IAM1335 – Designer Helps Businesses Create Personal Brands Online

Sara Abate Rez is the Branding and Communications Director at Ambience Design Group and the Founder of My Personal Brand and the Work/Life Balance project. Sara is passionate about design, communication, laughter, and people. Her Bachelor of Design degree and 15 years working as a brand strategist and designer for various brands have led her to where she is today. She currently runs an interior design blog and creates DIY design solutions through AmbienceExpress.com. She writes for her personal blog on branding and work/life balance and works with entrepreneurs who wish to build their personal brands online so they can create a business and life they love.

• CEO Story: Sara has always been a very creative person in arts, design, and writing. That led her to get a bachelor's design degree which involves digital graphics online. Worked in an agency for a couple of years. Seeking a good work/life balance atmosphere, Sara then joined her mom’s creative design company and later on build her own personal branding agency.
• Business Service: Custom home, new business – creating the digital space. Personal brand and graphics.
• Secret Sauce: It is the personalization injecting more of the individual into the space following the right colors.
• CEO Hack: Work/Life Balance. To really look into your whole life and work combine them together and as a person with limitations. Take time to recharge/rest.
• CEO Nugget: Continue building your brand by slowly sharing and contributing online.
• CEO Defined: Represents yourself, your brand, ability to make decisions. Ability to make a difference in someone's life.

Website: mypersonalbrandlife.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/mypersonalbranding

LinkedIn: sara-abate-rezvanifar

YouTube: Sara Abate Rez

Book: laugh

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Transcription

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00:25 – 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 Harker 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.

00:53 – 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 Sara Abate Rez of My Personal Brand. Sara, It's great to have you on the show.

01:02 – Sara Abate Rez

Thank you so much for having me, Gresham.

01:04 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, super excited to have you on the show. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Sara. So you can hear about some of the awesome things that she's doing. Sara Abate Rez is the branding and communications director at Ambience Design Group and the founder of My Personal Brand and the Work-Life Balance Project. Sara is passionate about design, communications, laughter, and people.

Her bachelor's of design degree in 15 years working as a brand strategist and designer for various brands has led her to where she is today. She currently runs an interior design blog and creates DIY design solutions through ambienceexpress.com. She writes for her personal blog on branding and work-life balance and works with entrepreneurs who wish to build their personal brands online so that they can create a business and life that they love. Sara, super excited again to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:56 – Sara Abate Rez

Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to.

01:57 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit, a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:07 – Sara Abate Rez

Okay. Awesome. So thank you so much for having me. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to share my story and just sort of share my journey along the way. And I'll take you back. I've always been a very creative person. I love art and design and color and all the things that go with it, including writing as well. So that sort of creativity and passion led me to pursue a Bachelor of Design degree, which allowed me to really get involved with creating graphics digitally online, which is great, you know, in today's world, especially, and combining that as well with communication. So you know, the messaging and how that combines together to really create something impactful.

So I worked for many years in the sort of agency world and I got to do both the design and the client management side. So, you know, that was great. I did that for about probably 8 to 10 years. And, you know, I say like the work-life balance piece was getting a bit out of balance at that point. And so I kind of decided, you know, my mom at the time, she'd been running a successful interior design firm for many years, and she was herself rebranding, she was moving to new locations, so I thought, you know, this would be a great opportunity to kind of get a chance to have more of an impact, you know, at a level where I could have more autonomy, have more of an influence on her brand and building that up with her. And we got to combine our creative services.

So with her in your design, I got to join with my branding. We created something called branded spaces where we would do that for businesses. And we got to explore as well like building up a new website, a blog. I also had the opportunity to start building up another side of the business, which is the personal branding side, my level of people and just helping people really bring together their own their own gifts and their experience and how to represent themselves online. So that's an area that I'm really focusing on now. And, you know, that's kind of where we're at and it continues to evolve. The online space has so much potential and I'm just excited about that for myself and for others. And I think that's why I have such a passion for helping people build their personal brands and kind of claim their space online.

04:19 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I appreciate you so much for sharing your story. And as you talked about, your journey and what has gotten you to where you are. And I love just kind of like the evolution that sounds like in everything that you've been able to build as well too. And I think when we hear sometimes design or branding, we can sometimes be with focused eyes and only think of it in one way. But I love to hear the different ways that it sounds like you've been able to kind of approach that creativity that you had in communication and how that can manifest itself in a way, you know, a website is designed or it could manifest itself in the way that a space is designed or how somebody is branding themselves for their personal project. It just seems like it could manifest itself in a lot of different ways.

05:00 – Sara Abate Rez

Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. I realized that the skills I learned, like graphic skills can be applied in so many different ways. It was exciting to see them come together in a physical space. That was something new that I hadn't done before. And that was really cool to be able to do that and work with interior designers. And then also, you know, seeing how creating a brand from, let's say, from scratch or for a new business or one that wanted to have a rebrand, and then bringing it from, let's say, the conception form, maybe on paper, and then combining that and then see it come to life on the computer and then having it translated into marketing materials or into a physical space.

Like it's, it really lends itself, like you said, to so many different elements. So I really started to have a new appreciation for what I learned in school and what I've sort of developed over the years and how it is so applicable. And yeah, it's like a little magical skill that you can create graphics and have them be used in so many different ways. So yeah, I'm glad that it's adaptable and that it can serve in a lot of different applications for sure.

06:05 – Gresham Harkless

Perfect. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know you touched on a little bit about how you're serving your clients. Could you shake us a little bit more on what that looks like and how you make an impact for the clients you work with?

06:15 – Sara Abate Rez

Yeah, for sure. So on the interior design side, we help clients who say someone is, let's say from the full-service side, a custom home or a new business. So they're going to need more one-on-one assistance with creating the concept, the floor plans, and all of the digital documents that help them create that space. And there's a lot of elements that go into that from the plumbing to the mechanics and also, of course, the end, the look and feel of that. And that's also bringing the individual with it, whether it's the homeowner or the business owner, into that brand. So using the right colors, the things that help them feel good in that space.

So and then with the branding side, the graphic side, again, it does come back down to that individual. So represent themselves in their brand, in their business, using those colors that represent them and the design that look and feel that they'll be proud of. So I think like in both cases, the creativity aspect comes in, but then that personalization is key to ensuring that whatever it is that we are designing for them, we are creating it in tandem with them and their likes and their dislikes and the application that will serve them best and have them feel really proud of what they're putting out there or where they're living.

And so that's kind of how we've been able to serve our clients with the creative skills and the technical as well. Our job is to find a way to make it fit really nicely together so that it is cohesive and it tells a story and why is, you know, maybe a personal experience or personal like of importance to my brand. And because people want to know the why behind why are you doing something? So maybe something that happened to you in your life sparked your interest in where you are now in your business. So it really, you know, gets really down to the personalization. So certainly, yeah. And I encourage, you know, more people to do that and to embrace all of them, yeah, all of themselves.

08:04 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, no, without a doubt. So I wanted to ask you for what I like to call your secret sauce. And you might have already touched on this. I know we touched on it, on you helping your clients to be able to do that too. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique or the business as well?

08:19 – Sara Abate Rez

Yeah, so we did touch a little bit upon it and it really does come down to that personalization and knowing that whether we're designing someone's space, whether it be personal or business that we're injecting more of the individual into the space, that we're following the colors that feel right to them, that they're drawn to, so that we're always creating something that feels good to the end user. So when it comes to personal branding, we want to know the what are the colors, the look and feel that they're drawn to what sort of represents them so we have we take them through, you know, an extensive process to understand that better.

So I think the secret sauce is really like not for myself like we bring all of ourselves into the design. So of course we're gonna share our own experience and what we think works, but in the end, it always is gonna come down to that individual. So it is a very personalized business, whether it is, you know, again, designing for someone's space or someone's brand. So it does end up being a customized process. But I think in the end, we always have to go in and trust ourselves and what feels good. Like, yes, there's always the thinking part, but we also really get a tune into ourselves, our gut, and what feels right to us. So we encourage our clients and whatever design application to always do

09:40 – Gresham Harkless

that. Yeah, I love that you shared that. And I myself, a lot of the things that I've started and I'm even doing now was largely because I did certain things as a child and I lean more into that. And I could definitely echo everything that you're saying. And it's something powerful when you can be your true, authentic, and complete self. So thank you so much for doing that. 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 app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:10 – Sara Abate Rez

Okay, so the hack that I'd like to offer, I would say is around a work-life balance piece. So this is an area that I and I'm sure many high achievers struggle with. So I've had to really like look at blending my life and my work into one calendar. So I would recommend that you know, we all have a lot on the go. We are one person. So looking at everything at a glance, helps us to really see what we have and what we're able to do on any given day.

So by combining both, we can see, okay, you know, whether we have a meeting or we can, you know, even like time blocking so we can have days where we're having lots of meetings and days where we're having that deep work where we're getting into the creative process. So I would say, like, you know, to really look at your whole life, your work, your life combined together and know that as one person, we're limited in our energy. So to look at that. And then also like when you know that you're facing an intense period of work to follow it up with an adequate amount of rest, right?

So that you can really rise up again and recharge and be ready for that next work or life challenge. So those are would be my hacks that I really had to learn to do for myself because naturally, I am a workaholic. I could work, work, work, but I, you know, I've been through the burnout. I'm sure many people have experienced it and I've had to find ways to be a bit more realistic about things and to not beat myself up if I didn't get everything that I wanted to do.

I look at things on the day and also on the week, what can I achieve, and realize that yes, sometimes there's gonna be an intense period of work and that's what we need to do sometimes to accomplish those big goals. But then you have to allow yourself to rest too. Otherwise, you won't be able to sustain it and go for the long call. Cause it's a marathon, right?

11:58 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I was actually absolutely just about to say that as well. It's definitely a marathon and I almost feel like you're taking a peek at my calendar as well too because I'm very much that person. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:19 – Sara Abate Rez

To start building your platform online. So again, I see this as a long game. It's not something like an overnight success. Building your personal brand is a slow game where you're going to start to offer your expertise, whether it's through a blog or a video or sharing other people's content that is relevant to what you're doing or what you're interested in. So know that all these little pieces are going to start to build over time. They all are going to be online. They're going to be on Google.

So as people start to search online, which they will naturally, they're going to start to see that, oh, this person has been contributing to this space and in this particular subject. So This is going to help build people's trust in you. And I would say like, you know, whatever it is, even if it's today, just start, start slowly. Don't get discouraged. It is something that we'll build over time. It's an age where there's more and more people are coming online.

Believe it or not, I don't believe the whole world is online yet, but we're getting there. And so it's overwhelming to think, you know, you want to have it all done. But I say just continue slowly over time, contributing, and sharing, and it will build from there. So that's my nugget to encourage people to continue to contribute no matter how slow no matter you know how little it will continue to build and you know have confidence in that.

13:41 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely appreciate that nugget and so now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Sara, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:54 – Sara Abate Rez

Okay, so being a CEO means that I represent myself. Sara, Inc. So I'm my own brand. I have the ability to make decisions that are going to benefit my life and my work as a whole. So it gives me that autonomy. I also as a CEO have the ability to make a difference in someone's life in the way that I feel would most benefit them through my own experience and talents, so to speak. And it's very rewarding for me personally, to have that sense of self, and to know that I can help them in a way that also, is, is good for me. So it's not, it's going to assist them at the same time. It's going to make me feel good about the way I'm doing it. So it's a give-give and we both benefit. So yeah, that's what it means to me.

14:44 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Sara, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was 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 a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:01 – Sara Abate Rez

You have to realize that your value as a human is not always about how much you can do. It's really about how much you can still, of course, achieve, but do it in a way that is more sustainable so that you're not taking away from other elements of your life. So again, going back to giving yourself grace, if you're having a bad day or a bad week, know that it's okay to rest and that when you come back and you rise again, you're going to be stronger, you're going to be clear and not to beat yourself up over that.

You can check me out at mypersonalbrandlife.com. And if you're in integer designing, we have also a great program at ambiance express.com. So that actually is something new and it's more of a do-it-yourself. But of course, if you need the full scope, there's that as well. So those are the 2 main ones, I would say, get a hold of me.

15:47 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And to make it even easier, we're gonna have the links and information in the show notes as well. So love that last point. Of course, love the work that you do and the time you took today. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

15:59 – Sara Abate Rez

Thank you so much. I love the opportunity to speak and share this. And I hope that more people hear it and they take that advice in their own life and their own business as well.

16:10 – 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.

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