How your mindset affects your brand with Bec Hughes

I talk a lot about mindset on the podcast and usually in the context of how mindset relates to making more money. But in today’s episode, I chat to Becky Hughes about the impact that your mindset has when you are going through a branding process. Becky shares some of the blocks that people have and how their thinking actually holds them back when it comes to their brand. This episode is full of gold nuggets so make sure you stick around.

Hello and welcome to The Clare Wood Podcast, where myself and incredible guests share about money mindset, financial success and how to manage your money in a fun and practical way to create wealth and abundance in both your business and your life. I’m your host, Clare Wood. I’m a business coach and a money mentor. I strongly believe that money has the power to positively change the world. I can’t wait to help you transform your mindset around money, create a love of numbers and build the business of your dreams, so you can live a life of financial freedom, giving and global impact.

CLARE:

Doors to my high ticket mastermind, the mind to money mastermind are now open. This high ticket community is about surrounding yourself with people doing amazing things in their businesses and helping you to unpick both some of the money blocks that are holding you back from building the business that you dream of, but also how to take the practical actions required to scale your business towards the million dollar mark. If you would like to find out more about the mastermind, you can do so by clicking on the link in the show notes for today’s episode.

A big, warm welcome to the podcast, Becky, I’ll let you intro yourself. Would you like to share with the listeners who you are and what you do?

BEC:

Thanks, Clare. I’m so happy to be here. I’m very excited to chat with you. Obviously we’ve got a little bit of history that we can talk about. So I’m a brand creator, strategist and coach. So I work with clients mainly in the service space to develop their branding. So that’s strategic branding, how they position themselves and then through to everything that they need to communicate their brand. So that could be website, that’s definitely usually logo and identity and all the things that go around that.

CLARE:

Amazing. Well, we will be talking a bit more at the end a little bit more about your business and how people can work with you if they do want to find out more. But let’s talk a little bit about our story of how we first connected. So let’s go back when to when you first reach out to me and maybe why.

Why Bec reached out to Clare to help her stop ‘hiding’ behind her brand

BEC:

It’s funny because I realised that this week that I first spoke to you in November last year, and that was because I had a reminder to buy my bechughes.com URL. And the reason I bought that was because of a conversation with you last year. So I followed you for ages, Clare, listened to your podcast, I would say religiously if not obsessively, every week. And I was becoming really interested, particularly in mindset and how my mindset was impacting my own business. So I was definitely stalking you in that way. And then I think it was around about that time last year, you were starting to think about launching the mastermind for the second or third time. And it was just good timing for me. So I set up a call to have a chat with you about my business. And one of the big things that came out, lots of things came out of that. I had lots of aha moments in that discussion, but one of them was really about my own branding, which is strange because that’s my area of specialty. But it’s like the busman’s holiday, you don’t actually want to look at your own branding. And in that conversation, it was the first conversation we’d ever had, but you encouraged me gently to step into my own identity more. So that’s what I did. Straight after that call I started the wheels in motion on that. And then I decided that I wanted to consolidate or take that further by joining the mastermind, which started in January this year.

CLARE:

Well, I’m so glad that you reached out to me of course, and that you jumped in. And yeah, it’s interesting often people are so busy serving, especially service-based business, serving other people that their own business or brand can get neglected. So it’s something we do see a bit. Well, so let’s talk a little bit then about the mastermind. So you came into the mastermind to work on your mindset and when you were saying, “I realised that there was some work to be done there.” What exactly did that look like? What were you hoping to get out of joining?

BEC:

Look, I realised, and I probably knew it for a long time, and I think this is true of a lot of creatives. So being a designer in particular or anybody I think in a business where you produce things, you can very easily hide behind that. And so I’ve spent seven plus years hiding behind my work, hiding behind brands. So I have had several re-brands of my own, and I was always an entity and very rarely would show my face. And even as I go and connect with other businesses, I know the first thing that I do is I look for the person behind the brand. That’s what I want to see, but I wasn’t doing that. And I started to question, why wasn’t I doing that? Why did I want to hide? And in so many ways, I’m a confident presenter, I deal with clients all the time. In my corporate life, I used to present in big board meetings, but when it came to owning my own work and just being me, I found that a huge challenge. And I started to realise, I obviously knew it subconsciously, but the catalyst was the conversation with you. And I just knew that I needed to dig a little bit deeper and understand why I was so reluctant to do it. And even now every day, I mean, you and I still exchange messages and emails.

And it’s a constant challenge for me. It’s the challenge for me in many ways, is how I show myself more and have the confidence to step into that identity a lot more. So that’s why I started the mastermind. But I would say there were a lot more things that came out of that around how I wanted to build my business, where I wanted to take things in terms of being more scalable, how I was communicating.

I don’t think I’d done a post on Instagram for about three years or something. So I was hidden in so many ways. So I think really what I keep repeating, I can hear myself, is this idea of being hidden and why was I hiding? And I knew that I needed somebody outside of me who was going to pull me up on it and start to challenge me on why I was doing that.

CLARE:

Yeah. It’s so interesting. And I think you’ve kind of hit on it there. There’s this underline, I don’t know why I do something. And this is really what a lot of this work is, it’s understanding those subconscious beliefs, where have they come from? And to your point, knowing you, you’re such a beautiful, bubbly, confident person, it’s surprising, but there’s obviously some story that has been holding you back. And that’s I guess what the mindset work is.

CLARE:

So today I really wanted to talk to you about how people’s mindset affects their brand. And obviously we’ve already alluded to people hiding behind their brand and not showing their face. But I specifically want to talk about how this work has supported you to be able to serve your clients at a deeper level. And specifically some of the blocks that you see come up in the branding process. So I’m wondering if maybe you could start to share, now that you have been doing this work and starting to identify these patterns, what are some things that you see with your branding clients of ways that they are holding themselves back?

Why saying “I’m not creative” is actually a mindset block

BEC:

Look, this is so interesting for me. And it’s, I suppose, a side effect of doing the work with you that I hadn’t anticipated. I was very internalized and I thought the process would be about focusing on me and it was, and that was a really important part of it. But one of the outcomes has been, it’s really given me insight and some clarity on why sometimes there are challenges in creative projects, why sometimes clients hit some roadblocks when it comes to things like decision making.

So, A, it has helped me see why that might happen because as a creative, and I’m sure any creative people listening to this, and I don’t just mean designers, I mean, anybody who copywriters anything, when a client doesn’t love your work, you immediately go, “I got it wrong. I’ve got it wrong. I need to start again.” But that’s not always the case. There might be other things underlying that as creatives we don’t necessarily see, identify and challenge.

So that was the first thing. It was this understanding that there’s more to it than, they just don’t like my work. And then also to be able to then put, as part of my process, a way of working through that and helping my clients get to a better outcome. So to answer your question, the kind of challenges I see, and I think people might have heard themselves saying these things sometimes, a really big one is when people say, “I’m not creative.” In fact, I had to meet him with a client only yesterday, and he was saying, “I’m not creative. I haven’t got a creative bone in my body.” And what I used to think about that was, “Yeah, okay. You’re probably right. I’m the creative one.” But that’s not true. And it’s something I have learned through my whole journey in being a designer, being a brand consultant, is everybody’s got a level of creativity, because creativity takes lots of forms. That could be problem solving, that could be thinking on your feet. There’s lots of ways that you are creative.

So that’s the first thing is, I don’t accept anymore when people say they’re not creative. Because what that is, there’s something underlying there. And very often what that is, is them immediately saying, “I’m not taking responsibility for this process and this decision.” That’s the underlying message. Now you said to me that you’ve said this as well.

CLARE:

Oh, there’s just been so much coming up for me because I am someone that would say that I’m not a creative person. And now that I’m doing this work, I understand where it stemmed from. It was in year eight in my art class and I was a straight A student, I got A’s for everything. And in art, I got a C+. And I was devastated. I’m like, “I can’t have a C on my report card. It’s just embarrassing.” So I went to my art teacher and I said, “How can I get an A?” And she said to me, “You’re just not creative. You’re never going to be good at art.” Now, I was like, “Just teach me the formula for being able to do this.” And so I bet you that a lot of your clients have had an experience like that. So something’s happened and subconsciously you’ve created a story. So subconsciously for me, that created a story, which is, I’m not good at art. I’m not good at being creative. No matter what I can do, I can never be good at art.

So obviously I had to drop art so that I could get my report card back to A’s again.

I’m going through a rebrand process at the moment. And I totally can relate to your client saying, “I don’t know, leave it to them. I want to have no input.” And to your point, it is totally not wanting to take responsibility for it. So I love, love, love, I’ve resonated with this so much. I love that first one.

So what was the second story that you were saying that you see pop up in the brand creative process?

How not trusting your intuition can cause blockages in the branding process

BEC:

Look, I think it probably relates a little bit to that, and that is not trusting your intuition. So I think stepping back from the creative process and, A, wanting to find tangible fact and rationale. And don’t misunderstand me, there is a lot of rationale and thought that needs to go into a creative process. But I always say that that insight, that research, that understanding of the tangible things has to go hand in hand with intuition.

So there’s an element of having an innate understanding of what you are about as a brand, what your meaning is, what your audience want. Again, when people say, “I don’t know what my audience want,” I don’t believe them because I think there’s an innate understanding of that. So it’s trusting your intuition when it comes to going through a creative process. And I think people are very held back in making decisions. And I’ll use the example of a particular Facebook group, and there are lots of Facebook groups, but a business Facebook group that I’m a member of, and it’s got thousands and thousands of members.

And then almost on a daily basis, I see posts going, I’ve got these five options for my logo and I just don’t know which one to choose. And sometimes they’re very different, but most of the time there are tiny, incremental, little differences that are almost not discernible to the naked eye. And I can see that what’s happened there is that they’ve just become overwhelmed because they’ve lost sight of their intuition and they don’t want to make a decision. They’re stuck in decision when actually the truth of the matter is, and maybe I shouldn’t say this as a creative, is any one of those options, any one of those designs would do the job.

Because ultimately what it comes down to is there’s no perfect solution, but if you’ve been through robust process, you’ve done the research, you’ve trusted your intuition, then you need to make a decision and you need to move forward in your business. And what I see is people getting really stuck in not making a decision about their branding when they’re going through a brand process. And they maybe waste weeks if not months, where they could have just moved forward, because the important thing is getting that refresh brand out into the market and starting to run with it and gain momentum with it. So it’s that kind of getting stuck.

CLARE:

This has hit me in all the fields again. So when I first started my business, it was not called Clare Wood, it was actually called a very corporate name, I started my business as CTD Solutions, Connecting the Dots, CTD.

BEC:

How memorable that is.

CLARE:

Right? And I decided that I wanted to come up with a new name for my business. I swear to you it took me four months, and I consulted every business friend of mine. I was messaging my family members, I was asking person after person after person after person after person. And in the end, someone just said, “Look, just call it your name for God’s sakes.” And I was like, “Oh, no one knows how to spell Clare.” Because it’s got no ‘i’ in it.

And I think now back and I think how absurd that I wasted so much time and it’s so easy to tell other people, right? When someone’s coming to me with a name, I say, “It doesn’t really matter. Just pick a name.” Right? Pick a logo. If you’ve picked a design expert, and they’ve presented a bunch of options to you, if you can’t choose, it’s presumably because they’re all good, otherwise it would be, well, that one’s out, that one’s out. So there’s such an incredible relationship between trusting yourself and not being empowered to make decisions. I love that example. I love it. Yes.

Why picking a business name can bring up the biggest creative blockage

BEC:

Yeah. Look, naming is a huge one. People get so caught up on naming in particular. And again, this is really is an aspect of mindset is that people attach so much meaning to one facet of their brand. “I’ve gotta do these 20 things, I want to be premium, I want to tell people, these are the four services that I offer. I want them to know that I’m based in Sydney. I want them to know that I work with female…” This long list of things that they want to communicate.

And they want to shoehorn all of that into a name and/or logo. And really you’ve got to remember that your brand is a very holistic thing. There are lots of facets that go into your brand. And one of the hardest parts as a brand designer is that first presentation, because you present and you will have experienced this, I expect, Clare, in this process you’ve been through, is that you present logos on a lovely white sheet, and here’s option one, and here’s option two.

But your logo is never ever out in the wild, let’s say, seem like that, it’s always on a website or there’s an aspect of it that’s on your Instagram feed, or it might be on signage or clothing. There’s so many other ways that your brand has to communicate. And it sits in a context and there are levers within all those contexts to communicate everything that you want to say.

But in the early days, everyone’s like, “Oh, I’ve got to say all these things and it’s all got to be in this two words or this one little logo.” And I think that’s an over expectation of what your brand, when I say brand, what your logo can do. Your brand can do all of those things. Absolutely. But your little logo all on its own can’t do everything.

CLARE:

Yes, yes, yes, yes. You’ve hit the nail on the head. And it’s really interesting. I can’t imagine how much pressure you must feel on that moment as a creative when you present these things. And suddenly it’s like, “Oh my gosh, what if they hate them?” It must feel like the grand reveal, and what if they don’t? Is that something that you experience, the nervous wait?

BEC:

Look, I think probably in my early days as a designer, I felt more anxious about it. I think these days I’ve built so much rigor into my process that we do the research, we do the work, we understand all the reasons why, and I am very close to the client in that process. And I bring them on the journey, that by at the time we see the creative work, it should be inevitable in many ways. It should just be a manifestation of all the work we’ve done before. So I’m having all of this insight around people’s mindset really helps as well, because I kind of know that their first reaction, whilst that’s important, because it’s part of intuition, their first reaction may also have some of this baggage, these call it creativity blocks. We’ve talked about money blocks for a long time, let’s talk about creativity blocks, might be holding them back as well. So it’s really about being ready to have that conversation as well.

But what was really interesting, and back in my corporate days, presenting to a brand manager in one of the big corporate food businesses was it had never occurred to me that she said we were going in to do a presentation. And I said, “Oh, are you excited to see the work?” She said, “I am excited, but I’m also really nervous.” I said, “You’re nervous? Why are you nervous? I should be the nervous one.” She’s like, “No, I’m nervous because I feel like, was my brief enough? Have I given you the right information? There’s a level of responsibility on me as well to have got the right outcome.” And I think that’s really important. And it’s something I talk about in a different context, which is about getting the best out of creative outsourcing, is that very often, the worst thing you can do is go to creative and go, “I’m going to leave it to you. I need a logo, but I’m just going to hand it all over to you.”

There has to be some level of responsibility about understanding yourself, understanding what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it. That’s not going in looking at Pinterest and finding lots of screenshots of things you like. That’s something completely different. But it’s understanding the strategic reasons why you’re doing the project and what you want the creative solution to achieve. So I thought that was interesting that it wasn’t just the creatives that get nervous, it’s the client as well.

CLARE:

Oh, I get so nervous when I’m about to see something for all those reasons. And also because you’ve invested money and you’re like, “What if this doesn’t nail the brief? What if it does nail the brief?” So I can totally relate to the nervousness around receiving that first copy. But it’s really cool listening to you talking about how now you can understand the thinking behind what’s going on when you’re observing these things.

While we are talking about money, there’s another relationship between branding and mindset that I’d love to talk about, which is of course my favorite topic, money. So this might be another area of branding that you see come up again and again, is that someone’s like, “I want this beautiful, new premium brand,” and then they want to work with the best. And then you present them with the quote and then they freak out. Is this something else that you sometimes see with clients of yours from a relationship between mindset and branding?

Mindset blocks around the cost of a branding investment

BEC:

Oh my goodness. 100%. And I always think about something my mum says, which is they’ve got a mini budget but they want a Ferrari. And that’s kind of what it comes down to. And I think what’s happened in the branding space is that, and I’m really interested in the outcomes of these processes, but what you’ve now got is lots of, I suppose, design, crowd sourcing kind of offers. So things like Fiverr, where you can go and a logo for not a lot of money. So I suppose that creates a perception that it should be cheaper and it should be a quick and easy process. It shouldn’t cost a lot of money. And I think there’s horses for courses. And like with everything, you can pay a huge scale. You can make whatever investment you want to make and whatever feels right.

But one of the mindset blocks I see is not wanting to make any investment. And I think part of that for me is because branding can be quite intangible or certainly it can seem like this final little output of a logo is physically so tiny, it seems inconsequential but it’s not. So all of the time and the investment and the thought that should go in upfront, isn’t visible, it’s so intangible. So it’s hard to attach a value to it.

So I think there is a resistance to invest because you want to invest in something real. You want a car parked out the front or you want a house as a result, or you want to have gone and eaten a nice meal for that money. But when you think about investing in something intangible, it’s quite difficult to justify the value.

So I think what’s important for me is always having a conversation about, it’s not the end output that you’re paying for, it’s the results that it’s ultimately going to deliver in your business. So how many service offerings, how many clients do you have to sign up? How many widgets do you have to sell to justify that branding? It’s probably actually not that many, but the impact it can have on your business growth is huge.

But the other thing for me is the impact a brand can have on the internals in your business. So in your own mindset and how you think about your brand. So the confidence it gives you to go out. And so I often talk about and I hear other people in my space talk about brand shame and not wanting to go out and be visible because their brand is holding them back.

But also how that motivates other people. If you employ people in your business, for them to see you investing, that can be very motivating for people. It can really up people’s productivity when they feel that they’re working for a great brand that… It’s like when you go and put your makeup on and put on a nice outfit, you feel better. And that’s the same with branding.

CLARE:

Oh, 100%. My husband, when he first started his business, he got one of those 99 design logos for $100 or whatever it was.

BEC:

I won’t judge him.

CLARE:

And I built him a website Wix, which is one of those template websites. So you can imagine with my, I don’t want to say lack of creativity, but with my logical brain that this website was, let’s just say a little bit substandard. And I remember when I said to him, “I think we need to invest in a new brand for you.” And of course I wanted to use someone that I know and he was freaking out about the cost of it.

CLARE:

And then after he had his new logo and his new website, he was at a conference and he’s like, “I was walking around and I was giving out my business cards.” I was like, “Go and check out my website.” And he said, “In the past, people would say, oh, do you have a website?” And he’d be like, “Oh, oh, mate, no, no, don’t look there.”

BEC:

Just send me an email.

CLARE:

Yeah, pretty much. And then he’s like, “And then now I was like, please go and have a look. I’ve got a real business and it’s amazing.” And he was showing up with just such a different sense of confidence. And at the moment, I’m nearly sharing my new brand at the moment and I’m a bit like that. I don’t want anyone going to my website anymore. I’m embarrassed of it because I know what the new, beautiful one’s going to look like on the other side. So you’re totally right that there isn’t a price that you can put on that confidence.

And I think, yes, I believe in getting an ROI on investments, but I also think it’s a little bit dangerous to try and qualify what sometimes investments look like. And this is something I experience with selling, coaching and mentoring services as well, is just because you spend $2,000 doesn’t mean that you’re going to make the big amounts. And it’s the same with a brand.

Yes, a brand can completely change your business, but it’s really hard to quantify exactly what that will look like and the timeframe. Sometimes people get an instant uplift from their brand, whereas other times that is overall affecting your perception in the market. It’s going to take time before that converts into a bottom line result. Sorry, I’ve just gone on a massive tangent there.

BEC:

But you’re right. And I often talk about the real and tangible ways that brand does impact the bottom line, but to your point, that doesn’t necessarily happen overnight. And I think very often it’s not seen or it’s not understood that your brand is having a role in that. So things like getting referrals. So I wouldn’t refer a business even, perhaps if I’d potentially had a good experience with them, if I didn’t feel that it had a brand positioning or perception that I wanted to associate myself with.

So there might be referrals that you lose, because people go, “Oh, well, Becky’s lovely, but I wouldn’t want to say to anyone else that I’ve worked with her because she doesn’t really stack up. She doesn’t give a good account of herself when she presents herself in the marketplace.” So there’s that kind of referral and partnerships and network that you might be missing out on, there’s talent attraction which is a huge thing. Even if it’s to partnering or recruiting a VA to building an employee team, you’re going to attract the best in your market when you’ve got a great brand. And that has an impact on the bottom line without a doubt, particularly if they’re sales people or they’re people who generate revenue. So there’s lots and lots of ways. The other one is speed. So all those inquiries that come in, if you are not confident in how you talk about and present your brand, and every time you’re sitting down, right? “I’ve gotta put together a pitch document. Where do I start?” Starting again, finding the images, reinventing, because you didn’t love the last one you did. There’s a lot of time wasted in that, which has got a number of physical value attached to it, where you could have been doing something else that was revenue generating in your business. So there are a rattle of loads of these, but there are lots of ways that brand can have a real impact on the bottom line for sure.

CLARE:

Yeah. Amazing. I’m loving this chat. There’s so many good little nuggets of wisdom coming out here. So we’ve spoken about quite a number of different ways that mindset plays into the branding process, which like you shared, wasn’t something you even anticipated as happening going and doing their mindset work. Were there any others that you wanted to share before we move on to…

BEC:

I’ve got to share my favorite, which is what I call brand neglect. And this is a huge mindset thing. And for me, I always think about you saying, do you get bills come in and do you just kind of push them away and don’t pay them and don’t pay attention to them because you’re kind of hiding from them because you don’t want to face the truth and except money flows in and money flows out? And that’s a shift in mindset.

When you’re fearful of money and you’re fearful of spending money, you ignore the things that need to happen. And suddenly electricity is cut off or you get a late bill or something. And that kind of idea of neglect is also really relevant in branding and all the things that surround branding. So how that manifests itself is I suppose that being aware that your brand doesn’t look great or you’ve let things slip or things have kind of come into your branding that don’t really feel consistent, but really just not doing anything about it and just letting it slide. And the other way it manifests itself which is so important is impractical terms, which is what I talk about, which is brand guardianship, which is not looking after your assets. So letting forms on your website break and not fixing them, never actually checking them because you just hope that they’re not broken and you don’t really want to know. So you just start to ignore those things. Not having control of your assets in the sense of not knowing where your website’s hosted, not knowing where your domain name is being hosted and when the renewals are supposed to come up. And when you do get the renewal, you kind of ignore it. And then suddenly you find that you’re in dire restraints because you didn’t do the renewal when you needed to. Not having all your high res logos to hand and all your images, you kind of lose control and lose track of those things. I think for me, that all comes under this heading of brand neglect. You’re not looking after all your assets and facing up to the things that might need to be fixed.

CLARE:

So why do you think that people do that? Why are people neglecting their brand?

BEC:

Well, because if you were to acknowledge that things needed fixing, it might mean you have to invest. It might mean that you have to step up and go through a process that might take time and you’re kind of fearful of investing that time. Is it going to expose me to things that I didn’t want to have to do? Am I going to have to get someone in to fix that form on my website? That’s another pain in the backside that I didn’t need this week. So I think there’s partly a bit of ignoring it because it’s just in the too hard basket. It’s going to mean that I have to take my attention away from something that I think is more important. And actually, I don’t think there’s much that’s more important than someone being able to contact you. But also I think it’s fear that it might expose you to needing to take steps to invest.

CLARE:

Yeah, it’s so interesting, isn’t it? Understanding the thinking that’s going on behind the actions that we’re taking or not taking as it might be. And you’ve hit the nail on the head. It is easy for these things to creep up really. I know that that’s what happened with me. That sometimes I go and look at my Instagram bar and I’m like, “That literally doesn’t even explain what I do at all.” It’s just to your point, you’re busy and you think, “Oh, I just can’t deal with it so I just won’t deal with it.”

And that’s definitely something I see a lot with money, is that people go, “I’m just not looking at my sales target anymore. It’s too hard. It’s too scary. It’s too overwhelming.” So I love, love, love all of this. And I can see how much mindset really does play into the branding process. So I love that.

Were there any other mindset learnings outside the space of branding that you had coming through the mastermind or that you’ve had through your shift in how you think about money and how you think about business?

How Bec shifted her stories around her own business investments

BEC:

Going into the mastermind, it was about hiding myself away and what I needed to do about that. I think one of the big other things that came out of it for me was having just spent the last, however long we’ve spent, 30 minutes kind of alluding to investment all along the way, how I needed to invest and didn’t invest. I mean, I had not spent any money on, not only actually business terms, but in business terms, I hadn’t really invested in my business, partly because I can do a lot of the things myself, but I hadn’t invested in myself in business. I hadn’t gotten help, I did everything myself. I didn’t get anybody to help me. And I think that was a really big learning for me, was around my blocks and resistance to investing. And I loved it when you said about ROI is important, and for me it is always about that balance. And I’m not going to go and invest frivolously. But understanding that I didn’t invest at all, I mean, that’s a red flag.

Investing zero is not really a good thing. So I think that was something I really worked through. And this year, if I reflect ever on 2021, taking out the C word and everything else, not the year I invested, it’ll be the year I started investing, because that will continue. I’ve invested in things in the right way and I’ve really seen the impact of that. And I still got to myself all the time. And I think I sent you an email the other day, Clare, saying, I hear you in my ear very often about things. But it really was kind of understanding what I need to do to grow the business. And a big part of that for me was investing.

CLARE:

Yeah. I think I’ve shared this story on the podcast before, but I spent nothing on my business for years either. I ran everything like an accountant, smell of an oily rag, and I really only had the aha moment when I started seeing everyone else leaping ahead. And I’m like, “Why are people having these $100,000 launches, half a million dollar years? What are people doing?” And then I started to watch them and I’m like, “Oh, they’ve gone and got a fancy website. Oh, they’re doing a professional photo shoot. Oh, they’re investing with these really expensive coaches and masterminds.” I started investing well before I started seeing the returns, but then things kind of solidify, come together, and then you have an income leap. And yeah, it’s really interesting to look back on all the limiting beliefs that I used to have around money, that I’ve now worked through. And it’s really exciting to be able to inspire and empower other people because, yes, you can keep doing the same thing, right?

And my coach said this saying to me the other day which I absolutely love, which is, what got you to here, won’t get you to there. And so if you are dreaming of something bigger, if you’re dreaming of stepping back from working 40-hour weeks, God forbid having a bit more work-life balance, if you’re dreaming of making a lot more money, you can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. You have to do things differently, otherwise you’ll just keep getting the same outcome. So I love that you’ve really lent into it. And hopefully the experience of investing yourself has really helped you to understand as well from your client’s perspective, when they come to invest in their brand and they have a bit of a freak out.

And it can be an overwhelming experience. But I know that for me, it gets easier and easier in time. The more that I’ve done it, I see the results. So love, love, love that. Thank you so much for sharing. I’ve loved all of these examples today. Becky, you are such a talented designer, brand creator. I really, really love the work that you do. If anyone’s listening and would like to come and check out your business or work with you, how can they do so?

BEC:

So I work one-on-one with clients to create their brand. So that’s a strategic process of. And very often I find that that’s rebrand because there is a brand life cycle. And you talked about getting the quick logo and the Wix website. And that’s very understandable for me. So I often do work with startups, but I work with people more when they’re rebranding, when they’ve kind of gone, “Right, I had a brand that took me through this first 18 months, two, three years, and now I know I really need to give it some rigor.” So I work one-on-one in brand creation and you can find me quite simply at bechughes.com. But something I’ve really thought about, and definitely this year as part of the process with you, Clare, was there is so much more around branding that I don’t get to do in that brand creation process. There’s so much in the upfront around mindset and there’s so much after. And I always say to my clients, when I hand over this brand project, I’m like, “This is not the end. You don’t get to sit now in the pool with a cocktail waiting for the doorbell to ring.”

There’s so much more you have to do to build momentum around your brand. So I’ve had a real sense for a long time that there’s so much more that I know and I’ve experienced in my career about brand and how you really build a strong, successful, robust brand. So I’ve spent a bit of time developing a program called Elevate and Expand Your Brand, which I’m launching in February, which is completely a new thing for me. It’s not one-on-one, it’s working with a group and there’s no creative output from me.

But it’s about working through all of the aspects. So there are eight aspects about how you build a robust brand. At the moment, the wait list is open, but it’s launching in February. So if anyone wants to go and take a look, they can find that on my website too.

CLARE:

Amazing. And I will pop a link for your website and for your new program in the show notes for today’s episode. And I love that because I do think people often think that a brand is a logo, but your brand is so much more. So I really love that you’re taking this work and taking it to the next level and showing people how they can really take their brand and actually implement it and really have the impact that they desire in the market. Becky, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been wonderful chatting to you again. I appreciate all of your wisdom and I look forward to chatting to you soon.

BEC:

Thanks, Clare. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been great.

CLARE:

Thanks so much for listening. If you loved this episode, please share it with your audience. And don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @clare_wood_coach. And also make sure you hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. Have an abundant week, and I look forward to talking to you again next week.