Brand It, Build It Podcast with Kelly Zugay of With Grace and Gold

We’re kicking off the new year with Episode 048: 5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Rebranding. Whether you’re a brand new business owner and you are pursuing very first brand, or you’re an experienced business owner and you’re considering a new brand — answering these questions can help to save you time and money. Answering these questions can help you find the best designer to align with your vi...

Both personally and professionally, 2020 has been a unique year for a wide variety of reasons. One unexpected discovery we’ve had is: Because our businesses are online, and because of quarantine, we have worked all year long, without a break. Maybe you can relate. According to an article in Harvard Business Review, on average, business owners in the U.S. work a 72-hour work week — which could mean...

Over the past four weeks and past four episodes, we’ve explored ways to enhance and elevate the Home, About, Services, and Portfolio pages within your web design. Every page of your web design serves a unique and essential purpose — and we are so hopeful the actionable tips we’ve explored have equipped you to enhance your online presence with purpose and strategy. This week, in our final episode o...

We’re continuing our web design series by sharing 3 tips for an elevated and impactful Portfolio page — creative ways to curate and present your portfolio of work so you can elevate your web design and more seamlessly showcase your expertise. Whether we’re serving our clients at With Grace and Gold through custom web design, or we’re creating a customizable Showit website template for our shop — w...

Whether your business is solely service-based — or services are part of what you offer through your small business — your Services page plays an important role in how your website’s visitors understand your services. Every detail of your Services page can lead your visitors toward choosing to book your services. So today, we’re exploring 5 ways to accomplish exactly that! Helpful Links : Podcast S...

Your About page can be so much more than a place to share who you are and what you bring to your business, and we’re excited to share how! Every small business is unique, so every web design’s features will be unique, too. However, these 5 details could help you to approach your About page in a fresh, new way — and could help you to create a more elevated experience for your website’s visitors. Yo...

Your Home page sets the tone for your visitors’ experience learning about your business, your products, and your services. Though your visitors may arrive from blog posts or from social media, your Home page serves as the foundation from which your visitors can be seamlessly led through your web design, and therefore, through the most essential details of your business. Today, we’re sharing 5 must...

Since 2014, With Grace and Gold has served more than 400 creative small business owners through professional brand design. If you’re a small business owner, too, you’ve probably heard how essential having a clearly-defined and professional brand is — but why? When is the best time to pursue a new brand for your business? What is the professional brand design process like? And what types of results...

If you’ve been with us since January, you may have noticed new podcast art and a new name. With Grace and Gold: The Podcast is now the Brand It, Build It Podcast. Today’s episode is not only about our name change, but it’s also about our philosophy when it comes to making changes within your small business. If you’re in a season of wondering about a name change, a brand or website change, or any c...

As your business runs, it’s likely you’ll find that some of those foundational decisions aren’t quite serving your business as well as you had hoped. It’s a natural part of small business ownership that, as we become more familiar with our roles, our clients, and our businesses — we learn and grow, and need time to apply what we’ve learned so our business can reach new heights. That’s why, today,...

Saying “no” isn’t always easy — or comfortable. But it’s an essential part of being a successful small business owner. Saying no can actually be really powerful and helpful. Today’s episode comes from one of our most-read blog posts, “How to Say “No” Kindly and Professionally.” We’re excited to share our simple 3-step process for saying “no” so you can experience clarity within your business and s...

On October 1, 2020 With Grace and Gold celebrated its sixth year in business. Whether your business is 1 year old or 10 years old, every business anniversary is so special — it’s a reminder to remember how hard you’ve worked and how far you’ve come — and it’s a moment to dream big about where you’d like your business to go next. This year has been challenging and bittersweet for all small business...

If you’re a small business owner, chances are, you’ve outsourced for one or more areas of your small business. If you’re a photographer, maybe you’ve hired a brand and web design business to build your online presence. If you’re a brand and web designer, maybe you’ve hired a photographer to capture your head shots. Or, if you’re a wedding professional, you’ve likely hired or collaborated with fell...

As small business owners, everything we do is designed with our clients — our prospective clients and our current clients — in mind. From the way we talk about our business on our websites and on social media, to the way we design our process and our client experience — every detail of our business is designed to connect with, guide, and serve our clients. That’s why the on-boarding process — the...

When we think about the small businesses we love and look up to, we often wonder, “How did they do it?” Maybe you look up to fellow small business owners who seem to have a brand, web design, and social media feed truly reflective of their personality, fellow business owners who offer both services and products, or fellow business owners who fearlessly pursue and create new facets of their busines...

At With Grace and Gold, we’ve become big believers in the idea that the time you spend outside of your business is just as important as the time you spend within your business. When we were new business owners, we found ourselves believing that the more time we spent working — or the more time we spent within our business — the more productive we would be, the more work we could get done, and the...

What if I told you that your website can be so much more than a place that shares your recent work? That your website can do more than serve as a detail of your small business? At With Grace and Gold, we have had the complete joy and honor of serving more than 400 small businesses and small business owners through brand and web design . We have noticed, first-hand, how the standards of web design...

By focusing on our clients, we can bring value to our clients, and live out the purpose we started our business for. But what about all the other areas of small business ownership? As much as all business owners wish they could focus solely on their clients, business housekeeping — like bookkeeping, accounting, social media marketing, blogging, newsletter writing, and so much more — have to happen...

Today, I want to share one unconventional approach we have to brand and web design. At With Grace and Gold, we do not offer what are called brand or web design “refreshes” — the process of making adjustments to an existing brand and web design to meet a client’s needs. Instead, we offer only our full Custom Design Experiences, through which we create a complete brand — or brand and web design — fr...

Reflecting upon our past episodeshas brought us to today, because we realized so many of those episodes were focused on you -- and what you alone can do to help your business grow. So, today, in Episode 029, we want to focus on strategic partnerships -- the reasons why strategic partnerships matter, and the ways that you can partner with fellow business owners to grow... whether that growth means...

Have you ever had an extremely busy work week — or had a completely overwhelming workload — and thought to yourself: “Well, that’s just the way it is for small business owners.” While owning your own business is different from working for someone else’s business, I wholeheartedly believe there are decisions you can make and systems you can create in order to make small business ownership easier, m...

Empathy is defined as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” Maybe being empathetic comes naturally to you — or maybe you need an occasional reminder to put yourself in the shoes of someone else. But all in all, being empathetic can help make the world a better place; it can help us to understand one another better and to lift one another up in intentional and thoughtful wa...

According to an article from Australia Business News, research conducted by Yale University has shown that, over the past century, the average lifespan of a business has decreased by more than 50 years. On average, each new business has a lifespan of only 15 years. According to a professor at Princeton University, enduring companies share similar values and approaches within their businesses: redu...

Your website is like your digital storefront — a place you can welcome your Ideal Clients to, a place where you can form a real connection with your visitors, and a place where you can openly and honestly sell your products and services. Over the past 6 years, we’ve observed that websites have become so much more than an online space to showcase products and services; they’ve become a place for bu...

As small business owners, we tend to feel very connected to our businesses; our businesses are a blend of our creativity, our passion, and our work — so it can be challenging to separate who we are from what we do. The results of not having boundaries can vary. Maybe you’ve found your mood is sometimes correlated with the highs and lows of your small business — or maybe your sense of self or self-...