We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shauna Haider. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shauna below.

Shauna, appreciate you joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

Turning your passion into a thriving, full-time career takes a lot of time and perseverance.

Making it last long-term begins with having a genuine love of what you do. If you’re just going through the motions to make a quick buck, it will wear thin quickly when challenges come up. There has to be a stronger driving force beyond money that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning and give it all you’ve got for another day.

For me personally, it took a few years of freelancing on the side of working full-time jobs before I was able to go out on my own and launch Branch, my boutique design studio. That early, hands-on experience working for other companies was incredibly valuable with understanding the work ethic it took to grow a creative business. I also gained a better understanding of the demands and overhead.

I freelanced on the side for 5 years before going out on my own. Because I’d built up a steady clientele over that time, I was able to make the same as my full-time salary by the end of the first year and then double it a year later.

In retrospect, I probably could have moved much faster but I don’t regret the path I took. We all move at our own pace and from an ethical standpoint, I’ve always been the type of person who wants to go really deep and have a mastery of what I’m doing before offering it as a service or making a living from it.

Now, social media can make things seem like they happen much faster — and if you’re not moving along at that same pace, there’s something wrong with you. The truth is, building a strong foundation in business takes a lot of time, money and effort.

Shauna, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Shauna, the Founder and Creative Director of We Are Branch, a boutique design studio based in Palm Springs.

At our core, we specialize in developing perfect-fit strategy and branding for female founders.

There are two things that set us apart in the industry. The first is a strategy-first approach. Before any design takes place, we take the time to get to know our clients on a deeper level so we can uncover what makes them unique within their industry.

In a world overflowing with templates, our goal is to help our clients sidestep the sea of sameness — and mimicking an industry leader always leads to being viewed as second best…or worse, a copycat.

Secondly, we’re against rubber stamping a set ‘studio look’ across our clients’ brands. While the Branch ‘design DNA’ is present in the brands we create, they still stand 100% on their own, fully representing the vision of the specific client.

We want out clients to be proud of what makes them unique and that will never happen if what we’ve created for them feels like a replica of another brand we’ve designed.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media is something I’ve always been intrigued by.

My first love in the early 2000s was blogging and showing up near-daily on a blog helped me develop my voice and design style. A lot of those blogging skills translated to the early days of Instagram and helped me build a solid audience there.

I never had a clear content plan but instead showed up as consistently as possible, sharing what I knew. I didn’t overthink it; I simply shared client work, the behind-the-scenes of running a creative studio and finally, personal stories which helped build community and connection.

I believe we start to hit a wall with showing up regularly and knowing what to post when we overthink what we’re doing so I really try to keep my eyes on my own paper. I get on Instagram, post my content for the day, leave a handful of comments, respond to DM’s and get back off.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Pivoting in business is a constant. Every time I’ve gotten a little too comfortable with where I was, something big in my industry shifted and caused a big shake-up. This is part of the arrangement that comes with being an entrepreneur; we’re often required to think on our toes and make big, uncomfortable decisions — it’s a path that’s not for the faint of heart!

When I 5 years into running my business, everything plateaued. I’d done really well up until that point and then couldn’t seem to grow beyond that, no matter what I tried or how hard I worked. It was painful.

Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer and invested in private coaching and a mastermind. It was a big risk but within months, I overcame feeling stuck and had my best year of all time in business.

The quickest way to getting unstuck is to invest in ourselves. The skills and knowledge we pick up will last a lifetime.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wearebranch.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearebranch/
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/wearebranch/

Image Credits
Shauna Haider headshot: (BRANCH_SHAUNA_HAIDER_1) By: Studio 5800