How Being Our Own Client Helped Us Launch Our Brand
When Elly and Nora Creative launched, it was an exciting and terrifying time. There was an overwhelming learning curve, big investments to make, and structures to define. However, the one thing we were thrilled not to have to outsource was our brand, content, and website. This is after all the thing we do for our clients, so there was no question.
Building a brand for ourselves wasn’t as easy as we assumed.
Creating for yourself if more difficult than creating for others. Maybe it’s because self-awareness is hard and it’s easier to be objective when you’re on the outside looking in. Or maybe it’s because you’re so invested in the outcome that it’s hard to adapt a done is better than perfect kind of mindset. Either way, we dug our heels in, got to work, and created something that we love. We learned a few things along the way that we think will be helpful as you think about yourself as your first client.
When you put yourself through the same process you expect your future clients to go through, it’s easier to find the holes.
One of the things we noticed is that in our freelancing days, there was less pressure to have systems formalized. Sure we had a process, but if a side gig didn’t come through, it wasn’t a make or break moment. We weren’t forced to evaluate why we didn’t get the job or how we can improve. We just shrugged our shoulders and went on our merry way.
With an established business, we had to get our creative brief in order and really think about how we’d be perceived by clients. What would their experience working with us look like and how could we get them to communicate with us in the most effective way? We knew that we’d intentionally craft that over time through feedback and surveys, but we needed a solid launching pad.
While we were crafting our own brand message, we personally answered every one of our own intake questions for Elly and Nora. It allowed us to see it from the client’s perspective and anticipate the holes that exist in the current prompts. We made adjustments and refined things before it ever made it in front of an external client.
It’s okay to abandon ship and go in a new direction when inspiration hits. Fortune does favor the bold.
We had poured over typeface after typeface in search of the right one. We thought we had it. It was checked off, but while looking at some for an entirely different project, we found another. It was a departure of what we liked to accept what we loved. Sometimes you have to be willing to let go of ideas you once liked. Growth isn’t linear and on a predetermined timeline. In this case, we moved from one to the next in a matter of minutes.
It’s okay to build something that will grow into your bigger vision, even if it doesn’t make sense now.
No one who works for Elly and Nora Creative is named Elly or Nora, which to some seems silly since there are two women who are the faces of the agency making it easy to get confused. But that was intentional.
It was important to us that the business name wasn’t attached to any one person so that there was room to grow outside of the people who do the work. For us, building this brand was bigger than our names. We wanted the name to have meaning, but still lean on the inspiration of women who came before. We wanted to call on the courage, integrity, storytelling, and leadership of a few and harness the power they brought. We think that Eleanor Roosevelt and Nora Ephron are great examples and we’re honored to wear the title accompanied with their names.
Learn more about us and how we help our clients get clarity in their brand and conversions from their content. Watch our video case study here.