The Benefit of Going Deeper Not Wider In Your Business

One of the words I’ve been trying to live by lately is CURATE. 

After reading the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown (I highly recommend it), I wanted to frame the next chapter of my life and business with this notion of “thoughtful reduction” -- or the pursuit of less but better things. 

The first few years of Made Vibrant were an important period of exploration and discovery for me, expanding my projects to include offerings under all three pillars of the MV mission: 

1. creative growth (ie. Better Lettering Course and my #AbstractAffirmationsDaily art prints];
2. business growth (ie. Better Branding Course and Make Money Making];
3. personal growth (ie. Connecting With Your Core and Color Your Soul).

These are all areas that I’m passionate about, and it felt amazing to see my business broaden throughout 2015 to serve all three pieces of my mission.

However, I’d be lying if I said that managing this many projects at once wasn’t a little bit taxing. By the end of the year I was starting to feel like I had planted all kinds of promising seeds without really taking the time or energy needed to help them grow to their potential.

While I still strongly stand behind the symbiotic, collaborative relationship between these three ingredients of creativity, business and personal growth (living my most vibrant life has certainly relied equally on all three), it became clear to me that serving all three properly would require a different approach.

In more metaphorical terms… I started to feel like it was time to take a break from planting seeds in order to properly cultivate my crops. To give each one the nourishment it deserved to really thrive.

Just as I was contemplating all of this, a few weeks ago I heard something that led me to think about this strategy in an even more meaningful way, which is really the lesson I want to share with you guys this week.

I was watching a live workshop with Marie Forleo where she discussed trimming back her business offerings to focus on her one signature program, B-school. In explaining this decision, Marie said something that really hit home with me. She said her gut was telling her to make an intentional choice to go deeper, not necessarily wider.

When I sat back and thought of my own business in these terms, I realized that my gut was telling me the same thing.

It’s no secret to most of you that ‘deeper’ is kind of my jam. As an INFJ, I love less but more meaningful friendships. I love digging into complex problems and peeling back a more profound understanding layer after layer. I love diving deeper and deeper into my own emotional and psychological worlds to get to know myself better.

But, despite knowing this about myself, something had been holding me back from incorporating this concept into my business. So I thought:

Why in the world do I struggle with wanting to dive deeper into my own business? Why do I feel resistance to doubling-down on my own programs like Marie mentioned?

That’s when it occurred to me that perhaps my business/emotional needs weren’t totally lining up with my creative needs.

From a creative perspective, I find that going WIDER not deeper is always my instinct. When that spark of inspiration hits, my creativity can’t help but want to follow it, and this often leads me in many different directions.

I’m aware this is not a particularly unique problem for creative people. So many of us find ourselves at some point or another with a wild case of Shiny Object Syndrome, bouncing from one project to the next because the novelty excites us.

For the past two years, this is the instinct I’ve been leaning into -- the allure of developing new projects, new services, new offerings in an effort to expand my business. And I think I know why.

For one thing, it feels natural. As humans we’re wired to want bigger and better and more, and so it’s instinctive for us to always ask ourselves What’s next?

Sometimes this also comes from a place of wanting to meet the expectations of those around us. I’m not just talking about our friends and family (feeling a need to have something to say when they ask “What’s new with the business?”) but also from the audience we’re building. I know I’ve thought on more than one occasion that I want to keep giving you guys new and exciting things to look forward to, and I’m sure this pressure to keep going wider is tied to that.

Lastly, and let’s just be honest here, new things are FUN! Everybody loves the beginning of a project when ideas are flying, possibilities are abounding, and you get to start molding that shapeless hunk of clay before you into something that resembles your vision. You know what’s NOT as fun? Following through. Pushing past challenges. Dusting off that project that has lost its shine and breathing new life into it again.

BUT, this is when I have to put my business hat back on.

Working on something that’s not necessarily as FUN might actually be what your business needs.

“Working on something that’s not necessarily as FUN might actually be what your business needs.”

For instance, I’ll let you in on a little secret here: my Better Branding Course was the project that brought in the most revenue for me in 2015 (48% of my revenue to be exact). It was also the program I spent the most time and effort developing, AND it still remains the project I’ve gotten the most positive feedback on in terms of the benefits my students have experienced.

AND YET... it’s the one program that has sat dormant, just begging for my attention for the past four months.

Why? Honestly just because my creativity got bored with it.

Now, I’m all for letting creativity steer the ship most of the time, but I’ve also been at this business thing long enough to know that our creativity only has the freedom and flexibility to do its thing if our businesses are profitable enough to allow us plenty of room to play. 

And our businesses will only remain profitable if we make smart decisions about where to invest our efforts.

“Smart business decisions give our creativity the room it needs to play.”

Once I realized that, I started fighting my urge to keep making NEW things, and instead I thought about how I could reinvest my time and energy into improving things that were already working. 

This means making decisions like: creating blog content and resources for new customers to find Better Branding Course and Better Lettering Course. Or teaming up with my husband Jason on BuyOurFuture, which gives you lifetime access to all our combined 35+ projects for one price.

So, as I cozy up to this new approach of going deeper, not necessarily wider…

Your challenge this week is to ask yourself: is it time to cast a deeper net with your business instead of a wider one?

If you’re still in the beginning phases of your business, you may very well want to stay in that exploration mode and cast a wide net. I’m all for that.

BUT, if you’re a year or two in and you’re starting to resist being pulled in too many directions, consider that it might be time to deepen your net for a while. To reinvest in what’s working in your business. To quit planting seeds for a time in order to see what you can really make grow.

Going deeper, not wider, allows you to uncover the true potential of your ideas.

Even if it means fighting your instinct to follow the shiny objects, consider the good you might be able to do (for your audience and your business) if you double-down on the projects that you’ve only yet to scratch the surface with.

Have an awesome week!

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Branding For Beginners: Defining Your Ideal Audience

Sometimes when you’re starting out, it can be tempting to declare that your business is for everyone!

When I started my freelance design studio, technically I could design for any type of business, from a corporate giant to a solo entrepreneur. It was just a matter of applying the same principles to a different set of problems and scenarios.

BUT, as I quickly found out, those two types of audiences have very different challenges, pain points, budgets, etc. Trying to go after both of them at the same time would mean that my branding and messaging might seem unclear or -- what’s even worse -- conflicting. Not to mention, I prefer working with one of those audiences over the other (I won't say which one... 😉)

That’s exactly why choosing a type of person or business to target is so important. It’s about giving yourself the best possible chance for resonance. And resonance, remember, means true fans, lasting customers, repeat clients.

Now, let’s talk about why that is.
 

Speaking To Their Struggles

First, getting specific about your audience helps you figure out the pain points and challenges of one single like-minded group. If you’re trying to reach everyone, it’s going to be hard to pin-point what exactly they struggle with and how they interact with your products or services.

However, if you narrow your focus to a smaller, more concentrated segment of people, some of their challenges and struggles will start to get more similar. This will allow you to get highly specific with your messaging, making it appear that you’re speaking straight to that group of people.
 

tailor-creating for their needs

Narrowing your audience also helps you tailor your offerings to a well-defined need. Take the Better Branding Course, for example. Made Vibrant's target audience is a group that I've dubbed "soulful creatives." These are highly creative people with an interest in personal growth, continuous learning and self-made success. Over the years, I’ve been able to hone in on the unique desires, goals and needs of this audience -- one of those needs being an affordable and encouraging option for branding. Because I was able to connect with that audience, I could tailor my course specifically to the needs of those people. 

attract your tribe, repel the rest

Lastly, by getting specific when it comes to your audience, it will allow you to attract valuable members of your tribe and repel more transient members of your tribe. 

Years ago, before I even had an online business, I attended the Alt Summit conference in Salt Lake City. While there, I signed up for a session on personal branding with photographer, Jasmine Star, and something she said in her talk still echoes in my ear. She said, when it comes to her brand: 

"I want to attract you or I want to repel you." 

Okay, the attract part made sense to me. Of course you want to attract new blog readers, new clients, new people in your community. But REPEL? That's such a strong word! It seemed so counterintuitive at the time. Until she pointed out to me that repelling the wrong people (people who won't appreciate your business or people whose values don't line up with the values of your business) actually saves you valuable time and energy down the road. It's not just a matter of authenticity -- it's a matter of efficiency!

Turning away customers or clients that aren’t a good fit for your business is almost as important as attracting the right ones because you don’t want to be wasting your resources on people who won’t positively impact the health and growth of your company. By drawing a line in the sand on who “your people” are, you’re effectively keeping your tribe as high-quality and engaged as possible.

So, remember...

“Defining a specific audience makes it easier to connect with the hearts and minds of your potential customers.”

Now that you're clear on WHY it's important to get specific about the people you're trying to attract with your brand, let's talk about how to actually do that...

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How To Define Your Ideal Audience

Depending on where you are with your business, you may already have a pretty clear sense of who you think this person is.

If not, I have a free worksheet at the end of this post that will help lead you to the exact type of person you'd ideally like to serve. 

Once you have a better idea of who that is, these are the three vital questions you want to ask yourself:

1. Is this an audience that I want to be working with?

There’s a reason why I refer to it as an "ideal audience." You have a chance to choose the people you want to serve, and if you choose a person you don’t want to be working with, you’re setting yourself up to not be very happy with your business. Think hard about who it is that you actually want to help. If you get stuck, sometimes it helps to start by who you definitely do NOT want to be working with.  

2. Is this a group of people that want (or better yet, need) what I'm offering?

If you’re trying to sell jetpack rollerblades to grandparents, you might run into a few issues. It’s important to identify whether the audience you want to help is actually in need of your services/offerings. This will make sure that the business you’re creating a brand for actually has the ability to be profitable and sustainable long-term.

3. Is this an audience I’m uniquely equipped to help?

It helps if you are especially well-qualified for one reason or another to connect with the audience you choose. In my case, I believe I’m uniquely equipped to teach soulful creatives because I myself am self-taught. That gives me insight into what someone might be thinking who is always trying to learn new things and get better through continuous learning.

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I can't tell you how much I recommend spending time solely focused on this one aspect of your business because your audience is the lifeblood of your company. They are the ones that will buy your products or services, and they are the ones you want to keep happy and deliver value to! 

Need some help defining your audience? This is a topic we cover extensively in the Better Branding Course! 

Hope you found this post helpful, and good luck as you define and refine your brand!

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Branding For Beginners: How To Blend Your Personal Story Into Your Professional Brand Story

As we talked about last week, the most powerful kind of branding is the kind that creates true emotional resonance with your ideal audience. 

But, in order to create that lasting, meaningful connection, you have to give your audience something to connect TO. One way to do this is to find a way to add your personal, more human story to your brand story. 

But first, what exactly do I mean when I say brand story?

I actually don’t mean your “elevator pitch” or the actual story you launch into at a cocktail party when someone asks you that dreaded question: “So what do you do?”

It’s not necessarily the kind of story that you literally tell someone. Instead, your brand story is the unique narrative that conveys the heart and soul of your business.

It’s rooted in your distinct background and it blends many different experiences, motivations and emotions together to form the DNA of your brand. Think of a brand story as the melting pot of answers to all those important, juicy, deeply-rooted questions about your business and what it stands for.

Questions like:

• What do you believe in?
• Why did you get started?
• Who are you passionate about serving?
• Why do you get up every morning excited about your business?
• What led you to this point in your life?

The goal of any story is to tap into your emotions and to take you on a journey, to give you something to relate to. So your brand story is the foundation to providing your audience with a way to connect to your business. It is what brings an underlying truth and authenticity to your final brand identity.  

How do you uncover your Brand Story?

First, it's helpful to start by finding the pivotal and important moments that led you to this point in time in the first place and where your brand stems from in your past.

For those of you out there that are more analytical, think of these pivotal moments like data points. Don’t worry about trying to connect the data points just yet, just focus on finding the pieces of information that seem important. Once you find those important data points in both your personal and your professional life, then you can work on connecting the relevant pieces into a strong creative concept.

The first thing you have to realize is that something prompted you to start your business. It didn’t just materialize into thin air. YOU made it. And because of that fact, YOU are an indelible part of the heart of your business (and brand.) So, predictably, the process of developing an authentic brand begins with you. 

I like to refer to this process of understanding how your business came to be as uncovering your "origin story."

What’s an origin story?

In comic book terminology, an origin story is a back-story that reveals how a character gained their superpowers and the circumstances under which they became superheroes.

That’s right, for the purpose of this lesson, we’re going to imagine that your business is a superhero!

Sure, superheroes have all of their powers and the ways that they fight crime, but watch any superhero show, read any comic book, and what makes the characters reallllly interesting? It’s their origin story. It’s finding out what major events had to happen in order to lead them to their heroic path.

The same is true for your business. A superhero’s list of powers is like your list of services or your list of products. They might be cool and all, but the bits and pieces of the backstory that led to all of that? Now that’s the interesting part.

For example, recently I’ve been watching a show on Netflix called Daredevil (no, not the mediocre action movie with Ben Affleck from back in the 2000’s - it’s much better, I promise.) Daredevil has heightened senses, a high threshold for pain and a thirst for justice. And I admit, all of that is certainly pretty cool.

But you know what makes the show interesting... what keeps me watching?

Understanding how Matt Murdoch: The Man, became Daredevil: The Superhero. He lost his sight in a chemical spill when he was just a boy which gave him his heightened senses. His father, a boxer, raised him alone and always forced him to study because he wanted him to be better than he was. He became a lawyer so he could enact justice and right wrongs, but even that left him feeling powerless to help those in harm’s way. All of that is what forms his origin story, and all of that is what makes me feel connected to him as a character.

So… that begs the same question for your business: Who was the superhero before he (or she) was the superhero? Or, rather: Who was the person behind the business (aka YOU), before he/she came to create the business?

That’s what you need to unearth. You want to seek out all those important, pivotal moments that led you to where you are today. What are those events that made everything shift?

I call these “plot points.” A plot point refers to any event or occurrence that moves the story forward. They’re the forks in the road. The points of impact. Those plot points are what we’re looking for in your personal story.

Finding your plot points

I think we can all agree that we undergo a number of metamorphoses throughout our lives. Sometimes those transitions can be caused by where we are geographically, what we’re studying, who we’re dating, what job we have, or a major event that shifts our mental or physical lives in a big way.

As an exercise, I really want you to dig into the memory vault and think about the steps that led you to where you are today. Close your eyes and I want you to imagine your life is a book. (For now, try to focus less on the business necessarily and just think about your own life story, your personal journey.)

If you had to divide up your life into chunks, what do you think would be the major chapters? What would be the plot points - those important moments that pushed your story forward? What events ended one chapter and opened up another?

Start when you were a kid and move forward on your life’s timeline until you hit what feels like a natural break point - an event or moment where things shifted directions. When you stumble upon that moment or event, consider the possibility that it could be one of your plot points.

As you do that and move toward the present, here are some guiding questions to ask yourself when considering your plot points:

• Is this relevant to WHY I decided to start my business?
• Did this change my perspective about myself or the world?
• Did a major part of my life suddenly look and feel different?
• Did my goals or future ambitions change?
• id this contribute in some way to how I run my business?
•  

Example: Made Vibrant

To show you how this "plot point" exercise can help inform your branding and how one person’s individual story can feed into their brand story, I’ll use myself as an example:

Chapter 1: Overachieving kid goes to college

Much of my childhood and adolescence was defined by my need to excel. I was a straight-A over-achiever kid, and just about every ounce of work I put into school was to achieve the external definition of success that I had been taught from an early age.

Plot Point: Switched majors from pre-med to advertising

Something happened though when I got to college. Even though I chose to be pre-med as a major (probably for how it would look to the outside world), as I sat in an Advertising 101 class, I fell in love with the idea of creativity and business.

Chapter 2: Advertising obsessed

Old habits die hard. I pretty much applied my obsession with succeeding to this new creative field, and I became consumed with trying to rise to the highest level of achievement within the advertising world. Not exactly a recipe for happiness and fulfillment.

Plot Point: I discovered my fancy NYC ad internship wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

I landed a highly-coveted internship at one of the world’s leading agencies in New York, and every day I hated going to work. Something about it just felt empty to me. Everyone was stressed out and jaded. Despite how it would look to other people, I made the decision to turn down the NYC ad exec dream life for something that felt happier and more me.

Chapter 3: Disillusionment with agency life

Instead of the fancy NYC agency, I took a job at an advertising agency in North Carolina, thinking it would be slower-paced, less cutthroat and more creative. Unfortunately I was in a media planner position - not very creative - and I could feel myself anxious to do something that used my creative talents more.

Plot Point: Quit my first advertising job just six months in

Suddenly acutely aware that it wasn’t right for me, I quit. Yet again I was learning a lesson to choose my own happiness over the expectations of other people, and it felt really good.

Chapter 4: Finding my creative voice

During this time, I started my own personal blog and began teaching myself design programs at night. I was starting to feel free.

Plot Point: Went to work for Jason’s startup company

My boyfriend, Jason, had a marketing startup company and needed someone to run operations. I convinced him to hire me (who else would be more invested than me?) and I got a taste for what it was like to feel actually valued at a job.

Chapter 5: A new world of work opens up

Working for his startup, I got to wear a different hat every hour it seemed, and I also realized that having the flexibility to design my schedule and motivate myself gave me a new energy I hadn’t experienced before. Meanwhile, I was still teaching myself design and starting to take on side projects.

Plot Point: Startup company closes shop, I decide to start my own business

When it became clear that the company could no longer stay afloat, I had a choice: go try to get another advertising job or try to make a go of it by myself. I chose the latter.

Chapter 6: Made Vibrant is born!

After a few months of freelancing, I decided to take my talents and create a larger brand around them: Made Vibrant.

...And, the rest is history, right?

All of those lessons I learned along the way: the power of choosing your own happiness over the expectations of others; letting go of perfection and the need to excel; searching for a way to express my creativity; teaching myself design; my hunger for flexibility… each one of those shows up in my brand story and contributes to how I connect with my audience.

My hope is that by going through the plot point exercise, you’re able to discover new layers and interesting insights about what led you to form your business that you haven’t yet thought about.

On Owning it

As one last point on your personal origin story, remember this: People can feel sincerity.

The more truthful you are about where you come from and who you are, the more sincerely your brand will come across.

It’s not enough to just identify these important moments in your life. You have to also recognize that those are the things that help you stand out. Those are the things that give you power. You have to acknowledge that these elements are crucial to your brand DNA, and you have to see them as strengths.

When I started my design business, I used to be afraid that because I didn’t go to art school, that it was somehow a disadvantage. Then I realized that instead I could OWN the self-taught, self-made part of my story. The fact that I learned everything myself not only showed that I was dedicated and resourceful (which people like when they hire you), but I also expressed that my method and process was different. I wasn’t weighed down by the “right” or “wrong” way to do things, and that made me more creative. Also, the fact that I had a background in advertising and startup culture showed that I had a working knowledge of how businesses run. This point was especially critical in getting some of my higher paying projects for larger companies right out of the gate.

Never forget: Your differences are your strengths. Take ownership of your personal origin story and it will help you stand out in a vast sea of online businesses.

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