Behind My Rebrand 🎨

Hello Reader,

I'm going to cut to the chase, I have very exciting news (okay it's exciting for me, maybe not normal people): I have a new brand and website (you got a little preview last week with my new email newsletter template).

The brand was designed by my long-time friend, sometimes client, and occasional collaborator Olivia August who runs a fabulous small agency called Bold August Design. She not only does wonderful design work, she's just fabulous to work with and has a process that feels incredibly personalized. She heard my semi-wacky vision for the brand and didn't even blink an eye and even raised the bar by incorporating a dog into the brand system and encouraging me to embrace the idea of having a large spectrum of colors as part of my brand because I just have so much stuff I'm working with all the time. If you want to look like the very best version of yourself, very authentically, get on her waitlist!

Why the rebrand? About a year and a half ago I actually changed my legal entity because of some complicated stuff with my state and reporting requirements. So, my current business is quite literally not my old business. (I'm not complaining, it was just simpler to dissolve the old entity and start a new one because they kept sending me bills for unemployment insurance even though I no longer have any non-owner employees—and the very kind people at the department had no idea why this was happening or how to fix it! It was a massive fiasco, that was giving me all kinds of grief I did not need.)

While the reason for the legal entity change was quite practical, it was actually a catalyst for a bunch of other changes. I'd leaned heavily into the consulting business model about a year previous, after slowly winding down the one stop shop agency due to challenges with capacity, and I found the beautiful, more neutral brand I had and loved no longer was right for what I was communicating as an independent consultant that had a more personal brand vibe to it. (To be clear, my previous brand was fabulous and I highly recommend Elizabeth from Creative Allure Design—the brand she created served me for years and was responsible for some really incredible opportunities.)

Anyway, this whole process has consumed a ton of my headspace, and has forced me to get super clear on something I'm always hounding clients about: What do I want to say?

Brands play a huge role in this. While I'm not a brand strategist, I'm inside a lot of brands, so to speak, but having to do it myself was harder than I thought it would be. Here's what I concluded is important for people to understand "at a glance" when they interact with my brand:

• Everyone is welcome
• We're going to have fun—even if the work is hard
• I'm committed to personalized, handcrafted strategies
• I really love dogs (actually, Olivia added this one)

Once Olivia was done with her brand magic, I ended up designing the site myself (the third site I've designed/written this year, mine plus two client sites,—and even though I've designed hundreds of websites, it's still always shocking to me what hard work it is, both mentally and physically), and wrote the copy, and feel pretty good about checking all those goals off as met.

Is it perfect? Nope!

Did I have to launch it before I was ready because I realized my old site was expiring on Wednesday? Yep!

I definitely got a lesson in taking my own medicine, so to speak, because I realized that my site had gotten somewhat, ehhhh, chaotic, and that problem needed to be dealt with.

So I used one of the exercises from my Squarespace SEO Hacks course to figure out the root of the chaos and streamlined the organizational structure of my site so people in need of SEO support would end up where they wanted to be, people looking for marketing strategy would land in that content zone, and the folks in need of business consulting would get where they needed to be.

And I did this without creating silos, which are a nightmare for website visitors. If you haven't really looked at the content on your website in a while, definitely do so—it's unbelievably helpful! (Short story of this technique: Write each page name on your site on a post-it note and start clustering themes together. You'll see the issues quickly. You don't want your website to feel like a menu from The Cheesecake Factory.)

Okay, enough about me (I do want to talk about this new branding all day), here are some lessons you can borrow from me if you're thinking about your brand, even if you're not overtly rebranding:

1. Start thinking about what you want people to feel when they interact with your brand way before you make any changes
2. It's okay to be unapologetic about what you're all about
3. You don't have to be neutral to be professional
4. Have a clear point of view
5. You brand should feel like the very best version of yourself

Thanks for letting me show off my fancy new look! Brands are a ton of work and it always feels a bit anti-climactic when they're released into the wild, so it's fun to share with you. If you're thinking about refreshing your brand and have questions, need recommendations for pros to work with, or are wondering if now is the right time for you to do this work, I'm sincerely happy to answer them—just hit reply and it'll land in my inbox.

Talk soon,

Sarah

P.S. I'll announce this more formally next week, but Squarespace SEO Hacks is back open after being closed for enrollment since spring. It'll be open for about two weeks and then shut again so we can keep the course up to date without chaos for my students.