Inspired Ideas

If you've ever received a brand kit from a designer or a template shop, you probably have a set of brand guidelines somewhere. Personally, I make sure every client I work with has some kind of style guide so there's no question of how to work with their brand assets when it's time to post on social media, build your website, or create a line of merch. But in the event you're not qu...

When we want our creative work to make us money, sometimes we think too big. We get too inspired, we think too long term. I’ve been seeing this all over the place with brands that offer bundles or all-in-one solutions, and use terms like “everything included” or “one-stop-shop”. Do we really need all that stuff? Is feeling like we need to either buy things that include everything or create offerin...

What better way to talk about not going it alone in business than bringing on my business partner?! Cellist Olivia Diercks sat down with me (outside of a Starbucks so apologies for the slightly odd recording sound) to chat all things collaboration in entrepreneurship and how impactful it can be for your brand. Olivia and I make up the folk duo, The OK Factor, and we just celebrated 10 years of mak...

While this episode is not *exactly* an episode about branding, it is an episode about how to run your brand into the ground. Falling into the trap of this one mistake will take away years from your inevitable success and leave you feeling burned out, poor, and bored. Maybe it's an obvious one, but it's one that bears repeating. Mentions: The OK Factor Cave Day Brand Coaching The Inspired F...

Listen up, my creative business owners. We're notorious for doing everything *but* what we know will help us gain momentum. In this episode, I'm expanding on the compound effect to help us balance our human needs and our business needs with a few simple strategies so we can stop the spinning wheels and make some progress.

The pandemic changed *almost* everything. What it didn't change? The single universal law that everything will always be changing, even in business. We survived the worst of the COVID pandemic as creative entrepreneurs, and maybe we're thriving on the other side. Maybe we're at a loss for what to do next. Regardless of our individual journeys, we have been asked to recalibrate again and again. And...

We're tackling the idea that business might actually be personal for us creative entrepreneurs. Yes, in many ways running a business requires us to think of it as an experiment and not get too wrapped up in the emotions of it all. But from a branding perspective, we can't afford to be impersonal with our client experience. Join me for a solo deep dive into how we can be more personal with our busi...

I'm a firm believer in details. Specifically, the details that make up your brand experience. However, in order to craft the details our people will care about, we need to understand who they are. In this episode, I offer up some strategic questions to get you thinking about your audience in terms of their preferences so you can translate those preferences into a high-quality brand experience they...

Those who can influence us can also inspire us. Why not turn the tables around and be an influencer of our own creative work to inspire others? In this episode we'll chat about the strategies I see influencers use and how to work that into your own marketing plan for a simple and effective way to sell your stuff, foster engagement, and grow your creative business. The Inspired Foundry

The essence of any brand is its mission and vision, both of which should essentially answer the question: what kind of world are you creating? Listen in to take a swan dive into this question and turn it around from all angles.  The Creative's Collection The Inspired Foundry

My inspired ideas are taking the form of questions this month, and this week's is one of my favorites: what are you working towards?  Let's chat about why vision matters for creative work, especially when it comes to turning that creative work into a true business. Staying inspired as you work toward a long-term goal is often more difficult than we want it to be, not to mention figuring out w...

This week's episode is a deeper dive into the inspired idea about asking yourself what you need in your business. If "confidence" is at the top of your list, consider revising your current systems or implementing new ones. I walk you through some real-world examples of helpful systems, and take you behind the curtain of my own business with an honest analysis of how systems directly impacted my bu...

In this episode, we're unpacking one of my favorite brand strategy questions: what brought you here?  In thinking about our creative work, we often get stuck on sharing what we think someone needs to hear in order for them to trust us with their money, like credentials or expertise. But it's often the smaller details, the interesting stories, the, yes, inspired ideas we have that make people...

Welcome to Inspired Ideas, a podcast about branding for creative entrepreneurs.  Brought to you with love by The Inspired Foundry