Want to know the process of what working with me is like?

I wanted to start documenting how redesigning your brand/website or in fact creating it from scratch looked like - so that you may learn some tips and tricks when doing it yourself, whether you hire me, someone like me or do it yourself - you’ll already know what you need to be doing :)

Or perhaps you’re interested in learning about some awesome kickass women, who might just inspire you to reach your own goals in business?

All of that sound good? Uh-huh, great, keep on reading baby… (to dive right into the process scroll on down to ‘The All-in-One Process’)

Today I’ll be introducing the lovely Dr Genevieve to show you a step-by-step guide of how we created her branding and how you can do it with your own business.

It all started with a Meet-cute.

For those of you that aren’t secret romance novel addicts (totally just outed myself!), a meet-cute, is usually where an amusing or charming first encounter between two characters in a book or film leads to romance galore.

I met my client and now lovely friend, Genevieve at a retreat in picturesque Frome based in the rolling hills of Somerset, our eyes locked across the bright and airy room when the birds outside started singing and a beam of light….

… Ok Ok, I shall stop pretending that I’m writing one of my much loved romance novels.

We’d both been part of an online course all about Intuitive Business Transformation. It was my third time round on the course and this time round I was on the calls as the Branding Expert. When Genevieve and I met at the retreat we’d been on 12 calls together and she’d made a decision before us meeting that she wanted to uplevel in her business and was thinking of hiring me to help her with that.

Genevieve or Dr Genevieve using her proper title, is a clinical psychologist and conscious parenting coach. She helps sensitive mums to reconnect with themselves and their children.

Before niching her business into helping mums, Genevieve had her own clinic on Harley St before moving to Canary Wharf and helping stressed city workers.

She has one of the most prolific press bars of clients I’ve worked with to date (press bar being this…)

Basically she knows her stuff and a lot of others seem to think so too!

Her work was always consistent but after having her adorable daughter Matilda she cut right back and it’s only after doing the course where we met that she realised her website was holding her back from taking the next step in upleveling in her business after becoming a mother. Also who she was in those photos wasn’t who she was anymore.

I have to also tell you her photoshoot horror story, as I’m wondering if any of you have had a similar tale to tell?! If so pop your comments below! I mean, you couldn’t make it up. On the day of her photoshoot her photographer told her that they liked to get to know the client first and then capture their photos at the end, which will be done super quickly as they’ll be able to nail it. Genevieve ends up giving a therapists session for 6 hours to this person with an hours shoot at the end of the day. The day wasn’t about her and when she sees the photos she doesn’t really love anyway that’s all she can think about.

This isn’t meant to be me naming and shaming here, but more so to tell those of you that have had a similar experience, that it’s not meant to be that way. Your photoshoot day should be one of absolute joy and transformation.

Genevieve knew that she wanted to invest in herself so that she could take that next step after Matilda and get her business jump started, and she knew that we’d be a right fit. Funnily enough it was from chatting over the calls every week and meeting in person that she knew I was right - not from luckily landing on my website and booking from there.

You’ll find that it’s not always about people finding your website through google and deciding to hire you on the spot because your website is kickass. They may come through a referral or social media - and THEN they find your website and are like, ‘oh, I have to work with her!’ And sometimes it’s simply about you raising your vibrations in how you show up purely because you love your photos, branding and website.

The ‘All-in-One’ Process

Genevieve decided to work with me on my All-in-One package. This includes Branding, Photography and Website Design along with copy calls with my copywriter expert and brand strategy sessions with me to help her get real clear on laying out her website and business strategies.

The prep work takes up to 2 weeks to be completed before our official start date which is when we have our photoshoot. Sometimes my clients need longer due to their schedules but I like to keep it all within a 4-6 week time frame.

The main process takes 4 weeks from our photoshoot day to the website being launched.

Prep Work

To begin with Genevieve was given the following in her personal shared area google folder;

All-in-One Questionnaire
Copy Questionnaire
All-in-One Welcome Guide
Website Copy & Content Help
Genevieve Website Copy

In the Welcome Guide you’re told exactly how the process works and what specific steps she needed to do, I won’t go into too much detail here but of course can if you wanted to book a call with me, but for now I’ll talk about only one of those steps - Pinterest.

Brand Vision Pinterest Board

Oh baby, my absolute fave thing is creating a Brand Vision Pinterest Board, I’ve created a few of my own over the years I can tell you! I love for my clients to create their very own so that I know what they’re looking for in their branding. What inspires them? What are their tastes? What colours do they like? Website layouts? If you want to create your own I’ve done a blog post all about how to do it, which you can read here.

One of the extra things I did for Genevieve as she was struggling with what to wear for her shoot, was that I pinned lots of outfit options for her based on what she’d pinned as liking. So all of her blue toned fashion shots, I’d found similar items for her from Zara, Reiss and Cos, so that she could click on the image and it would take her directly to those items.

Here’s a snapshot of her Pinterest clothing inspiration board >

And what she actually wore on the shoot. She definitely bought a few bits from her board and I think you’ll agree the mood fits well with her inspiration >

Branding Strategy Session

This is where the Pinterest board comes into play. I will have looked at her board before our call so I have an idea of what she likes and we get on that call and we get into it.

As with most things with me, there’s a loose system I work to, but mainly things happen organically so not every call is the same but what is the same is that I love to get to know my clients more. What offers do they currently offer, what new ones are in the works, why do you do what you do, who are your clients. I ask these questions in the questionnaire but we’ll likely chat about them some more on the call.

Then gets to the fun bit where I showed her images I’d sourced as surplus ones to use on the site to see if I’m hitting the right mark. I talked about colours. But the main focus of our call was to chat about the site map. This is where we went through what pages she’d want on the site, how to break up the ‘work with me’ page for instance. Will she have all of her offers on there? Will she want a separate page for each offer? Etc. For instance I like to focus on my All-in-One package so I have that as the main offer when you click on my Service page and if you want a photoshoot you can see that on the homepage and it’s linked on other pages of the site. She decided on having her 3 offers on one page which would link to their own pages.

Here’s what we did on her ‘work with me’ page >

We also talked about how to break down the pages, these are just my own tips and of course it’s up to the client but there are some good go to rules to go by.

I probably also will have done some little doodles that make sense to no one else, but give me an idea of how to lay out the pages.

Copy Calls

Enter Sarah Henson, my copywriting expert and also accountability buddy since I started my biz. Want your own accountability buddy? Read my post here on some tips for finding yours as she’s probably one of the top reasons I’m where I am today - keeping me sane whilst working for myself!

Using the scheduling link I gave Genevieve she booked her two copy calls with Sarah, to be 1-2 days after our brand meeting and then 1-2 weeks after their first call.

For the initial call, Sarah will have looked at the copy questionnaire Genevieve filled out and read through the site map notes from my brand meeting call a few days previously so she’ll be able to give Genevieve advice and tips on how to create her website copy.

Genevieve is a self confessed over writer, if that’s a phrase, who knows? It is now! She poured everything on to her website copy document which Sarah then went over with her on their final call which is a live edit call. Sarah suggests best places to put things, maybe how to structure something better, add in an extra point etc.

Genevieve then went off, perfected it until she was happy and then gave it back to me.

I have to say having Sarah work on the copy and help lay it out for me so that it’s easier for me to translate into the design process is an absolute gift.

Photoshoot Call

Again Pinterest massively helps me here as I get to see the types of photos Genevieve favours, as part of creating your Pinterest Vision Board is to add in photographs that you’d love your shoot to be similar to.

Once I’d looked through her image inspirations, I was able to help her with scouting a location. This can differ with every client, most of my clients will have a venue in mind already, sometimes it’s their homes and sometimes it’s where they take their clients. For Genevieve we chose to shoot in Chelsea, London at a location house and at a nearby pub which was super pretty, with lovely outdoor areas nearby.

We also went through the types of shots she’d be needing - a shot list. From ones of her looking friendly and approachable in a therapist style setting sat on a beautiful sofa to out and about meeting with a client in an elegant cafe.

What types of props she’d want to bring along for the photos. For instance, she’s massively into music and wants to start introducing singing into her therapy (girl can sing!) at some point in the future, enter guitar prop - so you can see she’s forward planning here. The shots won’t be used just yet but boy do we have some beautiful ones of her with her guitar!

Finally and this is a big one, we’d finished up our call and were just signing off when we got into a deep and meaningful conversation about all things woowoo, as I like to call it.

From her being raised by her boho hippy mother in a commune and being massively spiritual to having backed away from it all when she was training to be a psychologist for 10 years and working on Harley St to then rediscovering it all and falling madly in love with her spiritual manifesting self all over again.

She said she’d repressed it all as she wanted to be taken seriously and didn’t think you could when she was beginning but now that was something she was encouraging in her work yet still wasn’t sure about being out and proud with it. I told her I think she needed to own it and that aren’t the types of clients she wants to work with going to love all of that? Yes, she said - of course she did! So we planned to take some more spiritually tasteful focused shots.

Now that’s the magic that you may never see yourself and why you’ll stay hiding without someone like me to coax it out of you.

Photoshoot

Oh man, what a ridiculously fun day we had! Genevieve’s outfits were absolutely stunning and in total keeping with the mood of her vision board. The weather was beautiful, the locations were stunning and worked so well.

But really what was so beautiful that day was the energy between myself, Genevieve and Eva <3 Whp pray tell is Eva, I hear you say!? Well lovely readers, Eva is someone super special to me that I met one Christmas at a networking event where it was friendship love at first sight. We clicked on so many things from our love of The Law of Attraction to us both having quit our jobs in Fashion to pursue jobs that would help women feel better. Mine being to help entrepreneurial women like you create badass brands for your businesses and her becoming a stylist to help women feel beautiful in their clothes again - she is also extremely talented at hair and make-up, with her mum being a beautician.

Eva works on most of my UK based shoots and that day she did Genevieve’s makeup so she felt like a Goddess, helped style her clothes, assisted me on the shoot all day and most importantly for me, she created this wonderful energy and fun that we all got caught up in.

“The photo-shoot was one of the most fun days of my life. Liz and her team put me at ease, and helped me feel and look like a complete goddess.”

For a more behind-the-scenes look at this shoot, you can check out my stories in the highlight circles on my Instagram - @elizabeth_ellery

Branding & Website Design

Logo design begins immediately and I love to use my friend of 15+ years, Faye, who is a top notch logo designer and magic maker. When I was studying fashion, Faye was studying graphic design. Genevieve wanted something geometrical and using powerful shapes within The Universe.

Once I had the photos taken, I made my selection and colour edited them, narrowing down my all time faves that I’d like to use for the website.

I then created my mood board for branding with the exact colours and fonts I’d like to use on her Squarespace Website.

My favourite bit to do now is to take any rough sketches I’d made in our brand meeting and start to go through her actual copy. That’s when I make more cohesive sketches of where certain sections will go and what photos I may put on there.

Whilst looking at the copy, I went over which bits may need me to source other photos that I couldn’t have taken at her shoot. For instance mothers and their children, sunsets, lavender fields etc.

This I feel is one of my superpowers that I just love, I love being able to look at copy and visualise what images would suit that bit of text. For instance Genevieve had a block of text on her online course as follows;

There are 3 phases to the programme...

I wanted a way to make this visually exciting to the reader. So I took the 3 Phases and thought, what images would go with this? I thought of a forest or jungle at first but how to depict that with them being in similar tones of her brand and look cohesive?

That’s when I thought of Lavender, the colour would be on brand and I then imagined a purple open field, touching the lavender and having a bunch together - all would reflect the phases perfectly.

elizabeth ellery website designer portfolio dr genevieve.png

Once the time is spent on those little moments like the lavender trio, I find that everything starts to come together in the most beautiful way.

Launch

Showing a client her website is one of my favourite parts of this job and Genevieve was no exception. She absolutely loved it and only had a few tweaks she wanted to amend, from which book she wanted on the homepage to a different email address to be used. Honestly the least amount of amends I think I’ve ever gotten - Lizzy was a happy person that day as you can tell from Lizzy referring to herself in the third person!

And then BOOM baby we launched! 🚀

And that ladies is the process of how Genevieve and I worked together on her website.

I’d love it if you had any comments on what more you’d like to know about for my next case study, or which bits you liked hearing about most.

I’ll leave with you with viewing our project together here >

The ultimate step-by-step process of how to visually create your online brand - Case Study, Dr Genevieve