IAM1496 – Graphic Designer Helps Start-Up Companies Create a Competitive Brand

Amy Hanlon, founder of Blue Meta Design, visually showcases the impactful stories of startups through graphic design, partnering with VCs on cutting-edge investments. A small branding agency located in the Mid-South, Blue Meta Design is client-focused, servicing companies that are changing the world and their communities. With a goal to create memorable brands, Amy dives deep into the inner workings of each company to develop creative visuals while supplementing customizable services. She works with some of Silicon Valley's biggest names, giving her insight into what makes a brand stand out to a venture capital firm. Graphic design is Blue Meta's medium for making their clients' brands their competitive edge, ultimately acting as an extension of their client's teams, providing highly integrated solutions to help them succeed.

• CEO Story: After graduating from Graphic Design in College, Amy went on to work for a variety of companies in different industries. She had the opportunity to do freelance full-time 5 or 6 years ago. Overwhelmed with clients in her first year, and so she moved to her next step which was to build an agency.
• Business Service: Focus on design-specific solutions. Develop brands and also do extensions. Website, social media, pitch decks, sales decks, onboarding decks, etc.
• Secret Sauce: Variety of clients they work with. Start-up companies, seed companies, and venture capital. Thoughtfully built team – speed and ask the right questions to deliver the right solutions.
• CEO Hack: Embracing data in the business side of everything. Developing a spreadsheet for your company to have a custom to your business to give you an insight.
• CEO Nugget: Making decisions based on 80% data, 20% gut. Making sure it feels like the right decision but make sure you have the numbers to back it up.
• CEO Defined: A deep responsibility for the team. Responsibility for the clients, giving them solutions that would make them succeed.

Website: bluemetadesign.com

Instagram: bluemetadesign

LinkedIn: blue-meta-design

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00:20 – Intro

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 Harkness 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.

00:48 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Amy Hanlon of Blue Meta Design. Amy, super excited to have you on the show.

00:58 – Amy Hanlon

I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

01:02 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, excited as well. And you're doing so many awesome things. We had a great little first connection. So before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Amy Siggity here about all the awesomeness that she's working on. Amy is the founder of Blue Meta Design, which Visually showcases the impactful stories of startups through graphic design, partnering with VCs on cutting-edge investments and a small branding agency located in the mid-south. Blue Meta Design is client-focused, servicing companies that are changing the world and their communities. With a goal to create memorable brands, Amy dives deep into the inner workings of each company to develop creative visuals while supplementing customizable services.

She works with some of Silicon Valley's biggest names, giving her insight into what makes a brand stand out to a venture capital firm blue metal medium for brands, their competitive as an extension of their providing highly integrate they succeed. Amy is excited about the show. Are you reading community? Yeah, let's do awesome. So I know I seth in terms of like what you do. So I wanted to rewind the clock here a little bit more on how you guys started what I call your CEO story.

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02:17 – Amy Hanlon

Absolutely. So I am a trained graphic designer, went to school, went to college to be a graphic designer, has many years of experience as a graphic designer underneath my belt, and worked for a variety of different companies and industries. And about probably 5, 5 and a half, 6 years ago, I had the opportunity to go freelance full-time. And I decided that was the next step that I really wanted to take. No intent of starting an agency at all. But in that first year, my client list essentially just blew up and there was no way for me to handle all of the work myself. So in that time, I decided, you know what? Let's take the next step. Let's build an agency and build it differently than other agencies are typically built. So that's kind of how Blue Meadow was born. It was more of supply, demand, and necessity to kind of keep working.

03:25 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. So when you're what you do. And a lot that experience and a lot make plans and, and you k quote is we make plans, a lot of times it just blazes you and puts you in the place you're supposed to be. Not sometimes in the place we decide that we're going to be. Absolutely true. Yes. Nice. So I know I touched on it, you know when I read your bio, but I want to draw down a little bit more. Can you take us through a little bit more on what you're doing with Lumeta, and how you're serving clients you work with?

03:52 – Amy Hanlon

Yeah. So we really focus on design-specific solutions for our clients. So we're a graphic design agency, we're a branding agency, meaning we both develop brands, we extend brands through brand extensions of their assets, but then we also take brands that are already established and evolve into more collaterals that they may potentially need. So for example, maybe it's a website or maybe it's a website refresh, maybe it's some white papers, social media assistance, It could be pitch decks. A huge thing in our industry. We do so many of them, so we do pitch decks, sales decks, and onboarding decks. It's really anything that your brand is touching and needs design assistance. So visual branding, visual marketing, that's really where we excel at.

04:56 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I absolutely love that. And I don't know if you would say this, but I almost feel like anything your brand does touch does need design help. So that's pretty much all of the above. I think you might say the same thing.

05:06 – Amy Hanlon

Yeah, very much.

05:08 – Gresham Harkless

It does. But I love that you said design-specific solutions. What really kind of attracted me was the word solutions because I think, and I don't know if you feel the same way that so many times we even as you know entrepreneurs CEOs, and business owners don't look at what we do as solutions and definitely sometimes when we're serving our clients we're not looking at it as a solution and how we can kind of solve whatever problem they have.

05:30 – Amy Hanlon

It's so true. There are so many things that design can elevate a company and a brand. It can help you stand out. A lot of times if you have great branding, it can make you feel so much bigger. The company looks and feels and operates so much bigger if you have strong visual brands that are behind that's really where we ki help our clients.

05:58 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, something that sometimes envision, sometimes that we want to be, but it doesn't always manifest itself in the things that people see. Sometimes the collateral that we have. So I love that it sounds like you bridge that gap to help sometimes that vision and that mission kind of come to fruition and everything that people see.

06:19 – Amy Hanlon

For sure.

06:19 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. It could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

06:30 – Amy Hanlon

I think our secret sauce is the variety of clients that we work with. I think there are a couple of things. I think it's a variety of clients we work with. So we really have a strong niche in the technology startup world, But on both sides of the realms, we work with startup companies. It can be what we call a baby company like you just have the idea, maybe you don't have a brand, you don't have the visuals to back it up, you don't have a website. It can be, you know, that's kind of like a seed. Then when it comes to investing, there's like series A and B and C, and it goes on forever. So we work with a variety of those clients.

And so these entrepreneurs, the startup world, it's very fast. But on the flip side, we also work with the VCs. So the venture capitalist firms, the investors that are throwing the hundreds of millions of dollars into these startups to kind of help them elevate their company and move faster. So we see both sides of the coin and it really gives us an advantage that I think a lot of other agencies in this world don't have. We work very closely with a lot of our clients in the BC world. We know what they're looking for. We know what is making companies stand apart in those pitch opportunities.

So we really have the insight of both sides that we're able to help both sides of our clients with, which is really unique for us. I think the other thing is our people, honestly. The team, we're not a huge agency, we're actually a small agency, but our team is very thoughtfully put together. And we can create so many wonderful solutions and fast. This industry is insanely fast. So, we know how to work at the speed of our clients know how to kind of like push for more speed, and know the right questions to ask so we can get solutions to you as fast as humanly possible. So I think it's a combination of those 2 things.

08:49 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I love it. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:02 – Amy Hanlon

One of the hacks that I've really learned and have embraced is the data portion of the business side of everything, of the agency. And really embracing spreadsheets. I know Excel, a lot of people are like, oh my god Excel, just don't even. I love spreadsheets, I love Excel, it is the weirdest thing I have developed. There are quite a few spreadsheets that we use daily weekly and quarterly just to get a pulse on where the company is and running reports and I think I don't know if it's necessarily a hack I think this is something that all businesses should do but just fully embracing the data and developing spreadsheets that are just so custom to your business to give you an insight has done wonders for us. So I think that is what I would call my hack. I'm not sure it's an undiscovered hack though.

10:05 – Gresham Harkless

Well, as long as the hack works, that's what I usually say. That is the measure of a really great hack. And I think it's such a huge thing. I don't know if you've ever heard this quote or you subscribe to this, but I always said, I feel like the systems, the processes, the organization will set you free. And I think that having those things in place, allows you to become even more creative, I think because you don't have to worry, did we do this or did we do that? Are we doing this correctly? Because we looked at the data, we looked at the spreadsheet, and we created the correct formulas so we know we're in the right place and we could just go and create.

10:37 – Amy Hanlon

Yes, it's, I would say probably the last year I've spent a good amount of time on our systems and processes and making sure that we are flowing effortlessly and there are no missteps. And I think it has helped tremendously, quite honestly.

10:55 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, so you might've already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more word of wisdom or piece of advice is something you might tell your younger business self if you were to happen to a time machine or potentially your favorite client.

11:08 – Amy Hanlon

A word, a golden nugget. I think I kind of mentioned a little bit before the agency being a CEO, being a founder was never An aspiration of mine. I didn't think it was now that I was here. It feels like a natural fit but I think Being where I am right now. I think the good nugget would be decision-making when it comes to the business is it it's a little bit of an 80-20 rule for me. It's 80% data, taking a look at the data, making sure you have the numbers to back it up, but 20% gut. There are a lot of times when I think that this is the right decision, and then I'll go through, maybe it's expanding the team. Maybe it's a marketing effort that we want to do. Regardless, there are so many decisions that you constantly make in a business, but it's kind of that 80-20 split a little bit. It's making sure you, feel like the right decision, but then making sure you have the numbers as well.

12:23 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love that and sometimes our gut is together things that som you know, trusting you we're not able to articulate or say but there's something there that we are being told that we need to kind of lean more into. So I almost feel like, you know, those things can still kind of go hand in hand too.

12:52 – Amy Hanlon

Yeah, it is. My gut has not served me wrong yet.

12:57 – Amy Hanlon

So I am gonna hold onto that one.

12:59 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. A lot of times when you hear people that said I should have done X, Y, and Z, it's a lot of times because I should have listened to my guy. I knew that I should have done X, Y, and Z, and I just didn't pay attention to it. So pay attention to that data. Of course, definitely pay attention to that. So I love that 100 percent. Yeah. Awesome. Also, so I want to ask you now 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 this show. So Amy, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:23 – Amy Hanlon

So I think being a CEO to me is, the word that always comes to mind is responsibility. It's, you know, a lot of times you hear that word freedom, which is true. It does give you some freedom. But for me, it's more responsibility. I feel a deep responsibility for my team because I know that the success of the business is going to reflect them as well. Obviously, that's where bonuses come in. We have a bonus structure. Bonuses come in, raises come in, promotions come in. If the business isn't doing well and isn't doing the things that we need to do, it's gonna affect my team. But also the responsibility for my clients.

My clients are expecting outcomes and making sure that we are working with our clients, hand in hand, giving them solutions that are going to make them succeed. Because ultimately, if our clients succeed, we succeed. So I think really it's that responsibility, and then also just my family. My family solely is reliant on my successes, and that responsibility is on me. So I think that that is really what a CEO to me is, is that responsibility aspect.

14:44 – Gresham Harkless

Well, Amy, truly appreciate that definition. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best people can get out of view. Thought about all the awesome things you and the team are working on.

15:00 – Amy Hanlon

Yeah, we are always looking, you know, if anyone is interested in any graphic design needs, we're always constantly doing discovery calls. It's super important to make sure it's a good fit equally. We want to make sure that we're going to be a good fit for the client and also that the client is a good fit for us as well. So lots of discovery calls are always super important to make sure that you're going to mesh together. It gives a great end product if you don't skip that step reach us on the website, dot com. We're also on Li as well.

15:42 – Gresham Harkless

And to make it have the links and inform notes as well too, so that everybody can reach out and connect and find out about all the awesome things. I love everything that you've been able to kind of talk about, and obviously everything that you're doing. And right in line, I love you talking about the importance of doing that intro, call that connection that they really know if you're working with the right person, but also if the person is selecting you as the right person as well. And I think that right in line with the data and the gut and all the things that we talked about, you know, related to how you've been able to kind of create that, I guess, the culture around design being a solution. Appreciate you again for all the awesomeness that you're doing and of course your time again and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:21 – Amy Hanlon

Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed the time.

16:25 –  Outro

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.