[0:00] Hello and welcome to Aesthetically Speaking. I'm so excited you're here. I'm going to be doing something a little bit different today as I walk you through a meditation and visualization for your brand. And this is an exercise that I have done for myself and my clients many times just to help figure out what it is that you really want to create. And what I have found is we want to skip right to the part where we have everything we want in our business, but we really struggle when it comes to slowing down to figure out exactly what that is and it's hard it's frustrating I think people would be surprised if they spent a day with me to see how much time I spend thinking writing reflecting because I really believe that when I make good decisions I move forward faster and so I know that we're all about messy imperfect action and I certainly believe in that. Trust me, as a perfectionist, I need to take more messy action. But I also really believe in inspired action and doing things the right way, slowing down and really thinking about what we want. So I'm going to walk you through a visualization that I've created to help you go through the aesthetic of the brand, your own identity, your audience.
[1:20] Your marketing and the application of your brand. And then I'm going to talk you through some nitty-gritty and some of the ways to think about your business and the work that you're doing and how you can
[1:31] spend your time in ways that are most effective for the goals that you have. So let's just get into it.
[1:42] You're listening to Aesthetically Speaking. On this podcast, we're talking about all things branding, logos, colors, fonts, and the strategy behind it all. It seems like these days it's easier than ever to build an audience, but harder than ever to stand out online.
[1:56] My name is Rebecca, and I'm a brand strategist and designer. Together, we're going to talk about how to bring your brand to life.
[2:02] Music.
[2:07] I want you to just close your eyes for a minute and imagine it is five years into the future. Your business is thriving. Everything you have hoped to achieve has happened, and then some. You're introducing yourself to someone new, and you are radiating with total confidence and clarity that you are doing exactly what you're meant to be doing, that you are living in your full potential. What is your title? How do you introduce yourself? Are you a CEO? A founder? A creative director? an artist? What do other people think of you? Do they see you as a friend, an influencer, a leader, an authority, an expert? Maybe you're an innovator. Maybe you're a trendsetter, an inspired coach, a thought leader. What is it that people think about you that makes you so happy? What are you actually doing in your business? I want you to feel joy. Imagine the sense of flow you experience as you're spending time in your zone of genius every single day. What is your income?
[3:32] Visualize this number clearly. We're going to talk about how you actually create that income. But I want you to really think, what number is right for me? The internet loves to tell you to hit seven figures, eight figures, beyond. What's the number that you want to see in your bank account? Picture it. See your bank statement in your mind. And sit and center in the freedom and the satisfaction that this income brings. Ask yourself, what am I offering the world in order to create this income for my life? Before we move on i want to stay in this feeling and i want to encourage you to believe or at least entertain the idea that there are no wrong answers here, Whatever title you want to have is the perfect title for you. However you want to be perceived is perfect for you.
[4:35] This is the time to ask yourself what you really want. Because the truth is, we started our own businesses so that we could create what we wanted. But somewhere along the line, we started doing things the way that other people ran their businesses because we thought that would be good for us. You can make money doing anything, literally anything.
[4:59] So how do you actually want to make money? What do you actually want to provide? Who do you actually want to become?
[5:06] Ponder on these questions as we move to the next level. So in this future brand space, we're going to talk about the aesthetic and the image of your brand. I want you to imagine your brand is on a billboard in Times Square. It's lit up for the whole world to see. And I want you to imagine that you feel proud of it. You feel excited. You are inspired by the aesthetic of your brand. Picture your logo. Imagine your website, your social media profile. Just feel the energy of that brand and how it reflects your personality. What does it look like? What is the brand that you want to create? Is it really sleek and modern with some clean lines and elegant fonts? Is it really vibrant and colorful? Does it have kind of this fun, engaging vibe? What is the impression that your brand gives people? What are people saying as they walk by? Because your brand is iconic. Your brand is something people are obsessed with.
[6:12] Are they inspired by it? Are they excited? Are they intrigued? Is it mysterious? Do they feel really informed? Is it really straightforward and educational? Or is it just fun? Think through what you want your aesthetic to be. Imagine you've hired Rebecca Peterson's studio to design your brand. What does it look like? Picture it. Big billboard on Times Square lit up for the whole world to see. What is that image? And I really want you to anchor in and I want you to allow yourself to believe that you're good enough to have a brand that is this big, that is this stunning, that is professionally designed. So picture your logo. What does it look like? What's the name?
[6:59] What's your website? What's your social media? What is the essence? What is the vibe that people get. Really feel that energy and how it reflects your personality. And just stop and think to yourself right now, what is the personality that I want my brand to reflect? Five years down the road, do I want to be really intriguing and mysterious, dark and secretive? Do I want to be fun and goofy, playful, vibrant, colorful, having these engaging icons and illustrations? Do I want something that's just simple, modern, it's sleek, it's elegant, it's just clean? But really ask yourself, what do I want?
[7:45] Do I want people to think about my brand? Imagine what people are saying as they walk by. So you're in Times Square and people are walking by this billboard and they're seeing your brand. What do they like about it? What do they notice? How does it make them feel? Does it inspire them? Does it feel calming? Is it exciting? Uplifting? Is it straightforward and educational?
[8:11] Is it quirky? Thinking through these things is going to help you tremendously in understanding what you are trying to create, not just today, not just tomorrow, but for the long-term future of your brand. So you have a clear idea of who you are, who you're trying to become through your brand. You've got an idea of the aesthetic.
[8:32] Let's talk about your audience. You're up on a stage. You're presenting your brand to an audience who paid a million dollars to see you how does that feel does it feel exciting does it feel comfortable or do you feel like a total imposter, allow yourself to believe this allow yourself to entertain the thought that you could be worth a million dollars your brand so i want you to close your eyes and picture yourself on this stage. And I want you to see if you can start forming the faces of your ideal clients. Who are these people? Who are the people that pay to see you, who want to learn from you, who are excited to hear from you? Are they entrepreneurs? Are they moms? Are they creatives? Are they executives? And really try to cultivate an image in your mind of who these people are. See if you can focus on one and create a bit of a persona for them. Where did they come from?
[9:38] What are they struggling with? What are they afraid of? You sit down next to them. You say, tell me what's going on in your life. And what is it that they tell you that makes you say, I can help you. I know exactly what you need. Imagine their excitement to work with you and how inspired they are by your brand.
[10:03] And think, how much are these people paying you? What are they paying you to do? What do you do for them? Do you have a personal relationship with them? Do you have a small, intimate room of people who are paying a million dollars? Or do you have massive audiences filling a football stadium? What is it that you envision for your future brand? What lights you up?
[10:27] Visualize the relationship that you build with them. the success, the stories that you will create with them. Picture what they need from you and imagine yourself delivering it. Maybe it's on a silver platter. Maybe you hand them a file folder. Maybe you just sit and talk, but they walk away and you know that you have given them exactly what they wanted. Feel that mutual respect and admiration for your clients, for your customers. Sit in the awe of your own ability to create value from your ideas, your knowledge, your expertise, and your lived experience. And imagine how good it feels to see that value come back to you in relationships, in income, in autonomy and free time.
[11:26] Now the last step in visualization is to imagine your identity, your core message and essence, your visuals, your design being integrated into every aspect of your business to serve your audience in the best way you can.
[11:46] And as you're imagining this, you have the audience, you have the Times Square billboard, you're sitting in your space, maybe it's an office, maybe it's a studio, maybe you're outside, maybe you're in Italy. I want you to think about your marketing, starting with your social media, your content. What does it look like? How does it reflect your brand's core values and the aesthetic? Visualize this consistency in your colors, the fonts, the photography, the messaging. What is it that makes this brand recognizable to other people? What do you want them to notice? Do you want them to love the colors? Do you want them to be impressed by the layouts? Do you want them to love the quirky illustrations or just be intrigued by the dark, moody nature?
[12:47] Imagine everyone in your audience understanding your brand, getting it, hearing what you're saying, reading your Instagram posts or your blogs, watching your videos on YouTube and hanging on every word because they get it. Imagine every touchpoint being beautifully designed from the simplest, most mundane things like a receipt or an invoice or a trash can to the big things, the presentations, the book in Barnes and Noble. Feel that strength and that coherence of your brand as it becomes a trusted presence and i want you to ask yourself when you're imagining this feel the strength and the coherence of your brand, as it becomes a true force for good online and in person.
[13:50] Open your eyes. Let's get to work.
[13:53] So as I walked you through this visualization, I want you to grab a piece of paper and just make a note of anything that stood out to you that felt easy and anything that felt really hard. What I found is that there are elements of our brands and our businesses that we feel really clear on. I know exactly what I'm trying to create in this way. But then there are other pieces that feel a little sticky. I don't really know what the core message is that I'm sharing. I don't know whether I want to serve this kind of person or this kind of person.
[14:26] And then obviously there's always the challenge of how do I get from where I am right now to this image you've now planted in my head, Rebecca, of my brand in five years, 10 years down the road. What do I do to bridge the gap? That's what I want to talk about next. so I really believe that your brand is the umbrella that covers every other decision in your business the way that you structure your business what you choose to do for marketing what you choose to sell those are all branding decisions and having this clear vision of the brands that you're trying to create will really help you in making what I call those powerful decisions so that they're aligned with where you want to go. So what I want to ask you first, which is very, very basic, is what do you want to sell? All businesses sell something.
[15:25] And this doesn't necessarily mean that all businesses are selling a physical product or even a digital product. Some businesses are selling ideas. Some businesses are selling their time. But what is it that you want to sell? When I do this exercise for myself, I always come back to the strategy, the core of branding, the design and the creative edge. That's what makes me unique. That's important. But really what I want to sell is this clarity that I can help my clients achieve by walking through the strategic process. I always come back to that. I don't want to sell branding to the masses. I want to be able to serve a limited number of clients very, very well. I want to be a true master of my craft. And that may not be the case for you. You may want to sell one digital PDF to a thousand people. And that is absolutely possible for you. That is absolutely right for you if that's what you want. But I want you to really ask yourself, what do I want to sell?
[16:32] And how do I want to sell it? Then I want you to ask, who am I selling it to? Who is the audience that I am trying to communicate with, that I am trying to serve? Once you have those elements figured out, we can focus on the marketing. So I want to touch on this really briefly because there will be a lot more that we can talk about regarding the marketing of your brand. But to begin with, I want you to understand the basics of how marketing works. And this is basically a marketing funnel, which I know gets a lot of hate, but there's a reason that we have vocabulary like this, and that's because it works. So in any business, when you're marketing, you have strangers, friends, and customers. And I use different terminology depending on what the brand is, but at a very general level, every business has strangers, friends, and customers. Strangers are people who don't know about your business they don't know that you exist they don't they're not aware of you friends are people who are aware of your business but have not purchased from you and ideally friends like your business just because they haven't purchased doesn't mean that they don't like you and then you have customers they know who you are they like what you're doing and they buy from you and everything that you do is helping people somewhere along that path.
[17:54] Unlikely that someone is going to go from a stranger to a customer. They usually have to go through the middle step of being a friend. It's also possible that somebody can go from stranger to friend and it takes them years to become a customer. My point is, break your marketing down into these three categories. Strangers, friends, customers.
[18:15] How are you going to move them from one group to another. The problem is, it's very hard to do that work of like, okay, how do we move them from strangers to friends to customers if you don't actually know what your brand is? And so I really do want people to like take this visualization seriously. And ideally, you would hire me and I would help you walk through your brand strategy and tell you exactly what these things are, right? So you have a clearly defined ideal client with attributes and qualities that you can refer to and say, okay, great. So these are things that I know about them. And based on this information, I'm going to work on marketing in these ways. The problem is a lot of times we like kind of brainstorm and think about our brand, but we don't really do the work of figuring it out. That means clearly defining it. That means documentation. That usually means working with an outside source who can help you make some of these decisions and also give you the exact verbiage. So when I work with my clients, they walk away with their brand strategy document. It's basically the answers to this visualization.
[19:26] I'm going to force you to talk through this and I'm going to force you to figure out what it is you're really trying to create and then saying, okay, based on your answers, here's the messaging I think we should use. Here's the aesthetics I think we could go for here's what I would do for your brand photos right all of those things and then from there we say okay great now you can take that and apply it to your marketing.
[19:49] For me, I've split up my brand into three aspects of my business. The first is what I call the studio. So that's like operations. That is the administrative stuff. The project management, how I organize my work, my time, emailing, proposals, client calls, that kind of thing. Then I have the most important part of my business, which is the work, quote unquote. That's what I'm actually delivering to clients. So that's branding, that's naming, development, strategy, design, marketing, websites, design, development, copywriting, all of those things are part of what I do for my clients, part of the work, quote unquote. And I am constantly asking myself, what kind of client work do I want to do? How much do I want to do? What's in my zone of genius and what's not? And how do I manage that? What am I hoping to create five years in the future? What does that mean that I have to do right now? And I kind of adapt along the way.
[20:56] And the last part of my brand is the marketing. So this is finding leads, nurturing leads, and making sales.
[21:06] Which the way that I explained it before is for any business, you have three categories of your audience. You have strangers, you have friends, and you have customers. And I call them leads. I think that makes the most sense for my business, but you can find the word that resonates with you. And I have a system based on my brand that allows me to find leads find new people nurture those leads right both at scale and in individual relationships and then make sales to them and over time because I know what I'm trying to create with my brand I have a very robust set of offers that sell to my friends, my leads, in a way that meets them where they're at, helps me deliver value that's in my zone of genius, and helps me create the income that I want.
[21:58] And all of that is possible for you. It really is. And I hope that you take all of this information and you understand that you have to slow down, you have to do this deep goal setting, vision boarding, meditation to figure out what you really want and then you can apply it to your business and it's really easy to tweak as you go because you have this overarching brand vision, you have the strategy for your business.
[22:29] So I hope this was helpful. I would love to continue talking more about how to set goals for your brand and how to use your brand vision in the actual work that you're doing every single day. So send me a message if you'd like to chat more. If you would like to work with me either in the rebrand experience or as a creative partner, I have availability for both. So send me a message and we'll get started. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you next time. We hope you enjoyed listening to Aesthetically Speaking. If you want to support the podcast, please leave us a nice review or connect with us on Instagram at Rebecca Peterson Studio.
[23:09] Music.
