So I wrote a bunch of these log posts before I started the website. Only once I started putting together the site did I realize I needed a logo, brand colors, and an aesthetic. I thought about it and all tat came up wit is I have no artistic ability, and anyone who has seen me when my wife let’s me dress myself knows, I have zero style. I can code, I don’t fear messy problems, I enjoy financial modeling, but picking out a look and feel for my site made me break out in a cold sweat. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and this was definitely mine.
But did I let that stop me? Of course not. As we’ve talked about, as entrepreneurs we need to lean into the hard stuff. But just because we need to lean into the hard stuff, that doesn’t mean we need to go it alone. I am fortunate that I have a good community around me and I reached out to my different groups and asked if anyone I knew, knew someone who could help me with things I can’t do. There is no shame in that. We all need to learn new things and do jobs we never thought we’d need to do but don’t make anything any more difficult than it needs to be. Never reinvent the wheel unless you have to. Some skills you need to learn, some you can hire someone to do.
I was able to ask around and find a few options. Since each of these had been recommended, I needed to figure out how to find my person. In the end, it was easy. I reached out to all of them and we had a short 15-ish minute call where I asked about there creative process. Not because I wanted to align their process with my creative process, as I don’t have one as mentioned above, but I wanted to get how they thought, and to hear what they went through to develop solutions.
My reason for this is I wanted to get some flavor on what it would be like to work with these folks. Can we communicate? Do we use the same language, not spoken language as we all spoke English, but are we thinking about this site, and its purpose, in the same way. I narrowed down my search from five to two fairly quickly. It made it easier that two of the five never got back to me. The one that did get back to me that I didn’t move farther with kept telling me ideas for the blog, not helping me with design. While I am always excited to talk about ideas to help entrepreneurs, in this case, we needed to focus on work first, then we can brainstorm ideas for the blog.
Of the two left, one I guess didn’t read my request, as he was looking for a much larger scope of work and budget than I had asked for. I didn’t have the money and he didn’t need or want a job with my limited spend. But not dissuaded I found time to meet the last designer. We had a good conversation and I felt good. So I paid her for a few hours of work and then I followed up with an email, including some more information and feelings I was looking to communicate. She came back with some ideas that were not what I was looking for. So I reached out and gave her some more ideas, explaining things we might want to include in my logo, themes, items, clip art, etc. She came back a few days later and somehow was even farther off what I wanted. While I did not know the logo and look that I wanted, I knew what I didn’t want.
At this point I reflected on what I did want. What I wanted was a blog that hopefully could help entrepreneurs. This site was designed to do just that. It is not a site for fashion, travel, high end electronics, or other lifestyle brand. So I decided that good enough was just that, good enough. So I paid the designer the rest of the money I owed her and set out to find a solution. As it turns out, there are actually lots of places online where folks like me, who don’t know what they are doing can get good enough.
So I ordered a logo and colors that I like off fiverr.com/ that works for now. I reserve the right to change these in the future if I feel the need, but for me, and this site, content and community will be king, so for me, spending a lot of time and money on the perfect logo would be taking my limited resources and spending them on something that is not key to my platform. Again, this isn’t the case for everyone, and I would have loved to have found a designer that worked with me and we developed something I looked at and said, “YES!” But that didn’t happen and it is OK.
Plus I got to learn something new, that is that there are places to help the design limited entrepreneur like myself. Things do not always go to plan and that is OK. In fact, as an entrepreneur, you’ll find most things don’t go to plan. Some are farther off than others. When they do, stop and take a deep breath and reflect on the core of your business. What are the important things for you and your brand. If the thing you are working on, the thing not going to plan, is directly related to your core business, then step back, create a new plan, and attack it again. If it isn’t, see if you can find good enough and let it be just that, good enough.
So if you are a baker that focuses on breads and you want your signature bread to be a great sourdough, and you are having problems finding and storing a good starter, then yes, you will need to focus on finding a supply. If this takes days, or weeks, or months, so be it, it needs to be done just right. But lets say you had a wax paper supplier that you used that you liked and they go out of business. It might be just fine for you to use whatever wax paper supplier is next, rather than taking time away from backing or sourcing your starter, to find an exact identical wax paper.
Focus on the important things. It is common for us as entrepreneurs to get fixated. We have a list of things to do, and often an image in our minds about what that process will look like, and we like to check things off our list. But that same energy that allows us to focus intently on our business can get us in trouble if we use that energy in the wrong places. How do you know if you are spending time in the right places? Go back to your core, fewer things better. Ask a friend. Ask a fellow entrepreneur. Do the other things on your list and then come back to that item and see if it still holds your interest like it did. Often we can set a task to the side, then when we come back there is a simple solution or we realize it really isn’t that important.
For today’s helpful tips I’d like to divide it a bit. First, a bit about finding your colors for your business and or the physical location you work in. As I think most of us know, most colors do invoke a feeling for most people. A great site for reading more about each color and their pros or cons, is https://artincontext.org/color-emotions/ . If you want to read a bit more about color and its history in liitature, lithub.com has a fun article https://lithub.com/the-secret-literary-history-of-some-of-your-favorite-colors/.
Now to get to the main part of the self-help side of this blog, let’s talk about painting. One thing I have learned from painting a lot of walls in a lot of rooms, that prep is the key. Painting in a nice “W” pattern is good, but the difference between a good and a great paint job comes down to the details. Are the lines crisp? Does the paint bleed onto the next wall or ceiling? Did you paint the bathroom fixture accidently? Paint will usually be on the walls for some time, so take the extra time, you’ll appreciate the results. Otherwise, once done, you’ll see a spot where the paint didn’t do what it was told, and even though no one else might notice, you will every time you walk into the room. There are enough minor annoyances in daily life, you don’t need to add one because you wanted to save a few minutes when prepping the room.
OK, on to the tools. Real Simple has a nice list I agree with and they have some useful tips thrown in like running a damp cloth over your painters tape. https://www.realsimple.com/home-organizing/home-improvement/painting/best-painting-tools It also calls out the things you don’t need. I’d add to that a spray gun for an interior room. I made that mistake…once. I think I’m still picking tiny droplets off things from the five or so years ago I tried this. I wish I could find the picture of me, it says more than anything I could type. If I find it I’ll post it.
Paint Life on Youtube also has some good videos if you are looking for painting help. Here is its needed tools video to get you started https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEYcpdavZi0 . I like the practicality of this channel. It is focused on the simplicity of painting and how to do it right, for DIYers, not getting overly complicated and trying to position themselves above their viewer.
So today we covered a bit about your company’s aesthetics/logo, a bit about how to move forward when things are not going to plan, along with colors invoking feels and painting which often invokes frustration in amateur painters. I started this post in the beginning of the process for finding my logo and I planned it to be a much more straightforward post about how to find the right designer. I guess none of us know exactly what will be covered in a blog as life seldom goes to plan, and that is OK.