Build a Swoon-Worthy Brand

Speaker 1: [Music] every 90 days you get to reinvent a campaign or creatively be able to execute that through the process so it is so fun because everybody has a different Outlook and a vision inside their head that we can bring to life hi I'm Melanie bar welcome to the shiled experience with Melanie you're here because you want to experience the life and business that you crave join me as I talk to women who have successfully built it a career and business that they love we dive into the topic of how they built it and talk about everything from Having the courage to make career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so let's dive in Tracy zus is the co-founder of Workplay branding she creates custom content creation for your brand through photography videography and graphic design thank you for joining us Tracy you are the co-founder of Workplay branding tell us about it and what led

Speaker 2: you to launch your business I co-founded Workplay wring with my daughter I graduated actually as a chiropractor so often we go a different career path my husband and I with our two young kids decided to start off in Seattle Washington my husband graduated two years before me and so the plan was because he waited around for me for three years that I was going to build up his practice so we weren't going to start two practices at once with two small kids so I fell in love with building up his practice while he was in practice I fell in love with the marketing and the business side of things and that's what started my career and I never went into practice I just built up clinics and then sold them to other doctors and started Consulting on the business side of things with female doctors all over the world when l was in high school we started really talking about she was so interested in business like her first job was as our Clinic manager at 15 16 years old I had my first job at 15 so I love that it was great it's great to see how you did as a parent she was such a leader in there she's always been on soccer teams and so that leadership pulled over and she's just mature enough to handle the clinic at that point and we started developing systems together and I feel like that's really where workplace started very organically but it shifted into when LC went off to college she went to college in Miami and we were still in Seattle right before she went she started to do fashion blogging and so she was really asking questions about how do I reach out to Brands and things like that and she would follow step by step advice that I gave her advice that other people I'm sure gave her it was great because all through college she was really building up her networks doing things that are far above her Age We constantly talked business when she was young and she was so interested and I was too to

Speaker 1: the point where I have a son and my husband were just like oh my gosh they can not stop talking about business and it organically grew like more towards the end of her college career and then we just got started I had some existing clients that I was Consulting as far as in healthcare and we just started creating content for them and L really had the background for the content I didn't really have a background in photography at all or videography and she forced me off the auto settings on the camera and we started from that point she was so particular about how she wanted to get shot how she wanted to be portrayed with her blogging that it carried on through college like I said and then I got interested in bringing this to business owners because I was doing so much Consulting if they only could have great content visual content out there they would show up online so differently they could really promote themselves more and that was the start of it we started off just doing that it was a lot of experiments as companies are in the beginning but we have molded it a very complex process into a streamline system we both have very different styles in business and it really brings a lot of depth to our business as well usually that's the best when you have two different strengths and can bring them together and it has

Speaker 2: to be so fun to work as a motherdaughter

Speaker 1: team I've 9-year-old twins girl boy I recently my 9-year-old daughter gave her access to my canva and her teacher came home and she says not only is she doing her own projects at school she's creating canva graphics for all the other students for their projects too so she really likes the social media aspect and growing up I was an only child I went on lots of business trips with my family and it's interesting because I sat through so many meetings because I was an only child it's interesting what you take in when you're younger and I am so thankful because it helps shape my career in business having all of that information sink in just naturally when I was younger the business that you're

Speaker 2: creating is so smart because it's hard for companies that are focused on what they're doing you mentioned the medical field but you're focusing on being in the medical field but you also need branding that's going to be appealing that bring the people to your business and it's hard as I was talking to LC to try to break into that with a larger agency if you don't need necessarily the larger agencies so what you're doing is

Speaker 1: making it accessible yes it's access to the small business owner and startups that have limited budget for this and so many people that are small business owners they wear all the hats in a lot of areas of their business like you said but one of the hats that's really underestimated with the time and the number of steps is content you need content for everything right now visually you have to show up everywhere print seems to be making a comeback like it's so funny how that works the Cycles

Speaker 2: yeah exactly but you need it for print you need it for social media that's the

Speaker 1: obvious choice for everyone but for marketing campaigns going out there sometimes it could be a five fig campaign if you're using the traditional routes and so we found this I guess the missing piece is what a lot of people call it of getting that custom content to wrap around your business goals I love the process I love where we've taken it up to this point we're constantly innovating it and making it more relevant to what is going because it's so trendy right but that's a great part about what we're doing is we can EB and flow with the businesses we can help them pivot throughout the year every 90 days you get fresh content every 90 days you get to reinvent a campaign or creatively be able to execute that through the process so it is so fun because everybody has a different Outlook and a vision inside their head that we can bring to life and you take that off of their plate so they don't have to think so much about it and business owners so appreciate when that happens yeah it frees them up to do other things and it also frees them up to get more creative it frees their mind up to say okay what are the possibilities instead of oh my gosh I have to create a post or where am I G to get this image or or where's that going to come from they get really excited then and that is the best thing in business especially as a small business if you can get that moment me of if you could have fun again with it and so that's what we're seeing and I'd love to

Speaker 2: be a part of that yeah and what you're doing is fun it's like I look at she built it what I do is fun and if you're business-minded and you constantly want to learn and figure out how to scale and grow and do more it's a really fun business to be in yes absolutely you help business owners create growth and income in less time share with us how

Speaker 1: you do this yes absolutely we do that through the planning process they are the experts of their own brand we have so many industry so many people coming in to this method that we can't be experts at everything we've seen some people come in we can give them Insight on that but what we are experts at are getting the visuals to align with their goals and so it's really cool to have them brainstorm with us we can get them a Content plan in a few weeks with research involved with who they are aesthetically what they want their audience to feel what they want their audience to experience when they come inside their branded world we do that really well and that's a collaborative process with them they don't have to be an expert at creating the content plans or creating the actual visuals but they do have to be a part of the process as a small business owner a lot of times you're doing that on your own in in your head and it takes so long to plan that out and then you have to try it and then you might have to try it again and again we come in and we listen and we create the plan within two to three weeks we can get a really good plan for them down and then it's just like clockwork it gets more depth and more depth throughout the year we have it's a year-long process a lot of people will renew and they use that as a tool inside their business versus just a one-off Time the first time we meet with them you have to tell us your wishes your wants how you want it to end up and then also your goals because we wrap the process around your goals this is not just about posing people in front of a sign or in front of a building this is documenting what they do getting in depth a lot of people say that they're so focused now on a new way of creating content on a new way of introducing it to the world they see it more in a branded way as well they own it after a while and they said that was the missing piece the missing link to what they're having a block with so that has fast-tracked a lot of entrepreneurs and they've told us that they've told us that's a great part of having one team doing all of this because a lot of people have tried marketing companies obviously with a big retainer that's one of our things where it's accessible to everyone at our price point so when people have tried other ways to get this it has been a little bit tricky because they've had to pay the huge upfront cost a lot of people have said that there's not enough content that comes out of marketing companies that they need for these campaigns so we give them all the content that's another thing how we FastTrack this process is that we're not just giving them 100 assets after one branding shoot like they're getting up to 1,200 assets images or videos just from one day of shiting and so they get to choose what is best for their brand and what they were thinking in their head because we give them a lot of different angles a lot of different focal lengths and things like that with the photography and the video aspect of it and so they feel like they can mold that in a faster way as well and to create things that they just would never try with a one-off shoot and you can do so much with the Thousand images yes you

Speaker 2: can I think the key to what you're doing is diving deep with the client because we've all I've had to piece things together where it probably didn't come together quite right because so many different people were doing the

Speaker 1: moving Parts yes absolutely it's really smart that you go that deep with clients on what their wishes are what their goals are and honestly it speeds when you talk about creating systems you can tell that you do this because it will speed the process it does and having one team Under One Roof we have a design team we have an editing team we have a Content creation team we have this huge team and for this point it took a while to get here we've really innovated our style with it it didn't look like this in the beginning but it is what people wanted it's innovated from like requests and from what people were really needing and what was relevant and it seems like you're doing a really good job of listening to to what is needed and what the clients need absolutely we have to it's an evolving field a lot of these business owners that have been small

Speaker 2: business owners for the last 10 to 15 years they built it differently than what they have to sustain it now way that theyve built it is not the way that they're going to continue on having that success so it's a huge learning curve for them and this like I said Fast Track

Speaker 1: you have a co-founder LC share with us how you work together and what are your individual strengths do you think that

Speaker 2: complement each other being her mom I know a lot of things about her that typically co-founders would not know I know her habits and I know she knows mine it's been interesting route though to getting to where we are right now learning to deal with the little nuances of being family and working together but one of the things that we've always had is a very close relationship but not necessarily typical mom daughter like I had lyri really young I was pretty strict with her growing up so we have a really respectful relationship I would say I let her go off on very creative directions and I learn a lot from her as as well just being able to be in business with her I feel very energetic I have a lot of momentum very comfortable and confident that going forward nothing is going to happen that might happen with typical co-founders magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy what is one way that you make sure to find and live your joy each day I hit rock bottom at 17 ever since then I have learned to design my life the way I want it meaning in intentionally design it with the most outrageously successful scenarios already built into all of the categories family friends income travel the tip that I can give anybody else is to think like that design it the most successful outcome and not just successful with money successful with your relationships successful with experiences success in being happy in the moment I've always considered myself a happy person I get what I want because I design it I'm happy to know that I'm in charge of it that's one thing that I tell a lot of business owners get into a rhythm that sometimes can be lonely sometimes can be very full of pressure and I always tell them what do you want it to be write it out design it and just go forward with that and it's almost like a weight lifted off to you when you know that you're in charge of it you are in charge of it you have to persevere through a lot it's not always going to go as planned obviously but if you plan it and intentionally go for it like that like

Speaker 1: it will turn out oh and that brings me so much joy I love that you're chasing big goals and dreams like this it's fun to be around other people that are doing

Speaker 2: it too absolutely that's like the bis besty like movement I love that lric and I have actually found a couple other businesses that our mother daughter run and we just recently went to Mexico on a mastermind Retreat we did a lot more than just masterminding but added a lot of fun in there it was so cool to see how they were working together and we just got along we're almost exactly the same ages of them as well so it was nice

Speaker 1: because when you find like those aligned friend business associates dive deep into those try to like gain like meaningful relationships in that area and I feel like that will make it all so much better and so much easier and you have somebody supporting you in your corner that way especially if you're a solo preneur and trying to do it on your own find those relationships because then it gets exciting that like other people are going through it and I know a lot of people say that but you find a lot of comfort in that you have been so

Speaker 2: fun to chat with today and I love the business you're building is so fun and

Speaker 1: so needed for so many thank you we love doing it so definitely hit us up if you're interested and you need us share with us how and where we can find you Workplay branding.com you can go to our website we encourage everyone to book a call too get on because we want to make sure that we're a good fit for you and you are a good fit for us there's no pressure it's a great process we encourage you to do it because it's makes your life so much easier as a business

Speaker 2: person thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello shea.com on our shilt it website or @ Sheil it on social thank you to my editor Rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave [Music]