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Designing a brand you love and serving a niche with Fiona Humberstone aka The Brand Stylist

Have you heard of Fiona Humberstone? You might know her better at The Brand Stylist, and author or How To Style Your Brand ad Brand Brilliance? Well if not, get excited. And if you have then you are in for such a treat as this week’s podcast is all about Fiona, her business, designing a brand you love and serving a niche. It’s a good one…

Designing a brand you love and serving a niche with Fiona Humberstone aka The Brand Stylist

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What are your thoughts about branding? Do you see it as a logo and not a whole lot else, or do you see it as a whole lot more? In this episode, Fiona Humberstone talks about branding and graphic design including colour psychology, but also how your branding and the feel of the brand you create signals your target market. In addition to looking beautiful, your brand can deliver enormous amounts of value and help your attract the right people for you and your business.

In addition to so much about branding, Fiona also shares her business journey. From how she started and the direction her business took through to being in a high pressure environment where price was the key deciding factor, to turning everything on its head and making sure that she wasn’t competing on price. Fiona also talks about how this important change allowed her to go on and create truly amazing things and grown and develop a very different business all around this.

If you think Fiona sounds familiar over here – she is! I’ve written a couple of blogs around Fiona – here’s one from a while ago about why I love The Brand Stylist and I also included Brand Brilliance in a post about World Book Day.

I hope you love this episode with Fiona- I loved recording it and have been so excited to share it with you.

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5 top books for equestrian business

Today is World Book Day (well, if you read this on March 7th, it is!). With this in mind, I thought that to celebrate this fab event, I’d write about five books for equestrian business. These books are NOT equestrian. They won’t be able to teach you your fetlocks from your forelocks, but if you run an equestrian or equine business, you’ll know that anyway. These business books should help your business, your mindset, your marketing and more.

If you follow me on social media, you’ll know I’m a bit of a bookworm. Whether I’m reading a book or listening to one when I walk the dog, I like to learn as I go… but the subjects can be quite varied! Mostly, I listen to and read books about business and mindset. Sometimes a bit about branding and marketing too. But business is the general genre. So here, on World Book Day, I thought I’d share my five top books for equestrian business..

Here are my five top books for equestrian business…

Gary Vaynerchuk – Crushing It

In all honesty, this blog was always going to include at least one Gary Vee book. I went for Crushing It because it’s one I’ve listened to most recently (and is also the most recent of his books). Actually, not just listened to, I have the hardback book too! Crushing It is a kind of continuation from a previous book, Crush It, but can also be read and enjoyed alone. If ‘Crush It’ was a blueprint for how to achieve entrepreneurial success and leverage all you have, ‘Crushing It’ shows you using examples. Gary interviewed many entrepreneurs for this book, including lots I knew before (and many I’m pleased I know about now). It’s inspiring, interesting and packed full of ideas and real life examples that you can apply to your business too.

How to get to the top of Google – Tim Cameron-Kitchen & Exposure Ninja

If you’re even a little interested in Search Engine Optimisation, content marketing, and Google, have a read (or a listen!) to this. I downloaded this on Audible and have listened to it more than once. I love knowing how things work, and SEO is something that I have more than a passing interest in. To get an all in one, plain English, crash course appealed to me. I didn’t have hugely high hopes when I started. Part of me was concerned it would be too basic, and a larger part that it would be WAY too complicated… but it wasn’t either. The background was covered but more advanced ideas and strategies around SEO and getting to the top of Google were explained in a way that was really easy to understand and apply. As an extra perk of this book, you can actually have a free assessment of your website. I should say that I have the Audible version of this and I also found it really easy to listen to. A bit like a friend was chatting to me about SEO. It’s always important to listen to the voice of the narrator to make sure you gel with it. That sounds crazy, but trust me on this!

Chillpreneur – Denise Duffield – Thomas

If you haven’t read Denise’s other books (Lucky Bitch and Get Rich, Lucky Bitch) do… I feel that Chillpreneur is a great extension of this. You might think that these books revolve around money and being lazy – they don’t. To me, hearing a different view point from a self made multimillionaire was really interesting and something I enjoyed and took inspiration from. It’s more about stacking the odds in your favour – whatever form that takes – and making sure you’re leading a life that you really REALLY want. Not just going along with the tide and feeling rather unhappy about things. This is Denise’s latest book and one that I will be reading again very shortly.

Building a StoryBrand – Miller Donald

This book is seriously good. It explains the process businesses go through to build a story brand, where the client is always the hero and the business is always the guide. It’s a fascinating look at how all good stories, whether fictitious or real, are built around this brand story idea. The ones that succeed understand the pattern – the ones that don’t… not so much. Building a StoryBrand talks about the seven universal story points that all humans respond to. If you’re looking to improve your brand story, to guide your customers on the right journey for them, improve loyalty and a WHOLE lot more, this is for you!

Brand Brilliance – Fiona Humberstone

Not only is this book incredible to read, but it is a thing of beauty too. But you’d expect that from The Brand Stylist, wouldn’t you? This book is all about branding, colours, design, the way you position your brand, and how you stand out (for the right reasons!) is a busy world. This book is beautifully produced and although some of those topics might sound overwhelming, I promise you that the way they’re presented in this book makes them very accessible. Brand Brilliance will inspire you and get you thinking about your brand and what it stands for, but in a way that’s so, so useful!

So there are my five top books for equestrian business. To be honest I could have written a short book on books I recommend, but I do think these ones are really, really great! They cover different aspects of business, and would be a superb additions to your business library. What books would you recommend? What are your top books for equestrian business? Pop over to my Instagram and comment on the post with the image above!

Rhea Freeman Newsletter Link

The Brand Stylist - Brand BrillianceIf you’ve seen my Instagram in particular, you will have noticed that a book is a regular feature in my pictures. And this book is Brand Brilliance. It’s by the very talented Fiona Humberstone, also known at The Brand Stylist. But saying I just loved the book wasn’t enough… because I’m also taking Fiona’s fabulous online course, Design for Go Getters, and loving the whole process.

How did I find The Brand Stylist?

I actually can’t remember with complete certainty(!) but I think that I first found Fiona and The Brand Stylist on Amazon. I mean, that’s where I find a lot of people… either that or through podcasts I listen to. But I’m fairly sure that my first ‘meeting’ with Fiona was on Amazon, when I bought ‘How To Style Your Brand’. I have a HUGE thing about branding and being on brand. Having worked with so many business over the years, ‘on brand’ is a phrase I have used a lot. It’s something that any and every business owner needs to be concerned with and something I continually assess. And I don’t always get it right – far from it – but I am constantly trying. Over the years I have picked up a huge amount from the talented graphic designers I have worked with, but Fiona’s take was a little different. She clearly is bursting with technical knowledge, but she brings as slightly ‘softer’ side to it. Fiona talks about what ‘season’ your business is and the colours and style of these. It’s something that (in my experience at least) has taken a while to kind of marinade and develop in my head. I did enjoy ‘How To Style Your Brand’, but it left me with a lot of questions (I tend to think about things a lot!) that swilled about in my head.

Then Brand Brilliance came along

I was listening to a Me and Orla podcast where Sara Tasker interviewed Fiona. She was LOVELY. Approachable, jolly, insightful and passionate. I listened to the podcast a number of times and felt inspired after each listen. Fiona spoke about her new book, Brand Brilliance, and it sounded incredible. I trundled off to Amazon again and bought it. It’s not a cheap book (it’s around the £20 mark), but it is worth every single penny. I’ve paid £5 for books and felt ripped off, but I felt that Brand Brilliance was exceptional value. Before we even get to the content, the book is a work of art. It’s a lesson in layout and font, style, imagery… and that’s just how the book is, rather than what it contains. The content blew me away. It’s superb and I have recommended it to SO many people. When I meet up with people, I regularly take it along for them to see… and I think that everyone I have shown it to has purchased it! I loved the book and will be re-reading it again very, very soon.

But it didn’t stop there…

See, when you have a positive (I mean, really positive) ‘experience’ with someone, you find out more about them. I related to the book and Fiona’s philosophy and wanted to find out more about her and what made her tick, so I signed up to her newsletter and followed Fiona on social media (she’s usually found under her brand The Brand Stylist) and adored her content. And then she announced a course… Design for Go Getters. The course was run online and, again, not exactly cheap but, because of the book, I was quietly confident I would get exceptional value… and I was right.

What’s Design for Go Getters?

Design for Go Getters is The Brand Stylist’s online course that sheds a lot more light on design, its impact, how it works and what it says (and how to achieve it too!). As I said, I have a huge interest in design and have seen first hand the impact of good design vs. poor design and the impact this has on every area of a business and the perception of a brand. So I was keen to get some ‘proper’ education under my belt, that built on what I had learnt and loved from Brand Brilliance. I’m yet to finish the course (but when I do I intend to revisit, review and expect I’ll get more and more from it each time I look at it!), but I am enjoying every second. Combining mixed media, examples, information and challenges, I am lapping up the experience, the course… and have taken huge inspiration from it in terms of in terms of branding and design… but a whole lot more too.

So, that’s why I love The Brand Stylist. If you have even the slightest interest in branding and design, I would suggest ou follow Fiona on social media and have a good read of her blogs, they’re inspiring too. You don’t have to buy any of the above at all (and I haven’t been asked to write this, just FYI, I just want to share things with you that I love that I think you might like too!), but I wanted to share it with you, just in case.

Find Fiona here, at her online home The Brand Stylist