We recently connected with Jess Trachsel and have shared our conversation below.

Jess, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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?

Creating my personal brand was the biggest risk I’ve ever taken.

When I started my business at 24, I was a brand new brand and website designer and learning as I went. I played it safe and represented myself in what I hoped made me look “professional”: minimal designs with neutral colors and elegant serif fonts, clean white headshots in a studio, and tons of teaching content.

My business started growing. I took on a few really wonderful clients. I learned some of the finer points of running a creative services business. But I was energetically exhausted. Nothing about the polished and professional image I had curated felt like a faithful representation of who I was or what I was longing to help my clients experience: confident self-expression.

So, I decided to risk what I had built and switch things up: I made a huge pivot into a personal brand that felt like me. The neutral palettes gave way to bright colors, the headshots for playful creative photoshoots, and everything I created became more focused than ever before on helping women discover who they are.

I got honest and vulnerable with my audience and my clients: from sharing what it’s like to be an entrepreneur and late-diagnosed autistic person to pivoting my brand and offerings to things that created more energy and life for me. And to my surprise, they came with me.

The feedback was enormously positive. I started working with women who also wanted to tap into more genuine self-expression in their marketing and building brands for passionate business owners who connected with the things I was sharing. Some didn’t find me as “professional” anymore, but I became far more successful than I’d ever been. The risk I took by being myself and embracing creative thinking in my business changed my business forever, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Jess, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Once upon a time, in the bustling chaos of my mom’s kitchen, I convinced her to let me start a bakery at the tender age of 7. It wasn’t just about making something out of nothing; it was my way of funding my summer camp adventures for the next six years.

Fast forward, trading in homemade flyers for business cards and websites, I ended up as a brand and web designer at 24 years old and I found myself on a different kind of journey – one of self-discovery. Shedding the layers of who I thought I needed to be to be taken seriously as a young entrepreneur, I slowly started to unmask my true self. I’m now the founder of Prairie Glow Studio and a personal brand coach for professionals with personality. Over my time as a brand and website designer, I heard countless women share how much they would love to feel more themselves when it came to their brand and marketing, but felt limited, unseen, and uncertain where to start.

I realized that no matter the industry, women are carving out spaces for themselves in competitive markets, and standing out is essential. Even so, many of us have found ourselves conforming to what we believe is expected or required of us, without fact checking that assumption. We can easily end up ignoring our uniquely brilliant selves as we work to fit into a mold we have been told defines the only acceptable version of professionalism. We slowly quiet our creativity and intuition and distance ourselves from genuine connection with the people we are trying to serve.

As a personal brand coach and marketing mentor, I’m on a mission to empower female entrepreneurs and professionals with to realize the power of their personality. I am forever grateful that so many women trust me to help them build authentic personal brands that let them breath deep and show up fully.

From that baking to photography to business coaching to brand design and now personal brand consulting, I’ve learned that life’s too short not to be exactly who you are. There’s no time for generic brands or uninspired businesses when you’re made to make an impact.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

As cliché as it might sound as someone who coaches on it, a personal brand has been my biggest advantage to establish my reputation, in my local market as well as in the broader online coaching/creative world. Because I prioritized being someone people could easily to get to know and built my brand on being myself, I’ve always gotten comments from other coaches, creatives, and clients that my “niche” and the focus of my brand made sense to them. It was a good fit for me because of so many things that went into the passion I had for working with women and seeing them embrace more of their personality. It was easy for my brand to consistently feel like a natural extension of my every-day life (with a little added strategy, of course), and I became recognizable really quickly because of it.

I also took a very “brand strategy”-informed approach to the way I positioned myself in my industry. After working as a brand designer, I understood how powerful the basics of branding and messaging and a niche that fills a gap were. Applying all of those principles made it simple for people to grasp what I was becoming known for and continually see that reputation being reinforced through everything I did to grow my business (from the outfits I wore to networking events to the emails I wrote to my subscribers).

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Networking, hands-down.

I wouldn’t have started (or pivoted, or grown) my business without a Starbucks barista, a photoshoot, and a random Tuesday afternoon conversation over a novel.

Networking is indirectly and directly responsible for nearly everything that’s gone right in my journey as an entrepreneur.

In 2018-ish, I was sitting in Starbucks after a too-long day working as an Educational Assistant in a classroom of 36 wonderfully funny kindergarteners when the barista who was sitting at the next table over asked about the book I was reading.

I have no idea which book it was. All I remember from that conversation was that I mentioned being a part-time photographer when I wasn’t at the school, and she asked if I had heard of this new local co-working space that could be rented as a photography studio.

I said no and she typed the website for The Well Collaborative into my phone for me. I was curious and a it was few months later when I booked a photoshoot with Tammy Zdunich, the founder of the Well Collaborative.

Before we started the session, Tammy sat with me on the opposite end of a cool velvet sofa and asked me questions about why I wanted my photo taken and how I wanted to feel during the shoot.

Fast forward to today, I have been working with the team at the Well for almost a year and a half, Tammy and I have spent hours dreaming up new things over Voxer chats, and I’ve hired and been hired by countless women from the Well Directory over the years.

I met one of my favourite people because I attended a the launch party for a book that Tammy had written a chapter in, I was hired to take photos for a local youth organization because of attending casual networking events through the Well, and I’ve connected with my most wonderful repeat clients through being a WellAdvisor there.

That’s why I tell people that the best logo is your face, the best strategy is saying yes, and the best way to build an audience that cares is to care.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://prairieglowstudio.com/links
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prairieglowstudio/

Image Credits
Nicole Romanoff Photography