Hi Reader,
Most of the decisions clients make about whether to work with you happen when you’re not in the room.
Someone reads your website at 11pm. A referral looks you up before they reach out. A potential client skims your proposal, your pricing page, your last guest podcast appearance.
And all of them form an opinion about what it's like to work with you — without you there to explain, reassure, or fill in the gaps.
That’s where your brand comes in.
When you’re an expert service provider, your brand’s #1 job is to do the selling, explaining, educating, and filtering on your behalf when you can't be there to do it yourself.
When it's doing that well, you get to spend more of your working time in your zone of genius and doing the stuff that you love.
When it's not, all of the load the brand should be carrying falls back on you: more explaining on sales calls, more poor-fit inquiries, more revising and updating your proposals because it wasn’t quite right the first time, more people ghosting because what’s on the page doesn’t come close to how it feels when they’re talking with you 1:1.
And it’s not just about something that “looks professional”. A beautiful brand, if it’s sending the wrong message, is simply not doing its job.
So the real question isn't "does my brand look good?" It's "is my brand actually working when I'm not?"
I just published a new post that walks through exactly what that looks like — including the story of a client who got booked out in six months instead of the year and a half she was told to expect, because her brand was ready to do the heavy lifting from day one.
Read it here: How to make sure your brand is pulling its weight
And if this is something you’re working on in your own business, save the date for our next expert panel on brand experience! It’s happening on June 23 at 4:00pm ET / 1:00 pm PT and registration opens next week.
Have a lovely weekend,
Kristen
Need something a little more 1:1? Here are a few ways we can work together:
Get clear: Download the free Brand Alignment Scorecard to see what's working in your brand, what isn't, and where to focus next.
Get focused: Book a Brand Strategy Session to work through a specific branding challenge or question.
Get stuff done: A Brand Retreat Day combines strategic consulting and planning with practical deliverables that move the needle on your biggest pain points and priorities — in a single day.
Go deep: The Brand Blueprint is my signature process for established service providers who need a comprehensive brand strategy that positions them for their next stage of growth.