We recently connected with Andy Rhodenbaugh and have shared our conversation below.

Andy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Fear. It’s a feeling everyone has but pretends they don’t. It’s viewed as a sign of weakness when it’s a sign of our humanity. What will people think of me? Am I good enough? Will I succeed or fail?

Fear, as Dr. Chip Dodd notes, is the feeling that tells us we are in danger. For some, the danger is swimming in shark-infested waters. For others, it’s getting out of bed in the morning or starting a new business.

Recently, I made a complete career shift when I left my stable nonprofit job of 16 years (including stable pay and benefits!) and started my own for-profit marketing and branding agency. This new space is unfamiliar and feels dangerous for all sorts of reasons and so I find fear welcoming me awake each morning.

As Dr. Dodd also notes, if we ignore our fear or lie about it, pretending we aren’t afraid, our fear will turn into anxiety, a biological response to the suppression of fear. However, if we acknowledge our fear and share it with safe others, our fear can lead us to an intended gift: wisdom and faith.

As I’ve been honest about my fears, I have sought out wisdom from others. I got certified as a Marketing Guide by StoryBrand, a reputable marketing company that provides me a license to use their proven marketing framework along with training, coaching, and connection with other Guides.

As I’ve gained wisdom and equipping, I am learning to trust (faith) the skills I already had and those I’m quickly gaining. All this has led to the courage to put one foot in front of the other each day and simply do the next right thing. Just stack days. Deliver value. Serve my clients. Deliver more value.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

You know how a lot of service professionals are excellent at what they do and deliver incredible value to their customers, but their websites say otherwise?

I started Clear Sight Design to change this.

Service professionals who are excellent at what they do deserve a website that accurately represents the quality of their services and will help them share their services confidently. The problem is they are (usually) not website designers and DIYing a professional website is a drain on their time and energy, if not impossible.

Using the StoryBrand Framework and my 10 years of experience building websites on Squarespace, I can set service professionals up with both compelling brand messaging and professional website design in less than a week. For those who are committed to a budget and don’t mind a DIY, I offer customizable website templates that can be launched quickly and easily.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I had come across StoryBrand and its marketing framework earlier in my creative journey. I’ve been designing websites for over a decade, including some for my previous employer. I would always get compliments on how nice they were. I agreed, but I never knew why I was doing what I was doing. I just thought it looked good. When I discovered the StoryBrand Framework and how the website should be designed to maximize return on the investment, it was a game-changer. Now I can’t unsee a bad website. Had I understood the framework earlier I could have helped our organization meet our goals faster.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

As I serve my clients with excellence and deliver high value, I want my wife and daughter, who are Black and Brown, to have access to every resource and option they need to become all that God has made them to be. I want the words of the late poet Raymond Carver to be true for them:

“And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.clearsight.design
• Instagram: @andyrhodenbaugh
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-rhodenbaugh/
• Other: https://marketingmadesimple.com/andyrhodenbaugh