the bossbabe podcast - 90. How to Transform Your Branding Without a Designer in Less Than 24 Hours with Anna Nassery

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

If you want to build an influential brand, then this episode is for you. We’re joined by Anna Nassery, Founder and CEO of BrandUp, a strategic brand studio serving online entrepreneurs. Anna and her team are the masterminds behind our beautiful sales pages for The Société and Insta Growth Accelerator. An expert in storytelling and strategic design, Anna helps entrepreneurs elevate, scale and light up their digital presence.  Get ready to be inspired and leave with actionable takeaways as Anna breaks down the exact blueprint that she learned from building audiences and boosting brand awareness for Silicon Valley startups. Tune in as Anna shares how you can build an impactful, user-centric brand by understanding your ideal client and creating a story that resonates with them.  Check out BrandUp, our go-to design agency: bossbabe.com/brandup/ Join our The Société, our private membership for female entrepreneurs to connect, build and grow: bossbabe.com/connectbuildgrow

Do not rely on having a corporate job or a job if you know your ultimate goal is to do your own thing. There is literally unlimited amounts of work you could do. So putting boundaries and getting intentional about what you need to get done is highly important. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Natalie Ellis, CEO of Boss Babe and your host for this week's episode. This week I'm interviewing Anna Nasseri, my good friend and founder of BrandUp. Anna and I have actually been working together for a while now. She helps build

a lot of the boss web sales pages you've actually seen including The Society and Insta Growth Accelerator. Anna is an expert in her field of storytelling. She also helps entrepreneurs build brand awareness through strategic designs and messaging. Without giving too much away, Anna's unique ability to reverse engineer brand building has led her to build an incredibly successful business some of you may have heard the story I love to tell about how janky my first boss babe logo was I made it on paint does anyone even remember paint at the time I was so embarrassed I thought that I needed to have this beautifully designed logo for anyone to take my business seriously but I just didn't have the budget and what Anna really breaks down in this interview

is that building your brand doesn't necessarily mean having a perfect logo or the best designed website. Building an influential brand means knowing your ideal client first and then creating a story that will resonate with that ideal client. In this interview Anna breaks down the exact blueprint she learned from working multiple corporate jobs and applying this knowledge into her own business. Not only is she an expert in storytelling, but she's also an expert at laying out strategy and managing teams. So get your notepads ready. I know you're going to love this episode and I know you're going to have so many tips. So as always, take a screenshot, share your biggest takeaway or learning and tag me at IamNatalie and at

bossbabe.inc. So let's just dive in. Hey, it's Danielle. And I'm so excited to say that this episode is brought to you by our membership community, The Society. Now, The Society is one of my favorite places and it's the place for female entrepreneurs to connect, build and grow. And inside The Society, we provide you all the content and support that you need to build your businesses. So whether you're taking it from the startup to six figures, or even beyond every single month, you will receive a new success kit from an expert in their field to help you along the way. You'll also have access to every single previous success kit that we've ever created in the time that we've been having the society including how to grow your email list how to get started with facebook ads and pixels or

even how to reprogram your subconscious mind for success and on top of all of that you can definitely consider your fellow society babes as your accountability partners and business bffs we are here to inspire support and celebrate you every single step of the way and you'll also get two live group coaching calls every single month which are normally with yourself truly and you'll always feel supported and get those questions answered. In fact on our goal setting one I actually start every single one with a meditation and everyone finds it super powerful. So all you need to do is visit bossbabe.com forward slash connect, build, grow. If the society sounds like a really good fit for you right now, I hope to see you in

there. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself, confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. It's so lovely being here. Okay, so there's two ways that I want to take this interview. So the first way is I want to talk all things design. We have a lot of entrepreneurs listening that either are different stages of the business and have no idea where to take design. And secondly, I also want to talk about your career in design because you started in a job and have been able to scale a really successful business.

So there's so many things I want to cover. So can we first start with how did you get started? Yes, absolutely. Let's dive in. So I actually got started about three years back is when I launched BrandUp. And I've been in the brand and marketing space for the past 12 years. And it's funny because Natalie and I both lived in the Bay Area at the same time, but we never really crossed paths up there. But I always worked at Fortune

500 companies. I've worked at Interscope Records and Suja. And I went to school for PR. I didn't realize it at the time, but what I loved doing was like help build brands and tell their message and get it out there. And at the time I thought PR was the way of doing that. But as soon as I graduated college, I'm not gonna age myself. It was a while back. PR was kind of going down

because that's when social media first emerged. And that's when brands began putting out their own messages instead of relying on a press pitch or media pitch to do that. So anyways, I hopped around for 10 years and worked at different companies in marketing. As you know, marketing is a very broad term. And in the last few years in my career, I worked with early stage startups. So I went from Fortune 500s to early stage startups that were super scrappy to very well-funded startups who had insane budgets for marketing, branding, advertising. And along each role, I really learned a lot about not only visual design, but also how to build a highly converting website. When you build e-commerce sites,

every pixel on the page needs to really be focused on conversions. And you need to really put on a strategy hat with that. That said, I always worked with teams and I was never a designer. I know how to use Photoshop and I know how to do the things, but I was never a creator. I always managed teams of designers to design based on strategy. And I was kind of the conduit between the C-level executives and the designers to really lay out the strategy. So as soon as I decided I wanted to do my own thing, I was kind of overwhelmed. I didn't know where to start considering I didn't want to develop a website, like to actually do the coding myself or roll my sleeves up and create

logo designs and things like that. So I really put some thought into it and I know I wanted to create BrandUp. I wanted to create an agency that develops brands, reverse engineers everything from the ideal target buyer and then spreads the message out via a website. So along those lines, I just pulled the trigger and I did it and I knew I'd build a team to do the things because I really excelled at like laying out strategies, lead generation and really'd build a team to do the things because I really excelled at like laying out strategies, lead generation and really helping build a team and building a culture and building people that really resonate with the types of clients that we work with.

So right now, our forte is working with online entrepreneurs. And also we work with a lot of e-commerce and CPG brands, but we really position ourselves as the brand agency for online entrepreneurs. We crush it at sales pages. We build custom Kajabi websites, which are all rare. And we really put together this perfect formula. And that's something I train my team on because it's not often that there are specialists with it. So I knew we wanted a very specific niche and I rolled up my sleeves and I put together our in-house blueprints of how to put everything together. I didn't rely on other people to do that or I didn't rely on hiring a team or designers that knew how to engineer sales pages. I knew that was me. The thing I looked for in building a team were people who shared high level values, principles, and work ethic.

I love that so much. And yeah, I think from working with you for a really long time now, like anyone listening, if you see a BossWave sales page, you are the brains so much. And yeah, I think from working with you for a really long time now, like anyone listening, if you see a Boss Wave sales page, you are the brains behind it. And I think what you do really, really well is being able to translate someone's dream or vision into that actual physical brand and delegate that with your team, bring it back, you still sign everything off, which is amazing. So I think that's really incredible. And do you think starting in an actual job before becoming an entrepreneur really helped you with that? Or do you think you could have still done this if you just dove straight into entrepreneurship in the beginning? It's so funny because me

launching my agency when I did is the total opposite of how I normally operated. So I'm usually very type A and perfectionist. And I think the story I told myself was that I needed corporate jobs to help give me the blueprint and the structure to do what I do now. But all that said, I could have waited a couple more years. I remember when I first launched, part of me was still like, wait, I've worked on the brand side. It would be nice to work within an agency for a couple of years to pick up on the SOPs of putting contracts together, invoices, communication, how to manage workflows, things like that. And I thought about it. I was like, I'm going to hire out. I'm going to hire a mentor. I'm going to help somebody figure that out instead of wasting years of my

life working to build somebody else's dream. Because the juicy stuff, I already have. I have the gold within me already. I just needed operations to really help support me. And that's something, if I was giving advice to somebody just starting out, do not rely on having a corporate job or a job if you know your ultimate goal is to do your own thing. Just try it out. Take the leap. There's so much support you can take on, whether it's finding an unofficial mentor by asking around, seeing who else does what you want to do, seeing what steps they took to get there. Go on LinkedIn. If you want to get specifically into my field, look into other agencies and look at the founders and the owners

and see what they did before. Did they work at brands? Did they work at other agencies beforehand? Or were they kind of just straight out of design school and just hopped in and did the thing? I love that so much. And I think it's such good advice. I feel like for anyone who's listening, who is in a corporate job, and they really want to transition to entrepreneurship to entrepreneurship what you said is really powerful and you kind of have to start before you're ready and I know that's a cliche thing that people say a lot but it is true because if you wait till you have every single bit of experience and you're totally ready you've waited too long because when you get into entrepreneurship you're going to get hit sideways with something that you just did not see coming that corporate I think couldn't have trained you for and just taking

that leap I think builds that resilience in you that you're like okay you know what I'm gonna figure it out and I love that so okay let's pivot from this to talk about branding so you have helped so much with the boss babe brand from every sales page you see to our bossbabe.com site to soon a new brand we're doing everything we do everything through you guys and so I really want to start with if someone is an entrepreneur they've got their own business but they've you know their logo is maybe something that they mocked up themselves that was me last year I was still using a logo mocked up on paint that shows how long it was mocked on paint in like 2014 up until last year when I decided okay it's time to actually have a real logo what would you say to that entrepreneur and where do they even start with

any of this stuff and also how important is it absolutely so your story and the way the path that you took to build your brand is absolutely perfect and ideal so let me just lay it out there you guys I run an agency and I'm telling you, do not invest in a brand and website right off the bat. Because this is actually something that I learned within the startup space. So there's something called proof of concept within the startup space. And basically, a lot of brands, based on their shareholders agreed on, cannot spend money on a big brand or website before they've proven their concept. And proving your concepts means something different for every type of brand.

But essentially it means you build an assumption like this is our niche, this is our product. Our niche is gonna love our product. So let's build a brand that's gonna resonate with these people. But you might launch that product and that niche might not love the product. You might pivot the product, you might pivot the niche.

And then you're ultimately gonna have to redo your brand. So oftentimes they tell people, just get something out, get it up and running, make sure you're bringing in revenue, and then reinvest and build something solid. So essentially every brand should be strategically reverse engineered from the ideal buyer, not based on trends or what you like or what you think is pretty. It's really, you're trying to speak directly to a certain customer or client. So you really build something that's going to resonate with them. And the thing with branding, too, is I always like to use the iceberg analogy. So what normally what people think of as branding is like, oh, a pretty logo or a website when essentially

that's the tip of the iceberg that you people see. But there's for a brand like Boss Babe, that's very well done. And this was work that you did on your own before you went out and you hired us was all the stuff underneath the surface, the brand positioning, the strategy, you know, really putting your heart into how you think your product or service is going to resonate with the people that you have in mind. So that's the fun part. That's the juicy part. And you really can't build the visuals unless you do that. And a lot of that comes down to tone of voice too. So tone of voice, what words your brand uses, what words it doesn't use. And these are all things that you put a lot of intention into yourself as well. And words and messaging is such a big part of a brand.

So sometimes even if your logo or your visuals aren't that great right off the bat, if you're smart about your messaging, that's really going to resonate to people as well. I love all of that I just want to jump in and say you touch on so many good points and I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and one of the things that I hear from them is I can't start yet because my website's not ready or I haven't got my first client because my sales page isn't good enough or I don't know how to write copy therefore I can't go and get a client and I think what you're saying is that's actually the complete opposite. Like you should be going getting clients without all the fancy things. It doesn't take a fancy website to land your first client.

And you getting started on the ground by writing your own copy and kind of deciding on your niche and getting to know your clients is how you're going to build up what you're saying underneath the iceberg. And I think that's what I really tried to do with Boss Babe in the beginning is let me be the one that's writing all the copy and yes I might get it wrong and yes I might not resonate with them at times but let me try and see what works and then once I felt like I bottled up that tone of voice I could then train other people on it and I see that as a step that a lot of entrepreneurs sometimes want to skip because I think it can be overwhelming and they think that if they have all the things lined up, then everything will be easy. Absolutely. And I actually put together a checklist for your listeners of the core brand assets that

are really important to nail down when you're launching your business. And most of this, I could just say all of this, you can really do yourself. And there are tools out there to get it done. But everything from what you're talking about, like your competitive analysis, to getting clear on your buyer personas, to your brand messaging, your tone of voice, and then the visuals. So visuals would include a logo, icon, a color palette, brand font combinations, which are really important. That's separate from your logo. You don't use the fonts in your logo elsewhere. These are essentially headers, subheaders, body font that you can use for Instagram graphics, you can use for your email banner. It's just very important

to be consistent because consistency breeds legitimacy, which is super important if you're brand new. You want to make sure that your people really respond to your brand the same way within all touch points from like your podcast, your podcast assets, to your Instagram account, to your website, to your emails. It should all look and feel the same. It should all feel like your brand is a human and it's giving you the same vibe across all touch points. And something else that we actually put together for brand new entrepreneurs to prevent them from freezing up and not pulling the trigger on launching early on is our semi-custom brand shop, which are actually done for you logos, which basically you go on the page and you select which logo style you like. And then we'll go in there and customize

the logo based on your business name. And you'll get access to our library of color combinations, font combinations. You select the ones you like and we package it all up for you in a brand guide. Takes less than five days. It's under 400 bucks. I have a code for your listeners as well. Boss Babe saves you some extra money on that. And that to me was the ideal product that I wanted to put together for people who are brand new to get something professional and cohesive to really kick your brand off in the right direction early on without having people feel like they have that paralysis of, oh, shoot, I need to drop a few grand on a custom brand right now. And from a business standpoint,

that doesn't make sense. I love it. So let's talk about that, where you were talking about the branding, the logo being at the very top. And yeah, your brand shop is amazing. People can definitely create that logo. But can we go kind of a step back to what if they are just getting started and they don't even know how to start with positioning or what are the other things that they should be considering? Yes, very good question. So to kind of go back to the way that I personally define brand is branding is the emotions people feel when they think about your business. So it's almost a very, it's a very visceral gut level reaction. So when you're thinking about developing a brand, you're thinking of developing that you're thinking of developing

a feeling that people are going to respond to in order to drive sales. So like emotions drive sale. So you really want to weave that into your visual strategy as you're starting off. So to really get started, putting your feelers out there and doing a competitive analysis. Again, that's something you guys, if you Google it, YouTube it, you'll find a lot of very high level explanations of it or very low level, but pretty much saying like, okay, let's pretend you are an online entrepreneur, not in a way that you're gonna copycat them, but in a way of like figuring out how you're gonna differentiate yourself from them. And then also putting together lists of what type the audiences each of these people have honed in on. And then from there, figuring out like,

okay, I feel like what I do, I wanna specialize in not just health coaching, but health coaching for moms, first trimester, whatever it might be. And then really get nitty gritty. This is where you can really get creative about putting together your buyer personas. And that's something else you guys can Google YouTube. A buyer persona is I would advise putting two to three of these together. And you really get specific about your target buyer, target client.

Who is she? How old is she? Where does she work? Does she have a job? Things like that. And then get to the nitty gritty about her goals, her ambitions, her fears. And then also, what are her favorite Instagram accounts? What blogs does she read? What conferences does she go to? Those are all things you can use down the line when you're putting together ads or things like that. But really get clear on them.

And then from there, as you're developing the visuals, then you can see like, OK, what's Becky, Susan, and Cheryl going to like from a visual standpoint? And you know them really well at this stage. You know their fears, their wants, their goals. And from there, you can emotionally put together a brand that's going to speak to them, not just messaging-wise from your messaging perspective. Also look at the adjectives for the emotions you want people to feel when they hear your words, right? So is your brand friendly? Is it professional? Is it witty? Is it girly? Is it feminine? Whatever that might be, list out three to four adjectives and always stick to those. And that's especially important if, let's say, you hire somebody to do your emails for you,

or you begin scaling and building a team. You want everybody to use the same ground rules for speaking for your brand. And that's in the same way that they would visually. You know, you put together a visual brand guide. You also have to put together an internal tone of voice guide. You know, these are the words we don't use. These are the words we love using. These are the nouns that describe me. These are the nouns that describe our buyer. And these are the verbs to describe what we do. You know, really list out like flesh these lists out, right? 10 nouns, verbs and adjectives within each category. And from there, you can kind of just use a simple toolkit to put together taglines and hook statements, and then just use those consistently. I love that so much. And there's kind of so much I want to go into there. When it comes to, so okay, so someone sat down,

they've got their tone of voice. Chances are, if you're kind of a solo entrepreneur, it's probably going to be an extension of your brand voice and you talking to your client the way you think you normally would. So you've kind of listed all that, you've got your tone of voice, maybe you've mocked up your own logo for now, you're getting clients. At what point would you switch and actually have this done professionally so and we can use boss papers as a case study too now we have all of our sales pages and websites designed we don't do it in-house but we did work with you on creating templates so that our team inside like in the company could actually create assets but all of that's been done as we've scaled

the business and we've kind of ticked off one box at a time as we went. So when is the right time for someone to think about seriously investing? Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify. And Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So, of course, I needed to share it here with you.

It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business. You know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible i definitely recommend kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering boss babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. The right time is honestly when you guys did it. And it really depends if you run a kind of business like Boss Babe or let's say you run an e-commerce, like a consumer packaged good product. Usually if you're a CPG product,

I'd recommend doing that earlier on because you really have one chance at a great first impression. And oftentimes with brands like that, you have more capital to work with. If you are a personal brand, the general, I'd say like baseline for knowing when you're ready for that is I would say like six to 12 months into your business when you know you're closing at least three to four of your ideal clients like every quarter. You know you're closing them in, you're closing down the clients, and then you know your business is growing, you know your business is scaling, you know you're hiring other people. Absolutely, I think it's important for the general tone of voice and brand positioning, but just doing the visual parts like the logo, logo icon, brand colors, brand fonts, that I would recommend

doing a little bit earlier. So probably six months into business, and then you could do a full brand positioning overhaul, which is what we're going to be doing with you guys soon too. That I would do down the line when you're ready, when you have a team and when you're scaling. I love that. And one thing to mention too is it is perfectly fine and actually recommended to iterate on your brand down the line. Because brands are malleable. Websites are malleable. Because over time, your business grows and

evolves. So every major brand does this too. Think of how often Uber rebrands or they redo their logo or their strategy. And that's just how that's like the life cycle of a business. It's okay to do a full overhaul every couple of years. Yeah. Everything you're saying is really speaking to what I've done and so for everyone listening what we do basically is whenever we're doing a webinar or a freebie or anything like that where we don't know if it's going to work like you're saying we haven't got proof of concept we've not done it before we'll open up insta page we've got our brand guidelines our color palette we'll mock up a page and we'll see what works and we don't feel like it needs to be the most professional as long as it's really

speaking to our audience they know what they're getting that's how we'll do it yet if we're launching a new product and so products for us we have an e-com and we also have online products so one of them is going to be our new launch course that's coming hopefully March 2020. And with that, we came directly to you to help us build a real brand behind that and also a sales page because we've done the research. We've got proof of concept. We know it's going to work. So can you talk through what that process would look like for someone coming to you and wanting to build, say, just a logo and sales page?

What does that look like? Absolutely. So that's a great question. And you would be very shocked because oftentimes people don't know that if they're launching a course or a product like that, that it needs its own visual identity. So to kind of backtrack, I think Boss Babe did everything so right. And I obsessed with the strategy that we put together for you guys, right? So we started working with you guys one product at a time, building new products, revamping old ones. And within each product, there is a visual brand identity and

then sales page or website design, right? So visual brand identity is just logos, fonts, colors, et cetera. So whether it's IGA or the society or your new course, it's going to really, each one of these has a different vibe and they have a different sub niche within your main boss babe umbrella. So it's very important to know your overarching brand strategy. And then from there, figure out where each of these other products, courses, programs, membership sites fall into that umbrella because each of them has a different audience. And again, it all comes back to audience. So first of all, getting clear. If you're building a new course or program and need to build a sales page, I would say get clear on the audience there. Get super, super clear. Even if you've already

done that for your main brand, you need to create a sub-niche now for this new product. Once you do that, then come to us. We'll build that visual identity because as you know too, as you build a product, as you market it and put together all these products for it and webinars and email blasts and things like that, you want them to be branded. It's very important for those who are branded. And also, let's say it's a course. You want the back end course experience, like the slides, things like that, to match the visual brand identity. So those are the rules that we put together for our clients. You know, this is the color palette you use.

This is the header font. It's all caps. The body font is this weight of this typography style. This is what all your buttons look like. So that way you're very consistent at every touch point and people's experience with the product does not end at the sales page. That's where it starts. And also sales pages too are such, they're my favorite type of page to build because they

really funnel people through every stage of the buyer's journey in one page. Answers every question, you know, it gives a little preview, you know, you talk through payment plans, all these, everything. You know, oftentimes people include videos in there as well. So those really, you need to take a lot of, you need to put a lot of intention into architecting those to really answer all the questions that your people have when it comes to buying your program. And I think it's a really worthwhile investment too for anyone listening who maybe in the past has created their own sales pages and already like you said when we were doing the Boss Babe brand we actually went back and revamped old products

and I'm just going to say right now I was so embarrassed of the way the society sales page look it was the I mean I seriously put it together I think in less than 24 hours on insta page I had no idea what I was doing but it worked we made over seven figures with that sales page it wasn't fancy I didn't even have a video on there it was just very much me speaking to my audience saying hey we've really got something here and we know you're going to love it we know it's going to solve problems for you and we put that out there and Danielle and I really just poured our heart and soul into it and it worked and then it became time to actually revamp it and turn it into a product with its own brand and its

own feel and then we went back and revamped the back end of the website and slowly rolled it out so again bringing it back to not everything needs to be perfect. And talking about the brand umbrella, I love that you brought that up because you kind of touched on this at the beginning in that you kind of want products to be cohesive within the brand. And one thing we did was just weave the Boss Babe pink throughout all of the products. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yes. So along those lines, like I said, each of the products that Boss Babe has built has its own unique identity, but they're almost like cousins. I love that. I wouldn't say stepsisters, but you could tell they're all related, but they don't look identical.

And we used Boss Babe Pink, which is like a grazy pink color across all brands. And then also we got very strategic about the typography style because if you guys really, I'm such a nerd when it comes to fonts. I love fonts. Because they really, they depict, there's a lot of personality that comes out of them. And for you guys, we didn't use the same fonts throughout, but we used the same font styles.

We used Serif fonts, which are the very elegant kind of classic fonts. But then we paired them with very like fun, funky, like contemporary fonts to really depict the brand personalities across the board. But in general, we use the grayish pink color, we use Sierra fonts. And then we got strategic about the color pops within each brand to really depict the

main emotions and personality that we wanted each product to have. And something I'm actually in the process of building this now. So this will probably be out hopefully by the time this comes out or shortly thereafter, but our agency is putting together sales page themes and templates for people to build off of. So that really will take a lot of the guesswork out of the layout because you know how it is. I don't know if a lot of you listening are really familiar with the formulas that we use, but within sales pages, there's always like the, is this you? And then like eight bullet points. And then I was once in your shoes. Here you go. And then a little bit of background about the founders or the main business and then the modules and that whole dance will

really lay out within a few different business types. And then from there, we'll be hands-on with building the visual brand identities for these. So they look very specific to the brand. I love that idea so, so much. What do you think is really important for someone to include on a sales page? Like you mentioned a few different bits. What do you think helps convert on, say, a coaching or like an online program? What really helps convert on a sales page? One million percent relatability and making people know that they are seen for whatever issue they're having or the problem they're trying to solve is being addressed. And a lot of times, so a sales

page can be launched by, I'll use a random example, I'll use you guys like Boss Babe, or it can be launched by somebody like a Natalie, right? So whether or not it's a brand, a non-human brand, or it's a personal brand, you use a lot of relatability that you weave in there. You know, like this is for women or men or people who were once in this position. I was once in this position. This is what I did to get out of it. Now I'm here to like help show you the way. So much of that comes down to like audience segmentation. I love that so much, relatability and really meeting your clients where they're at. I made the biggest mistake with this when I was launching IGA because when I was putting together the curriculum for IGA we had around 1.4 million followers and we'd grown a

million in a very very short period of time and so I was really pulling apart all of the tactics that we'd used to get to a million and so I posted in the society I said okay I have the full blueprint of how we got a million followers who is interested in this does this sound like a really good name and I stepped away from that post like this is gold it's going to get amazing engagement I've hit the nail on the head with this name and then I got so many comments saying Natalie I just want 10,000 followers in a swipe up feature like this is way too overwhelming for me and I completely missed the mark and I wasn't thinking in terms of what does my ideal client want but I was thinking in terms of what can I teach or what is interesting for me to teach right now and that was a real wake-up call

for me to really step back and realize that I need to be in my client's shoes always and so whenever we're writing sales pages now that's what we do I literally will get into a mode where I can just channel my ideal client like as if I'm sitting having coffee with her and telling her what she needs to hear. So okay moving on from that so they are really clear on what it takes when it comes to creating a visual brand identity, what kind of thing they should be doing when it comes to tone of voice, what a sales page should look like. You mentioned you've got a checklist for everyone listening which is amazing. What kind of things are covered on that? Within the checklist, I'll really lay out the first step. So if you're launching a brand, how do you really get in the trenches and figure

out who your main segment is and what does that mean? How do you break that down into people, the components of putting together some buyer personas, and then from there, doing a little competitive analysis. I'll kind of talk everyone through that process. And then what to do on the language side so brand messaging tone of voice the different components that go into there and the small steps you can do to DIY it and then all the visuals from there too so how to roll up your sleeves and get things done right now how to put a logo together right now kind of how to really throw out a color palette that will work across all digital channels and then font combinations love it and for everyone listening I think the

kind of main message that's coming through is just take action, just do it and think about polishing it afterwards. Would you agree with that? Yes, absolutely. Okay. So then let's take it back to where we started at the beginning. We talked a lot about how you really got started in business and you've managed to create such an incredibly successful brand. What was it like getting your first ever client? Like if you go back to the very beginning, how you get your first client this was a really great story so oh my goodness I got my first client from one of my good friends Angie Lee she had a mastermind at the time and it was all online coaches within her mastermind and she actually introduced me to one of my now good

friends who you've met too, my friend Stevie. I did her website. And Angie asked me, she was like, I have this girl Stevie, she needs a website. Can you get it done? And at the time I was just like, deer in headlights, but I was just like, yes, give it to me. I'll get it done. And it was one of my proudest websites I've ever done. Like we did such a great job on it, but I really pulled together all the missing pieces to get that job done to completion that part's all figureoutable what's really important with getting things done is the strategy and the creativity factor and if you know you have that and you can own it

things like operations things like development the technical side easily outsourceable okay and so you got your first client and how did the business grow from there like what was your main source of generating clients from then on? A million percent referrals and also I would say my superpower is social connection so I've really made a great point of you know I have such a great Rolodex of people that I've met within the last 12 years a lot of people that work with me now, I met at startups. I poached them. There are designers, developers that I poached from my other jobs that I knew I was in alignment with, just kind of getting it done with them. To this day, we haven't

put a dollar, this is weirdly shocking, we haven't put a dollar into advertising or really putting together a proper, you know, I have so many plans for 2020 when it comes to digital marketing and content, things like that. We really haven't been doing much in that arena as of now. It's literally been all referrals and it's all been, I go to events, I meet people. I don't, not necessarily clients, but I meet people that will refer me clients. I meet people that work with or for my ideal clients. And I tell them, I'm like, Hey, we're the best at what we do. It's going to behoove you to help if you want to help your clients out like this like point them in our direction and we'll take care of them I love this so much and for everyone listening seriously listen up to this part because

it's really important I think what you've done really well is you communicate what you do who you do it for and then you've got proof on the back end of doing a good job and so for us at Boss Babe anyone that comes our way we will send straight to you because we know you take care of clients you do such a good job you always deliver something that they're really really proud of and happy with and that alone I think is an incredible business model and for us what's been really powerful is when we were first kind of getting started I have lots of clients and we're so used to being in so many different slack channels and there's all these email threads and we said to you guys can you come into our slack and kind of be there I know we're not

working on a retainer but can you just be there so that if we do need something we can reach out and talk about projects and that's what you did you slotted in and your entire team it's just watching that grow has been amazing because they're just like you. And I know I don't need to get on a call with you to get the most amazing project done. You have an amazing team. And how did you get to that point? Thank you. I appreciate that. And also real quick along those lines too, our relationships with our clients are very important because like I said, brands and websites are malleable and we want to be there with our clients every step of the way. If we've worked with a client, we already know we like them. We know their brand and we want to be their partner as it builds and grows. So we love being in your business in that

sense and know that we have your back whenever you need us. I think that's really important in developing a longstanding relationship. So let's say you come to me and you want a new page. I'm going to prioritize that over a new client that I have a sales call with later that day because we want to have long standing relationships with people. It's kind of scary too as, you know, touching back on growing your team and building them. As you know, it really is scary adding, you know, having to worry about adding somebody else's salary, you know, payroll, all of that's scary. That's a big leap of faith because those are higher numbers that you need to hit every month.

But if you see growth and if you see that you're hitting a ceiling with your growth, that means you need to build your team. And that's scary. It really is a leap of faith. It's scary. But for me, it's paid off 100% of the time.

And every time I feel like we're slowing down or my guiding principle is if somebody comes to me and is like, hey, I need a website and a brand. If I can't get started on that within three weeks, then I need to hire more people. You know, in a lot of agencies, we're a badge of honor, like, oh, we're booking through May of twenty twenty nine. Like nobody wants to wait that long. You want to strike while the iron's hot. So if we can't start people off now, I need to build a team. And that's a beautiful problem to have. And how do you manage the team making sure things get done? And I think really important in your industry, making sure it looks good, it's done to a certain standard. How do you make sure that happens? Because I know that you have been able to really delegate

effectively in your business and step back and stay in your zone of genius. How do you do that? Thank you. So I think what's really big there was I'm super, super, super picky when it comes to people I add to my team, especially on the account management side. I think that's very important because account management really pulls strategy out and that really just builds the shape of where the brand's going to be taken and then design pops in there and makes it happen and turns that into reality. So my relationship with our account managers is very tight. They are like my number twos. So like you said, I sign off every project we have.

I keep my eye over every high level strategy. We have weekly calls to go over certain blocks that any of my account managers have with clients and I pop in and I lead the way with that. So that's something really important to me because you know this too, it's really important to stay out of the trenches of your business if you want to grow your business because growing your business is a job in itself, right? But with what I do, a lot of the reason why we grew was because of how I grew the company and how I operated within the company. So I wanted to duplicate that. And I'm very type A with this process, but I've gone through everything from, I have loom recordings of how to do everything, how to walk clients through issues or problems.

I have workflows and SOPs on, I use monday.com for those. I have them for every step of every process. That way, if anybody ever has an issue or question, they hop in there. And then also we do this once a month, but we have a full design strategy session where we have our in-house rules for visual design with branding and then visual design with websites. And we have what to do and what not to do. So these are rules like this quarter, we're not going to use cursive fonts. Absolutely not. If a client wants a drop shadow, no, we're not doing it. And then we also have trends that we really want to go forth with every quarter too. So that's something we iterate once a month. That way, every project that we launch is very cohesive too. Because even if a different account manager is really overseeing

the project or different designers working on them, it follows our in-house rules and best practices so much gold in everything you said and I really believe that successful people are specific in certain ways and we were probably like in the spa having this random conversation but it's something I really remembered you said that when your account manager hops on a zoom call like a video call with a client even background is important to you. Can you speak to that and how you even think through things like that? Because that to me was like, wow, that is why she's successful, because she thinks through those details and she knows what's important and what's not. Yes, absolutely. So I think this is really specific to my industry, but brand is experience and emotion, right? So we're selling that.

So it's essentially like I like to use the analogy of going to a dentist with bad teeth. So let's say you're a personal trainer. You got to look the part. You're a dentist. You got to take care of your teeth. So with us, we try to make sure that every step of our process with clients is cohesive, is consistent, and is very polished. So certain touch points are everything from our initial welcome

email to how we onboard them to the every document that we send clients is custom designed. It really elicits a lot of the same feelings that people have when they land on our website or things like that. So I really like to make sure that it's that's all consistent. And even within operations too. I remember when I hired my operations manager, I pretty much templatized everything for her right away. I was like, okay, this is how I would love for you, you know, if you have a client, because operations to me classically has been more finances, numbers, like structure, things like that. Not so much experience and not so much customer experience, right?

So I really wanted to make sure that I had like tone of voice rules for operations for having communications with our clients. It's very consistent with just what we really preach. So that was important to making sure that everybody within your team, the way that they communicate with their clients, when they need to communicate them, it's a friendly, beautiful in-house experience. It's kind of like it's embedded into the company culture. I love this. I can imagine people just scribbling down so many notes right now and all the process they're going to make. So just want to pivot one last time because I could just pick your brain for days. How do you keep your energy up? I know you have so many little ninja hacks of how you keep your energy up, things you do. I know you're a big fan of cryotherapy. Do you have any specific

routines, anything that helps you stay in your zone of genius and not get overwhelmed when you have this many clients and this many moving parts in your business? Yes. So I'm sure you can attest to this, but if you're an entrepreneur or you're running your own business, there is literally unlimited amounts of work you could do. It's unlimited. So putting boundaries aside first and foremost and getting intentional about what you need to get done is highly important. And a big realization I had last year because I suffered from burnout was how that my energy is my superpower. And when I kind of I was spinning my wheels because like I said, I suffered from perfectionism. And when you're like that, you're wasting your energy on things that don't matter. So I not only made that realization, but

I prioritize my energy more than anything throughout the day. I need to get eight to nine hours of sleep a night. That is a requirement. That is a must. I don't do early morning calls. I make sure my first two hours of the day are for me and getting my mind right, getting a little bit of movement in. We can have a separate podcast episode about just biohacks that I weave into my day. But I always start my day with some Joe Dispenza. I do my brain tap, which is like a really you have a brain tap too, right? Yeah, I love.

Yeah. And I just got a new home, which I'm going to. Oh, you did? Yeah, I'm going to combine that with my brain tap to kind of do like a full like morning. Just get it right. So you've got joe dispenser so have two sets of earphones have your earphones that you put like earbuds and then put your bows on top so put your joe dispenser in your earphones then your nucom sound on top my mind is blown i can't take credit for it i think it's ben greenfield's hack it is a game changer okay done

i'm gonna do that tomorrow morning yeah that's I think those are the very behind the scenes ways that you can really get yourself straight. And for me, as soon as I start my workday, I actually learned this from Brendan Burchard, but I do my own version of this is I work for 50 minutes and then 10 minutes. I have a timer on my Apple Watch. The last 10 minutes of every hour, I need to get up and move. That means I have a rebounder at home. I do that.

This is actually kind of embarrassing, but I have a hula hoop. I'll like hula hoop for 10 minutes of every hour, I need to get up and move. That means I have a rebounder at home. I do that. This is actually kind of embarrassing, but I have a hula hoop. I'll like hula hoop for 10 minutes. I'll literally just do like a quick little yoga flow. My favorite is actually walks. So anytime I have a call with a client that I know I don't need my computer for, or I catch up with a friend, I walk and talk. And this was something I learned at my startup jobs too. This was like something Steve Jobs like invented was the walk and talk. So like the walking meetings and you get such fresh air, like you get your blood gets oxygenated, such a good way of getting grounded after you've been in your head all day. So I think what's really important is as you're an entrepreneur, you're in your head all day. If you can just get into your body in bite-sized chunks throughout the day, that helps really

keep you grounded. So at the end of the day, you're not a complete zombie, you know, and doing little things like right now I have an infrared sauna at my house and a cold plunge. So like every day I do some contrast therapy. So I'll do cold plunge sauna, cold plunge sauna, like back and forth twice. That takes like 30 minutes. I can't do sauna for too long because I hate being hot. And that's a great way for me to just like, I feel like I just release a ton of stagnant energy doing that. And then that helps me

show up better at work. That helps me show up better as a friend. That helps me just retain my happiness. So I used to think that was selfish. I used to think, oh, I can't take this 10, 15 minutes to myself to go do this because I have like a never-ending work pile to tend to but that helps me plow through that in such a grounded place I love it so many tips in there so we've got the brain tap new calm for anyone listening it's n-u-c-a-l-m we're not affiliated we're just obsessed new calm you do the like heat and then cold even if anyone doesn't have a cold plunge they could just turn the shower cold yeah it activates that response in your body just for a couple of minutes you can do it in a morning okay and then you've got sleep walking so you're working for 50 minutes and then you're taking a 10 minute break is there anything else you might do maybe not daily but every now and then i know

you're a big fan of breath work so something that's really important for me is i love doing breath work one maybe two times a week it's really really important. I can't really describe it. I get like a mini like transcendental experience every time I do it. I know that sounds really cheesy and I don't even understand it, but it just releases energy or old emotions that we tend to like hold within our body. And a lot of women, especially like tightness in your hips and your stomach really corresponds with just holding an emotion. So I find breathwork is a really effective way of just getting through that. And it opens your heart because first you're like breathing through your womb, then you're breathing through your heart and then you're releasing. It's just doing that constantly is so grounding. And I love taking dance class too. So

something I always thought that Natalie, you and I are so compatible like life partners. But the one thing that I think we defer in is I'm like, I love working out. Even when I travel, it's like something very important to me. And it's like the kind of workouts where you want to die after. It's not me. It's not me. The ones that, you know, you're sore for a few days, you're sweating, all that. So outside of that, yoga and dance for me are not workouts.

It's just a really good expression. Like you help it. Like I said, it all comes back to embodiment. They're really great ways to get back into your body and get back into flow. I think flow has been a very big theme for me lately. And the more I can flow in my personal life, the more that flow really permeates into my business. And I think that's the best way to operate.

Oh my God, I love this. And I really love to hear these tips and tricks from people that I actually see embodying that energy is a superpower. Like you truly do have so much energy and just seeing the way you run your business. I mean, we've worked together on a lot of projects and not one of them has really had any hiccups, which is, I think, just really testament to how you run your business. So just to kind of bring it all full circle for entrepreneurs listening who don't have proof of concept we're saying go out there and find proof of concept get paying clients see what works and resonates. For those who want to

not spend much money at all a couple hundred dollars something like the brand shop where they can just mock up a logo, a color palette, some guidelines. But then beyond that, if they're building sales pages, websites, brands, they come to you. Is that right? Do I get it right? Yes, absolutely. You nailed it. So for those of you that are early stage and want one of our done for you logos, you can find that on our website, brandup.inc.ink. And then just click the shop tab and we will be adding more products there. So we'll be having some sales page themes up there soon and maybe we'll expand into websites later on in 2020. I would really love to put some tools together for early stage people that,

so they're not overwhelmed about getting their brand and their golden nuggets out there for the world. And then whenever you're ready to work with us one-on-one, that's really where the juicy stuff lays. So yeah, just same process there. Go on our website, contact us, reach out. If you're there, I would love to work with you guys. I am obsessed with every client that we've gotten from Natalie and Boss Babe is so in alignment with who you are because I believe people magnetize other people. So because of that, we always love prioritizing anybody that comes our way via Boss Babe. So come reach out, tell them Natalie sent you

and we'll take care of you. I love it. Yeah, we'll put all the links below, link to that checklist, which I think will be super valuable. And then we collaborated on a page really showing what the design process was like at Boss Babe if you want to take a peek behind the scenes

and see how we work with Anna's company. So all those links are there. Thank you so, so much for this. I literally feel like I have so many tips to go away with. Yes, it's been a pleasure. Thank you, Natalie. If you loved this episode, please subscribe, download a few more, and please leave us a review. I really want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were, and I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next. To say thanks for leaving us a review, we'll send you a copy of The Boss Babe 25. The Boss Babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth. It covers everything from our favorite rituals, books, and hacks. If you want a copy, just leave us a review, screenshot it, and send to podcast at bossbib.com. We will then email you a copy ASAP.

And since we love Instagram, you can go to the hashtag thebossbibpodcast and find our latest post and leave a question in the comments. We love reading through the comments and we'll make sure to answer it on our next podcast.