2013 BRANDING WEBINAR SERIES: THIS IS YOUR YEAR!
December 21 • 134 Comments »
Client
YOU
Wow, what a wonderful year this has been! We started the Making Brands Happen webinars this year as a way for creative business owners to get a powerful kickstart…. right in the comfort of their homes! You’ve all made remarkable changes in your lives and businesses! We were thrilled to have MBH and our webinars mentioned as a 2012 industry highlight at the engage! luxury wedding conference in Palm Beach this year, where Lara was also a speaker on branding. Huge thanks to Rebecca and Kathryn for their kind words!
We are very excited to launch the 2013 Making Brands Happen Webinar Series with a new webinar to kick the year off in a BIG way. Part 1 will be focused on giving you a strong start for the year – goal setting, clearing the clutter, setting yourself up for success and taking action on what matters. We highly recommend you take the entire webinar series as they all tie together. If you can’t make one of the days, not to worry – we will be sending recordings for your convenience! So, join us and make 2013 YOUR YEAR! Cheers, y’all!
EDITED TO ADD: Congrats to the random winner chosen Kat Hanafin! Kat, email marissa @ makingbrandshappen.com to get your registration codes. Everyone else, there are just a few seats left and you will save $25 when you register for the whole series, which we highly recommend. Each webinar goes with the next. We’re so excited! See y’all next week!!!!
P.S. Photo above by our dear friend Gina, taken on the Making Things Happen Tour this year!
Hi, friends! We’ve had a truly blessed and exciting year with phenomenal clients and so many inspiring brand launches ahead! We’re already filling fast for 2013 brands and just wanted to take a minute to encourage you. Life is too short to play small. We started this work because we want creative business owners to be able to literally make their dreams happen. The dreams that are so big they keep you up at night with excitement. The dreams that help your family thrive. The dreams that you were born to step into. Take that giant leap today. Wishing you all a blessed 2013 ahead! xo Lara and Emily
Get ready for 2013! Powerful Branding + Client Experience Webinar
October 10 • 90 Comments »
Client
YOU
We’re SOLD OUT for 2012 brand launches (and almost full for 2013!), so to give you a jump start into the new year, we’re combining our popular webinar series into ONE POWERFUL WEBINAR. Get your brand refined and your client experience dialed in for a BIG 2013! We will cover all the essentials you need to know: Get Branded and The Client Experience. We’ve made this super affordable so it’s a no-brainer to join us and really take things to the next level. Our motto: Life is too short to play small! See you all on November 7th!
REGISTER HERE
WIN A SEAT FOR YOU AND A FRIEND!
Help us spread the word about the Powerful Branding + Client Experience Webinar and be entered to win a seat for you and a friend! Four ways to enter:
- Tweet about the webinar and link back to this post.
- Blog about the webinar
- Facebook it!
- Instagram it!
Or do all four. Just be sure to comment here and let us know you did so. Enter as many times as you like! We’ll pick a random winner on Halloween. Get to it and spread the word!
UPDATE: Congrats to Beka Watts and Kelly Dellinger — our WINNERS for the contest posted above!! Beka and Kelly, please email Marissa to get set up! If you entered to win, please email Marissa ASAP for a special entrant only rate!
Hi friends! Oh my, we’ve been busy bees this year at Making Brands Happen. Emily and I are over-the-moon about our clients this year and cannot wait for our 20 or so big launches coming up in the next few weeks. Every one of our clients has worked SO hard and transformed from the inside-out. It’s been inspiring for us to watch the light bulbs go off and see big dreams realized.
We’re officially SOLD OUT for 2012 launches and now accepting 2013 clients. We are fiercely committed to doing our best work and have some exciting new options for the new year (I cannot believe this year is drawing to a close already!). If you are interested in Making Brands Happen for 2013, we’re now having prospective clients do an initial consulting session with yours truly so we can really get to know you and your goals to see if we are the perfect fit for you. To book your initial session with me, just shoot Marissa and email and she’ll get you scheduled! Since I’m knee-deep in making a magazine happen right now, initial sessions will either be scheduled for late this fall or early 2013.
Wishing you all a blessed fall ahead! I personally cannot wait for the leaves to start turning, the NC State Fair to open and for Starbucks to roll out all things holiday! Yeehaw! What are you excited about?
Love y’all!
P.S. We’d LOVE to see y’all at Making Things Happen this fall! Join us.
photo by Nancy Ray
Hello, friends! Marissa here! We hope that your summer has been wonderful so far, and hasn’t been flying by nearly as fast as ours! This week we had two BIG launches from the Making Brands Happen family!
First up: we were absolutely thrilled to launch our fabulous client Ms. Shannon‘s gorgeous NEW brand and site! Her stunning images have a great new home to be shown off in!
Special thanks, and BIG hugs to Cathy from Love Inspired for her hard work and talent on Shannon’s site and blog!
Doesn’t Shannon have the best smile? We’re so thrilled for you, S!
Next up, we have the much-anticipated launch of our own Mrs. Emily Ley’s new SHOP!!
Emily’s shop has been a labor of love. She designed it to make life just a little sweeter for all of the busy business women, super moms, pig-tail brushers, tailgate hostesses and overall awesome-makers.
From gorgeous personalized iPhone cases (I’m obsessed with mine – see if you can spot it on the site!) to unbelievably adorable Great Day Plates™, Emily hopes these paper and gift products impart a bit of Southern charm into your busy days and help you focus on what matters most.
Besides her overwhelming love for classic, timeless patterns and gorgeous monograms the mission behind these products is to help each of us focus on our TREASURE. Why are gorgeous iPhone cases awesome? Because they encourage us to flip those puppies upside down, show off our pretty case and get back to the people right in front of us!
And just you wait! The NEW Emily Ley Simplified Planners will be available for preorder on July 20th! I cannot wait to put mine together!
To celebrate Emily is give out a little love to all our sweet friends! Just enter “OHHAPPYDAY” at checkout for 10% off iPhone cases until July 20th!
P.S. All of Emily’s lovely images are courtesy of the incredibly talented and adorable Nancy Ray.
We’re very excited to share that we’ll be adding an additional hour for all past webinar attendees to join us after the Get Published webinar on Wednesday, May 16. From 4-5pm EST we’ll answer questions on powerful branding, developing a remarkable client experience and getting published. All past webinar attendees will receive admission into this separate session. We’ll be sending out an email to all past (and Get Published) attendees today with details to get registered for the Q&A.
The first Business & Branding Webinar Series was such a hit, we’re offering a summer series as well! Join us for Powerful Branding (June 20) and The Client Experience (June 27)! Get registered here. We’re so excited for Get Published on May 16!
We are SO excited to have begun the Making Things Happen tour in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, yesterday! We had such a fantastic group! Over the next ten days, we’ll be traveling (with Gina Zeidler!) to Atlanta, DC, NYC and Boston! We’re so thrilled to begin this journey again and meet so many of you. We also launched our brand new website (thanks, Cathy!)
We’ve been working with a number of new Making Brands Happen clients and can’t wait to reveal over twenty-five new brands this fall. We only have four MBH client spots left for the remainder of 2012 (two beginning in May, one beginning in June and one beginning in July). If you’re interested in reserving one of these spots, or would like more details, send us a note.
The first round of our Making Brands Happen Business & Branding Webinars has been FANTASTIC! Hundreds of you joined us for Powerful Branding, The Client Experience and (will join us for) Get Published (on May 16)! Our first series was so popular, we’re offering the series again! We’ll be offering Powerful Branding (June 20, 12 – 4pm) and The Client Experience (June 27, 12 – 4pm) as well as one branding evaluation during each. Seats are limited. Register here.
AND WE’RE GIVING AWAY A SEAT!
Win a series seat to attend both webinars (Powerful Branding + The Client Experience)! Four ways to enter:
- FACEBOOK: Spread the announcement to your Facebook friends! Be sure to link to Making Brands Happen. Comment here to let us know!
- TWITTER: Spread the announcement to your Twitter followers! Be sure to link to @PowerfulBrand. Comment here to let us know!
- BLOG: Spread the word with your blog! Be sure to comment here to let us know!
- PIN IT TO WIN IT!: Pin the top graphic with a link to this post! We’ll announce the winner on Friday, June 1!
We’re also SO excited to announce our new POWER SESSIONS! Sessions are 30-40 minutes in length and are done via Skype or phone with both of Lara and Emily at the same time. We’ve already done so many successful sessions and the feedback has been WONDERFUL! We will send you a very thorough brand evaluation to complete before the call and take a significant amount of time to study your brand beforehand. Only two sessions per month will be offered at a discounted rate of five hundred dollars. The prep work we send you beforehand covers your goals, vision for the future and we also ask that you send us three focal areas/questions that you’d like us to cover in your power session. These sessions are intensive. We pack as much as possible into each power session to give you a solid foundation for big change. Email Marissa for more details or to reserve your spot.
And… we are missing our babies so much! Well, Emily is. Lara says goodbye to little Grace for a week today. We’ll miss these little ones, but these adventures are so worth it (that and all the snuggles we get when we get home!)
Introducing Kathy Romero Events!
April 18 • Comment »
Kathy Romero’s transformation was absolutely remarkable. After meeting her in New York City in January 2011 and seeing the fierce drive in her eyes, we knew there were brilliant fireworks ahead! Kathy wanted a new visual brand and company structure that put her on the map. After a total overhaul – including changing her company name from Concepts in Bloom – the new Kathy Romero Events lets her truly electric personality shine! Having this new brand let her authentic brilliance come out more than she ever anticipated. Watch out world, Kathy Romero is a dynamic powerhouse and ready to make big things happen!
What excites me the most about my brand is that it totally represents my personality!
I am completely focused. I have mapped out a clear and concise way of managing my business. It’s amazing how comfortable my brand makes me feel. My brand and all it’s components allow me to sell/talk about my services with incredible ease.
The rebranding path will enable you to deliver that much more… You will find renewed confidence. Rebranding will give you the much needed push that we all need at times to be even better than what we already are.
My fear was that people would not know who I was based on all the changes that would be implemented. I also feared that what I truly wanted would not be interpreted correctly. I feared that I would end up with a brand that did not represent me.
The entire MBH experience was tremendously empowering. Lara and Emily pushed me to highlight my authentic self. No gimmicks just TRANSPARENCY. Working with them not only equipped me with the most amazing brand and tools for my business but they motivated me to take everything I knew to yet a higher level. Lara and Emily always kept me focused and true… Working with them was a true gift that not only changed my business it also illuminated my soul. I HEART THEM.
Hearing, “Your brand is YOU!” Hearing that for the first time filled me with AWESOME.
I felt a bit lost before my brand was transformed. Now I feel totally focused and BRILLIANT.
There are no limits to what I can achieve! I love what I do and that love is infused in to every little step I take. As long as there is heart behind what I do, my brand will hold true.
The branding process made me realize that if there is no heart behind what you do, there is no brand. I’m grateful!
KATHY’S NEW SITE
KATHY’S NEW BLOG
MORE FROM KATHY ABOUT HER REBRAND!
What excites me most about my new brand is sharing my work with everyone. I have been working non-stop for the past three years with amazing clients and I have hardly shared any of my work on their weddings. I have all these past jobs that I am so proud of and now I have an amazing foundation for sharing both past and future work.
Through this process my confidence has grown immensely. I used to give people my business card and not let go because I wasn’t proud of it. I was also so embarrassed by my previous (mostly non-existent) website. I would make constant excuses about why it was that way and why it wasn’t good enough. Now I am insanely excited to share my business and my shiny new website with everyone!
Branding is scary because if you do it right then it forces you to look at all the things you are doing wrong and evaluate them so you can do them better. That is scary! But it is also necessary for you to be able to communicate what you want your brand to represent. Branding isn’t just a logo or your favorite colors. It is the entire package from how you dress when you conduct business to the notepad you write on in a meeting to the impression you leave with a client after your first conversation. But in the end, if you do the work, the change will be remarkable and the fear will be replaced with pure joy.
I was terrified to put myself out there before this process. I had this idea in my mind that I needed to hide behind my business; to give people the feeling that it was more than just me. I am now so proud of what I have accomplished in my first two years of business and I believe wholeheartedly that I can build something big that will always represent my core values for my business. I have always had a huge fear of failure and letting people down, but I have learned that businesses grow and change constantly and that every business can’t fit every client. It is important to create value and to stay true to what you believe in to attract the right customers.
This experience with Lara and Emily has changed me in so many ways. From my first day attending Lara’s branding conference in Las Vegas I knew that stumbling across her on the web one day was supposed to change my life. I have come back to the things in life that have always mattered to me most; family, happiness, doing what you love. Life gets overwhelming and crazy at times, it is easy to get caught up in what you can’t do and who can do it better and thinking you will never be good enough. But it is easier to stand up and say I am not settling for that, I can do better. Lara and Emily have shown me that so much more is possible in life. That everyone deserves to discover what they love and go out and get it. Life is too short to settle and hide behind your fears. I love to design. I love my family. I have also been introduced to so many amazing women through my experiences with Lara and Emily. That in itself is life changing. Being surrounded by people with the same ideals is so important in life. The love and determination in all of these women in contagious and uplifting. I am insanely proud of what I have accomplished through Making Brands Happen, but even more proud of the relationships I have built through this experience.
The most exciting moment in revealing my new brand was all the positive feedback I received. I was so blessed to know that so many people were looking at my work. I was also so touched by the people who said that it was a perfect representation of me. That they saw me in my brand and my work. As a designer it is always hard to work on your own brand and to finally feel like it’s actually done – the feedback I received made me feel for the first time that it is perfectly me and it is done (for now 
Before my brand transformation I was lost. I was hiding behind being busy, when in actuality I was hiding because I didn’t truly know what i wanted out of my brand or my business. Now I feel like I can accomplish anything I set my mind to. Now I feel like I have an amazing foundation to run from. The future is wide open for me. I am so excited for the year ahead. I am excited to continue to evaluate my business paths and explore some of the other crazy ideas I have had floating around in my head. I can’t wait for all the amazing clients that are coming my way because of my new brand
MORE FROM COURTNEY ON HER REBRAND
Introducing Kailey-Michelle!
March 28 • 1 Comment »
Client
Kailey-Michelle Plain
Kailey-Michelle wanted a fresh start and a brand that allowed her love of all things romantic to blossom. She wanted to inspire couples to love deeply and motivate fellow entrepreneurial women to make big things happen in their lives. Through our unique process, Kailey-Michelle overcame so many fears and emerged as a true leader. Equipped with a stunning new visual brand and back-end strategy to match, she has stepped onto the Canadian wedding scene with both feet planted firmly.
My brand is the most authentic representation of my soul possible- My heart in purest form and it thrills me to no end, to have clients and colleagues see the real me throughout every layer of my business. Having people tell me (many times prior to ever meeting) “I feel like I’ve known you for years,” and “you should be my bridesmaid, not my planner,” is the greatest complement I could be blessed with.
The biggest change, since working with Lara + Emily, was learning to hold myself to a standard of Grace, rather than my {overwhelming and disheartening} standard of “perfection.” In approaching my everyday with this standard, I have finally found the joy and contentment I was seeking in life and in my business. They gave me the genuine purpose, focus and confidence I was seeking in my journey.
Be prepared for self discovery. The process of “branding” is so much more than a system, a look or an entity; it’s your heart, alive and soaring. Be prepared for BIG change, immeasurable growth and genuine empowerment. Because when your journey comes to a close, you’ll be unstoppable- just watch!
I had tried for many years to give the world what I thought it wanted, rather than approaching business authentically.
I had a “business” face and I approached everything in my work with this entity. Out of fear- of rejection, failure and true success- it became a wall that eventually suffocated my passion. The spark that once illuminate my way had diminished and I craved it’s triumphant return.
MBH was my road there: I faced my fears, owned by light and learnt to see my flaws a beautiful: “character.”
Lara + Emily were a constant source of encouragement + wisdom- inspiring me each day, to be a more authentic and empowered version of myself.
I was consistently blown away by their in depth understanding of who I am as an individual, what makes me unique and what I genuinely wanted for my brand. Their level of professionalism is unparalleled, yet cozy, like your favorite flannel pj’s.
I simply cannot say enough! They were my missing link- the invaluable and poignant key to success.
Coming in to it, I felt stifled, overworked and suffocated. I had tried every which way I knew possible, to get my business where I wanted it; but still, my gallant efforts left me little more than disheartened and unsure.
Now, I feel like running through a field with 1000 balloon! Lara + Emily showed me the path, reminding me of the light I have within me, even when I couldn’t see it.
I truly feel like this is just the start! The opportunities are endless and I am tickled daily, by the doors that continue to fly open- things I never dreamt possible!
I have been immeasurably blessed and I owe it all to Lara + Emily.
People ask me all the time, what I attribute my recent success to and my answers is always the same: Making Brands Happen. It’s as simple and profound as that!
MORE FROM KAILEY-MICHELLE ON HER REBRAND