It’s almost time to do the damn thing.
And by do the damn thing - I mean, get married.
We’re less than two weeks away now - which feels absolutely insane to type out.
cue the nervous/stress butterflies in my stomach
We are knee deep in the final stretch of the part where everything goes from ideas, and knowing what we want to do…To the execution. Actually doing the thing.
So now the challenge is bringing the vision to life - and being able to bring other people in on it.
I have to be able to communicate exactly what I want and how I want it to my maid of honor, my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, a photographer, and a coordinator.
And as a pretty hands-on gal who prefers being in charge and working on my own (I’m allowed to say that, right?), I’ve learned a lot in the last month or so about delegating, hiring out, and asking for help.
And one of the things I have realized in these final stages of planning a wedding (which if you ask me is not so much unlike a giant freaking rebrand - new last name coming soon) is that there is a whole messy middle between clarity knowing what you want and strategy knowing exactly how you are going to do it.
This is the place where dreams go to die (not to be dramatic).
Plenty of people have dreams, or an idea for a business. They talk a lot of talk.
You are shaking your head right now, because we all know that person.
But you have to be willing to do the research. Figure it out. Ask questions. And ask for help.
When most of us are planning a brand build, a rebrand, or a wedding, for that matter, this is the crucial step that we forget to account for.
We think that the research step is going to be a one-and-done task.
But it’s not.
Especially when it’s something you’ve never done before.
That is essentially what happened with one of my most recent Studio Session clients, Chelsea.
She came into her Studio Session knowing she wanted to pivot her brand. A pivot that meant building an all new audience.
But just what that looked like - she needed a lot of clarity around.
So my job became - researching. Figuring out just how to do it - and who her new audience was.
When it comes to research for your brand, you don’t want to put all of your eggs into one basket.
You want to attack it from all angles, so to speak.
01. Start with Perplexity to better understand your audience.
Perplexity is an AI search engine, and it’s where I typically start my research process - whether that is better to define an existing audience or a new one. What I LOVE about Perplexity is that it searches through Reddit forums, content, and blogs - and links them in the research, so you can go in and dig deeper on your own. I really like the first prompt in this Substack article.
02. Mine your testimonials for Positioning & Messaging
One of the earliest marketing lessons that really hit home for me was that your clients and customers already have the best messaging for your brand. The way they talk about your brand is how you should talk about your brand. So if you have an existing client base, create a master doc of all of the testimonials, feedback, and love letters you have ever gotten.
- Go Analog - Print it out and read through, highlighting the stickiest, most on-point words, phrases, or descriptions that your clients used to describe you.
- Go AI - Save that doc as a PDF and drop it into Claude (my fave for this because you can feed it the most at once), then ask it to pull out the repeated language, the emotional words, and the exact phrases your clients use to describe the before and the after.
01. Treat your content as an experiment
You can learn a lot by auditing your existing content - but even more from experimenting with content and the ideas behind your brand pivot.
Whatever kind of pivot my clients are in, I am almost always recommending that they create content with one of two goals: reaching a new audience, or getting feedback from the one they already have. Ideally both.
Three ways to do that:
- Run a series. Pick the idea behind your pivot and make 3-5 pieces of content that test it out loud. What people save, share, and reply to is data. What they scroll past is also data.
- Ask questions in your captions. You can put polls directly in your post captions now, which means you're not limited to stories that disappear in 24 hours - and you can reach people who aren't tapping through your stories at all.
- Ask in your emails. Your list is your warmest audience and the most likely to give you a thoughtful answer. I am NOT GREAT at remembering to do this. But when I do include some kind of a question - I always get more replies in my inbox!
Rebrand in public and talk to people 1:1
This was one of the BEST things I did during my own rebrand a couple years back - I created a Rebrand Research call link and invited people to chat with me over coffee about their rebrand. I told them exactly what I was trying to learn and why: that I was building new offers and wanted to figure out where people needed the most help.
Then treat the transcripts from those calls exactly like your testimonials - as raw material for better messaging. (Use something like Fathom so you get notes and a full transcript without having to scribble while someone is talking.)
Threads, is one of the best place to reach people in your target audience who aren’t following you yet (granted that audience is on the platforms - so check into that first). You can write threads that speak directly to a specific audience by naming them in your content.
Be DIRECT - just tell people what you’re trying to learn. You can also search your niche and practice audience listening, which is research too.
Just know that this is where the time between clarity and strategy gets tricky, because you can’t always get all the answers you want overnight.
Which is why I recommend a brand reset every quarter - where you audit the content you've been creating and see what it's actually telling you (more on that soon).
The devil is in the details.
The messiest middle of most rebrands is the time between getting clear on what they want to do, how they want to grow, pivot, or build their brand - and the how.
Especially if building a brand, designing a digital footprint, and creating content are all new skills to you.
When it came to planning a wedding, knowing what I wanted was the easiest part - but figuring out all the details? How to execute the day. Who goes where, and when, and to what song.
The research.
That is the part I didn’t take into enough account. Bank enough time for.
Because sure, I can figure out the seating chart.
But how far apart do the tables need to be?
How far do the tables need to be from the outside of the tent?
Where are the poles, and how many tables can I fit between them?
These are all questions that needed to be answered before I could check just one thing off my list.
When you are building a brand and launching something new.
You get the option to skip this step (kinda).
You can get an idea.
Tell no one.
Build the whole thing overnight.
And then launch it - to absolutely no one.
I still remember the first time I told someone that doing just that was a bad idea.
And she was NOT happy with that feedback. Our working relationship ended soon after.
But this week - I delivered a strategy inside The Studio Session with a 7-month launch window for a new offer & audience.
Because even though we have clarity today - and the research to back it up - it still takes time, and real people (not just robots), to validate an idea.
