IAM319- Branding Consultant Helps Clients Communicate Their Awesomeness

Tiffany Hoeckelman gets out of bed each morning for one purpose – to help soloprenuers create an amazing client experience by knowing their own powerful brand identity.

Starting out in 2010 as a virtual assistant and freelance graphic designer, Tiffany witnessed several businesses undermining their success with poor graphic design. She soon recognized that small business owners needed help delving deeper than just their visual identity; they needed to identify and cultivate their purpose.

Driven by this mission, Tiffany has built a virtual team, offering brand consulting and implementation. Her secret love for systems and spreadsheets ensures her clients can deliver on their brand promises.

• CEO Hack: Asana to delegate and keep things moving
• CEO Nugget: Failure is where learning begins
• CEO Defined: The maestro – holder of the vision

Website: https://loneorange.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoneOrange/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffanyhoeckelman/

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Full Interview

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I've Tiffany Hoeckelman of Lone Orange.

Tiffany, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Tiffany Hoeckelman 0:39

Gresh thank you so much for having me. It's an honor and privilege to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

No problem. Super excited to have you on and the honors definitely all mine and you'll hear why I'm gonna introduce Tiffany so you can hear more of the awesome things that she's doing. And Tiffany gets out of bed each morning for one purpose to help solopreneurs create an amazing client experience by knowing their own powerful brand identity. Starting out in 2010 as a virtual assistant and freelance graphic designer, Tiffany witnessed several businesses undermining their success with poor graphic design.

She soon recognized that small business owners needed help delving deeper than just their visual identity; they needed to identify and cultivate their purpose. Driven by this mission, Tiffany has built a virtual team, offering brand consulting and implementation. Her secret love for systems and spreadsheets ensures her clients can deliver on their brand promises. Tiffany, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Tiffany Hoeckelman 1:32

I am ready. Let's do this.

Gresham Harkless 1:34

Let's do it. So the first question I had was the hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. And what led you to start your business?

Tiffany Hoeckelman 1:40

Sure. Well, you just gave a great introduction to what we're doing. So I was thinking about this earlier, and my CEO story really started probably back in high school or college. So if you had to put a theme to my story, it would be evolution, a new lesson at every turn, like that has just been my whole evolution. So I got my degree in graphic design. But when I couldn't bear doing that for a profession. So I ended up in small businesses, where I was handed an organization and they said here make this grow. And so for about 15 years, I was in charge of very small organizations learning a lot. And when it came time for me to move on, I decided to start my own business. And so I actually started as a virtual assistant because I was able to take all of those skills.

And I wanted to be able to help solo entrepreneurs, although I didn't know that term at that point, to be successful in their business by helping them with the stuff they didn't know how to do the back office sort of things. So about a year into my business, it was actually going great. I was just about a capacity, but I realized two things. One, I didn't love what I was doing. And I thought well, I'm the boss this is a problem. So time to time to figure this out. And I was actually hit with the trademark infringement issue.

So yeah, which was big and probably a good topic for another story, the reason why you should do some trademark research. And it forced me actually good in hindsight, again, evolution and a new lesson I had, I was forced to change my name.

So that is actually where Lone Orange was born. And that case, I actually started the company about in 2010, so about nine years ago I Excuse me then two years in is when I completely rebranded and shifted, and started Lone Orange to really help. Again, those same solopreneurs do what they didn't want to do or didn't know how to do.

But this time, it was about how to communicate their awesomeness, like how to figure out who they are, how to communicate that both visually, because that was my background in graphic design, but also verbally and how to get the message to the right kind of people. Because we all get into business for what we love to do, we don't get into business for all the other stuff. And branding was one of those other stuff that people didn't know how to do really well.

So that is where my passion lies. And that's what I love to see people be able to grow in. And so now we're, as you mentioned, a virtual firm I've got a team of vendors, providers, and team members all over the country who helped me out depending on what the client needs and my clients are all over the country as well.

Gresham Harkless 4:25

Nice I absolutely love that and I love the fact that you know bad situations sometimes happen as you mentioned a trademark infringement is probably super frustrating but at the same time usually when you look back in hindsight you can definitely say that happened for a reason because you've been able to build such a strong brand and all the awesome things that you're doing and helping people find their awesome as well too is definitely something could appreciate.

Tiffany Hoeckelman 4:49

Absolutely yeah, for sure. I mean truly everything I've learned something that has gotten me to this point today.

Gresham Harkless 4:56

Yeah. And I know we talked a little bit more about it offline, but you are just being so system driven, because I think a lot of times when people start businesses, they have their passion, their thing that they love to do, and they forget about all the other back office stuff often, that also is essential to being able to grow a successful business. So it's great to see that you're implementing that and you did implement that. And then you're also helping businesses to find a lot of those things as well too

Tiffany Hoeckelman 5:23

Exactly I think it helps them to get accelerate, they're a stronger foundation because they can get into business and do what they know and learn. And there are all kinds of free resources, but to be able to figure out who they are, and then to start systematizing, so that they can scale faster, and that they can grow faster. That's what's exciting to me because I geek out on systems, which is odd for a creative. But I do and I have seen the benefit of systems, my own business. So I love helping other people ramped that up a little faster than I did.

Gresham Harkless 5:57

Yeah, absolutely. Wow, I'm a big systems geek as well, too. And I usually say I love systems because if you have them in place, you can be even more creative because you don't have to worry about all those other things. So that's why I definitely love it. And I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper to hear more about how you're serving the clients. I know you touched on branding. And I think a lot of times when people hear they think, Okay, well, I already have a logo, but I feel like correct me if I'm wrong, branding means so much more than that.

Tiffany Hoeckelman 6:22

It does. And you're right. You could probably talk to 10 different people and ask them the question, what is branding, and you'll get 11 different answers. Because branding is so broad and so vast, it's certainly the logo in the brochure, certainly part of that, but it's also your greater understanding of who you are, as a company, and especially for solopreneurs, who I love to help when your brand is so integrated with who you are, you've got to be able to pull that out of yourself to know how you're going to communicate that to other people. Because in business as with in life, like is attracted to like, so if you can better communicate, then you're going to attract people who are like you and who you want to be able to help.

So ultimately, what we do is help create a client an amazing client experience. But to do that, we got to back into, first of all, knowing who you are. So knowing what your core values are, what your brand's story is, and who you best serve. And so knowing that and then being able to communicate that both visually and verbally. And obviously, as a graphic designer, I'm big on verbal communication as much as the skin of visual communication as much as verbal communication.

So you have to communicate, and then you have to be, and this is the part that I think a lot of branding, exercises, programs, whatever don't focus on. And again, this is where I geek out is helping is now taking that brand, and making it the experience and systematizing it. So as you said, you can have the freedom to be more creative and not reinvent the wheel every time you're doing something. And you're able to bring on new people.

So you can scale faster, you'll want to be able to vet the right people because you've got your core values in place. And so you can make sure that they're matching that or complementing that as you need it. And then you'll be able to train them better because you've already got your systems in place. And they're going to do it the way you want it done. And they're going to be able to not dilute your brand, I find that that's one of the scariest things for solopreneurs is I want to grow, I want to grow my team.

But what if I hire somebody that hurts or loses my brand? Well, by having those systems in place from the get-go and knowing and understanding your own brand, you can hire and train those people a lot faster. To communicate and to be your kind of are big things to get that client experience.

Gresham Harkless 9:00

Yeah, and I absolutely love that especially when they have no systems and everything in place. So I find too, that you often also are able to understand if it's a client or maybe a team member that may not necessarily fit with you largely because you have those systems. So systems come from who you are, what you want to be, as you said, and a lot of times you can try to figure out fairly quickly if it's a good fit or not because they either align or they don't and then you kind of are able to make decisions based off of that.

Tiffany Hoeckelman 9:28

Exactly. And it's always a learning experience yourself if you make a bad hire.

Gresham Harkless 9:33

Yeah, for like it's always going to be a learning experience. When it comes to running a business. It seems like so would you consider that to be like your secret sauce? What you feel distinguishes you is that you have those systems in place and you have that background.

Tiffany Hoeckelman 9:44

They do. I do think our secret sauce, especially if you put us up against other branding programs. It's definitely the client experience. And essentially what we're selling what we want to drive home is client confidence is our clients are confident and who they are, how they're delivering, and that they're confident in the team that they've hired to help them get there. So client confidence is what everyone on my team is focused on creating.

Gresham Harkless 10:11

Yeah. And that makes perfect sense. And I love the fact in, especially like what you touched on before the whole being thing because I also feel like when you're tapped into that as well, too, not only is it for the clients that you work with, but it also probably manifests itself in the clients so to speak, the people that they're trying to bring in as well, too. Because when you are that, you start to attract it, like you said.

Tiffany Hoeckelman 10:33

Absolutely. Right. In fact, I even had a client recently, who went through my program. And at the end, she had been a business owner, she had started a couple of other businesses in the past, but she was getting ready to start something new that she was super passionate about. And so because of her past experience, she knew she needed some of this in place. So before she even started the business we worked together, which is unusual. Usually, I work with people who have had some success already. But she was savvy enough to know that it was time to invest.

What was cool is that after we worked together and got some of those systems in place, as soon as she started getting new client interest, she was ready to go. Like she already knew exactly how to handle a new lead, how to take them through a sales process, how to onboard them to a new brand new client, and how to start doing service delivery. And to the point where within a couple of months, she's just about a capacity and is ready to at least start thinking about bringing new people on. And so having those systems in place meant that she can accelerate her success rather than, Oh, goody. I've got a new client. Now what do I do?

Gresham Harkless 11:41

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That definitely helps out. Because I think a lot of times being successful in business, it's not necessarily knowing everything yourself. But knowing who you can call on who you can tap into. And having somebody on the speed dial definitely helps out. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I wanted to ask you about what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Tiffany Hoeckelman 12:06

Sure. One of my favorite things, I could come up with a bazillion, but one of my favorites is using Asana. And you've probably heard it from other people before, but I love it because it is my way because my team is all over the country. It's my way of being able to delegate and keep things moving. Whether it's me overseeing it, whether it's my assistant and project manager who helps move things along. And so it's our communication tool. And it's free, at least to a point.

Gresham Harkless 12:34

Yeah, I would definitely echo that. And now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business?

Tiffany Hoeckelman 12:44

Yeah. Oh, so much again, gazillion things. But in thinking about this, the motto that I've adopted for myself, probably just in the last two or three years is failure is my guru for my whole life, fear and fear of failure has been a constant companion, like just the idea of not succeeding has paralyzed me in a lot of different things. But what I finally realized is that failure is actually where have learned.

Gresham Harkless 13:14

Yeah, I love that. That motto, especially when you say fail, fails fast, so that you can learn to do something different, or you learn from it. Because a lot of times you hear fail fast. And I'm like, that doesn't make sense. Because you can fail. But if you never grow and take those lessons from that, then that's truly where you start to see growth, and you're just moving so fast that you're maybe making mistakes, but at the same time, again, you're moving past them, while everybody might be delivering what they should or shouldn't have done. Right.

And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote, CEOs on the show. So Tiffany, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Tiffany Hoeckelman 13:49

Very good. So that is a good question. And it's one that's been hard for me to learn. I think, to me, a CEO is a maestro, it's the vision holder, it's the one who holds the vision and then guides the rest of whoever your team is whatever that might look like, even if it's your spouse, or you're the team members, your employees, contractors, whatever, but that you're then guiding it to get to that goal. And I've always been a technician that's the kind of person I am. So doing has always been a lot easier for me. So the idea of what a CEO is been something I've had to grow into, but making sure that you're holding the vision and making sure everybody is on track to that vision.

Gresham Harkless 14:33

Absolutely. Especially when having a team and putting all these processes and systems in place is important to be that Maestro actually spoke to. So definitely appreciate you for sharing that with us. And, again, I appreciate your time. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and then of course how best they can get ahold of you.

Tiffany Hoeckelman 14:50

Sure. Well, as I said, our big thing is helping solopreneurs service-based solopreneurs really help to know to communicate and be their brand identity so that they can best serve and best fulfill their mission in the world. And so I would love for people to check out the website, of course, which is loneorange.com like the Lone Ranger, that's here. This is people in orange. But also I've got a free checklist out there. So if you're interested in learning how to communicate and what all that entails, and all those aspects of your business to look at, I've got a free checklist, we just call it the no communicate and be checklist.

And so you can get that at the website. Again, at loneorange.com/kcb checklist. And of course, follow me on Facebook, just at Lone Orange. I do Facebook Lives and videos, and I even do some free coaching. So certainly follow me there. And I would love to interact with you if you got questions. I'd love to interact with you there too.

Gresham Harkless 16:03

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Tiffany, I truly appreciate it. And we'll have those links as well in the show notes. So you can also go down there and follow up with you and connect with you and meet the Loan Orange as well too. And I truly appreciate your time again, I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Tiffany Hoeckelman 16:17

My pleasure. Thanks so much. Gresh Have a good day.

Outro 16:20

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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