Testimonial - Vanessa Shen

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Before getting in touch with Olea & Fig, I had my own marketing strategy, but I was looking for ways to clearly define my positioning in the marketing and to define my niche to stand out. I also often found myself spending too much time on creating social media and email content. I wanted to create a strong brand, but I didn't know what my brand should look or feel like. I offer premium services and eduction, and many of my potential clients had doubts on my expertise with the presumption that I'm not "well-known enough", and they didn't see the true value I could offer.

Most branding and marketing books share general insights or high-level steps on how to create a successful brand. However, there aren't resources that take you step-by-step, through multiple collaborative discussions, teaching, practices, reviews and refine processes for small businesses. For most entrepreneurs like me, we think of a general direction ourselves, but we have no idea how to execute on it. And even if I start to take steps to share my messaging and offering online, I wasn't sure if I was on the right track or if my marketing was even working.

Most marketing and branding are done solely based on the target audience. In this case, the creator or the founder are often removed from the creation process. And because most marketing focuses on what's trending among target audience, the founder's purpose and uniqueness are often neglected.

Olea & Fig teaches building a cohesive brand from offering a thoughtful and unique customer experience. We combined my unique personal qualities, my services, and customer needs to create a comprehensive experience specific to my target audience. I finally found my band values, positioning, messaging, and how I should be communicating my brand with people to showcase my maximum value.

This has really been a liberating experience for me as a business owner. It answered all the questions that I had been asking for so long. This experience gave me a way out of the continuous pressure and nightmare as a start up!

Now that I have a defined brand direction and a solid business foundation, I no longer feel anxious when I need to create content for social media and email marketing. Instead, I look forward to sharing my insights with my people and learning what they need. I no longer feel that I'm constantly selling, instead, I learned to have a genuine two-way conversation and connect with the people I serve -- this huge change had made running my business really enjoyable for me!

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— Vanessa Shen | Personal Stylist & Educator | @vanessa_style_advisor