Watch This Episode About Building a Female Leadership Coaching Brand
Are you building a female leadership coaching brand?
If you operate in the coaching space or you’re looking to position a brand that is based on your expertise in working with people, then you will probably find this story about Jo Davidson interesting. Let’s inspire you as we look at how a unique combo of my services worked for her business.
About This Branding & Personal Branding Photography Case Study
Meet Jo Davidson – Female Leadership Coach
Jo is a dynamic Female Leadership Coach. She has built a very successful online coaching business with a 1:1 model. With this success, she wanted to expand her offering to have more scaleable options.
How We Met
I first met Jo back in about 2015. She always stood out to me as someone who cut the BS, all her copy in social media posts and emails felt personal and genuinely deep.
Jo got back in touch with me again to let me know she wanted something creative for her next set of photographic images. We sprang into action. Here are all the different steps involved in the final shoot and strategic branding work we did.
Q1: From Shoot Plans into Adding Strategic Branding to the mix.
LAURA: In your own words Jo, what was it in our working together on the initial shoot plans that made you decide you wanted to incorporate the brand strategy work we did?
JO: I felt like I was kind of fumbling around, trying to find some answers as to, you know, what I wanted, and, I didn’t know what I wanted, and I needed somebody that I could trust to sort of pull that out and figure out what did I want. On the other side, it was, like, I don’t want to sort this out in six months or, you know, I don’t want to sort of take weeks and months just kind of trial and error in it and hoping for the best, I just want somebody to just like give me the answers.
Q2: Sorting Strategy in Just One Day
LAURA: Doing it all in just a day. That leads me beautifully to my next question. Let’s talk about doing this in one intensive day.
JO: We already decided that we’re going to do the photoshoot and I was like, “Okay, but now I still need this other part done and we’re already there, like, we’re ready to sort of make the photo shoot happen and I’m like clueless as to what I want.”
Building a Female Leadership Coaching Brand Without Wasting Time
And, again, it’s like I don’t want to dilly-dally, I would rather just get it done. I feel like there’s more focus on it when you do that, I feel like when you do like bit and a bit and a bit, you kind of lose the focus, you lose the thread, you lose the enthusiasm as well. I’m terrible for losing enthusiasm for things if I don’t just like getting them done, so it was just perfect for me.
Q3: Strategic Expectations
LAURA: And be honest with me, what did you expect to come out from that day?
JO: I mean, I’m not entirely sure that I even knew what I would come out with. I trusted you, like, to figure it out, and that’s what you did like I knew you would, that is your professionalism, that is your expertise.
What A Brand Strategy in a Day is Like
We talked about so much stuff, so much stuff that I wasn’t even aware of that I was doing, so much stuff that I wasn’t even aware of that I wanted in my brand. You know, I came out of it at the end I’m just thinking, “How on earth are you going to turn that into anything?” I think the main reason that I wanted to do it when I’m briefing to people in the future, for other things, you know, I want a website rebrand, I can literally just go “There you go”, and they can get it and I don’t then have to figure out how to explain that to people because you’ve already done that for me, so absolutely perfect.
Q4: Implementation Joy & Efficiency
LAURA: That is my happy place, Jo! I love that you’ve said that. So now that you have your organised and codified brand guidelines document, how do you feel about the implementation side of it?
The Art of Delegation
JO: Yeah, I mean, I feel super relaxed about it now, it’s like I can bring anybody on board. For example, with the website, like, I will be employing somebody to, you know, redo the website. Like, “There you go. Off you go, do your thing.” The most important thing for me, for my clients, you can always make more money, but you can’t, like, get back the time, just hire a bloody person to do the thing for you, especially if it’s somebody that you know you can trust to do it.
Q5: Shoot Day Surprises
LAURA: What’s the one thing you didn’t expect when thinking about your photoshoot Jo?
JO: I think the biggest thing is how much bloody hard work it was. I mean, you guys just worked solidly, I was exhausted, like, I mean, brilliant, brilliant thing to do but it’s a long day actually and there’s a lot that goes into it.
Supermodel Feels
And, you know, I’m just standing in front of the camera posing, and I’m bloody knackered, so- You guys just worked and worked and worked, it’s just unreal, and just all the different props and you’re like running around after us, treating us like a supermodel. I was like, “I quite like this, I quite like having a personal primper.
And a Personal Crew
A personal makeup person just like keeps on touching us up, and that. So, yeah, I think that was the biggest surprise. I mean, I’ve seen them before, of course, I have, you know, I know people who’ve done them with you before, I considered having one done with you years ago and it just didn’t feel like the right time. But, yeah, I think that was the biggest surprise, was just how much work goes into it and, like, like some of the ideas you came up with, like, I would never have come up with.
Photography Results In Situ
LAURA: Here’s a quick preview of how these images are currently sitting on Jo’s website, I love how the graphic design side of it feeds into both the colourway and the outfit, and the overall energy that we were able to crystallise from the branding strategy day.
Powerhouse Unleashed – The Ultimate Guide
JO: Anybody who is interested in finding out more about my work, the best place to get started is by downloading my free “Ultimate Guide to Empowerment”, which you can get at thepowerhouseunleashed.com/ultimateguide.
LAURA: I signed up for a copy of this myself and found this framework raised some interesting challenges. I recommend this too so any women out there who want to start feeling more empowered as professionals and as women of our time.
Q6: Photoshoots and the Intrinsic Connection to Empowerment
LAURA: Thinking about the idea of what it feels to be empowered, or just empowerment in general then, Jo, I’d love for you to talk about how you felt on the Photoshoot. You know, being photographed is very vulnerable to a lot of people, and I think especially to women, do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Power in Vulnerability
JO: We are powerful women, we are empowered, most of the time. But there’s something very vulnerable about being in front of the camera, and like for a whole day, like, I mean, it’s probably harder at the beginning and, it probably gets easier as the day goes on, but there’s something- like you feel a bit daft, to be completely honest, like standing there posing for, like, all these photos, you do, you feel a bit daft and it’s like…
But equally, if you don’t stand up and do it, then how will anybody ever really know what you stand for? Do you know what I mean?
Jo’s Personal Branding Photography Wish List
Jo wanted to show her authentic self with a dialled-up sense of claiming female power.
When we had worked out a clear strategy to inform her marketing and expansion plans it was clear that she needed cut-out studio imagery and outdoor on-location photography.
Location Scouting
Finding private and public outdoor space meant we could signify “smashing” and being “bombastic” with a huge wrecking mallet and some smoke bombs.
Creative Direction on Fashion Choices
Jo wanted to be relaxed and sharp at the same time. The fashion direction that came out of our strategy day was effortless, relaxed chic. We needed to make it look like Jo could move from a boardroom, to a coffee Zoom meeting and to cocktails.
Female Leadership Coaching Brand Moodboard
Working with the overall creative direction decisions made by Jo’s Brand Strategy in a day service meant that the photography shoot mood board was a real cinch in the creation process behind the scenes.
See if you can spot how these ideas translated into the final female leadership coaching brand shoot.
Studio to Outdoors Personal Branding Photography Shoot Day
Landing on a studio with a rooftop location that was in Newcastle city centre gave us lots of different location options within a relatively small radius. This meant we could begin and set-up within a studio environment and then build looks from this same base with minimal time-wasting travel.
Editing and Retouching a Female Leadership Coaching Brand
With studio-based photography, we transformed the final images into full cut-out transparent backed .png files. This makes it easy for Jo and her team to layer up online marketing activity.
With on-location photography, we opted for a very subtle increase in the saturation of colours akin to Jo’s power-colour brand pallet.
With Extra Special Thanks to my Creative Crew
There was a whole team behind this project developing Jo’s female leadership coaching brand. Thank you to every one of them:
Styling
Nichola English – AKA The Wardrobe Provocateur joined the team for Jo’s personal branding photography shoot. On #MwahTV Nichola shared how valuable having a clear creative direction is when styling for a shoot.
Hair and MakeUp
Laura Oddity took care of the amazing Hair and MakeUp looks created on Jo’s shoot day. Laura is truly fantastic at working fast and intuitively responding to any creative brief.
Smoke Bombs
and a heroic last-minute service.
Rooftop & Studio
Board School Studio, Ouseburn.
Video Production
Danielle Bayes – Videos Undifficulted.
Danielle and I would like to extend our thanks to the BTEC Digital Art Students at Sunderland College for workshopping this episode editing process. Great work guys!
Reflecting on Jo’s Brand Strategy and Photography Case Study
This project with Jo is a great example of how important it is to work on documenting a solid branding strategy foundation BEFORE investing in creative assets. What came up from the Brand Strategy in a day session yielded many amazing insights that worked their way into how the Personal Branding Photoshoot worked out.
If you’re like Jo and also creating or building a female leadership coaching brand, I hope this insight helps you.
Timestamps For This Episode about a Female Leadership Coaching Brand
00:00 Episode Starts
02:12 Talking Strategy with Jo Davidson
02:52 Delegation is POWER
03:39 What did she expect?
05:26 Talking Style with Nichola English
07:00 Outfit Alchemy
08:57 Female Leadership Coaching Brand Style Tip
10:38 On the Roof
11:44 #BTS of Shoot Day
12:42 Surprises on Shoot Day
13:47 Using the Final Images online
15:41 The Image Collection
