Ditch the Beige Branding: Bring More Color and Personality Into Your Business With Chloe Richardson

Podcast

Sep 29

Dear Creator,

If you’ve ever wondered whether your brand is “too colorful” or “too bold” to be taken seriously or if you've quietly built a whole marketing strategy around what your competitor is doing… this conversation with brand designer and self-described "customer experience nerd" Chloe is going to hit different.

Chloe is a Designer, strategist, customer experience enthusiast, and someone with an alarming amount of opinions about businesses making things harder than they need to be. She works with service businesses to fix the way their brand feels, from first impression to final touchpoint.

In this episode of Dear Creator, she broke down exactly why most small businesses are getting it wrong.

Key Highlights

Your "unprofessional" style might be your biggest asset

Chloe wears pink and green... and her brand mirrors her style too. For a long time, she second-guessed it. She said, "I think my style, I always find it hard because I think, you know, am I too childish? Am I being colorful, bold, and all of those kind of things?" she admitted. "And I wonder if I don't look premium to my clients."

But the opposite turned out to be true. Being authentically, unapologetically herself is exactly what draws clients in including brands you'd never expect. She recently rebranded a wetsuit company with a "clean, cool-girl" aesthetic, specifically because they wanted more personality and approachability than the sea of lookalike Instagram brands could offer. She mentions that in the personal branding era, trying to mimic a "corporate" look that isn't you doesn't read as premium reads as forgettable.

Stop researching your competitors for inspiration.

One of the most practical pieces of advice in the episode is that before Chloe designs anything, she researches the physical and digital environment around a business, not its competitors.

"If you're looking at your competitors, you are just drawing from everyone else around you," she said. For brick-and-mortar clients, that means literally checking what colors and signage neighboring stores use, so the business doesn't blend in. For online businesses, it means understanding who's actually walking through the (virtual) door — not who you assume your target audience is.

"Strategy always will win in my eyes," she said. You can design the most beautiful brand in the world, but if it looks like the business next door, there's no impact.

The real cost of a broken customer journey

This is where Chloe's hospitality background really shows up in our conversation. A good customer experience is about every touchpoint matching up like your website, your Google Business Profile, your automated emails, your DMs, your in-store signage.

You know exactly what to expect from certain businesses like McDonalds or Subway. Every touchpoint is consistent. When a business's Instagram aesthetic doesn’t match the in-person experience, or a logo on an old email flow doesn't match the current brand… that's where trust can quietly erode.

Automation can build trust or quietly destroy it

Chloe was refreshingly honest about her own "ick" with automated tools like ManyChat — the auto-DMs that fire the second you follow someone or leave a comment.

When you’re having a conversation with someone in the DMs, then ManyChat starts sending you a bunch of links… it can make someone think that they’re not talking to the actual Creator or Entrepreneur behind the account.

Her advice for service and product-based businesses are that automations aren't the enemy, but they need to feel earned. Check in with customers like a human before you ask for a review. Skip the generic 10%-off code and actually solve the problem your customer came to you with.

Building a business (and a self) from scratch

Beyond the branding talk, Chloe was candid about what the first year of going full-time actually looked like including a month she made just $300, and the identity shift of holding herself accountable without a team or a boss. She's found her rhythm through networking events, stepping away from Pinterest and mood boards in favor of real-life inspiration or magazines, and leaning on a small community of fellow business owners who actually get it.

It's a good reminder that behind every established brand is a person still figuring it out in real time and that might be the most authentic branding lesson of all!!

Thanks For Tuning Into Dear Creator!

You can listen to the full conversation to hear what didn’t make it into this recap on YouTube, Spotify, Substack, and Apple Podcasts. If you enjoyed the conversation or the podcast, please leave a review or rate it! It’s greatly appreciated and it helps others who need to hear these conversations, find them.