Choosing font pairings might NOT be high on your to-do list this week, but it is a good thing to know about

When establishing the design guide for your brand, the fonts you use consistently are important.

You want to appear pro and not amateur, so choose fonts that have a classic feel and design, without being commonplace. Fonts that come preloaded on your computer are usually a dead-ringer for homemade design, so look outside your hardware for some alternatives.

There are literally MILLIONS of fonts out there to choose from. When you start the process of creating your design guidelines you will run into this WALL of options that may stop you dead in your tracks, but don't worry- you have resources!

Dafont.com is a resource for finding fonts that you wouldn't normally find preloaded on your Mac or PC: https://www.dafont.com/


This resource lets you key in words or phrases to actually see what they would look like in the font style you're choosing, as well as establishing "Families" of fonts to help your search go faster
https://www.fontspace.com/popular/fonts

1001 fonts has all the fonts you have NEVER seen, plus text tool lile fontspace to see what you're fonts will do.: https://www.1001fonts.com/

And finally, 99 designs hosts an article to help you with PAIRINGS – to give you ideas on what styles work best together.

https://99designs.com/blog/tips/font-pairings/

Your branding is a visual, and contextual representation of your business. If your brand is a hot, delicious cup of coffee, persistence is the steam from your cup that sends that delicious aroma across the room to the noses of your potential clients.

Apply your branding to everything you do, without hesitation, without shame and mostly – without fail.

All of your visual identity, your content, your blogging, your articles, interviews, and whenever you have the opportunity – talk about your business, place your branding on your product, and never, ever let any product you create leave your hands without your brand touching it.

Persistence is the act or fact of stubbornly continuing to do something. and this is something you need to keep your brand top-of-mind, and to bring your work to light to more people more often.

Any post or note or interview that does not have your brand attached is a lost opportunity – don't let this happen.

I hope these 6 important posts have helped you

After posting all of these steps have been enlightening for me, as I have been digging into my brain deeply to find the best advice I can give to new business builders who want to put their best brand forward.

It's important for me to help as many people as possible make the most of the opportunity the online marketing platform provides for us.

Common sense – of course plays a big role in how to best represent your brand, just look to your own impressions and habits towards other brands and check-in with yourself about how certain brand behaviors affect you and your impression of them.

Notice those that are well designed, consistent, predictable or those that are amateurish, home-made, flaky, or inconsistent. Do any come to mind?

How do these affect your loyalty to them, or your willingness to engage – especially with your credit card number?

Lastly- if you need any help discerning whether or not your brand is on-point – or needs some refreshing – give me a call.
I can offer you a 30-minute strategy session to assess your brand performance from a few simple questions, and give you a path to better brand performance – all absolutely free.
It is my belief that everyone deserves the same professional online presence as the big brands, and it's my mission to bring a Professional Online Presence to all small businesses worldwide. Thanks for reading

Thomas Gaebel
IELA

Your brand is what your customers and audience think of when they hear your company’s name or see your logo. It’s what you represent and who you are as a company.

It’s both the voice and the tone within the content you create, and it can be experienced through all the work that you produce.

Style guides are used to define the way the brand will look and keep graphics consistent and uniform across all mediums. Although you'd think you wouldn't need these kind of rules – how to display a logo is really a no-brainer, right? – you really do, and a design conflict moment with a vendor is the wrong time to realize you need to create a style guide so he or she doesn't make a mess of your brand image.

A visual style guide will help the creation and upkeep of your website, app, social media accounts, advertising, marketing, and packaging consistent at all times, and that consistency is critical for brand loyalty in the marketplace. It establishes the rules for fonts, image types, colors, and logo placement.

A content style guide tells your marketing team, content creators, and employees how to write in a way that reflects your brand’s character. It also specifies how you want them to refer to your brand and products, translate industry jargon, and use grammar and punctuation.

An editorial style guide may determine your attitude/personality on social media versus email marketing and your company website.

Having these preset rules of engagement will prevent design snafus and editorial mishaps by ensuring all of your content producers are on the same page.

Here's a great service to help you build your brand guidelines:

https://www.frontify.com/en/brand-guidelines/

Here's some more helpful information from Venngage:

As the flagship of your Professional Brand, your logo should represent the essence of your company’s personality. It should be instantly recognizable, legible, true to your brand’s personality, and unique.

It should also function correctly, it should be flexible, portable, relevant, and in design: timeless!

Branding agencies will design 3-5 versions with about 4 rounds of edits. Crafting a logo can often be subjective and time-consuming, so you need to take time to consider the work that may go into developing a logo to your liking.

A smart process would be to collect a list of logo samples, fonts, colors, and styles you prefer to share with your designer, this will give him or her a place to start when delivering your first round.

Logo design Myth Number 1: Designing a logo is fun and easy
If you are a professional in logo design and visual communications you – of course – can do this yourself. If you are NOT a professional designer- then by all means; DO NOT DESIGN YOUR OWN LOGO.

Here are some resources you can apply to help you get started.

Here's a little .pdf I designed to help you avoid those logo-design mistakes
8 Ways to fail in the logo design Game.

Don't want to spend a lot of money on a designer?
Try out these resources:

FIVR

UPwork

99designs

Remember- it's easier to design a logo right the first time, and a pain in the butt to change it everywhere you apply it later on. Good Luck!

In the quest for a powerful brand, we must look outward to determine where to set our sails. One of the most important things you can do ( and they're all important) is to establish the WHO.

Who is your most perfect Viable client? (PVC)? Who are you selling to? Whose problems are you trying to solve? Having a strong idea of who is vital for your brand's success. Establish the who and you’re better able to determine a few key factors
What are their pain points, challenges, problems that you specifically can help them resolve?
What is their ultimate goal, what is their short-term need?
Why are they challenged?
Why are you the best option for them
And where do they hang out: online, in the media, on the street?

You’re asking more than who in this section, you’re asking who what why, and where. Answer these questions and your task of finding your PVC becomes a little bit easier.

I'm creating a new content development schedule for myself, and I'm passing the info on to all of you. This week I'll be posting one vital step towards a strong brand identity every single day- I hope you hold me to it.

Today we're covering the first step to establishing your Powerful Brand.

HERE'S WHY: Getting clear on your brand identity will help keep you on track. Businesses without a clear brand identity suffer from confusion, distraction and mission creep.

Please know this: Your brand is more than a creative logo, it is your entity. It's who you are, what you believe in, and what customers can expect when they engage with your brand.

Building a strong brand takes effort, and these 6 steps can help get you there. Here's the first step for today.

1. Brand Identity

If you need some help determining your brand’s mission, vision, overall business goals, naming your company, or coming up with the tagline consider getting help from our FB group here or set up a Free 30-minute coaching call me, I am here to help.

Brand Identity typically includes:

•Ideation for your company name: Is it relevant to your services, does it speak to your audience?

•Tag line: What would be a client's big takeaway in a few words?

•Brand positioning: What industry are you working in? What problems do you intend to solve?

•Brand story: How did we get here? What's your 'Why?"

•Messaging: Your messaging is your Who/What/HOW statement.

Finish this sentence: "I help _____[Your Perfect Viable client group]
looking for/suffering from _________________[Their biggest challenge]
find ______________[The solution you bring to the table]
through __________[your method for getting them there]

These services should be strategic, relatively permanent, and take a lot of rounds of edits to find the perfect fit for your goals and brand personality.

There are TONS of youtube videos and articles online about establishing your brand's function, purpose, and mission. Do your research and get clear, it's through this clarity you will find your path forward and an easy straight line to success.

Starting your own online business is not easy, especially if you’re going the wild “solopreneur” route. You are the CEO, the janitor, the employee, the accountant, and every other possible job you can think of.

The reason you’re doing it this way doesn’t matter that much – maybe it's money, maybe it’s simply easier, maybe you’re going solo just at the beginning, and because you chose the road of the small business owner – the path of the entrepreneur – you need to utilize every tool that is at your disposal. This is where social media comes in.

With proper social media utilization, you can have an amazing marketing tool for free. This is important to understand because the standard tools for online marketing take a lot of time and can be quite expensive. Using social media, you can advertise your business, and show off your Professional Online Presence for free to dramatically improve your Google Ranking. 

Here are a few ways Social media should be your #1 tool for marketing in 2021

#1 Social media will help you snag a broader customer base

The most obvious benefit is that a huge amount of people spend hours on social media every single day. Many get their news from social media feeds, it helps them stay current with both world events and juicy gossip. But, it also provides people with access to various businesses and services.  This is where you come in.

Setting up proper dedicated pages on social media and maintaining these pages by posting content, and engaging, you gain a very powerful advertising tool virtually for free. The number of potential clients you can influence by using social media is huge, in fact – much larger than the number of people you can get via regular TV (discounting prime time slots).

#2 Social media can create more personal client relationships

As I’ve mentioned, social media creates a more personal and tight relationship with your customer base. Social media also allows you to create communities focused on your genre of expertise. It's also an excellent source for feedback, to help you fine-tune your message, branding, and mission.

If you use it properly, social media can give you the kind of A/B testing that cannot be obtained anywhere else. Experimenting is also easier, as will outreach and customer support. Not only that, but you will be able to develop trust, and obtain a more loyal customer base.

#3 Social media can help you to compete in the online business marketplace

This can either be a huge advantage, or (unfortunately) a necessity – it depends solely on the line of work you’re in. For some businesses, having your own social media pages is a huge plus – maybe because of the nature of the work itself, the culture of the profession. Some small business owners might not see social media as important, but this is a mistake. They're missing out on a large portion of customers they could not reach any other way.
Did I mention social media outreach is cheaper, and often easier to implement than standard online marketing?

#4 Social media can help you develop and maintain a solid brand idenity

An important part of any business is the development of a brand. It's your signature, something that makes you stand out.

You might notice that creating a brand as a small business owner may actually be easier than branding for a larger one. You have more freedom, more flexibility. By using social media properly, you can advertise your brand, mold it and update it thoughtfully. Because it's easy to update digital content, versus print, or broadcasts, like billboards or TV commercials.

If you want to, you can change your messaging and brand identity with the flick of a switch.

#5 A strong social media presence does amazing things for your S.E.O.

If you google your business focus and region you might find your website show up in the listing first, but more often than not, you'll also find your Social media content show up in the feed as well. Social media can get you a ton of traffic and improve your Google rankings. Shares on facebook don’t actually get Google’s algorithms moving but, these shares are an excellent way for people who are looking for you to find you. They help get your content out there, it gets people clicking on the links you want – and if people know your name, they can type it in the search engine. 

Social media is an excellent vehicle by which all the hard content development work you did can be seen and do its job. Most well written and consistent content will start showing up in Search engine feeds within 30 days of posting- this includes Social media posts.

#6 Social media is an ROI rocket in your pocket

By now, you should be convinced of just how important social media is for your online business. It’s not just about likes and sharing and communicating with high-shool friends you don’t like – social media can actually be a powerful, marketing tool. From your Google ranking to establishing your business acumen, nothing beats Social media for outstanding Marketing return on investment.

To learn more about how you can use all the tools social media has to offer, consider joining my Facebook group- OMI- Online marketing immersion, where we talk about all-things marketing for new businesses online. And consider my Online Marketing Immersion program to learn more about ways you can create your own Professional Online Presence.

A letter from the IELA founder; Thomas Gaebel

The key to finding one's best-life–  I think – is in finding out what kind of work best suits us, not just in our skillsets or interests, but for the kind of work that is compatible with the way we are wired. What job choice best suits our brains.

Because we all have to make money to survive (at least most of us do) we end up spending the majority of days working to raise that money to afford us the comforts we've all come to expect from a well-balanced life. Rent, Transportation, communication, and food are the basics, and the earnings we get from our career of choice bring us the opportunity to afford them. Unfortunately, at the time we choose our careers, we typically don't put as much emphasis on job compatibility as we do on earning potential, success trajectories, and aptitude.

It starts at the beginning

Choosing a career is the first step to joining the workforce. Unfortunately, we are pressed to make the decision about what we want to do for a living long before we are ready to answer that question. It could take the average person years and years of in-the-field experience to realize what they like to do, how they like to do it, and where they would like to make it happen.  So what happens: we get deeply invested in a job or carer we're may not be happy with, and instead of changing it for something else we might like better – we stick with it and double down because it's considered unwise to change something as important as a career after you've been in it for a while. Especially for those of us who've spent thousands of dollars on an education, and may be deep in student loan debt as well.

My issues specifically

I've had this problem for years, but it's been coming into the light more and more over the last 18 months. The issue is this: I have so many interests, so many things I like to do in my work, I find it difficult to pick just one. How do people handle having ONE JOB? Doing one thing, the same thing every day for years? This question haunts me. The thought of having one thing to do for 8 hours a day makes my brain hurt.

Worse than that, I get bored - and bored is the closest thing I can think of as torture for me.

As a career choice, I'm primarily a graphic designer and I work in web design, marketing development, designing for books, illustration, photography, and I also do podcasting and voiceover work. I named my business ImagesEverything because there really isn't much in the graphic design arena that I don't provide services for, I like it all and I like to stay in a state of exploration.
Don't misunderstand me, it's not just that I have a short attention span, it's that I am operating at my highest level when I'm engaged, challenged, and deeply interested in the work I'm doing.

I also learn very quickly, and the typical method of education for children and adults is frustrating for me. It never seems to move fast enough. I've always learned best by doing, not by listening or reading.

I have in the past few years found that ideally, I like problem-solving.  It's challenging, it's engaging on all levels of my creativity, and each problem is different so it's like having a new and different job every day. Being faced with a difficult challenge that others have failed to solve and breaking the code is the closest I've come to actually being vocationally fulfilled. This insight offers me an explanation as to why I work in graphic design and marketing – both of these areas require things that are compatible with my ideal way of working, but not always.

My Ah-HA! moment

A new client came to me earlier this year with an interesting problem. She had been relying on a designer to do all of her marketing for her over the past few years and that designer recently ghosted her. He became involved in another career or client and was no longer available to take care of her marketing needs. Because she felt abandoned, she wanted a new paradigm– she wanted me to teach her how to do her own marketing, so this scenario wouldn't happen to her again. In essence, she wasn't asking me to be her marketing manager, I was going to be her marketing consultant – or coach.

I agreed to the premise and set her up with a weekly zoom call where we would plan her marketing strategies together with a monthly fee. The project would last for 3 months. I was happy to participate - mostly because I would still be in the marketing arena taking advantage of my skill set, but also working in a problem-solving capacity, so every new day would be different. Win Win!

As we worked more closely I learned a lot about her, and I also learned her motivation for wanting to be so involved in her marketing- she had a serious problem with work/life balance.

This client believed that by getting a better handle on her marketing she could make it work better at bringing her new patients (she's a Chiropractor with 2 offices). Better marketing means more business, more business means more money, more money means more free-time, and free-time equates to work/life balance. I personally didn't necessarily agree with this last part, and I felt there were other ways she could work that would improve her work-life balance, and I asked her if I could coach her on this new goal alongside our previous goal of online-marketing training. She agreed to give it a try, and I started asking questions.

Did I fail to mention . . .?

I have always been the type that likes to give away advice. I read a lot on self-help and work on myself constantly. I received a mantra in 1996 from a monk who studied under Maharishi Yogi in the '70s, at a retreat in Sedona Arizona and I consider myself to be well on my way to enlightenment. I have a life balanced in fun, family, and fulfilling work and to me, this means I have a lot of self-improvement information, tips, and tricks to share. And I have a difficult time keeping my mouth shut.

When my client agreed to let me help her reach a work/life balance, combined with the marketing program we were planning, I found myself in a state of nirvana. I was problem-solving in a vocational and personal platform. I was engaged and challenged and creatively satisfied while helping someone overcome some of her more pressing challenges.

We discussed her time management, and her money management, and found some holes in her processes that could get her a little bit of her life back. We discussed options for her to schedule some much-needed time off, and she realized she just needed someone to give her permission to take a long-deserved vacation. Just the idea that she didn't really have to keep plugging away so hard was a watershed moment for her, because after the intense work and focus required in her initial business startup phase, she never really learned how to stop that wheel, and it had been spinning out of control. She just needed someone to tell her it was okay to breathe now because her business was up and running and doing fine. So simple a solution, but she just couldn't get there alone.

"Wow," I thought to myself after our breakthrough "If my workdays could be like this all the time I would never retire!"

I had reached it – occupational satisfaction level 5, The highest rating you can make. My best day ever.

What made it especially satisfying was that I didn't have to drop my vocation of graphic design and marketing in order to find happiness in something I enjoy, which now looks like marketing coaching with a focus on work/life balance. I somehow found a way to combine the two and create a joyful and effective work-life for myself, while providing additional value and opportunities for my clients.

As of today, I have 3 clients, all as marketing and coaching platforms combined. These are clients who need a little help presenting their business to the world, and who are trying to find ways to balance out the expectations and challenges of their work, with the needs and expectations of their lives.  So far, we all experience breakthroughs virtually every week as we work towards obtaining these goals.

My platform is simple:
On the marketing side, I ask my clients what their marketing objective is, and I offer them tools and tips on how to get there. Content development, blogging, Facebook tools, web design, SEO, Youtube, audio podcasting and print. any and all of these are available to my clients as options for boosting their business presence and their market visibility.

On the life side, I ask them to tell me about their lives in four specific areas;
Time: How do you manage it? How does it manage you?
How do you feel about time today? Do you have enough time? Are there enough hours in the day? Are you often on-time or chronically late and why? Do you use a calendar or planner?

Money:  How are you earning? How are you spending? What about savings? What about debt?  We dig into these four questions in an effort to find the glitches and then work on goals to get this ship righted if it isn't already

Relationships: Tell me about the people in your life, and share some of the challenges you might be facing in the areas of Communication, compatibility, emotional connection, and balance. I also like to talk a lot about boundaries, how they work, and why many of us have a difficult time maintaining them.

Self-care: Are you getting enough sleep? Are you eating right? Are you getting any exercise? Are you meditating in any way? I also like to talk about good and bad habits, how to form them or break them, and how to identify if a habit is good or bad.

It's within these four "Pillars" I think we find the greatest opportunities for growth, personal change, and in getting our spinning wheels under control. I think it's by slowing or stopping this "wheel" that we truly start to regain our work/life balance and find the peace and harmony so many of us seek in our hectic and complicated lives.

In the coming months, I plan to launch the IELA marketing coaching platform called W/L BALANCE, where I offer my clients a package of marketing deliverables such as web design, email marketing tools, branding, coaching on content development, and planning a successful campaign. In the package, I will also be offering life coaching, where we talk weekly about the four pillars and work on setting and fulfilling goals in an effort to obtain that coveted work/life balance. I call it my Best Life Program, and I hope I can provide value and opportunity to all who need these services.

If you'd like to learn more about the W/L Packages, or my Best Life Program, please feel free to email me at Thomas@iela.net and we'll set up a time to talk, even if you don't see the package posted yet. My goal is to expand to 10 clients a week and no more, so hopefully, there's a slot available for you when you're ready.

Thanks for reading

Thomas Gaebel |founder
IELA | ImageEverything-Los Angeles