Who do you want to be? Share in the comments! 

Make this year different.

Say so long to the status quo.

Follow your dreams and do what it takes to make them come true.

And dream big.

You can do more than you think you can – we promise. You’re destined to do great things, you just gotta have the right tools and drive to get the job done.

And if you need a little help getting there, no worries.

The Create + Connect Project’s flagship, 8 week course is open again, and this time there’s no deadlines or cart closes. Just join when you’re ready!

With insight from big names like Erin Loecher of Design for Mankind, Camille Styles of Camille Styles Events and Kelly Beall of Design Crush, along with backers Design*Sponge and HGTV, this program will teach you everything you need to know about getting your business up and running online.

Because when it comes to your day job, there’s something else you’d rather be doing, right?

Click here to learn more about the Create + Connect Project 8 week program. 

• Mariah left her day job and is totally fulfilled by creating her dream jobs at Create + Connect Project and Oh, What Love.
• Katrina launched a world changing philanthropic program dear to her heart that will rescue moms and babies from poverty and it will help entrepreneurs get ahead in their biz.  Here’s more on A Giving Chance.
• Not to mention we’ve been featured in places we’ve only dreamed of, we’ve connected with people we’ve always admired and we’ve done things no one thought we could do.

One thing we talk about is this idea of Give, Give, Get.  If you keep giving, good things will come your way too. So, with this being Thanksgiving, we are thankful for your love and giving you 3 Ways You Can Give Thanks!

1. Write Recommendations for others.  Maybe they’re past colleagues, former bosses or just people you’ve known along the way.  Giving them your stamp of approval and letting the world know you endorse them is a great way to say thank you.
2. Give a Testimonial for a product or service you love.  If someone or a company is doing something great, let them (and everyone else) know.
3. Tell you’re followers your grateful for them.  Our fans have a lot of choice these days.  The fact that they read what we put in the world is pretty amazing and totally worth thanking!

On that note, we do appreciate you and we have a little gift for you.  It’s 10% anything in our shop!  Just use this coupon code at checkout. Easy as pumpkin pie!!

In fact, I (Mariah) have my brand launch party for my wedding styling business, Oh, What Love Studios, tomorrow, so I’m in the middle of the launch party craziness! Here are my tips for planning your own launch party:

Planning the Party

When you decide that you want to throw a launch party, think about other brands or small businesses similar to you in your area who are launching their brands as well. Team up with one or two other brands that have complementary services to yours and throw a party together – this will help keep costs for everyone down.

For example, with my launch party I teamed up with a wedding and event planner who is just starting out and a  local restaurant that just opened a fun and glitzy lounge. The event planner and I are working together on the venue decoration and the marketing materials, and the lounge is taking care of the venue and the food. This way we are all spliting the costs so it’s not just one of us footing the bill for everything.

Getting the Word Out

When it comes time for promotion, make sure you start promoting and inviting people a month to six weeks in advance – this gives people a chance to plan ahead and get it on their calendar.

Another reason it’s great to work with other people on your party is that your guest list is multiplied by the number of people you’re collaborating with. Each person will invite their own circle of people that you may or may not know,  and that expands the number of people that are introduced to your brand.

When it comes to actual promotion, create a Facebook event and invite friends from Facebook that you think may be interested in coming. You can also promote your event on your Facebook business page as well as your website and blog. For more traditional marketing, try submitting a press release to your local newspaper or the community calendars in your area. You can also print up posters and hang them up at local coffee shops and cafes – I know as long as your event is non profit, Starbucks will allow you to hang up posters on their bulletin boards.

The Actual Party

I’ve learned this week that it’s important to get into the venue and start setting up as soon as possible. Lucky for me, my venue is closed during the week we were able to go in on Monday, set some stuff up and see what else we needed to do. Since there are three of us, we were able to bring decorations we had in our own collections and didn’t have to purchase much, but there’s a chance you may have to rent or buy decorations for your own party.

The party is a place to showcase your talents to your guests, so make sure you bring things that relate to what you do. If you’re a crafter, you could set up an area where people can purchase your products (check with your state laws to see what laws you need to follow when selling items). If your business is more service oriented or you don’t have physical products, bring your laptop or iPad and have it open to your website. This way people can browse through your services.

The whole reason for your party is to introduce your brand to your community and get more clients, so make sure you give them something to take home with them – whether it be a favor with your information attached or a brochure, it will help them remember who you are and what you do.

On the day of the party, finish up all of your last minute details and relax a little bit. Don’t get too overwhelmed, and make sure to enjoy your party!

And just to get one final plug out there – I want to invite you all to my launch party!
If you’re in the Quad City area, I’d love for you to stop by [re•fresh] lounge in Moline between 4 and 8pm tomorrow! We’ll have appetizers, cupcakes and fall drinks along with a fun giveaway and some pretty little gifts for you to take home. You can find out more on our Facebook event page!

Are you planning to do a brand launch party? Or, have you already had a launch party? We’d love to hear about it in the comments!

We thought you might need a little bit of inspiration for your week.

Working hard really does pay off, and those people you look up to had to work hard to get to where they are.

Keep your head up and know that you’ll be there one day if you really want it!

Feel free to Pin It and share it with your friends. And stay safe if you’re in Hurricane Sandy’s path!

Have an amazing and inspiring week!

If you’re starting a blog or if your blog just hasn’t build momentum (yet), it can feel like a big waste of time and energy.

That’s what I love about Triberr.com.

Triberr leverages Twitter to amplify your blog’s reach.  Sounds complicated, but it’s not!

It works like this.  Basically, you set up an account and start building your tribe by inviting people to your tribe or you can join other people’s tribe.  Your tribe is a group of people that have a similar audience as you.

Now, every time you post a new blog article, your article shows up on your tribe member’s feed.  When your tribe members log on, they can easily share your post via Twitter.

What I do is go back and look at my Twitter @mentions that day and I love seeing a stream full of retweets of my post.

What do you think?  Are you going to try it?

But we’re not all graphic designers, right?
We’ve created 2 downloadable templates for you to use in your blog posts.

What you’ll need: 

• Photoshop or Photoshop Elements
• Templates (Click Image Below To Download)
• 3 to 6 Images

Here’s how to use them:

1.  Open the PDF templates (this one and this one)  and your photos in Photoshop.

2.  Drag one of the photos into the template open in Photoshop. Go to the ‘Layers’ toolbar on the left hand side and find the layer for the image you just dropped into the template. Drag the photo layer so it’s positioned below the layer that says ‘Place Image Below This Layer’ and above the layer labeled ‘1′.

3.  Next, resize your photo to fit the template frame. Do this by pressing ‘Command’ and ‘t’ at the same time. Once the resizing frame pops up, hold down the ‘shift’ key and drag the corner of the photo to fit.

4.  Repeat this process with your other photos.

You can also easily change the colors of the element by playing with the Layer Styles.

Here’s an example of what it will look like when you’re all done!

We wanna know – what are your favorite ways to spruce up your blog posts? Leave them in the comments section below.

There are 5 ways to get instant credibility. 

1. Giving Things Away.  The “Free Gift” is a brilliant and long standing marketing technique that works.  Think about it.  Free samples at the grocery store, free 15 minute consultation, free Victoria Secret panties….the list goes on. When you offer something for free it invites a customer to try your product or service with no strings attached and it gives you an opportunity to get customer feedback.  After they try your free offering, ask them what they thought.  Turn those comments into testimonials. 
2. Solicit Rave Reviews.  You might be just starting your business now, but you’ve likely worked with people in the past.  Make a list of former colleagues, bosses, clients, customers and professors (people who can rave about you), tell them what you are up to and ask for their help in writing a recommendation for you. 
3. Fame Box. Every website needs a fame box. A fame box is usually in the sidebar or footer of a website and it has the logos of the places you’ve been featured. This shows that you’ve already been endorsed by bigger credible outlets so people know that you are credible too. See a sample here. 
4. Advance Praise. Are you working on a big project and you really want to roll it out with huge success? Start finding ways for people to review your product before it is available to the public.   One of the easiest ways is to offer a beta version of your product or service. This lets you start building buzz and lets you get all of the kinks worked out prior to the launch.  Plus, you’ll get to collect testimonials from the people who joined the beta trail. You’ll get huge bonus points if you are able to get “bigger people” into your beta test because they have a bigger audience that they can tell about it. 
5. Favorite Tweets.  Twitter feeds go fast and sometimes we overlook opportunities to capture what people are saying about us.  Everyday, look at you @mentions on Twitter.  This will show you the list of people who are talking about you.  Anytime you see a positive comment about your work, Favorite the tweet and take a screen shot.  You can always add those to your website or sales page too. 

This week, I challenge you to choose one of these areas to focus on.  Let me know in the comments what you think will work best for you.

One of the most exciting things about owning your own business is creating a logo and seeing it everywhere.

But once you’ve spent all that time and money having your logo designed or designing it yourself, paying to have it printed on your packaging, letterhead, business cards, etc. can get pretty pricey.

Well friends, there’s a solution – especially if you like to get crafty and creative (and we know you do)!

A rubber stamp.

More and more small businesses are having rubber stamps with their logo designed and are using them from everything to their product packaging to having an instant business card maker with them at all times. And creating a stamp is most often less expensive  than having all of your branding collateral printed with your logo on it.

There are lots of places you can go to get a custom rubber stamp made – we use a local business to do ours, but there are tons of places online and even people who devote Etsy shops to creating custom stamps  for people.

A few things to think about – do you want a self-inking stamp or do you want to use stamp pads? With self inking, your logo can only be that one color, if you use stamp pads your color options are endless. Also remember that the bigger the stamp, the more expensive it will be.

Sounds kinda fun, right?

In the comments section, tell us what you would use a custom rubber stamp for – we wanna know! 

Image via Sassen Design on Flickr