Entrepreneur Highlight: Creating an Unforgettable Client Connection (with Sarah Lin Photography)

The ability to connect with your clients can make your business succeed or fail. Not only is that connection necessary for booking clients in the first place, but it's also critical to creating a quality experience for them.

When building your offerings and packages, focus on creating an unforgettable service that your clients (or customers) will look back on and talk fondly about for years to come.

My friend Sarah demonstrates this so well. She is a couples and wedding photographer with a talent for making her clients feel like well-loved friends. Her personal touch in all aspects of her brand allow her couples to love each step of the process, too.

So I'm thrilled to have her join me for this week’s entrepreneur highlight!

Entrepreneur HighlightSarah ForestNovember 1, 2019creative entrepreneur Comments

8 Signs of a Quintessential Logo

While your logo is one of many brand elements that make up the visuals of your brand, it has the notable ability to give people the gist of your business.

With just one mark, you have the opportunity to showcase facets of your company that go deeper than just your business name. This is a very powerful assignment.

A compelling logo grabs your audience’s attention, draws them in, and makes it easier for people to remember your brand.

It’s your business’s signature. Your X on the dotted line. And a logo designed with great intention and strategy reflects the care you give to each of your customers and clients.

While this is an area of your brand that can be creative, there are a few helpful guidelines to follow when it comes to an effective and quintessential logo.

Branding, Business, Getting StartedSarah ForestOctober 7, 2019creative entrepreneur Comments

How to Create a Productive and Inspiring Workspace (at Home or in an Office)

What do you love most about a good workspace? For many creative entrepreneurs, it’s natural light, a clutter-free feel, a lack of distractions, and cozy, comfy vibes. These all work together to create an inspirational space that allows us to work productively on our businesses.

Whether you have an entire office at your disposal or a tiny corner in your living room, today I’m sharing 10 simple steps for creating an enjoyable workspace—no matter your setup.

If you want your work zone to feel like a productive retreat you get to return to each day, let this blog post be your guide.

The Worst Website Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

In 2019 and beyond, every creative business can benefit from a website, and most already have one set up. However, there are many things that can make a site subpar.

You don’t want your website to be one of the many that fall prey to these rookie mistakes.

Even the smallest error can result in the largest loss—such as deterring potential clients or customers because of a site’s faux pas that’s easily fixed.

I’ve rounded up the most common website errors I’ve spotted in 2019 right here in this post. Give your business an advantage by avoiding these top 11 mishaps.

10 Characteristics of a Well-Designed Brand

You’ve seen it before: an amazing brand design that is perfect in every way.

From the logo, to the color scheme, to how well the concept fits the business’s theme, a stunning brand like this can have you spending hours eyeing everything their shop has to offer.

This is much more powerful than a brand that lacks this alluring feel.

Why is this the case? A well-designed brand creates an entire experience around a business. So it’s no longer just a product or a service or a blog and is instead transformed into a captivating aura that draws people in.

Instantly, items in the shop become a little shinier and more special. Services become more desirable and engaging. Therefore, a well-designed brand increases the entire value of a business and makes its audience more eager to invest money into whatever the brand is offering.

This can be your business, too!

Many careful decisions go into developing successful branding; it’s the result of a design strategy and process that hits all the marks. Much brainstorming and planning is required to elevate your brand in this way, as well as techniques and know-how.

In short, with a brand like this, there’s more than meets the eye.

But I’m spilling some designer secrets today to help you make sure your brand creates an irresistible experience that draws in customers and clients.

Branding, Getting Started, StrategySarah ForestSeptember 23, 2019Design, Experience, creative entrepreneur Comments

Creating a Responsive Filterable Gallery in Squarespace

Have you ever wanted to create a responsive gallery to feature different collections of your work all within one page?

While Squarespace doesn’t have a content block to create this magic, I do have handy trick I’ve used in various ways across my website. This method actually uses several pages, and the results are so similar to a one-page feel that your audience will hardly realize it while your responsive gallery changes with a click of a button right before their eyes.

On this “one page,” your audience can select different categories to view. And they can easily toggle between these filtered views without losing their bearings or ever having to click the <— Back button of their browser.

Similar to a storefront with categories listed at the top for easy sorting, this Squarespace work-around has many uses.

Let’s jump right into today’s step-by-step tutorial!

SquarespaceSarah ForestJuly 24, 2019creative entrepreneur Comments

Squarespace 101 for Creative Entrepreneurs and Bloggers

video + blog post

In this Ponderstream episode, learn the basics of Squarespace as I take you behind my computer screen and give you a step-by-step tour of the back end.

Get a detailed glimpse of Squarespace’s many features to see how simple and easy it is to use.

From creating pages to setting up shop, I cover practical ways creative entrepreneurs and bloggers can use Squarespace to build their brand’s headquarters.

Missed joining this one live? Register for next week’s Ponderstream webinar here.

An Inside Look at My Brand and Website Design Service

My love for graphic design and creative entrepreneurship is what led me to venture out and start Ponder Trail. I wanted to offer branding for small businesses and be a valuable resource, too.

While I have a page dedicated to my design service, I haven't yet spelled out the process on my blog.

So today, I’m sharing the details of my brand and website design package.

There are several features that make it a little different, and this post walks you through the process and highlights some of the elements that make it unique.

I hope you enjoy this in-depth look at what it’s like to work with me to transform the visual brand identity of your business.

How I Set, Plan, and Follow Through on My Goals

video + blog post

In my last Ponderstream Episode, I shared my step-by-step process for how I reach my goals. My process includes creating goals, breaking them down into daily actions, and monitoring your progress along the way.

Over the past year, I’ve focused on creating an effective and streamlined goal-planning system that saves time. Setting goals can be an easy place to get hung up on, so I wanted to outline a specific method that I could follow over and over again.

My goal was to be able to incorporate a step-by-step planning system into my routine to eliminate the pitfall of wondering where to start each day or what to work on next.

After over a year of experimenting and refining, I’ve ended up with a simple goal-planning process and created a workbook to go along with it. It’s made such a difference with reaching my goals, so I was excited to share it with you all last week in my livestream.

Essentially, my method for reaching goals is breaking them down all the way into simple to-do tasks that are assigned to each day. This creates a step-by-step plan for staying on track so you can monitor your progress and actually complete the tasks necessary to accomplish your goals.

There are 4 main sections: prepwork and laying the foundation, setting goals, planning them out, and following through. Join me as I walk you through the entire process in detail.

Missed joining this one live? Register for next week’s Ponderstream webinar here.

The Top 2 Critical Strategies to Consider when Starting and Growing a Business

video + blog post

There’s so much noise online about what you need to do before you launch a business, but today I’m taking the stand and saying there’s a Top 2.

In fact, if I had known and followed them before I ventured out and launched my first business (a handmade knitwear company), these two strategies alone would have saved me from running around in time-wasting circles, and my business would have taken off much faster.

One of them is a fundamental, yet often unnoted step to ensuring your business doesn't dwindle away from you and fail due to a simple overlook.
The other is a new, growing need I’ve noticed in recent months and is a byproduct of the modern online business era. But I’m not sure how a business can survive in 2019 and onward without implementing this strategy.

While extremely effective, the are both simple methods to follow and only require a bit of creative brainstorming time with you, paper, and a pen.

So here’s what I would say if I could tell every creative entrepreneur only 2 things I wish I did when starting and growing a business . . .

Missed joining this one live? Register for next week’s Ponderstream webinar here.

Introducing Ponderstream: A Webinar Show for Creative Entrepreneurs

If you’ve spent time browsing my blog archives, you know I love talking about creative entrepreneurship, and I jump at every opportunity I get.

So I am excited to announce my newest resource: Ponderstream!

Each week, I am hosting a live webinar show filled with high-quality content to help you in your business endeavors. I wanted to create this new form of content to transparently share even more insights and strategies with you. I love how easy and enjoyable it is to learn with video, and I can’t wait for you to see what’s in store.

Think of Ponderstream as a video podcast series that you can return to each week for new content, all designed specifically for creative entrepreneurs.

And the best part is, it’s an interactive livestream!

Ponderstream features the in-person feel of live video and a chat feature. So you can take part in the episode, too, by asking questions you have about each week’s topic.

With time dedicated to Q+A towards the end of each livestream, you can come away with personalized tips and ideas for your business each week. (Almost like a mini coaching session.)

I hope to see you there!

Find details for Ponderstream episodes here.

4 Key Areas of Branding a Small Online Business

By now, you’ve probably heard it: a brand is more than just a logo.

As a brand identity designer, I know this first-hand and talk about it often on the blog. A business’s branding is created from building color palettes, pairing fonts, and through compiling an entire style guide—just to mention a few of the visual elements.

However, branding goes even deeper than what the outside of a business looks like. And many of these other critical areas are often neglected and in much disarray.

Branding is more of an abstract concept—like developing a writing style; it’s something that takes quite a bit of unpacking to understand fully because there are so many components and the possibilities are endless.

So I’ve broken the essentials of creating a brand into 4 simple parts to make it easy to digest and implement in any creative business.

Learn the ins and outs of these 4 key elements of branding in today’s crash course.

What is Branding? And Why it is Important?

These days, branding gets a lot of buzz. However, I still come across many businesses that just don’t seem to grasp the full concept of branding.

I suspect this is the case because branding is a bit difficult to master. It’s an abstract concept made up of many parts and often looks different for every creative company.

But the truth is, branding will either drag your business down or allow it to soar.

So it’s paramount for every entrepreneur to set aside time to delve into forming and refining their brand identity.

Maybe you’re new to learning about branding, or maybe you’ve already covered some bases. Either way, I’m spelling out the nitty gritty of this critical notion to make it easy to understand.

As a brand designer, this is one of my favorite topics to talk about, so I hope you glean some helpful insights from today’s post on branding basics!

Branding, Getting StartedSarah ForestMay 1, 2019creative business Comments

My Productive Work-from-Home Schedule

Turns out, when I don’t have a schedule to follow, time leaks through my day like a siv.

. . . And I have a hunch I’m not the only one.

When I first began working on Ponder Trail, my mornings started at the early hour of 4:30am. I’d wake up and hit the ground running after my husband headed to work. Those morning hours were golden for being productive and making progress. And it was easy to spend 12 hours getting things done and getting my little company up and running.

Since then, though, our schedule has changed quite a bit.

After shifting to a later, and somewhat unconventional, schedule, it took a while to figure out a routine that was optimal for running my business. It often felt like I couldn’t get anything done or stay focused.

But I took it as a creative challenge, and over the last few months, I’ve been extra determined to create a daily routine that optimizes productivity and is easy to follow.

I’m happy to report that experimentation and persistency were just the ticket: after much determination, time-tracking, and habit-building, I landed on a new daily routine and work schedule that exponents productivity! In fact, it’s been my most effective work schedule to date.

I’ve been fine-tuning it ever since, and today, I’m taking you behind the scenes to see what a typical day of working on Ponder Trail looks like.

Keep reading for a tour of my routine and how I schedule my time.

Entrepreneur Highlight: Infusing Personality into Your Brand

You’ve probably heard it before: people want more than pretty pictures on Instagram; they want authenticity and someone to connect with. In other words, people are seeking to get to know you on a more personal level.

So joining me for this week’s Entrepreneur Highlight is Lauren of Found and Free. She’s sharing lots of wisdom and inspiration on adding more personality into your brand (as well as some lovely interior spaces). She has a lively Instagram account and instantly makes you feel like a good friend.

If you’ve been searching for ways to connect with your audience, you won’t want to pass up Lauren’s insights.

The photos of her serene and cozy her home are also bound to give you all of the productive workspace vibes. (So know you may walk away wanting to do some serious decluttering and organizing.)

Entrepreneur HighlightSarah ForestApril 26, 2019creative business Comments

4 Key Things to Do Each Quarter to Maximize Success

A new quarter is the ideal time to check in with your business to maximize success. I always find quarterly segments to be perfect for finding clarity, setting goals, and staying on track throughout the year.

Their 90-day time span allow for progress to be made and give you ample time to effectively analyze the ins and outs of your business.

It’s all-too easy to drift from your course and lose sight of your brand’s focus, so in today’s blog post, I’m offering some help.

Ensure game-changing progress over the next three months with just four simple things to do at the start of each quarter.

How to Plan Out the Perfect Quiz for Your Audience

I was featured on the Interact Blog today! Here is the free quiz-planning template that goes along with my post.

While it’s easy to come up with a great concept for a quiz, it’s often difficult to translate that into questions, answers, and results.

This is where implementing an effective planning method comes into play.

I created a Quiz-Planning Template to make it even easier.

Create your quiz right here!

Business, Marketing, Getting StartedSarah ForestFebruary 26, 2019Quiz, creative business Comments

Entrepreneur Highlight: Focusing on Client Interaction

You know the people on Instagram you love following along with? That’s Sydney of Elmsett Design. Sydney is an interior designer with a knack for balancing textures and neutrals, and I’m always looking forward to the glimpses she gives of her brand.

Today, she is sharing some insights into running a service-based business.

From some of her best tips on designing a productive workspace, to how she focuses on client interaction to grown her business, this post is an inspirational read for creative entrepreneurs in all fields of work.

She’s the perfect guest to kick-off this year’s Entrepreneur Highlight series, and I’m so glad to have Sydney join me on the Ponder Trail Blog today!

The latest insights for creative entrepreneurs