Re-branding Jesse Petersen for Business

With one conference call I suddenly had to re-brand myself as a self-employed WordPress consultant in the wide world of entrepreneurship. No longer was I the moonlighting, 18-hour per day husband and breadwinner, but a full-blown freelance WP expert trying to make ends meet – quickly. Results and feedback have been favorable so far, but there was and still is a lot of work to do to make that transition from doing this work for a company to doing it exclusively for oneself. Here are the first six steps I have taken to re-brand myself.

1

My first step was to get the word out to my current contacts who had projects that were going slowly due to my massively restricted work time since I was working 50 hours/week, nearly around the clock for momentary fixes. They were delighted to know I was on their projects full-time and I got their projects done rather quickly.

2

What happened next was actually concurrent with Step One: my contact form on JessePetersen.com kept people coming in with various theme issues and site projects. It was absolutely essential to create my professional site to separate my blogging from my profession, especially when I go on and on about American Idol and such here.

3

After running on all 16 cylinders for 2 1/2 weeks and trying to work out ways to generate passive income, I decided I needed to continue putting out my feelers and let people know who I am and what I do. I started hitting up Twitter and Facebook a LOT more, which led to the next step.

4

I’ve always done art – and done it well, but my graphic design seems to have lagged behind those initial art skills. In recent months I have felt that my work was inferior to other designers’ work that I have been exposed in the WordPress community. I’ve made some pretty decent strides in recent weeks, but it is time to get that monkey off my back.

To remedy that, I started spending hours looking at site designs, Photoshop tutorials, Smashing Magazine, and clicking links from successful business owners on Twitter into the wee hours of the morning on my iPhone in bed. Yesterday I made a brand identity for myself for using as an avatar, logo, and favicon. Today I incorporated it into my website header and spent hours researching and designing my Twitter profile background.

5

I’ve been a sponge soaking up as much collective information and wisdom from others’ successes and mistakes as possible. I’ve begun reading Barry Moltz’s book, Bounce! to regain my composure and grab onto some proven ideas to point my compass in the right direction with the right frame of mind.

6

Now that I’ve written this post and put it out there for Twitter viewers and on my Facebook profile, I’ve been re-branded for my new vocational purpose.