We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Melinda Livsey. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Melinda below.
Alright, Melinda thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you share a customer success story with us?
One of our clients recently helped her client with a pitch deck that ended up winning them $14.7 million in investment.
Melinda, 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?
In 2017, after doing graphic design for 9 years, I discovered the missing piece I had been looking for throughout my entire design career: brand strategy.
This new found treasure enabled me to solve big brand and business problems utilizing the very things that brought me to design in the first place—creative problem solving, storytelling, and meaning making.
I was finally doing meaningful work that made an impact. And I was hooked.
As I grew in my new skills, I realized that even the best brand strategy frameworks only got me so far.
I still had so many gaps in my process. I felt insecure and not sure I’d be able to bring value to clients with what I was using.
So I formed an unofficial mastermind with a group of fellow brand strategists. Over the course of a year we practiced and studied together, shared our learnings from client projects, and supported one another as we each developed our own way of approaching brand strategy.
I now offer an opportunity to learn in a community just like I did for other brand strategists so they can develop a way to do brand strategy that works for them (and their clients).
One thing I’m most proud of is how our clients exceed what they think is possible because of the confidence they gain after taking our program. They’ve started their own podcasts, done TedTalks, written books, helped their clients win investment, and even worked with Fortune 500 companies. They feel increasingly comfortable facing the unknown because they finally realize they know enough to figure it out, whatever ‘it’ may be. To see our clients feel confident in themselves is priceless and motives me every day to continue doing what I’m doing.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Posting on social media can feel like yelling into the woods, hoping someone might hear you. It can feel quite discouraging to create posts just to have no one like them (except maybe your own mom).
I was lucky enough to be featured on an established YouTube channel when I first started building my social media presence. That experience made me realize that showing up in, and giving value to, other’s communities is the quickest way to build my own. Trust is instantly built with people when I show up on other’s platforms, podcasts, or communities because the host trusts me enough to have me there. It’s like being introduced to someone new through a friend, versus trying to meet someone randomly on the street (or yelling into the woods). So instead of posting endlessly on social media in order to build my audience, I do guest posts, podcasts, and interviews in communities that I can help the most. Then, from there, they can follow me on social media and keep in touch.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
What if we could spark energy and motivation in not only ourselves, but our team and even clients?
One TedTalk that significantly impacted how I lead was How to Fix the Exhausted Brain by Brady Wilson. In the talk, Brady provided the question — “What matters most to you?— in order to find out what energizes the person we’re speaking to.
I’m interacting with humans on a daily basis and this question has helped me understand what I might be able to do to help spark energy in myself as well as others.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://melindalivsey.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melindalivsey/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZolOR-ZLOv-U872bnZtO6A