Apr 7, 2020
Wife, mom, business owner, friend, the list goes on and on for how
many roles we can play. When you become an entrepreneur, you take
on a whole new brand identity. It is fun to create your brand
identity, but where the heck do you start? On today’s episode, we
talk with Jessica Cruz-Abalos, founder of J.Cruz Designs, about the
importance of visual branding and navigating life as a
solo-entrepreneur. Jess is a web and graphic designer that
specializes in visual branding. Her work and life philosophy is to
create purposeful design for purpose driven people and small
businesses. For 5 years she was a co-owner of a boutique branding
company with her friend, who loved working with small businesses
and women entrepreneurs. They decided to part ways (no hard
feelings!) and to pursue bigger projects on their own.
Being an entrepreneur does have its challenges, especially when you
have a family: Jess experienced postpartum depression while she was
discovering that she wanted to become a solo-entrepreneur. She was
able to bounce back by finding new love for fitness that gave her
self-confidence and awareness of the importance of
self-care.
Takeaways:
1. Don't just create a generalized persona for your target
audience. Create 3 detailed personas! Include their name, age,
education, lifestyle, occupation and hobbies. The more descriptive
you are, the more you are able to understand their needs and pain
points.
2. Establishing your brand personality is crucial. Not only will it
drive what your visuals will look like, it will create authenticity
and relatability among your target audience. What are the feelings
or experiences you want your client to feel and how do you want to
be perceived?
3. A huge tip when working with your web designer and graphic
designer: Content Drives Design. It is like when you make a movie,
but you don't have the script. The content is the foundation on
which the design rests on. You can create a design with filler
text, but you are only going to add more work onto yourself because
things will still need to be rearranged and reorganized. It will be
a disaster. So, you need to create the content FIRST.
Jessica is one of the speakers for this year’s Fab Fempreneur Fest
2020. Her round table talk will teach you how to discover your
brand personality in more detail. To connect with her further,
visit her website: http://jcruz.design/. To register for Fab
Fempreneur Fest and more info, please visit our website:
https://fabfempreneurs.com/fest.