It's Marketing's Fault

It is time for its marketing's fault where we discuss how to do marketing the right way I'm your host Eric Rutherford and I am thrilled today because I have with me Nadine Hanafi She is the CEO and founder of digital brand kit as well as we are visual She is a branding expert and visual storyteller who helps online experts package their knowledge and uniqueness into irresistible brands.

Nadine, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Eric.

I'm really happy to be here.

I'm thrilled that you're here as well.

I gotta ask just upfront, like were you always planning on being a designer?

Was this like your life's ambition from early age or did you just get into it in a different way?

How did you get into branding and design?

It was absolutely not my life's ambition.

And it's something I fell into completely by accident.

When I was younger, my dream was to become an international lawyer.

My father worked for the United Nations and he did important work.

And I wanted to do important work and I wanted to be a lawyer.

And so that was that was my dream as a child.

The thing is, is I did not realize I was a creative soul back then.

I did not have any avenues to explore my creativity in an official way.

Like I did creative work at home.

And so I didn't really stumble upon my own creativity until my early twenties.

And by then I was in business school.

I had given up on the legal dreams.

They didn't, my legal dreams didn't survive my teenage years.

But I went to business school and in business school, there was a project that we needed to do for my marketing class where I needed to do something creative with presentation design.

And so I don't know what happened, but I just created the super original and creative presentation that blew my own mind and blew the mind of my professors.

And so that's kind of when I discovered I had these creative skills, artistic skills.

And I didn't really explore them until after I graduated from college, went to become a marketing manager at this company where they needed a lot of help with creative work and website design and all these things.

And they didn't really have people to help them with this.

And so...

because I didn't go to design school, I went to business school, the only tool I knew how to use was PowerPoint.

And so I took some design classes while I was working for this company and started designing things for them in PowerPoint.

And so just through learning design online, I started to explore this side of me and develop it and read design books and I found a designer in myself.

And so that's kind of how it started really accidentally.

And then me realizing that, hey, this is a skill I could actually monetize as a business and then went to business for myself after that.

love that story because a lot of times we don't realize our skills until we actually try them out either intentionally or by necessity right it's it sometimes it's like I have to do this or maybe I want to do this and I like how as you go as you went into that you're using the tools available you start out with PowerPoint you're like but like Everybody was using PowerPoint too.

So it wasn't like you were trying to use some weird obscure software.

It was...

if I'm being honest, Eric, I did try to learn Photoshop.

I opened the course, this was lynda.com back then, before I was bought out by LinkedIn.

And so there's all these online courses and there was a course on Photoshop.

And I opened the course and there was all of 15 or 16 hours of video tutorials.

And about 30 seconds into video one, I realized there was no way I was going to learn Photoshop and I gave up pretty quickly.

I was like, let me just make PowerPoint work for me.

Oh, but I like that too, because you're like, okay, this, this is not the tool I want to use.

Uh, and so, but I'm going to use something that works for me, that looks good, that, that really is going to save my sanity and then provide some wonderful results for, for the business I'm working for and for others.

So I think that's awesome.

I think that is entrepreneurial ingenuity right there.

Thank you.

It didn't seem like it back then.

It seemed more like laziness, but now it's entrepreneurial and you're putting me.

I think the older I've gotten, the more I realized working smarter is so much better than working harder.

It took me a long time to get that.

But so I just applaud you for that.

And that's where it takes me into my next question because you're like, okay, I was not planning on going into branding and in that sort of genre of marketing.

Mm-hmm.

So you got into it and sort of stumbled into it and then excelled at it.

How do you respond to people who say, well, yeah, branding doesn't really matter.

Like it's the product or service that counts.

How do you respond to them?

Hmm.

I respond and say, you're right about one of those things.

The product and the service does matter.

And if you have a bad product or a bad service that's not positioned well, then no amount of amazing branding or good design is gonna do anything to help you.

That is for damn sure.

But I also know this.

is that you can have an amazing product or service and it may go unnoticed and you may not reach your full potential because you did not know how to package it and share it so that it was seen by the right people who need what you have to offer.

That's what branding does, is it packages all of those ideas, all of those brilliant services and products that you have to offer into something that catches people's attention.

and gets them to your checkout page.

That's the job of branding.

And so, yeah, I get this question a lot, you know, what's the ROI of branding?

Sure, I can't give you a number.

It's not quantifiable, sorry.

I suck at math anyway, so I probably wouldn't be able to quantify it.

But to those people who ask me, what's the ROI of branding, I say, what's the ROI of looking professional?

What's the ROI of looking expensive?

What's the ROI of looking like you know what you're talking about?

What's the ROI of showing up?

People with good branding show up more, right?

They feel really confident and they have the tools, the visual tools, the assets that they need to show up regularly online on all the different platforms where they need to be present.

What's the ROI of showing up?

So on and on and on, but yes, it's not quantifiable, but in my 10 years of experience doing this, I have seen time and time again how branding, good branding, uplifts the people who do it right and takes and helps them move into that next level of success and how bad branding can hold some people back or lack of branding or getting stuck on branding and not even launching the idea in the first place because you couldn't figure out how to brand it.

I've seen it go both ways.

So that's my answer.

love that answer.

I like how you described like a good product can go unnoticed because of the branding or totally rejected because of the branding.

Which yeah, it's like the product solves a problem but it doesn't sell itself.

Exactly.

We all wish it would.

But if it helps, I think branding is a very nebulous concept for people.

And in fact, it's not very specific.

I mean, there's branding that can cover so many things.

So I would invite you to think about branding as just packaging, as presentation, as simple as when you go to a restaurant, that plate that lands on your table.

How is it presented?

Is it appetizing?

Does it make you want to dig in, right?

When you're shopping for products at Target and you're looking at the products on the shelves, do you not buy with your eyes first?

Right?

What catches your eye?

I mean, there's people that are paid millions of dollars.

What you think is irrelevant, branding, some people get paid millions of dollars to nail it and they do.

studies upon studies to figure out what is going to attract people's attention and make them grab that one product off the shelf.

And if you think about yourself as a product, if you're a personal brand, you're the product.

And it's your job to stand out on that shelf of a thousand other people that do the same thing as you in the online world.

Do you do you find as you're working with businesses and entrepreneurs, especially entrepreneurs or executives who are sort of working on this personal brand?

Do they sort of struggle embracing the idea of I need a brand?

Like is there an is there sort of this I don't want to stand out sort of feel I'd love to hear your take on that.

Sure, well, yes.

And I can speak for myself because I was one of those people for a long time.

It's so much easier to hide behind your business as a person, right?

And something about putting yourself or making yourself be the face of your business feels like, oh, I'm gonna look like an influencer.

you know what I mean?

And influencers get a bad rap.

So, you know, people don't want to operate like influencers.

Like I'm a legit business.

The thing is, it's not about being an influencer.

It's about putting yourself out there and being the face of your business for one simple reason, which is that nowadays in the world that we live in, people want to do business with other people.

They don't want to buy from companies.

They want to buy from people.

And there's studies, tons of studies have been done about this.

Um, but now the majority of people need to do business with a person, a human being that they like, know, and trust.

And so by building a personal brand, all you're doing is giving, creating a relationship with people.

and allowing them to get to know you enough to like, know, and trust you and buy from you.

And so if you think about it in that way, it's not about sharing what you had for breakfast every day and, you know, oh, hey, I'm making a run to Starbucks.

You like, that's, that's not what it's all about.

It's about having a website that has yourname.com on it and a, and a pretty inviting picture of you in the Europe section.

It's about sharing a weekly newsletter and you know where maybe you'll share a personal story here and there and there But you're just sharing your knowledge, right?

That's what personal branding is.

It's building relationships with strangers online and influencers do it by sharing, you know, their Pictures of their coffee in the morning and you're gonna do it in a different way But yes, I mean it there is there are a lot of people that have a personal resistance to putting their face on the business I was one of them for a long time, so I know what it's like because I'm like, hey, my business speaks for itself.

My skills speak for themselves.

I don't need to do this.

Yes, you do.

Yes, we do.

And so the sooner you accept that reality, that that's the reality we live in now, the better.

So true.

And it seems like it seems like it has been changing, especially the last five years, even longer, as far as this need for this branding and personal brand in order to do that.

So just it sounds then like, for lack of a better term, it's almost like depending on how old you are, what generation sort of you're in, you may gravitate towards it a little easier than others.

I don't, I mean, that's sort of my guess, but do you see that?

Maybe there's a little bit of correlation with, you know, what generation you're part of.

I'm technically a millennial, an older geriatric millennial, but a millennial nonetheless.

And my fellow millennials don't seem to have a problem with this, a lot of the ones that I know.

And then some people that are older than me don't have a problem with it either.

I think it's a matter of I'm personally an introvert.

And so I think...

My fellow introverts are probably the people that struggle with this the most.

We like being behind the scenes and putting yourself out there requires a lot of energy that is scarce for people like us.

And so if you are like me, my best advice to you is don't hide, but just become very good at managing your energy in order to be able to be visible.

without it draining you from the inside.

love that description as an introvert.

I get it.

And so I think that speaks volumes in terms of just being a honestly being afraid to put yourself out there and the as you say, it's the energy involved in doing it.

Because it's a it's both fear and energy.

Because it just and it takes its soul.

It does make a toll.

It does.

It's like people, it's like, well, now that you're garnering all this attention, people are like, oh, she's awesome.

She knows all these things.

Let me ask her a question.

So you start getting all these DMs and people wanna know more about you and people want to get your eyes on something and they want invites and da da.

And that...

you know, all of that, those requests coming from you.

And as introverts and sensitive people like me, we want to make people happy.

We want to give and give and give.

And so you need to know how to give, how to measure and limit what you give and not be overly generous because that's how you deplete your energy.

So, so true.

I can, I can empathize with that completely.

I'm like, whoo.

Yeah, there's only so much energy before I just have to completely just be by myself for a while.

Yeah, and people respect boundaries when you put them in place.

I've experienced with, you know, setting boundaries in a way that didn't feel comfortable for me before.

But when I realized that I never got any negative response for setting boundaries, in fact, people respected me setting boundaries.

I was like, oh, I can say no.

It's OK.

That is incredibly liberating when you can, when you get, I don't know if you ever get comfortable, but at least when you get, are able to do that on a regular basis.

So that kind of leads us into what is identity based branding and how does that really differ from regular branding?

Yeah.

Well, regular branding.

There's no such thing as regular branding, but there's bad branding.

But no.

So identity-based branding is not a novel concept, but it's a term that I'm trying to coin.

And it's because I get this question a lot.

And so we were just talking about people who want to hide behind their businesses, who want to brand their businesses, but not brand themselves.

And so a question that I would get a lot is...

So should my brand reflect me, my personality, or be about my audience and my business?

Like there's this duality of it needs to be this or that.

And my answer with identity-based branding is it's both.

It should be a hybrid of both.

So to me, there are the identity-based, so let me just explain that and then I'll.

I'll go into what my thoughts were there.

But identity-based branding is we weave in your identity, your personality as the business owner, as the face of the business, with the identity of your ideal client avatar and who they are and what they struggle with and what they want.

Okay, and so your branding is supposed to do two things.

It's supposed to, one, be an accurate reflection of you as a person.

And we can talk unpack that a little bit more, how we do that and what that means.

But it also, it's main job is to effortlessly attract your ideal clients.

Right?

So it needs to send the right message to the right people that, Hey, I'm your person, or this is what you're looking for.

That's the message your branding needs to send.

But also your branding is your handshake with a stranger online.

before they ever meet you in person.

And so what your branding cannot do is it cannot be completely different from you as a person because then you're setting your audience up for shock.

If they interact with your branding and it sends them a certain, it exudes a certain energy, then they hop on their first call with you and you are nothing like that energy that they encountered through your branding.

then it's gonna throw them off.

If they expected this vivacious, vibrant, colorful personality because your branding is all these things, but then they meet you, you're super cold and pragmatic and just a very quiet energy, they're gonna be thrown off, right?

So that's one thing your branding should definitely do is it should reflect your personality and it should reflect your personal energy.

And so in...

in the way that I approach branding, I'm all about brand energetics.

And so I want to, and I have this whole process to capture your personal energy through words, keywords, emotions, you know, those types of, conceptually capture you as an energy.

And then in a more scientific process, who is your audience?

What's their age, gender, what are they looking for?

What are the words that they're attracted to?

What are the things that they need to know about you in order to know, like, and trust you?

All of those things.

And we take this and that, and we mash it together, and we get your unique visual identity.

So.

Ha ha ha.

I know and but that's powerful.

I really like that imagery of your branding is like a virtual handshake where you they were somebody meets you for the first time and they get to know you and just like if you meet in person and you greet someone you get that first impression.

That's right.

And there's a, I hope I'm not going to butcher this, but there's a quote from Jeff Bezos that says, your reputation is what people say about you before you walk into the room or after you've left the room, I think is what it is.

See, I've already butchered it.

But I say your visual identity is what how people meet you.

The virtual online you.

before they meet you, before they're in the same room as you.

Right?

So it's supposed to be a preview of who you are.

It's supposed to give them, it's like a trailer of, who is Eric before I actually meet Eric?

And so our job as branding experts and designers is to help you translate.

And that's where it gets hairy, is translate all of these things.

into an actual visual identity.

Colors, fonts, layouts, right?

The whole thing.

So that leads me to, so can I ask you about the quiz?

Okay, because yeah, your brand quiz, because I thought it was fascinating.

I took the brand quiz, I thought it was fascinating the way all of the questions work together and the ultimate results that it provided.

Would you just, for anybody who hasn't taken the brand quiz, Mm-hmm.

Would you elaborate on what it is and, you know, not necessarily, you know, how it works, you know, like, we're not asking for behind the curtain.

Yeah.

But just like, just give me like, you know, this is what goes in and this is what comes out.

Yeah.

do that, I'm curious, what season did you get?

You're a fall.

That sounds about right.

I'm a fall too, yeah.

Yeah.

I was like, I took it and I'm like, and then I got the result.

I'm like, yeah, that fits.

Yeah.

Like, so I was, I was curious what it was going to look like.

And I'm like, yeah, that fits.

So yeah, so yeah, just opposite most of the time.

So the brand quiz.

So first of all, why do we have things like this, brand archetypes, right?

Because the brand quiz is based on a brand season's archetype, the brand, four brand season, which are spring, summer, fall, and winter.

And we use...

archetypes because we need to put people in boxes.

So we can deal with the complexities of life and personalities and all the things.

And so the way that the brand quiz works, and you've probably noticed this when you were answering the questions, is I asked you some questions about yourself, and then I asked you some questions about your audience, and then I asked you questions about your business.

And so...

This is what we were talking about just a minute ago with brand identity or identity based branding, where we're mashing all this together to give you one, one result.

Um, and so the idea is with brand archetypes, we, we all kind of fit into about 12 or 13 personality types.

And those 12 or 13 personality types can then be narrowed down to again, four seasons.

And so that's mainly what's happening in the backend of this brand quiz is, I'm first categorizing you into these larger personality types, and then I'm further categorizing you into these smaller buckets, the four brand seasons, by using some of the answers that you give me about your business and your ideal client avatar.

And what this allows you to do, so this is the secret sauce of how we go from, words and emotions.

What are the emotions you want your brand to convey?

What are the words that you want people to associate with your brand?

How do you want people to think about you when they interact with your brand?

All of that, this is the process of how we take that and turn it into actual design recommendations.

And so for example, if you are a fall brand, right, if you answer all those questions and it says you're a fall brand, visually, what does that mean?

Well, it means that you're going to have to use warmer tones of colors, right?

Your color palette should be made up of warm tone colors as opposed to a winter brand which is going to have cooler tones, maybe neon, right?

These very clear colors, right?

Saturated.

You're going to have fonts that are a little bit more rounded, right?

They're going to be beautiful and elegant but they're going to be a little bit more rounded versus a winter brand.

which is also gonna wanna have these super elegant fonts, but they'll be a little bit more harsher, right?

So it's all of these things that we then translate all of that into visual cues, visual recommendations for colors, fonts, layouts, and digital brand kit, right?

Which is my template shop.

is where we will match you with, well, here's what your visual identity should look like.

And here are three options that you can choose from.

So there's no guessing, right?

Because this is where people get lost.

So you can take a quiz all day long and it'll tell you, oh, you're a fall brand and you can walk away with that and go, great.

Tell everybody I'm a fall brand.

Awesome.

But, you know, I mean, we're happy to provide that kind of clarity if that's what you want.

But if what you want is an actual visual identity, we're gonna tell you, here's what your visual identity should look like.

right and we'll give you three recommendations of templates, brands that you can purchase right off the shelf that are already designed for you.

Um, and you can take that and start implementing it right away, right?

And have, give yourself a logo, give yourself business cards, give yourself social skins, all the things that you need to actually express your visual identity out into the world.

But it's basically the brand quiz is our way to help you sift through the million and one possibilities of what your visual identity could possibly look like and narrow it down to some informed options that are scientifically proven to support your business goals based on the information that you gave us.

That's powerful.

That really is.

And it makes it really easy for somebody who's looking to figure out what their brand is.

You take the quiz and for everybody listening, the quiz is painless.

It's just answer the questions.

And then it gives you that result.

And I like how you don't have this massive laundry list of options because that causes analysis paralysis and That's right.

you get like three options and you can pick one now.

You're also you've got like a couple of templates already created, but like you've got you've got several that are in the works.

So what's your vision for that?

Yeah, so right now we recently relaunched Digital Brand Kit as a whole new animal, a whole new beast, but the concept has not changed.

So the original concept of Digital Brand Kit that remains is we wanna give you everything you need to run your business from A to Z.

Because the true problem that we solve is this.

Most people who need branding are gonna do one of two things, either A, they're gonna DIY, right, and they're gonna start with what they know to start with, which is a logo, which they'll probably obsess over for God knows how long.

And then they're gonna try to figure out their color palettes by going on Pinterest maybe, or just Google A and color palettes, and trying to figure, stitch something together, right?

And then they're just gonna keep reacting to their creative needs as they come up.

Oh, I need slides.

Oh.

I need social media graphics.

And every time you're reacting to a need, you're gonna have to go out and carve out time to create those assets.

So you're constantly reacting to your needs, right?

Option two is maybe you have some extra money laying around and you're going to go hire somebody to do it for you.

Great, except just because you have the money to pay for a fancy designer does not mean that's the right move, especially if you're just starting out.

I've turned down plenty of business of people who came to me with money to throw at a problem and they want custom design.

I'm like, you just started your brand.

This may not be the time to drop 10, 20,$30,000 on a custom brand because your visual identity may have to switch in six months once you've started doing this and interacting with people and seeing who you attract and figuring out who you really are in this market.

And so...

B is you got and spent a lot of money to have somebody do this for you because you just don't wanna have to deal with it.

So enter option C, digital brand kit.

And by the way, in option B, you're still reacting to your design needs as they arise because that design you're gonna work with, it's gonna give you a color palette, some fonts, and a logo, and maybe it'll do a custom website for you, but you're still gonna need social media graphics, slides.

invoice, invoices, proposals, all the things that your business needs to run, business cards, all the things.

Enter option C, which is we've already proactively identified what all those assets are that your business is going to need in the foreseeable future.

And we design all of them for you in one cohesive, beautiful brand so that everything looks together, right?

It's not piece Everything looks together and we give it to you in one package.

And so you buy an entire visual identity and now you don't have to worry about it anymore.

You can just get to work on the things that you need to do.

And so in the original version of Digital Brand Kit, we sold three different bundles where you could buy these assets in bundles and we group all of our assets in kits.

So there's an email kit.

There is a social kit.

There's a lead magnet kit, a block kit.

So for every area of your business that needs branding, we have a kit.

In this new iteration, we are giving the people the freedom to buy their kits as they want.

We don't bundle them anymore.

In the old version, we would bundle them.

So you'd have to buy these bundles of kits together.

Now we let you buy the kits that you need when you need them.

So in this new version, we launched with the brand starter kit.

which in a nutshell is everything you need to launch your brand, right?

To get your brand up and running.

So it's the basics.

It's logos, it's business cards, it's some social media graphics so you can start posting.

It's a coming soon page for your website.

It's a social scan.

So you can update all of your social media.

So everything looks good.

You said all the things, but we will soon be releasing the rest of the kits.

and there's 14 of them.

And if you wanna see all 14, even if you don't purchase Digital Branket, it is great to just give you visibility on what are all the moving pieces of your business and start anticipating, what are my future design needs going to be?

What are some assets I don't even know that I need?

Like you need a speaker kit if you wanna do any form of speaking, paid or free.

You need a media kit to go pitch yourself on podcasts.

That's included in Digital Branket.

You need...

slides and worksheets and things to create a digital course, right?

We've anticipated all of that and categorized it into these kits.

So you can just go to digitalbrandkit.com and go to the How It Works page and it'll give you a full breakdown of all the kits, all 14 kits, which is all 14 areas that your business needs to be branded at, all the touch points.

That's brilliant.

And just two things that really jumped out at me from what you shared.

One is, is you don't always know at the beginning what your brand is, you know, that it, that it changes over time as you get into it and yeah.

And I think, I think a lot of people, okay.

So, okay.

I'll quit the generalization.

Me.

I think, I don't know.

I feel like, oh, I gotta, I gotta know.

Yeah.

No, no.

Anytime, even if you've been in business for a while, if your offerings have changed, if what you offer now is different from before, if the audience that you're selling to is different, your brand is going to have to evolve to reflect that.

So your branding really is fluid.

It can stay the same for maybe a year or two, but it'll have to change as you grow, as your business grows.

as your audience grows and changes and you started attracting people that you didn't think were gonna be interested in what you have to offer, but boom, now they are.

That's a good problem to have.

Now you gotta cater to that new audience.

So yeah, and I've just heard too many horror stories of people who spent overspent, overspent like crazy on their branding and then walked away from branding that cost them 20, $30,000 because they moved away from that.

They had to pivot for X, Y, Z reason, right?

So when you're first starting out, that is not the time to invest in custom branding.

That's the time for a starter brand, which is what I call Digital Brand Kit.

It's kind of, it's like a starter home, right?

It's not your million dollar dream home.

It's a starter home to get you started that you can get your family in and start growing from there.

That's what Digital Brand Kit does for you is it gives you something.

to start with and start putting yourself out there.

And it's much more affordable.

Obviously, affordability is one of our core values.

Affordability and accessibility is we want to make it easy for you to get your business off the ground and start putting yourself out there so that you can afford that custom, beautiful $30,000 custom branding, maybe in a year or two.

I like that and I hadn't thought about that the brand can change and evolve over time depending on Just depending on how the business is going depending on life is going depending on just the changes that occur And I like to hire how you're you've got 14 different things I would have never thought there were that many but usually you don't know that ahead of time, right?

Until you run into a problem and you're like, oh my word.

I've got to create this.

Oh my word I can't make this match anything Oh, my word.

I've got a I've got a white word doc that I'm going to turn into a PDF.

All right.

exactly.

And let me tell you, in the world that online, the fast-paced online world that we live in today, speed is the name of the game.

Your ability to execute on your ideas in a speedy manner will make or break your business.

You need to be able to hop on an opportunity very quickly if it comes your way, right?

It's an oppo, you know, luck is where opportunity preparation.

We're giving you the preparation so that when the opportunity comes, you've got what you need to go out and make things happen.

And so you shouldn't have to turn down an amazing opportunity for a speaking gig that just fell out of the ether because there's no way you can get your slides ready in a week, right?

Like I would have to build this from scratch.

What am I going to do?

And I'm now remembering...

a story of one of our clients who, I don't remember the exact circumstances, but he needed to launch his digital course next Wednesday.

And we were, and when we had this conversation, it was Monday.

So Monday, and so the following week on Wednesday, his digital course needed to be published and he had zero digital course.

He had an outline.

But he needed to somehow come up with this digital course and buy some miracle.

No, not buy some miracle.

Because he bought digital blanket, this is a blatant promotion here.

He bought digital blanket right after.

He won because we talked on Monday, he bought his DBK package, I think Monday night.

Text or emailed me the next day.

He's like, hey, I've already started working on my slides.

I opened up the package and our course slides is one of our biggest templates.

It's got hundreds and hundreds of slide templates that are designed specifically for digital courses.

He worked on it like crazy the rest of the week.

Over the weekend, I checked in with him.

On Monday, he was like, I'm almost done.

On Tuesday, I checked in.

He said, hey.

we're ready to go, my course is gonna be published tomorrow.

And I was like, wow.

And he could not stop singing our praises because the reality is, is he had nothing a week before and in one week he was able to turn around an amazing, legit looking digital course.

And that's where you're able to accelerate your timeline of execution because you have these templates to work from as a foundation instead of building from scratch.

Wow, that's amazing.

I love that example.

So it sounds like it's speed and then that quality professionalism because it sounds like then brand can be a barrier to success for an entrepreneur as much as it can be an asset is the way I'm hearing it.

I like that.

It's yeah, it's a liability for some people and it's an asset for others.

Yeah Yeah, when?

What?

I confess I hadn't thought of it in those terms the way you just said it as far as like asset versus liability.

Mm-hmm.

Oh, 100%.

And it's a liability in so many ways.

It can be a liability in so many ways.

It can be a liability if your branding just doesn't look polished or professional, and so people don't take you seriously, right?

Or it doesn't look polished and professional, like, uh, maybe, you know, really?

That sounds a little expensive.

I didn't think you'd be that expensive, right?

Because you don't look, you know, you don't look that legit.

Um, or it could be, well, I don't know.

It could not, it could even be unspoken in the sense of like the concept of reciprocity.

If I feel like you've invested a lot of time and care into creating a beautiful brand experience for me to welcome me into your world, then I feel more compelled somehow to invest in you at that same level because you invested in me, right?

You invested in attracting me to your world.

in a way that was pleasant and clear and simple and all of those things.

So there's so many ways in which branding can be your asset, an asset for you or a liability working against you.

while I had not thought of that rule of reciprocity whereby by having a clean professional brand, you are extending the courtesy and almost hospitality towards potential customers to say, to put their mind at ease, say, I know what I'm doing, and to lower the fear threshold.

Again, I like to use analogies a lot because they help me simplify and understand myself.

Because sometimes I'm like, I feel like I'm not that smart.

I need you to simplify this for me.

So I like analogies for that reason, but here's an analogy.

It's like somebody invites you to dinner at their house.

It's just dinner.

So maybe they don't put that much care into it and maybe they'll just serve you.

warm up the leftovers from last night and put that on the table and maybe I'll order some pizza because there was enough leftovers for everybody and you know throw a couple beers on the table and call it a dinner and you're like great we had a good time that's it or somebody invites you to dinner and they cook they cooked themselves this amazing feast it took them Five hours in the kitchen.

And it was very thoughtful.

They thought about a conversation that they had with you a few months ago where you mentioned to them casually that you like to eat this one kind of food.

And so they thoughtfully prepared that one kind of food for you.

And they prepared the table and there was candles and all, like it was just a magnificent dinner experience.

Which friend are you gonna remember more fondly?

It will the memory will stick much better, right?

You will feel Gushed over.

I don't know how to describe it.

But just like oh wow, they went above and beyond imagine you had to pay $3,000 for both dinners.

Which one is gonna make you feel like you got screwed?

Ha ha ha.

Wow.

But I love that analogy though because it's like, okay, it's this added value component that it's like it has nothing to do necessarily with the service being provided.

You know, it doesn't necessarily fix a problem, but it does.

It shows that strength of value and to whatever it is you're offering.

Yeah! shows that you care.

And so that's another big dimension of branding, is it's experience.

It's what's the experience you're trying to create, right?

But I do wanna kind of bring it back to functionality too.

There's a quote by, I don't remember who now, it's escaping me, but it may be Steve Jobs.

Design is not just how it looks, it's how it works.

So there is a functional aspect to design, which I'm using design and branding a little bit interchangeably here and being a little loose with words, but they work together.

But good design, good branding is also about clarity and simplicity and making it easy for people to make a purchase decision, right?

And so a confused mind always says no.

The role of branding...

is to unconfuse people, is to make it very clear that you are the right choice, right?

That's the general sense of branding.

At a design level, the way that all of our templates are designed, all of our templates are conversion optimized, right?

Everything is leading to, yes, it's leading to an action.

It's making things very clear and simple.

It's explaining things.

That's the other function of design, is simplifying information.

complex information to make it easy for your audience to understand what you offer and say yes to what you have to offer.

So I just wanted to mention quickly that there is a functional aspect to design, which design is to me is nested under branding, right?

Branding is much larger, but design is one of the functions of branding.

And it does have a functional, you know, responsibility too.

I'm glad you mentioned that because I think sometimes we think of design and functionality just goes out the window, right?

We don't think that as integral to design, but you're right.

Good design is functional.

Good design makes life easier or makes a process easier.

Exactly a process easier.

Yeah.

But just as we're beginning to wrap up here, one last question for you before we kind of finish up.

One takeaway that you would like to leave listeners about branding and like one takeaway for them.

Hmm.

My one biggest takeaway is always this.

Do not rush into picking your colors and your fonts and the actual exterior aspects of your visual identity before you've stopped and done some introspective work about who you are as a brand and how you want to show up in the world.

And when I say how you want to show up, it's not literal how the colors you want to show up.

And that's the last decision you make.

You need to think about What is the energy that you want your brand to exude?

What's the, what do you want people to say about you?

It's all these things that you need to think about, these very, very important decisions that you need to make first before you go on Pinterest and start choosing colors and looking at, and so too many people think that, excuse me, design is a little bit random and you just pick something that looks good to you, that feels good to you.

Yeah, you can do that.

it's just gonna take you a lot longer to land on something that works.

Right?

And so don't waste time trying to pick out branding in a random way.

Invest your time in getting really crystal clear on who you are as a business in the larger world of your industry and your competition and what you have to offer.

And then getting clear on the person that you are and the personality that you wanna infuse into your brand.

And once you have those truths about you and your business, then you can confidently go into building a visual identity.

That's gonna align.

love that.

And that's something I would not have thought of before is really doing that introspection on yourself and the business and your customers and saying, okay, what is the, where is that overlap in that Venn diagram, so to speak, right?

Where's that?

And then from that comes the design and the brand.

Mm-hmm.

That's right.

So for everybody listening who wants to know more about you, who wants to know more about your company, wants to know more about Digital Brand Kit, where would you like them to go?

Sure, well you can go to digitalbranket.com and you can also follow us at digitalbranket on Instagram.

And if you want to connect with me, you can go to nadinehanafi.com or follow me on Instagram at nadine.hanafi, which is H-A-N-A-F.

Excellent.

So if you're listening, I'm going to drop all those links in the show notes.

Definitely make sure to check out Nadine and the branding.

Absolutely.

Oh, my word.

Yeah, take the brand quiz.

It's easy.

me on Instagram and let me know what season you got.

I love that.

Oh my word, yeah, because the brand quiz is brilliant.

It's painless, right?

It's just, it is.

So make sure you check it out.

All the links are in the show notes.

Nadine, thanks so much for joining me today.

This was so much fun and I learned a ton.

Oh, this was a treat.

Thank you so much for having me, Eric.