We’ve all heard the saying “jack of all trades, master of none”, and usually when people say it, they wear it as a badge of honor.

As a brand, the biggest asset you have with your audience is trust. Without trust, you have nothing. Building trust takes a lot of work, and it certainly doesn’t come easy.

Specialization gives you the edge to not only build trust in your field, but also to deepen the specific skills that your brand requires. Focusing on becoming incredible in your niche allows you to become the best, which ultimately builds the trust you need.

In this episode, we talk about how specialization builds trust, strengthens your specific skills, and why narrowing your focus will take your brand further.

Whether you’re a designer who decides to give your website an overhaul every couple of months or a business owner who is never satisfied with the last set of print materials you had made, we have a message for you: stop redesigning everything.

It’s one thing to have a business card that needs a redesign, but it’s another to wake up every six months and decide to redesign everything from the ground up.

There are lots of reasons to conduct a redesign of a website, product, or print materials, but before anything begins, it’s time to take a moment and consider what really needs to happen.

If you're a chronic re-designer or you find yourself never satisfied with the latest published iteration, this episode is for you.

You might remember what it felt like when you just got started: the rush of adrenaline when you launched, the feeling of your first order, the plans you laid out for your first years of business.

But now it seems like it’s stagnated, and what you used to be happy to wake up for is difficult to get excited about. It’s a tough place to be.

Stagnation is the enemy of progress, and if you're feeling like your business, passion, or goals have slowed to a crawl, it's time to do some evaluation.

In this episode we talk about strain, burnout, and evaluating what has caused you to lose the momentum you started out with.

When it comes to building a brand experience, is it better to build your own platform or to use someone else's?

There are a lot of bigger platforms claiming to have everything you need, from product drop-shipping services to third-party apps, rental spaces to all-in-one design solutions. Building your brand on another platform has its benefits, but it also has its costs.

When you build your own platform, you control the entire experience. You make all of the decisions, you control the time table, and you can fully customize everything your customer experiences. Of course, this takes a lot of time, capital, and infrastructure.

In this episode, we look at what a platform is and how you can leverage your platform to enhance your audience's experience, whether you use your own or a third-party platform.

It's easy to want to update the look of your brand or to make sure that you're up to date with the latest visual trends, but rebranding is more than just slapping a fresh coat of paint on a building and calling it good.

There are a lot of stories of big brands spending millions of dollars on rebranding their image, only to realize that they made a huge mistake. Some have even reverted to their old brand identity!

Rebranding can be exciting, but it can also lead to unwanted outcomes if not handled correctly. Rebranding is more than just changing a logo or updating a website, it’s redefining and refocusing on your goals.

In this episode we talk about the weight of rebranding and how to count the cost of a rebrand to make absolutely sure that doing so would be in the best interest of your audience and customers.

Like counts. Followers. Page views. Impressions. Favorites. Retweets.

It seems that you can't go to any website or app these days without seeing some form of voting system. Vote for your favorite image, double tap to leave a heart, favorite, and subscribe.

The problem is that it's easy to attach personal value to these numbers. If your latest picture on Instagram got less likes than the last one did, you immediately start wondering what went wrong and why you messed up.

But the numbers don't matter.

What would you do if you had just one follower? What about 1,000? What about 100,000? What changes between 1 and 100,000?

In this episode, we talk about how to avoid equating personal value with the numbers that are coming in, and ultimately why numbers don't matter.

Every time a new year rolls around, people immediately start making resolutions and new goals. Going to the gym, finally learning that new skill, finishing the project they started but never finished.

Of course, as we all know, not all of those ever actually happen. Maybe a few months go by and we stick with it, but inevitably we've set ourselves up to fail. Why? Because we didn't approach our goals and plans with intentionality.

Staying true to who you want to be in this next year requires specific direction, and it may even involve sacrificing some things you didn't know you needed to. This episode will help you break through some of the fog and finally get some clarity about how to make this next year the best one yet.

It seems that everyone has a million-dollar idea these days.

You have an amazing concept for the next big company, product, or startup, and so you scribble your thoughts out excitedly on a piece of paper. Over the next few months you write up a business plan, get other people excited about your idea, and you can't wait to make it happen.

Then something happens.

The planning stage never seems to end. A few months go by but you're not quite ready to get into production because you want it to be absolutely perfect. You want the best end result possible, and so everything has to be just perfect. Except now it's been three years and you still haven't done anything about that idea, and five other companies have risen up in your place, leaving your million-dollar idea obsolete.

Planning only works if we act upon the plans and actually do something about it. The greatest inventions of all time weren't birthed out of someone just looking at the blueprints: the inventor actually had to move forward and create it.

In this episode we dissect some of the common reasons for the paralysis that keeps us in planning mode and how to finally move forward and achieve our goals.

What you say and produce is incredibly important, but it’s important to take into consideration the environment that you find yourself in. It might be the kind of platform you use, the language you’re writing in, or the sort of market you’re selling your product to. Understanding what “surrounds” your brand and your message will make you more effective at reaching the right people.

Content is about resonating with the right message, context is about resonating at the right moment. You could have the perfect content, but without the right context, it might mean absolutely nothing.

In this episode, we examine the power of understanding the context surrounding your work and the methods you can use to become the expert in your context.

Storytelling is a tool to take people beyond than what they see, to open their minds and engage with them on a deeper level. It's more than stating the obvious, it's about inviting your audience on a journey that promises to make their lives better.

It's not just about writing out some fiction. Crafting a narrative allows you to be intentional and imaginative and relevant, captivating the attention of your target audience and standing out from the competition that just states the facts.

In this episode, we get more into the "how" of storytelling, exploring different methods of delivering a story and producing content that is interesting and relevant.