Emma Rose Company Website Launch
It’s hard to believe that my journey into entrepreneurship began in 2013. I’ve told my story before now but wanted to take the opportunity to go back to the beginning and how this business of mine has evolved and share the biggest lessons I’ve learned along the way.
For a greater part of my adult life, I’ve found myself on a roller coaster of emotional highs and periods of intense productivity, which was usually followed by emotional lows and unproductive time. It wasn’t until recently that I finally gained control of not only my business, but my life. I’m sharing this today because without all the things I’ve learned up to THIS point, my business would not be where it is today and I can almost guarantee a launch of this caliber would not be a reality.
FIRST THINGS FIRST, MY TOP 3 GOALS WITH THIS PROJECT WERE:
1. Feature an entirely new brand copy.
If you’re unfamiliar with this, copywriting is extremely important and I realized earlier this year (2018), that I needed help with mine. Am I a strong writer? Yes! I am. However, even strong and capable writers like myself need help when it comes to their own business and hiring professionals to bring it all to life. So I hired Ashlyn, the owner and boss babe behind Ashlyn Writes. I stalked this incredible woman for several months before sending her an email, sharing my heart, and opening up the door to conversation about the possibility of her helping me. Instead of new gear or attending a workshop this year, I knew my investment needed to go to something a bit different and I knew I wanted Ashlyn to be the one to help me.
2. Create an entirely new website flow that makes more sense.
I wear many hats in my business — yes, I do. I hired a copywriting team because it was time for me to bring it home in a sense and ensure that what I do, who I serve, and HOW I serve, finally makes sense. I’d struggled with this for a long time in figuring out how to keep doing all the things I love but not confusing my readers and my clients. When you work your way through the new website you’re going to see that it finally makes more sense (at least I sure hope it does!)
3. Bring more color to my brand.
I’m a huge fan of neutrals and felt like my brand couldn’t (or shouldn’t) incorporate much color. But then throughout my web copy project, I started digging really deep into who I am and what represents me as an artist and creative business owner. I’m COLORFUL! If you look through my Instagram and all my work, it’s not neutral at all. Not only is my brand colorful through my imagery, but so am I. I love my blonde hair, decorating my home with pops of color and feel inspired by our town we live in and all the beach vibes you get exploring. As I sat down to figure out which direction I wanted to go — yellow kept coming back to me. We live in a yellow house, it’s my daughters FAVORITE color and I realized that it’s also one of mine, too! I started exploring how a shade of yellow would look with Emma Rose Co. and quickly fell in love. So that’s the inspiration there and you’re going to see it around every corner and click of the new website!
So now that you know why this project happened in the first place, let’s take it back… way back, back into time…
(“No baby no baby no baby, No, no, no…”)
Okay, please tell me you know what song that is. No? Click here.
You’re welcome.
Okay, okay — back on track, Emma.
In 2013 I started exploring my creative side. Our wedding happened before I knew much about Pinterest (thank goodness.). Haha. So much of the decor was DIY and after the wedding I decided to open my own Etsy shop. It was called Filtered Art. Why the name? Well, I made these adorable coffee filter flowers and oh my goodness they were cute and I still love them but talk about time consuming. Anytime I see them strung around the homes of friends and family I can’t help but smile and think back to that time.
When I got pregnant with Riley, I started creating baby bodysuits with cute fabric patches and yes — those we so cute, too. I loved this and even asked a friend to take some product pictures for me.
Photos by Kady J. Photography
Cute, right!? I wish I had time to still do these because they’re so sweet!
It was at this time I started seeing the importance of imagery with a business and so began my fascination with photography, marketing, and setting myself apart. I dove right in and never looked back. There’s a lot that happened around this time but the moral of the story is that I KNEW I was going to do something. I just didn’t really know what that something was yet. I took online courses, read every article I could find, watched hours of YouTube videos and slowly but surely figured out that my next step was something really important::
I needed a website.
I searched high and low for a designer and then stumbled on Rachel at Intentionally Designed. I resonated with her in so many ways and knew that I wanted to work with her. This was my first big investment in business and I am grateful for that! Here’s a peek into my first branded business, Emma Rose Designs.
It was during and after this brand and web project with Rachel that I decided to again — learn EVERYTHING I could on my own about building a website. I stuck with Squarespace from the beginning because of so many reasons… you can read about those right here. My little Etsy business stayed busy but I eventually decided to close the doors and pursue what was calling me — photography and web design. Web design was always on the back burner until the past year or so but it kept me busy in the winter. I started building my portfolio and eventually even booked my first wedding. It’s all a blur quite honestly.
So I came back to Rachel to help me hone in on the photography side of my business. Emma Rose Photographer was born.
I loved what she came up with and this was what I ran with for a good while, until the struggle got real with all the things I love to do. Once again, I was ready to go in a different direction to create some sort of “umbrella” business where I could be all the things I wanted to be under one name.
Emma Rose Company was born!
(kind of).
Honestly? There were a few names in between there but I can’t even remember. I was just “Emma Rose” at one point, “Emma Rose Co.”, and then finally landed on “Emma Rose Company". I tried to separate my business (more than once), but always came back to the fact that I want it to be TOGETHER.
Enter the real struggle: Telling My Story … in a way that makes sense.
As you read above in the beginning of this post, trying to tell my own story in a way that makes sense has been the biggest struggle of all. Sure, I’ve been on a journey with my own branding and can say I’m finally so beyond thrilled to have landed on a color palette and logo that truly feels like Emma Rose Company, but merging my voice in a strong way with all the avenues of my services has been the most challenging of all.
My life has changed pretty drastically in the past 12 months. More on that here.
So how on earth do I bring in web design, photography, mentoring, workshops AND a bit of my health journey all in ONE space? It seemed impossible… until I found help to bring it all together. My copywriting is truly one of the best investments I’ve ever made for ERC and it came together better than I could have even anticipated. In a nutshell, I now have a “blue print” for my brand voice with guidelines and support to ensure my message is always clear and focused and makes sense. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried through this process seeing and reading it all come to life. So that brings us to the present… and the new home of Emma Rose Company (which will be referred to as Emma Rose Co. in various places!) I honestly have no idea what happens from here except that I keep on doing what I’ve been doing, but with a much more incredible online space to call home.
What others are saying about the new website:
“It made me feel like you were sitting next to me on my couch telling me about your life/biz and all the amazing things you offer!”
“The first word when I opened up your site was, WOW.”
“The entire experience was refreshing!”
“The thing I love the most is the “realness” of it!”
“Your conversational tone is perfect and I love that you approach the relationships as friendships. ”
“The font/layout/aesthetics are just perfect. Simple yet interesting.”
“Every page you land on gives you a little more insight into your story. The further I dove, the more I learned about you, and by the end, you related to me on every level. I just wanted to throw up my hands and yell AMEN sister!”
“Hands down one of the best websites I have ever come across.”
If I’m being perfectly honest, I’m scared. I took a huge leap of faith with this rebrand and copywriting and I have NO clue what happens next. I simply hope that I can continue inspiring others, keep taking awesome photos, build awesome websites and educate other photographers along the way. Who knows — maybe someday I’ll write a book! I’ve got some big dreams and if this post does ANYTHING, I hope it shows you that never at one point did I really know exactly what I was doing. That is still true today because the beauty of all this is that you GET to learn new things every day and you get to explore different avenues until you find what fits best.
To wrap things up here, I’d love to share five things I’ve learned in my years of running my own business.
Hopefully you can takeaway something from these things, too.
Value your time by placing a price tag on it. This one is pretty simple — don’t do things for free. Your time is the greatest resource and one thing you can’t get back.
Remain curious. I strive to keep an open mind to new ideas, possibilities and opportunities. I don’t believe that you have to “stick to what you know”, because somehow I was able to teach myself so many different things I had zero clues about. If you’re willing to do the work, the possibilities are endless.
Believe in yourself. Too many entrepreneurs quit because of setbacks in business (I was almost one of them), but instead of looking at those setbacks as a total failure and sometimes they are but sometimes our greatest failures can turn into our biggest wins. I wouldn’t be the business owner today without all the bumps and roadblocks along the way.
Outsource. I learned that sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself and for your business is to outsource bits and pieces of it, even if you’re like me and you LIKE to do all the things and have #controlissues. I used to be that way until I discovered the POWER in outsourcing and how passing off different tasks can open up new doors for opportunity and growth. A few things I currently outsource in my life are: house cleaning, admin tasks, client management/booking, designing my graphics for the blog, and the most new item is — editing! I still edit all my portrait sessions but have started outsourcing my wedding edits this year and it’s been a true godsend. Start small and see how you feel. I wrote a post on how I went about hiring my first assistant, so that would be a GREAT place to start!
Look out for you. It’s easy to get lost in our own businesses because we LOVE what we do. However, it’s not sustainable to hustle and grind seven days a week with little rest. At some point whether it’s a week, a month, or a year from now — the crash will happen. It’s not selfish to take time for yourself because I say it over and over again — you can’t pour from an empty cup. It might not be every day, but do things for you away from the work. Get a massage, go to a yoga class, or keep it simple with diving into a good book cozied up on the couch.
So if you haven’t already, I invite you to cruise around the brand new website and of course, let me know what you think in the comments below! I’d LOVE to hear from you! Thank you for reading this not-so-short post about my journey with ERC!
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Our family pictures with Lora Grady Photography | Spring 2018
DISCLOSURE::
In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. I appreciate the support and love you all have shown my blog and will only recommend products that I use, love, or covet. That's all!