[00:00:00.240] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Branding is such a hot topic for wedding pros. And today I have a very special guest on the Power and Purpose podcast. I'm bringing my brand strategist and designer Nicole Yang to talk all things branding for the wedding industry and to teach you how you can start creating a more consistent brand. You're here to grow a business, but not just any business. You want to grow a profitable business with purpose, a business where you wake up every single day driven to serve your customers and make a difference in your own life. I'm Candice Coppola, published author, business coach, and your guide to building a more consistent building a profitable business with purpose. Join me here every single week as we explore how to build and grow your business with purpose. Get ready to dig in and have meaningful conversations about the strategies and techniques that will help you build your dream business. This is The Power in purpose. Hey there, friend. Welcome back to The Power in purpose podcast. It's me, your host, Candice. And as I mentioned, I have a really special guest on today's episode of the show. I'm bringing my brand strategist and designer here at Candice Coppola onto the show, Nicole Yang, to talk all things brand branding for the wedding industry.

[00:01:31.870] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Nicole has a long history in the wedding industry, actually. She was the former creative director over at Southern Wedding's magazine. She has worked with all different types of brands from the wedding industry and outside the wedding industry. I personally think that she is one of the smartest and most creative brand designers out there, which is why I hired her. All jokes aside, Nicole is pretty amazing. The premise for this episode came from a recent comment that I got from an industry friend who said, Candice, every time I see something, I instantly know it's yours without knowing it's yours. Meaning when I see a graphic or something you post, I know it's from you without seeing your face or seeing your handle or seeing your name on it. That was a huge compliment and largely due to Nicole's genius in branding. It got me really thinking about the wedding industry and this sea of sameness that you heard me talk about with Aalaya Harris in her interview and how you can make your business pop when everyone out there is a shade of blush, a shade of Beige, and following trends and looking the same, how your business can, first of all, be instantly recognizable and how you can have consistency in your branding.

[00:03:02.530] - Candice Coppola (Host)

So, girl, strap in because me and Nicole are keeping it real in this episode. We're talking about trends we don't like, we're talking about mistakes you're making, and I'm asking her her opinion on how you can brand your business better. A lso, really interesting question I asked her today, should you be branding your business for you or for your customer? And I think you're actually going to be surprised at the answer she gets. So if you're not familiar with all things Nicole Yang, please prepare to be. Nicole is a brand strategist and graphic designer who has worked with dozens of women owned businesses to help them turn those ideas that are just bouncing around in their head into meaningful and impactful design. She supports online brands by embracing their unique super powers, elevating their presence and designing their product and service experiences. She's a certified brand specialist, a speaker, and an educator with over a decade of experience with design. She is so, so, so talented. She's worked with companies like Southern Wedding, simplified by Emily Leigh, Floret, and so many more. She's so talented. So without further ado, let's just get into this fantastic interview with my brand strategist and designer, Nicole Yang.

[00:04:23.250] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Hey, Nicole, welcome to the show.

[00:04:25.100] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Thanks so much for having me, Candice.

[00:04:26.840] - Candice Coppola (Host)

We were just saying off camera how excited we were to sit down and talk. We work together on a weekly basis, but we don't get the chance to sit down and have these long form conversations. So this is really a treat.

[00:04:38.860] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Same for me. And I know that we have lots of things that we both want to get our teeth into and discuss, so I'm really happy that we now have a venue for it.

[00:04:48.260] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I agree. Oh, my gosh. Maybe we should have a ted talks, but like with Nicole. Nicole comes on the podcast every quarter and dishes on the latest strategies for your brand and branding and stuff like that. That would be so fun.

[00:05:02.640] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

That'd be exciting. Make up a little cocktail, have a little moment.

[00:05:06.360] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Okay. I like where we're going with this. We're just doing shots with Dawn in our 100th episode. So maybe it'll be like cocktails with Candice and Nicole.

[00:05:14.750] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

That's perfect.

[00:05:16.090] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Let's do it. We'll create the graphics for it and we'll be good to go.

[00:05:22.190] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Oh, my God. Can't do shots, but I'll be here for.

[00:05:24.390] - Candice Coppola (Host)

The rest. I love it. I have introduced you to our audience before our interview here, but I just have to thank you because you have just created such an incredible brand for me as a business. And I just don't think I would be in this position without your expertise and your artistry. I tell you this all the time, Nicole will create something for me, and I'll be like, Dude, this is the best fucking thing ever. How do you do it? You're a magician. You're an angel. But I feel like maybe I need to say it again. I so appreciate your wisdom and your artistry.

[00:05:57.010] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for saying that. It means a lot coming from you because some people say it and you're like, Oh, well, you'd be happy with anything.

[00:06:07.190] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Thanks. You say I have a disconcerning guy.

[00:06:09.470] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Yes, exactly. It speaks a lot, though, to the work that you've done on your business. You have such a clear vision. I think that that's key to any design decision that you make is being really in tune with your business.

[00:06:22.990] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Well, I'm sure we're going to get into this today. What spurred this episode was actually a compliment I got, and I attributed it to Nicole, which was somebody said to me, Candice, anytime I see something pop up that's yours, I instantly know that it's your brand because your branding... I know your branding. So anytime you post something, I know it's you before I know it's you. And that was a huge compliment. It's something I think all businesses should strive to have that level of branding. I attribute it to Nicole, who is my brand strategist and graphic designer. She's responsible for anything cool visually that you see, we put out there anywhere. She is responsible for it. It really got me thinking about how that's not the case for most businesses in the wedding industry. I find like most businesses in the wedding industry don't have that strong of a brand. Would you agree with that?

[00:07:13.960] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

I do agree with that, sadly, because they have so much to offer. But there are definitely a couple of things that are problems because they maybe haven't been taught. And there are some things that I think are inherent to the wedding industry that we can talk about, too.

[00:07:27.450] - Candice Coppola (Host)

This sounds juicy. All right, good. Well, my first question for you, and I love to ask this question of experts like yourself, is about mistakes that you see us making because I think there's so much we can learn from the mistakes we're making to then have a conversation about how we can do things better. So I'd love to start off this conversation with, in your opinion and in your experience, what mistakes do you see wedding pros often making when it comes to their brand?

[00:07:55.050] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Okay, well, let's start with what I call little bee branding mistakes. And they're things like colors and fonts and your logo. Something that I see all the time are the wispy script fonts. That's huge. That's been huge for decades. And now we're also getting into the really modern editorial thin serif fonts. And they're completely different styles, but the problem with both of them is that they're really hard to read. They definitely achieve a certain esthetic, which is super important in the wedding industry. But above the esthetic, we have to make sure that our clients can actually interact with and read what we're putting out there. So that is a mistake. Number one is sometimes your marketing might not be working because people physically don't understand what you're saying.

[00:08:41.700] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, my God. That's so true. Yeah, I see this all the time. And in your quest to use the most scriptiest font or the coolest font, you're sacrificing literal usability where people cannot read what you're trying to say.

[00:08:59.930] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Yes. It's one of those things that's heartbreaking because I understand why people do it all the time. And there are places where you can use those beautiful fonts. You just have to be a little more strategic about it. Make sure that it's gigantic and easy to read. There are really cool ways that you can use stuff like that, but don't use it everywhere. Same for soft colors like the blushes and the beiges and the really light grays. I've been on so many wedding websites for vendors where everything is just like this light gray. And again, it's a readability issue. And as couples are getting married older as well, I'm in my early 30s and I'm starting to squint now when I read my mail and I'm like, Oh, this is an issue. So contrast in that readability is an issue. It all comes back to accessibility. Can people actually understand what you're putting out there, or does it just look like this pretty soft, wispy BLOB that's on the internet? It's beautiful to look at, but you can't do anything with it.

[00:09:59.590] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Right. A soft, wispy BLOB. That's like a quote. Beautiful to look at, but you can't do anything with it. I also feel like all these muted tones, and I'm a lover of muted. I think you need muted, but you also need that contrast. So you need something that elevates you off the page or helps you break out visually from the sea of sameness out there.

[00:10:23.090] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

100 %. Definitely not saying to nix all the scripts and all the blushes, but add in something, make some key decisions that make sure that it's readable. So colors, fonts. Another little B issue that I see is just people thinking, Oh, I'm in the wedding industry, so I just need to look like a wedding invitation or a website version of a wedding invitation or what everyone else is doing because they need to associate me with this photographer or this planner that I'm trying to be like. And I think that leaves so much left on the table, so many opportunities that are not being embraced.

[00:10:59.430] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I agree. We have this unique perspective where you and I have been a part of the wedding industry for over a decade, and we've seen trends come and go. Do you remember when like, watercolor was a really big trend in the wedding industry where every logo was made out of had some watercolor element to it?

[00:11:21.380] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Yes. And all I kept thinking was, how are you printing this? How are you getting this embroidery on T shirts and hats? This is impossible.

[00:11:29.400] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Totally. And then also there was a big trend with stag horn, deer heads. Deer heads were everywhere. I even did a deer head photo shoot. Deer heads was in everybody's logo, was everywhere. I do.

[00:11:43.630] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Remember that. Oh, you're bringing back some not so happy memories.

[00:11:47.900] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I don't know if you've ever created a deer head logo, so I don't mean to diss. But we all have our moments where we embraced a trend. And so if you could look through the wedding industry right now, we've talked about readability, not sacrificing readability and user ability for your brand. If you could look through the trends that are happening right now in the wedding industry, like the deer head or like the watercolor, what do you think is a trend right now that is similar to that? That is really trendy, but it's actually almost too trendy where it might be hurting your brand if you're using it.

[00:12:21.370] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

I keep going back to the scripts are still a huge thing. I don't know why they've stuck around for so long. Now we're moving into the editorial, big Serif modern fonts, really cool uses of photos and layouts. That's actually, I think, a good trend if we're using it the right way. But again, we're moving from one side of the spectrum to the total opposite side, and we're sacrificing all this personality and all this usability that's in between. And we're not really thinking about, what does my client actually want to see from me? What do my events actually look like? Do they match up?

[00:12:59.580] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, that's such a good point. And I actually have a question for you about that a little bit later in our interview about creating a brand that's around you or around your customers. And I'm going to be really curious to hear your thoughts on that. But I would agree. I feel like you scroll Instagram and everything has this editorial slant. It's black, white and Beige. We're using these editorial Vogueesque fonts everywhere.

[00:13:22.440] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Yes, I think that's a big issue. Another thing, and this is what it really leads to for me is what I consider the capital B branding mistakes is not actually looking at what your brand is, what your unique value proposition is, what your ideal client is. Some of these really basic business things that I think that if you're in business for a long time, you do the homework upfront and you say, Okay, here's my unique value proposition, here's my ideal client. Then five years later, you just forget about it. You're like, I've done this for so long. It's not a thing anymore. Then you just want to feel like you have to evolve for the sake of evolving, and you're not doing the homework again and setting the foundations again and making decisions from that really informed place. That's a huge capital B branding mistake that I see made often.

[00:14:15.960] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, I agree totally. I can definitely see that where if you've been in business for a while, you maybe take for granted the steps that you took when you started your business. I think also, too, it's just so easy for people to latch on to trends and change their mind constantly about their brand and their logo and their colors. And there's just no rhyme or reason to any of it. It becomes one of those houses where you can see the original home, but then they added so many additions. It's been owned by 15 different people, and they keep adding on to it that it just looks crazy.

[00:14:49.190] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Yes, that's exactly what it is. I empathize so much. I think when you're a business owner, it's so hard to stay consistent for years on end and to feel like you don't need to hop on the next trend. And especially if you need to make a big change in your business, sometimes that feels like a really easy fix is let's do something trendy and get some new people in here. But I think it really does every one a disservice. It brings in the people that you don't want to see. It brings in people who aren't as committed to you and what your values are. And I think another, I'm going to take this back to the big B branding mistakes is we often think about branding as just a visual experience, just the colors and the fonts and the logos. But what it really is is the visuals and the design. It's the tone and your words and your sounds. It's intellectual, so what your actual offers are and what your marketing is, and it's interpersonal, so what your customer service is. I think that when we start following these trends, what we end up doing is removing the visual side from the rest of our business and separating it so that when people go through this funnel of actually booking with you and going through your experience and interacting with your offers and following you on Instagram, it feels like a huge disconnect because you haven't married all these four parts of your business together.

[00:16:08.470] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

You haven't said, Oh, if my visuals look this way, then that means that my customer service needs to behave this way and sharing those same inherent values. It becomes really jarring, I think, for a client to feel like they have invested in something that they're not actually getting. Like, Oh, I thought I was getting this really vogue experience, but I'm really just getting the YM magazine from the 90s.

[00:16:35.220] - Candice Coppola (Host)

It's giving the monthly advocate, it's giving AARP.

[00:16:41.860] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Aarp, yes.

[00:16:44.460] - Candice Coppola (Host)

It's not giving Vogue. Oh, my gosh.

[00:16:47.700] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Let's go with it.

[00:16:49.060] - Candice Coppola (Host)

No, but you're very right. Branding is more than just your visual representation. I think most people attribute branding with just your logo or your colors, and it's so much more than that. What you just described can feel really difficult for somebody listening who maybe hasn't figured out all those puzzle pieces, or I don't know, you see all these different components and it's like, Well, how do you wrap your arms around it all to create an identity that encompasses it?

[00:17:19.490] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Yeah, that is a big task. I'm not going to lie, it's not going to be easy for anyone to just say, Oh, I answered these five questions and now here's my brand. But you do want to start with the five questions. What I always say everyone should start with is come up with three to five keywords for your brand and ask yourself, just literally take out a sheet of paper and ask yourself, What am I known for? What's my expertise? What are my strengths? What's this approach that I bring to the table that no one else is bringing to the table? What do I want clients to perceive about my brand before they even start working with me? And what should they feel? What should clients feel when they are working with me? What should that experience be like for them? And the last question, which I think we often overlook is, what are our clients biggest hopes and dreams about this experience that we can deliver for them that they're not getting anywhere else? And just write out all those answers. And I think that what you'll start to pick up on are these patterns, what words are repeating themselves, what themes are repeating themselves, and distill that into three to five keywords.

[00:18:23.780] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

And if you keep those keywords at the forefront of every decision that you make, suddenly things get so much clearer and so much more consistent, even though you've got some variety in there.

[00:18:35.840] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, yeah. That is good. I love all of those questions that you put together, and I can see how answering those begin to paint a bigger picture about what your brand looks like. Because as you were telling the questions, I was answering them as fast as I could in my head, and I could see my brand coming together with those answers. Yeah.

[00:18:56.760] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Yes. Once you do it, it becomes second nature. You have to reprogram your brain to do it a few times. But then once you do it, it makes those decisions easier because I think that we also take for granted how many decisions we have to make in a single day. The decision fatigue is ridiculous. Then on top of that, the fact that you have to create all this content and then you have to make decisions around those content, decisions around your brand. But answering those questions, coming up with your keywords, it eliminates 50 % of those decisions.

[00:19:28.760] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, yeah, for sure. It's interesting. I just gave a presentation at the Signature CEO conference all around data mining and why you should be mining for data to help you make decisions. And in my research for my presentation, I uncovered a crazy statistic. And that is that on average, we make 35,000 decisions a day. The average person makes 35,000 decisions a day. Imagine the entrepreneur, like the business owner, how many decisions we're responsible for a day. So it's no wonder that we're all stuck.

[00:20:05.340] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Yes, that sounds exhausting. Not even just doing it every day, just hearing it sounds exhausting.

[00:20:12.870] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Totally. Completely. I appreciate that by having these answers to the questions that you've posed and being able to deliver a consistent brand helps you too to make better decisions. One of the great things that Nicole created for me was some brand guidelines. I just hired a video editor, my friend Janel, and I'm onboarding her and she's asking me all the right questions. She's like, Your brand guidelines. I'm like, I got those. When I sent it to her, she was so impressed by how it made her job so much easier for her to jump into her role in my business and to deliver something based on my brand guidelines.

[00:20:53.070] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Heck, yes. That makes me so happy. I think that's something that... Yeah, we also don't think about where I'm in my business, I know what colors go together. I know what my fonts are, but there's so much... There's so many questions that someone else coming in with no company history and none of that intellect that comes with just having done it for five years by yourself on end. There's so much that you can give them if you just put it in a dock or, again, send them those keywords. I'm not sure what my brain guidelines are, my brain standards, but I know it needs to feel like this. You really start narrowing in on all those things that make your brand really consistent and specific to you.

[00:21:35.290] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, I agree. With the marketplace so crowded right now in the wedding industry, I think standing out is more important than ever. And we've discussed some of the little B and the big B branding mistakes that wedding pros are making. I just want your opinion about, first of all, do you think it's more important than ever for wedding pros to create a brand that's instantly recognizable? Is there a one tip or one thing that they could be doing to make that happen?

[00:22:09.670] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

I do think yes, become more recognizable. There is absolutely no downside to being more recognizable unless you decide in two weeks that you want to live in the forest by yourself and not have your business. That's a totally different thing. Another problem that we can talk about. But yes, standing out is always going to be good for you. As far as an easy way to do that, unfortunately, there's not really an easy way to do that. It does require a little bit of elbow grease and a little bit of brain grease from you. That sounds gross, but it's going to take some work. And again, it needs to come back to those keywords, but it also needs to come back to what are the things that you're consistently putting out there that you can create rules around. And if you spend two hours thinking about all those things and creating some rules around them, again, it saves you so many hours of decision making in the future. Candice, I'm going to use you as an example. For this podcast, even, when we think about all the ways that we want to share it and all the ways that it could potentially look, whether it's YouTube or Instagram or on your blog or wherever it needs to be, we have to define what those parameters are.

[00:23:20.770] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Then we have to think, Okay, how can we take a podcast title and reuse it in five different places? Is there a rule for the way that it looks in all those places? I think that it sounds intimidating to say, Oh, we need to create a style for every single one of these elements. There's the podcast title, and then there's the episode number, and then there's the guest, and all these other things. But it's literally a matter of like, put it in a font, put it in a color, put it on a background. Is there a recurring shape that you can use somewhere? Start with the very basics, make one thing, take all those same things, and rearrange them for a different platform. I think that people often don't do this because it feels like cheating sometimes. It feels too easy, or it feels like, Oh, I'm not supposed to reuse all these elements. I'm supposed to do it new every single time. But that is the point of consistency is making sure that those things are recognizable right off the bat. And that means sticking to the very, very basics, the things that people don't have to use their brain power to process, like colors and fonts and shapes.

[00:24:29.700] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

And then once we feel really confident in that, we might be able to graduate to some more sophisticated things like different kinds of shapes and layouts and specific things like that. But keep it simple. Stick with the things that you can control that you know look good and keep reusing them.

[00:24:47.360] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, rules and consistency around those rules when it comes to your brand is what you're saying is what creates consistency. And that consistency then makes you recognizable to others. They'll instantly know when you post something that it's yours because they expect you to use a certain font in a certain color in a certain line height in a certain way. Nicole, do you still have your brand course that people can join where they can learn all about this and create a brand for themselves?

[00:25:17.450] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

I do. It's called the Balance Brands Lab Kit. And what we're actually doing is reimagining it this year. So you'll be able to sign up and get the first few lessons for free. So we'll walk you through the foundational stuff like creating your keywords and your mood board and finding your colors and fonts. And then you can graduate up and decide, Oh, I really want to work on photography styles and shapes and patterns and stuff like that. So that's a great resource and a place for you to start.

[00:25:44.080] - Candice Coppola (Host)

It's amazing. I took it. I remember purchasing it. This is before Nicole and I began working together. I forgot.

[00:25:49.800] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

About this, Candice. Yeah.

[00:25:51.250] - Candice Coppola (Host)

It was so fantastic to learn from Nicole in that way. First of all, Nicole is a great teacher. She is a great great... She can break down complex things in a very simple way, and branding can be very complex. The course is really organized, and she walks you through how to create brand guidelines and the rules that she's explaining to you right here that you need in order to be recognizable and consistent. It's honestly one of the best courses I've ever purchased.

[00:26:19.310] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

That's amazing. Thank you so much for saying that. That makes me feel so good. And I think that's important, too, is branding. Design in general, even if you're a creative person and you have a design background, when it comes to graphic design, it just feels so inherently difficult. There's not a specific role that you always follow. It's really subjective sometimes. Having someone, I think, guide you through the process and help you make those decisions along the way is really important. We talk about keeping it simple and sticking to the fonts and the colors, but that also means that those fonts and those colors have to be based on your brand, your keywords, what makes you unique. Because if you're creating a brand that looks like everyone else and you're consistent to everyone else, that doesn't do anything for your business. So you really have to start with the foundation and then build up those really simple roles after that.

[00:27:13.470] - Candice Coppola (Host)

It's such a great point that you made, too, which was start simple somewhere and have your basic rules in place for your brand. And just to reiterate, rules are my headline font is this font at this size used in these colors. So very consistently, we're always doing that every time it looks the same, so people know what to expect. But just breaking down very simple rules first and establishing those and then finding ways to be more playful, to be bringing in maybe a script font but a different type and only using it in a specific way. One thing I see wedding pros doing all the time is you guys will create a sales deck with your pricing and everything is in fucking caps. And I'm like, Who wants to read in all caps? There's no bullet points. You got sentences in a script font. You're using everything in caps. It's not readable, as Nicole has indicated it needs to be. And there's no rhyme or reason. You've got one paragraph in this font at this size, another paragraph in this font at this size, and it drives me crazy. It must drive you even crazier, Nicole.

[00:28:22.020] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

It drives me crazy because, you guys, I know that you're doing it because it feels like you need to. It feels like the design thing to do. That's the only reason anyone makes these decisions is you're following a trend. I don't want to harp on trends so much because in some ways that they can be good. But you're following trends in ways that aren't serving you. I think something that we forget about design and branding in general is it has to be functional. It exists to serve the client. It exists to guide them through a process. Even though it feels like it needs to be pretty, it's really supposed to be about utility. Start with that accessibility and that readability. Yeah.

[00:29:07.390] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, my God. It's a really good reminder that sometimes we just take it too far in the... We download a template from Creative Market and we just take it too fucking far. We just do the most in our document and we're like, Oh, this looks pretty, but really you can't read a single word in it. What that ends up meaning is if it is a pricing guide, somebody's going to be so confused, they're going to leave. They're like, I don't know what this all means. It's not easy to understand, right?

[00:29:34.750] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Exactly. I want to scream this from the rooftop's campus.

[00:29:39.240] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Well, we're doing it. We're screaming it.

[00:29:42.850] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Everyone, please. Yeah, it is that. That goes back to the whole client experience thing. We overlook it as a part of branding, but it is the brand. If your business exists, it exists to serve a client or a customer. Every decision has to be about how we can make it clear to them what our expectations are and what they're going to get from us.

[00:30:06.160] - Candice Coppola (Host)

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[00:31:32.060] - Candice Coppola (Host)

They say, B U. You're what separates yourself from the competition. And by they, I mean, the people over here, maybe not us, but they say that. Or should we be branding for the client we're trying to actually attract? T like, what should we be doing? Branding for us or for the customer?

[00:31:48.960] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Candice, you should be branding for the customer. 1,000 % always for the customer. Okay, yes, there are parts of your personality that are important. There are parts of you that are critical to your brand, and those parts are not whether or not you're a coffee lover or a dog lover or your favorite color is pink, but it is what do you bring to the process? What do you bring to the do you make your clients feel that is different from what they are going to get somewhere else? So being outspoken and bold, for instance, that's not your brand. It's not important to your brand unless you are working on bold, modern, boundary pushing event styles. Being a dog lover has nothing to do with your brand. Might be a little cute line in your bio somewhere, but has nothing to do with your brand unless your dog is coming with you to every single client meeting and it's onsite for prep work and is running the show and maybe a portion of your profits go to animal charities. The further away it looks from your brand, the more entwined it really has to be. I don't want to say completely remove yourself from the process, but the parts of you that are in your business are the parts of you that are serving your client.

[00:33:09.960] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

And it's hard to come to terms with sometimes because we all want to say, Oh, well, they're meeting me and they're working with me, and I want them to get to know me and to not feel like they're being led down a specific rabbit hole that's not what they're actually getting from me. But that's where you really have to think about, what is your client expecting from the process? What are their hopes and dreams about working with a cake baker or an event planner? They have certain expectations that have nothing to do with you that you can meet, and you have to think about how you're guiding them through the rest of the client experience. From the first onboarding email that they get, to the check ins, to the questionnaires, to the meetings, to the onboarding, not all of that is an opportunity for you to talk about your favorite cocktails or how much you love your dog. You have to consider what is going to be a part of that process and play those things up. And again, play up the things that you're going to make people feel. I, for instance, have a really bold, bright brand.

[00:34:15.770] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

I'm an introvert. I really struggle talking to people and being loud in a room. But I do think that my superpower is helping people be bolder in their businesses and make decisions that make them feel brave about what they bring to the table. And that is something that I try to instill in every single part of my client process and in every deliverable that I give to them. Those are the distinctions that you really have to make when you're thinking about, where does my personality play into this? Because you don't want to abandon yourself, but you do want to make sure that it's reconciled with what your client is going to experience. This is.

[00:34:49.170] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Such a great point. Thank you so much for this lesson. I think we don't hear it often enough from the branding world. And I think what's being pushed more is be yourself, be your unique self. People are looking for elements of their personality that makes them unique and they're using that in their brand. What I hear you saying is be yourself, but first of all, find some common threads between you and your ideal client? W hat are your shared interests, your shared boldness, or your shared personality traits that maybe could be used to add some personality or a punch to your brand? But outside of that, you need to be thinking about what the customer wants and also visually what they like because the wedding industry is one of the most visual industries. That's what is so.

[00:35:40.600] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Fascinating to me about the wedding industry is it, yes, the most visual, the most varied. There's such a huge range in what weddings look like and feel like and where they are and who's a part of them. It's amazing to me that we don't have all of these beautiful wedding brands that look as varied as that. There's so much opportunity here that I think that everyone can really latch on to, but we have to let go of thinking that we need to look a specific way, that we need to look like that scripty blush, Beige, black, white thing.

[00:36:14.320] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I got you. Yes. Just like you want your clients to maybe take a little bit of a risk when it comes to their wedding, and just like you appreciate the clients who bring color and aren't just doing blush weddings with wooden tables and cross back chairs and just the usual you appreciate a client who has a punch of color or a cool pattern or something, a love of vintage. We want to bring that to your business, too.

[00:36:41.600] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Yes. I think everyone's got a style. I even hesitate to say this as a designer because I think that my job is to mold myself and my style to what my clients are after. I'm not saying that all wedding professionals need to mold themselves to one specific style, but there are going to be through lines. There are going to be things that you love working on. There are going to be things that you really want to pull out of your clients that can become really beautiful moments for you to not only make yourself look more unique, but to tell more of a story around that. And that's, I think, something that we talk about a lot in all industries is storytelling around your brand. But we forget that storytelling takes so much time and investment. But when you convert it into something visual, that is a one second brain processor that instantly gets a client on board and says, Oh, I want to hear more about this. And it.

[00:37:40.850] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Also helps that know, like, and trust, too. They can instantly see something that you put out there, see the story behind it, and then instantly feel more comfortable with your brand or they know, like, and trust you. So it helps to bridge that, too. You have this lovely little bird outside your window just chirping right now, Nicole. And it's giving all the spring vibes. I love it. Okay, good. It's so soothing. It sounds so peaceful and just so springy over there. Beautiful spring morning. I'm curious of your opinion on wedding pros. Let's say for their website. One thing I noticed sometimes is the brand is so strong that it detracts from the images of the work that they're trying to showcase that helps the client to buy. A couple is buying with their eye and they're looking at weddings and images of photos and video to help them make that decision. They're basically picking a wedding in your portfolio, almost, and saying, I want that. That is the style, the theme, the essence of what I'm looking for. What I find sometimes is branding the wedding industry that's really strong, almost overwhelms and detracts the eye from the images that you're trying to sell of your work.

[00:38:58.250] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, yes.

[00:38:59.230] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

This is a really interesting thing that happens. Again, this is specific to the wedding industry is sometimes the branding is too strong and sometimes it is way too weak and it relies too much on the imagery. I think that's where you really need to go back to the accessibility and the readability of what you're working with. I know that I've been harping on the pages and the blush, but right now I'm going to say sometimes it's appropriate for you to have those things built in. Anytime we build a brand, we always talk about, Okay, what are your main brand colors? What are the flashy ones that we want to use to play with? But then you also have to build the foundation of your neutrals and your darks. The neutrals are the ivories, the blushes. We don't want to stick with stark YTS because stark white is everywhere on the internet. But those really soft colors that we can use to let the images speak for themselves. And then we want to have the dark colors that make sure that anything that we put text into is going to be readable. So you always want to have a push and pull there and really focus on your foundational colors and then add in pops and shapes and fun text on top of it.

[00:40:13.390] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

But that is something that I think is unique to the wedding industry is we're dealing so much with portfolio images, and that's doing so much of the speaking for us. And I think that sometimes we forget that images can be a design element of our brand. We can display them in a way that feels really unique. So whether that's like putting a not too busy frame around something or displaying images in a specific layout that feels really unique to us, or having some shape that goes over the corner of something like little badges or little stickers that don't completely detract from the image but add a little bit of your branding to it. There are elements that we can play up and play down that I think can really make a portfolio sing. I think sometimes we forget to do that completely and we either just stick an image up there and let it speak for itself, but then you have no idea where it comes from because there's no branding to it, or we do too much and we can't focus on what we're actually trying to absorb.

[00:41:14.540] - Candice Coppola (Host)

That's such a great point. You want to like, sprinkle a little razzle dazzle, but you don't want to overwhelm. You just want a little something, a little extra, a little sparkle, a little drop of this, but not something that, like you said, detracts from the original mission of why you might have put that image on your website or you're showcasing something in your portfolio.

[00:41:35.040] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Yes. And I think if you have a really strong brand and if you're using it in a lot of different places, not everything that you put out needs to be super branded all the time because you have this nice environment where everything altogether looks like it came from you, but not everything has a giant logo stamp on it or a big red square on it.

[00:41:56.140] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, I do. I do. My final question to you is a two part. I feel we have two sets of listeners here. We have people who are relatively new to business, and then we have a lot of OGs in business. First, what advice do you have for wedding professionals who are just starting out and trying to establish their brand identity?

[00:42:21.110] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

I would say if you're trying to establish your brand identity, really think through those five brand keywords that you want to pull out. I also want to say that I think it's completely normal and natural for your brand to change later as you discover the types of clients that you love, the type of work that you love. I say this to almost every new brand that I work with and I say, Your brand is probably going to change. We can do this perfectly the first time around, but you're naturally going to evolve in your business and your brand is going to need to reflect that later on. So it's okay that things will change later, but if you do the homework now to really focus on your values and what those five brand keywords are, you can create that line of consistency from your brand as it is right now to what it might be in 10 years. If you really think about what you want that client experience to look and feel like. So start with the brand keywords. Don't forget about the basic, basic brand homework. Yes. And the.

[00:43:22.690] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Balanced Brand Lab is a great course to dig into to help you learn many of the principles that Nicole is talking about here and also to help you come up with something that feels consistent and cohesive and is going to serve your business in this era of its infancy. But I think back to my style 10 years ago, I think back to my style in high school, I was like a grateful dead patchwork pant wearing. I used to sew my own clothes. I mean, I was a fucking mess. I'm so different now. Now, you guys know me. You know I'm nowhere near that. But look how my style has evolved over the last 20 years. And all of our styles are like that. We have our own eras in fashion and home decor where we're really into a certain style and it speaks to our personality. And then it changes and we go in a different direction and your brands will have the same experience. Exactly.

[00:44:16.320] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

I think that sometimes we really feel down about changing, but that is natural. It is okay to evolve. It's good to evolve because you're just going to get more and more specific as things get older and more developed. Yeah. Is there.

[00:44:29.760] - Candice Coppola (Host)

A time where we change too much? I remember having Terica, my friend Terica on the podcast, and she was talking about there was years where she was rebranding every five minutes. She was trying to figure herself out through that process to figure out her voice. And eventually she did. But she was just constantly rebranding and probably confusing the hell out of everyone. And I see people doing this sometimes where they run to think, I'm not getting clients, I need to rebrand. Or it keeps them busy and they just find busyness in branding.

[00:45:01.650] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Busyness in branding, yes. You feel like you got to do something and that feels like it's an easy fix, but it's really making the problem worse. If you are rebranding more than once a year, there's an issue. I would say even once a year, you shouldn't be rebranding. You should maybe just do a little refresh. Look at your colors and your fonts. Is there something that you've been doing that hasn't been quite so readable? Or is there a color that you keep using, but every time you use it, you hate it. Just stop using it. So do a little evaluation and refresh every year, but don't change the whole thing. And don't be one of those people. I know that this is hard to ask someone who is creative, but don't be one of those people that's like, It's just one new font. I'm going to use it. And then three months later, you're like, Oh, but it's just one more new font. Listen, I.

[00:45:54.480] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Am a font hoarder, okay? So I'm guilty of doing this where I love fonts so much. I have just a catalog of fonts. I'm a font hoarder. I love fonts. I love typography. It's hard, Nicole.

[00:46:07.830] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

I know. I'm the same way. But listen, if you are a font hoarder and you're like, I just have to use this in some way, you know what? Make a homemade card for your friend. Make a party invitation. Do something else with it. Yeah. Don't slap.

[00:46:22.750] - Candice Coppola (Host)

It on your website, and now you're committed to it. And then you're just adding more confusion, like Nicole and I were talking about with your capital text and this font and that font and nobody can read anything you're trying to say. Ps. Exactly. What would you say to the more established wedding pro who has an aging brand? Brand was hot in maybe 2014, but girl, we are nine years later and it is not so hot anymore. What would you say to that wedding pro who needs a brand refresh? Maybe where should they begin or what should they be thinking about?

[00:47:04.740] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

I'm still going to say reevaluate your brand homework, start with those keywords. But I think that if you have a brand that's been around for a long time, you have the benefit of looking back on your past clients and the process that you've been using with them for years. There's going to be something in there that's going to be really special and unique to you. So whether that's the way you treat clients when you're on a meeting with them or the way you hold their hand through a really emotional part of the planning process, it could be anything, but you have the benefit of looking back on how it feels to work with you, and you can play that up in so many different ways. Embrace your process. Think about the big capital B branding, all the parts of your brand in that client process, like the visual side, the tonal side, the intellectual side, and the interpersonal side. That's where you might be making some visual changes to update a brand that's nearly 10 years old and maybe stop using some of those really trendy decisions that you were using in the past. But you also have the opportunity to really think about your brand holistically and how people are going to feel when they interact and they start booking and they really start converting into a...

[00:48:20.290] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

I don't like using this term of brand evangelist, but a lover and advocate of your brand who wants to tell all of their friends about you. That stuff happens in your process and not always in your visuals. Yeah, you.

[00:48:34.260] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Are so right. You're at such an advantage if you have been in business a while to be able to have all this to fall back on as you're making decisions about the evolution of your brand. You really have all the experience and all the data and information you need to make really smart choices. And you're also in a position where you should be able to afford to hire somebody to help you help you do this so that the brand can last another 10 years, not 10 minutes.

[00:49:03.840] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

100 %. If you have been around for 10 years, please work with a pro because the worst thing you can do is say, I have all this expertise, all of this experience, but my brand looks really clunky and my teenage daughter made it. That is part of the experience as well.

[00:49:24.100] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I have one bonus question, I guess, to ask. That's like, when looking for a brand designer, if you're an established pro or you can afford to hire somebody to come in and to be a strategist for you and to help you evolve your brand, is there something in particular you should be looking for or something you should expect to get? I have seen over the years somebody be like, Oh, I rebranded. Or like, Tomorrow, I'm announcing my new brand. And you're like, Oh, I can't wait to see what Kiersten is doing. And then she comes out with this logo and you're like, Girl, that's it? You paid somebody? That's it. ready to make that for you? That is shit. What is that? It's literally just a font. There's no nuance to it. It's giving nothing. I don't want anybody to have that experience here listening to our show. How do we make sure we hire somebody who is going to give us something that creates that brand recognition that has been the whole premise of the show? Yes.

[00:50:29.310] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

D efinitely ask what your deliverables are. Don't just assume that branding makes the same for every brand designer, because like you said, it absolutely does not. I've worked with some surprisingly very well paid branding designers and really popular brand designers where all they do is hand you a logo and one font and one color and that's it. And I know that we talk about logos and fonts and colors when we're talking about branding a lot, but what it really is is which fonts go together, which colors go together, when, what shapes. There's so much more. There's an environment that needs to be created there. So if you're interviewing your designers, ask what the actual deliverables are. So you want to be looking for, yes, the brand colors and logos and stuff, but are they going to include iconography if you need it, or a pattern or some background texture? Are they going to walk you through combinations and type styles? Are they going to give you actual formatting options, or are they just going to hand you a font file and then you're set loose with it? And that's when you start capitalizing everything and putting letter spacing between script fonts that shouldn't be there.

[00:51:35.360] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Oh, my God.

[00:51:35.810] - Candice Coppola (Host)

That's my biggest pet peeve. Why is there a space? Is a script is supposed to be connected, girls. Exactly.

[00:51:41.750] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

That's another thing I want to scream from the rooftop.

[00:51:46.020] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Let's develop.

[00:51:46.760] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Another podcast episode.

[00:51:48.350] - Candice Coppola (Host)

We need to. Actually, the original premise to this was, Nicole, could you just have a come to Jesus with us on the show? I don't know if we could do this in an auditory way, but can you just talk us through some of the crazy shit we're doing that is not good from a graphic design standpoint? One of those things would be putting a space in between the letters of your script box. Don't do that. Don't do that, guys.

[00:52:11.430] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

It looks crazy.

[00:52:12.720] - Candice Coppola (Host)

It looks crazy. It looks crazy. But one thing that's popping out at me is you should make sure that you're hiring a brand designer, not somebody with a Canva account. I don't know. I've worked with other folks and they're all great. But what's unique about Nicole is Nicole has created physical products. She's done some branding across different mediums, and she's a real graphic designer and she opens up illustrator with a blank thing, and she's actually creating shit from scratch and not downloading templates and then customizing a template and calling it a brand. There is a difference. There is.

[00:52:53.900] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

A difference. And that's something else to keep an eye on is in what form are you getting your final deliverables? This is why I hated the watercolor trend for wedding pros 10 years ago is you really do have to think about how is this going to print? You're going to be printing business cards potentially back in the day when we all had conferences to go to and printed business cards. If you're an event planner, you might be printing T shirts for your entire staff to wear. So how is your logo going to look screen printed on a T shirt or on an apron? You really have to think about all the usability issues that come up when you're designing something that's going to be used all the time everywhere. And then something that Candice and I do all the time is we think, Okay, well, what needs to be used, not by me, the designer, but by your team who just needs to pump out something really quick. So if they are working in Canva, or if they're working in something like in whatever platform that needs to be really easy for them, we have to design our files and create the final file format in a way that's going to be useful as well.

[00:54:02.620] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

So we don't just give Candice a PDF or a JPEG of something. We'll give her an SVG file that she can load into Canva and change the color up really quickly or scale up without loss of resolution so that she can reuse it and her team can use it in ways that don't restrict them. Yeah, it's such a.

[00:54:21.920] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Good point. I've realized in my own experience with branding and my brand has evolved, when I started working with Nicole, I had done it all myself. I think it was pretty legit. It wasn't your typical DIY. It was pretty good. Nicole brought personality into it and brought things out of me and brought it into the brand. Over the two years we've been working together, it's evolved and it continues to evolve. We continue to play, we keep it consistent, but we continue to play. I think one of the greatest things about the experiences is that after we rebranded me, we continued to work together. T hat gives us the freedom to figure things out as we go while staying consistent. If you're in a position to hire somebody to rebrand you, I would want to see if there's an opportunity to stay on in a retainer way where maybe once a quarter, you come to them with a project where they can create some templates for you or work on something for you, do a little bit of a refresh, maybe bring in a color you're feeling in this season, and just have that consistency. Yes.

[00:55:28.250] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I want to.

[00:55:28.750] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Say that a million times over. Thank you for saying that. I think that not only does it help with consistency, but once you work with someone for a long time, they come with institutional knowledge that they've picked up along the way. They can help you make decisions that say, Oh, we tried this a few years ago, we shouldn't do it again because it didn't work, or we should do it again because X, Y, Z variables have changed, or I see you moving in this direction. Maybe we need to move your branding with it as well. There's a lot of that back and forth that happens with that institutional knowledge and with someone who can just be there for you and observe your brand over time. Yeah, it's.

[00:56:06.860] - Candice Coppola (Host)

So valuable. It can feel, again, going back to those decisions that we make, we are in charge of making so many decisions and largely we are working alone most of the time. We may have small teams, but we're working by ourselves and we're responsible for being the idea creator. We have to think through all these things. It's nice when you can have a consistent creative person who knows your brand, who has gotten to know you, who has gotten to see how your brand evolves, to see your marketing strategies, and who can come in and say, Hey, why don't we try this? Or, Hey, I like your idea, but here's why I think it's not good. Here's why I think that's a really shitty idea. But be honest with you and not just be like, Sure, I can create this graphic for you, but come from a place of like, yes, this is going to benefit you, or actually, I think this is what we should do instead. Exactly.

[00:56:52.960] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Yes. Well, this has been so.

[00:56:55.370] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Great, Nicole. For anybody listening here who first wants to connect with you outside of this show, how can they do that? The best way to connect with.

[00:57:03.540] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Me is on Instagram @ Nicole A. Yang. Follow along. Hopefully, we'll be posting lots of helpful tips on there. I've also got a YouTube channel, which is a really great place to get some of that actual tactical design advice if you're DIYing. So search Nicole Yang Design on YouTube. Those are the two best places to both connect and hopefully get some really great tips. Awesome. Your YouTube channel.

[00:57:26.920] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Is great. I love you T oob. I'm a visual person, and so it's a great way to connect with Nicole and to see what she's talking about here, even just in this interview. And for somebody listening who might be interested in checking out the Balanced Brand Lab, I'll link to it below. But how can they do that? Yes, just head to.

[00:57:46.440] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Balanced Brand Labkit. Com, and you'll get all the details there, little previews of what you'll get inside, and all of your questions will be answered. But you'll also see a place where you can reach out to us if you have any more. Awesome. Yeah, guys, it's.

[00:57:58.530] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Such a great course. If you want to learn more about graphic design branding, you feel like your branding is all over the place. I came to Nicole and I was like, Dude, I am downloading all this stuff, create a market. It feels crazy. I feel nuts. I feel like my brand looks nuts. And maybe from the outside it didn't. People were like, Oh, this is pretty nice. But I didn't feel connected to it. And I'm like, I need you to help me make sense of this. S he was like, I hear this all the time. Don't worry about it. And the Balanced Brand Lab really helped me to solidify my thoughts. When I hired her, I actually brought my brand kit that I had created and I was like, Here's my brand kit. And it helped us to start our relationship together. So it was just a really good course. That was so fun.

[00:58:39.730] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

Thank you. And I think something that I think about all the time is it's not just the decision fatigue when you've got someone else working with you, you suddenly just feel more confident showing up in your business, which is such a hard thing to ask yourself to do every single day. So do whatever it takes. Oh, yeah. No, when.

[00:58:57.380] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Nicole creates a graphic, I'm like, Well, Nicole created it. I have to fucking post it. She made it. I have to use it. I paid for it. She made it. We got to use it. And so there is almost like this permission when you work with someone that helps to give you some momentum and push you to have more accountability. They make it easier for you to market and put yourself out there because the majority of the work is done. You just need to share it. And that's the easy part, or should be. It doesn't feel like it, but it should be. Nicole, thank you so much for being such a great guest and giving us just so much knowledge today about branding. This was my pleasure.

[00:59:32.980] - Nicole Yang (Guest)

I love chatting with you. I hope that I was helpful for anyone listening, but thank you so much for having me. Well, what did you think? I thought.

[00:59:40.190] - Candice Coppola (Host)

That was such an incredible interview. I thought Nicole was so great. I learned so much from her. I love everything she said about how you can create a recognized brand in the wedding industry and break out of that sea of sameness with your visual brand. I've linked everything we talked about in the show notes, so the questions that she wants you to ask yourself, I've actually written them out in the blog post so you can easily copy and paste them and begin working on your brand guidelines. I've linked to the Balanced Brand Lab, Nicole's course, all of her social media, her website, all the things. I do hope that you go and connect with Nicole. She posts some really inspiring stuff on Instagram and her YouTube channel that I think will help you become a better brand designer for your own brand and also inspire you as you go on the journey of rebranding or refreshing your wedding industry business. So, my friend, thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Power and Purpose podcast. I am so grateful you're here and I want to remind you, as always, there is so much power in your purpose.

[01:00:43.750] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Until next time. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Power and Purpose podcast. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and consider leaving a review. Head over to power in purpose podcast. Com to access all of the resources and links mentioned in today's episode. That's power in purpose podcast. Com. I'll see you next time.