Behind the Scenes of the Unbounded Potential Rebrand

Catherine A. Wood  0:00  

Hello, hello, and welcome back to the second episode of the podcast. I’m really excited to be here with you all today. And I just got back from the dog park. It’s super cold outside today here in Boston. And now I’m sitting in my office with Luna, who hopefully will not snore too loudly as I record this episode. And I have my favorite Voluspa candle lit which I coincidently just sent to our wedding photographer as a gift for being so amazing. And I’m wearing my favorite electric heating pad around my shoulders, which basically, I think everyone in our unbounded mastermind has at this point, because we literally almost all wear them to the goals. And I’m going to link to both of these products in the show notes today in case you’re interested in increasing your own cozy factor in your office. And today is a huge day for us in my world. And I’m really excited to share about it with you today on the podcast. By the time you will have listened to today’s episode, we will have unveiled our new website, our new rebrand, and our new strategic direction for the business. And it has been a massive, creative journey to get here. Honestly, I feel like I birthed a creative child. Yet it’s a bit more anticlimactic, right? Because it’s like when you launch a new website, you just press Publish, and voila, it’s not quite the same excitement. Not that I’ve experienced childbirth. But that’s another story. But anyway, I am really excited to take you behind the scenes of my business today and share a little bit more about my rebranding new website and new direction of my business. Because I think we don’t always hear about how people undertake a huge project like this. And this has been a, it’s been a long journey for me. i It’s been so long that I literally had to write down a little timeline to take some notes about when I hired who and at what point along the journey. And I totaled it up and in total, this project from start to finish as taken 17 months. Now, that’s not to say that when I started last August, so June of 2021, that what I intended to do at that point looked like what I ended up creating, it was so much bigger than I could have possibly envisioned in the beginning. But I think that’s oftentimes how creative projects work. You start with a vision. And then as you begin the creative process, your clarity and excitement for your project unfolds. And that’s certainly been my experience. And I’m really excited to share with you about this rebrand. And this new website because this is not my first rodeo with taking on big creative projects like this. I mean, I’ve never taken on one of this magnitude. And I’m going to share the the price tag of that at the end of the episode. But

what’s different is I tallied it up, and this will be my fifth website. And the last one was done with the same designer. They are amazing. But I had a really crappy experience multiple years ago with a web design team. I had found this web designer online, and she had completed the site of an online business owner who I admired and I loved her site. And so I ended up hiring her. And it was just not a fit. She was a poor communicator, she really lacked boundaries. And she didn’t follow through like she really had low integrity, which, for me, I’ve just come to realize is super important in business. And it was just a real horrendous experience. And I at the end I was so impatient to to bring the new website to life that I just settled for less than what I had hoped for. And I defaulted to her preferences to her desires to what she wanted at my own expense. And those are all examples of the unhealed empathic parts of myself which have been a huge part of my journey in business and a big part of what we’re going to chat about in our podcast here and this rebrand. This website has been then just a completely distinct experience for me, it’s not to say that we haven’t met hiccups and delays along the way we certainly have. But overall, it has been a magical experience. The experts that I’ve hired the designers, I’ve worked with the people I’ve partnered with, either all of them, I know and have been in pre existing relationships with, or they were direct referrals from people that I trust or work with. And it made a world of difference. I just felt exquisitely supported throughout this whole journey. I felt incredibly trusting of the people that I hired to support me. And it’s been just a really wonderful encouraging, validating experience for me to be supported. So well. And I work with a lot of heart centered entrepreneurs. And that is a huge journey, transitioning from hiring, support and not getting your needs met, to shifting into that mindset of being exquisitely supported, right, like what I mean is like the idea of attracting into your world, just aligned, values oriented partners, it just makes the a world of difference. And that has been my experience. And that’s what I want to chat with you all today about on this episode. So I’m going to share the behind the scenes of what this creative project has included for me, I’m going to share the timeline for the journey, who I hired, at what point along the way, I’m going to provide the names and websites of all of the contractors that I hired to support me with the rebrand in the show notes, so you can check them out. Because they’re all amazing. And I highly recommend all of them. I’m going to share some of the lessons learned along the way. And then at the end, I tallied up the price tag for what this rebrand and new website cost. And I’m going to share that because I think that transparency is really valuable in business. And I think for my first website, I paid like a couple 100 bucks, I think it was like 400 bucks for the first website. And this is just a far cry a far far cry from that. So with that, let’s jump in. And I let’s see if we back all the way up. When I started this creative project, I was most interested in owning my voice, I realized that I I was really lacking a skill set to write compelling copy in my business. And while I’ve always loved writing, the style of writing that I learned in college was really different than how I thought or what I felt like was lacking in my writing for my book but also for my website. So I ended up hiring a copywriter.

I chose her hire me for a day package. And she was amazing. I hired Alison Janda Brown, and she helped me write more clearly and more compellingly, for my business. It was incredibly useful. I think sometimes we hire consultants to to do Done For You services. But when I started, I was really interested in this done with you package because I wanted to learn how to write better, I really enjoy writing, and I wanted some clarity and some tips around how I couldn’t write more effectively. So we worked through some of my copy. I drafted the copy for a new opt in offer. And she helped me edit that and, and it was lovely. And that was literally a year ago last summer. That was from June to August of 2021. So that was kind of the beginning of their journey. And then later last fall, I realized that I wanted to update my opt in offer on my website. I had had this five day ecourse and a guide on my website is my opt in offer and I’ve had it there for years. And honestly I I’ve been pretty embarrassed by it for a while now. It didn’t feel like me. It didn’t feel like my voice. It didn’t feel like a accurate expression of who I am today and how I support clients and what I love to talk about just felt super outdated and I used to feel a little embarrassed when I’d see people download it on the site but it it was there I just kept it there because honestly, people downloaded it. And I always wondered kind of, you know, did they think I was boring? You know. So, last November, November 2021, I hired Cara ray of avocado toast and marketing. And Kara and Tim Ray are there the hands and eyes and soul and heart behind a lot of work we’ve done here over the years, that amount of potential, Tim oversaw the complete rebrand of the site, which I will come back to later. But I initially hired his wife, I heard Kara and I had met Kara first, like back in 2018, I think, through a networking organization, o 2019. And I hired her to help me edit the new opt in offer into an a course because the topic was about boundaries, in business and boundaries is something that has been really fundamental in my journey to becoming a prosperous Empath, right, like, all of us who identify as heart centered and empathic, I have it that learning how to reclaim and honor and protect our boundaries is a journey that we all have to step into, at some point along the way of learning how to thrive in business, and in honoring our generous souls while not being at the expense of our time and our energy and taking care of ourselves. And that’s a topic that has just been hugely important for me, clarifying, for me healing for me, boundaries has been part of the linchpin to my success, and they’ve certainly been a huge part of my journey in becoming a prosperous empath. So we developed the boundary bootcamp course, which is a new course that I’m unveiling with the website, and Cara helped me develop some long form copy into email sequence and the training copy for the course, which was, which was really awesome. So that was back in November. And then last December, I was introduced to Haley Hatcher of heart centered podcasting. And Hayley had been referred to me by another online business owner who, whose podcast I really have come to love.

Emily, Louise is the founder of the ambitious introvert. And we’ll be having her on the podcast here. And I’m really excited to share her with you, because listening to her podcast, really presents me to maybe this would be a great way to share some of my message and share some of my learnings and thought leadership with a greater audience and seeing her do it and seeing how she did it with such grace and ease, really, kind of opened the door for me, and made it seem possible. And Haley has been just such a wonderful partner for me in pro in producing the podcast and in overseeing the weekly production of the editing. And behind this, all of all the behind the scenes stuff. She’s wonderful. And I also so appreciate her because I hired her last December. And then literally the next month, I decided to completely jump ship with my website and my brand and, and throw it all out to redo it all. And she has stuck with me and held a spot for me in her business ever since then. So we started that journey back in December. And more on that later, clearly. So then, this is really kind of where I, I decided this was going to be a much bigger in endeavor than I had imagined. And this was back in January. I hired Martha Christina Garza, who’s a luxury brand strategist. And she’s also a long term client of mine who I just adore. And Martha just does exquisite work. And I don’t typically hire clients, I really honor keeping those agreements and honoring those separate relationships. But I felt like knowing Martha since 2019 If there was anyone that I could trust to walk those paths together simultaneously, and knew that we could maneuver any The conflicts or communication challenges that she was the one and and working with her was nothing short of magical. I mean, having a client to be able to reflect back your impact was very humbling. It was a really humbling and, and emotional and vulnerable experience for me. And there were tears shed, which is not uncommon. And it was, it was really awesome. So I hired her back in January, I traveled to New York for an in person intensive to do all the strategy work. And then for the past, let’s see the first two quarters of this past year, we worked on all of the design, and the languaging. And the new tagline, the new font, the new colors, the new logo, it’s just been awesome. And I am really excited for you to take a peek at the website, because I finally feel like the website is me. And I’ll share more about that in some of the lessons learned. But it’s just really impactful to feel fully like yourself online, then get creates space for so much more space for attracting your ideal clients for for modeling, showing up as yourself and creating, creating a conscious business approach, which I think I didn’t necessarily see how I was trying to be someone other than who I am. But But I was. And that’s probably one of the biggest lessons learned that I’ll share more.

So after we initiated the branding work in January, then once I had the foundation of the brand colors and the new direction for our style, I decided to hire a personal stylist because we were going to do a new shoot a new photoshoot for the new website. And I really wanted to have outfits that really fully reflected who I am. And I hired Carolyn Vainio of Klv styling, who is also a former client and since become just one of my closest friends and was one of my bridesmaids. And it was so awesome working with her, we did a closet clean out where essentially, we cleaned out my closet and I donated all of the clothes that no longer represented, who I am today, my style, my my look my feel, which was really fun. And then we went on a shopping trip. And we specifically picked out outfits for the photo shoot. And we also picked out some everyday items which have literally since become my everyday outfits. And that was that was back in March of this past year. And then let’s see, the month after that. I knew I kind of got to the place with my website that the rebrand was coming to the final stages. And I realized just how outdated my copy was. And that I really needed to rewrite all the copy, which was a big endeavor, because my site is not a simple site. It’s hosted on WordPress. I’ve had it for eight years, I’ve published a weekly blog for many, many years, you know, it was a very expansive, extensive site. But I really wanted the copy to reflect my voice. So not only did I hire Satoshi Sen Gupta of the happen company to write the web copy. I also hired her to interview some of my long term clients and success stories and write complete case studies that I could feature on the website and really share some of my clients journeys because coaching can be really hard to explain to people who have never experienced coaching before or worked with a coach. And I really wanted to presents a larger audience to the impact of coaching because coaching has, I mean I love I love what I do, but it’s also been hugely transformational on every level in my own life. And I that’s what I wanted to portray, in these case studies and Soryo she just did an A gorgeous job capturing their voices and I’m so grateful for the five clients who consented to not only being interviewed but then having their coaching journey be written up into a long form case study and some of some of them allowed me indulge me to take some some quotes to create a testimonial video which was awesome. So that was back in April. And then at the end of April, on the eve of my birthday, we scheduled our rebrand photoshoot. And I worked with Stephanie Craig photography, who’s located in Western Mass in Holyoke. And it’s I’ve done a lot of photo shoots over the years, and they’ve all been really special. But I think this one was the most impactful on a lot of different levels. And for one, I hired I also hired a hair and makeup artist to do my hair and makeup for the day. And if you know me in real life, I don’t wear makeup. I don’t wear makeup, I don’t do anything to my hair, besides put in some curling product, like I’m just super low key. So I was really nervous and wanting to maintain my face on camera. And I’ve worked with Emma Bushi, who, who partners with Steph and she was the best like so, so much. So the best that she came to our wedding a couple months later and did hair and makeup for me and our wedding party. I just loved her like she just had such amazing calming energy, and I felt more at peace being in her presence. So back to what was so different about this photoshoot is that I created the environmental

experience so that I could be myself. I brought my two dogs to the photoshoot, right? Like there’s nothing like dogs to make you laugh and feel comfortable. We played but chata and a lot of Latin beats throughout the day. And I invited a couple longterm clients to join in for the photo shoot and some group photos. And it was just so amazing. I’ve never spent so much time planning for a photo shoot. I’ve never spent so much time planning for the specific shots that I wanted the angles that I wanted the landscape versus portraits that I wanted, it was just so intentional and purposeful. And I get this feedback a lot that I am intentional. And I I really see and saw that I was not only during this photoshoot, but during the rebranding experience, as a whole, I really envisioned thoughtfully ahead of time, what I wanted to create from the photoshoot experience what I wanted to walk away with and and they over delivered, the photos are amazing. And I’m excited for you to dig into the site and see them. So then let’s see. Up next was the new website. So Tim ray of avocado toast marketing, we have been working together since 2019. And I have no doubt we’ll be working together for as long as I’m in business because he is just such a wonderful values aligned, integrity driven, wonderful communicator, business owner, and I appreciate everything he stands for. And those are the types of people that I hire at this point in my journey. And working with him has just been it’s been. It’s been amazing. And we started together. I think I hired them back in April. But then we technically started the work on the website in early July. So let’s see July, August. So it’s taken four months to bring the website to life. Now I say that for a couple of reasons. Like first of all, I think it’s helpful to manage expectations for large websites to know what you can expect. And I had no idea what I was getting into when we started. I don’t think he did either because I don’t think I had clearly articulated my vision for how big I wanted this to be for how many components I wanted to include. And once we got started, you know, like it just got it got real. It got really exciting. And it’s been just a creative brainchild for the past four months in bringing this website to life. I hope that you have enjoyed this timeline. And with that I thought I’d share just quickly six of the top lessons I learned And the first one is the reminder that it is super important as business owners and specifically empathic ones, to create an empowering relationship with feedback. The single reason that I endeavored to hire a brand strategist and a web designer at this level was due to feedback that I received from clients. So the first piece of piece of feedback that I received was from an ideal client. someone I admire someone I’ve known for many years, who told me that my copy on my website didn’t speak to her. And that was really useful feedback for me, because she’s my people like, she is literally the type of individual that I love working with. So the fact that my copy wasn’t speaking to her anymore, really spoke to a gap that I needed to close to make sure that I was speaking to the people that I wanted to attract into my world. And then the second piece of feedback I received was from one of my clients in the mastermind, who told me that my Instagram feed and the pictures on my feed that they didn’t feel like me. And that really landed for me, because I had been feeling the same way for quite some time. And so much so that I had kind of fallen out of love with Instagram, and I wasn’t posting so consistently,

because it did not feel like me. So I really leveraged that feedback to my advantage to, to really jump into this creative project. And I’m super grateful for that feedback, because I’m not sure would be here had they not shared their experience with me and had I not been willing to listen. The second lesson learned is to embrace being a creator. In my experience, all entrepreneurs are creators, we are all bringing creative ideas to life, whether they’re services, products, visual expressions of our business, social media feeds, like we’re always creating. And one of the both blessings and curses of being a creator is that we don’t know where we’re headed. When we begin a creative project. Like we actually have to trust the creative process, trust our intuition and surrender control. Now, that is not always easy. For ambitious, ambitious, driven, high performing arts centered entrepreneurs, right, we are typically so driven by results and, and struggle with controlling the outcome. So as a creator, you need to find the strategies that allow you to be connected with your intuition, and to be able to surrender control. For me, some of the practices that have been incredibly supportive with me over the years have been journaling, and meditation. Those are two structures that I just consistently use, and they consistently connect me with my knowing and my intuition. The third life lesson learned is the idea of detaching from the outcome. And what I mean by that is, as ambitious entrepreneurs, we typically have a vision in mind for when we want something done by many of us resist setting goals because, you know, we’re scared that the day will come and we won’t have landed on our deliverable. And in, in bringing a creative project to life, like it requires us to detach from the outcome and learn to embrace the process and fall in love with the journey. And as a heart centered entrepreneurs, we are in business because we love what we do. And learning to love the process and the experience of creating is as important as providing your services otherwise, if it’s not, then you really need to hire out those those jobs so that someone else can can fall in love with that. That part of your work that part of your business because people feel it, right. Like if, if if I put something out there on social media or in the world and I’m not committed to it, I don’t believe in it. I don’t love it. Those those posts fall flat 99% of the time. Okay, number four Be clear on your intention. This is super important. When I started this rebrand and this new website, my intention was to be fully me and to show up as authentically myself. And knowing that knowing that that that was my highest intention, it supported me in making all of my investments, all of my business decisions along the way, in service of that commitment. And it does require some foresight right. Whenever we start a new endeavor endeavor, whenever we hire a consultant, hire a coach, we have to be clear on what we are empowering that structure or that container to help us create and for me, envisioning and getting clarity on the intention sets me up for success and fulfilling on that intention.

To recap, the first lesson learned is to create an empowering relationship with feedback. The second is to embrace being a creator. The third one is to learn how to detach from the outcome throughout the timeline and embrace the process and journey. Number four is to gain clarity on your intention to get super clear around what you’re committed to creating from any creative project or endeavor that you say yes to. So number five is around open communication. As empathic entrepreneurs, we are incredibly generous. We want to be of service we want to contribute. And we’re inherently generous. So it’s super important to honor and value open communication. And my version of this in during this rebrand was something I’ve never experienced before, I was working with my web team. And like I said, we’ve been working together for four years. So we have lots of relationship. And about halfway through the project, we got on a phone call. And Tim shared with me that he had under quoted me for the project. Now I feel like typically, as service providers, you don’t typically hear about a business owner really just owning that. And I had a lot of compassion for him, because I could totally see how he under quoted me and and he asked if I had any wiggle room to increase the budget. And, you know, that vulnerability, that willingness to ask me and to partner together at that level it it made me trust him even more, it probably made me an even more loyal customer. And we absolutely did we we split the middle of the difference that he was asking for and and he’s, you know, made a lifelong client of me and huge referral partner, because I really value open communication and working with partners and consultants who also model transparent communication. While for me, that’s one of my most important values. And the sixth lesson learned, is to remember to be in relationship. So when we are hiring contractors and consultants and working with experts, you know, even if they are completing a transaction for us, it’s a relationship and in business, your relationships are so important, I have a deep sense of appreciation for the business relationships that I have developed over the years. I honor them, I take care of them, I think of them when I’m making referrals. And there is nothing more useful in business than to have a thriving network of business relationships. So I hope those were useful. And I want to leave you with the dollars and cents of this investment. And I had to do some some research to remember how much I’ve paid over over the months and the years for this rebrand. And right off the bat. What I’ll say is this only includes specific contractors hired for the rebrand and the new website. This does not include my amazing coach and my amazing VA team, who have helped me in countless other ways throughout this. Throughout this process, my coach Merida bullies in helping me kind of put ideas to words around the clarity and helped me clarify on my decisions and which direction to move. That’s just invaluable support for me. We’ve been working together for five years now. And then my VA team who has been just my saving grace, my knight in shining armor. I work with vine and virtual. And Nnamdi is just amazing. And earlier this week, he he really rallied for me in at the last hour helping me totally change the platform for our boundary boot camp course. We had originally wanted to host it on another platform and then we figured out it wasn’t going to work. So at the last minute we had to scratch everything and start from the beginning which was just amazing to have his tech genius and know how to walk us through that and really create an amazing product. So the dollars and cents of it. For the website and the branding alone I spent $20,000 and And then in

total with all of the copywriting support, the styling the photoshoot, the hair and makeup, all of the other people I paid in total $28,686 I hope today’s episode was useful if you are considering a rebrand or website and or know someone who is I highly encourage listening to this episode or sharing it with someone who’s beginning that journey. It is a really fun and wild and fulfilling ride. Have a great day