This week, I’m excited to share with you what branding design beyond logos & colors means, with Lindsey Beharry from Lindsey Beharry Design Co. Lindsey is a graphic designer, specializing in brand design. Before she started Lindsey Beharry Design Co., she served as a nonprofit marketing director, a writer with 100+ published works, a pro-book editor, and a graphic designer, which helped her develop a strategic and story-driven approach to branding and marketing over the past 15 years. She creates beautiful logos, branding, and websites for women’s small businesses, so they can show up more confidently and professionally, and make more money.

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Emily: 0:0
Welcome to the No Mercy business coaching podcast with Emily a Woodruff. The podcast that walks you through managing your own small business through the highs and the lows, will talk with small business owners from all over the US and share insights on how to help manage your business without the extra fluff and connect with other women. Just like you.

Emily: 0:29
all right, welcome to the No Mercy business podcast. This is Emily. I am excited to have you here today. We have a special guest with us. You have Lindsey be hearing from the Lindsey Beharry design Co. Lindsay, would you like to introduce yourself?

Lindsey: 0:45
Yeah, so as you said, my name is Lindsay Harry. I’m a graphic designer. I specialize in brand design, specifically for women’s businesses. Before I started my business, I served in the nonprofit sector, doing all sorts of things. But my last job was as a marketing director, I have over 100 published writing works. I served as a professional book editor and a graphic designer, which has helped me develop a strategic and story driven approach to branding and marketing, which is what I use to help women enhance their businesses.

Emily: 1:21
That is awesome. So how did you how did you go from the nonprofit world into brand design in general?

Lindsey: 1:30

Yeah, so I’ll just kind of give you the highlights of my backstory. I worked mostly in the nonprofit sector. So for the past 15 years, I’ve worked every marketing job imaginable for some nonprofits that do some really meaningful work. I started my career as a writing intern. Okay, I worked in the publication’s department and I had this dream that I want to be a freelance writer and I wanted to work as a book editor. So after a few years, I left that job and I landed a job at an academic publisher, and I hated it. So the work was just so production based, I miss sort of doing lots of different creative things. And something I realized later was I didn’t like it because it wasn’t very relational, I didn’t get to work directly with a lot of authors, which is what I kind of imagined I’d be doing. Um, but I was successful, successfully freelance writing on the side. So then after about a year and a half of that, I found a job at a business nonprofit. And I worked as their magazine editor. And I liked that part of the job a lot. But the problem was, they didn’t just need a magazine editor. They needed a graphic designer, they needed a social media manager, they needed an ad manager, a content writer, a web development person. So instead of like viewing this as overwork, I just kind of pulled up my big girl pants and put on all the hats and started learning all of these skills to run this marketing department. So then after that, I ended up working for an international nonprofit that does prison ministry work. And they had the same problem. They needed just an entire marketing departments worth of worth of help from one person. So I wore all of the hats and eventually worked my way up until I was directing the marketing department. So how I got into brand design specifically for women, is in every single job that I worked. And I think this is a lot of places, but I know it’s really particular to the nonprofit sector. They had very strong brands, but not every not everyone was expressing the brand the same way, it wasn’t managed very well. Because there really was no gatekeeper, you have one person working in the marketing department. So everybody has their own idea of what the brand should be. So each department is expressing it in a different way. And I have a very strong right and left brain. I’m very creative, but I’m also very analytical. So it was just very natural for me to step in and fill in that gap. And start standardizing their branding and developing brand guidelines for them and unifying the look and feel of each product or program that they offered. And just kind of leaving everything better than I found it because I don’t know any other way. Yeah, so that is how I made the leap from nonprofit into branding. And I can tell you a little bit more about like specifically in my business.

Emily: 4:47

Yeah, yeah, go ahead. How did you decide to niche down to to working with women specifically? In your, your realm?

Lindsey: 4:57

Yeah, so It became very clear to me, I would say about six months into owning my own business, exactly who I wanted to serve. That just came by reflecting on my past 15 years of experience where I’m rising in the ranks of this marketing department. But the whole time I find myself thinking, like, I don’t know what I’m doing. I didn’t go to school for this, I’m a fraud, somebody’s gonna find me out, like just impostor syndrome being so hard. But at the same time, I was getting all this feedback coming in from these industry professionals saying, Oh, we love the branding that you have, and customers, which for the nonprofit is donors really started pouring in with the programs. And so I’m seeing this response to it, while at the same time just having this incredible self doubt. And then I started my own business in 2020, which at the time was just general graphic design. Right when the pandemic hit, it was literally like January 2020, right before things shut down. So impostor syndrome wasn’t going anywhere, I just quit my job to start a business. And it here we are. But I found myself just taking all of those skills from the past 15 years of learning how to run a marketing department. And it helped me run my business. And I found confidence in that. And so I realized that who I wanted to help, was the past version of myself this like incredibly capable woman who was doing amazing work, but was riddled with self doubt. And I wanted to give that woman confidence, I wanted her to be proud to show up in her business every day. I wanted her to, to feel just as put together and professional as she already is. So yeah, so I just took all of that experience, and I wrapped it up to start running my business. And I will tell you, it has been like, the most exciting thing to see the transformation of women who don’t, you know, maybe don’t feel like super proud to show off their website, or they’re not super proud to talk about their business and helping them figure out how to build the pieces of their brand and talk about themselves. And then watching them talk about their businesses proudly show off their websites, proudly land dream clients and dream gigs that they have been literally dreaming about for years, is why I wake up to do what I do every day. I love it.

Emily: 7:23
I love that. All of it. That’s so great. That’s so so great. I don’t advertise this too much in the boutique group. But I’m also a bit of a boudoir photographer. So hearing you talking about empowering women and just, you know, learning to love yourself where you’re at is such an awesome opportunity. And I I really liked this like self love movement, parts of it. Parts of the self love. Sure. Yeah. And just I’m really excited to see women really turning into to what they want to be in what they they’ve been called to. And that’s so neat. Yeah. Yes, Tony. Yeah. So how do you kind of started to talk about it, but what are things that you do for yourself to show up for your business every day?

Lindsey: 8:12
Yeah, so I guess I would, I would say there are three main things that I do. For me, consistency is key. So that means I start my day, pretty much every day the same way. Which is leads me to number two, which is I pour into myself, first, I take about 30 minutes, maybe an hour, grab my cup of coffee, I weed, whether that’s a book, or it’s reading the Bible, to have some quiet time to reflect in general. And then I start my workday. And then the third thing is I treat my business like it’s a business like I may work for myself, and I may or may work from home. But it is a business. It’s a viable, legitimate business. So I stick to a schedule for myself. And then I try to once a week have a CEO day where I can actually pour into my business doesn’t always work out that way. But as much as I can I try to set aside time for my business itself.

Emily: 9:07
That’s great. And that is such a hard balance to set boundaries and to be able to say workday is done. It’s good. It’s good to hear that you’re doing that already. Yeah. So how do you as a brand designer, how do you find and connect with your ideal client?

Lindsey: 9:27

Yeah, well, I would say for me, it’s the same as it is for everybody where you have to be really clear on who your client is. Then you need to know where they hang out. So for me, my client is women, usually between the ages of 25 and 60, who run their own businesses. They’re serious about their business. They’re passionate about their business. They know the value of the work that they’re providing, but they also know the value of professional branding and partnering with other professionals who can help make their business the best they could be. Most of my business is found through referrals. But outside of that, I would say, I found them assess success with online business groups, mostly on Facebook. So there’s the business boutique group. Another group that some of your listeners might be interested in is freelancing females. It’s a huge group like that hundreds of 1001 and 100,000, maybe 10s of 1000s of people on it. And then I also connect with local women’s businesses, groups in my area. And I think why that has been so particularly successful for me, is you’re not just pushing out a message to a cold audience, you’re really building relationships with these people. And there’s this reciprocity of receiving help and giving help. And I think the giving help is so powerful. I think sometimes people are afraid to give away free knowledge. But I say give it because nobody can do exactly what you do and exactly the way you do it. Like, that’s your secret sauce, nobody can take that away from you. So give more than you asked for, I think it comes back to you and multiples. And I think it’s a great way to like increase your customer base, and to open the door to helping people see what it would be like to work with you.

Emily: 11:16
I think that’s great. I love that. And it seems like there’s a lot of that, kind of starting now like with Pinterest and the stories, you know, social media stories where you can kind of share, here’s three tips for this. And here’s this and instead of it all being the secret that it used to be it’s it’s neat that people are willing to share it now. And

Lindsey: 11:40
and what I love about the Facebook groups is it’s not just like me assuming oh, here’s what I think that you want to know, or here’s what I think you should know, it’s people asking, like real questions for real problems in their business that other people have real solutions to. And so, I mean, you know, somebody asks for feedback on their website, sometimes instead of just like writing, well, here’s where I think that you could make some, some improvements. I’ll record a five minute video for them. And I’ve heard several of them say like, that was the best thing ever. Like, it’s just five minutes. So I’m gonna be going over some basics. But I like to take that extra step to give just a little bit more than people would expect.

Emily: 12:23
For sure. That’s great. So what would you if you could give a new entrepreneur? one bit of advice? What would that be?

Lindsey: 12:33
Yeah, I would say just start, like, don’t buy into the lie that you have to have it all figured out before you start a program or project or you launch your business, because you won’t have it all figured out. Nobody has it all figured out. That’s like, I think we all tend to like self sabotage a little bit when it comes to putting ourselves out there because it’s such a vulnerable, vulnerable place to be. And then that’s where your imposter syndrome kicks up. So, you know, the truth is, is we’re all just figuring this out as we go. And it doesn’t get easier, we just get better. I heard Jasmine star say that just a couple of days ago, I loved that. And I would even say like, I know, I’m a brand designer. And this might be some bad advice to give, I don’t think it is. But maybe some other designers didn’t give this advice. But I would even go so far as to say don’t invest in a professional brand or professional website in your first six months to your business because you will change and grow so quickly during that time, that you’ll just end up having to reinvest. So wait until you’re clear on what your business is and who you’re serving and how they want to be served. So yeah, I would just say, Take messy action, and then pay attention to what you’re learning along the way. Use that to adjust how you run your business, and continue that cycle. And before you know it, you’re gonna look back and be like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I accomplished all of that. I’m actually doing the thing.

Emily: 13:52
I totally agree with that. I I’m also a brand designer. So I affirm and I’m somebody who has ran their own business and have seen how mine has changed throughout the years. And I wish that Yeah, yeah, that I would have not spent money in certain places and just said, Nope, I’ll just go on Canva and make my own little logo by myself. And that, you know, it’s a perfect place to start and branding is not the place to, to, to put forth all of your efforts. So early on. I agree.

Lindsey: 14:24
And I think what makes such a successful brand is knowing your business well knowing yourself well, so that you can pour all of that foundational work into creating something that looks and feels and sounds like you and appeals to your audience.

Emily: 14:40
Exactly. And, and branding is not just I’m sure we could go on about this all day. But branding is not just a logo and it’s not just your colors. It’s it’s exactly that it’s who you are and what you’re standing for and the types of people you want to work with what your ultimate goal is. You can’t know that and your six months you know first one little bit as a business owner, it’s gonna take time. Sometimes you start out and you think that this is your ideal client, and this is your ideal platform, but you might learn that you actually fit in better here or over there. And, yeah, yeah, I’ll get off my Yeah,

Lindsey: 15:16
I mean, for me, I started out thinking like, oh, I want to continue to help nonprofits. And I still do. But I made the switch specifically for women to women’s branding, probably six months or so, a year or so into my business, because I just felt so connected to that idea.

Emily: 15:36
Now, that’s great. So do you know of any stereotypes about designers or brand designers that you would want to tell the truth about instead?

Lindsey: 15:48
Yeah, um, there are so many, but you just touched on one that I would say is a is one of the biggest stereotypes that I come across, which is, there’s no such thing as a quick logo. Really, there’s, there’s not really any such thing as a quick design. But I got this all the time, when I worked in, you know, like corporate and nonprofit, it’s somebody will come up to me and say, Hey, I just need a quick logo, it should just take you a few minutes. Well, first of all, red flag, right. Second of all, as you said, a truly good logo has thought and intention, there’s a market study, there’s design research, and foundational groundwork that goes into it. And so like just to give a specific example of what that looks like, if somebody comes to me for just a logo, I won’t give them just a logo, I will give them a logo. But we’re also going to dive deep into their brand strategy, we’re going to find out their mission, their vision, their values, their audience, how they want their audience to feel, how they want their audience to experience, their business with our brand story is everything that goes into creating this well rounded business, then we can start to look at the visuals for the business what the logo looks like, and what that logo looks like in the context of what their branding could be. But that’s a couple of steps down the line. So I always start with brand strategy first. And then if so, if somebody comes to me for just a logo, they’re walking away with so much more, they’ve got a complete visualization of what their brand could look like. So then when they’re ready to build out their brand to build out their website, they’re leaps and bounds ahead of someone who maybe went to a site and got a $5 logo. I’m not knocking that I’m just saying so much that goes into it.

Emily: 17:36
No, that’s great. That’s spot on, I think. Is there anything extra or anything additional that you would want our listeners to be able to know about you and your business specifically?

Lindsey: 17:39
Yeah, um, as cliche as it sounds, I truly am invested in seeing my clients succeed. I’ve had a couple of clients clients tell me after some of our first calls that after our first call, they just knew I was going to actually partner with them in their business or their project. And it’s true, I am super invested in seeing my clients business six businesses succeed, whether that means working with me or referring them to somebody else that could help them in a different way, or giving them some resources that could help them until they’re ready to take the next step with their branding. So, for example, I have a series of resources on my website, if you go to Lindsay perry.com/resources. You’ll see them all there. And then I also have a free brand development guide where if the listeners are interested, they can start to build the foundations of their brand before they ever get to working with a brand designer, it’s going to help them and the rent designer is going to love them.

Emily: 18:51
That’s great. Well, that leads me into the last thing if you just want to share where our listeners can find you. Now’s your time to shine.

Lindsey: 19:00
Yeah, you can find me on my website at Lindsey be harrys.com You can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Lindsay Behera design and if you’re on Tik Tok, you can find me there too. I’m not super active. That’s also Lindsey Harry design. And if you’re on LinkedIn, it’s Lindsay B’s Harry design. CO

Emily: 19:19
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. I’m super excited to share this with everybody and yeah, just thanks for your time.

Lindsey: 19:28
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Emily. This is fun time. Thanks

Lindsey Beharry is a graphic designer, specializing in brand design. Before she started Lindsey Beharry Design Co., she served as a nonprofit marketing director, a writer with 100+ published works, a pro-book editor, and a graphic designer, which helped her develop a strategic and story-driven approach to branding and marketing over the past 15 years. She creates beautiful logos, branding, and websites for women’s small businesses, so they can show up more confidently and professionally, and make more money.

Website: lindseybeharry.com
Instagram: @lindseybeharrydesign
Facebook: @lindseybeharrydesign
LinkedIn: Lindsey Beharry Design Co

You can connect with Emily A Woodruff at:

Emilyawoodruff.com
Instagram: @emily_a_woodruff
Facebook: @emilyawoodruffbusiness
Pinterest: @emilyawoodruff

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Transcribed by Otter.ai