The Leap_year Startup Package: How we build a brand in one day of your time
When we build a brand, it’s a lot more than just a logo and website design. We often launch an entire business from the ground up, or rebrand when it’s time to pivot or upgrade. We tell a story that draws people in and helps them understand what you are all about. That can include everything from naming and productizing your services, to creating a website, to crafting strong messaging, to strengthening your pitch and helping you gain confidence in sales. We start with a deep strategic foundation and take you all the way to setting up your G-Suite and LinkedIn bio. It’s all about you, your vision, and your business.
When you work with us, you get a whole team focused completely on you and your idea—a strategist, a designer, and a copywriter who all wear many hats—working in tandem to make your idea real in the world. We bring teams of experts together who are passionate but not precious about their work. If something isn’t working, we scrap it and keep moving forward.
How do we build a brand so quickly? We work collaboratively in real-time with you and trust the “creative genius” moments that pop up along the way. Working side-by-side with you means we don’t waste any time pursuing a direction that isn’t going to work. We find that true collaboration and transparency makes for an effortless and enjoyable work experience with fantastic results.
We’re passionate about people with big ideas who take the lead and make things happen. If you’re sitting on a big idea right now, it’s time to get that work out into the world. You don’t have to have it all figured out—brand building with us brings you clarity through the process.
Quickstart Strategy
Part of how we build your brand in one day is that we start every project with a Quickstart Strategy. This takes place outside of the sprint day and can stand on its own or transition seamlessly into any brand package. We start with a deep dive where we ask the right questions that help us draw out the information we need to create your brand strategy. Often, clients begin feeling clarity and progress from this call alone.
90-minute deep dive with you + our team, so we can:
✳ Get clear on who you are and what you stand for
✳ Carve out your space in your industry
✳ Productize and organize your offerings
✳ Help you streamline your sales process
✳ Find out what your brand should look and sound like
Coming out of this deep dive, we create a robust deliverable that includes everything you or any creative team need to dive into the creative process.
Brand Strategy Deliverable:
✔ Brand Strategy defining your:
audience - primary, secondary, tertiary
unique offering
brand personality
big idea
✔ Brand positioning
✔ Product / process recommendations
✔ Mood board
✔ Recommended website outline
✔ Marketing / PR recommendations
✔ Actionable plan for next steps
The Start Up Package
After the Quickstart Strategy, we’ll recommend a package. The Start Up package means we’ll build your brand in one day of your time! We work before, after, and behind the scenes to make the process seamless for you. Our goal is to provide an experience that feels inspiring and transformational, and for you to come out on the other side with all the tools you need to launch and go after your business goals. Our intention is that you won’t have to “work hard”—we guide you through the process and do the work of translating your vision into beautiful and effective deliverables.
Getting Ready
First, we’ll schedule your day. We’ll send you a logistics questionnaire to gather some basic info in advance, and we will discuss anything else we need from you like existing photos or other materials that may carry over into your new brand. Other than that, there is very little prep we need you to do in advance of your work with us except drink water, take care of yourself, and be excited to build your brand.
The Sprint Day
The sprint day is 10am—6pm (or an 8 hour window that works with your time zone). We typically meet 3-4 times on Zoom throughout the day and give you some homework between sessions. It’s best to have the day open but we can also work with your schedule if that’s not possible.
Your Leap_year team will consist of a brand strategist, a copywriter and a graphic designer. We will also schedule special sessions with PR, social media, and marketing experts depending on your needs. You’ll notice our team members all wear different hats and have a lot of overlapping skills as well! We work together all day, focused on creating your brand with an iterative process. We share work with you, workshop revisions on screen in real time, then hop off Zoom for a work session, and repeat. We continue this way until the day is done, except for an hour of tech time where we work with you to get all tech details squared away like domain transfers and email setup.
The schedule on the day varies. Here is a sample agenda:
10:00 Presentation: logo, fonts, color palette, naming/tagline, initial headlines, website structure. Workshop in real time via screen share.
11:30 Work session offline
1:30 PR Session
2:30 Work session offline
3:30 Social Media session
4:30 Work session offline
5:30 Final presentation, walk through final to do list and next steps
6:00 Wrap
Wrap Email
After the day, we wrap the final to do’s on our end and package up your brand toolbox. We send you a robust email with access to all your files, website, collateral, and all the work we have done together, in advance of your follow up session.
Your Deliverables
Brand Book — The strategic process begins with the Quickstart Strategy and continues throughout our work together. At the end, you will receive your strategic deliverable designed in YOUR brand look and feel that includes your:
Target audience - primary, secondary, tertiary
Unique offering
Brand personality
Big idea
Brand Identity
Logo
In the Startup package we design a wordmark logo for you. Typically, it is your name or business name in a beautiful typographic design that fits with your brand personality. In addition to it being on your website and other materials, you will receive your wordmark logo in various file formats and sizes, in black, white, and full color, with and without your tagline if you have one, and in any alternate configurations that may be needed. For example, we may design a stacked version of your first and last name if your name is very long.
Icon
We design an icon for your brand to be used when you need to brand a very small space such as a profile picture or app icon. Sometimes this is your first initial or other graphic element in your brand colors. In addition to being on your website and other materials, you will receive your icon in various file formats and sizes, in black, white, and full color.
Graphic elements
Graphic elements vary for every client depending on the brand personality. It may be one or more patterns that we use on your site to create layering and texture. It may be a suite of icons we use to illustrate your brand offerings. Or, it could be one or more pieces of collage or illustration that evoke your brand personality.
In addition to being on your website and other materials, you will receive your graphic elements in various file formats and sizes.
Color palette
We select a brand color palette that we workshop and finalize with you on the day. You will receive the color palette laid out on a PDF one-page guide including Hex codes, RGB values, and CMYK values for each. You may need to use the Hex or RGB codes in the future to set colors on the web, and the CMYK values for print. We don’t provide Pantone codes but you can always reach out to us if you work with a print vendor who requests these.
Typography
We select 2-3 fonts for your brand that we workshop and finalize with you on the day. You’ll receive your fonts in a dropbox ready to install on your computer. Many of the fonts we work with are free. We will discuss with you in advance if we choose a font that you would need to purchase a license for.
Some fonts aren’t available on all platforms. When this is the case, we’ll provide alternate fonts for your brand, prioritizing Squarespace and Google Docs, and considering Canva as well.
Website
We build your website in Squarespace with the Startup Package.
Your site consists of about 6 main pages. Often, these pages are:
Home
About
Methodology or other
Offerings / Services
Contact
Blog (we’ll set up a few initial posts or placeholder posts)
Near the end of our work together we will transfer website ownership to you. You and your team can access the site via your Squarespace account and edit as needed.
For hosting, we always recommend the business plan at $276 per year. You can also pay by the month at a higher rate.
We like to launch your site right away. If certain pages aren’t ready (for example, a blog) we will hide that page and show you how to make it live when ready. If you aren’t ready to launch the site during our work together, we’ll password protect it and show you how to remove the password when you’re ready to launch publicly.
Email marketing
We set up your email marketing with whatever platform you use, and if you haven’t started email marketing yet we’ll make a recommendation. Typically we will recommend Squarespace, Mailchimp, or Hubspot depending on your needs.
We will create:
Opt in — place(s) on your site for people to sign up
Email template — simple branded design for your marketing email
Research shows that more people sign up for email if there is an incentive, called an Opt In Freebie. We will create one as part of your package, or implement yours if you already have one.
Tech Time — we take care of you when it comes to tech.
Transferring or buying your domain(s)
Setting up your Squarespace account
Setting up G-Suite email ($72 per year, per address. 1st year free through Squarespace)
Connecting social accounts
Uploading branding to social accounts
Email basics
The basics of how to update your site, how to access Squarespace help
Copywriting on the website
We’ll write the copy on your site in close collaboration with you. Sometimes this looks like us writing the first draft and you edit, or the other way around. For primary headlines, we’ll workshop the language together.
Other Design Deliverables
Social media header and profile images in the file formats and sizes you need
Branded Google presentation document template (also on dropbox as a Powerpoint)
Branded Google document letterhead (also on dropbox as a Word doc)
Business cards
Follow Up Session
In this wrap video chat, we do a final review of all the work we have done together and make any last live revisions on screen. We walk you through your toolbox, and talk about your next steps as you begin telling the world about your venture.
Quarterly Revisions
We include quarterly checkins with revisions for one year following your launch.
Next Steps with Leap_year
After the Startup Package, you can work with us again in a variety of ways!
Marketing Sprint - We’ll do another day together focused on your marketing strategy, creating your marketing and social media templates and calendar for the whole year, in one day.
Marketing Retainer - We work together in a monthly sprint day, and ongoing execution between sprints, to run your marketing and get you to your goals.
Design Subscription (beta) - Unlimited designs and unlimited revisions.
Renegade Launch with our PR partner is an amazing way to launch to press both for your business and for your personal thought leadership.
Sprints and Half Sprints - Need more sales collateral or other deliverables that require strategy, copy, and design? We offer additional sprints and half-sprints to execute more for you and keep the momentum going.
