How to brand (or rebrand) your one person business
The Ask website and brand recently got an upgrade! I hope you like it.
To date, I’ve built or tweaked The Ask brand three times over (not without a lot of help!) so decided to capture the learnings along the way, and share with you today.
In this post I’ll outline my rationale for a rebrand (investing time and money into something that wasn’t exactly broken) and then the process behind it, for you to get a glimpse into the thinking behind a branding exercise of this kind, the investment in time, team and money.
Whether you are building your brand for the first, or even the tenth time, I hope it’s useful. Your brand is a byproduct of your mission, beliefs and how you operate (your Unique Contribution), so all of your design efforts should start out with a conviction in that arena.
So, onto the rebrand BTS.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?
In the past month I’ve felt a lot like someone on their way to an expensive haircut would feel upon getting complimented on their hair.
Meaning, that The Ask brand was not previously causing any ‘problems’ and in fact, I even receive frequent messages from people who say they loved it.
So, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it? Well it was certainly a bold choice to spend the time and money on something didn't exactly necessitate it.
But those that know me know I don't do anything by halves, and that I care a lot about the little things. My business is my baby, and my baby has grown up a lot lately, so it was time to give her a new look!
It’s grown up thanks to the evolution of The Ask’s focus, niche and client.
For context, I began coaching in January 2020 and went full time in June that year. Since that time, there have been four ‘phases’ in terms of The Ask coaching focus:
2020 - Providing fun and accessible career guidance to people pursuing “courageous careers” or finding the right work for them
2021 - Guiding startup founders to build the right business for them
2022 - Helping people in “entrepreneurial” careers to decide and plan their next career move or business idea
2023 - Supporting one person business owners to build a profitable business around their unique contribution
To be clear, I didn’t have an annual reinvention just for the lols. Changing what you say about your business and your client persona, programmes and pricing takes a lot of thinking and executing!
Instead, what happened at each turn was more of an evolution based on something I learnt about the market, my customers needs, or my own coaching preferences.
To the outside this evolution may have been subtle or unnoticeable, but to me they sometimes felt like seismic shifts.
Throughout, my core mission remained unchanged: to help ambitious professionals be fulfilled at work.
I know that this ultimately comes down to knowing yourself and what you want, and I’ll always stand for and serve this agenda. The clients who pursue this for themselves, often choose entrepreneurship for its potential for uncapped growth and the option to choose what you work on.
Today I coach one person business owners to be known for something in their industry, create value and stop trading their time for money. This could be any professional services provider, coach, consultant, expert or creative with a monetisable skill set who wants to tap into what makes them unique, and develop the foundation of a sustainable business around it.
So where previously I was about helping people find answers to big questions and consider any and all types of career paths, now, it is more targeted.
As such the brand has had to evolve from a more ‘consumer facing’ generic brand identity to something that better reflects the higher-touch and more personalised service that is Unique Contribution.
It’s a more hands on programme, and I take on less clients as a result. Whoever chooses the Unique Contribution programme is choosing to spend a lot of time with me and so there was room for the brand to reflect more of my personal style.
So now you have the context, here’s how I turned it into action .
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How to rebrand (or build a brand) for your one person business
As I went through this process there was a lot to consider, but it all happened pretty fast (turnaround in 3 weeks total and just two days for the website). That’s pretty extreme speed but the website was offline and I didn’t want to have to lose too many days downtime.
That turnaround speed was helped by the fact I know Squarespace well, know the right people to help, and have been very hands on myself (made possible by August being quieter time for coaching with many clients taking a summer break).
If you’re taking on a branding project for your business here’s what I would advise, based on my experiences recent and past:
i) A clarity about your business vision, mission and purpose.
When you have this, you’ll know what feelings your brand should evoke.
For example, I help to empower people and provide them with confidence and clarity about their future. Clean and crisp design combined with bold colours works for this reason. However, I certainly don’t encourage a cookie cutter approach to business building, which is where the images of different layers and textures of the brand comes in – as I talk about finding what makes you stand out in business these elements hint to that point of difference.
ii) A good understanding of your ideal customer.
Their buying behaviours, habits, demographic and psychographic traits are useful when you design a brand that has them in mind.
At The Ask, I know a majority of my clients are in their 30s, live in cities, are ambitious, aesthetically conscious and also very thoughtful about how they live their lives, and spend their money. Coaching is rarely an impulse purchase, and so The Ask website includes storytelling, context building and free resources to educate people prior to choosing to work with me or not.
iii) Know if your brand is fast, cheap, or good?
This might sound silly but it’s actually a “Common Law of Business Balance” that gets taught in management consulting. The idea being that most brands have to choose between two of the three options - they can’t be fast, cheap and good all at once. This framework hasn’t informed my brand per se, but allows me to accept that the type of coaching I offer is good, and results are pretty fast, but it isn’t ‘cheap’. It’s an investment.
The brand had to reflect the level of investment my clients make when they work with me, hence the use of fonts, colours and textures that are more high-end than before, replacing the use of primary colours and illustrations.
iv) Seek visual inspiration from a range of sources
Once you have clarified the above, you can start to build the visual components. I love a moodboard for this purpose, and I’ve personally sought inspiration from brands across the board: by no means limited to coaching businesses. It’s about finding other brands that evoke similar feelings for their customers. Or fulfil similar desires.
Remember those feelings of being empowered, clear, and confident?
I can take those feelings and consider in what other contexts they might apply. For example, you might feel confident after attending a great workout class. You might feel clear after an educational course. Empowered after making a decision good for your long term health or bank balance. Other businesses exist for those purposes.
Look at their brands and in addition conduct a search across Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram, Behance, trade publications and so on, to find images that you like or feel represent the feeling your business evokes for its customers. Create a mood board on a site like Canva.
Then look across these images you’ve collected and find themes. Do you notice many bold fonts? Muted tones? Real images or illustrations? Scenery or people? You don’t have to emulate these exactly, but there will be clues about how your brand should look.
v) Start designing & building the brand
You can either do this yourself, or enlist a professional. I was always planning to use my designer Nas for her brilliant eye and our successful track record working together.
We had a call earlier this month, following an extensive briefing, where she presented two concepts for me to choose from, one of which she went on to develop further. Before choosing, I consulted people I trust with the two options – their decision was unanimous which made the choice easier!
Make it stand out
Here’s a snapshot of the alternative concept I didn’t end up choosing, in case you’re interested:
Then, the next step was to create a final brand guideline for the colours, fonts, images and so on. I have this as a guideline to use now when I create assets myself, which happens on a weekly basis!
With the brand guideline in place, the touch points that are required can be built. For you, consider what needs to be implemented? Website and socials are the main ones, but you might have printed materials or merch, too. You might be a very visually driven brand or use more written text. Consider these needs and how much time each will take you to create.
I’ve implemented the new brand across the website, LinkedIn and my newsletter predominantly for now. Then going forward, all the blog and resources will be in the new branding. (Absolutely no way of going back over old ones and editing those right now - would take weeks for what I imagine is of limited return on investment).
I also had new headshots done, which I would recommend if you’re selling a personalised high touch service, to showcase your personality and look professional. As you’ll notice there is a strong synergy between my brand and headshots, as I shared them with my designer. So what's quite funny is that the outfits I bought on holiday Lisbon last month have literally shaped the entire brand repositioning for my business! Talk about personal branding.
vi) Consider the costs
Depending on how far along in your business building journey you are, that will influence the investment you can put into your brand or rebrand. You must also factor in your time, as its time spent away from finding customers or delivering your services.
For me the biggest monetary cost has been designer's time on the brand and website built. Myself and Mel have done the rest e.g. update assets and socials. There have also been additional costs like buying font licenses, the photographer and the studio and outfits.
All in this comes to around £4-5k investment. I could have easily spent more time and or money but tried my best to avoid it!
How should you decide how much you should spend?
You may not need to go to all of these lengths, and in fact shouldn’t if you’re just starting out and proving market demand. Branding comes from clarity about what you offer.
Until you have that nailed, you could do your branding in a more shoestring/DIY way and bring different low cost tools together, or skills swap with someone who has the ability to support you, or look on Fiverr/Upwork as my clients have done.
However once you know there’s demand for what you offer, and you want to add fuel to that fire (the case in my instance), its a serious investment you’ll want to consider.
It so happens that £5k is the price point for my signature programme for 1-1 clients. I’m essentially making a bet that the rebrand has a good ‘return on investment’; its impact should bring in many more of my ideal clients over the course of the next year or so.
vii) Allocate your time accordingly
Whether you enlist help or not, these things take up your time. I’ve had to jump into various platforms to make edits, fix code, rewrite copy etc countless times in the last few weeks.
Everything takes longer to do than you think. So however you do your branding, don't forget to factor in your time and attention to ensure you are proud of the end product!
I know for sure there are parts of The Ask website that arent perfect given the fast turnaround, so I’ll have to come back to them, but for now it was good enough to push live and share with you all!
Finishing touches
As I wrap up this post, I wanted to say thank you for letting me indulge you in this process. It certainly feels indulgent to write at length about this and plaster photos of myself all over your screen (!)
But back to the point, I know that many of you share similar visions and hopes for your one person business so I write in service, expecting you might take something away from this process.
The main takeaways and final points I’d make are:
You need clarity around who you serve, and how you serve them, in your service based business, and what you want to be known for as the person providing it.
A great brand should also be memorable, consistent across touchpoints and ideally, as timeliness possible. Yes you’ll evolve and so will your brand, but the goal should be to create something that you love and you’ll want keep for a long time. Your customers will grow to recognise it, and repetition builds trust and certainty over time.
The timing of branding is a bit of a chicken and egg question: should you get sales and then invest into your brand? Or invest in a brand in order to make sales? It's a personal decision, and depends on your risk appetite and starting position financially.I believe that you should get clear on what your business does and how it works, build a brand you are happy enough with, but expect these two milestones to take some time and financial investment to achieve. Whether through coaching, mentoring, skills swaps or paying experts. It's a misnomer to think that a service based business doesn’t need investment – it's just that you are the investor in it. You might invest out of your profits, or if you don’t have them yet, from another revenue stream you’ve set up or your personal savings. Loans and external funding are available, but I would encourage my client to create their own income streams and build up slowly.
Your customers can tell when your brand feels like high quality. When it shows your credibility. When it gives them certainty, through your own clarity about what you do.
If you are seeking more direction for your one person business in terms of its core offer, pricing, methods and marketing then check out the Unique Coaching programme for details of what working together 1-1 could look like.
Happy branding, rebranding, or perhaps to just keeping things the same! Let me know how you get on or if you have any questions.
