It took me a LONG time to stop DIY-ing my brand.
I mean, a REALLY long time. More than 20 years.
It wasn't because I thought I was the bee's knees at branding or anything - I'm clearly NOT.
I just didn't think it was the best use of my resources.
I mean... take a trip in the Wayback Machine with me and look at these oh-so-sexy early brand images.
This thing took me FOREVER to create - one pixel at a time - in MS Paint, I believe.
Looking back on it, I can say that it LOOKS like it was made in MS Paint. I was SO proud of all the detail. The shading! Look at that tiny little pot at the base of the hill! The cactus has a shadow!
Never mind that you can't really READ the words at all. I mean, who needs to know what your company is all about?
That landing page is HAWT, right? I used every bad design trick in the book on that logo. Reflection? Check. Outer glow? Double check. Embossing, drop shadow, inner glow, and outline? Baby, I got 'em ALL up in there!
It was also on the cover of the first edition of my direct sales training workbook.
I actually got smart and hired someone - on a site called "50dollarlogo.com" - to design something for the second edition of my book:
Yes... I was blonde for a time. And yes... I DID have more fun! But maintaining that color was a PITA. I had to cut my hair every time I colored it. Eventually, I gave up on it.
But look at that book cover - I still put that "glow" around my name, and what about the TERRIBLE cropping job I did around my hair? and let's not talk about the bad photoshopping of the money and the calendar. I mean, ooof! It's bad! And the website didn't match the book. It was just a mess!
Around the same time, I launched The Renaissance Mom. If you've been around a while, you might remember that old brand. Again, I hired out the design to someone who was REALLY good at giving me what I asked for, but I DIY'd everything else - including the website. Talk about a discombobulated brand! I went through a number of tag lines in the course of a few months and none of it stuck. I even tried hosting a 3-day event that totally BOMBED. Here's a screenshot from 2010:
Those giant, clickable social buttons on the top of the page? Yeah, they TOTALLY blend!
Good times!
I stumbled through another year of trying to DIY my website and then, because I was tired of trying to keep up with all the wordpress theme updates, I hired someone to do a whole refresh. I realized it was time for me to do SOMETHING unique to make a unique mark in the industry. Everything I'd done up to that point was built off someone else's template (except for those early logos, and well, you saw how good THEY were!).
I didn't have a ton of cash to lay out, but it was clean, original, and I finally had a tag line that felt genuine. I don't know why that was so important to me, but it was. Still is, to be honest. I think it helps people know what I'm about and what I stand for.
And that was the first time my name became my brand. GULP!
I had fonts! I had a logo! I had brand colors! I had ARRIVED!
I started making worksheets in Open Office (before Google Docs was hot, my friend!) and all my stuff started to look like it belonged together.
The Secret Watch came out in 2012 and I was finally a *published author* gosh darn it - and I wanted a website and branding to reflect this new version of me. Something totally custom.
Behold the Stepford website of 2014:
Now, to be fair, this website was EVERYTHING I asked for. I hired a designer to take the old phoenix from the Renaissance Mom logo and build a new one. Out of the ashes, right?!?
I even ordered business cards (still have them) with that logo. Then, I hired a web designer to incorporate that into my new website. We had new fonts, new colors, and I thought it was GLORIOUS!
But I was still doing a lot of DIY. I mean, check out this monstrosity:
Look at all those fonts and colors! The spacing! Your attention goes everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. WHAT A DISASTER!
But I was SO PROUD of it at the time. It lived on the bottom of the home page of that site for over a year.
That leopard print was slapped on everything for many years. I'm still a big animal print fan, but it took the tough love of a seasoned pro to help me get over myself.
By 2015, I was ready to release another album. It had been a while, and I had a clear vision for the project, so I booked my very first *official* photoshoot. I think I dropped a few hundred dollars on it. Which, for me, was HUGE at that time. From those photos, I reached out to Tracy Lay, who I'd known for a few years. She took those images and developed my very first Brand Guide. Here's a peek:
I felt SO professional! Tracy went on to create a bunch of branded templates for me - for YouTube, workbooks (still in Open Office!), and really felt like I had my shit together. Except that it didn't really match the website. Well, except for the leopard print. Like Sriracha, I put that on ev'rythang!
It was 2016. I had just moved to Nashville. Hot on the heels of my album release, I had just completed work on my Creative Entrepreneur Type Quiz. I jumped into Canva to create THIS carbuncle:
I used that thing for a few years. If you look hard enough, you can still find it buried in the pages of my current website. Shhh. Don't tell Tracy! I was using Canva for just about every design or brand project at that time. Social posts? Yep. Email headers? Sure thing!
And it was ALL. OVER. THE. MAP.
I mean, I had Tracy's brand guide, but I didn't know the first thing about design that worked. Clearly. I mean, just look at that thing! *shudder*
Thankfully, I did the right thing and hired Tracy to design the book layout when it was ready to launch. THAT turned out pretty darn good! So much so, that I also hired her to take the pictures from my second photo shoot in 2017 and fix my Stepford website - that I'd been running with for more than four years at that point. ZOINKS!
Together, we developed my second-ever mood board:
You'll notice some of the same elements, but a more sophisticated look and feel. I was "growing up" my little brand - and starting to embrace my sparkle! That was 2017. The plan was to create a "phase one" website that would start my transition from that old "Stepford" look and feel to a more grown-up brand. By the end of 2019, we were finally able to roll it out:
Yes, that leopard print's still kickin'! But we also pulled SO much of the book branding into the website. Fonts, colors, logo, tag line. The whole nine. And it was everywhere - social templates, Youtube thumbnails, email, worksheets (now in Canva, my friend!)...all the bells and whistles!
FINALLY, a cohesive brand... just a measly 25 years after I started this entrepreneurial journey!
Just in time for a pandemic. womp womp!
The truth is that none of it was actually bad in the moment - for where I was at and what I was trying to do. It served a purpose. It gave me a starting point. And to a degree, I was right - plunking down (tens of) thousands of dollars for branding would NOT have been a good use of my resources then. I was a mompreneur with young kids... then a divorced, single mompreneur who had to rebuild her life after a failed marriage.
But once I got established in Nashville, things started to change for me. I recognized that my DIY branding wasn't doing the heavy lifting I needed it to do. It looked half-assed, and my results for my clients are NOT half-assed. I put my whole ass into it, every time!
Working with a professional like Tracy, I've learned how to make better design decisions. But I also realized that having her as my brand guardian meant that I could TRUST someone else to make sure I looked good. What a relief! She's done all my branding since then, and most of my design work. And she made it easy for me because we put all the templates into canva.
So when I started working on my next book, and realizing that my brand wasn't reflecting the direction I needed to go next, I called Tracy, and we started working on the "phase two" website and branding of my dreams.
I mean, can we just celebrate how GOOD this all looks for a minute? And how it all goes together?!
DIY can take you pretty far. I don't knock it, because I know how important it is to do what you can, as you are able, with what you have... whatever that might be.
AND... I also know that sometimes you need to go further than what your DIY skills can provide. That's the benefit of hiring a pro.
Is it branding? Honoring your boundaries? Expanding your capacity? Something else? Not sure? I can help you suss that out. Book a next steps session and we can figure it out together.