Friday Series: The Branding Process

A few embarrassing things happened to me when I went to my coaching session with the amazing Katelyn James!

The First most embarrassing moment:  I got lost!  Which is really not new for me so it wasn’t that embarrassing.  It was only embarrassing because I had to call Katelyn 80 million times in fear that I was going to be horribly late!  I also had to call Amanda Hedgepeth like 50 times to make sure I was on the right path which was also awful because I knew I was interrupting her already busy day!

The Second most embarrassing moment (and one that has really stuck in my mind every day since then) was that after our 5 minutes of introductions,  Katelyn told me that I was not at all the person she had pictured stepping out of that car to meet her.

My “brand” was 180 degree opposite of who I am in real life!  And it was not a positive thing!

I never really fully believed that an online personality had anything to do with business!  I thought that it was nice.  I thought that nice websites were just that… nice, pretty websites!  I thought logos were cool and I appreciated them a lot!  Especially because my dad was a freelance graphic artist and one of my best friends in college was aspiring to be a graphic artist as well!

But for me:  I didn’t really think it would make a huge difference! I mean come on now, could a few teeny tiny details online like font type and color scheme really give a perspective client a perception of who I am?!

And then I hopped out of the car for my coaching session to have Katelyn tell me that among other things she expected see an over 40 something, very old school photographer!  Who she did not expect to meet was a bubbly, outgoing, somewhat goofy blonde with pink in her hair who wears her heart on her sleeve!

The first piece of advice I got was to get re-branded!

So… here I am now stepping into this crazy FUN process, and I thought I’d take you with me.

Meeting with Katelyn was a HUGE step for my business!  Since meeting with her, Tuck and I have taken some pretty big leaps!  But moving forward with this step is a pretty personal journey and it’s really revealing!

Right now it feels like I’m a bit confused and all over the place.  My homework has been to pin on pinterest which I mean that’s kind of awesome!

Tuck comes home and asks what I’m doing and instead of feeling guilty about being on pinterest, these days I get to say “Homework!”

But in reality it is a little tedious and hard!  I don’t want to overwhelm my team!  And some times I feel like I’m a bit of a multiple personality with all the randomness that’s going on there!

But it makes me feel like a puzzle with all the pieces!  I can’t wait to see what it all looks like put together!

I’ve also found out a few things about myself and my business that I never would have known.

Like I really do have a clear cut vision and amazingly the possibility of a tag line even!

It’s all pretty cool!

 

I can’t wait to see how it all unfolds and what my team comes up with!

Check back with me here next Friday to see what’s happening along the way in this process.