Q&A: My Marketing & Branding Experience, Why I Started A Podcast, Why I Shut Down My Shopify Store

Today’s show is going to be Q&A style! I’m going to answer some questions about my background in branding and graphic design, why I started this podcast, why I shut down my Shopify store, the projects I’ve been able to work on, and what I’m doing now. It’s going to be a fun one so grab your favorite drink and let’s get into the show!

Q&A with a brand designer and marketer of over 14 years - designwithclarissa.com

I wanted to do a Q&A episode so that if you don’t know me, you could get to know me a little better.

Annnd to be completely honest, I’m recording this on the Friday before this episode is supposed to go out, and summer break also starts next week, so my son will be home with me, and I have no idea how I’m going to do work and keep this podcast up BUT I am going to try, it will just take a bit more planning…

So, you have been warned. Yay for summer but also it may be a bit crazy here on the podcast. 

But for now, let’s get into those questions:

Q1: How did you get started in graphic design and branding?

Well, I made my first official logo in Excel, for my dad’s very well-established HVAC company, and… I was a teenager in High School!

And yes you heard that right, I made it in excel.

Turns out, you could actually design graphics at a decent pixel size in Excel, at least, back when I did it you could. The file of course was not vector, but it worked enough back then that the logo was actually placed on a billboard, some t-shirts, their website, and anywhere else it could be used.

I made that first logo without design software, and really, without any “official” training. I learned from Google and tutorials, and I just started making things in whatever PC software I could get my hands on for free (namely Excel and Paint because ‘free creative apps’ like Canva or Adobe Express weren’t a thing).

I eventually spent most of my high school graduation savings on my first iMac and the Adobe Suite.

Which, by the way, the Adobe Creative Suite was on a disc, because this was back in the dinosaur ages before everything was cloud-based.

So, well before I received my degree in graphic design, I was already making logos and graphics for clients – much to the thanks of my dad for telling all of his business contacts about what I could do.

On the outside it might have looked like I was polished and professional and knew exactly what I was doing… but on the inside, I was just getting started and learning as I went.

I don’t think those early clients (besides my dad) had any idea they were my guinea pigs. If they did, they didn’t care, and still trusted me (or my dad’s opinion) enough to make graphics for their well-established businesses.

I wanted to answer this question first because I think anyone can put themselves in this story.

Your thing might not be brand design – maybe it’s a storefront or copywriting or photography or you sell physical products.

You may have started, or are trying to get started, the same way I did. You might not know all the answers or have the “best” thing (software, education, money, fill-in-the-blank) to do what you are doing, or to do what you want to do…

But you’re trying anyway. And that’s how we all start. By just trying.

Q2: What previous jobs have you had?

My first “real” job was working for my parents, doing marketing and customer service. And my first job outside of working for my parents was as a barista at a local coffee shop. I worked there for a few years and then went back to working for my parents.

Then when I was 20, just after my husband and I got married, I became a bridal consultant and sold wedding dresses and prom dresses. I also somehow convinced them to let me design their bridal book and business cards on the side – and this was for a very well-known and well-established bridal shop in Missouri called Norman’s Bridal.

And at that time, I had experience, but definitely not a lot, so I don’t know that, if I hadn’t been working for them in the store, I don’t know that I would have gotten them as a client. So. That was a fun project to work on.

Other than those two jobs, every other job I’ve had has been working in Marketing and branding for my entire career – so over 14 years now, and that’s not even counting the time I worked for my parents when I was a teenager.

And, every time I’ve had a job working for someone else, I’ve also worked on the side for my own clients. Doing those two things in combination: working for myself for smaller clients and then also being employed by larger corporate companies, has contributed to, I think, having a very well-rounded background in the industry that I wouldn’t possess otherwise.

Q3: What kind of design work have you done?

Both professionally being employed by other companies, and also working for my own clients, I’ve created brand identities and graphics, I have managed things like social media, email marketing, websites, ads, and campaigns for all kinds of businesses, large and small.

I’ve worked with retail furniture companies. My dad’s HVAC company. A coffee roaster. My mom’s fabric store and retreat center for quilters. An exterior cleaning company. All kinds of construction companies. Someone who sold their own bottled Bbq sauce. A bridal shop. A midwife. Some non-profits. A donut shop- I almost forgot about that one! Companies that are in retail, service based, B2B and B2C.

I know I’m missing some but there are a lot of years in there and I’ve done a variety of different things when it comes to branding, marketing and graphic design.

For the past 7 years, along with the things I’ve done on the side, I’ve been employed by CEC, which is an engineering firm that has offices in Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas.

I currently help manage their brand and all the creative things that go along with it: Such as strategy and creative for print and digital media, campaigns and ads, their social media, website, email marketing, internal and external communications, new initiatives like a fun project that is coming out this summer.

I’ve created CEC’s brand guidelines and helped to shape the look of their brand over the years. I’ve worked there since 2017 and I’ve gotten to not only work on a lot of cool projects and initiatives, but I’ve also grown a lot personally and professionally.

Working there has allowed me to learn things that, if I were just working for myself, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be a part of or learn from.

So I’m really grateful I get to work in branding and marketing – doing something that I really truly love to do – for such a large company that has a really great culture, and again, has allowed me to do everything from bring new ideas to the table and see those come to life, to even the day-to-day things that I work on that I’ve been able to learn from and help to shape as they have continued to grow into this larger regional firm.

Q4: What are you doing now?

I have created a handful of brands in the last three or four years, but I would say both at work and on the side what I have been doing the most is creating systems and processes for, and teaching about, branding and brand consistency for businesses and business owners.

How companies both large and small, whether it’s just you or a team of 300 people, can educate your team and deploy your brand cohesively and consistently.

Because the reality is, even if you have a designer or even if you have a marketing team – when you have so many team members doing so many different things it can be hard to keep track of and it’s really important to educate your team.

At the end of the day THEY are the people that, whether it’s more behind-the-scenes inside the company, or whether it is externally and they are client or customer facing, they are the people using the brand and they are helping to shape it. 

So, if you can be clear about your brand guidelines and clear about your brand voice and what you stand for and things like your mission and your purpose, and you can communicate that internally to your team, then THEY are going to be able to communicate that externally to everyone else and help shape the perception of your brand.

They’re doing it anyway, so you may as well give them the tools and resources they need to do it effectively and according to your brand guidelines.

This is so important, because if you can do this, you can increase brand awareness, brand loyalty, increase clarity for your teams, clients and customers, and ultimately help your company grow.

But your team isn’t going to know how to do that on their own, especially if that’s not in their wheelhouse.

They’re not going to just understand the importance of branding, you’re going to have to teach them, or have resources available to them, or have someone come in to talk about that, because it is important for brand growth and longevity.

If you think about any brand – just name and brand that you love – you might think about their logo at first or their colors or their fonts (if you’re into that sort of thing like I am). Or, you might think about their customer service or how great the products or services are that they offer. You might think about an ad campaign that you saw or a YouTube video or a podcast that you listen to.

There’s so many things that need to have some sort of consistency and be cohesive, because your brand isn’t just your logo. It’s not just the pretty colors.

It’s all of these little different components added together.

And especially if you’re a larger company, it’s all of the different teams that manage those different things and those team members knowing and learning how to do it well – not only according to your brand guidelines, but also in a way that fits within your company goals and overall mission.

There’s a lot that goes into it and that is a lot of what I have been doing lately is teaching about that and how to do it well.

And by the way, that’s why I’ve created resources with you in mind, in my shop, like the Brand Strategy Framework Template and the All-Content Planner Template, so click those links to learn more about how they can help you and your brand!

Q5: Why did you decide to start a podcast?

Because of my answer to the previous question! With my background and everything that I’ve learned and everything that I know how to do, I’ve also seen this gap where businesses need help with their branding and brand consistency. Over time, I figured out that I really like talking about that and teaching about that, so that’s why I decided to start this podcast.

I was blogging for a while before starting the podcast, so now the blog is basically the podcast show notes and it’s all written out for you, so if you wanted to read what I’m saying rather than listen to it, then you can do that.

But the podcast has been really fun and I’m not going to say easy, but I have been able to be pretty consistent with it, which is huge because that’s another big component of being able to stick around in the minds of your audience is being really, really consistent.

I also felt like I needed a different medium besides blogging because I think blogging is really great for SEO and coming up in Google search, but it also takes a lot of time to write and set up, and if people aren’t reading it or they don’t know how to find you, then it’s kind of pointless.

I knew in order to get more eyes and ears on my blog content, that I probably needed to start doing something else to bring that traffic in.

I tried YouTube for like, three weeks, but that took even more time than blogging did, for me at least, so then I tried podcasting and haven’t looked back since.

I do some planning ahead and make some content outlines, and then I turn on the mic and I’m able to record. It doesn’t take much editing because I want the episodes to flow pretty naturally, so I don’t do a lot of editing.

And since I’m also posting it to my website as my blog posts, I’m already utilizing the content a few different ways, so it’s more worth my time doing it as a blog and as a podcast.

I’m not trying to create a bunch of different pieces of content for different things, so that helps, and podcasting does make it easier for people to digest the content in a different way, too.

Like I said, I knew that businesses and business owners needed branding resources, but I didn’t realize how much I liked teaching about that until I started blogging about it, and now that I have the podcast, really it’s even more fun because I feel like I’m actually talking to someone so – if you’re listening – thanks for listening!

Q6: Is there anything you’ve started that you aren’t doing any more?

Uhh yes. A lot of things. I used to offer all kinds of other services besides branding, just because I have expertise in them and have done them for years.

I’ve offered things like social media management, email marketing management, squarespace and shopify website services, and random graphic jobs that weren’t related to branding at all.

I don’t offer any of those things any more, because I’ve figured out what I am BEST at and what I LOVE to do and what I want to focus my limited amount of time on – but I did offer it them at one time and I’m glad I did, I learned a lot and also learned what I didn’t really want to offer.

Another story that goes with this is that I started a stationery company in 2015.

I had no experience in the space, other than graphic design, I just loved planners and stationery items and I was already making some of my own for personal use. So I decided to open a Shopify store and started selling digital pdfs, and physical tear-off desk pads that I printed and bound MYSELF and sold them in my mom’s fabric store.

Which is another good example of how my parents have believed in me and helped me out along the way, so thanks for doing that for me mom! (I know you’re probably listening to this!)

However, I wasn’t making much, it literally wasn’t even supporting the Shopify store that I was paying for. And actually, the graphic design client side of my business was!

In 2018 (ALMOST THREE YEARS LATER) I finally started to believe what I probably already knew all along: The stationery product business just wasn’t for me.

I liked it when I started. It was fun and creative. Plus, I had done it for so long, that I was just trying to make it work – because, I’m not a quitter (I told myself).

It took me almost ANOTHER FULL YEAR to finally close my Shopify store in 2019. I was draaaaagging my feet, but it really was the best decision ever. However, I also cried thinking I had wasted 4 years of my life trying to build something that I didn’t stick with.

I felt like I had failed.

I was afraid to let go but also mad that I had held on so long (and A LOT of life also happened during that time).

But… the day I closed that store, I told myself I could – and would – start over doing something I knew I actually loved and had YEARS of experience doing: which is branding.

It was right in front of me the whole time, which is pretty comical, really, because the design side of my business – what I should have been focusing on – was SUPPORTING the business that I no longer liked, but that I was trying to keep going.

Closing that store was the right decision and it allowed me to focus on building what I feel like I should have been doing all along – and I think that decision has even led me to making this podcast. It’s been slow, but steady growth.

And, I don’t even mean the making-money kind of growth, but the knowing what I wanted to do, and doing it, kind of growth.

I am going to stop there for today! This was a fun one to talk about, I hope it was fun to get to know me and my background a bit more. I’ll have to schedule another one of these soon!

By the way, if you haven’t listened to the latest episodes on working from home with kids, go listen now:

Summer break is here and I know I need some of those tips for myself while my son is home with me this summer.

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Until next time, thank you for listening to (or reading this blog for) The Sweet Brand Show – now go out and make your brand a sweet one!