Jen Olmstead, a Virginia-based graphic designer, visual storyteller, type nerd, and cofounder of the Tonic Site Shop, shares how she got started designing websites and tips for creating an authentic and unique brand.
More about Jen:
Jennifer is a Virginia-based graphic designer, visual storyteller, and type nerd. A lifelong fan of a good story – and shaping the words and letters that tell it – she specializes in creating uniquely-tailored brand experiences for creative entrepreneurs, and in building online spaces that people love to explore.
In 2013, Jen and fellow designer Jeffrey Shipley founded TONIC SITE SHOP and launched their first collection of cocktail-inspired, “completely customizable websites for the modern, stylish creative.” (Yep, there’s a Martini, a Mojito, and Moscow Mule… her mother is still pretty sure she owns a bar.)
Jen runs her business from her home outside Washington, D.C., where she lives with her handsome husband, their two little girls, a golden retriever, and a much-beloved espresso machine. She eats gluten so you don’t have to, enjoys hosting and hospitality (with a cocktail in hand!), and her love language is witty banter.
Follow Jen: Website | Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest | Freebie
Show Sponsor: Showit – The website builder for photographers and creative entrepreneurs. Use the code DAVEYANDKRISTA to save 30% on an annual subscription.
The transcript…
A note about the transcript: The interviews are transcribed by an online app, and there may be errors in the transcription. While we do our best to correct errors—especially those that may change the meaning of what a speaker was trying to say—we do not catch every error. Thus we ask that people refer back to the audio/video for quotes. Also, please refer back to the audio/video if something is not clear in transcript; however, if you are hearing impaired, feel free to email us for clarifications.
(intro)
Jen Olmstead: 00:00:00 … no, don’t do this right now. You need to live in your brand. You need to occupy your brand first. Because we like to say a designer can’t give you a brand, they can only give your brand something to wear. I’m not in the process of just like handing out brands that are going to make you successful and I think people see these pieces of the puzzle…
Davey Jones: 00:00:32 Welcome to the Brands that Book Show where we build creative businesses, build their brands and find more clients. I’m your host, Davey Jones and today’s interview is with the Jen Olmstead, a Virginia based, the graphic designer and visual storyteller who’s worked with some of the biggest names in the creative industry and today she’s sharing how you can create a unique and authentic brand even without hiring a designer.
(end intro)
Davey Jones: 00:00:59 So first getting started. Life looks a lot different for you now, right? Having a second child. And you work from home primarily?
Jen Olmstead: 00:01:10 I do, yeah.
Davey Jones: 00:01:15 So how’s that transition been going from having one to two?
Jen Olmstead: 00:01:18 I mean, I feel I got knocked off a little pedestal because I feel I was just like, Hey, you know what? I don’t know why people talk about it being just so hard to be a mom and a creative an entrepreneur. We’re doing great. And I think I unfairly remembered when my first daughter was born three years ago, I was like, you know, this is great. I launched a website the week after she was born, I had guests in to work on their brands and she would sleep for a few hours and I work for a few hours and then we’d be sipping espresso together and I feel like I got so much done. And so I thought that that’s kind of what would happen this time around with my daughter Sophia who is now six months old. And so I didn’t really take time off with Sophia and I still had a full slate of work because I was remembering this imaginary and productive Jennifer who lived three years ago and this time I was like, how did I not account for the fact that when I have a baby sleeping, I have a three year old who needs lunch or a snack or the next episode of something or who wants to color.
Jen Olmstead: 00:02:22 And so it was definitely a much bigger adjustment than I thought it would be inside really had to get into a new rhythm of like, OK, I can’t really plan to have four hours of work time at any time unless I’m going to stay up until two in the morning or unless I have help that day. So it was a really humbling adjustment of like, OK, this is a totally new season and I have to account for that. And I’ve been very grateful to have clients in that and a business like Tonic, that’s more of a residual income that can operate without my direct involvement at every moment because I certainly haven’t been able to be involved in every moment. So I feel like the light end of the tunnel is here, but it was definitely a bigger adjustment than I expected.
Davey Jones: 00:03:04 Yeah. Well I know Krista and I are going to be looking to you as we get, as we get closer to June and figuring that out for ourselves. But that’s, that’s awesome. And I want to, I want to go back and really talk about how you first got started. So you went to Patrick Henry College and you majored in journalism. And how did a degree in journalism lead to design?
Jen Olmstead: 00:03:33 Well, I’m very much the quintessential accidental entrepreneur story. I went to college for journalism. I was super excited about writing long form journalism. And working for the New Yorker or McSweeney’s or The Onion or something in that nature. And I knew at that point, and it’s still true now, that mostly I just loved stories and I found people really fascinating and I loved talking with them and figuring out what made them tick. And so that was really representative in my writing at that point. It’s like, OK, like how can you take this person and really articulate who they are and what they think and write something that appeals to them
Davey Jones: 00:04:09 I do think that you would be great at The onion. I mean you would have been great at all those places, but I think that would’ve been a great fit.
Jen Olmstead: 00:04:17 I was really excited about that. I was like, Oh, maybe I can be in broadcast and be Diane Sawyer. And they’re like making people cry or making them laugh, you know, just like… I was very excited about this. And then I realized that I wasn’t hot enough to be on daytime and I probably would just end up as a weather girl until I got wrinkles. And I was like, OK, this is not a good trajectory for me. So that’s what I was pursuing in college. And then I think it was kind of telling whenever I was the editor of the school paper and my first editorial decision was, should we change the body font to Minion Pro? It wasn’t anything story related, nothing about actual journalism. And so I think that was the first hint when I loved, I fell in love with editorial design and layout and was up late researching other newspapers and magazines and kind of sifting through those ideas.
Jen Olmstead: 00:05:11 And so I think I began to realize if the story doesn’t look good, if it’s not visually appealing, then people don’t want to read it. All of a sudden when we redesigned, even our school newspaper, everyone was like, oh, did you know we had a school newspaper? This is not bad. So it was really telling. And so the college actually started hiring me to do some design projects for them. Some marketing and branding projects, which was dumb since I was a college sophomore. I’m like, that was a terrible idea. College, I don’t know what you’re doing. But then some friends were like, Hey, I’m getting married, can you design a wedding invitation? And then sooner or later, since I was in college, a bunch of my friends had started photography businesses around that time as that kind of was booming.
Jen Olmstead: 00:05:53 And were like, “Hey Jen, I would love to have your help designing my website.” And I was like, no, that’s not what, I don’t do coding. I don’t have any experience in this whatsoever. And again, they were like, “I don’t care if you have any experience, let’s just try it.” And so they introduced me to the platform that you now love too, that I remember selling Krista on a few years ago, Showit. And so I fell in love will Showit because a) the team was super awesome. And then obviously it’s a platform where you don’t have to do any coding or back end or it gets developed visually. So that was a new, exciting place for me to land. And so I did my first website for a friend and then one of her friends is like, “Hey, I saw your website, who did that, can they help me?” And then things just began to snowball from there because as you know, the creative world is just so very large and small at the same time. The great thing about what we do is you never have to tell someone, man, you really need a new website. They’re in this vacuum of like, oh my gosh, I totally need a new website. My website sucks so much. Please help.
Davey Jones: 00:06:57 So I feel like everybody goes through that each year almost. Where they feel like “hey, my website needs to an update.” And it’s so true that the creative industry is so big and you’re always discovering different corners of it, but at the same time, somehow so small as well. But that’s such a fascinating story because that’s kind of how Krista got involved in the design as well. But it was in high school. She was working for the high school school paper and realized that she didn’t care so much about the writing part as she did about the layout of the paper. And so she was going to go to school for journalism and right before she got there, decided to change her major to design. And so that’s how she got started in design. Worked in a wedding invitation studio.
Jen Olmstead: 00:06:57 Oh my gosh. We had very parallel lives and I did not know that!
Davey Jones: 00:07:45 And it’s so interesting now talking to a number of entrepreneurs, how they kind of stumble into that world, because I don’t really think that there is a ton of preparation, even if you were to major in business in school, there’s not really a ton of preparation for running your own business, being an entrepreneur, being part of a small team, you know.
Jen Olmstead: 00:08:06 I think that’s going to change. I think increasingly as our society is focused more on entrepreneurship and that’s been highlighted. I think that they are going to be a lot more streams of higher education that are oriented towards entrepreneurship. And I’m excited about that because I think that’ll be super beneficial thing because when I started out I knew nothing about running a business. I still know very little about running a business.
Davey Jones: 00:08:32 You and your husband run your own businesses.
Jen Olmstead: 00:08:33 Yes. And without my husband I would still, I would not have a business license. He was like, you should be an S Corp. And I’m like, that sounds cool. That’s a lot of letters. I’ve definitely benefited because he started his business in college to pay for college. And so he and his brother paid for their school by working full time, starting a business in college and he still runs that business now. So I’ve really benefited from his entrepreneurial streak too.
Davey Jones: 00:09:00 Yeah, that’s awesome. And it’s so nice to have somebody, you know, because Krista for a long time, ran her own business and I was a high school teacher. And I know that for her, having somebody else to be in it with her was huge just from a support standpoint. But I hope that you’re right and that education does start going that route where there’s more real world in general. So your first clients, they were photographers?
Jen Olmstead: 00:09:33 Yes. It’s interesting because everyone says in the creative world, you’ve got to find your niche and I feel like my niche kind of found me because thankfully every photographer knows approximately 1000 other photographers. It seems. And so when I did the first site for that photographer, she ended up being a sandwich board for my business. Because all of a sudden she had a new website and all of her friends and their friends saw it. And so I think that was a really beneficial thing for me to realize as soon as you’re in a pool, that pool is your client base. And so that was a really helpful thing starting out because I never was like, “I’m a web designer for creatives and branding specialist for creatives and small businesses and photographers.” That kind of became my title by the fact that I was working with this specific group of people. And because of that I got to know that specific industry well. And what their clients were looking for and what that looked like. And so I think that was really beneficial early on.
Davey Jones: 00:10:32 So early on, while while you’re taking those clients, did you like working with the photographer? And so you kind of knew after maybe building a couple of photography websites in particular that you’re like, hey, I’m good at this?
Jen Olmstead: 00:10:57 It’s really interesting because very quickly into the process I was like, this is what I’m good at. This is where of all the things I care about merge. I remember one of the first conversations with one of my clients Sarah Bradshaw, who was my second client ever. We just launched the new version of her site, so many years later. So she’s still a client of mine. And I remember sitting down with her at Panera and I was like, ok, so like what do you want your site to look like? Who’s your ideal client? And I began to ask her questions as a journalist and she really responded to that and I feel like in the course of that conversation she’s like, man, I’m so excited because I feel like you really get what I’m trying to do.
Jen Olmstead: 00:11:33 And I was like, yeah, no I do. I feel like I get it. I feel like I know what kind of a story I’m trying to tell. And then that made me really be equipped to visually translate that visually. Now that’s a super popular concept, but don’t think that that was typical in the design community that I was in, at least at that point. I don’t think that was how most people have approached it. And so I think that made the results be somewhat different. And I loved then, after I had that story in place, the visuals were already there and that’s the benefit of working for photographers, as you know, is that they already have great visuals. Whereas most small businesses are like crap, I need to have photos for this?
Davey Jones: 00:11:33 Yeah, all they have are old iPhone photos or something like that.
Jen Olmstead: 00:12:23 I just got photos for a project the other day for a project that I was doing actually for my college and I was like, how is this photo 12 kilobytes? Where did you get this photo? Is this from a smart phone from 25 years ago?
Davey Jones: 00:12:34 The very first digital camera…
Jen Olmstead: 00:12:40 They have their razor phone and they’re taking photos with it somewhere in a dark room. So I don’t know.
Davey Jones: 00:12:42 You’re still doing some work for your college?
Jen Olmstead: 00:12:45 Yeah, it’s actually funny because they currently don’t have a graphic designer on staff and so they’ve joked that I am their staff graphic designer, but I keep telling them, I’m like, no, I have two other full time jobs.
Davey Jones: 00:12:58 You should say, yeah, that’s fine as long as my kids get full rides to school or something like that. So as you got started and you get your first client and that client led to two others, did you ever get to a place where you’re like, ok, this is what I want to do now? I need to go and find clients. Were there any challenges there in building your client base? Or did clients kind of find you?
Jen Olmstead: 00:13:31 This is a terrible question because I’m going to say no, that I didn’t ever go out and find clients. In fact, I had the opposite problem. I call it like the oh crap moment of entrepreneurship where all of a sudden demand was far exceeding what I can execute and some that was a huge struggle. Still is a struggle for me honestly, is because those first few websites people responded to really well. All of a sudden I had this huge influx of inquiries and people that were like, hey man, I love this website. Please build mine. Can you do it next week? And I was like, no, I can’t do that. I’m so sorry, no, I can’t. And because of how in-depth with my process was with each client, it was pretty time consuming for each project. And so all of a sudden I was facing being over committed or working on too many things at one, time having this process that was extending too far out because I had a client and another client and I was working on too many projects at the same time.
Jen Olmstead: 00:14:34 And so I really had to just overhaul my process, take fewer clients and realize that every single time I launched a website, there was going to be an influx of new inquiries of people saying, “hey, please can you do this?” And I think that’s the benefit of figuring out what your process looks like and achieving an outcome that you’re proud of and working with clients that you love. Each project is basically your biggest marketing piece at that point. And so I think that it was kind of the opposite problem where I wasn’t having to find clients, I was having to figure out how to treat my existing clients well and then how to say no or figure out something else. And so that’s actually why I started the Tonic Site Shop that I have with my partner Jeff Shipley.
Jen Olmstead: 00:15:21 That’s why I started that with him because we saw this huge demand and this huge need and all these creatives who are like, oh my gosh, my website sucks. I love this website that you built. Can you do it? And I was just saying no over and over and over. And they’re like, well crap. And so we decided, ok, there’s obviously this huge need. We should design a set of templates for people who hate templates, who don’t want a template website. That was kind of our audience. We said it was templates for people who give a damn – with apologies to my mother who is listening to this. But we set out to create things that were just as good and just as intentional and just as well researched and just as well designed as any of our custom projects that anyone would be proud to have. Who would say like, oh man, It’s like you designed this just for me. So that’s kind of how Tonic was born, out of feeling terrible for just saying, no, I can’t help you over and over.
Davey Jones: 00:16:15 Yeah. Well that’s that’s probably been a huge blessing then to be able to send people to the templates. And the interesting thing about templates is especially on Showit, we’re fans of Showit too, is that it’s just such an easy platform to use and pick up and be able to do it yourself. And especially if you start with a good template, you can really make that template your own. So at the end of the day, you don’t have to worry necessarily about having a matching website to somebody else because I think that most of the time when we look at how people have used our templates, they end up with very different websites at the end of the day.
Jen Olmstead: 00:16:56 Exactly. I think that’s a huge benefit. And I think the narrative, at least that I was hearing years ago and I still hear all the time now is, “I have this website that someone built for me and I don’t know how to change it. And so it’s been the same thing for the last six years. I don’t know how to add new photos, my portfolio is super out of date and I paid all this money for a site that I can’t do myself.” And I feel like we’ve been so pleased to be able to say like, hey, guess what? You don’t have to be held in website jail. You should be in control of your own website. And so even now with my clients that I build custom stuff for, I love that like Jenna Kutcher able to say, “hey Jen, I just added this sales page the other day. Can you take a look at it?” And I’m like, that is so cool that she didn’t want to say like, Jen, can you do this for me? She took all the bones that we’ve created together and she was able to create a totally matching new section without feeling like she was held hostage by my design.
Davey Jones: 00:17:49 So going back a little bit, you mentioned that you had to learn how to say no. And I feel like that’s such a struggle for people. They have this influx of work and you want to say yes to everything, 1) because you’re making money from it. But then also because you might not like to say no. How did you get into the rhythm of saying, ok, these are the projects that I’m going to focus on and that I’m going to say yes to. And these are the projects that I’m going to say no to, at least for the time being.
Jen Olmstead: 00:18:14 I will let you know that in 2019 when we do another interview. First you have to realize that you’re not the best fit for every client. I think that’s something that we have to realize as creatives. We can see ourselves in so many shoes to our detriment. And I go like, I couldn’t be the one to do this for you and these days I have a lot of people that are like, I know that you were put on this earth and design the website for me. And I’m like, no, I don’t think so. Because there are tons of other really talented designers out there that need a client. And so if I take on too many clients, why am I taking someone who might be a great fit for this person over here? Or why am I taking away an experience that this client might have so much better with another designer who’s a better fit for them? So I think that shift in mindset is really important. Just realizing you’re not the best fit for everyone and everyone is not the best fit for you.
Davey Jones: 00:19:15 Yeah, I think that’s great insight. We see that in a photography business as well. We might have a really a high budget wedding inquiry that comes in and we want to say this wedding is going to be gorgeous, but at the end of the day there might be a few things where it’s just not a good fit for us in particular. So I think learning to say no, I mean it’s difficult, but I do think it’s very liberating at the end of the day. And it really allows you to focus on those clients that are a good fit, that are going to have the best experience possible.
Jen Olmstead: 00:19:52 Yeah. And so I think that it’s realizing who do you love to create for? How much can you create? And that for me has been huge. Just realizing that I honestly can’t take on too many projects before my work really suffers and before my client experience really suffers. And so my threshold for that is probably lower than a lot of people because I put so much into each project, into anything. And so I think I had to realize, “who do I love to create for and how much can I create?” Those are two guiding thoughts. And then when people inquire, it’s also really telling the things that they ask when they inquire. The things that they’re attracted to. And I mean I don’t have like a specific design style.
Jen Olmstead: 00:20:39 I don’t have like, “oh, this is the kind of site I like to design over and over and so you need to like the style.” I really try to disappear as much as I can into each project. I love having each project be super unique. And so if someone emails me and says, “hey, I want something just like this project that you designed over here,” to me, that’s usually a good indication that I’m not going to be a great fit for the project because I don’t want to just redo that website. I want someone to say, “man, I haven’t done anything that falls in line with what I’m looking for, can you help me create something that’s super new and original?” And I think that to me is like a super tantalizing opportunity. I’m like, yes. Like, let’s create something super awesome.
Davey Jones: 00:21:22 I want to get to how you do that. But do you feel like, since we’re talking about saying no and picking the rIght clients and things, do you think it’s, maybe even more important for a designer to pick the right client? Because I almost feel like it’s building a house. It’s a little bit more intricate than I think people realize coming into the experience. Like you had mentioned joking around about people who come in and say, “hey, I need to launch my website next week”. And you’re like, yeah, that’s just not gonna happen. And it’s not going to happen at least and it look good. So there’s more intricacies to it. There are some delays. There’s decision making on the part of the client. So how do you communicate that kind of stuff to your client?
Jen Olmstead: 00:22:14 Communicate what the reasons are for them not being able… how do I communicate when they’re not a good fit? Is that what you’re saying?
Davey Jones: 00:22:22 No. How do you communicate upfront what this process looks like because it is such a depth process?
Jen Olmstead: 00:22:29 So I feel like setting expectations in any project is so vital. And just a quick aside here. I think that one of the things I like to talk about as a designer is figuring out the best case scenario process for you. And so one of the things that I’ve realized, in my workflow is that when a project stretches out, and stretches out and stretches out… as the timeline goes on, there’s an automatic decrease in inspiration and motivation. For me and then also for the client. I feel like you get excited about something and then as the time goes on you get less and less excited all the time and you kind of can’t capture… It’s like dating. That initial first date when sparks are flying.
Jen Olmstead: 00:23:14 It’s like this is the really exciting time. And then obviously, you know, in the best case scenario, that spark doesn’t go away. But in design work, I realized that I needed to act on that initial spark. And so I reoriented my workflow to be a design intensive focus. And so I actually did one yesterday with a client and we were sitting in a very collaborative atmosphere like you and I are right now. And I was showing her concepts and she was saying like, oh yeah, I like that, but something about this doesn’t feel right. And so in that moment there’s a huge amount of energy where I was super inspired. Now if I wait another four months, that energy would dissipate significantly. But if I work on her stuff today, whenever I’m coming off that like creative high, I’m still in it.
Jen Olmstead: 00:24:05 And so I think it’s really important to realize as a creative, how do you work well. I feel like Krista is this way, I don’t know this about her, but she seems like a super disciplined creative where she’s like, I’m going to work on this project today. I’m going to sit here for 12 hours and knock out all these things. That’s not my skillset all. It’s the journalist in me, honestly, it’s the writer, but I need that inspiration high. And so I reoriented my process to basically figure out that out. So I communicate that to my clients now like, “hey, we’re going to do all your homework first and then we’re going to have a design intensive where we work together and kind of get into the zone together and come out going, ok, like this is our game plan.” And then after that then we can set our timeline moving forward. So yeah, it’s been super helpful. It’s been a great change both for me and for my clients.
Davey Jones: 00:24:55 So if you go back in time, and this is the last question I’ll ask about you starting your business because I really want to talk about how you stay inspired and how others can come up with an authentic and unique brand, but if you go back in time, what, what’s one thing that you wish you had done sooner in your business?
Jen Olmstead: 00:25:17 That. What I just told you. The first few projects I did that kind of went long and you’re both frustrated and the clients like, “hey, what’s happening?” And I’m like, “hey, it’s just not there yet.” All of that could have been saved by taking a hard look at my client experience, my workflow, and going, ok, how can I make this workflow work for me and work for my clients? I thrive in a collaborative environment. I love chatting with you. I’ll be like super up for the next few hours because I love interacting with people. And so realizing that I’m not meant to be in a business by myself coming up with the design concepts. That’s just not how I work well. So I think through how we work best, what leaves you in a creative space and then figure out a way to make that your process. And I think most creatives don’t even think about that. They go like, this is how you do this thing and I got to do it this way that this other person told me how to do it. That’s not true. This is the great thing about being an entrepreneur. You are able to create and cultivate your own work environment. Be present in that work environment and figure out how you work well and then do that. So I wish I’d done that earlier.
Davey Jones: 00:26:24 Yeah, I think that’s a super helpful exercise – maybe even at the end of every year, to look at different pain points for not only your clients, but also yourself because we find with our clients that when we’re focusing on those pain points, those things that we keep saying about our clients, man, I wish they wouldn’t do this. And I can think of a ton of examples, especially, in photography business. But, as we think through those things, all those things can be solved with a little bit of education. But I love your insight because I think the same can be true for yourself and your own business. So, thinking through, this doesn’t work for me. How, how can I change it?
Jen Olmstead: 00:27:07 My clients hate this every time. My clients always struggled early on with creating content because I would be like “I need all your content for your website,” because I heard this is what you’re supposed to do as a designer. I need to all your content for your website before we can get started. And so literally every project started with stall out at that point. I think this is true of all designers, I just don’t think they say it, but I think every project would stall out because guess what? I’m working for very visual people. And so they sat down with a blinking cursor and have no idea what to create because they haven’t seen anything. And so now, we develop the first set of concepts. So they kind of know what kind of content they need to create and where it’s going to be and where it’s going live. Then they go through creating their content and as soon as I switched that, that roadblock disappeared. And so instead of just being like, no, here’s this box, please put it into this little box for you that says graphic designer. I think it was really helpful just to take a continually evaluative look at the process and what was working, what wasn’t working.
Davey Jones: 00:28:09 I keep on sidetracking myself with all sorts of other stuff. We had an interesting interview with a Ashlyn Carter, which will also be published at some point, about creating content and fit and stuff in that little book. But anyways, we’re going to move on because I do want to talk about…
Davey Jones: 00:28:27 We’re going to take a quick 60 second break so I can introduce you to one of my favorite companies and the sponsor of this episode Showit. Showit It is a drag and drop website building platform especially for photographers and creative entrepreneurs. It’s used by some of the biggest names in the creative industry from Amy and Jordan Demos to Katelyn James, and it’s what we built our website on too. What’s awesome about Showit is that it’s both powerful and easy to use. The intuitively designed website builder makes it easy to change colors, fonts, images, and objects. Finally, a website you can update it on your own without having to hire a designer for every tiny change. It’s Google friendly and you can design the desktop and mobile versions of your website side by side to ensure your website looks great on any device and you can even integrate a WordPress blog with your Showit website making it that much more powerful. And, guess what? They have tons of free and premium professionally designed website templates to help you get started. But what makes it such a special company is their customer support. They’re super responsive and are there to help every step of the way. You can even save 10 percent on an annual subscription by using the code BTBSHOW. For more information, check out the show notes and now back to our episode.
Davey Jones: 00:29:42 … now creating content and fitting stuff in that little book, but anyways, we’re going to move on because I do want to talk about, really this question. You’ve designed brands for, you know.. And like you said, you publish a brand and you get an influx of inquiries and you’ve built websites and brands for Jenna Kutcher and Katelyn James and most recently, Shana Skidmore and I imagine that after you publish those websites, and this is even observation that we can make, that all of a sudden other websites pop up that may resemble those websites, right? To put it mildly. I guess on one hand, people love your work. And so obviously, imitation is a form of flattery, but at the same time going out and copying somebody else’s website because they liked somebody else’s website is not going to be authentic or unique for them. So you can’t work with everybody, as much as you might want to work with everybody or a bunch of people might want to work with you. So what would you say to clients who are trying to build an authentic and unique brand, but maybe they are not ready to hire a designer? You know, I think that’s an important thing to put out there. I’m a believer that you should build your first one or two websites yourself. Give it a shot, you know? And there’s so many resources out there like a Showit, Squarespace or whatever it is. So I’m a big believer in that or for whatever reason, they’re not in a place to hire a designer. So what steps can they take to build an authentic and unique brand?
Jen Olmstead: 00:31:33 I love this topic so much and I do think that this is an issue that we see. And it’s not just these bigger names like Jenna and Natalie and Shanna, you know, whoever else. I think it’s with everyone and it’s because I think because of the state we live in right now. We have a huge advantage and then we also have a huge disadvantage. And the advantage is that we’re creatives. We have good ideas. We know what we like. A lot of small business owners would be like, I don’t know what my website should look like. I have no idea and just have a lack of inspiration. We don’t have that problem. But we do have isn’t an inundation with what everyone else is doing. And I think that’s because of the community online of creatives.
Jen Olmstead: 00:32:16 I think it’s because of the internet at large, it’s a comparison game playground. But 10 years ago, we would’ve been familiar with maybe two other websites of our competitors in our local area had been like, ok, I can’t use this font because this guy across town is using this font and I can’t put a tree as my main image because this other person has that. And that would’ve been it. It would’ve been like ok, everything else is fair game. But now we literally know what the website looks like of every other creative in the stratosphere, we know who they rebranded with, we know the strategy behind it, we know when they launched it, and so we’re constantly inundated with other things in our industry. Other competitors who, maybe even across the globe. We know exactly what everyone else is doIng and so because of this, I think we’re tempted to skip a step and we tempted to start with emulation instead of inspiration or tempted to say, ok, this is what everyone else is doing.
Jen Olmstead: 00:33:16 I’m going to pick five websites that I liked and kind of look at them and decide like, I think this is close, but it’s not quite me. This is kind of cool, but it’s not quite me. And then we end up with this hodge podge of items and I think it’s such a shame because as I’ve told people before, wouldn’t it be a shame if you spent all this work and tears and sweat equity and then your website ends up representing someone else better than it represents you. You know? That’s the opposite of our goal, right? So I think the problem is this emulation and it’s because we’re not doing the first step. And Seth Godin has this great quote that says “be the best version of yourself, not the best version of someone else.” And I think that’s kind of our temptation right now.
Jen Olmstead: 00:34:00 It’s like we’re just trying to refine what someone else has to make it fit us. I’ve actually had this happen, fairly recently and it was really interesting actually because it gave me a bird’s eye view into that common kind of misconception because I sent this very gentle email to this lady that had a website that was very similar to one of my clients, and it was enough so that it was like a direct replicate. And I was like, ok, like this is probably a little bit too close. Like, FYI, this is something that my client has purchased and spent money on. And so therefore it would make us feel more comfortable if you could change it to be a little bit less of a direct replicate of her website. And this lady very sweetly, it was like, actually no, I didn’t copy her website.
Jen Olmstead: 00:34:45 I brought up four of the websites you’ve designed and I just took pieces of each of them. And so it’s really not her website. It’s just like all of them. But she was like, this isn’t copy. And so she was like, well, you know… And I was like, honestly, the best way I can explain this to you is if you take 500 words from a few different novels and are then like, here’s my new novel, it’s still plagiarism. But the problem was not that this lady was a bad person. The problem was that’s how she thought you began the design process. You look at five other websites and you go, ok, I like this, I like this, I like this, put it together, boom, new website.
Davey Jones: 00:35:34 So if you had an opportunity to talk to her before, before she had got started and you were in a coffee shop and just in passing conversation, you knew she was working on a website, you would say, hey listen, really? You should start here.
Jen Olmstead: 00:35:50 Yeah. So there’s this great quote on by this Austin Kleon, and he says, “you don’t want to look like your heroes. You want to see like your heroes.” So you don’t want to go look like Katelyn James. You don’t want to go look like Natalie Franke. You don’t want to look like Krista and Davey. There’s a book called the Brand Gap. And it says the things they’re supposed to do. A good brand identifies, informs, entertains, and persuades. But then there’s a fifth thing and that is differentiate. So you should be starting by looking at what these people do, but then differentiating yourself and say, what about this, why is this successful? So you your heroes, why are they successful? But then how can I do it differently?
Jen Olmstead: 00:36:38 And so all of this leads back to the homework process. And so I’m very much a homework background designer and so that’s kind of what we’ve really enjoyed equipping, even with our Tonic Sites, we do the same exercises. So one of the first things that we do is we do a brand questionnaire. I do this with all my custom clients. We do it loosely with Tonic as well. We ask them questions like, “what would your brand look like if it was a room?” “Where would you brand shop?” “What are things that people associate with your brand right now?” And so as you do these questions and as look at the answers, you end up with things that are original to you because you’re not asking questions about the industry. Your eyes are not on other people, they’re back into your brand. So that’s super helpful. That’s one thing that we do. Another thing we do is called the brand interview process and this is something that I came up with because I’m a former journalist. But that basically entails you answer a set of questions that are like, what’s one thing about my website that I don’t think is working well for me. How would I describe my ideal client? You answer a few of those questions and then you send the same list of questions, I think there like four, you send a few of those questions to other people that you trust or like your partner, Krista would answer it. And so as you begin to compile those answers, you see the common themes and common threads. So armed with this homework, all of a sudden you have this rubric of like, ok, my brand until like my this.
Jen Olmstead: 00:38:19 And so I know then how to speak to them. And just a cool example of this, at Showit United, where you guys were, we were talking through this whole brand interview process and I mentioned the one about where would your brand shop? And that’s one of my favorite questions because it sounds like the most air headed, Elle Woods approach to graphic design. But it’s actually super telling and one of the girls came up to me afterwards and she was like, oh my gosh, I realized that all this time I’ve been trying to be J. Crew and really my client would shop at Sephora. And so I was like, yeah, ok, let’s unpack that a little bit. And she’s like, you walk in, it’s super well organized, the people are really helpful. Everyone’s like, hey, what can I help you with?
Jen Olmstead: 00:39:04 It’s really editorial and their website is very editorial and clean. And she was like, yeah, so like I guess my website needs to be super well organized and I was like, hey, you know what you could do, you should go back and look at like the Sephora magazines and mailers and stuff and figure out why are they doing what they’re doing? And guess what? Sephora is not another photographer in her area. Is is a multi-million dollar company who hires genius graphic designers that make them a bajillion dollars. You can bet that they’ve really thought this process through. That’s one of the favorite things that we do. Even with our Tonic Sites, it’s like, ok, if this site needs to appeal to someone who likes J. Crew, let’s not look at a bunch of photographers have websites like J. Crew, let’s look at J. Crew and say, ok, how are they using space and fonts and what are their stores like?
Jen Olmstead: 00:39:49 Because we want someone who loves J. Crew to feel really at home on this website. So it’s crazy to me because as soon as you have the inspiration, you’re going to end up with something unique because you cannot help but do that. You’re not starting with what is super common and that’s why we have this state of homogeny in our industry where you can barely differentiate all these websites. They’re all using the same font, same colors because they’re all looking at each other and it just doesn’t make sense to look at another person.
Davey Jones: 00:40:21 Yeah. I think that the best thing you can do to stay inspired is look outside your industry or at least one of the best things that you can do. I know that Krista does that for design and that our brand questionnaire has some similar questions and never will we ask like, “hey, list your five favorite photographers you know, and what you love about their website.” There’s no way you stay inspired that way.
Jen Olmstead: 00:40:47 I think that people go, ok, I’m not going to look at other designers. I’m not going to look at other websites. I won’t look at it this person’s new branding because I don’t want to copy. You know, most people have had that in mind to begin with, but then they don’t know where to look and so they’re like well, this is the super frustrating. Either they go down the Pinterest rabbit hole and they ended up with a bunch of stuff that they think they, like that doesn’t go together and they don’t know why they like it because they were hungry. And so they just pinned a ton of recipes… Pinterest is both great and terrible.
Davey Jones: 00:41:18 Same problem, too much information to consume.
Jen Olmstead: 00:41:20 Exactly. We’re just spammed with inspiration. Or they sit there was a blank screen and they’re like, ok, got to hammer out this website design and they have nothing to start with.
Jen Olmstead: 00:41:31 Some of our favorite sources of inspiration, whenever Jeff and I get together to design Tonic Sites… We’ve designed sites based on a cool store that we were in. And we’re like, man, we love the way this feels, we want a website that feels like this. I was on a plane back from Greece and I saw this really amazing inflight magazine and there was a story in it. I love the layout of the story and so I took all these snapshots on my phone of the story layout and then when I got home I designed a website that had a similar feel.
Davey Jones: 00:41:31 That must have been the most beautiful ever. You probably weren’t flying Southwest or something like that.
Jen Olmstead: 00:42:09 Actually, I think we were flying like super budget. Have you ever flown WOW air?
Davey Jones: 00:42:15 No, I’ve heard of it. Never flown it.
Jen Olmstead: 00:42:18 So it’s called WOW. Because you’re constantly saying wow, during the flight, like wow, water is $12. Wow my seat doesn’t recline. Wow my tray table is stuck.
Davey Jones: 00:42:32 Yeah, isn’t that like Iceland Air? Or part of Iceland Air? Something like that.
Jen Olmstead: 00:42:33 So I’m not really sure. It felt like a scam. The airline attendants were really good looking and I decided was their selling point. The airline attendants are really good-looking. Everything else was terrible, but it was cheap. But anyway. Their in-flight magazine – super on point.
Davey Jones: 00:42:52 Yeah. I mean, even for things like content marketing, when I’m looking for inspiration, I try not to look at what everybody else is doing and their marketing efforts within the industry. There’s all sorts of things going on in other industries that are really cool and interesting and innovative. And so I find it’s a lot easier then to kind of appropriate those ideas, for our own industry where maybe they haven’t been used as much or maybe they haven’t been doing that sort of thing.
Jen Olmstead: 00:43:23 So I love that. Take an idea and then you go back to the brand gap and say, ok, how do I differentiate this idea now for me? Like how can I take this and not just plug and play it? How do I take this idea and do a version of it that fits with my brand. But yeah, looking outside our industry I think is a huge place.
Davey Jones: 00:43:45 Yeah. Krista loves reading, especially fiction books, for inspiration, but again, staying out of industry. So I love that insight. I love how you focus not what everybody else is doing in the industry. I think that’s a great piece of advice for anybody else. Is there anything else that people can do as they create their brand and their website? Just to make sure that they’re not looking towards what everybody else is doing.
Jen Olmstead: 00:44:14 So I think the next important thing, after you’ve kind of figured out the tenants of your brand, like ok, you’ve done your brand questionnaire, you’ve done your brand identity, you have kind of a hold those things, I think the next thing is who’s your ideal client? Who do you want this brand to appeal to? Because ultimately if you do a great job articulating your brand online, but you don’t target it to your ideal client, you’re still not going to get the success that you’re looking for in terms of inquiries, in terms of conversion because you’ve kind of left out the person. Because, this is a really important thing, and this is a concept that Donald Miller teaches a lot, is that You’re not the hero of your brand. You just conveying your personality is not the point. And I think this is where a lot of creatives have been not well served because they’ve just been told like if you are yourself online, people are going to fall in love with you and you’re going to get booked. And I honestly don’t think that’s true. I think that you should represent yourself authentically online. But I think if you are the focus of your brand, people are not going to appeal to it because people want to see themselves represented in your work and your brand. They want to know how they’re going to fit into your narrative that you’re creating. So you’re saying like, this is who I am, this is why I’m, you’re leaving out the most important person and that’s the people that you to serve.
Davey Jones: 00:45:38 I think that’s the biggest pitfall for an about page because, yeah, sure, it’s about, somebody trying to learn who you, but it’s really about your client and they want to see how they fit into this experience. Such great insight and Donald Miller, huge fan. Building a Story Brand is a book that I just read in January. Highly recommend
Jen Olmstead: 00:46:02 His podcast is also super good.
Davey Jones: 00:46:03 I haven’t listened to this podcast.
Jen Olmstead: 00:46:05 Yeah, super super good. He’s got one on the pitfalls of your website and I think it’s really smart. I’m an advocate for less text on a website. I’m an advocate for making sure that it’s not just you and then you’re thinking back. Just to expand a little bit, you’re thinking about it from a process of where would my ideal clients feel comfortable? And so, for example, one of my clients, Audrey, is a client in Paris and she was like, my clients love high fashion. They love these luxury brands. And so her website needed to not feel super casual and needed to feel very editorial and in line with everywhere else these people are spending time online. So that was really indicative of the end project and the aesthetic that we wanted to create was what would appeal to her ideal client. And then in terms of the text – that informs the tone. You shouldn’t necessarily just write in your own voice, you should think through what is my ideal client looking to read, what are they looking to be told? You don’t want to just sit down and start talking.
Jen Olmstead: 00:47:08 So it’s a matter of you’re not being inauthentic, you’re not saying “I’m going to be this different person online” because you never want people to meet you and then be like, oh my gosh, you’re so different. But you are choosing them bits and pieces. Even with our Tonic brand, Jeff and I always joke that like we’re kind of huge dorks and then the Tonic brand is cool and I’m ok with that because when you meet me, I’d rather be much more personable. ‘m definitely much more personable and I think you see that like in my email correspondence with Tonic, et cetera, but the Tonic brand, we still make it our goal – even in Tonic is like we’re here because we wanna help you look cool. Tonic is not about us being the cool. It’s worth saying you are too cool to be stuck with a website that isn’t as cool as you are. And that’s our goal. How can we elevate you? You don’t want to work with Tonic just because we seem pretty great and we know that. That’s not the goal. Infusing which parts of your personality are the most important to show online, but keeping in mind it’s not just about you.
Davey Jones: 00:48:29 If I tried to be completely myself on my website, every picture of me would be in sweatpants. I put on this for this interview, but in general, I’m in sweatpants. I love that you transitioned how people receive your website because usability is a huge aspect of building a website as well. So it’s, it’s great to have awesome aesthetics and to have something visually that that reflects you in a brand, but then there’s also that next step of figuring out how people are going to work through your website and use your website. And that’s, you know, to a certain extent, a whole new, a whole other beast. So do you have any advice for people thinking through that kind of thing?
Jen Olmstead: 00:49:15 Yeah. So if you are launching a new website and you have someone who has never been through it, go through it and try to click things and like see what works and where they get lost. That’s huge part of the process – is going ok wait a second, someone needs to use this. Because the average person has never interacted with your website before and if people get lost, you have failed. And I like to say that you have about, you have about .08 seconds to make a first impression on your website. So if they get there and they have, I call it the “Cheesecake Factory menu syndrome” – where they just don’t know what to do and don’t know what to do next. You’ve already lost them, you’ve lost that lead. And so I am a big fan of looking at your website and figuring out where are you directing people, especially from your homepage. I see this a lot. There’s just this smorgasbord of options. But there’s nothing that’s elevated in terms of scale or size or design where you’re funneling people through because you want people to get to your website and click, you know, pretty early on and let them interact in some way.
Davey Jones: 00:50:22 I think intuitively we think, oh, people want access to all the things they want, all of the information and people don’t. I mean I think about my favorite restaurants – they generally have the smallest menus.
Jen Olmstead: 00:50:32 I’m so with you on that one. And I assume when there are 400 things, that two of them that are probably good and they’re hidden in this menu and I have no idea where they are. But whenever people are competent enough to only give me a couple of options, I’m like, they must feel really good about these options. I love recommendations, that’s one of my favorite things. So I love when someone says, this is my favorite thing because I have the competence of like, this is going to be good. So I think the same is true of the approach to website design. You want people to immediately feel confident about where they should go, layering content in, but you want that process to be very intuitive or people are going, oh yes, I do want more. Oh yes, I will read more of this. And they’re making choices that are already have basically been pre-determined.
Davey Jones: 00:51:24 Meeting people where they’re at in their thought process. And as they’re exploring your site and thinking about what they want from you. So is there anything else in terms of a building authentic and unique brand?
Jen Olmstead: 00:51:41 Just one of my favorite things to say about this issue is when you start with intention, you create with purpose. All of this goes back to intentionality. When you do your homework, when you refuse to just survey the creative landscape. When you think about your UX experience as you’re designing your site, thinking about, what do I want people to do, where do I want them to go? All of that is just intentionality. And what that takes is time. It takes thought and it takes time. And I think as creatives, were very into immediate gratification and we have this need to make sure that we’re being very well represented online – which is very good that we think that way – but I think it’s really important not to skip a step, you know, and lose the intentionality. You guys have this with your Palm Shop and we have that with Tonic, where we’ve tried to take a lot of the guesswork out of that process.
Jen Olmstead: 00:52:34 So we’ve kind of done a lot of intentionality for our clients and said, ok, this is how the flow works. And so, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, hey, I need some inspiration, how should my website works? Feel free to just go and look at the sites that we’ve designed and click through them and see kind of how we’ve chosen to build an experience. I think that can be really helpful as you’re seeing how designers do what they do and then take that and use that as ok, this is in my arsenal now to know like how she would flow. I think it’s so vital to just have an intentionality approach to the design process. Just holistically.
Davey Jones: 00:53:11 Yeah. And I think we live in a world now where there’s no excuse not to have a pretty good looking website template shops like Tonic. And you have website building platforms like Showit that really do take the guesswork out of it. You don’t need to know code to get on Showit and work through that and it’s gonna take a little bit of learning if you’ve never been in it before, but it’s worth it because it’s a flexible enough platform to do the things that you want to do on it.
Jen Olmstead: 00:53:38 I love it because like we’ll get people that are like, man, I thought I needed a custom website and I feel like this website you guys designed is exactly built for me. And that’s the most of rewarding of things. People have said they felt like the products that we designed were custom built for their brand. And I think that’s because we do have such a person in mind for each of our products and we have such a brand that we’ve created for each one that we know, all of our sites are based on cocktails, which you may know, but we know, the vodka soda would look like this and would be this kind of brand. It would have ideal clients like this. And so we’ve really tried to take that approach and I think it’s been cool just to see who matches up with what and who really goes. Like, this is totally me. Awesome.
Davey Jones: 00:54:20 Yeah. And, and I think that there’s a lot of value in even starting with a template or building your own website and going through that process and thinking about these things. Because I think when you do that, for the first two, maybe even three websites. When you’re ready for custom design, you’re going to be that much more coherent to your designer. ou’re going to be able to say, hey listen, this is what’s worked for me in the past, this is what hasn’t. And I thought this was kind of my brand, but I feel like it’s more this and so I think it just makes it easier for your designer too when you get to having a custom brand website. All right, so when do you think people are ready for custom branding and web design?
Jen Olmstead: 00:55:02 Well, I definitely think it’s later than most people think. Because I get a lot of very well-meaning inquiries that are like, ok, I just started a business and I want to start out right. I want to make sure I have my brand and my website on point and so I’m ready to like invest and really get that done. And it’s fascinating me because we’re in this creative space, we all know that’s what we need – which is awesome – that makes my job easy because like I said, I’m never having to convince people, wow, you really need a great brand, a great website. So job security is just fine. But generally I’m like, no, you don’t do this right now. You need to live in your brand. You need to occupy your brain first. A designer can’t give you a brand, they can only give your brand something to wear. I’m not in the process of just handing out brands that are going to make you successful. And I think because I’ve worked with some of these influential people like Katelyn James, Justin and Mary, and Amy and Jordan, and they say, okay, they have a great brand and that’s what’s made them successful. However, if you look at all these people, they’ve all had websites for years and years and years before they had ever worked with me. And in that process they were gaining such a great understanding of what worked for them. Amy and Jordan had built their own website. Katelyn had built her own website. Justin and Mary had had their own website. All of these people had websites for a long time and do you know what they were doing? They were turning out great work in that period of time. They were doing great work. They were working with their clients that we’re honing the client experience and so when they came to me, they had this arsenal of everything that I needed to just knock it out of the park and say, ok, this is who we are. This is what our clients love. You know, when we did the brand interview for Amy & Jordan, everyone said the word “joyful” over and over and over in the brand interview process and we’re like, ok dang. I guess the brand needs to be really joyful. And so that impacted the photos that we took of them. They shouldn’t be staring sensitively into the camera. They were laughing at each other because they needed to be joyful.
Jen Olmstead: 00:57:08 The copy that they wrote was very welcoming and was very enthusiastic and they would not have known that their first year of business. And we wouldn’t have been able to make those decisions had they come to me when they first started out. So I definitely think it’s really important and like you said earlier, I think people should build, um, especially since we have the tools now, since we have awesome site shops and Squarespace, etc. Go ahead and put something up. Just keep it simple, don’t stress about it, don’t worry about it not being overly branded. Just make sure it looks nice and clean and highlights your work well. Those are the earmarks for success for your first website. It should not detract from your work and If you don’t want to commit to anything that you’re going to regret in a year.
Jen Olmstead: 00:57:52 Don’t put purple butterflies all over it because then you’re going to be the purple butterfly girl. And then when you change your website…
Davey Jones: 00:57:52 You don’t want to be the butterfly girl.
Jen Olmstead: 00:58:00 That’s in life in general. You never want to be the purple butterfly girl. But I think that’s where we see people in kind of the cycle of rebranding over and over and over. And we all have that friend right where you’re like, you just launched this website, you know what’s going on, and it’s because they jumped into something and we’re like, this is what I need. And then I get these inquiries all the time where people are like, hey, I just worked with a designer six months ago, but the end product just doesn’t really feel right. Can you rebrand for me? Because I think it’s important. And I’m like, no, don’t do this. You’re skipping the homework steps basically. And you haven’t lived your brand long enough. Katelyn James had her own brand and her own website for like seven years before we worked together.
Davey Jones: 00:58:59 And that’s a long time. And branding and web design, it costs money. You could take that money, it can help you figure out what your brand and website should look like before ever getting into hiring a designer and spending a ton of money on something that’s going to change six months or a year later.
Jen Olmstead: 00:59:15 Our Tonic designs are one eight to tenth the price that most of my costs custom clients invest. And it’s crazy because I will tell someone who’s just starting their photography business that’s inquired with me. I’m like, well, you know, my average client usually invests this, and it’s a high amount. And they’re like, sure, that’s fine. And my husband gets mad at me because I’m like, no. Do not put this on a credit card. Go out there and buy a beautiful template design for like under a thousand dollars or around a thousand dollars. Enjoy that. It’s going to make your work look great. You don’t need me yet. You know you don’t need me. And in fact, I would probably be a disservice because I’d be branding your business now before it’s ever had a chance to grow into what it could be in another couple of years.
Davey Jones: 00:59:58 So I have to ask this question as we wrap up here because I see this debate every other week, in a Facebook group somewhere with a bunch of photographers wondering should they put their prices on their website.
Jen Olmstead: 01:00:15 So I want to know what everyone else answers this question because I feel like you’re going to get different answers from all the different designers. So I definitely tend to think that especially if you are at a higher price point, it’s wise to say what’s your average client invests. Because all that it basically does is it keeps you from answerIng a lot of other emails that are just like, hey, how much do you charge? How much do you charge? So I don’t think it’s going to hurt you to list that amount and how people inquire for more info. Because if people really fall in love with your work, they’re probably still going to email you, even if your website says “I start at six thousand,”. They’re going to say “I love your work. Is there any way we can work together” and you’ll still have the opportunity to evaluate. If you are just building your business and you are in a place where you not turning away clients, then I think maybe you don’t list your list you price on your website and you do accept those inquiries and then you send them pricing guides and give them the ability to fall in love with your work first.
Jen Olmstead: 01:01:17 And then kind of equipping them with the pricing information. So I think it does kind of depend on where you are in your business. But in general, I’m in favor of it.
Davey Jones: 01:01:25 Yeah. And we have an article on our blog about this question. We answer it, I think in pretty much the exact same way. We list what our average client spends. So that people have an understanding of what they can expect to spend on our website and we focus more on the experience. We don’t ever really advocate listing collections and things like that and deliverables, on your website. Well that’s great that we are on the same page.
Jen Olmstead: 01:01:55 I’m so glad I thought you’re gonna. Just be like, nope.
Davey Jones: 01:02:00 Cut this out of the interview now.
Davey Jones: 01:02:04 Where can people follow along? Jen is kind enough to give away the brand questionnaire and the brand interview process, right? Uh, you can download those and we’ll include links to that in the show notes. So check that, especially out if you’re going to go through a website redesign or brand redesign in the near future.
Jen Olmstead: 01:02:27 Even if you’re not, honestly, I mean, not to interrupt you, but even if you’re not, I think it’s really helpful no matter where you are in your process to know those answers about your brand, your client, how other people perceive it . So you know, don’t feel like you have to be going through a redesign for it to be useful.
Davey Jones: 01:02:43 Yeah. And we’ll include that in the show notes. So if you’re, if you’re wanting to download those, go to the show notes. There’ll be a link there where you can download that, but where can people follow along with you?
Jen Olmstead: 01:02:53 Yeah. So you can find my personal, the Tonic Site Shop, where Jeff and I run that and that’s over at tonicsiteshop.com. So we’ll have some, I’m sure of website design and cocktail recipes. Basically Tonic Site Shop. You can find us on Instagram @tonicsiteshop. And then you can find me personally, which currently is mostly photos of my very handsome husband and children, occasionally with things that inspire me @jenolmstead on instagram.
Davey Jones: 01:03:24 It is a great looking family and you always have great recommendations. On Tonic you’ll find the the cocktail recipes and all that, but even on your personal Instagram and I want people to know that when I need a good show to watch or book to read or something like that, Jen is one of the people that I go to. I feel like we share some similar tastes when it comes to a tv and movies and things like that.
Jen Olmstead: 01:03:51 I feel like I can now count on the fact however. Do you like the Walking Dead?
Davey Jones: 01:03:55 No, I wasn’t, I wasn’t huge… just the first couple of seasons of Walking Dead and then I lost interest.
Jen Olmstead: 01:04:02 Then yeah. Then we can still be friends because maybe it’s Tyler Herrinton that still likes Walking Dead.
Davey Jones: 01:04:02 It is Tyler Herrinton. It’s Tyler and Michael.
Jen Olmstead: 01:04:09 Yes. Ok, that makes sense. Cause that’s kinda my rubric now because I’m like if you still like the Walking Dead, we probably aren’t on the same page because my husband’s still watches it that I think mostly out of like duty because he’s committed to this for so long. It’s like a relationship. But all I hear is just like “rah rah rah rah rah” for like an hour. It’s like, sorry, I just lost interest. Yeah. But yeah. No, I’m with you on that. Yeah. I feel like that needs to be like in a supply for your Podcast. Like what are you watching right now? Or like what book are you reading? So that’s, that’s a good little tip for you.
Davey Jones: 01:04:44 What’s your, what’s your latest recommendation? We’ll end there.
Jen Olmstead: 01:04:59 Like I recommended to you, I love The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and my husband loves it too. I feel like it’s Gilmore Girls for people who thought Gilmore Girls is a little too coy and it’s not embarrassing. My husband watched it with me and really enjoyed it. So I would, I would start there, although I will say that it definitely has some vulgar moments. So if you’re looking for like the super family friendly show, I wouldn’t necessarily say that that.
Davey Jones: 01:05:20 And Red Oaks. So that let’s not leave that out. That is surprisingly good. Sad that it’s only three seasons. Definitely makes me think I should have lived in the eighties.
Jen Olmstead: 01:05:20 You should have.
Davey Jones: 01:05:24 I should have been born in a different generation. But anyways, we can go on about this stuff forever and thank you so much for joining us.
Jen Olmstead: 01:05:34 Thanks for having me. It was super fun. I enjoyed it. I’ll see you next time when we can hotly debate other shows and/or pricing options.
Davey Jones: 01:05:44 Thanks for listening to the Brands that Book podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and leaving a review so that others are more likely to find it. For show notes and other resources. Visit Davey & Krista.
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