4 New Strategies I’m Trying This Year

Last week, I took my littlest one to preschool for the first time. I’ve been a working stay-at-home for over six years now, so this was a very big deal. Thankfully my wild wonderful girl and I were both ready — for the new opportunities, challenges, and friends we’ll meet along the way.

My business has essentially been in hibernation mode all this time, and now suddenly the promise of time and space to focus on my beautiful little business stretches out before me. So after almost a decade in business and over six years raising kiddos, I’m beginning again with intention and sharing which strategies I’m excited to try next as I begin to rebuild.

A Decade in Business

Ten years ago, I started my holistic branding business. It was scary to leave the comfort and safety net of working for someone else, but ultimately I knew if I wanted the freedom to choose how I wanted to work and who I wanted to work with, I needed to step out into the unknown and forge my own path. A big part of starting my own business was that desire for freedom — specifically the freedom and flexibility to start a family and be able to stay home with my little ones while also doing work that feeds my soul.

I spent three years building my business by crafting timeless logos and soulful branding for creative small businesses and creating courses to help my fellow designers expand their skills and increase their confidence while saving more of their precious time. My head for systems came in handy and I set the course side of my business during my firstmaternity leave and beyond. 

Making my way back to work after the birth of my son (especially during a global pandemic) was difficult and had me questioning my skills and capacity, but eventually I found that my new role as a mother actually made me better at my work. Over the next three years I took on less branding work and turned my attention to creating and selling my online courses for designers. All the while, I shared the process since it’s part of my soul mission to share my journey to help others along their own.

Then in 2022, everything changed. We were blessed with the arrival of our wild wonderful little girl, and then our whole world fell apart. While I navigated a new baby, my son’s chronic illness, and then being displaced from our home while we detoxed and healed from mold poisoning, my business came to a screeching halt. I only had the capacity to survive and keep my head above water, so for two years I just stopped showing up.

If you’ve read our story of resilience, then you know our hardest years actually led to a beautiful new way of life for our little family, but I’ve found that reviving my business after years of silence has been my newest challenge.

So now — ten years after starting this business — I’m taking an honest look at what’s worked over my last decade as a holistic brand designer and teacher, and what I’m excited to try next. And in my typical fashion, I’m sharing it all openly with you, friend. :)

What Worked in the Past

If I had to attribute my years of business success to anything, it would be sharing honestly, authentically, and consistently. I spent over a year in the beginning of my business sharing weekly blog insights and posting pretty much daily on social media as well.

Now I’m giving myself a full pass for the last few years since our lives were falling apart there for a minute, but my business momentum really stopped when I stopped showing up. After all, it makes sense that I need to be visible in order to be seen, serve my audience, and remind them of the value I have to share.

The online landscape has changed a LOT since 2016, as has my relationship with social media. It hasn’t felt aligned for me to show up on instagram as I once did since it doesn’t feel sustainable to run that hamster wheel d of endless content creation and it’s difficult to connect organically with our people these days. But I’m dipping my toe into some new tactics and mindsets and finding my way back to sharing openly and consistently in a way that feels right in this new season.

4 New Strategies I’m Trying This Year

01. Sustainable Marketing on Pinterest

I’ve always loved spending time on Pinterest. I know I’m not alone in this. Over the years, I’ve used it the way most of us do — to save inspiration. Pinterest had my back while I planned my wedding, curated home design ideas, and catalogued branding inspiration.

However, I recently realized that I haven’t been using Pinterest in the most valuable way I can as a small business owner. While saving my own inspiration is nice, it doesn’t help anyone find my branding services or classes for designers. With the help of a great course from Jenna Kutcher, I’ve come to understand that Pinterest is more than a social media platform. It’s a beautiful and intelligent search engine, built to help people find exactly the kind of content that I create.

While most other social media platforms have lost their heart and verge on feeling toxic, creating my own content on Pinterest feels fresh and fun. Best of all, while posts on other platforms die after days or even hours, pins can be just as powerful (or even moreso) years later. Between my branding portfolio, online courses for designers, and my archive of blog insights, I’ve got quite a backlog of Pinterest gold that I can’t wait to tap into.

For a long time, I've been looking to find another way to market my small business that didn’t feel draining and toxic like the rest of social media. With Pinterest, promoting my work and offerings feels fresh and actually sustainable. I’m actually excited to share again, and I love the thought that each pin I publish is a seed I’m planting for the future. I can’t wait to see what grows from them.

If you’re curious about what I’m sharing, follow along on Pinterest.

02. An Intentionally Timely Discount Incentive

As an online course creator, it’s a fine line to motivate potential students to enroll without using too much pressure or scarcity. I’ve always hated the countdown timers, hard sells, and fake LAST CHANCE offers as much as anyone else, so I refuse to use them in my business. I offer the occasional sale, but I believe in the value of my courses at their regular price and don’t want to cheapen them by doing sales too often.

However, I realized that with no timely incentive or touch of scarcity, people don’t buy. There’s always some reason to put it off or some other cost that’s more pressing, and I get it. I have a home and two young children, and everything just seems to keep getting more expensive. But just like my approach to getting clarity by finding alignment first, I’ve realized that I need to prioritize investing in myself and filling my cup first, because something will always come up. And if I don’t put myself first, something else will take that space.

I genuinely believe in the power of my classes to help designers increase their confidence, expand their skills, step into their next level, and save more of their precious time. I’ve seen it with my students time and time again, and now I realize that I’m actually doing others a service by giving them a timely incentive and a touch of scarcity, as long as it’s done with kindness and the right intention. With this in mind, I’ve added that bit of timely incentive in the form of a limited time special discount that’s offered when you sign up for one my free trainings or challenges.

This offer isn’t there to pressure potential students, but to give them that little nudge — the sign they may been waiting for to invest in themselves — if one of my classes feels like the right next step. While most course marketers use offers that expire in a few hours, mine lasts for 3 days to give potential students more time to marinate and feel into what’s right for them. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but finding a new way to offer a timely incentive with intention feels good.

03. Lower Priced Extended Payment Plans

I’m a small business owner with a family, and so are most of my students. I understand the financial pressure of the world we’re living in and that everything really does seem to keep getting more expensive. While I want to make my classes more accessible, I also need to honor the hard work, experience, and value I’ve baked into them.

So while my classes are not getting cheaper, I have found a solution that feels good. I’m now offering (much) lower priced extended payment plans on all my classes, so you can start learning now for less. Full disclosure, I’m testing this one out and I hope it’s a win win for all, but if it ends up being too much of a headache for me chasing down payments then it might not last. With that in mind, now may be the moment to grab that class you’ve had your eye on if it feels right. The choice is always yours. :)

04. Back to Blogging

Finally, it feels fitting to end (and begin again) on blogging. Blogging is how I started my business journey ten years ago, and it’s honestly the form of marketing that feels best to me. I love writing openly and honestly. I love sharing my experience with you. And I love hearing when my journey helps you on your own path. So with that in mind, I’m bringing consistent blogging back. It may not be weekly like it once was, but you can expect to start hearing from me at least a couple times a month with fresh and balanced brand insights.

After a decade in business and six wild years staying home to raise kiddos, reviving this beautiful small business with intention in this new season is an exciting new adventure. I’m so thankful you’re here and I can’t wait to continue sharing with you, friend!