STAY CURIOUS.
Creativity thrives on curiosity. Which is why we’re compelled to keep learning — and sharing what we learn with anyone willing to listen (or in this case, read). Peruse some of the musings from our curious blog curators. We’d love to hear your thoughts too, so reach out anytime.
That Time We Almost Changed Our Name
A couple of years ago, Robert and I came surprisingly close to changing our company name.
It wasn't because people couldn't pronounce it, although plenty of them couldn't. It wasn't because they couldn't spell it either, even though there are probably more vowels packed into "Enablers" than necessary.
The real reason was more personal.
I had convinced myself our name communicated the wrong thing.
In my mind, an enabler was someone who helped bring other people's ideas to life. It sounded like we were the executors, not the thinkers. The support act instead of the strategy. As our business matured, that started to bother me. I wanted a name that sounded more authoritative, more corporate, more like the kinds of agencies people expected to see.
The Best Brands Aren't Created. They're Uncovered.
We've been giving business owners the wrong job.
Somewhere along the way, branding became this creative exercise where you're expected to sit down with a blank page and invent something interesting. You're supposed to come up with a clever tagline, write the perfect elevator pitch, build an About page that somehow captures your entire personality, and maybe even discover a version of yourself that sounds just a little more successful than the one sitting at your desk.
Every Summer I Was Convinced We Were About to Go Out of Business
Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic.
But if you're a business owner, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about.
Every year around late May or early June, I'd start noticing things getting a little quieter.
A few fewer emails.
A few fewer inquiries.
Clients taking longer to respond because they're traveling, wrapping up the school year, or mentally checking out for summer.
Why branding prices are all over the map (and what you're actually paying for).
Short answer? Anywhere from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands.
Helpful answer? It depends on what you're actually buying.
A lot of people think branding is a logo. Others think it's a website. Some think it's social media, colors, fonts, or a clever tagline.
Those things matter, but they're not the brand.
How to Show Up Consistently for Your Brand Without Losing Your Mind
You can’t get hired by people who don’t know you exist.
Simple. Painful. True.
And yet most business owners treat visibility like an emergency flare gun. You disappear for three months, panic because leads are quiet, post seven times in four days, completely exhaust yourself, then vanish again into the content witness protection program.
She Was Doing Everything Herself — Including the Brand. Here's What Changed When She Let Go.
There's a version of building a business that looks like this: you're the founder, the marketer, the salesperson, the customer service rep — and yes, the designer. You made the logo. You picked the colors. You wrote the tagline at midnight on a Tuesday when you were too tired to second-guess it.
And it worked. For a while.
You Don't Need to Be a Designer to Make Great Brand Decisions
Let's be honest about what usually happens when a business owner sees new creative work for the first time.
You get an email with logos attached. You open them. You feel something. And then you immediately start second-guessing that feeling.
You forward it to your spouse. Your best friend. Maybe your most opinionated employee. Now you've got three different opinions bouncing around your head and suddenly none of the options feel right — even though your gut knew exactly what it wanted sixty seconds ago.
You Don't Hate Your Brand. You've Just Outgrown It.
There's a particular kind of discomfort that's hard to name at first.
It shows up when you're handing someone your business card and you rush past it — "here, but the website is a little outdated" — before they even turn it over. It shows up when a potential client asks for your portfolio and you spend ten minutes rearranging your homepage in your head before sending the link. It shows up when someone asks what you do and you somehow end up explaining it for four minutes without ever quite landing the point.
The Invisible Business Problem: You're Great at What You Do, But Nobody Knows It.
You're good at your job. Really good. Your clients love you, your work speaks for itself, and you've built something worth being proud of.