The Design Business Show 089: Rebranding for Designers with Rachael Kay Albers

Rachael Kay Albers is a digital strategist and business comedian. As the founder and creative director of RKA ink, a branding, web design, and digital marketing studio based outside Chicago, Rachael has helped hundreds of thought leaders and visionary entrepreneurs all over the world stand out online without selling their soul or playing the manipulation game. When not crafting epic, unforgettable brands for her clients, Rachael hosts Awkward Marketing, a business comedy show blending fun-sized business advice with storytelling and sketch comedy. Think of her as the one-woman SNL of biz TV.

Here’s what we covered on the episode:

How I had Rachael on the podcast in episode 22 where we talked about how just building a website for your client isn’t enough
How Rachael is going through a rebrand and hired Sarah Ashman to help with the process
How offers that Rachael sees online for fast branding & design lead her to speak out on Instagram
How you can get a new brand look, feel and starter website in a short amount of time but is that in your businesses best interest in the long run
How small businesses need to be educated on what a brand is instead of believing the common myth that your brand is your visuals
How you can go to Rachael’s Instagram to check out her posts
How meeting with Sarah made Rachael realize her brand didn’t match what she was putting out into the world
How Sarah told Rachael on their discovery call that they have to know what they are packaging before they work on the visual direction of her brand
How Rachael didn’t take the advice she gives her own clients about not focusing on the visual right away but focusing on your business strategy and where the future of your business is going first
What the first process of Rachael’s rebrand was and how it can inspire other designers
How Rachael booked a room at the Four Seasons Hotel so she could be inspired and focus on what she really wants for the future of her business
How branding is more emotional than people might know so when you rebrand it’s really like therapy for your business
How working with Sarah was the biggest investment Rachael made for her business and how it changed her mindset about her leadership role
How Rachael’s agency, RKA ink is staying similar to what they were before but she’s building a new website for her personal brand, Rachael Kay Albers
How Rachael’s agency is “done for you” and her brand Rachael Kay Albers is “show you how to” where Awkward Marketing, consulting services and courses will live
How Rachael wanted to move into the “show you how to” side to reach infinite people because she can only take on so many one on one clients each year with the agency side
How Rachael has been speaking everywhere because it truly fulfills her and brings brand awareness, leads and credibility
How Rachael goes about her social media strategy in a more organic way and how she has used social media posts to create bigger content pieces, videos or even keynotes
How Rachael doesn’t hire out her content creation because she loves doing it
How sometimes you do need to hire an outside person to help accelerate things, see blind spots and because you might be too busy
The break down of how much time Rachael spends in the different areas of her business
How there are two camps for how people do their work, camp hustle and camp chill out, where some people work hard to make money and where others don’t work that much and still make a lot of money
How both camps can be toxic and how your reality is somewhere in the middle of both
How Rachael works very hard partly because of the big shift her business is going through so she can make more revenue from courses, speaking and consulting and less from one on one clients
How people don’t talk about when you’re scaling your business it can be a long, slow pivot when you have no other strong source of income
How Rachael’s pivot for her own business has taken years and it will continue to take years
Why Rachael is doing the work now so she can give a gift to her future self and why you should too
Keep an eye out for Rachael’s rebrand because bringing Sarah in to help has created magic for her business and how bringing an outside person in could help you too