Chapter 3... Let the Branding Begin

Let the Branding Begin

I've had a fortuitous breakthrough in the last week, which after the kick-start Divine received from the Fresh Ideas mentoring competition makes me feel like my luck must surely be running out soon... or the fates are truly smiling on me.

A word of advice to anyone starting a new business -particularly one operating in social spheres: accept every invitation and attend every function or event you can. This is networking 101 to those with a nose for business and it quickly becomes so to others (like me) who have learned it from experience. It's often the chance meetings and introductions through mutual friends that lead to the beginnings of business relationships than following the conventional channels, such as researching lists of companies and spending exhausting hours on the internet.

The More You Know, the More You Don't Know

One of the key areas that Krista and I agreed needed addressing was Divine's website. Since cementing which specific aspects required the most attention my partner and I had spent days reformulating the content with a much clearer idea of how it should best reflect our fantastic service. This proved a far more difficult task than I had expected! Ironically, with a much more focused vision of what I wanted the site to convey (not only information-wise but also in terms of projecting a certain overall feel and ethos) I found it much harder than when I first wrote the site's copy in the very early days of Divine. Needless to say, that original site didn't work as well as I'd hoped and anticipated... a fact which has been wincingly reiterated to me many times these past few weeks, but most recently by the branding company I now have helping me do the overhaul!

A Bolt from the Blue

Last week I happened to meet the head honcho of a branding company at a social event; I told him all about Divine, the mentoring competition, where I was with everything etc. and he was really interested. He loved the idea of Divine and liked the brand as it currently was but saw loads of room for growth and development. Anyway, to cut a longish story short, after a subsequent meeting I now have a fantastic company building a new website to reflect our reinvention! This couldn't have come at a better time since Krista had made it clear that what I heretofore had wasn't going to work in the PR stratosphere she was intending to introduce me to; the branding team are very much on the same page as me (and vicariously, Krista) and so hopefully I'm in for happy days.

So, I very much feel like I've had an early Christmas this year, but after the difficult last few months I can't help also quietly thinking I do deserve it. On the Christmas note, the festive season actually is a bit of an annoyance in a way, as it's going to be a couple of weeks hiatus from the momentum I'm steadily building up and very much enjoying. Still, I expect I'll be humming a different tune come the 25th, when I'm sitting before a traditional lavish Greek Christmas dinner with my family in Athens!