How To Brand Your Course, Membership or Software With Pro Designer Betsy

[00:00] Betsy: So you can do a whole lot with a little, as long as you get those really core foundational elements, then the sky's the limit.

[00:06] Micah: One of the things that I learned in this process was just how often you have to update things, like how they look out a date after a little bit of time.

[00:15] Betsy: That's really important is having a brand and design that can adapt and evolve as you grow, because your business isn't going to be the same in a year that it is today.

[00:23] Micah: So I think any membership site, the reason I'm spending time on this is I think any membership site can and should model this concept of, okay, you have a logo and then you have these kind of sub colors, maybe for your different courses or levels. And Ben, with all due respect, Ben is, like he said, he's colorblind, not the person you want to have design, but the system is so good that he can be very effective in it. And I think this will resonate with all you membership site owners out there who are the ones actually creating the curriculum and doing the teaching. Hey, everybody, it's Micah with Membarium and membership coach. We have Betsy, who is our secret weapon behind all of our new look and feel branding and design. Betsy, thank you so much for joining us.

[01:03] Betsy: Hey, thanks for having me here. I'm excited.

[01:05] Micah: Yeah, me too. So we work together a little less than a year, but pretty consistently. And you have helped us remake the Membarium brand. Membarium, for those of you who don't know, is a software company, so it's kind of like a software brand. And then we had you help us remake and kind of we had a brand a little bit for another membership coach, which is a training company, but not really. And so in that case, you just made a whole new brand. So with Membarium, you kind of.

[01:34] Betsy: Yeah, we pretty well started from scratch on that one.

[01:36] Micah: Yeah, exactly. So Membarium, I guess, was an update. Membership coach was a start from new. And then recently we even did a little membershipper project, which was like a quick and dirty, just get it out the door, right? Like, so. Yeah. So for those of you watching, I am excited to have Betsy on here, not only just to introduce you to her, but also because she really is so good at understanding design from like a color imagery perspective. And we just got a ton done. So we wanted to do a little show and tell, show you guys kind of the work we did. You can get in touch with Betsy if you want, but also just have Betsy share some of her kind of thinking and process and kind of how we approach this. So Betsy, we're going to we're going to get kind of nerdy and artistic here. I'm really excited. Maybe you could share your screen. OK. And for if anybody's listening to this, you may want to, you know, go to the video when you have a chance, because a lot of this one is going to be very visual. So we had Membarium before. And Ben, maybe you can come up with some screenshots of what it used to look like that we can go check out in a minute. But go ahead and Betsy, maybe just walk us through from your perspective of the as the designer, you know what the project was like.

[02:54] Betsy: Yeah, I was really thrilled to work with you guys because you had kind of an established product and business and a little bit of a brand. And when you guys came to me, you were, you know, mentioning that it was a little bit scattered and all over the place. It didn't feel very cohesive. And that is something that can happen over time, especially with brands that are focused on really solidifying how great their product and their service is. And the brand can sometimes go a little bit to the wayside. So my job was to come in and kind of extract some of those thoughts from you guys, figure out where you wanted to take the brand and kind of how you had transitioned from when you started to now. So getting to know you guys as people and as a company was really important. And I think it's something that a lot of business owners don't put into their brand. They don't put that human touch or that human element into it. And what's really cool about you guys is you really want to see people succeed and see these membership sites grow and scale and do all of these things. And you have the support to back it up. So we wanted to create something that really felt fun and engaging and really drew users in. One of the missing elements from the original logo was kind of a symbol or something to give you a little bit more visual staying power. So that was one of the things that we updated first, like right off the bat was adding this little really cool symbol. And there's a lot of meaning packed into a small, small space here. So there's these peaks. Can I have you zoom in on it? Yeah, absolutely.

[04:33] Micah: Thank you.

[04:34] Betsy: Of course. There's kind of these peaks at which, you know, if you're thinking about leveling up or ambition or climbing a mountain, there's that aspect to it. There's the points like the arrow. So moving up, they're all they're pointing upwards. There's also kind of this like scale, like a graph scale, like it's moving up or your profits are continuously moving. And then there's also the M. So there's a lot of things here. And there's a lot of ways that this can be interpreted, which is really, really cool. So that means the viewer sort of gets to decide what that means to them and what resonates and connects with them.

[05:11] Micah: Yeah, it was kind of funny because we used to have a like a box with a bunch of little icons or something flying out of it, but it was too busy. And Ben, let us let us know when you have some of these graphics up or if you want to kind of share screen and pan through. And that might be something, Ben, that you can do is just share your screen across, you know, the old site, the new site, as we're talking about stuff whenever Betsy's not showing something specific. But yeah, what I can say is this new logo. So like I've got it on my T-shirt right now. It's a little oversized, but it's so much easier to put on a hat, right? It's easier to use as a favicon on the little website thing. Yeah. Show the show this stuff. So I love, by the way, everybody loves that shirt on the right, the little grid shirt. Yeah. And we we've tried them in different sizes. So that was kind of the design element. And like this one I have on, like how big the M is. It's like the whole shirt. Oh, my God. But but yeah, those things are cool. And people really like, yeah, that one that you're zoomed in on. But like I said, I love how it goes on the hats and I love how it can do that. Like that hat on the left, the black on the black is my favorite. So I've just been it's kind of funny because, yeah, I love the brand for the business. But but I love the clothes and hats because I'm like, look, I'm in uniform. I don't have to, you know, think about what to do here. I've got a variety of good looking stuff.

[06:32] Betsy: Exactly. And I think that's one of the things that is it really brings me a lot of excitement and joy is when you guys are so happy with it and you're proud to wear it and you're proud to share it. That's exactly what a brand should be. It just needs to capture this essence of like fun, excitement, getting out there, connecting with people, having them ask you what this is all about. And swag is a great way to do that.

[06:56] Micah: Yeah, absolutely. And we I I am proud to wear it, proud to hand it out. Zoom in on that top memberium. So there's that blue squiggly line behind there. And I remember at one point you kind of asked us, what is our company's spirit animal? And we thought, you know, maybe it's an owl because we're into education. We thought of these things, but we kind of came back eventually with what's kind of like an octopus because it's got its tentacles all over your site, connecting everything.

[07:21] Betsy: Yeah. And you guys are juggling a lot of things as in a membership site. You're juggling a lot of things.

[07:28] Micah: Exactly. So tell me about the graphic back there, because I know it's like almost a motif throughout the website. So what tell me more about that.

[07:35] Betsy: Yeah. So the inspiration for this definitely came from kind of that tentacle aspect of the octopus. But it also came from the idea of like a flow. So having these multiple bands of what you're doing in your business kind of come together, intermingle and work as a as a single unit and be really unified. So in any entrepreneurial journey, you're balancing all of this stuff. And one of the really cool things about Mambirium is and part of the story is that it's helping these people who are having who have put together membership sites really balance and juggle all of these things without it feeling so chaotic. And so I really liked that idea of flow as well. And plus it does. It's just kind of a cool shape. If you think about how an octopus moves through water, it was a really subtle way to get that idea in there. And it's not going to be it's not like hit you over the head.

[08:28] Micah: We've put an octopus here, but it's just one of those things that's really cool and has created a really energetic feel to the entire brand. Yeah, I agree. And it especially looks good with kind of the technical nature of the little icon to have like some roundedness and whatnot. Hey, Ben, what do you got for us?

[08:49] Betsy: Yeah. And one of the things I'd like to say on that is with when you build out a brand, especially one that's this complex, we've got a lot going on here. We've got some custom icons. We've got custom patterns and design elements, even these really cool illustrations. This got really complex, but you see a lot of the same motifs move throughout the entire design. So as we were talking about kind of that flow and feel to the little octopus tentacle, you know, thing, we've also got that in some of these shapes that are behind these graphics here. We've connected all of these random pieces with this kind of blob in the background with this organic shape. It's really fun. It matches that same idea and feel as the little tentacle graphic. But now it's unique and different. Like you don't see this everywhere. And we did custom create a lot of this over time. So it didn't happen overnight. But that's how we've gotten that same feel throughout all of the graphics, even though we're not literally reusing the same thing over and over.

[09:53] Micah: Yeah. Ben, you just popped on. Welcome, welcome, Ben Denny. What do you got to show us?

[10:01] Ben: Yeah, I was just going to share some of those, you know, prior versions of our website. And so this one I actually was able to grab all the way back from like 2014. So maybe it's like the very first. And it's not loading up here perfectly, but you can kind of just get a feel for how it looked a little bit. So that's definitely interesting. And then we had kind of transitioned just over the years. You know, we can go through way back, but this was probably like the last one before we got in touch with Betsy, I think. Was we kind of had this design. I know not all the graphics are loading, but at this point, I think, and Micah, you might know a little bit more about it. But I think we were just trying to use like templates and things basically to put this together. Because we we'd had somebody with a lot of design capability in our team who was handling it and then not anymore. So, yeah, so that's how this kind of happened. And the colors, you can just see it's like all over the place. And so that's kind of when we realized like we need help. And then we did start kind of simplifying and removing the color at one point. And so I think we went with this just for a really brief time right before we got in touch with Betsy. And so this was what I remember is just really I remember seeing this version of it.

[11:15] Betsy: And there's a lot of really great elements to this. There's nothing truly like wrong with it, but it's taking it from what it is now and really elevating and really up leveling it. And that's what that that brand consistency can do for any website.

[11:32] Micah: Yeah. So take us to the current one, Ben.

[11:35] Ben: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It's like it wasn't that that was bad. It was like that was like the homepage and the rest of the site kind of didn't match that. But with what we have here, it's it's very consistent all throughout.

[11:46] Betsy: Yeah, it's beautiful. And it's just visually striking, right? Like it really captures your attention and makes you want to read.

[11:53] Micah: Yeah. And one of the things that I learned in this process was just how often you have to update things, like how they look out a date after a little bit of time. This all looks, you know, up to date. This was made about a year ago, right? So this is almost a year old now, but still looks very up to date. And in my mind, it's a very good mix of some realism, right? Like that book is kind of very graphic, but then some very chunky, simple, like new age software looks as well around the site with some of the little icons and things. Yeah. This stuff I love because it's got like a black and white, a full color, and then like a cartoony feel all in one. So for some reason, I feel like this really kind of brings it together where it's like, yeah, it is real people. But then there's the cold technical software aspect. But then let's try to, you know, lighten it up, color it up. So again, all of this stuff really is around a software company. So I know most people have membership sites, not software company. We'll get into that in a second. But I wanted to start here for everybody because this is the first project we did with Betsy. And then after this, we did a membership site project. If you can real quick though, Ben, if you can go under support and drop down to one of the subdomains. So one of the things, and Betsy, I'd love for you to talk about this as we, she built, I believe you call it a kinetic branding system, right? Kinetic system.

[13:15] Betsy: Yeah.

[13:15] Micah: Yeah. So go ahead and talk us through kind of what happened here because we have Membarium, the main site. And then you can see here, this is Membarium for Active Campaign. And Ben, if you'll bounce back and go to Membarium for Keep. Um, Betsy essentially made these like sub brands that are connected to some of our partner companies or our integrations still under our brand. So you can see like how good that green looks with the yellow and everything. So yeah, go ahead, Betsy.

[13:41] Betsy: Yeah. So one of the challenges here is having to kind of smash two brands together, right? So you're working with the Membarium brand and you're working with the Keep brand. So we needed to find a way to make that look really good. And we weren't just designing for one, we were designing for eventually three. So with Active Campaign and Keep, what I did was take a look at their branding systems and ways that we could put the puzzle pieces together so that it made sense. And in this instance, it was stripping a lot of the big bold color down and focusing on kind of a really clean black and white look so that that green doesn't pop out or look like a mistake. So here we've still got some of the links and buttons that are in that really rich blue from Membarium. But a lot of everything else has really pared down. And we're focusing on the green from Keep's branding in all the places that make the most sense. So the logo, the little icon at the top, and here in the navigation.

[14:42] Micah: No, it's awesome. I'll go ahead, Betsy.

[14:44] Betsy: Sorry, I was going to say one of the things that's really important about a kinetic system is if you are trying to add different variety or you have a company that has several sub companies or products, a kinetic system is a really great way to help people really just subtly know like, yep, I'm in the right place. Like I've seen Keep stuff before. I know that this is Membarium for Keep and it's going to connect all of those dots in a real visual way. It's going to make it really easy for them to know where they are and what they're doing.

[15:17] Micah: Yeah, it looks amazing. Go to the footer if you would, Ben. So, you know, we have the top level site Membarium and then we have Keep an active campaign. And then we're introducing a third one. So where about is, there's going to be another version there. Let's see. So is there anything else you want to share about Membarium, Betsy or Ben, that you want to kind of share about Membarium before we transition over to Membership Coach?

[15:46] Betsy: I don't think so. I have anything that we might mention with Membarium is also true with the other two brands that we've done. So we can move on.

[15:56] Micah: Yeah, let's go to Membership Coach. So maybe Ben, you can stop sharing and Betsy, you can kind of introduce us. But Ben, if you'll find the old site and we'll kind of show the old and the new and some of that as well. And I'll kind of kick us off a little bit here by saying this one was funny because we...

[16:16] Betsy: Sorry, I don't know what just happened.

[16:17] Micah: You're good. We originally asked Betsy for, you know, help with an event because the live event was kind of coming first. And then we took the event recordings and put them into the membership site. So kind of on the right, you can see that membership summit type stuff, the event related things. But there was, you know, we knew we needed the parent brand, Membership Coach, above it. So Membership Coach, even though it is separate from Membarium, we also knew that Membership Coach and Membarium would often be presented together, right? So yeah, Betsy, take it away.

[16:51] Betsy: Yeah, absolutely. This is a classic case of a little bit of putting the cart before the horse because you guys had this event and you had to get some stuff done for it. And so we started to create the new Membership Summit logo. And originally it was in like this kind of powder blue and yellow and maybe some orange. That was what the original logo was. So I just created a new little icon to go with it. We didn't really reinvent the wheel too much.

[17:17] Micah: Can you zoom in on the Membership Summit thing? Make it real big. Thank you. Yeah.

[17:21] Betsy: So over time, the colors had evolved. They changed a little bit as we started to work on Membership Coach and realizing the connection there. And this really, I feel like it drastically changed. And it kind of made the vibe a little bit different. I feel like this got a lot more fun. It made it into something that I really wanted to go to and really wanted to attend because it's so vibrant and it just looks fun, right? So when we started to then transition into Membership Coach, we already had a little bit of that visual identity established with the colors, the fonts, because you guys had put together the Summit site. So the challenge then was to figure out a way to make Membership Coach simple and fit with some of that branding and then still look like something that is very professional and like a teaching element, like an education brand. So one of the thing we went through several different iterations of this logo, but again, we've got a lot of meaning packed into a small space. So there's the container that goes around the words that kind of keeps everything orderly and, you know, kind of in the box. But then you've got the little little eye looks like a person and we had the arrow sort of break through that box. So this is a program or a program and education to help you break outside of what you normally know or think about think what you know about a membership site and how to build that business. So that was that was a really fun little twist to have that arrow kind of break out of the box.

[19:03] Micah: Yeah, well, you scroll up to the top a little bit. And obviously, I'm wearing the hat here, but it would be interesting to see also maybe you can dig this up, Betsy, some of the original logo variations. Because in each of these cases, especially with membership coach, she she collected all these different concepts that could be, you know, a logo or a starting point of a logo. And I remember that conversation where we I think we even combined two things like there was the box look we liked and there was the little eye going up. And at the end of this now, I feel like it has so much meaning. Right. Because it's the you know, the person you you're going up and out of the box. Right. You're breaking out of the box. And I just love it.

[19:46] Betsy: Looking for the originals. I don't know if I can find them fast.

[19:50] Micah: If we don't find it, that's OK. I'll say a couple more things about this. So I had since and I think this will resonate with all you membership site owners out there who are the ones actually creating the curriculum and doing the teaching. In this case, I didn't want to overwhelm the students. And so I was trying to go with not something like aggressive, but something kind of fun. And originally I thought, well, maybe we do almost primary colors like little kids like play school, you know, triangle, square, circle, whatever. And then with basic colors. Yeah. So you can see some of those kind of basic ideas there. Yeah. So the top left, right, is the square. And then there was another spot. Maybe it's to the right somewhere that had the eye with the arrow. Where's the eye with the arrow?

[20:38] Betsy: We might have introduced that later. This is kind of messy because it's one of my it was my working file for all of you guys. We had all of these options. So this actually gives a really good behind the scenes of all of the iterations that we went through and the process that we went through to get to the final.

[20:56] Micah: Yeah. So there it is on the toward the bottom right. Yeah. The arrow. Yeah. And at first you can see like one of them, we thought, oh, it's like a road. The bottom kind of middle there with the road or the. And then we were like, well, it also kind of looks like a caution sign, maybe. So, yeah. Certain things we ruled out, certain things we combined that we liked. But I love looking at this because this, I think, gives. I think this is what a designer should do. Right. I've worked with designers where they'll they'll send me like one design that they really iterated 100 times on versus this is actually a bunch of different ideas and concepts. Right. That then we. Yeah. I felt like I was at a buffet just like picking my favorite things.

[21:34] Betsy: Oh, I like that thing and that thing.

[21:36] Micah: Yeah. So, Ben, maybe you can bring up the current membership coach site so we can have a look at that for a second. And I'm sure there's other things to talk about here. But one of the things within membership coach we did is we also did the kinetic branding, but we said, well, there's four stages under membership coach. So you can see the one, two, three, four. Or so Betsy created these like kind of color schemes where it gets progressively a little more. I guess you could say dark, but at least for beginners. Right. It's orange. It's fun. And then kind of get serious as you go. And then below that, even a little bit of. And he's looking at this as an admin. So that's why it's doubling those things down there. No big deal. But then you can see like, OK, the mastermind, the certified partners and the summit are different products as well. So I think any membership site, the reason I'm spending time on this is I think any membership site can and should model this concept of, OK, you have a logo. And then you have these kind of sub colors, maybe for your different courses or levels. And then below that, even you have these other kind of colors. One go a little open. You've got, you know, the white on the right, the dark in the middle and the yellow on the side. But they're at least differentiated.

[22:43] Betsy: Yeah.

[22:44] Micah: And so we have all these kind of products and things that came out of that event. And they all kind of look good together. This screen is a little crowded. I'm not saying it's a perfect site, but I'm saying at least from a. We were populating out a bunch of products and able to make them kind of all look, you know, individually designed, which I thought was cool.

[23:03] Betsy: Yeah. And one of the really cool things about the membership coach brand is we do have a lot of branches off of the original kind of concept and design. And it's been able to evolve over time and adapt to the things that you guys need or want to add. And that's really important is having a brand and design that can adapt and evolve as you grow. Because your business isn't going to be the same in a year that it is today. You're going to have ideas. That's what we do as entrepreneurs. And you're going to want to implement some new things. So having a designer that, you know, understands that evolution and that growth and build something that gives you that really great foundation and can grow into whatever you want it to be. That's really important. But also just taking that thinking into any sort of branding or design project that you create as a business owner.

[23:53] Micah: Yeah. Because Betsy, you've been a thinking partner as well as a design partner, right? A lot of the copy that we adopted came from you. I think especially where our internal view of everything is tainted, right? We're too familiar with our products and we assume, oh, they know what this means and they know what that means. So it's good to go through and have you have us explain it to you and have you kind of repeat back. Well, you know, maybe people need to hear it a little bit differently or see it a little bit differently. Absolutely. Ben, can you pull up the event sales page? Because I thought, so like we said earlier, we started with the event, you know, so Betsy was designing this page and elements of this. Yeah, keep going down. And I just thought this was so cool. So like that background is cool. The page might be a little, oh, that's a video. Yeah, that's a video background. Keep going. What I want to see, keep going down, is the arms. Oh, yeah. So Betsy developed this whole additional. So stop right there. Yeah. So this graphic I thought was so cool as far as like, oh, you're building the membership site by like adding these elements into it. Right. And we can play with parts of this graphic, too, on different pages where maybe just one arm is reaching in. Scroll up a little bit, Ben. So you can see kind of these arrows are used, right? Keep going up. The different shades are used in different ways here. Maybe you can go in, Ben, to like the account page. And the other thing that would be cool to see is the book, the membership booklet.

[25:23] Betsy: Oh, yeah.

[25:24] Micah: So while Ben is grabbing that, yeah, you can see that this brand is really rich and just has a lot of options. But we – this page is funny because he's an admin, so it's not populating these things. That's okay. But just scroll down real quick. Oh, Ben's going to go log in. Oh, okay. You can log in if you want. Let me just find a user real quick.

[25:47] Betsy: I do want to say something about – you had talked about differentiation earlier. And I think that's one of the really cool things about a kinetic system is making sure that everything has its own unique identity or look and feel, even if it's underneath an umbrella brand. So moving forward when we work on things maybe for the summit next year, we'll focus on incorporating that yellow and making that a more primary color for the event. And then as we do things to build out the mastermind or the certified agency, we'll keep those elements and kind of make them their own little thing. But they're still cohesive, right? They've still got that really cool little arrow graphic. They've got that yellow and orange gradient.

[26:32] Micah: So keeping them different but the same, which is sometimes easier said than done. Right. Keeping them in the same family, right? Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and scroll down here, Ben. So, yeah, this is – he just auto-logged in as a test user here. And you can kind of see what the page looks like. And this was just Ben grabbing random colors to create those gradients for these sections. It wasn't even – I don't think like Betsy necessarily custom designed this. So that was one thing too is once we had – and one thing we should talk about is Betsy delivered a lot of this to us in Canva. So we now have like a branding kit in Canva where when we go start a project, it automatically has all of this. And that's one of the biggest things that we needed as a company when we brought you on, Betsy. It was not just like, hey, we need these things redesigned. And we as a company need to become capable of creating new things that are in line with that design, right?

[27:25] Betsy: Yeah, absolutely. And that's a huge piece of what I try to do with every single client is create a brand guidelines and a brand standards. It's easy for you guys to follow. And honestly, like I'm not an affiliate or associated with Canva at all. I just think it's a really great tool and it's something that everybody can use. And it does have a lot of this capability so that I can go in and get you guys set up for the best success. And I love that.

[27:52] Micah: Yeah. Oh, we love it too. So there's Ben inside Canva. You can see she created a ton of these little things. We can swap out the words, but we have all these different designs, right? Those designs are differentiated but still on brand. And I just love it.

[28:07] Betsy: Yeah, we created a lot of templates for you guys both within Memberium and for Membership Coach.

[28:14] Micah: Yeah, it's amazing. So I feel like we're experts now.

[28:18] Ben: Go ahead, Ben. Yeah, I was just going to say another thing that she did for us was all these custom icons like the arm, for example, that you were mentioning. All of that is actually just in here so we can use it anytime just inside of Canva. All those files are just stored in here for us and organized.

[28:34] Betsy: Yeah.

[28:35] Micah: Yeah. Do you have the membership book that you can show, Ben? Because I thought that was a – and you can unshare for a sec while you find it. Give me just a minute to find it, yeah. Sure. So basically, under Membership Coach with those different sections, we had the color system. And Betsy helped us develop a booklet for our event. And the feedback from the people at the event was – you know, I loved the booklet, but they loved it even more. It's just beautiful. It turned out great. So I can't tell you how much design is like an extra layer or like a cushion or something that the business floats on. Because we could do a good job before, but with our bad design, it didn't always look like we were doing a good job. So, Ben, while you're finding that, Betsy, any other kind of comments between Memberium and Membership Coach? And you're also welcome to share if you have something to show. But then we'll move on to Membership or after we look at the book.

[29:35] Betsy: Yeah. I think one of the things that was unique about these different brands is they all had to sort of play together. So on one of the sites that Ben showed, there was a little native ad for Memberium on it. And we had to make that look good with everything else that was going on with Membership Coach. And because both have such a strong identity now in their own right, that was another challenge just to think about when we were making both of these brands. Because they have to be independent, but they also have to play nice together. So there's elements. And because you guys worked with the same designer for each, there's going to be a style crossover. But there's subtle little things that you guys might not have thought about and I might not have even communicated with you that I worked on in the background to really make sure that they looked great together. And the same thing is true with Membership or as we move into that. I wanted to make sure that everything that we did there allowed it to be its own unique identity. But it's also going to play nice together so that you guys have this really beautiful little family of brands.

[30:37] Micah: Yeah. And I think you killed it. Yeah. Go ahead, Ben.

[30:40] Ben: Yeah. There is like a flip version. So I'll probably overlay some of that as well as you guys are talking. I couldn't find that that quickly. But like here is, yeah, the actual file that we ended up with. And so just I'll kind of pan through these. But.

[30:56] Micah: Yeah. Go. I would love to see the flip version too. But yeah. Thank you to our sponsors. Spiffy. Personal brand. Yeah. I love Michael Hunter. But yeah, you can see it's just like it's a it's a great looking, you know, very custom, very full scale book. But yeah, those title pages are great. Go all the way to the back. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and scroll down. So you can see the pages. Yeah. Go ahead, Betsy.

[31:22] Betsy: I was going to say this is a really great example of I created a few templates for you guys and it was a little bit of an evolution. So we started with some things and then, you know, again, ideas were had. We updated some of the page layouts. We added some things here and there. But ultimately, I handed this over to Ben in Canva and he was able to make it look amazing. So you can do a whole lot with a little. You don't have to have a designer, you know, spend hours and hours and hours building every single page. As long as you get those really core foundational elements, then the sky's the limit.

[31:59] Micah: Yeah, I agree. Like once we had the strong branding kit from you and if you Ben, if you'll zoom in and kind of show. So basically these title pages like sell, it has this custom icon of the money. And then all the sub pages of the sell have that icon. Right. And they have other icons. So you can see the avatar one. Keep going forward now. So under sell is avatar messaging description. Keep going. And you can see avatar. Once it takes over, it's got its icon. Right. And it's got that like background stuff. But just the way that this flows through. And I think that's what people liked when they saw it. If you'll go kind of back to the beginning, Ben, where it shows the one page that has all 16 stages for a moment. So what people liked is that they could see. Yeah. They could see, OK, there's there's four sections. Build, sell, retain, ascend. If you. Yeah. And then within each, there's just four little icons. Right. And then as they went through, it was it was so chronological. And I think that's comforting to people. So if you're able to take your content and do the same kind of thing. Right. And then we put them in a little circle here. Same icons. Yeah. But you're showing them, hey, it's a circle. If you start a business and you get all the way to the exit of the business, you can start another one or whatever.

[33:09] Betsy: I think one of the things that ended up being so elegant about this solution for you guys is we had this sort of warm tone to dark, cool tone. So it starts out in a very different vibe and then it gets a little bit cooler and then we're into like a purple and blue and then we're into like a blue and a black. So there's not only flow in how the icons work together and all of that, how you guys had it laid out on the first page, like literal arrows between each. There's also a color flow here, which is really subtle, but it just makes a much better solution. And that was one thing that when we started all of this, it, you know, when you get to work with a designer who has some of that formal training, has done this before, they're going to see things like this. It's going to be obvious. And so when we had this beautiful color palette, it just made sense to make it go from kind of this light warm to dark and cool. And I think that progression is really nice, but it also leans into that color psychology piece of things. So when you're starting out, Micah, when we were talking about creating the membership coach brand, we wanted it to feel, you know, very easy, very simple, like ABC123. And we ended up really leaning into that with a lot of the kinetic system that we built. And then it's also an ascension. So you're starting out with those fun, bright, bold colors, and then you're moving into something that's a little bit more sophisticated and elegant with that, that dark added to it.

[34:38] Micah: So by the time you get to the end, you've leveled up, not only in your education, but also in your branding. It's amazing. Yeah, it's got that like serious, like high class, dark tone at the top. Go all the way to the end, Ben, if you would. But you guys can see, we basically just kind of like repeated that pattern, right? But that way somebody could really follow along. And then here at the end, you can see there's like the hooray, you know, on the left there, there's a page just for, you know, hooray, you did it. There's, yeah, the networking page custom. The sales page is in there with a little QR code. Maybe you can just pan through a couple of these. Oh, yeah, that is it. Yeah.

[35:17] Betsy: Yep.

[35:18] Micah: And so you can see it's all just kind of like, you know, it's easy to make it look good because it's under this brand. And then whatever we put in there is going to look great. You know, it's a very simple page, but it just looks good. So thank you, Ben, for sharing that.

[35:32] Betsy: One of the things that made this really successful is you guys didn't go out of your way to break the rules. When I handed over these templates and I handed over the brand standards for you guys, you followed them. So that's one of the really important steps is not getting too creative with the colors or the fonts. It can be really tempting to play around, especially in a sandbox like Canva where you're like, oh, I want to try this or I want to put that in there. Here's a cool random stock graphic that I found. You guys have stayed within those brand standards, followed the rules. And that's really the heavy hitter as to why this looks so good.

[36:07] Micah: Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. And it's I definitely Ben can tell you. I was like, Ben, we got to everything has to be sourced from Betsy's thing. Right. Because it's so easy to take like, let's say I take something from you and I change it. And then he takes the thing I change and he changes it. And pretty soon. And that's what happened to us before. Yeah. Totally.

[36:25] Ben: And I'll just I'll just throw this in there, too. I'm actually colorblind. And so I shouldn't be picking any colors. And that's why I love Canva, because Betsy went in there and set all these all the gradients, even they're set in there. And then we can just click them and we can even shuffle them. But it's all going to be within the brand. So no question about consistency.

[36:44] Betsy: Yeah. Yeah. What is it? Keep it simple, silly.

[36:47] Micah: Yes. Like this just keeps it simple. Yeah. And Ben, with all due respect, Ben is Ben is. Yeah. Like he said, he's colorblind. Not the person you want to have design. But the system is so good that he can be very effective in it. Yeah. Betsy, maybe you can show us the membership or thing. So basically what happened, I'll fill in the story while she's pulling it up. When we built Membership Coach, we built our own little custom AI plug in into the site to do what we wanted it to do. Right. To be able to run prompts for our members. And then we realized, okay, this is the thing everybody wants. People were like, oh, well, I want to do that to my site. And so this is the third brand. And this is a new little kind of software startup called Membershipper, where it's an AI plug in that connects, in this case, ChatGPT into your membership site. But we wanted to, once again, differentiate it from the others, but still have it similar enough. And this little logo and icon and everything, Betsy came up with. What's crazy about this is we only gave her like a week. We said, hey, we want to do one more brand. Right. We've done these other two. We've been going forever. Let's do one more, but keep it simple initially. And then we'll kind of see what happens and grow it. Go ahead, Betsy.

[37:58] Betsy: Yeah. This one was really fun because it was under a time crunch. It was like, hey, we have this idea. Let's just make something happen. And this one did not start as a logo. It started as an illustration of a mascot for you guys. And I can pull that up here in a second. But it started out in a totally different light. We were just like, hey, let's put something cool together and see what we can do with it. And then through conversation and the evolution of the project, even over a short period of time, we're like, hey, we just we need a logo to be able to ship this. Right. So we then started to play with different robot head concepts because we were doing this little robot mascot. And this one came together really fast. But I think one of the things that was really cool is that's what can happen when you work together for a long period of time and you have a good relationship. Is I can now understand what you guys are talking about much faster. I can get to the things that I know you like faster because we've been working together for so long. So this one did come together really fast. And you can see that we haven't really differentiated. We haven't strayed too far from the membership coach branding, but we have given it its own identity. We're leaning into one of the same gradients that was from a membership coach. And then we've kind of put together a different font system and color system for membership where we want it to be really clean, really streamlined and focused on the product.

[39:29] Micah: Yeah. And if I remember correctly, we kind of used a little bit of the membership coach color, but then a little bit of the memberium fonts. Right. And so that can kind of fit in between those two brands. I want you to show them the robot because the robot, the little logo, basically she drew this incredible robot. And we said, well, we need like a logo version of that. And so that's the little robot head that is the logo. Yeah. Show us that illustration because it's just incredible. So you drew this like on your iPad or whatever?

[40:00] Betsy: Yeah. I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like. So I got on my iPad, started sketching. That's actually one of the parts of my job that I love the most is I get to sit down and still be creative and use pen and paper and try different things. And that's where this little guy came to life. And then, as you can see, we've started to build him out graphically. But that's kind of when things went a little bit sideways and we started to focus on the logo itself. So you can see I moved it away, but you can see that the little head of the robot is very similar to the head of the one that I started to draw. So that was kind of the inspiration. And he just morphed into a little more iconic symbol.

[40:42] Micah: So cool. I love I want to use the sketch, right? Like on a black and white page with the sketch. And so what I told her is, hey, we're going to we don't really have time to build a whole branding system, right? We got a bunch of things going on. But, you know, can you make us a mascot or an icon? And that's the robot. And so we could my thinking was we could get away with using a black and white template as long as the robot was cool.

[41:07] Betsy: Yeah.

[41:07] Micah: And and you can see he's got the forearms, right? Because we have four stages. And so on the right side, you can see the forearms are kind of like supporting the four stages. So you guys are seeing this a little bit in concept. We're taking a little break from it to implement a bunch of things. But I just and again, it was like what? Maybe you had a week and you sketch the robot in another week and you made all the logos and colors and fonts. Yep.

[41:30] Betsy: Yeah, I think it was about a two week process. And one of the things that I thought was so cool about this is, again, because we've been working together for so long, the idea of having multiple arms came from that original idea of what is the spirit animal for memberium. And even though this isn't memberium, it's a it's a different software. It was the same kind of feel and something to help you juggle these four pieces. So you get you're kind of getting those octopus tentacles in your little robot now.

[41:57] Micah: I love it. And I love that it makes him different because a lot of people in AI are using little bots, right? A lot of them don't have arms.

[42:06] Betsy: They're just like little disembodied heads or like they they're just floating bodies. It's so weird. I did a lot of research.

[42:16] Micah: So let's see. I think we've walked through, you know, kind of the process that we went through as a company, right? We started with memberium. We were updating a 10 year old brand membership coach, kind of creating something not. We had had things previously, but we this was basically from scratch, right? We weren't trying to reuse or grow off of those other things. And then membershipper is just a little baby brand just getting started. Right. But getting started.

[42:41] Betsy: Yeah.

[42:42] Micah: But the strong robot concept, I can see it becoming like the forearm, you know, cool robot. Not that the robot is unique. Right. Like we said, other people are doing it. But I think your version of it just put in so much more, you know, artistic ability to start with. So that seed, I feel like, can grow into a much more unique and fun brand.

[43:01] Betsy: And he's really not just a robot. He's also he's also a little chat. Like there's a little chat bubble in there. And this was sort of a happy accident. But I also kind of feel like he looks a little bit like a plug. So like you're plugging into something new. This is a plug in. Like it's it's a little bit literal, but it's kind of fun. It's different. And again, this is a symbol that over, you know, 100 people or 1000 people, they're all going to interpret it a little bit differently. And that's one of the things that I think makes a really successful logo is if it's got multiple ways to be interpreted, all of which are positive and moving your brand forward and creating that awareness. But then it becomes it's kind of where science meets art. And I think that's one of the really cool things about branding as a whole and why I love doing it.

[43:50] Micah: Such a cool way to put it where science meets art. So yeah. Ben, any other things you want to show or say about the branding project? I know you were the one receiving a lot of the files from Betsy and turning it from her, you know, artistic vision into an actual functioning website. How was that for you?

[44:11] Ben: Yeah. I mean, you know, initially it was, you know, it was like newer because we haven't worked that way exactly with a designer. But she basically gave us everything that we needed. And so if we asked for fonts, you know, just confirmation of that and all of this, she would do that for us. Basically, what happens is you make this beautiful website and things inside of Illustrator or whatever, and then you kind of have to slice it up. And so you have to get like, you know, separate the icons out from the backgrounds and all this. And so she kind of helped us do that. And one thing that I'll tell people who are doing this is a lot of times like the font sizes, they don't really match up to like the actual website for whatever reason. And Betsy knew this and kind of warned us ahead of time. And so once we kind of started getting some of the pieces in place on the actual site, we just got on a Zoom call with her and then we let her kind of look at it and adjust things. And so that way we knew it was right and kind of, you know, at least had a designer's eye on it basically. So that's the only, that was like the only maybe tricky piece to be honest. But anytime we needed something, we would just ask her and she would send it over to us.

[45:16] Betsy: So yeah.

[45:18] Ben: It was, yeah. Yeah.

[45:20] Betsy: I'm always blown away when I, cause I don't do any of the developing. I don't know code. That's, that's not my jam. So I always end up designing these static pages and then handing them over to a website developer. And when you work with somebody that you have access to and can have a Zoom conversation with, that does make it easier. But there's also a challenge from taking it from a static design and putting it into something that is dynamic. Cause there's animation and hover states and all of this really cool stuff that you can do within. I know WordPress, but probably other, other platforms as well. And then I have to take that understanding. Like I'm not a developer, but I do have an understanding of some of how that works and put that into the static design and think, okay, I want this to have this hover state. I want the text to animate in this way. So being able to translate that information and having the understanding of how it works online and as a website, live website versus just a static design is really important as well. Yeah. But like the fact that you made it look so amazing, that's just, it always blows my mind.

[46:27] Micah: Well, it's, uh, it's a team effort for sure. But you, you for sure added something that our team could have never been and me, you know, Melissa of all of us, we couldn't have done this in a million years. We couldn't, you know, just outside of our wheelhouse entirely. So, um, thank you, Betsy. And thank you for sharing. Thank you for coming on, uh, people who might want to work with you. How do they find you? How do they get in touch with you?

[46:51] Betsy: Yeah. Um, they can visit my website. It's heavenstobetsydesign.com. And I also, you can also email me at Betsy at heavenstobetsydesign.com. So I am available there. Um, yeah, there's probably, I can also give you like social links and stuff as well.

[47:09] Micah: Well, and I will just say, you know, for the end here that, uh, working with you has been an absolute pleasure. Like if, if people are watching this interview, this is how Betsy is all the time, right? Um, she's just sharp and pleasant and creative, um, and so helpful and hardworking. So Betsy, we really, really appreciate you. Thank you so much.

[47:28] Betsy: Yeah. Thank you guys. And likewise, I love working with clients that have that creative vision and allow me to be creative and do the things that I feel are going to really move their business forward. So I've loved that about working with you guys as well.

[47:40] Micah: Thank you. Um, well, if you want to get in touch with Betsy, go to, uh, heavenstobetsydesign.com. We'll put a link under this video, or you can reach out to us and we'll put you in touch with her. But Betsy, thanks again.

[47:52] Betsy: Awesome. Thank you.