Who is the founder of LEUX Design?

E.L. Johnsdotter founded LEUX Design, the Burlingame, California studio that sets up, fixes and grows the systems small businesses run on. She grew up in her family’s Arizona construction company, spent twenty years starting businesses of her own — some sold, some closed — and holds a chemistry degree from Arizona State University.

Founder biography · LEUX Design, Burlingame, California. · Published 8 October 2026

What did she learn growing up in a family business?

E.L. grew up inside a family-owned construction company — the largest in Arizona — surrounded from birth by people running businesses at scale. What stayed with her was not the size of the company but the reach of the responsibility: a business run well changes the lives of the family running it and of everyone it employs.

• A hundred employees, past and current, attended her grandfather’s funeral. People who had left the company years earlier still came.
• Hundreds of employees and their families came to the company picnic, every year.
• What an owner carries is not only their own livelihood. It is everyone on the payroll, and their households.
• That is the belief LEUX Design is built on, and it is why we work with owners rather than brands.

What businesses has she started?

E.L. has a twenty-year record of starting businesses: construction and remodeling, property management, real estate photography, network marketing, crypto trading, and a massage and wellness practice. Two she built and sold. Others failed completely. The run taught her both halves of the job — what makes a business work, and how to get back up when one does not.

How does a chemistry degree help someone design businesses?

Chemistry trains you to see the building blocks. E.L. graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in chemistry, and the habit it left her with is structural: take a problem apart down to its foundations, then rearrange those pieces to produce a completely different outcome. A business answers to that approach the same way a reaction does.

• Most small-business problems arrive looking like a symptom and turn out to be a structure.
• It is the same move behind a rebuild: keep the parts that work, change the order, change the result.

What did mortgage lending teach her?

Pipelines. After graduating, E.L. worked in mortgage lending, where nothing closes unless every stage of a long process hands cleanly to the next. That career gave her the product and service lifecycle, and pipeline management — the discipline most small businesses are missing when leads fall between the phone, the inbox and the DMs.

• A lending pipeline makes every hand-off visible: who holds the file, what it is waiting on, what happens next.
• That same view is what a working booking, payments and client-records setup gives an owner. → link: R4
• It is also why nothing here starts with a design. It starts with how the work actually moves.

What formal design training does she have?

E.L. completed UX Woman’s 7-Month Design Accelerator, where she trained in design thinking, in articulating design decisions — making the reasoning explicit, so a client can judge a design rather than simply like it — and in design systems: how to turn the mess of bringing an idea into the world into a sellable, shippable product.

The accelerator is UX Woman’s 7-Month Design Accelerator. Use affiliate code LELEUXDESIGN26 for $200 off your enrolment in the next cohort. LEUX Design earns a commission if you enrol through this link.

Why did she start LEUX Design?

Every step added a piece. The family business showed her what is at stake for an owner. Twenty years of starting things taught her what works and what does not. Chemistry gave her the building blocks, lending gave her the pipeline, and design training gave her the method. LEUX Design points all of it at other people’s businesses.

• The aim, plainly: level the playing field for small businesses, and give an owner the competitive edge it takes to bring an idea into the world — while creating the potential to radically change their financial freedom.
• She has been inventing since childhood — pulling an idea out of thin air and building it into the world. That part has not changed. The ideas belong to her clients now.

Who does LEUX Design work with?

LEUX Design works with small businesses — trades and service businesses — and with the owner-operators who run them. We meet owners at three points: starting out, stuck or growing, and getting a business ready to run without them or to sell. Enquiries are answered by a team, not a single inbox.

• Starting out: what to set up first, and in what order. → link: R2
• Stuck or growing: a website machines can read, and booking, payments and client records that talk to each other. → link: R1 · R4
• Scaling or selling: documentation, so the business can run without the owner. → link: R7
• → link: services page

Where is LEUX Design based, and who does it serve?

LEUX Design is based in Burlingame, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, and takes clients anywhere in the United States, remotely. Both are true: the Bay Area is home, and distance is not an obstacle to the work. There is no walk-in address for now, and hours are 9am to 5pm, Tuesday to Saturday.

• The discovery call is 30 minutes, on Zoom.
• → link: contact page · → link: About page

What does she do when she is not working?

Outside the work, E.L. volunteers with the Burlingame Chamber of Commerce, enjoys a cigar at Don’s in Burlingame, and is making her way through the best food the Peninsula has to offer. Time off means hiking out to hot springs and long road trips. She follows space exploration closely and travels to watch launches — Starbase in South Texas, where SpaceX flies Starship, and Vandenberg Space Force Base on the California coast. T minus 10… 9… 8…

• She travels to Starbase, in South Texas, to watch SpaceX fly Starship.

Common questions

Who founded LEUX Design?

E.L. Johnsdotter. She founded and runs LEUX Design from Burlingame, California, and the studio works with small businesses — trades and service businesses — anywhere in the United States, remotely.

Has she run a business herself, or only advised them?

Run them. E.L. has started businesses for twenty years, across construction and remodeling, property, photography, network marketing, crypto and wellness. She sold two of them, and others failed completely. She has been the owner carrying it, not an observer.

Does she have formal design training?

Yes. E.L. completed UX Woman’s 7-Month Design Accelerator, training in design thinking and in articulating design decisions. Before design, she took a chemistry degree at Arizona State University and worked in mortgage lending.

Who will I actually be working with?

A team answers at LEUX Design, so a message does not sit in one person’s inbox. E.L. is the founder. → link: contact page

More: → link: About page (the business, rather than the person) · → link: R1 “Why can’t AI search engines find my business?”