LaFaye Pye, the Prosperity Strategist, is one of my business besties. We met via an intensive 6-week online course (of course!) in which it turned out that there were only a small handful of us who posted regularly and did our best to keep up with the content. After this course was finished, we all had to take a step back from what we were working on to decompress. But I would never trade that experience as all the amazing friendships that have come out of it.

When LaFaye was going through a re-brand, she brought me in to help. We looked at her current color scheme and visual elements, and talked through exactly what she was trying to communicate. She was very attached to her pinks and browns, only they weren't quite the right shades to communicate her position as an expert in her field. She was also attached to the Summer color psychology group with its flowing and feminine elements. To communicate her expert status, we tweaked her palette to encompass a Winter color scheme, and...

I met with Misty at a cute corner coffee shop in downtown Bath, Maine, the city of ships. Cafe Creme is the hangout of choice for many of the locals and boarding school students alike. Its intimate atmosphere encourages conversation and camaraderie, and the sea of treats under glass domes at the counter along with row of local coffees along the wall encourages you to stay awhile.

Misty had heard about me from my SCORE mentor. If you are unfamiliar with the SCORE program, its mission is to match entrepreneurs with seasoned business veterans. Misty, a mom with young kids like myself, was a massage therapist by trade, and working on developing an incredible app she called Thoughtful Giving. At the time she had entered the LA Top Gun competition to win funding for her business idea and wanted to connect with me to learn more about branding and design.

I was more than happy to meet with her as one, she was obviously a fellow go-getter, two, I love talking branding and design,...

How are you coming along on crafting your brand story? Do you have a past, a place, character traits, and an aspirational personality created?

I want to hand you a big platter of “ah has” around color psychology. It sounds a little out there, but stick with me.

In nature, there are four distinct groups that colors fall into, as discovered by British color psychologist Angela Wright.

Note that in nature you never experience color alone, it is always surrounded by other colors.

When colors are seen surrounded by colors that are in the same group, we instinctively “read” their positive characteristics.

For example, it’s currently peach season in Maine. Those lovely ripe peaches pull me in, and I know the ones with more red on the skins will be juicier and sweeter. The pale yellow ones repel me, sending a signal that they are still firm and unsweetened.

This is nature alerting me to what is good to eat, and what I should leave alone. The pale yellow is in a...

I did a live Masterclass on the 4 critical ingredients you need to create a delectably memorable brand. But what if YOU are the brand? How do you apply these four elements to yourself?

Let's recap. The four elements you need to whip up that brand are:

1. History (a past)
2. Culture (a place)
3. Brand Personality (character)
4. Typical Customer (an aspirational self-image)

Related to YOU, here is what you need to think about:

History
What is your personal story? Why did you want to create this brand? One of my good business friends LaFaye Pye , the Prosperity Architect, tells the story of how she was stuck in bed for months on end with a back problem. Before getting hurt, she taught nutrition and was well known for her delicious and healthy recipes. But it didn't light a spark in her. While she was unable to walk, she realized that what she really wanted to do was help female entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground. (Sound similar? Yes, we both have a similar passion!)...

When you're working on building your own website, while you have been surfing the web, documenting what you like and don't like about different sites, do you start to notice anything similar about the sites that you like?

Do they seem cohesive? Is there something about them that makes them stand out in a unique way?

You might not have even picked up on it, but I bet these sites all have very cohesive brands. A brand is simply something that differentiates a business from similar businesses.

"Buy this one, not that."

For example, I can buy leggings on Amazon, or I can buy Under Armour leggings and pay five times as much.

What makes me want to pay five times as much?

The brand.

With a solid brand, your offering commands top prices. A brand means reliability. You develop relationships with brands. You come to expect certain things from certain brands, and they in turn consistently provide that.

At the heart of a brand is having a good product, and the process of branding is about...