002 - What It Really Means to Build a Brand
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[00:00:00] Hey everybody, and welcome to episode two of your Brand Growth podcast, the place where smart service-based women stop overthinking and start building a brand that's clear, confident, and completely aligned with who they are. My name is Melissa Horvat. I'm a brand strategist, designer, the founder of graphica, and today we're diving into something I feel super strongly about and something that.
Is literally the key to my business, and that is that branding is more than just a logo. And if you've ever thought, once I have a logo, I'll be ready to launch, or I need a pretty brand so I can look more professional, then today's episode is a hundred percent for you. So let's start with the most common misconception I hear.
And that is that people think that branding equals your visuals or your logos, your [00:01:00] colors, your fonts, how your Instagram looks aesthetically. And yes, they do matter, but they're not what your brand or where your brand starts. You can have the most beautiful logo in the world and you still struggle to attract clients or you still feel unsure of what to post.
Still sound like everyone else out there online because your brand is actually not your visuals. So what is branding? So you may have heard that branding is how you make people feel, or it's what people say about you when you are not in the room. That is a really, really common phrase that is heard. Uh.
Across the board, across the world. People say that, and that is really true, but also really scary because your brand is something that is actually out of your hands. It, it lives in the hearts and minds of other people. It's the emotional connection. It's your reputation. It's the story you are [00:02:00] telling with your words and your visuals, your offers, and your tone and your energy.
But it's actually how people feel about that. So your brand lives in their hearts and the minds. It's the impression that you leave behind. So I wanna say that your brand is the promise you make, the experience you deliver, and the personality that makes you unforgettable. It's not just what you do, it's why you do it, and who you stand for, and how you show up consistently.
So. If you've, if you ever feel like your content is all over the place, that's something that is really quite common with clients that come to see us. They come and start with the conversation usually starts with, I'm completely overwhelmed creating content on social media. I don't even know what to post.
I don't even know where to start. Like, what do I even wanna say? Generally. [00:03:00] They ha they all, it's, it's the opposite. They're posting and posting and posting, and no one is connecting with anything that they're saying, or they are working really, really hard in their business and aren't really attracting the clients that they love working with.
So it's not because you don't have a fancy enough logo. It's because the deeper brand, brand foundations just have not been defined yet. And as a graphic designer, my business started out as a graphic design studio. So people would come to me and go, we, we need a new logo, or we just need a business card, or we just need a company profile document.
So as I have developed and grown my business, and so has my brand of course, but one thing that we do now in our business is we stop and we say to our clients, okay, you want a [00:04:00] logo? Let's just go take a a step back. Let's start with the brand before we actually create something that. It looks like your brand.
So as a graphic designer, my job is to understand all the things that live underneath that logo. So all those elements of your brand to then create something. So I I say to a lot of people, your logo is literally the flag that you are flying above the building that you've created underneath. So inside that building are all the things that you are creating to form your brand.
You've got. Your ideal client. You've got your personality, you've got your messaging, you've got your mission, your vision, your values, positioning, and brand voice. All those things live inside the house. And then above that house, you'll have a flag flying outside the door that is literally the logo that captures [00:05:00] all of those elements when it comes to your brand.
So your brand will always feel like a patchwork. Of whether or not you are doing Canva templates and second guessing everything. If you don't have all these things in place, yes, it will start to feel like a pretty ugly patchwork quilt in my opinion. So what I want you to do today is I want you to walk away and start shifting how you're thinking about your brand as a decoration.
Start thinking of it as connection. And that's what I am currently actually teaching inside my course, um, brand new. Uh, it goes beyond the surface level of design, um, to build a personal brand that's strategic and actually where you're leading your business with your soul and ready to grow. Some of the things that we focus on are your brand foundations, your dream client, brand, personality, messaging, um, and then we go on to your visual identity and.[00:06:00]
And do some practical, um, lessons on content and strategy. But I just wanna say, if you've walked away today and you feel like you, you may have a pretty logo, you may already have a pretty logo, but you just wanna work on the foundations of your brand. Have a think about all the elements that I mentioned before, or you may be ready to create a beautiful new logo.
I want you to stop and I want you to take a step back because your brand is built from the inside out. When it is built from the inside out, it becomes magnetic. People love it. You are clear. You're consistent. You're authentic. When you're posting on social media and talking to when people, you are actually speaking to your ideal client.
I want you to have just that one person in your head that you are speaking to and creating content for. 'cause that's another thing that a lot of my clients come to me and say that, oh my God, I'm not gonna show my [00:07:00] face on social media. Oh, I'm so embarrassed. But when you are creating content and in the back of your mind is one person that you're speaking to, that ideal client that you love working with every single day, then it becomes, it actually becomes quite easy.
So if this episode is giving you a little bit of clarity or a little bit of aha, an aha moment, um, I'd love you to take a screenshot and tag me on social media on Instagram. My handle is at graphica, G-R-A-P-H-I-K, aco. Um, and tell me what you loved about the episode. And let's celebrate your next step in growing a brand that truly feels like you.
See you next time. In the next episode, I.
