It’s the great conundrum of offering consulting of any kind — the people who most need your services are often the least likely to be able to afford them.

If you really need the ability to get your brand off the ground but are mired in the common trappings of a photography business — ineffective marketing, underpriced services, or the overwhelming cost of just-starting-out, the odds of having a spare $395 in the bank at the holidays are slim. I get that. I do. At the same time, asking me to split a session amounts to my doing twice the work for half the price. It isn’t something I would let YOU agree to, so I can’t agree to it, either.

The compromise?

If you’re in Pensacola, FL or New Orleans, LA and would like to be part of a branding roundrobin (two hours of group discussion, branding advice, and business therapy), the cost is $800 for 4 to 6 people. So, the more people that sign up, the cheaper the cost, from $200 per person to $134 per person.

Just e-mail me [brandcamponline@gmail.com] with your city of interest, and I’ll keep you on a waiting list. When we hit critical mass, I’ll send out a payment link!

Pensacola & New Orleans are confirmed locations, so as more are added, more roundrobins can happen!

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For more Brand Camp tour details, visit this link!

Want to read it on the blog? THE GREAT CONUNDRUM

The skinny:

Haunani (my business partner) and I will drive to your town.  We’ll probably make you giggle.  We’ll spend a few hours discussing your business and your brand.  (We guarantee two full hours.)  Its strengths, weaknesses, and goals.  What’s working and what isn’t.  You’ll fill out the standard Brand Camp questionnaire for consulting ($149 per 30 minutes, when not on tour!), and we’ll rock your brand out.

We promise to play nicely with your kids and dogs if you promise to provide us with a place to sleep (hotel or your home, we’re not picky) and a meal (again, not picky!) in addition to our cost.  You’ll be featured on the Brand Camp blog — with or without your name and website, of course — and we’ll make a fuss over just how much fun we had with you.  Because you ARE fun.  If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have volunteered.

The moola:

Traveling isn’t cheap, and neither is time spent away from our studio.  Our visit costs $395. That will save us from having to hitchhike from place to place, compensate us for being away from our business for two weeks, and still be cost-effective enough that you can afford to have us over.  (We’re better than a new lens.  We’ll make you way more money.)

Your Brand Camp tour stop will include a copy of the Projection and Sales Merit Badge, an epic branding and business consultation, and some quality hang-out time to answer questions/pick our brains.

AND NOW, THE SCHEDULE!

January 25 – Charlotte, NC
January 26 – Charlotte, NC
January 27 – Atlanta, GA
January 28 – Atlanta, GA
January 29 – Hazlehurst, GA
January 30 – Jacksonville, FL
January 31- Jacksonville, FL
February 1 – Destin, FL [confirmed]
February 2 – Pensacola, FL [confirmed]
February 3- New Orleans, LA [confirmed]
February 4 – New Orleans, LA
February 5 – Houston, TX
February 6 – Dallas, TX

We’re asking that you reserve your date with a $100 deposit.  CLICK TO DEPOSIT. Once the dates have been confirmed and visits finalized, we’ll ask for the balance of $295.  If 10 people don’t get the guts to pony up, you’ll get a refund.  Plain and simple.

Yes, you can reserve a night and then drive ten hours to get to that town.  I don’t care where you live, I care about where I’ll meet you.  So, if you’re in Orlando and you’re dying for help, drive to Jacksonville!  Snag the date!  No worries!

Reserve the date you want in the town you want, and the tour will happen. Nobody reserves, no tour happens.  I am not Bon Jovi.  Or even David Jay.  There will be no tour bus with a 40×60 blowup of my face.  Just two women arriving quietly, sipping lattes and helping to grow your business on a personal level.

It’s up to you to make this happen.

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Want to read it on the blog? BRAND CAMP TOUR ANNOUNCED!

Here’s my idea:

I create a roadtrip and stop at the homes of photographers who need help with their business and their branding.  It’s about two weeks long, there are ten stops on the tour.  Each photographer pays enough of a fee that my travel costs, food, and much-needed Starbucks runs are covered.  I make no bank.  (Seriously.  This isn’t about making a profit.  It’s about having a branding & business adventure.)

Each photographer on the tour also provides an evening meal and housing for one night.  Your house or a hotel.  Makes no difference.  Wine, beer, and/or shots while you bring the party are worth bonus points, but certainly not necessary.

I told Haunani, my Essential Imagery business partner, about this plan.  She’s stoked, too.  So, you get two peeps helping your business for ridiculously cheap while I share my road-tripping adventures with the Brand Camp readers.

If you’d be willing to pony up a few hundred dollars (exact $ amount determined later) for a crazy-awesome, one-on-one business therapy visit from Haunani and myself, I need you to do two things.

1.) Leave a comment below with your city and state.

2.) Tweet/spread the word/generally bribe other nearby peeps into being willing to host a leg of the tour.

3.) Get really effin’ excited that this absolutely fabulous, totally heartfelt and utterly hotel-conference-room-free tour could actually happen.

Makes no difference to me if you’re in Alaska or Seattle, Phoenix or Boston.  If we can get peeps who are relatively close together, we can begin to make a tour plan.  I just need you to raise your hand and say Booyah, please!

If you have some bad-ass idea that relates to this or is a twist on this, leave it below.  I just need to see if there’s any interest in this — lunch, coffee, roller derby, whatever…

Want to read it on the blog? THE BUSINESS THERAPY TOUR?

Okay, so other than having developed a crush on Johnny B. Truant, you’ll appreciate the fact that I may not be doing this right.  There are a million things I should be writing about on this blog, and I’m choosing to say this…

In consulting, I keep seeing the same mistakes, answering the same questions, and suggesting the same tweaks to my clients. So, I’m working on a product that will lead to commonly-needed tweaks for your creative brand.  It may not be perfect upon launch, and it may not be the most stylishly-styled, designerly-designed thing you’ve ever seen, but it will kick ass.  It will help you.  It will help your brand.  And I can’t be more specific than that, because what I’m working on feverishly this week will most definitely be tweaked by the time it’s finished.


If you’d like to be the first to know when this hits, sign up below.  I’ll be choosing a few peeps to get advance copies free of charge to sweeten the deal, too.

Want to read it on the blog? WIN AN ADVANCE COPY OF BRANDAID

Turns out, I’m a book-cover-judger.  And I’ll wager that you are, too.  I know this because I distinctly recall picking up this book, flipping through it, and putting it down.  Multiple times.  Yep, you read that right…I kept being drawn to this book, and didn’t actually commit to purchasing it until it HAD A PRETTIER COVER.

The hokey illustration and that title font?  There was no way that book could be good.

The kicker?  I looked the series True Blood up online, saw the books it came from, and committed my search again, because my results page *had* to be wrong.  *That* series couldn’t come from *those* ugly books.

My husband also recalled having been interested in the books, but having put them down because the cover looked too much like a kid’s book.  He didn’t want to read a young adult novel about vampires, he wanted the real deal, so the cover actively deterred his interest.

My point — which is being belabored, so thanks for reading — is that YOUR CLIENTS JUDGE BOOKS BY COVERS, TOO.  You think they’ll see past bad design, an icky website, poor spelling, a pixelated image, a wonky menu, or a skewed message.  But they won’t, and you can’t expect them to. The brain is hardwired to respond well to appealing design — or there would be no supermodels, no gorgeous Hollywood stars, no Macs, and no Swedish furniture.

So go on and take a good, hard look at your business ‘book cover’ — and make a plan to implement the ugly, wonky, or misleading bits as soon as possible.

Want to read it on the blog? YOU'RE GOING TO BE JUDGED BY YOUR COVER.

Successful brands evolve.  They make mistakes, learn from them, and make more mistakes, then learn…and in the process, they tweak their logos.  There’s a fascinating look at well-known brands here. So go.

Go.  See Target’s 1st, absolutely wretched logo, and take heart.  You, too, will evolve.

Want to read it on the blog? EVOLVE.