own future.

Around the same time, the company adopted Google Workspace and began building the operational infrastructure that would support its next stage of growth.

In February 2017, D'nelle and Chris packed up their lives and moved from Tennessee to Denver, Colorado.

At the time, the decision felt risky. Most of BIPi's relationships, clients, and professional network were rooted in Nashville. Yet the move revealed something important: strong relationships don't depend on geography. The transition became a catalyst for growth. Longstanding industry connections continued to refer new work.

For the first time, the business felt stable enough that D'nelle could begin paying herself a real salary. What had started as a side project was becoming a sustainable company.

Later that same year, BIPi formalized something that had already been quietly taking shape for years: ongoing website support.

While many agencies chased the next large redesign project, BIPi took a different approach. The team focused on maintaining, improving and strategically guiding existing websites over time.

What began as a practical business decision eventually became one of the company's defining philosophies.

Instead of treating websites as finished products, BIPi began treating them as living systems that needed ongoing care, maintenance and stewardship. That shift transformed client relationships from transactional projects into long-term partnerships, many of which continue today.

Early growth brought an unexpected challenge.

In 2018, a contractor relationship unraveled, resulting in a major client dispute, significant financial losses and some of the most stressful months in BIPi's history. Growth plans were put on hold, and D'nelle stopped paying herself while the business recovered.

The experience was painful, but it also forced an important realization.

Until that point, BIPi had been built largely on trust, relationships and good intentions. What 2018 revealed was that trust alone is not a business system. Contracts, documentation, clear expectations and operational structure aren't optional. They're tools that protect everyone involved.

Many of the systems that define BIPi today can trace their origins to lessons learned during this difficult season.

When COVID-19 brought the live events industry to a halt, Chris's touring career came to an abrupt stop. At the same time, BIPi clients faced unprecedented uncertainty as they navigated lockdowns, closures and rapidly changing customer needs.

Rather than retreat, the team adapted. Chris stepped into a larger operational role while D'nelle focused on helping clients respond to a new reality. Some organizations were fighting simply to stay open; others needed to reinvent their services almost overnight.

The months that followed tested every assumption about work, technology and resilience. But they also reinforced a lesson that would become increasingly important: The businesses most likely to survive were the ones willing to adapt.

Amid the uncertainty of 2020, something quietly transformative was happening behind the scenes.

Through a mutual friend, D'nelle met Marissa Ezell, who had recently begun exploring WordPress development after her therapy practice was disrupted by the pandemic. What began as contract work gradually evolved into a deeper partnership built on curiosity, trust and a shared commitment to solving complex problems.

During this period, Marissa and Chris took on increasing responsibility for client support and day-to-day operations. This freed D'nelle to focus on strategy, design and client relationships. When she temporarily stepped away to work at another agency in 2021, the team kept BIPi moving forward.

For the first time, the business proved it could thrive without every decision flowing through its founder. Looking back, this was the beginning of modern BIPi: a company built not around one person's capacity, but around a team working toward a common vision.

In April 2023, BIPi took one of the biggest risks in its history.

After three years of working together as contractors, D'nelle and Marissa decided to hire her as the company's first non-owner employee. It was a leap that felt strikingly similar to D'nelle's decision to go full time more than a decade earlier: exciting, intimidating and impossible to fully predict.

The opportunity came when Radsource approached BIPi with a major project that demanded more capacity than the company could comfortably provide. Instead of turning away from growth, the team chose to invest in it.

The decision transformed the business. What had once been a founder-led consultancy was becoming something larger — a company capable of supporting deeper expertise, broader services and a more sustainable future.

For most of its history, BIPi had grown almost entirely through referrals.

Then, in mid-2023, brand strategist Sara Neal helped the company do something it had never done before: intentionally define how it showed up in the world.

The project delivered more than a refreshed logo, professional photography and brand standards. It gave the team language for expressing what had long made BIPi different.

The process also sparked a new realization: If the company wanted to build a future that wasn't dependent on referrals alone, it needed to become more intentional about marketing, visibility and business development. For the first time, BIPi began investing in a sales system designed to attract the kinds of clients and projects it wanted most.

By 2024, the team had spent years refining its technical expertise. The next challenge was clarity.

Working alongside members of the Together Digital community, D'nelle and Marissa developed "Miranda Marketer," BIPi's ideal client profile. While it began as a marketing exercise, it quickly became something much more important.

For the first time, the company had a shared framework for evaluating opportunities, prioritizing work and identifying the kinds of relationships where it could provide the most value.

The result wasn't simply better marketing. It was greater focus. Instead of trying to be the right solution for everyone, BIPi became more intentional about serving organizations that valued partnership, trust and long-term thinking.

After years of working side by side, D'nelle and Marissa reached an important conclusion: BIPi's future deserved the same level of planning they brought to client projects.

In March 2025, the two spent a week together in Denver mapping out the next chapter of the company. Drawing inspiration from EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System), leadership coaching and their own hard-earned experiences, they built BIPi's first long-term strategic plan.

The retreat marked a shift from reacting to opportunities as they appeared toward actively designing the future they wanted to create. It wasn't just about goals, revenue or growth. It was about values, sustainability, leadership and building a business capable of supporting both clients and team members for years to come.

20 years in, Berry Interesting is more resilient than at any point in its history.

What began as a side project and later became a founder-led consultancy has grown into a true team. The systems are stronger. The relationships are deeper. The planning horizon is longer.

The lesson of the first 20 years wasn't how to build websites. It was how to build trust, sustain relationships, adapt to change and create something durable.

Today, we're focused on something bigger than the next project or the next quarter. We're building a company designed to endure — for our team, our clients and whatever comes next.