BusinessHome Decor
Our Leave it To Beaver Kitchen
I’m an old soul. I’m the one who kept all my grandmother’s furniture not because I was attached to her memory (although, I’ll admit that’s part of it) but because it...
BRAND INTENIONALLY
BUSINESS
GET CLEAR IN YOUR BRAND AND CREATE LIFELONG CUSTOMERS
/ 01
BusinessMindset
The Problem with Meetings
I remember when I first graduated college and went into a job that had meetings, I felt like I was on top of the world. Not because these meetings were insightful or really had any purpose at...
Brand StrategyBusiness
What is a Brand Strategist?
How do you build the brand of your dreams when you’re not entirely sure how to get there? That’s where a brand strategist comes in. Think of me as a coach for your marketing (and...
Business
How to grow your following
As a brand strategist, it’s the number one question I get around social media. “How do I grow my following?” and the answer is never what people want to hear, because it’s...
Brand Strategy
Get Testimonials For Your Brand
Social proof, it’s the thing we as humans need in order to build trust with anything. A new person in your community, an animal, and of course, a new brand. We want to know that it works,...
Brand Strategy
How To Write a Customer Profile
If you’re selling to everyone, you’re already losing. Sounds counter-intuitive doesn’t it? Shouldn’t you want to sell to as many people as possible? Shouldn’t your...
Brand StrategyBusiness
Give It Away: Building Recognition With Freebies
There is one debate that I have again and again with brand owners and it’s the concept of freebies. There is a fear when it comes to offering something for free. That it lessens the value...
BusinessWebsite
Your About Page Isn’t About You
I have yet to meet a business owner who enjoyed creating their about page. Or for that matter have found a lot of value in their about page. And that’s usually because they’re making it about...
BusinessSocial Media
What Social Media Platforms Are Best For your Brand?
The ever growing to-do list, the new social platform that launched last week that you have to be on, taking care of the family, cleaning the house, finding an opening to see your best friend and...
Mindset
Being Intentional with your time: Balancing All The To-Dos
You could hear the desperation in her voice as she listed her to-do list to me. 2 businesses, kids, a husband, pets, and whatever counts for self-care all folding in on her, all reminding her...
Email Marketing
Creating Your Email Funnels
Email will forever be my favorite marketing tool. While social get’s a lot of buzz and creates the feeling that you’re making progress in your business, an email funnel is what will...
Business
Content Marketing Strategy That Converts
There’s a difference between just throwing content out there to have something posted and creating content that converts. The difference is value. Having a content marketing strategy that...
Business
What’s Your Why?
“When you know your why, your what becomes more impactful” – Michael Jr. What’s your why? Why did you start your business? Was it a lifelong passion you had since you were...
Brand Strategy
How To Know If It’s Time For A Rebrand
“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” –Seth Godin....
Business
Choosing Your Brand Colors
Choosing your brand colors isn’t as simple as grabbing your favorite color and building a logo off of it. Instead, put intention to the colors you choose and the emotional response that...
Mindset
What It Means To Have A Minimalist Business
“There’s nothing wrong with finding the right size and then focusing on being better. Small can be a long-term plan, not just a stepping-stone.” – Paul Jarvis What does it mean to...
Social Media
Get Seen on Social in 3 Ways
You started your business with the hopes of making a difference. To reach your audience and tell them what their life could be like. To solve a problem and ultimately make the world a better...
Brand Strategy
Brand Guidelines – Why You Need Them
“More what you’d call guidelines than actual rules” – Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl The thing that makes it easiest to run my business is creating...
Website
Magically Show up in a Google Search With SEO
I’m gonna come out and say it with the cold hard truth, because I care and want your business to flourish. Your website, marketing, social media, brand is NOT about you. I know, that cuts you...
Business
A User Experience Map
Ever been on a website that was impossible to navigate? Like no matter where you went on it you couldn’t find your answers. (I’m thinking any government website I’ve ever been...
Business
Identify Your Customer’s Pain Points
As a brand you’re here to solve problems. It doesn’t matter what you sell. You saw an area of the market that wasn’t working and you created something to fix that gap. So what wasn’t working that...
Website
Get To Know Your Audience With Analytics
She stared at me like deer in the headlights when I asked her to tell me the specifics about her audience. Not the ideal customer we had created together, but who was actually showing up and...
Business
Meet Your Audience Where They’re At
The brands I most want to work with I start by following on social media. After all, that’s where people go to get social isn’t it? Follow Your Dream Clients You follow their accounts so that you...
Business
Putting Your Customer Profile In Action
Her name is Meghan. She’s 32, lives in Seattle, and vacations in Vail, Colorado. She’s started her own sustainable clothing line which she designed all on her own. Meghan is married...
Business
Why You Need To Niche
When you need an electrician do you go to best buy and talk to the TV sales man? Or if you need a haircut do you talk to your nail technician? No. Why? Because they aren’t the expert. You...
Business
Reveal Yourself To Your Audience
How much does your audience know about you? Not just what you sell or where you’re located but about what makes you tick. Do they know your favorite show or how your team likes to get together...
Business
Take Your Customers On the Hero’s Journey
When I first started in marketing I thought that the goal was to simply get a product in front of an audience as often as possible. Why wouldn’t someone want to buy what I had to offer? I...
BusinessPhotography
Brand Photos – Why Your Business Needs them
Picture your favorite brands. What comes to mind? Is it the sweater you bought from them last fall? Was it the storefront you visit every few months? Or was it the photos that captured your eye...
BusinessSustainability
Show Off The Sustainable parts of your Sustainable Brand
When you choose to go into business not just to make money or serve your customers but to change the world, that’s something you should be talking about. Today, sustainability in business...
Business
How to Market Yourself In 30-Seconds
A one-liner, an elevator pitch, an ice breaker, whatever you call it, it’s the way to market yourself in 30-seconds or less. So who are you? I don’t mean that in an existential kind of way....
Business
4 steps to creating an email Sales funnel that Converts
Let me tell you a secret. The most powerful marketing tool in your business is your email list. More than just a way to announce sales, emails are marketing that your audience has agreed to....
Business
Clarity in Your Brand
2020 was an awakening, both for my business and my personal life. It was a shedding of skin, a baptism, a detox. What 2020 did for so many of us, good or bad, was to reveal where we were in our...
Business
Develop Your Brand’s Voice
Every piece of your brand should have consistency. This is true even in how you speak to your audience. As you continue to get clear on who you are and who you serve you’ll develop your...
Business
Planning Out Your 1st Quarter
Every great story starts with a plan. That plan might be as small as getting from here to here, but along the way a more developed plan arises from trial and error. Think of any great movie...
Business
How To Create A Launch Strategy
We all launch things throughout the year. Whether that’s a new product, a special event, or a campaign for a sale or just to share content. Launches are happening all the time and...
Business
How To Create Goals For Your Life and Business
We over-estimate what we think can accomplish in 1-year and under-estimate what we can accomplish in 5 years. Which is why we all need to learn how to create goals for our life and businesses....
Website
Optimize Your Photos For Your Website
I love working on my website. It’s an obsession I have. Or it’s that feeling of being a coder in an action movie where I’m saving the world on the back of a website. Not that I...
Business
How To Get Referrals
When it comes to your marketing plan this year, where do referrals lie? Are they even in your plan? Do you even know how to get referrals? Here’s the thing, we trust our network. When they say...
Business
The Best 2021 Planners To Get Organized For your Business
“Let’s get down to business…” (Insert dancing to Mulan song the rest of the day). But in all seriousness, this year is about getting down to business. It’s about...
Business
How to Give Back With Your Business
As a sustainable brand, you might feel like you’re already giving back to the world with your business. I mean, what’s better than a product that supports the environment and the...
Business
Find Rest in Your Business
In Christmas movies and holiday memories we think of December as being this time of rest. The world slows down after a crazy Summer of playing in the sun. Things slow down as we return back to...
Business
The Best Time To Have a Sale
You’ll notice that the end of the year is when everything goes on sale. Every single store has some sort of promotion starting around Black Friday and the prices stay low until Christmas or the...
Business
You Can’t Have It All
You can’t have it all. Even Beyonce doesn’t have it all.There is this idea flying around the internet that if you just did it right you could have it all. Be the perfect mother, run a...
Business
Your Business Isn’t About You
Your business has nothing to do with you. This my friends is the hardest idea to grasp when it comes to your business. You spend all your time thinking about and working on your business so...
Business
Practicing Thanksgiving Every day
Where the mind goes, energy flows. This is the first step to practicing Thanksgiving every day. This has been a constant theme in my life as of late. It could be because I’m in the middle...
Business
How To Create A Powerful Landing Page
In most cases, your website is the home to your customers. It’s there to answer all their burning questions like when are you open, what do you provide but most importantly how will you...
Business
Marketing Without Social Media
It’s been just over 10-years since social media came into our lives, and yet, it feels like we’ve never done business without it. As small business owners, running social media on top...
Business
Conscious Marketing For The Holidays
The holidays always feel like a hectic time in business. The combination of holiday sales, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday, creates a lot of competition and almost no way to...
Business
Quality Over Quantity
In the last few years, I’ve transitioned out of my super saver ways and leaned into making purchases of quality. I’ve grown tired of having things break after only owning them for a...
Business
Creating Lifelong Customers With Retention
It costs 5X more to get new customers than it does to build lifelong customers. Can we just sit on that for a moment? 5X more money, 5X more work and a lower conversion rate for someone who...
Mindset
Out with the New, In With the Old
New is always better. At least that’s what we’ve been told. But the more I think about the past, the way our grandparents would have approached life. I start to think that maybe...
Brand Strategy
Your Unique Value Proposition
Think about your favorite brands. The influencers you follow, the retail stores you can’t get enough of, the package free products you sit by the door and wait to arrive in the mail. Every brand...
Brand Strategy
4 C’s Of Marketing
Marketing is actually pretty simple. You’re just getting the word out about the product/service you have so that the world can see what a better place it is with you in their lives. The...
Mindset
Season of Change – What It Means For Your Business
I anticipate Fall, the season of change, all year long. The shorter days, the rest that comes after a hectic Summer, the sweaters that have been hidden in your closet since May. For me, the...
Business
The Company Of One
I read a lot of business books. Most of them come from the same point of view and all of them hone in on the keys to a successful business–Providing value. But The Company of One was different...
BusinessPodcast
The Social Dilemma – BRAND STRATEGIST PODCAST
There is no doubt that we have a social dilemma. Our obsession with our screens is affecting our community, driving depression rates and even distorting our bodies. Even now as I type this...
BusinessPodcast
Podcast 9: How I Save Time Creating Content
How is it that some days I feel like there are exactly 35.25 hours in the day while other days I’m pretty sure there were 5? They say time is linear, but I’m starting to wonder if...
Website
The Hero’s Journey on Your Website
Stories, they are the thing that teach us new lessons, share our history and connect us with a stranger. After thousands of years it’s the tool that has been passed down generation after...
PodcastWebsite
SEO Basics – THE BRAND STRATEGIST
Feeling like you’ll never get more customers to your website? Or maybe you just want to build the long game strategy to go along with your marketing budget. Whatever the reason, building...
BusinessPodcast
Podcast 7: Consistency In Your Brand
Growing your business is like growing a garden- stick with me here. You need consistency in taking care of your garden from when you water, to the quality of water to the environment you’re are...
Business
Creating a Cohesive Brand
Creating a cohesive brand is the key to transitioning from just any old brand to a successful brand. It sounds simple enough and yet when we show up online it’s easy to forget the...
BusinessPodcast
Podcast Episode 6: Instagram For Your Business
While we all know how to use Instagram to show off our latest vacation or the dinner you had at our favorite restaurant, utilizing Instagram for your business isn’t always the easiest thing...
Business
Running an Intentional Brand
Every year I choose a theme for the year to use to guide me in my decision making. I’ve noticed that without even thinking about it I often go back and forth between two main...
Business
Best Email Newsletter Services For Your Business
If you missed Episode 5 of my podcast, you’ll want to catch up on that here and see why you need a newsletter in your marketing strategy. To put it simply it’s a strong strategy to connect with...
BusinessPodcast
Podcast 5: Do you need an Email Newsletter?
I’m in a lot of Facebook Groups for business. I like to see the conversations around marketing that people are having and the questions the facing. I caught a thread that talked about how...
Business
Storytelling Marketing
Not every great story starts with “Once upon a time” or even “In a galaxy far far away“. But every great marketing strategy revolves around a story. It’s a tool...
BusinessPodcast
Podcast 4: Creating a Client Profile
If there was one thing I would make sure every brand has it’s a client profile or ideal customer avatar as some call it. It’s easy to think that we know who our perfect customer is...
BusinessCreative
Product Vs. Lifestyle Photography
The very best marketing starts with your brand’s photography. It’s the opening line into your brand. The “come hither” that pulls a customer in and asks them to stay...
Business
What makes the best email newsletters
She said to me “an email newsletter is too expensive. I’m just going to focus on growing my social following instead. I wouldn’t even know what to put an email newsletter...
Business
How To Use Archetypes In Business
Harry Potter was the hero, Merry + Pippin were the jesters, Yoda was the sage, Edward Cullen was the rebel. We’ve seen the archetypes of stories over and over again but have you ever thought how...
Business
Why Your Brand Needs a Brand Profile
If I were to hop on your website or your social media for 10 seconds would I know exactly who you are? Would I know what you sold and who you sold it to? Getting that clear in your brand is hard....
Business
Feel Confident in Your Brand Through Networking
I believe that who you know is 75% of success. It takes a village to do anything big. Hard work and skill play a part too, but getting in the door, finding the prospects, or having the word...
Business
Financial Confidence
I run the finances in our household. Not because my husband can’t, ironically he’s in finance, but because it gives me confidence in our spending and our life decisions. There is...
Mindset
You Are What’s Missing From This World – Your Voice Matters
We talked on the phone forever, as old best friends do. Sharing the stories of life, being stuck at home, and our dreams of the future. In a small, soft voice she shared with me her secret. She...
Business
Creating A Resume That Connects With These Tips
I don’t know about you, but I can feel the uncertainty floating in the air. It’s so thick I could almost grab it. It’s been this way since Quarantine started. Never quite sure what’s going to...
Business
3 Styles of Content – Which is yours?
Unlike getting dressed in the morning where you have more options than you know what to do with, choose a style of content for your brand is pretty simple. While there are few style choices, they...
Business
Why We Hide Success
I’ve been a frugal person for as long as I can remember. For me, money has always made me anxious. It’s probably an emotion passed down from my grandmother to my mother and then down to me. I was...
MindsetWellness
Why You Should Stop Saying “Should”
As women, so much of our identities are told to us. From an early age, we learn to be pretty. To talk, walk, act like a lady which includes not being bossy, overbearing or throwing tantrums. From...
Business
The Art of Small Business
There is a sense of wonder that occurs when you walk into a small shop for the first time and breathe in the smell of freshly poured candles and see little trinkets that bring a smile to your...
Business
How to Look Your Best on Zoom Part 2
You know that hat you wear that makes you feel better than Beyonce? Or the shirt you wear whenever you have a big meeting you need to land? Or perhaps is those shoes that make you feel sexy as...
Business
Look Your Best In Your Zoom Meeting Part 1
We've all been there before. Sitting at our desk in the middle of meeting and noticing ourselves on screening thinking "is that really what I look like?" Surely, I'm not that pale. With these...
Mindset
Courage in the age of Coronavirus
For Christmas, I asked for a new devotional. As a recovering evangelical I crave the spirituality of my childhood without the need for certainty that came with it. I missed the community and the...
Email Marketing
Email Marketing Case Study: TOMS
It’s no secret that I love TOMS. Obsessed might be the more accurate word, but I digress. I not only Love TOMS shoes, their one-for-one model, and their travel stories but I love the brand...
Business
Your Ideal Customer (With Download!)
Remember when you used to print out a map before you drove somewhere? Mapquest was my jam in High School. Or even before that when you would use a fold-out map or one of those crazy huge books...
Website
Key Elements to a Great Website
In a recent post, I broke down the two best places to build your website. The next step is actually creating the website. Having a background in graphic design and website design this has made...
Website
Where To Build Your Website
My first ever website was for the business I started in High School. A clothing line that donated all the proceeds to charities in Africa. It wasn’t a sustainable business model but I was 16. I...
Business
4 Podcasts To Change Your Business
I have a morning routine that doesn’t fail. Waking up at 5:30-6:00 am every day (weekends mostly included) to send out emails, write in my journal, enjoy a cup of tea by the fire and catch up on...
Business
Creating Your Content Calendar
I’ve had a plan since I was born. Okay, maybe not that early. But I started planning early on. I was the girl who planned my birthday parties and planned out my life course in detail (even when I...
Business
Katie Leigh Reads: Quiet
What would the world look like if we were encouraged to be left alone? To no longer work in open floor plans. To work from home everyday or for at least a few hours a week and to have time to...
Mindset
When Is Enough Enough?
When I was a little girl, I dreamt of what my life would look like when I got older. Having my own place to live, marrying the man of my dreams, pursuing art and social justice, becoming...
Social MediaWellness
Social Media Detox
Depression, anxiety and an extreme comparison problem are running amuck in our society. Maybe it’s the growing cities and close spaces to live in, or maybe it’s the fact that your...
Mindset
Daily Affirmations
The trending #MantraMonday is growing by the day; even if it isn’t Monday. It’s an idea that a beautiful phrase said over and over again will somehow change us. And in some ways it does. There is...
Business
One Size Never Fits All
When I was growing up the Popcorn shirt was the shirt of the decade. A shirt that looked like it could fit a doll on the hanger but stretched to fit any person. It came in a shiny assortment of...
Social Media
Using the Advertising Space in Facebook Cover Photos
Yesterday I sat and stared at my Facebook business page wondering why it wasn’t connecting with me. I recognize that the disconnect isn’t the top reason for my lower engagement,...
Social Media
Posting The Same Image Multiple Places
If there’s one thing we don’t have enough of we’d say it’s time. Our to-do lists are long, our dreams are big and time is limited. There always has to be a creative...
Social Media
Scheduling Your Instagram Posts
There are so many different ways to approach Instagram it’s a little overwhelming. As I’m struggling to find what works for my Instagram I’ve learned a lot about how others are...
Business
Poser Syndrome + The Cure!
We all feel it. It doesn’t matter what age you are or what gender or race you are if you are human then you’ve felt like a poser at some point in your life. It comes with the...
Mindset
Finding The Balance
I’m sitting on a park bench taking a break from a long day of work. I can feel the cold air blow against one cheek, and the hot Colorado sun kisses the other, and all over a sudden, I...
Social Media
Let’s Talk About Engagement
No, I’m not asking you to marry me, though that’s sweet you thought that. I’m talking about that good old social engagement you’ve been avoiding on your Instagram,...
Social Media
Tell Your Story With Instagram Stories
I have been living on Instagram lately. If you could build a stylized Teepee, as you see in every cute Instagram children’s room, and set up shop on Instagram I would be there; sipping my...
Social Media
Analyzing your Instagram with SquareLovin and Insights
I used to think that just posting on social media was enough. I created some content, and I shared it. That should build my following and grow my business, right? I’m sorry to say,...
Social Media
The Power Of Storytelling On Social Media
Let’s be real, marketing is hard. There’s really nothing about it that’s easy. It takes a lot of thought, a lot of effort and works best when you plan ahead. When you think of...
Social Media
Minimalism in Social Media, Increase Your Creativity
Tiny houses, limited clothing in your closet, traveling the globe full-time, and giving away as much as you can. These are the things you hear the most often about Minimalism. And while these are...