It's Thursday. Thursday is my favorite day of the week. Cause I get to, I get to show up with somebody who is making a real difference in the world of business and helping other business owners grow every week in the rise of, of noise Facebook group. I get to shine the spotlight on somebody. And it's just, I think I've talked about this before.
It is my one commitment to content every week and the reason it's my commitment to content every week, everybody has to have one. If you don't have one, get one, it feels just so good because you do the one thing that you love, that lights you up and then you get to share it on all of your places. And it just feels like flow and it feels easy.
And I personally get to have a lot of fun with it and build relationships with it and share cool information.
Before I introduce you to my friend, Laura, we were talking about, oh, it's kind of spring. And in the form that I had sent out, Laura said, I had asked her anything else I need to know. And she said, well, I have over 33 house plants thought that's pretty cool. I like house plants too. And, and with it being spring and we talked about house plants and I had to care for them and they're kind of like buddies for us. And this is the time of year. Some of us are buying our seeds.
I had a great time at Briggs nursery in North Attleboro, MA yesterday.
Oh, I'm going to stop. This is not where I was going with this Laura to start off with, but I'm going to say this. And then I have to write it up someplace. So I went to Briggs nursery yesterday, had my grandbaby with me, bought a wedding gift for my neighbors had gotten married, beautiful wind chimes, got out to the car, put the wind chimes up on top of the car so I could wrestle that baby into the car seat and it was snowing and it was cold and I couldn't get her in the seat. And then I took off and the wind chimes were still on the car. And I didn't realize it until I got back to Westport and I sent them a Facebook message this morning. I called at seven o'clock in the morning, Steve from Briggs nursery answered the phone. He said, oh, I'll go look for you. He walked up and down the road a half mile. Didn't see it, but I should come in because he'll replace it for me.
Now talk about planting seeds. Of course, there are nursery, planting seeds and marketing and branding.
Like not only is Briggs beautiful. Not only is it the perfect place to have a cup of coffee with a friend or have a work meeting, or just sit and do work there. But now you can have all those feel goods. Cause you know, oh, they were so kind. They were just so kind.
So that's branding, right? Like we don't know Laura and I were talking before we went live.
We're doing all the things. We're planting our seeds. We're nurturing our contacts, all the things I love to talk about. And I love that this is a, it just goes along with the time of year that we're at.
Let me see if I had anything else to say about that, right? It's just, it just comes around to being ready, to doing the things, taking the steps, having the strategy, seeing beyond the headlights of your car, knowing that you're going to get there. But knowing that where you are right now is setting you up for getting there.
So that is my, I guess it's a digital marketing tip of the week. It's a marketing tip of the week. It's a business tip of the week. So now I get the honor of introducing you to my friend, Laura science and Laura, I'm going to ask you to say the name of your business, cause I'm afraid I'm going to mess it up.
Of course, of course you are so not alone. So it's a little bit tricky. It's it's the first word is, which is French for studio. And then the last three letters are my initials. L K and S. So it's just, I tell ya, L K S and it's funny because I will have clients and they'll be like,
oh, I came up with this cool name and I'll say, no, that's way too difficult or long. You probably choose something else. But I don't really don't really abide by my own rules because simply because years ago I was thinking of changing my name years ago, like probably like 17, 18 years ago. And my own mother was like, don't your chair change it.
It's French. It sounds really cool. And I said, all right, mom, I won't change it so you can blame my mom. I love it. I just didn't want to mess it up because French is not my thing. Had it been Spanish? I know I was, I took Spanish in high school too. So, All right, so now we're going to do her official buy.
So Laura is a design doctor and multimedia design developer. I love that she works with indie consultants and marketing teams to galvanize their brand identity, weaponize their visual marketing strategy so they can articulate their value, stand out from the competition and continually discover cool, intuitive ways to make more money change more lives. When I asked Laura, what is her superpower? She said that it's fixing confusing disorganized content and ideas.
So they sing in beautiful, clear harmony. What can you tell me about that superpower lore? Oh man. Well, where do I start? I would say that that kind of super power comes into play in a few areas. Top of mind right now is a little service that I, I do call the power hour and it's for anyone and everyone that just needs design advice right away on something that's,
you know, got them stumped and short, short kind of like sidetrack. This is an example of one of the things that we were talking about before, before we started, which is okay, I'm planting the seed. I don't really know if it's going to take off. I hope it takes off. And I'd almost kind of like what wouldn't say,
I forgot about it, but I kind of forgot to like, market it, pay attention to it. And I just kind of gave it a little bit more attention, you know, maybe like over the past couple of months. And it really feels like it's, it's been blowing up in a, in a good, in a good way. So yeah,
just just know that, you know, and anyone that's listening, that's struggling with, I don't know if this is like, if I'm, you know, wasting my energy here. Well, there's no way you're going to, you know, know that for sure until, you know, down the road, but just be patient, you know, be patient,
put your energy, put your energy where you think, you know, where, where your gut tells you to. And if it doesn't, if it doesn't return right away, it's okay. Be happy and move on to something else and still enjoy, enjoy it, find a way to enjoy your business and what you do. So in this power hour,
I've I worked can work on all types of things, do advise on all types of things, but I've been doing a lot of pitch decks. People will schedule a power hour with me to work through pitch decks. And that's a real kind of interesting and super cool way that I can, I can kind of help out with the content and the visuals.
So I really kind of help them break down. You know, what's the problem that you're trying to kind of get at or articulate and solve and maybe, you know, get funding for or whatever, you know, who is this proposal for? What do you, what's the problem that you're trying to solve for them or with this company or this person,
and how can we, can we kind of like shave that down, articulate that better. And then, you know, going from that to, Hey, do we need all these graphs? You know, like, do we, do we meet all these graphs? Because what's the story you're trying to tell. What's the main point, you know, you're trying to make,
are you just trying to look like you have a lot of cool information here, that's nice for you, but is it actually gonna be useful and storytelling, is, is it going to have like, is it going to make the, the person or the group that's watching have this aha moment? So I know that was kind of like a bit of a deep dive,
but that's it, that's just one example of how I use my, my superpower, both kind of like with kind of like with text stuff and organizing, organizing like bullet points and content and titles and all that stuff, but then also making sure that visually it makes sense and it's, it's punctuated well, and it's powerful and compelling. It seems to me like you have,
you have left brain, right. Brain going on it. Cause I know that you're, I know that you're a perfectionist. And so when you talk about bullets and putting together the messaging and that's the content type part of it, but then I also know that you're an extraordinary designer. So do you feel like you have to pull in both parts of you when you're doing your work?
I'm I feel so, so seen by you right now, Susan, that it's really cool that you picked up on that. And that's something that I've kind of thought about myself for a long time, that I have this weird, strange left brain, right. Brain type of type of thing. I've kind of thought that for a while, but I haven't,
I haven't really, you know, that has kind of been in the past for a while. I haven't really thought about that or explained that or used that as an explanation to somebody. So yeah, I hear you're so spot on, my dad is a computer programmer and my mom is a cake decorator. So go figure like that's, that's how, I guess that's kinda like how I ended up where I am.
So when you work, w I can see that, right? Like that's clear to see when you, so when you're working with a client and maybe it's me, maybe it's me because I have a million things I want to do. I want to do, I want to have a membership and I want to do email marketing for people. And I want to,
to have a courses and all the things, how do you go about helping somebody let's say me, like, figure out what's going to be the front facing, and I'll say website, or maybe it's content, other kinds of content. How do we figure out what to get rid of, to tear away? And what's going to be the most important front facing vision of me based upon words and,
and design. And I don't really mean me, me, but you understand, it's like, there's so many like me out there. Thank you. That's a really good question. And I would say, I would answer that by saying it really is a kind of a mix of two different things. How, what, like what most excites you and what you kind of most want,
maybe another way of, of getting at that is how you want people to contact you, how you want to come across. But then also are you, are you actually speaking to the right people? Are you, I dunno, I'm kinda like, kind of like a little bit all over the map here. It's, it's hard to actually pin down,
but essentially let me pull back. It's a mixture of what do you want? What do you love? And can you, can you articulate the pain points, the problems do you, and do you really understand the problems that you're solving for the people you want to work with? So it's like, it's those two camps. It's me and the people I want to serve.
And so kind of, if you kind of want to branch out from that, me and who I want to serve, we start for me. It's what kind of, what, what excites me about how I show up and you actually were, you know, you, you sent this ready to at the beginning, you said, this is what I love.
This is my favorite. This is my favorite thing, you know? And then, and then I, if I were, if I were working with you, Susan, I would say, okay, if this is your favorite thing, how do you think, how do you think you're serving your ideal clients? The people that don't yet know about you or the people that know about you, but they want to work with you and they need some extra impetus. How do you feel like what you're doing is, is serving them.
And then the next question would be, what do you think they, they really need? And that could be one or, you know, five or six things. And then how can we, how can we arrange things so that we kind of get the best of both worlds you're doing what you love and the right people are coming to you and getting their problem solved by you..
When I'm doing digital marketing consultations with people, they are there, they've got the shoulds, right? Like somebody told them they should be on social media. They should be on this. They should be on this. And you can see that when they talk about it. And honestly, when I first start talking with people about email marketing, which is something I love for the reasons I love it, it's controllable. It's the best return on investment. I get to think about it. I don't have to compete. I'm somebody signed up to be on my list. I'm going to give them all I can. But when they talk about it at first, there's a physical reaction. It makes them feel icky.
But when we talk, have that conversation about right with your selling, if you feel Selly, if you're doing the things that are not in alignment, like you just said of what gives you joy, then it's going to feel like that. So what can you tie in that? A gives you joy and lets people know what you're about and what it is that you do.
So you said, how do you want to come across? And I, I would say, I want to come across as generous. And I want people to know that I hold them in a container of support so that they can go do the things that they're going to do. I work with transformation, creators. They're making big differences in people's lives.
And I want them to help to get more change and help more people. That's the other thing too, is that are they sharing content that is addressing the problems and the solutions in a generous way? I tell them you never have to sell me unless you're selling a course and you have a deadline, then you do a sales series.
But otherwise it's never a sales email. It's a conversation. It's a gift if, to showing up in generosity. So to your point, how can people do that? Now? I don't create web copy. I don't do any design work for them, but, but their website and their content is where they were going to be bringing people using their email.
So it's really important that they work with somebody like you to gain that clarity, to kind of climb out of the chaos and to know that what they're presenting their forward facing materials look like them and sound like them. Now, if they don't even know who they are, then they can go to somebody like Dave and get an idea, right? Like he's,
he's the idea guy At the brain for rent. His and I actually just had a free session with him. Was it last week? They've and, and even just in that, in that last, that, that session, that was so helpful. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I think that that's, it's brilliant that you're the person that once they have that clarity and then they,
they know how they're going to present it. And from my point of view, if they're going to be doing email, it's always better for me. If they've worked with somebody to clarify their idea, their packages and their strategies. And then they've worked with somebody to create website that looks like them, it sounds like them. And then we start doing the email stuff.
I mean, it's important to grow a list anyway, but if all of those other things are in place, they're just going to have so much more success. Yeah, I you're you're so right. And I think I wanted to, I wanted to actually speak to a point that you had made a minute ago about, I don't know, I kinda call it shiny object syndrome or like,
should I, should I kind of like do the thing cause everyone's doing that or Tik TOK or whatever, but, well, actually, so maybe I'll maybe I'll, maybe I'll kind of comment on that, but I did want to, I did want to actually speak to what you had just said about making sure that you have all of these other kinds of elements in place.
Maybe they're not absolutely perfect. And I want to actually just want to want to have like a little, I want to insert here. I'm a total perfectionist. So I am, everyone else is probably way better than me at just putting, putting stuff out there. Even if it's, even if it's like, you know, 75% or 60%, I am,
I'm the last person to like kick my product or service out the door. Cause I'm like, it's gotta be at 110% and I have to answer all of the questions or problems that could possibly come up. And it's just, it's not the best way. It's not the best way to work on stuff. So yeah, like what I would say is have,
have someone that you trust, work on those work on those kind of core pieces, you know, your, your brand. And then how does that, how does that work? How does that work and look and sound on your website? You know, and how does it do have a, you know, I dunno, who has business cards these days?
I have business cards. I love them. You know, they're like super cool people explain over them, but other people are like, no, because of business cards, but if you have business cards, did they do they actually interlock beautifully and thoughtfully with, you know, what's on your website and your brand. And when you have those things in place and bottom line,
you can't get those things in place in a day because if you could, they, you would want to change them the next day anyway, because, because you haven't put enough time into them. So I think a lot of people think, oh, it should be, I should be able to go daddy's website tonight kind of ruined it, you know,
for us designers. But yeah, you're right. It's good to have those things in place first. And then you can work with the, you know, an email genius like you to, you know, you already have like some idea of your voice, you know, and you're, and so, so, so much of what you would do for an email campaign.
It just falls into place so much, so much more easily. Yeah. So I know we don't have that much more time. I'd love to find out when somebody comes to you and they're like, I'm, I'm all over the place. I need help with my branding, right? If you're a multimedia brand developer, a brand baker, and I know it's much longer than we can cover in the next couple minutes,
but maybe just give me a quick overview of what that, what that process looks like and what the outcome would be. Well, I do help several different types of people. I, I, you know, I work with solopreneurs and indie consultants and then I also work with marketing teams too. But the result is really the same. It's, it's just more with a certain type of client. It's more like, okay, is this something that you have a need for me to help you with over, over an ongoing basis? You know, you need to kind of, do you want to continue marketing? Are you selling to, you know, thousands of people and you need to, but, so what does that process look like?
I actually ask a lot of questions upfront and I'll be, I'll be super honest. I've had some, some people that turn into clients, they'll say, wow, it's kind of hard to actually get, get, get to you. And I said, okay, I'll take that. I, but if I, if I didn't have these kinds of filters in place and ask all
these questions upfront to learn about, you know, what problem are we trying to solve that you're experiencing right now? You know, what are your goals for, if you need a website, what are your goals for this?
A big question I like to ask is why should I do business with you?
Like, if I’m Joe Schmo, why should I do business with ABC widgets as opposed to XYZ, widgets next door? Like you tell me, you, you give me the, the gospel of ABC widgets. I asked those questions and you know, what, if there are people that just, they don't have the time or the inclination to answer those. And there's nothing wrong with those people, but they're not a good fit for me. I ask a lot of those questions upfront and then we go from there. It's like, okay, well, do you need, do you need a logo? Is that something that you're, you know, you need, you're frustrated with, or you're, you're, you're just starting. Do you need a web presence after that?
And, and then it really just kind of goes from there. It's, it's really, it's really kind of, that's more the, kind of the custom done for you work that I do. I do have a brand rocket program, a 10 week program that I'm, I'm still, I kind of just recently released and it's still being formed. Although I am taking applications, that's kind of like a, a more defined scope version of, of that with a few other kind of cool, useful things thrown in. So yeah, that's, that's kind of, that's kind of how it works. And, and with, with the kind of the more custom project work, I really try my best to make sure that I do exactly what the client needs in order to get their ideal client or patient or customer, you know, whatever they call it, because it's not about, it's not about them following my formula or, you know, it's about making sure that they attract the right people, you know? So, yeah. And it's that's I could get, I could get a little bit deeper, but that's kinda just like an airplane.
Well, that was perfect too, because what you're talking about is asking all the questions, it sounds like then you come up with whatever they say, they need the logo, the website, the branding, whatever it is, but it's based upon not what they think should be, but what they truly are one and also making sure that when we're all out there scrolling at hyper speed through this space, through the internet, we're not ever saying I'm looking for somebody with the best design. We're looking for someone who understands our problem, who clearly can do and can do that in that millisecond. And that's why the design is so important. That's why the messaging is so important because none of us are like, oh, that's beautiful design. I should probably hire that person.
No, it's because the design that you've created for them somehow translates into this is who I am. This is the problem I solve. If you're that person let's have a conversation, but it's like, it's like an emoji, right? Like emojis tell us so much in one character, but we also have to have like that kind of attention span for our branding. I would say You're so right, Susan. And I will say for many years, I made the mistake of thinking. If I put my great design work out there, people will understand that I can do this, this and this for them. And they'll contact me. And I was so wrong now I still did get people, but I think I got them because I was able to explain to them on some level how I would solve their problem.
And I think a lot of business owners, they have that, that way of looking at talking about their business, oh, if I put my great products or services out there, people will get it. And that's, that's not the case. No. And it's, it's again, it's just speed of light and so much coming through. So how do we've got the relationships we build the seeds we plant.
And that's the other reason I love, I love email so much is because first of all, you can put a lot of thought into it. Secondly, it stays in the inbox. And thirdly, like I said, you don't have to sell you just keep showing up and giving more value, giving more value, giving more value. I just shared a post by Michael Katz.
I'm the likable expert on LinkedIn yesterday. And he was talking about the reason email is so valuable now. And I would say same thing that when you've worked with people before you come with me and you know what your branding is, you know what the problem is you solve and what you have to offer. And then people see you show up in their inbox.
It's much more likely that they're going to open it. And again, it doesn't matter how many, how many emails you send, how many people are on your, on your list. It matters who's opening. And the number one reason people will open an email is who it's from. I have a whole webinar on subject lines and how to get them to open.
I have a whole other webinar on click through rates, but if somebody doesn't know who you are and what you stand for, they're not even going to open it. So I applaud the work that you do. And I'm sure that the people that you work with are grateful that they have you as a guide. And let tell me who, how can people,
I will put your information in your, your website, in the show notes. Is there anything else you wanted to tell people what, how to get in touch with you, how to get started with you? Yeah. If you want to, if you want to actually get started with me and you're, you're all this talk you're like, okay. I'm I,
I like what she's saying. I don't really yet know what I need the best way is to go to that funky French, that funky French business name. L K S a T E L I E R L K s.com/get design help. And that I'll kind of ask you some really key questions that get it, what you really are looking to do,
and that will put you in a, on the right journey. And then we'll talk, we'll figure out what you need. And if, if I'm the right one to help you, if not, then I'll send you to another capable, awesome person that will do the job. Well, one way or another, they get a great discussion.