Owning the F*ck out of your Brand (Ft Lillian Gordon)
I love branding. I really, really, really do.
And I have fallen in love with branding even more so in the past 12 months as I've really started to dive into the topic and realized how much branding has an impact on [00:01:00] our ability to grow on social media.
The time in which we have to grab someone's attention has gone from three seconds to 0.014 seconds. Do you know how short that is? Do you know how short of amount of time that is to capture someone's attention? It's not like you're gonna capture their attention with what you're saying, your expertise, your energy, your vibe, or any of these things. For the most part, it's going to be your aesthetics, your branding.
Branding goes so much further beyond [00:01:30] just the aesthetics, but aesthetics are a big part of our branding strategy. It's almost like the forefront of our branding strategy. And then we have other elements such as our voice, our values and our vibe, but the visuals are so, so incredibly important.
And that's why I'm really excited about today's episode because I actually sat down with my branding designer, who is not only the genius behind all of the new branding that you see all over my social media, but she is also [00:02:00] recreating my entire website. She has given me so much motivation because I finally feel like I'm visually represented as myself online. And it's just allowed me to really step into this whole other vibe that a lot of people are really noticing.
If you did like this episode be sure to screenshot and share on Instagram and of course tag me + Lillian, @erinmayhenry, and @itslillianfrances.
“It’s about following your inspiration so you can inspire yourself.
Meet Lillian
Lillian is not only doing the rebranding of my website and helping me with my merchandise and all the different branding aspects and elements that go into that. But then she's also helping me with my ongoing content creation. So if you go to my Instagram, all the different, like graphic design kind of posts that you're seeing Lillian is creating those.
I have never felt like someone was able to bring my personality, my vision, [00:10:00] my style, who I am, where I'm at in my life so beautifully to life in an aesthetic way. Like I wasn't even able to do that for myself.
Lillian did that for me. Here’s how she breaks it down:
For some clients, it’s about talking to them a lot and asking them a lot of questions. For others, it’s about diving feet first into their social media and getting a feel for it all.
For you specifically, it was about really watching your lives, getting your tone of voice. Just getting in your world.
A lot of the time, a lot of people find it really hard to design for themselves because you can't quite see yourself in the way other people see you. But then when you have that outside person, AKA me or another designer to [00:13:00] look at you and piece all these things together that are seemingly dichotomous and contrasting and put it into an aesthetic, then it feels like, “this is me.”
Because there were so many contrasting elements in your brand, rather than putting one big mood board together for your branding, we actually put together, I think it was three that kind of pictured different elements [00:13:30] of your brand, which is quite common for a personal brand.
The idea that you can have one kind of vibe as a personal brand is very 2d. And as people wear 3d. So having those different mood boards that communicated like the freedom lifestyle and the beachy vibes and the chill, then also having one that communicated the productivity side of things. And then another one that, [00:14:00] communicated like the party vibes sort of, and then carrying through like elements that made sense, like that were common between those three mood boards is like sort of how we created the vibe.
OWN THE HUMAN SIDE OF YOUR BRAND
When people think of branding, they think of these very two-dimensional aspects and elements. That can work against you because you approach it with the frame of mind that I can only use these colours. I can only use these fonts. And [00:16:30] I can only speak about these things.
For some, it’s about getting the permission slip to be all that they are. For others, it is just really about a personal development journey. Of getting to know [00:17:30] yourself, understanding who you are, and then from there building the confidence to then own it. Because for a lot of people, it's very easy to go online and look at your industry or the people that you look up to online and see them as like, okay, well, that's what they talk about so, therefore, I need to be that niche or that specific.
At the end of the day, it is just about realizing who you are, having the confidence to put it out there. And if you need the permission slip, find some like Lillian to give you one.
BECOME YOUR OWN IDOL
It's really hard to kind of like find your own voice when you're so inundated with following other people.
Ultimately design is something that's replicable. Like it's not something that is unique to me as much as I have a specific design style and I have a way of approaching design projects. But if I was to expect that my feed aesthetic and my portfolio was gonna set me apart, that's setting myself up for not ultimate failure, but um, [00:21:00] for a lot of competition. Yeah. And I'm very much along with you about becoming the only one for my ideal client. And so I knew that there had to be other pieces that came into it. It couldn't just be my services that set me apart. It couldn't just be my design style that set me apart or my portfolio. So I really like honed into, it was very easy to kind of go, okay, well, like what are other designers doing to set themselves apart and like looking for [00:21:30] clues there.
But if I was to go ahead and like, copy what they're doing to set themselves apart, then I'm not doing that. It's like, it just cancels itself out. So I did a lot of thinking about what I wanted, who I wanted to be outside of my business and who I thought was like a cool person. Like how could I be even cooler than I am now? Like that was the kind of way that I looked at it.
So each week it was like at the start of the week, I'd be like, “okay, what new thing am I gonna pick up a new habit, a new way of thinking?” And three months later, or two months later I'm looking at myself and I'm like, I'm so awesome.
There's confidence from that because I can look at myself and be like, I wanna be friends with me.
MORNING ROUTINES CAN CHANGE YOUR BUSINESS (when you do it for you)
Starting your morning in a way that feels good to you will change your business because it tells your subconscious that you come first and my business comes second. [00:28:30]
Lillian’s morning routine:
Get outta bed.
Gab my phone, I scroll, I check my emails.
I will put on my swimmers and dive into the ocean.
I’ll sit at the beach [00:30:30] for maybe like 15, 20 minutes before I even go in.
Come home, shower, get ready for the day.
Have breakfast and then start the day.
When it comes to taking full ownership of yourself and your life, knowing who you are & want to be, plays a huge role in how you set up your day.
It doesn't have to look like everybody else's morning routine just because everybody else is working out in the morning doesn't mean you have to.
It’s about following your inspiration so you [00:33:00] can inspire yourself.
What are the things that you're inspired by?
What are the things that light you up?
Not what people are telling you.
If the dominant thought is I should do this, you're doing it wrong.
Let's forget about what you think your audience will like. Because branding for someone else is basically being like, “okay, I'm gonna please these people.” And ultimately that just doesn't work unless you're inspired by it.
What inspires you? What lights you up?
Let's look at that first.
3 WAYS BRANDING IS PROBABLY HOLDING YOU BACK FROM OWNING WHO YOU ARE
1) Brand strategy: brand strategy is ultimately used by a designer to communicate why they're doing something for their client so that their client understands it. But, we can twist design psychology to work for us. Anything can work.
2) Feeling like you need to be consistent: No, no. If it's not aligned, change it. If you hate your branding. You won't show up. Humans evolve. People evolve. It does not make sense to be consistent with your branding to the point where you take out the humanness. Thinking that you're failing by evolving and changing a branding is completely off.
3) Thinking you need to have set colours and fonts: That makes sense for some brands, but it doesn't make sense for all brands. There are other ways to make it aesthetically brand cohesive.
When in doubt: If it doesn’t feel good, it’s not for you.
Be sure to connect with Lillian here:
https://www.instagram.com/itslillianfrances/
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