Map Out Your Life for 2017!

A few weeks ago, I get this message from my friend Rachel Luna..

She wanted some girly business time because she literally lives 15 minutes from me in Oceanside.. and we wanted to decompress after the holiday.

 (Side note:  Check out her site, I designed it!  And its the example I use in Launch Your Brand! So you too can design a site like it!)

First, we thought Mani-pedi's, then we thought SUSHI, then we thought why don't we do life maps?!

I thought about all the years I've done life maps and the process I have gone through. The most impactful life map I've ever done came to me from my friend Citt Williams.

We were living in Tokyo in 2009 at the time and she had me do this exercise. (She was a badass documentarian that did documentaries about climate change for the United Nations)

She said "go through this Excel spreadsheet and find the things that are MANDATORY and HIGH, write a very specific GOAL in relationship to the ones you've scored the highest with."

I had put on the map that I wanted to make $5,555 a month, and literally within 24 hours, I got a job that brought my monthly income to exactly that! I drew a dog with a spot over her eye that I wanted to adopt, and within 3 months I had a boyfriend with a dog with a spot over her eye. I wrote the kind of bedroom furniture I wanted for my fantasy bedroom and within 1 month I had that. I wrote that I wanted a website that would change the face of design and branding. And whelp, I'm sort of known for that now?!

Here is the Spreadsheet for you to use: 

You take a piece of paper and split it into 4 quadrants one for each section of the map, and add a visual to each one that represents the goal.

I did mine in Photoshop Mix for Ipad (but I don't recommend this unless you have Adobe Creative Cloud, and the Ipad Pencil...and even then it's sort of tricky) the EASIEST way to do this is either draw out little icons or cut them out of magazines.

Or you can get on Pinterest and Print out images you find to add to the board. Remember this is for your personal use! (For business design this is NOT okay for personal use this is fine)

Then you post your map next to your bed or in your bathroom so you see it everyday and it reminds you of your vision. The images help with reminding you of the goal without you having to read!

I really hope you enjoy this exercise and once you do it please post your life map in the comments! I want to see what your goals are for this year.

Thanks to Rachel for filming half this video!

(Also note this before my lashes came off. Now that I look at them they do look sort of all over the place! Maybe this is a blessing!)

My Lifemap for 2017:

• Spend 6 months of year traveling in Europe, UK and Australia.
• Develop a "For Purpose" organization that gives to worthwhile causes such as Habitat for Humanity and foster care programs
• Consistently bring in $97,979 a month
• Embrace divine feminine energy through spirituality
• Create a pinup body that I love. (I superimposed my head on Marilyn's bod)
• Get more speaking engagements that make an impact.... maybe TED? But at least 3 workshops a year!
• Dance 3-5x a week
• Have enjoyable dinner parties with new friends
• Hire a team of rockstars to support my business: social media content dev, project manager, assistant

And find my Jason Schwartzman - funny, sweet, motivated, successful, (age appropriate 30-42) who loves me a tiny bit more and wants to start a family asap!

Tell me in the comments below what your goals are for 2017!  

And if you create an awesome life map, post below and I'll give you encouragement!

How to Create Color Schemes & Get Inspiration from Magazine Covers

Last week,  I went to a cabin in Whistler BC this last week to work and play! One of my amazing design students, Cindy, let me stay in her cabin!  (Ahem, Brag Alert:  it was more like a: A 3 story mansion with hot tub!!!) to write and work on updating the Launch Your Brand Program (to be released this week)  Keep your eyes peeled for tons of fun goodies coming your way this week!

Can I get a high five!?  Nothing like getting biz done, in style!

I seriously have the best relationships with my students... we really do become branding besties! Thank you again, Cindy!!!! 

How to Find Color Inspiration to Use in Your Brand

I found an issue of Cosmo UK Edition and fell in love with the color scheme.  So I bought the magazine to see what I could grab from it, decided to throw together a quick tutorial for you!

I thought it would be a PERFECT opportunity to show you how to get inspired by colors (and headlines for blog entries or lead magnets) you see in the world and then use them for your business!

First I take you through the steps of finding inspiration, then you photograph the inspiration with your phone, or with a scanner and you pull this into Adobe Color to pull a color scheme.  It's quite awesome to start to find color schemes in the world and be able to use them.

Now, you want to be careful here not to create brand confusion, I am definitely not recommending stealing the brand colors of a competitor, creating a brand or website that looks like theirs and confusing the crap out of everyone.  That would be wrong.  

But you can find the color scheme of a beautiful photograph you find, a magazine cover, a photo you take, stock images or illustrations you find, etc.  Just make sure they aren't brand color combinations.  This cover of Cosmo did not use their brand colors.  

Remember color + fonts + image style do make up the feel of a brand, so it also is related to a combination of those things for it to really create confusion.  If you don't use the exact combination and make things VERY contrasted (very different), then you'll be fine!

In the book, "Stealing like an artist" By Austin Kleon (which is a really great book by the way) mentions in the book about "remixing" and the idea here is to take an idea already out in the world and make it better.  

You want your own unique perspective, and you want to mix 2 + things to make something new, instead of stealing ALL of the things from one source.  

Stealing from one source is plagiarism, stealing from multiple is research! - Wilson Mizner

Take Action!

Create a unique color scheme from something you find on Pinterest, or out in the world, and use Adobe Color to create a color scheme following the video tutorial from above.  Then post a screen shot of this color scheme and explain what you'd be using it for in the Free Facebook Community!

Did you love this lesson?  

"How to Get What You Want From a Designer"

A few days ago, we covered the beginning of the story of how I launched Gabrielle Carsala's brand "Badass Bliss," this last month, who was a super amaze-balls dream client that I worked with over the past few months.   If you missed it, part one is here.

How to get what you want from a designer...

Design clients usually fall into 3 categories: the ones that know EXACTLY what they want (the "smarty-pants"), the ones that have NO FLIPPING IDEA, and the dream client (which Gabrielle falls into, and we'll get into that in a minute).

The "smarty-pants" and the "no-flipping-idea" category of clients can create major problems for the designer. The first kind will show up with the fun stuff done, colors and fonts picked out, look at someone else's website and say I WANT THAT...before they even meet with a designer or have a proper brand strategy.  

These clients come to a designer almost as an art director with a "do this, do that" approach... without any real knowledge of why certain fonts and colors, style might not work...or why copycatting someone else's design style might not be the best idea.  Their inflexibility generally gets them what they want, but is that really going to be the best thing?

This approach is sort of putting the cart before the horse, and not always the best way to get a best brand identity, nor one that feels like you (especially if they are copycatting someone else.)   

What the "smarty-pants" client needs is someone to get to know them, understand their vision, their industry, and create a vision WITH them, and talk them out of all their bad ideas.

Then there is the second group of design clients, who don't know what they want at all, and they expect the designer to be a mindreader. They can't find anything they like because they just don't know.  They say things like "I don't know-- just make it pop!" 

A good designer, will take them through a guided process to help them figure out what they want, and justify to them why certain decisions should be made regarding things on trend, industry, and communication of adjectives that their ideal clients will resonate with.

A dream client, like Gabrielle, (falls into neither of these categories and the has best attributes of both) had an idea of how she wanted her brand to "feel", but flowed through the process with me to figure out what was going to work, with my lead.

A good way to not fall into the previous two traps, is to have a clear idea of how you want your brand to "feel" let your designer guide you through a process with mood boards so that you both can get on the same page.  Mood boards become a necessary (and fun) part of the process!  This is because it's a way to communicate with your designer visually, and your designer visually with you.

WHY COMMUNICATING VERBALLY WITH A DESIGNER, DOESN'T WORK...

The problem with communicating verbally versus visually with a designer, is that for example, the definition or idea of luxury to a designer might be different than your idea of luxury (which might be traditional, classic, and the designers might be modern.) Hence why mood boards are SO important, so that you are communicating to each other with visual examples instead of verbal ones.

Before getting any photography done, designing a logo, or picking out colors, there is a very systematic process you should follow...

Before you do any design, these must be decided:

1. Concept - What is the message you are communicating for this parent brand (this many times turns into the name of a biz or a tagline)
2. Theme - What possible visual themes could support that message (designer will generally come up with some, and you should too with designer guidance)
3. Mood Boards - They refine your ideas in a visual way.  Seeing this can help you eliminate ideas before you invest in a designer, or any time designing anything.

To have a super strong brand you NEED to have a strong concept (message) and a variety of visual options via mood boards (visual theme) to decide the best route to go.  

Concept (The Message) : Badass Bliss

Theme Ideas:  Badass Dorothy (The Wizard of Oz), Badass Lifestyle, Badass Luxury, Badass Vintage Neon Dorothy

Mood Board #1: Badass Dorothy from Wizard of Oz

Notice Dorothy with the machine guns, spikes, etc.  The badass part is being communicated with those items.  The bliss part is the end of the yellow brick road.  Every single image either says Dorothy or Badass.

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https://www.pinterest.com/youcanbrand/dorthy-her-bad-ass-life/

Mood Board #2: Badass Vintage Neon Dorothy

Same philosophy as above, but this one integrates vintage and neon elements for a different spin on the badass element!

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https://www.pinterest.com/youcanbrand/vintage-neon-dorthy/

Mood Board #3: Badass Lifestyle: (THE CHOSEN ONE)

This one was the chosen concept because it was most closely aligned with the realistic vision that Gabrielle had for her clients, which was to live their best lives through having fun, being confident, adventurous, stylish, care-free, and being able to get over shit and get things done!  So girlfriends, sparkles, cotton candy, private jets, all became the inspiration for the photography shoot.

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Now what do we do with these mood boards to use for the brand photography.....  Whelp, that's in the next part of this series coming next week!

In the comments below, share which of the three client categories you fall into, and what your biggest take-away from this blog entry was!

Extra HELPFUL CRITERIA FOR FINDING A DESIGNER:  When trying to find a designer-- find one that has a distinct branding process, go through that process with them, and be as flexible as possible. It's a team effort, you need to be guided out of your bad ideas and into the best version of your vision.  Also keep in mind, a designer will NEVER hit it right the first time, and sometimes it takes quite a few times before you are speaking the same language, so be patient. I call this "Failing Fast!" -- gotta get to the bad ideas first before the good ones emerge.  Same thing for those who are DIY'ing their brand.

...If you want to start design your brand, check out:

Live Your Brand. Live Your Bliss.

Part 1 -- It's summertime. You'll never guess what I've been up to....

Trying to find my bliss while living my brand! 

Dammit..."Finding my bliss" ....That sounds so flipping woo woo!!!!  But I literally cannot find better words to describe what is happening right now.

OH WELL! Here we go.....

So way back during my first launch of my Launch your Brand Program  I ended up having success that I had never experienced before.  I sold out two programs, and I had more money in my bank account than I have ever had before.

I had been working for THREE years to achieve this and finally I had launched. My dream appeared to have come true, but then I looked around and realized. "NOW WHAT?!"  I had achieved my financial and professional goals, but my personal life was sort of in shambles....

• I was still living with my mom (we were both recovering from breakups)

• I was living in a city that wasn't inspiring me the way I wanted to be inspired

• My dating life sucked big time

• I wasn't achieving my health goals.

• I wasn't seeing friends very often

So in one way I was feeling happy and grateful for my successes, in another way I was feeling completely miserable and incomplete.

So being the adventurer that I am, I thought to myself,  well I just need to travel more.  If I would travel more that would make me happy.  So I started planning trips.  My first big trip of the summer was to do a one month sublet in Portland, Oregon, which is basically my other home.  I lived there for a decade, two years ago, and go back often because all of my college friends and friends from my 20's live there.

Fast forward to now, in the last month, all the above issues have been addressed and figured out, and I'm feeling like I'm on the path to some serious bliss making!

I finally feel some sort of content satisfaction.  I feel inspired.  I feel my best work is about ready to be born.

And I did this by making a commitment to myself to start "living my brand."  I would think... "What would pinup Jenna do?"  or better yet "What would Amelia Earhart do?" all of my problems started instantly solving themselves.  

I will show you how I did this.

What Would Amelia Do?!

WWAD!? Amelia Earhart.  That vivacious, strong independent, thought leader.... That fantastical superwoman!!!!

She was the inspiration for my brand, an adventurer like myself.  She was the groundbreaking first woman pilot to fly across the Atlantic by herself. She was a professor and a woman's right activist.  (Both things that I am too!)

She was even an associate editor at Cosmopolitan magazine.  (Amazeballs!)

This girl was living her bliss and breaking ground doing so.  She fell in love with something she was passionate about, and it lead to her getting paid a lot of money to do it.  She even saved up $1,000 to learn how to fly (which was an insane amount of money at the time.)  

She had the passion, and she had the drive. She wanted to influence people and be a good influence for women.  This is why I love Amelia.  

Her first attempt at the 1937 world flight was on my birthday.  That bad-ass bitch is my hero!!!

People followed Amelia because she went into the unknown, she embraced adventure, she lived a life that wasn't common.

If we could learn anything from Amelia, It could be that the more interesting, inspiring, passionate and real you are, the more likely it would be for people to want to follow you.  A lot of people followed her then, and people are still fascinated with her today.  We could say she has a pretty successful brand for being a dead lady, don't ya think!?

When you think about your brand, Do you want to just be known for selling shit on etsy, or doing something you only sort of care about....  

OR

do you want to be.....legend.....(wait for it).... dary???

Don't just be outside the box, be out of this world!

Over the next five days, you will be learning 10 Lessons, how to "live your brand" and "find your bliss" by following the lessons I learned on a crazy road trip I took this summer and my attempt to be a little bit more "on brand."  The process is simple, it requires some introspection, some adventure, and it requires to to be okay with thinking differently than the status quo.

From my personal philosophy, living your personal brand is living your dream, creating the life that you want with your passions and interests, to in turn, inspire others to do the same for themselves.  

When you live your life by example for your ideal client -- you become more interesting. When people remember you, they feel like they know you, and therefore want to do business with you. 

My Aha-- You need to live your bliss to become infectious!

I thought to myself --- How can I inspire and invigorate others others, by becoming my sexiest pinup, most well-balanced, most interesting, most adventurous, hysterical, bliss-living version of myself?

But even more importantly, how can I do this for myself....? for my happiness...? and to quench my insatiable curiosity?

How do I become legend.....(wait for it)....dary.....?

Lesson #1 -  Travel with Almost Complete Strangers to Make Things More Interesting 

So the adventure begins........My summer road trip started with plans to leave sunny San Diego for the summer and drive up the coast on an adventure with some "Perfect Strangers" I had met on the internet.  

Yes this was SORT of like an episode of the 80's tv show "Perfect Strangers."  We did meet some long lost cousins along the way, and we were getting to know each other while living together for a week.... (As a side note, I do wish Balki Bartakumus would have come on the trip, he would have been so fun! I totally would have done the dance of joy with him!)

Who would be crazy enough to travel for 18 hours with, not one, count them two strangers?!  

One of my travel companions was a b-school mate, and the other a student of my Launch Your Brand program. Yep, I totally become friends with my students!!!

Now traveling with strangers is not something I can recommend for just anyone, you must be game for the unknown.  You must be ready to get to know a WHOLE lot about people in a very short period of time.

It's sort of like a marathon reading of someone's diary, you see the raw parts of someone's existence when you've shared crazy stories. You live and breathe with these people as though they are family, or friends you've known forever, and in reality, you are on what is like a very long weird date. (You eat together, sometimes snooze in the same space together, share family and friends together, and you don't know each other...) It's a TRIP!  

Pun totally intended.

What comes out of the end of it is hopefully, some great friendships, some great memories, and some blog worthy moments!  All of these things achieved. But let's start at the beginning.

The fabulous Miss Nicole Marietta

First Mate

Nicole Marietta (Launch Your Brand Graduate / Fellow B-Schooler), lives in San Francisco...  We had never met before but she was my online student, and a killer one at that. She's a copywriter and newly developed her passions and skills for becoming a professional designer through my program....Her websites are Write Brave and Nicole Marietta both are which she developed and became a professional designer from doing my LYB Program.  Her design site to be released soon. (FYI If you like her sites, she's accepting new clients!)

Second Mate

Miss Angelica, (Fellow B-Schooler and LYB Blog Reader) who is a 21 year old entrepreneurial prodigy.

The Trip Itinerary

The goal was to hit up the scenic route on Highway 1,  hit Santa Barbara,  San Francisco, and make it up to Portland, Oregon where I had a sublet to spend the month of July.  Angelica gets picked up in Santa Barbara.  Nicole gets picked up in SF...and the adventure really begins.

Lesson 2. Get a bigger rental car to fit your stripper pole.

It was the first day of the trip, I got a economy rental car that was entirely too small to fit a month worth of my things, and two other people with their things.  But the worst part about this situation was terribly frustrated that my stripper pole did not fit in the trunk.

In case you didn't know,  (I'm not a traveling stripper) I am however an avid pole dancer for exercise and cannot get enough of it!  Having my stripper pole was really important to me, because I need to dance.  It's my form of self expression, exercise and stress relief.  I almost didn't pack clothes and decided to just buy clothes as I traveled, I wanted to bring that pole so badly!

The suitcase I had packed was too big.  I had to dump the whole thing out and start over again.... I literally had to shove everything into a small suitcase.  Even Picasso (my boston terrier puppy) was TOO big for his carrier. 

Trying to put him in his carrier was like trying to get a cat into a sink full of water!  

I had my huge Imac desktop computer, my laptop, my Canon 7d, and was ready to get the heck out of town.  I was VERY sad to not get to bring my pole, I had all these plans to set it up in random places and dance all over the West Coast, while listening to Lana Del Rey's song called West Coast...

The lesson learned here is Amelia Earhart would have rented a bigger car, cause nothing would have gotten in the way of her dancing dreams.  In any case, I through my pouty face out the window. I got on the road and the adventure began!!!!!

Click this Link To Go to "Live Your Brand. Live Your Bliss." - Part 2" 

Part 5 - How I launched my brand "The Finale"

It's here!  The moment you have been waiting for... I reveal all my secrets to my very first ever launch and how I made it a success!  You'll learn resources of my photographer, how I promoted it and all the kismet things that happened along the way.  You'll see actual stats of how this grossed 20k in a very short period of time!  Hooray... Let's do this!

If you missed any of the first four parts of this series, there are a list of links to Part 1 - 5 at the bottom of this blog entry.

So we are the part in the story where I had finally come up with some mood boards, that helped me visualize what I wanted for my brand, without having to design anything or hire anyone. They were going to serve as major inspiration for the concept and theme of my brand, as you saw examples in the previous posts.

All these quotes from Amelia Earhart were popping around me about women and entrepreneurship and it was becoming very clear that vintage aviation needed to be the theme, and the pinup part needed to come out because of my burlesque dancing past!  I felt like Miss Amelia was calling to me!

The mood boards became an instrumental role in how I would design the brand identity, and how I would guide the amazing photographer to coming up with the shots I wanted.  

For example, I knew that I would want it to look as if I was writing something in a photo, I had on my list of poses to get me holding a marker so it looked as if I just drew the logo.  This is my membership site....had I not had the mood boards or had a clear vision, I wouldn't be able to do things like this:

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Pretty cool right!?  Everything was done with intention!

Before I met with the photographer though, I needed to get him on the same page.  I chose him because he is a painter on top of being a Boudoir photographer.   He's also the husband of the burlesque teacher at my pole studio!

Based on looking at his work, I knew that he could edit me to make me look like an airbrush painting!  He could make me look like a fantasy!!  By the way, it's taking every ounce of courage for me to give you his name and his website because it is in my ego's best interest to hoard him and keep his work my little secret... but you know what, I want him to be successful and I want you to be successful.  I feel no fear of competition, or jealousy of seeing other people be successful.  I just want to love and influence, and by sharing this, I am showing you that I love you and want to influence you!  

When it comes to developing a personal brand identity, no one can be exactly like me, or exactly like you ---and give the world all we have to offer in our own unique way, so in that sense there is no competition and there is no problem in sharing resources!

So here's where the amazing things started to happen, once the photographer was booked and the mood boards had set the scene.  I needed to go costume shopping.  I of course, waited until the very LAST moment and literally had 2 hours the day before the shoot to get a 1920's style aviation helmet, and piece together all costumes including a flight attendant costume.

I took my mom with me to find these items and we only went to 2 stores.  The first was a Steam Punk themed store, where I knew we could find some amazing Goggles to use on myself and on my puppy!!

Now here's where things get kismet, we had no problems finding the goggles, but the helmet was something I was looking for, but not likely going to find... not a lot of stores have 1920's aviation helmets just lying around.  But I brought my mom with me (she's a little sleuth), and the lady at the store said that they didn't have anything like that.  

After about 30 minutes, my mom spotted it on a bottom shelf, dusty, old and like it hadn't seen the light of day in years... It was totally fate that we found this amazing REAL vintage helmet from the Amelia Earhart era...and it cost me a whopping $200 but was worth every penny for the authenticity of it all.  I wanted to do things right!  We were thrilled and shocked and I kept thinking "Yep, on the right path!!!"

The next thing I needed to find was a flight attendant costume, (shown way up above in this blog entry), that was the second outfit I needed.  I walked into this total Halloween costume in a bag type of a store and asked the clerk if he had a sexy flight attendant costume.  He said "No we don't"

Then I said "I don't believe you!" in a sort of flirty and demanding way...  So I went and asked his wife.... And she said, yes we have one left.  IT was exactly my style and my size.  What are the chances!????  Thank goodness that I followed my intuition.  

Lesson learned here, if you don't get the answer you know is truth..... keep asking!

So the photo shoot happened, with $200 worth of hair and makeup. Scott, the photographer, is unbelievably fun and professional.  We drank champagne, I danced around and posed like a free-spirited pinup.  He did a rush to get me my images and he over delivered.  With the first rounds of images he had superimposed me on the plane, I asked him -- why are these plane images so blurry / pixelly... And he said he was having a hard time finding high resolution pictures of AMELIA EARHART's PLANE!!!  I did not ask him to do this, he is such an authentic and amazing artist, that he knew that I was trying to channel Amelia and that he wanted this to be authentic too!  This sort of thoughtfulness and commitment is what makes things interesting and authentic.  I couldn't have been more thrilled.  I had no idea he was going to superimpose me on top of her actual plane.

He got me the images early, he was a dream to work with.  Then the work of executing the brand began by implementing everything into a web design via Squarespace.  I did all of this.  It was amazing to see my vision come to life.  The poses I had found, the concept and theme exactly how I imagined it.  I developed my brand colors off the imagery used.

---

The Day of the Launch

It was two days before my 34th birthday.  Happy Birthday to me!   I had friends in town that were blowing up my phone for me to come hang out to celebrate my birthday, ( I was repeatedly saying "Do you not realize that I'm about ready to launch the biggest thing of my career!??! Who has time for birthdays!?!?!? Even if it was my own." ) They understood but kept calling every hour to see if I was done yet.

I was feverishly doing all the things you do before you launch.  Testing out bugs, working on terms of service, implementing testimonials.  I worked for 20 hours straight, had 2 hours of sleep to wake up and work for another 10 hours before I launched around 7pm on March 15, 2014. There was nothing more thrilling that pushing that button and thinking "HOLY SNIKEYS, I'm finished."  I was exhausted and elated.

Three years in the making, ups and downs.  How many theories I tested, how many classes I had taught to learn how to take someone who has never designed before and turn them into a designing ninja...along with a thorough understanding of how to tap into an ideal targets mind!  Finally the THING THING WAS OUT OF MY HEAD..... hallafreakingluyah!!!!!!!!

First step -- Announce it to all the facebook groups I belong to....  I belong to Ali Brown's Elevate,  Marie Forleo's B-School,  The 30 Day List Building, Hera Hub (The Women's Co-Working Center) I belong to and suddenly the likes and comments started coming in....

477 Likes, and 194 comments... this was a similar reaction to most boards that I posted it in, while this looks minimal in terms of numbers or fairly good... The amount of traffic I got was

I got almost 6,000 views to my website over the following 2 weeks, 9k page views.

As the views went up, the subscriptions jumped through the roof and my list to grow from 200 subscribers to about 800.

I grossed over 20k in new revenues just from the programs, not even talking about all of the new graphic design business that was brought in (I even got a celebrity client through it), nor considering my other sources of income, it took me into six figures territory.... YAY!!!

All of this was done without a cent spent on advertising, or webinars.  What I had invested in was amazing programs like Elevate, B-School and Hera Hub.  I had networked by providing valuable services for free to these groups.  I gave away some scholarships.  I invested in really important things like a good microphone for videos, and software to execute everything.  The photographer, costumes, make up were essential.   Designing many iterations and failing at the design 3 times was ALSO essential to getting me to where I am now.  There is NO way I could have hit this on the first try.  So you shouldn't put that sort of pressure on yourself.

No matter what you do make sure your clothes look good, your hair and make up look professional and that you hire a photographer that has a magic spark of bringing out your story!

Step 2: Provide a ton of valuable content and come from a place of wanting to give back and help others succeed

This is why I'm being so transparent with all of this?  Because I want you to experience success with your business too!  I have nothing to hide and everything to gain by sharing my secrets.  I make a huge effort to go into these Facebook groups and give as much free advice and resources as possible.

I want you to see what is possible for yourself, when you have a truly effective and visually interesting brand identity.   SO DO NOT GIVE UP!!!  It might take you quite some time to develop your signature program, or to even come up with an idea for your brand, and that's okay, if you have something brilliant in your mind, get it out and share it with the world.   It's not a race, there is no one else there like you, so you don't need to worry about someone else doing it first.  If anything, other people doing something similar means there is a market for it!

Just make sure it looks decent when you get it out into the world.  Go for making an impact!  Make sure that it tells a memorable story, and try to do something that you haven't seen before.  (Remember the story about me almost copycatting Marie in the beginning)

Make sure that it comes out in a fairly impressive package. There are exceptions to this rule. There are some people who can just have a plain website and the content is so smashing that they'll make it a success with their networking powers.  The key here is clean simple design, and programs developed of what people really need. It's when the content gets lost in a busy muddled, dated, boring or off-putting design that there are real problems.  Simple is always key! 

Step 3 - Get out from behind your desk and start networking -- GO TO CONFERENCES

Two days after my launch, I went to Ali Brown's Elevate live event.  As I was making the two hour drive up from Oceanside, CA to Los Angeles, I had this vision of people seeing my brand on the big screen.  I just knew that people were going to be talking about it!  

Within the first 30 minutes James Roche (Ali's top program teacher) had come over to my lunch table.  I had post cards printed with my branding on them and Mimi Quick (a friend and fellow Elevate member said) at the table said "GIVE HIM YOUR POSTCARD!!" because she was excited about the brand.  He took that post card and within the first hour of me being there, after we had come back for lunch.  I had gotten up to give a testimonial for the Elevate program, and Ali said "Are you the pinup girl on the plane!?"  and I said yes!!!  James had already given the tech people my post card and they put it up on the big screen to talk about how effective my brand identity was!!!!  

They also had commented on how the deliverable of what the clients got being so clearly spelled out that you literally understand what I do, how I am different, and what they get in a specific period of time!  This is integral for making sales because you only have about 10 seconds to sell people who have never heard of you or your company before.

So that's it... brand was launched. The opportunities have been overwhelming and exciting and I feel like this is just the beginning.  The first program is done and the work has been brilliant.  More student work and testimonials to be posted in the next week.

If you would like to jump in on this fun ride I'm on, there are 2 seats left in the program that starts tomorrow June 2.  If you want in jump on it!!!  The next time I'm running this program is not for several months.

Check out the programs at the bottom of this page www.youcanbrand.com/launchyourbrand

In the comments below share your aha's or stories of your first launch!  What were your successes or nightmares!?  What struggles did you break through?

Miss anything from this series?  Here are the previous articles!

Part 5 - How I launched my brand "The Finale"  (You're here!)

Part 4 - Almost Time for the Launch! "A Hiatus"

Part 3 - How I launched my brand.... "The Good Stuff"

Part 2 - How I launched my brand... "The Concept"

Part 1 - How I launched my brand... "The Before"