EP65: The Power Of Your Brand Color with Michelle Lewis

That's always good to hear, right?

Absolutely. Well, the name came from me trying to trademark another name and it being blocked and me looking on GoDaddy because I don't know about anyone in the audience, but I tend to be a domain hunter. It's just like, it feels like every day it's like, oh, this would be great. Oh, this would be great. So I literally looked at my domains and I saw Visibility Vixen. I was like... I'm going to do it. And that's what I trademarked on the phone with LegalZoom when we came into that barrier. So that's how the name was chosen. I literally just grabbed it out of the hat. But my background is actually in film and television. I grew up in it. My dad was a director producer. And then I worked in it for about 10 years. Also got my film and TV degree. And then after, you know. working that for a while, having a project taken from me. I just couldn't do that anymore. So I bailed out of the industry and was like, well, what am I going to do now? And I started with an ebook and then an e-course and then, you know, got the bug and started diving into entrepreneurship. So my unique perspective on color comes from film and TV. I also studied interior design and got a degree in that and also plant-based medicine. So that's why my perspective on color is a little bit different because I've studied it in so many different modalities.

maybe. Are you not allowed to say? No, I can say. Let me see. The first one that I was like in... that I can remember was Paycheck. I don't know if you've seen that movie with Ben Affleck. Yeah, I remember that. It wasn't anything exciting. I was a nursery customer in the very last scene. But when you see the blonde girl in the blue sweater, that's me. And then I worked as a stand-in for many years and I worked on the remake of Melrose Place, Pretty Little Liars, and Chuck, where I met my husband.

My dads and my husbands are much more exciting, but I did a couple, so it's good.

It really is.

Well, I mean, usually whatever the show or movie is, is either in a warmer palette or a cooler palette. And like, for example, when my husband was working on the show Criminal Minds, certain scenes had to take place overseas. Let's say, for example, South Africa. And they were really shooting it in a place called Valencia, which was just in the middle of nowhere outside the studio. But they would put like an orange filtered lens in front of the camera to give it more of that exotic feel because we associate orange specifically with more of those exotic locations and cultures.

So you would know more than that. There's a book that's really interesting and it's called, If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die. And that is all about color symbolism in film and what it's used for. It's a really great book and it breaks down each of the primary colors and some other ones, purple, orange, yellow, green, red. blue and what they specifically symbolize in film. So it's exciting when you see a movie where the production designer, you actually know that they did their homework on the colors. And so someone's in green early on and you know that, ooh, that might be the evil character and that kind of stuff. It can get really fun.

Oh, yeah.

It could. You have to be quiet when you're watching it with your husband or family because you'll ruin it and they'll yell at you.

You're like, that's fake.

Absolutely.

I think... When I'm asked this question, the first quote I like to give is that we have to remember that according to so many studies, only 7% of communication is verbal. And yet, especially for those of us that run businesses, those of us that have to market ourselves or we're hiring marketers, we tend to focus so much on the opt-in, the email sequences, the funnel, the product, messaging, messaging, messaging, messaging, but we tend to only focus on the verbal part of messaging. So according to that statistic, if that's all you focused on in creating your brand and business is the verbal part of messaging, well, then we know that there's 93% left that is communicated differently. And a huge part of that is visually. So, and a huge part of that is obviously color. So we have to be looking at our business from a more holistic perspective and understanding that just like someone who's watching a movie, just like the different studies that you can look up for yourself about, color and how it physically causes a reaction, we need to take that in consideration when choosing our brand colors, especially knowing that it can be such a huge trigger, positive or negative, to get someone to not only trust us, but want to purchase from our brand. Does that make sense?

And you definitely will. Yes. Well, especially this is why I say like, please don't go to Google or Pinterest and just look it up because most people do this. They go, okay, my brand color is blue and I love it. It's my favorite color. And so I'm going to prove Michelle wrong, right? This is my color. And so they go onto like Pinterest or they go into Google and they see one person that reports what that color is that may or may not be right. And they're like, yep, see, see, that's exactly it. I don't need to change anything. And it's like, well, okay, let's, let's hold up because we need to make sure that with our customer that we're doing a bunch of different things with color. The first thing is your primary color needs to be based on the emotion that you want your ideal client or customer to feel the first time they see your brand. What's important about that, you may say, well, no, my brand is reflective of me. Well, unless you're only trying to attract yourself, that's not really true, right? That's fine. But in most cases, we want to attract a specific type of clientele. And so we need to figure out what's that one emotion? Is it motivation, hope, trust, joy, whatever it may be, and make our primary color choice based on that. And there's a lot other... considerations we need. And we can go into that if you want to. But I think the bottom line is we really, really, really have to understand what each of these colors mean in order to tie it correctly to an emotion. Some people come into my color kit, which is just kind of the surface level of everything. And they're like, oh, well, I'm going to choose, like, for example, they said orange because it symbolizes excitement and motivation. And I'm like, no, it doesn't. Like get off of Pinterest. That's not what it means. You need to keep going. Because in a lot of ways, you have people that are associating color just based on design, just based on film, just based on emotion or whatever. We have to have a really holistic perspective of the true nature of a color to be able to tie it correctly to our brand.

Yeah, the color kit. Color

You're going to probably see that comment. You're like, oh, I know the person that said that about Orange Town.

And I hear that sometimes I have people who are millionaires that come to me and they usually want to consult because at that time in their business, now they're ready for publicity, right? But they've hit a roadblock because even though they're pitching, they're not getting accepted. And it can be a little bit frustrating because they have all this clout. They have the money. They have all that. But they don't necessarily have the name outside of their niche. And coming from more of a Hollywood background, I could tell you on set, no one necessarily knows who Amy Porterfield is. But anyone in the industry is like, Amy. So I think that in order to answer your question, What I tell them is, okay, well, you did not, and I'm not saying this about Amy, she's done this homework, but for other people that come to me with that struggle that are having a hard time with publicity, the first thing I do, look at their brand, look at the colors. Usually there's no intentionality whatsoever or it's incorrect. And so I say, okay, well, we need to do some branding. Well, no, I don't believe in... that. You know, my brand is me. That's my brand and blah, blah, blah. And I said, that's fine. And they say, well, it's made me, you know, this much money so far. And I say, well, first of all, imagine how much more money you'd be making if you did this in the first place. And then second of all, If you want to get a publicist's attention, if you want to get a show booker's attention or want to be on TV or whatever, they're going to be coming to your press page, hopefully. Hopefully you're not sending a PDF and they're going to be able to look at that and see that color association. And it's going to help them associate you more prominently with leadership in order to book you. So in the same way, if you want to shorten, because you know, they say it takes 10 to 12 touch points of someone seeing your business before buying from you. Well, our job is to hopefully shorten that timeline. And one of the best ways to do that is with color. Because like, for example, hammer and grind, if it's strongly associated with orange, and let's say you're putting up a Facebook ad or something and you have a stronger orange background, the next time that the person sees the ad or sees a post on social media or whatever, they're going to already be associating you with that color and it's going to be storing in their memory bank. So that's one of the biggest things that I can say versus just you posting in whatever outfit and black and white or whatever. Yeah, eventually your verbal message may get through, but why not shorten that time span to trust and sale with a visual? So like whenever people see me, they see more of this bright contrasty blue and that's how they remember me. So I have people that send me ads from other brands that have a similar color and they're like, oh, I thought this was yours because I'm so strongly tied to that color.

Yes. Let me show you an example. So I'm working with AppSumo because the podcast pitch kit is listed on their website. And so they're like, hey, we're going to start running some traffic to this. So we're going to be creating some ads for it. And I said, great. So they sent it to me this morning to preview. And for those of you that are listening, just watch the video and you're going to be able to see it. But it's that really, really strong, almost like a cobalt blue color. Well, when you see this in the feed, you're going to have a much stronger reaction. And they're going to be able to see, okay, it's the podcast pitch kit. Yeah, but they're going to be tied to that emotion of that really strong motivation and trust with that blue color. So that's what's going to get them to sell much faster than if it was just whatever gray and brown and black.

But this is the thing. We're not educated about this. It's no one's fault if you feel that your brand is subpar, especially when you're coming to me. First of all, never feel that way. That's my job. So that's my joy. And second of all, I have so many people that come in and they're frustrated because they've been toiling and struggling for months because they were told by the industry, well, focus on your offers, focus on your message, blah, blah, blah. Your brand is about you, blah, blah, blah. then they were never shown anything about color. And they go, oh my gosh, like all I need to do is tweak the colors on my landing page. And then they see their sales spike. Like that's a big deal. And that's what we're here for is to start seeing a difference in that bottom line, whether your goal is sales, traffic, or something like PR.

Yes, he was. I was like, you know what?

went out and bought me some. Okay, hold it up for a sec because it's a little staticky. Let me see it again.

Yeah, he's got the blue shoes. I love it.

Yeah, it's fantastic. What a great idea.

No, they're like out there spray painting their boots. They're like, yeah, this works for me, right?

Absolutely. Well, and especially, I'm not sure. how your audience advertises, but I'm thinking it's mainly they're doing their listings on Yelp and Google Maps and they have their truck and they have their business cards and that kind of stuff. So those types of visuals are really important. And I think the other thing that's really important is especially if you're showing up to have a meeting and to go over a property and what the person wants, it's really important to figure out what color you're going to be wearing. Like even though it may sound silly. You may increase your conversions just by choosing the right shirt color because you probably don't. Let me explain. There was a Russian scientist named S.V. Krakow in 1942 who did color experiments with blue and red. So he brought people in and he wanted to test their physical reaction when they saw each color. So with red, he noticed the pupils dilated, the heart rate went up, the blood pressure went up, you know, the palms started to sweat. And then with blue, notice the opposite. So the people stayed normal, heart rate went down, blood pressure went down, you know, very calming. So just by those real life experiments, you can see the difference in going to an initial meeting of wearing the color red versus the color blue, right? What do we want to symbolize to the customer, right? We want to show that we have expertise. We want to show that we are trustworthy. That's probably number one. And we want to show that we can get the job done. So I would say that would be a huge thing to take into consideration. And then that bleeds right into advertising and what you want to connotate. So I would be staying away from the reds unless it was an accent color. I would not be doing predominantly grays, blacks, and browns because it does not cause any type of reaction whatsoever in the body. So you won't get a response. And, you know, depending on your audience, you may want to stay away from. You know, the purples and some of the colors that are associated with more mysticism and maybe some of the pinks too. So really staying in more of the blue tones, the orange tones like you have, the green tones might be a little bit more harmonious and attractive to a customer.

I don't think that that's necessarily the priority. Let me give you an example. So if I am going to meet someone for the first time, maybe it's a client, maybe it's in person, and maybe it's a relationship I want to develop, then I'm actually going to wear purple. Because purple is a lot about a relationship building, especially if it's with a female. I'm going to focus more on a purple color. If I'm giving a speech, then I'm most likely going to be in a blue. If I'm teaching a class, smaller amount of people, they already trust me, and then I'm giving them a specific subject, then I might be more in a red because I want to stimulate them and keep them awake. Does that kind of make sense?

Using the colors in your closet as an arsenal for your intention in everyday life, I think is the goal.

Absolutely. You don't need to always be on brand, I don't think. I think once you start the job, that's probably a consideration, especially for you and your team. It'll have a much more positive association with the homeowner or the buyer. And it's also going to help when people drive by and see that to trust you more and to want to hire your company. But I think to start out with, the first thing we all have to do, go to your closet and look at it and see, does it look relatively colorful or is it like a vampire's den? For most of us, it's like a vampire's den.

Yep. And that is so common. I remember in college looking at my closet and going, oh my gosh, like it's all black and gray. So the first thing we need to do is start experimenting with wearing different colors. This might feel a bit unnatural and it might bother you a little bit, especially as you change out of comfortable color palettes into ones you never wear. A lot of people don't like orange necessarily when they first start. But the important thing to understand is that since we know scientifically there's something called color medicine, that the body responds to all these colors, it's important for you to start getting comfortable wearing these colors. colors to see how people respond to you, trying at different jobs, different shirt colors, just to see what gives a really positive association. You know, I think that that's a really interesting experiment and it can lead to some really interesting realizations. I mean, try it on date night, try it on family night, just see what happens and what people start responding to, because then it's going to be easier once you start introducing the habit to go, okay, I not only know that this is a good color for my customer, but it's a really good color for me and my team. So I'm ready to move forward. Don't just like change everything and throw a shirt on and just hope for the best. Like we need it to be a gradual change.

it's true. And once you start waking that up, it's a really exciting journey. I've actually started writing a book on this because I think that it's so powerful and it's not something that we're taught and it should be. Like we should understand the colors we're putting on our walls and especially for contractors like. Holy smokes, is there a lot of power in that, especially if you're not necessarily working with the designer and the customer says, well, we're just going to do this, whatever color in the kitchen, red. Well, you can say like, uh, no, like we should go more into this family unless you want to fight a lot and that's fine, but your turnover will probably be higher. So it can be really empowering in a daily life from what you're putting on your walls to what you're putting on your body.

Exactly. I mean, a lot of dogs, I've read research where dogs have freaking anxiety and they're wearing a red collar and the person changes it to blue and this anxiety subsides. Like, are you kidding me? It's such a powerful thing that we don't think about that can be influencing us. positively or negatively every day. So we should at least have a basic knowledge of it so that we're not just under the whim of what other people decide. We can actually understand and make educated decisions.

Well, I think it depends on what their definition of a brand is. Cause I could show you the most beautiful brand in the world, but it doesn't really matter how it looks if it's not converting customers. Right? So I think that's the first indicator is how are your sales? How are your conversions? If you're going, okay, well, I'm just kind of getting started. Fantastic. The barometers we need to look at are traffic and what I call discovery calls, you probably call client calls or whatever that initial... Discovery calls. There you go. Okay, great. Discovery calls, what that frequency is and then what the percentage is to actually booking the job. So looking at all those barometers is really important. I can't say a one-size-fits-all because there's some people that have the worst brands in the world and they do really well. But that's usually the 1%. The rest of us, I'm not a one-percenter. I'm not a magic pony. This has been a tough go of it. And I'm glad it has because I can help other people who struggle. And that indicator is, okay, let's look at what those traffic sources are and how they're converting. In terms of logo, you can go to my site. It's the most basic logo in the history of the world. So I think that's not a really hard part of it. I do think the important part of the logo and the site is the primary and secondary colors and the overall color palette. So that's what I'd be a little bit more worried about. Not worried, but, you know, focused on.

Well, I don't want anyone to suffer through anything. When people, they say this to me, they're like, oh, I love the subject of color and that's so amazing and da-da-da-da-da. But I don't want to change anything. Like, that's a lot of work. Like, well, you've already put in a lot of work learning about the color. I know, but I'm going to hire a web designer and I'm going to have to change this and that. Like, okay, but if it gives you the results that you've been looking for. In this case, for this show, that might be more regular work. That might be the ability to hire more people because of the regular work. That might be expanding your team. I mean, who knows what your growth may look like. Maybe you want to start getting more in the local press and newspapers and radios and be known as the contractor for that area. Well, that does mean you're going to have to put a little bit more work into your marketing. And there's no reason to market a subpar brand. So it really is the foundation from which everything grows, including sales, including publicity and marketing. So we have to have that strong foundation. I'm not saying you got to hire a web designer to redo everything, but can we just look at, okay, if I, my primary color, let's say right now for someone listening is gray because they liked the color and they're listening to this and going, you know what? I'm serving people, let's say in Oregon, in Northern Oregon, it's really green. Maybe I want to bring a little bit more green as my primary color and have gray as my secondary. Well, that's a pretty simple switch on Vistaprint for your business cards. And it's a relatively simple switch on your website. What's the worst case scenario? You're going to have to bring someone in to do your website for anywhere from $500 to $2,500. Is that worth it for that long-term growth you're looking for? I think the answer is absolutely.

Totally. And some people ask me, well, why did you choose blue? There's so many people that talk about these different things that chose blue. Blue worked for me. Visibility was not a term in 2015. It was something that I helped bring to the space. And so I'm proud of that and I'm not going to change it. But if I was talking to someone who, let's say, was a landscaper, like you said, and they're competing against 20 local businesses. And let's say 75% of them, their primary color is green. Well, then I'm going to say, we're not going green, right? We're going to go a little bit different so that you can stand out, especially. on the trucks and stuff while you're driving through the city. So I would do some research and see, okay, how are people responding to maybe purple? And how are people responding to maybe a really strong blue or a baby blue? And figure out from there how we could tweak the brand so that it would really stand out. So that when you put an ad in a local newspaper or magazine, they're flipping through and they see those all the time. So they're conditioned to flip past what's going to make them stop.

that's...

Maybe in this case, like a purple rake, but yeah.

Exactly.

I recommend sticking within the primary colors. And from what I've researched, the things I can back that affects the human body 100% physically, as well as the other ways, is red, green, yellow, blue, orange, and purple. Now, pink doesn't necessarily, it's technically not a color in the visible light spectrum. The reason why I had so many people that wrote to me and said, I'm so attached to my brand color. Everyone loves the color. Like you can't ignore pink or magenta. So that's what led me to doing all the research. And people do respond to those colors. Pink, they definitely feel more calm and more compassionate. Magenta, they feel more rebellious and more revolutionary. So I also have to include pink and magenta in that scope because people do respond to it.

Yep. And it worked. They really crushed AT &T. So AT &T is in a panic right now. It's exciting.

Sure. So specifically for contractors, you can think, let's make visibility and marketing synonymous. And that can be your social media. If you're emailing people that are, if you have subscribers for some reason, you know, that kind of stuff. The things that you're doing organically to bring business in. Publicity is what you're doing on other people's platforms in order to grow awareness of your brand and potentially. get more customers. So that's going to be your podcasting, your radio, your magazines, your print, etc. So the first thing I need to say is, especially if you're, let's say, paying for advertisement in a magazine, you need to be able to afford for that to bring you nothing and no results. Publicity is not a guarantee of return on investment. And I think that's where a lot of people get misguided, even in my industry, where they think, oh, if I... invest in ads or if I just book this top podcast that I have to pay $2,000 to be on, it's going to get me all these customers. There's never a guarantee. So I'm sure we all know that here, but I just got to say that in case there's someone out there that is thinking about doing that. When you feel like you're at the point of getting some more publicity, you can absolutely start with some incredible avenues. The first thing I would do since we're in such a digital space is I would look for, are there any podcasts in your industry for landscaping, for contractors? Look around. I mean, look at this show. So you might find something that you can guest on, or you might find a show like this one where you could maybe potentially be a sponsor. So those are some fun things that you can definitely do. Otherwise, you can look up your local radio stations. You can look up your local newspaper. television, magazines, and get some features going on in there. In that case, what I would do is specifically figure out what can you pitch that's unique. For example, I live in Coeur d 'Alene, Idaho, and in the newspaper and in the magazine, they usually feature a certain prominent entrepreneur or business owner or whatever about once a month. You might have something like that in your area. And how cool to, yeah, you can pay to have an ad in there, but what if you pitched a story about maybe what brought you to the area, why you started your business, what your family's doing in the local community. Maybe you're a huge volunteer. Those are ways to bring a lot of visibility to your brands in a cool way because it is really authentic. And everyone wants to work with someone, especially if it's in one of their homes that they feel like they can relate to and trust.

Sure. The first thing that I'll say regarding what we just talked about is don't be afraid to pitch something different. If you're looking at your local news station... Maybe you pitch and say, hey, I'm interested in potentially collaborating in an ongoing series where it would just be however big of a time slot,60 seconds, five minutes, whatever. Maybe you're a landscaper in this case and you can say five-minute landscaping tricks you can do at home. And you could be showing that on video that they could be featuring. Maybe it's going to be exclusively for their website, whatever it may be. And you're just shooting this one thing. Maybe they come in and shoot it. I don't know. you know, they put up your name and that's how you can be getting traffic. So that was just coming to my mind when you were talking. When it comes to having a press page, I don't think in this case it's absolutely necessary, but you need to go through your homepage and make sure it is very clear what you do, who you are, has a mini bio, and enables them to see maybe even just one video of how you are on camera, especially if you want to book local television. And if you want to do radio, they need to be able to hear your voice. So those are things that I think are important. A lot of people say that you just need a one sheet, which is a PDF to send when you pitch. I strongly advise against that because a lot of those pitches go right in the trash can. People who are good in their industry do not open attachments. So that's why it's good to maybe create an additional page on your website that has, you know, headshot of you, doesn't need to be fancy. a little mini bio explaining who you are, what you do, what your business is about, what you're passionate about, topics you like to speak about. So not just landscaping, but how to use bee-friendly plants in your garden, how to weed without using harmful pesticides, those kinds of things that are a little bit more unique, and then showing how they can contact you. So if you don't want your phone blowing up necessarily from your homepage. you might want to create a press page so that they can get in touch with you. Does that kind of give a couple of pointers?

Sure. Well, thank you so much for the opportunity. If you want to take the color quiz or the color class, that's on my homepage and that's free. If you want to start with something small, like Brad talked about the color kit, you can start there. I have a more advanced education in the color course. So if you want more in-depth study on what every primary color means. and building out your business's brand palette, that might be a good fit. And then if you want, you can always book a color consult with me, which is where we jump on a call. You can walk me through your brand and what your existing scheme is, and we can talk about it and get you pointed more in a clear direction.

We can always do that for sure.

Like we all turn that color and everything turns that color. I would probably have to say green. I love blue, just like you do. You know, it's the world's favorite color. But green, in my opinion, is the color that... the body really can't get too much of and it balances everything. So if you're too hot tempered, it brings you down. If you're too mellow, it brings you up. If you're feeling a lot of anxiety, it brings more balance. If you're, you know, it's just a really great color for the body. If I'm feeling stressed or I'm having a really busy day, I literally go outside because I'm surrounded by pine trees and I just look at the color because I know what it does for my body. So I'd have to say green.

I mean, you can get into like the film sphere where green is a split personality color and they say compare a tree to the skin of the Wicked Witch and the differences in tone. But no, I'd say just, you know, more of those natural greens. If I had to pick probably pine tree green.

You know, I think so. I think growth for sure. But it's like you can have the green of a tree. You can also have the green of like spoiled meat. So it's really interesting like what our brains do with different colors. I never have been able to get to the end of learning about it. And I think that's one of the cool things about color psychology.

Sure. I'm reading right now. You can see it's flipped up. I forgot to move it. It's called Contagious by Jonah Berger. Why Ideas Catch On. You love it? I'm

Yes. I got all three. So excited.

Yes. That's next on my list. And then he has one more. I just can't remember what it's called. I'm hammering through those and they've been so good. Did you like Contagious? I thought it was great.

Yes. I want to go.

$100 Philly cheesesteak. It's like, let's do this. I'm willing. Let's go.

You're ahead of me. I got to catch up.