66 | Branding and Websites with Lindsey Freeman and Julie Goldberg

Camille (00:00)
Welcome.

Camille (00:00)
To In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman. I'm a registered herbalist and licensed nutritionist. And in this podcast, I share tips and tidbits that may be helpful for other practitioners. Today, I'm really excited to bring you an interview about websites and branding. This is a topic that a lot of people struggle with, especially in the beginning. I find that people feel pressured to have a brand and to spend lots and lots of money, or time, or both creating a website that reflects who they are and what they're doing. But we don't have the training for that. Most of us did not learn about this in school, or maybe there was one class talking about branding and websites and things like that, but we're out there on our own. And instead of doing the basic things that we need to do at the beginning of a practice, like find clients and work with clients and set up business banking, all of these things, instead, we're stressing out over websites and branding and things like that.

Camille (00:56)
So.

Camille (00:57)
Today I have brought in some people who know a lot more about this topic than most of us do. We're going to have an interview with Lindsey Freeman, who is a co founder of Premade and runs the digital design studio Play & Public, specializing in branding and square space development. Play & Public brings brand stories to life by crafting captivating visuals that leave a lasting impact. Embodying the spirit of play, they infuse every moment with creativity and joy. And Julie Goldberg is the other co founder of Premade and is also a mental health practitioner, offering practical and easy to follow methods for running a successful private practice. She's the founder of Third Nature Therapy, a virtual therapy group offering holistic mental health care for people seeking a different perspective on wellbeing. So Lindsey and Julie are going.

Camille (01:40)
To talk to us today about.

Camille (01:43)
Marketing and branding and websites for beginners, and in particular for beginner service providers, because the types of things that we need to be doing and thinking about are perhaps a little bit different from somebody who is selling a product or creating a software company or things like that. So they've combined Lindsey's expertise in design and digital design, particularly, as well as Julie's experience as a mental health provider. And they've come up with some suggestions and also solutions for people who are feeling stuck around the website. So I'm really excited for you to hear this interview and I hope that you find it as valuable as I did.

Camille (02:29)
All right. I am so excited to welcome Julie and Lindsey to the podcast today to talk to us more about branding and websites. As you know, if you are a long time listener, I have strong opinions on this, but I'm really excited to hear from some experts who have been working to help newer practitioners make this whole process a little bit easier because I know there's a lot of anxiety around this topic. So let's start out. And Lindsey, maybe you can take the first stab at this question. I know you all feel very passionately about branding for practitioners. Could you just define branding for us and talk about why it's really important for somebody who's relatively new to their field?

Lindsey Freeman (03:09)
Yeah, absolutely. Branding is basically every touch point your ideal client comes in contact with. It's the way that you make them feel. So it's really important to have clear messaging and clear branding across all of your touch points. So when your ideal client comes across your feeds or any content that you're creating, they know exactly who you are. So big differentiation between... Having clear branding helps you be differentiated between other practitioners. And so you are not always going to be for everyone. So how can you really niche down and find your own voice and find your own look and feel? So we really want, with that and taking the time to really invest in finding clarity around your branding, you really have the fact of the no like and trust factor. They're like, I know I'm going to get consistent content from you, and I know exactly what I'm looking for when I'm in your space.

Camille (04:09)
So lots to say there.

Camille (04:12)
Got it. And then, Julie, did you have anything else to add on that one? Yeah.

Julie Goldberg (04:18)
As health practitioners, the brand is really our essence. It's how we show up. It's the uniqueness of our services. I'm a therapist, so my brand is how I provide therapy. My business is I do one on one individual therapy sessions, but my brand is how I do that. And that's why people would reach out to me. That's why people would schedule with me. They're scheduling services with me. And so it's really important that I'm super clear about how I provide those services. I don't want someone to show up that wants a super structured session that is evidence based by the book, homework every session. And I'm sure it's similar with nutritionist and herbalist. I want someone that's a little more intuitive, holistic, seeking deeper healing. But that's totally fine for the people that want evidence based structured sessions. I just don't want to waste people's time and have them schedule something that's not actually my brand or my absence or my experience. So it's better for me as the practitioner to show up authentically through my brand, but it's also better for the clients and the potential person that's seeking services. How sad is it or discouraging for someone to schedule?

Julie Goldberg (05:50)
Finally, seeking support that they need, schedule a session and then realize, Whoa, this is not at all what I was looking for. We're doing it just both for our business and for potential customers if we're not showing up authentically in our branding.

Camille (06:06)
Yeah, got it. That's such an important point that it's not just for you, it's for the client as well. I love it. So let's go to the person who's just getting started and they understand the need for a brand or they want to have a brand. But it's overwhelming in the beginning to try to think about this. And I know sometimes people feel like, oh, I'm going to have to spend $5,000 on a website or hire a logo designer and business cards are the first thing that they think about. What advice do you all have for the beginner who's looking to approach branding, but perhaps is on a budget and doesn't necessarily have a ton of time and a ton of money and certainly very little, if any, training in marketing and promotion? Where do we start?

Lindsey Freeman (06:59)
Yeah, so fortunately, with the rise of technology, there's so many resources now where there's a lot of free resources or incredibly cheap resources that you guys can use. I personally would recommend researching other brands that you resonate with and start seeing what type of language they're using, what colors they're using, why do you feel attracted to this brand and start asking the why. Because as soon as you get deeper into the root foundation of why you're attracted to something, that's when you can start making or build clarity around your own brand because I do believe anything that you're attracted to is also a reflection of you in some way. It's like the mirror. A few resources that I love to recommend is Canva, obviously, they have a ton of pre made templates that you can use. You can even get the pro account where you can look at a bunch of color sets from all the different brands that you liked and researched, and then you can just add it there. And so you know exactly what colors to use you want to use together. And as far as color picking, you can go to Adobe Color Wheel.

Lindsey Freeman (08:07)
It's a free online resource and they have a bunch of different color palettes. Pinterest is also an amazing resource. And I know a lot of brands do have some little DIY kits that you can purchase for really cheap. If you are gung ho on having someone else put together something for you, I don't think you need to spend $5,000 on a more experienced designer, but there are cheaper resources. So Fiverr.com is amazing if you wanted to quickly get something out and going. I think I even saw on camera now that they have a logo maker as well. So I think it's just like starting out somewhere. And then once you get really clear on who you are, what you're offering and the ideal client you want to attract, that's when you can go in with an actual brand designer and get down the strategy of your brand, which then informs actual visuals that they'll create for your brand. So then you can really have a unique cohesive brand that goes across all of the touch points. Do you have any other resources, Julie?

Julie Goldberg (09:12)
I mean, our templates are a good place to start or a Squarespace template in general. They really break down the different pages that you need, the way to schedule, they highlight your services. I actually found Lindsey after using a template myself. When I started my practice, I was very into niching and branding. I knew it was important, but I had spent so much time building this website through a template that one was for bloggers so it was not a good use of my time. I had to really learn a lot of tech skills and how to organize it on my own. But then my whole entire website was for teenage girls, and I filled my practice with teenage girls. It worked really well. But then I realized I didn't like working with teenage girls. So if I had invested thousands of dollars... I mean, eventually I hired Lindsey and I did invest thousands of dollars. But if I had invested thousands of dollars from the get go to build a website and branding and marketing around teenage girls and then realized that that wasn't what I wanted, I would have been devastated, honestly. It would have really discouraged me from getting started in the field.

Julie Goldberg (10:33)
But instead, I started building my practice, realized I didn't like working with the clientele that I was serving, which was totally fine. And because I had done everything myself, I was able to save a lot of money in the process. My income doubled in the first year that I was in private practice. I was working in schools before that. So I had the resources to invest in branding two years into my practice and then completely shifted the ways that I showed up. But if I had done that in the beginning, I didn't have enough data points to build a brand that actually spoke to who I was. And I don't think it would have been effective. So I strongly discourage people from investing in a really custom website and building a brand right from the get go. If you're a few years in, great, that's a great point. But you don't need it starting out.

Camille (11:32)
Yeah. I could not agree more strongly that I've worked with so many people who think they know what they want to do, or they think they know what they are doing in the beginning, and you start doing it and you're like, Oh, maybe like Julie, I don't like that. I don't resonate well with this group, or actually my practice is going to take a different turn, or I'm going to do things a little bit of a different way than I thought I would at first. You move, you sit, you get married, so many things happen. And I really think you don't really know what direction you're heading until a couple of years in. If that, I mean, some of us are still figuring it out 15 years down the road.

Lindsey Freeman (12:12)
I.

Camille (12:13)
Feel like that's such a beautiful part of being a business owner. I love that I get to change my mind. I love that I get to evolve and grow instead of this very linear path of working for someone else. I get promoted. It's a less linear, which I really like as a creative person. But if I had built that path right from starting out, it wouldn't actually match with where I ended up or potentially would end up.

Julie Goldberg (12:44)
Yeah. Go ahead, Lindsey.

Julie Goldberg (12:46)
Just from my experience as being a brand designer, I've had multiple people start. We do a full branding session, and then a couple of years later, they've either shut it down or they completely pivoted. It's t's very true. People definitely should just wait and feel into what they're doing before they fully invest without the clarity that they need to put those efforts into it.

Camille (13:12)
Yeah. And honestly, I think the reason that people tend to want to jump right into the branding is it is fun. The colors, it's very fun to think about what colors you resonate with and a logo and picking the different options. It's a fun process. And I think it also distracts us a little bit from the hard work of not having any clients and speaking to what feels like nobody and all the things that are hard in the first year of practice. You're like, oh, but I could spend 30 hours designing the perfect business card.

Lindsey Freeman (13:43)
I honestly believe it's a form of procrastination and fear of actually showing up and doing the work that you're here to do. There's some people are like, oh, it's this logo. It's just not perfect yet. I'm like, this is not what it's about, though. You need to solidify your product and your service. And then maybe down the line, you can worry about that. But don't not do something or launch your business because you don't have the, quote unquote, perfect logo or color palette or fonts or whatever it is.

Camille (14:13)
Yeah.

Julie Goldberg (14:14)
That's I mean, I am a perfect example of what you just talked about. I obsessed over my website before launching it. I really got in my head, I have to have this perfect site because I want to come off so professional. I want to come off like I have it so together. And sure, maybe I did. But for what? What was the point of that? I stayed in a job that I wasn't liking longer than I needed to, and I wasn't making money in the process of spending hours building this website that didn't need to happen. And it was a good learning process. It led me to do what I'm doing now, but it was definitely a place of fear of showing up for me.

Camille (14:55)
Yeah, it's intense. And that leads us to a solution that you all created for people who are in that phase of wanting to have a website but maybe realizing it's not a super great idea to spend a ton of money and a ton of time creating something that may just need to change or likely will need to change in the next year or two. So could you just tell us a little bit about your website templates and what the deal is with those?

Julie Goldberg (15:23)
Yeah. So I ended up hiring Lindsey, as I said, after working with teenage girls, I was also working in addiction, just like a hodgepodge clientele. And I'm a holistic mental health practitioner. My degree is in mindfulness based counseling. And I was not showing up like that at all online. So Lindsey really helped me with my branding. I got really clear of how I wanted to show up. And then we also designed a website for my practice. And because my branding was so clear and my website was really well organized, I ended up not having to do any marketing. I was showing up authentically, the right people were finding me. And then my website was designed for people to contact me if they had questions, set up a consult call, learn more about my pricing. They could read my blogs if they wanted free resources. There was tons of things there for people to engage with me, and I was calling in the right people. And we realized that there was this huge gap in one to one service providers of having websites that actually serve the people they're trying to support. So we took the exact template and framework that we used for my website, and then we made it into Squarespace templates.

Julie Goldberg (16:45)
So Lindsey designed the websites. They're both really unique and fun and bold. And then we took my business framework of working one on one in private practice and infused that into the website. So everything's totally set up for people to launch a private practice right away. There's no need to hire anyone specific or code. None of the complex stuff. The business model is actually pretty straightforward as a one to one service provider. And the things that you need on your website are also straightforward. So the templates are just that. They go right into your Squarespace account, you can edit all the text. If you want to get really specific with the colors and the fonts, you can change it or keep it as is. Now all you have to do is update the text and the photos.

Camille (17:39)
I love it. Lindsey, did you have anything to add there from the design perspective?

Lindsey Freeman (17:46)
Yeah, absolutely. I think the most valuable aspect of it is actually the organization of the site itself and the prompts that we give you within the website. But if you're also worried about, I don't know what fonts to use, I don't know what colors to use, we also created color guides and fonts guides for you to do that with. So it really takes out the stress and the guesswork of how am I showing up correctly or do these colors match or do these fonts match. We really thought through everything so you guys don't have to. It's meant to be as easy as possible to get your business up and running.

Julie Goldberg (18:20)
Because my template that I purchased was not like this, I don't think I fully understood what we were building until maybe a year into working together. But they literally go directly onto your Squarespace account. So you sign up for a Squarespace, you log on, there's the website. There's no building it. There's no hours sitting at your computer making sure it's right. The website is in your account, and then all you have to do is update the text.

Camille (18:51)
And that is huge because so many people get stuck on just the logistics of how do I add a page? How do I connect a button to a link? These are the things that as practitioners, we don't really need to know how to do. And yet we're spending dozens of hours with this one little button on the website instead of, like you said, marketing yourself and going out and speaking to people, doing things like that.

Julie Goldberg (19:17)
And knowing that your website will do the marketing for you. If you feel really confident and proud of your website, you share it out. It is a wonderful business card that is available 24/7. You don't have to be actively engaging for it to be doing its work.

Camille (19:33)
Yeah, I love that you created this resource. And I know there's tons of Squarespace templates out there, and it's really hard to sort through them. And then most of them, you are going to have to change them substantially on the back end to make them appropriate for a one to one business. And so I love that these are already... You've got the About Me page and the Work With Me page and the Discovery call. All of that is all set in so you're not Franken steining something together out there.

Lindsey Freeman (20:06)
That's the goal. Make it.

Julie Goldberg (20:08)
As easy as possible. Yes. We're loud about how beige and boring a lot of therapist websites are. So there are a lot of templates available and they're all the same. And like we were talking about with branding, people are hiring you for your time, for your essence, for your uniqueness, and your website needs to highlight that. So that's another thing about our templates. They really are plug and play to highlight you.

Camille (20:40)
And help you live out. Yeah, I love that. And just for people who are not tech savvy, which I know that we do have a substantial portion of herbalists in particular who are like, Ah.

Camille (20:53)
How easy are the templates? I know you said you log into Squarespace and there it is. Is this are we talking? Really, I can barely log into my email level of access here. And what support do people need if they run into a problem with your template? How can they get some support around that?

Julie Goldberg (21:15)
Maybe two steps above. I can't log into my email. You have to know how to edit text on a screen. You have to know how to upload photos. But we have videos that walk you through how to do all that. So you don't have to know how to do anything on your own, but you do have to know, okay, I'm going to watch this video and then I'm going to implement this stuff. And that is something that we don't require, but we recommend you feel comfortable doing on your own. And then if you have any questions, we are real people that respond to the questions via email. We're not robots, we send videos or links, or we can even go into the site. But there's support if you get lost. But we have probably 30 different videos of how to do each different stuff. And that sounds like a lot, but they're like two minutes each, maybe probably less. And if you're comfortable with Squarespace already, you don't have to watch all of them. It's just if you're looking for additional support of how to do certain things.

Lindsey Freeman (22:32)
Got.

Camille (22:33)
It. Okay. And I know a lot of people are accessing websites on their phones. They can't sleep when they're searching for some sleep support in the middle of the night. Are these mobile optimized? And also do you have any comments on accessibility and inclusivity?

Lindsey Freeman (22:52)
Yeah. So what's good about Squarespace is that they have already built in a mobile optimization. And then within all of our templates, we've made sure that all of it is optimized for everyone. As far as accessibility for colors and type usage, how we have it currently on our templates is good to go, but we don't have any control over the fonts or colors used once you guys change it. So the idea is always going to have accessibility and inclusivity in it. But once it's out in the world and bot, we're unsure of where it goes.

Camille (23:25)
Yeah. And in case people don't know what we're talking about here, just depending on people's access needs, there needs to be a certain contrast between the background and the font so that some people can read what's there. And so that's what Lindsey is talking about, that we need to have good contrast. You don't want to have an orange font on a yellow background or something like that. And it needs to be big enough that people can read it even if their eyesight is challenging for them. Great. Okay. And just last question here. What about SEO? Because I know sometimes people start looking into that and then they're like, Oh, I need to go back for another master's degree just to understand what's happening here. Do you have any thoughts on how important this should be for a newer practitioner? How people should think about this when they're just getting started?

Julie Goldberg (24:20)
I would say it's medium important. For newer practitioner, why wouldn't you set yourself up to eventually rank on Google? So SEO stands for search engine optimization. It means optimizing your site for Google to scan through it and say, yes, this is a site that is qualified and talks about serving clients in Arlington, Virginia, seeking herbalism for postpartum support. You're optimizing your site for a robot to scan through it and know that's what you're talking about. It is a long term strategy. So I think your question around like, how important is it for a new practitioner? It's not going to help you get clients right away. You your site needs to build credibility and ranking, and that happens over time. The more text you have on there that talks about what you do, the more credible you become. The more links you have to other people talking about similar things, the more credible you become. Again, that takes a long time to do. But it's a really great strategy for long term marketing. I found a lot of success writing blogs for SEO purposes. So our templates come with a blog page and we show you how to do that.

Julie Goldberg (25:51)
But it's a great way to add tons of text onto a page and again, prove your authority on the topic so you can write it specific to your niche and your clientele. And the more you do that, if you really want to start ranking for SEO, you can write a blog every week, you can write a blog every month. If you pay someone, they're probably going to write a blog every day, which is I don't have time for that. But it allows your site to continue to build and rank higher. The other thing that we love about Squarespace is the SEO on page is so easy to edit and use. So you can add all text, which describe the image right there. You can add an SEO title for each page and a meta description for each page really, really easily. You don't need any tech or SEO training for this type of stuff. And you can track your analytics on Squarespace as well, which is really cool if you're into that. So you can see how people are getting to your site. You can see what keywords you're ranking for. You can see what your most popular pages are, how long people spend on your site.

Julie Goldberg (27:11)
And it's a good way to know and track are your ideal clients, finding your website in the ways that you want. But again, it takes a lot of time.

Camille (27:24)
So maybe that's something for people to think about, but wait till get their feet under them to do any more serious focused attention on that.

Julie Goldberg (27:36)
Yeah, wait until you get your feet under you. You know what you want to rank for is another big thing. But set up your site correctly because the faster it loads, the better it will rank. The less errors you have, the better it will rank. The more optimized it's for mobile, the better it will rank. So do the things that you can do from the beginning, but you don't need to pay anyone or do additional trainings right away. Our templates have SEO instructions in them.

Camille (28:08)
As well. Great. Amazing. All right. Well, we've talked a lot about the templates. How can people get the templates if they would like to have one?

Lindsey Freeman (28:23)
Our.

Julie Goldberg (28:23)
Templates are available on our website. The website is templatesbypremade.com. And if you want to purchase one, you do so through the site, and then it goes onto your Squarespace account within 24 hours.

Camille (28:41)
Amazing.

Camille (28:42)
So easy. That sounds great. And if people wanted to connect with either of you all out there on the Worldwide Web, how could they do that?

Lindsey Freeman (28:56)
So we're also on Instagram @templatesbypremade.com. And if you want to send us a DM, we love those. And then you can also email us at hello@ templatesbypremade.com, and we'll also respond to those.

Camille (29:11)
Amazing. And I'll put all that in the show notes in case people are driving or out and about and can't write that down right now, so it'll be in the show notes. Is there anything else you all would like to say to newer practitioners or any other things that we didn't get to that you wanted to make sure we got into this episode?

Julie Goldberg (29:28)
One thing that's just on my mind today is it can feel really scary and overwhelming of getting started. And I was in the place of getting started and feeling like I was going to all these trainings, paying all these random people, trying to do everything myself that I wasn't actually doing anything in the process. And I wasted a lot of money. And so I know what that's like. And that's big reason why we started pre made. We are there to support you for getting started and have a quick and direct support line so you don't have to do all these things on your own. We know what that's like, and we're here to help you actually get out into the world and stop hiding behind all the doing.

Camille (30:26)
Love that. Yes. Less fiddling with your website more doing the thing you're trained to do. Yes. Great. I love it. Well, thank you all so much for all the love and care and thought that has gone into the templates. I'm sure that they're just such a huge help to so many people. And I'm really excited that they're available because it's so generous and so lovely to have these types of things for folks who are just getting started.

Julie Goldberg (30:56)
Thank you. Thanks so much for having us.

Camille (30:58)
Yeah. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening to In the Clinic with Camille. Hey, did you know that I write a weekly practitioner note for herbalists and nutritionists?

Camille (31:18)
If you would like to get that in your inbox, you can sign up at camillefreeman.com/newsletter. I'd love to have you join us there.