Terriers InBiz is a series that highlights Boston University alumni who have been innovative leaders in their field and have played a significant role in businesses, locally or globally.
If Julie Brooks could change one thing from her past, it would be her college major of art history. Brooks, who graduated from Boston University’s College of Liberal Arts in 1987, is currently the CEO of eCape, a website design and marketing company based in Cape Cod.
“There are no jobs in art history, so you pretty much have to do something else,” Brooks said.
And that is exactly what she did.
She started working for her husband’s family business, a small tourist magazine in Cape Cod called the Best Read Guide, where she served as the production manager and art director. But when the Internet became more widely used by businesses in 1995, Brooks quickly adapted by creating a website for the magazine.
Soon after, Brooks started the CapeCodToday.com website, adding to her portfolio the WeddingsonCapeCod.com website 12 years later.
Thus began eCape, an online marketing company that creates and designs websites for others. Twenty years later, the business has only grown.
“We have about 300 local clients, who are all mostly small businesses,” Brooks said. “And we build websites, we host websites and we also sell advertising on three different websites.”
Running a company was something Brooks always thought she would do, even when she was a child. She had envisioned a career in publishing, where she would run a magazine.
Brooks was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1964. Her dad’s job as an insurance executive caused the family to move around a lot as he was constantly transferred.
However, Brooks said she had “a typical suburban 1970s childhood.” Her family eventually settled in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she attended a private girls school.
School was an area Brooks excelled in. She was accepted to BU on a Trustee Scholarship that covered four full years of tuition.
She began in the School of Management, now known as the Questrom School of Business, but switched to the College of Liberal Arts, now known as the College of Arts and Sciences, in her second year to become an art history major. She was also a member of the sorority Alpha Phi and lived in the Trustee Scholars’ dorm, which she said was one of her favorite experiences at BU.
It was the summer between sophomore and junior year when Brooks met her husband Jay while working in Cape Cod for the summer. They married after she graduated from BU and now have two children: Will, a high school senior and passionate drummer, and Marina, a high school freshman and a field hockey and lacrosse player.
Avid about the outdoors, Brooks enjoys boating, running, swimming and most forms of exercise, she said.
And unsurprisingly, she also loves the Internet — Reddit in particular.
Brooks said eCape is one of two things she is most proud of, the other being her children. However, the job has its challenges, one of the biggest being competition from large national websites.
“Google [and] Facebook are taking a bigger and bigger share of local advertising dollars,” she said. “… What I’ve had to do is come up with Internet marketing services and other services that I can offer to clients in order to compete.”
But Brooks believes that being a Cape Cod resident gives her an advantage.
“My clients appreciate that, and they’re willing to pay for the opportunity to work with somebody local,” she said.
Digital marketing is also a field full of constant change, which often creates challenges, according to Brooks. What works one month may not work the next.
Yet one of the hardest times for Brooks was when she had to downsize the company in early 2014 because of the economy. It was necessary to keep the company profitable, she said.
Since starting eCape, Brooks said she has picked up a variety of skills, the most important being “learning how to ask for the sale [and] learning to sell my services at a rate that reflects the true value of my services, rather than just trying to compete on price,” Brooks said, adding that project management is also a skill she has had to master.
One of her favorite parts of the job is the before and after of designing or updating a client’s website, describing it as a “very satisfying experience.”
“Typically, what I do in a situation like that is assess what their needs of the company are and build them a new website and also usually a whole digital marketing program and, you know, it puts money in their pocket,” Brooks said. “It makes them money, and it makes them look better on the web and it’s the same kind of satisfaction you would get in flipping houses or something.”
Currently, Brooks has a small staff of two local employees — a managing editor and a web developer. Since downsizing, she has taken to outsourcing a lot of work.
In the future, Brooks said she hopes to take on bigger jobs and continue to focus on her current clients.
“I would really like to start doing larger website design projects for larger clients,” Brooks said. “I would like to continue to develop my three content websites that I sell advertising on, continue to improve the content on them so that they keep getting traffic and keep delivering business to the advertisers.”
Living on the Cape, Brooks said, has made her experience what it is — working with the community and helping its business leaders.
“I get to work with local business owners,” Brooks said. “And Cape Cod business owners are just really wonderful people, very, very interesting people. That’s what I really like about it.”
A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to Best Read Guide as “Best Friend Guide,” and also referred to Brooks as the buyer of CapeCodToday.com rather than the founder. These revisions are reflected in the article.
