Designing from the Heart: Turning Authenticity into a Visual Identity

Have you ever looked at your website or your content and thought, “This doesn’t really feel like me anymore”?
That moment of disconnection is more common than you think.

Many entrepreneurs focus on the surface of branding. They chase the perfect logo, the sleek new website, the trending color palette. But what if real branding starts somewhere deeper?

That question shaped my entire conversation with designer and strategist Christi Cooper, a woman who has spent over twenty-five years helping entrepreneurs bring their authentic selves into focus through design.

Branding Is About Experience, Not Aesthetics

Christi said something that captured the heart of branding perfectly:

“At its essence, brand is the experience that people have with you and your business. All touch points everywhere.”

That idea reframes everything.
Branding is not about how you look. It is about how people feel when they experience you.

Every post, every email, every website visit, every conversation leaves an impression. All those little interactions add up to what people believe about you.

When those experiences are consistent and aligned, your audience feels trust. When they are inconsistent, even in subtle ways, trust disappears quickly.

The Real Work Is Clarity

One of the biggest takeaways from our conversation was how many people start in the wrong place. Christi explained that most clients come to her asking for a new logo or website when the real issue is deeper.

She said, “People sometimes think they need to redo their website, but really what they need is clarity in their messaging and their offers and their audience.”

That truth applies far beyond design. Clarity drives everything in business. When you know who you are serving, what you believe, and what makes your work meaningful, design becomes easy. Without that clarity, no amount of visual polish can make your brand feel authentic.

If you are feeling unsure about your branding, start by answering three simple questions:
Who am I here to help?
What do I want them to feel?
What do I stand for?

Get those answers right, and your visuals will start to align naturally.

Why Your Values Matter More Than Your Fonts

Christi always brings her clients back to their core values. It surprises people at first, but it makes perfect sense.

Your values are the anchor of your brand. They shape how you speak, what you create, and how you show up online. When you communicate from those values, people recognize something genuine in you.

If your business is built on integrity, empathy, or empowerment, that energy should be visible in everything from your photos to your color palette to your words.

Authentic design is not about perfection. It is about coherence. It is about letting your visuals express your truth.

Redefining Professionalism

When we talked about professionalism, Christi made a point that really stuck with me.

“Professionalism is such a catch word. People have different opinions, especially if they come from corporate space. But I think there is a certain level of image that people expect when you are at a certain level. So if you are seeing yourself at that level and you are getting to that bigger level, you kind of have to look like you are at that level for people to take you more seriously.”

That line hit home for me because I remember my own transition from corporate life into entrepreneurship. For years, I played by rules that required me to blend in. My clothes, my tone, even my nail color were all meant to be “neutral.”

When I started my business, I finally allowed myself to show up fully. I wore color. I laughed more. I led with my personality. And that shift made all the difference.

Professionalism in entrepreneurship is not about blending in. It is about alignment. It means showing up as the version of yourself that already belongs where you are going.

When Your Brand Needs to Catch Up

There comes a point in every entrepreneur’s journey when you realize your brand has not kept up with your growth. Your business has evolved, but your visuals still belong to the earlier version of you.

That gap can quietly limit opportunities. People see your website or your content, and it does not reflect the excellence you deliver today. Christi shared the story of a client whose outdated site was holding her back from national-level visibility. Once they elevated her brand presence, new doors opened almost immediately.

Your visuals tell people how to perceive your level of expertise. When you look like the level you are playing at, others begin to treat you that way.

Designing from the Heart

At the end of our conversation, I asked Christi what designing from the heart really means. Her answer was simple and beautiful. It is about creating alignment between who you are and how you show up.

That alignment takes courage. It asks you to look inward, to question what feels true, and to let go of old versions of your brand that no longer fit. But when you do that work, everything starts to click. Your marketing feels easier. Your confidence grows. Your audience connects with you on a deeper level.

Designing from the heart is not just about visuals. It is a mindset. It is a way of showing up that says, “This is who I am, and I am proud of it.”

A Final Thought

If you have been thinking about updating your brand, start by asking yourself whether it still feels like you.

Not who you were when you started. Not who someone else says you should be.
You, right now.

Your brand is not a logo. It is an experience. When that experience feels authentic, everything else begins to align.

Chapters List

00:00 Introduction to Branding Expertise

01:26 The Disconnect in Branding

04:14 Defining Brand Experience

07:50 Intentional Branding and Its Challenges

11:28 The Importance of Professionalism in Branding

14:55 Embracing Personal Expression in Branding

Full Transcript

Christi Cooper (00:00)

brand is the experience that people have with you and your business. All touch points everywhere. So whether you're talking to someone at the grocery store about your business or your...

making a social media post All of that is branding at its whole.

Amanda Kaufman (00:33)

Well, hello and welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show. And today I'm joined by Christi Cooper. She is a genius in branding and design, and I'm really excited to have her here on the show. Hello, Christi .

Christi Cooper (00:48)

Hi Amanda, thank you for having me.

Amanda Kaufman (00:50)

my pleasure. Well, Christy and I got to know each other through a community that we were both members of. And she really impressed me with how generous she was and, of course, colorful. Christy, why don't you take a moment and talk to us a little bit about what led you to being an expert in branding? What do you really specialize in the most?

Christi Cooper (01:10)

Well, I currently specialize in helping experts with their personality powered brands and websites. And what led me there is I've just been a designer my whole life since I was 17. So long time. 25, 26 years. I started in print design. I went to university. I worked at an agency. I got burned out. Like the whole story, right? Like the whole like...

agency burnout, started my own business. Then when I started my own business, I worked with anybody and everybody. Like think that's a typical entrepreneurial story, right? You just like try to figure out who you wanna work with. And I just really fell into working with a lot of like coaches and consultants and service providers, just individual kind of solopreneurs or those who had small teams.

And I really enjoyed that work and found that that was where my talent was in bringing out the personality in their visual branding and their visual website, combined with strategy and all of that as well.

Amanda Kaufman (02:14)

That's really, really cool. I mean, 25, 26 years as a designer, that's really incredible. So when you're working with somebody and you're not even working with somebody, let's back that truck up. Let's say you're beginning to think about working with somebody and maybe you're researching them, you're checking out their socials, you're checking out their website. What would you say?

Christi Cooper (02:28)

Ha

Amanda Kaufman (02:40)

is the big cry for help that you're seeing when it comes to design. Like, you wish people would be hiring you for this.

Christi Cooper (02:44)

Ha

I think it's when I see a huge disconnect between like who they are on social media and like when I go to their website or their landing pages. That's one thing like their website will look like something but they show up as someone else on social media. It's like...

has a disconnect there that just makes it feel off. Also, I see a lot of really confusing websites that I don't know what they do. I don't know how to get to their offer. I don't know how you can help me. There's a lot of things that go on in a website specifically that can really turn off a viewer really quickly.

So those are some of the biggest ones I see. I see a lot of vague language on websites, especially coaches. I see a lot of like jargony like, live your best life, you know. And like I understand what they're trying to say, but it's like it's so big and vague and what everyone else is saying. Like it just doesn't, it doesn't resonate with people. And so that's another thing I see a lot is messaging as well.

Amanda Kaufman (03:35)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. you're so right, too, about the congruency thing. When people, just the human mind, our psychology, we're looking for trust. We're always looking for this consistency. And it could be consistency and rhythm. That's one of the big things that I see a lot of coaches struggle with and entrepreneurs struggle with when it comes to client acquisition is they don't have consistency with how often they're appearing on social media or how they're appearing on social media.

what they're saying on social media, or maybe they're silent altogether. ⁓ Most people really do accept though that they have to have a website. And what I see is a lot of people doing it quick because you're supposed to do it, but not necessarily pausing to think about, what is the cohesive idea here? Like what am I trying to present to the world?

Christi Cooper (04:25)

Right?

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Kaufman (04:46)

Can you do me a favor and just like share with us what is your definition of brand? You know, I have mine, but I love asking actual professionals in the branding space. you know, how do you define it? Because it always seems to be a little bit different.

Christi Cooper (04:53)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It's such a like jargon word, right? Like in the industry, it's like, your branding affects this, your branding affects that. like at its essence, brand is the experience that people have with you and your business. All touch points everywhere. So whether you're talking to someone at the grocery store about your business or your...

Amanda Kaufman (05:09)

Okay.

Christi Cooper (05:21)

making a social media post or you've got your website or you've brought your client on and now you're giving them their onboarding materials. All of that is branding at its whole.

It's really the experience and impression that people have of you and your business. I find with coaches,

it can get a little confusing because they might be just building their personal brand as a business or they might have a company name that they're trying to build and sometimes they don't know where how that all works together.

Amanda Kaufman (05:50)

Yeah, I noticed you were like not saying that where's the line. You were saying like, how does all that work together? know, branding is such an interesting subject. You know, when I teach it, I always say it's all the things that you do and don't do that leaves an impression on someone. Right. And that's a really overwhelming idea because it's like already it's, you know, try to list everything that you are doing.

Christi Cooper (06:11)

Yeah, yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (06:19)

But then try to list all the things that you're not doing. it ends up being a pretty overwhelming thing pretty fast. I'm curious, when you see somebody that has clearly invested time, energy, money into messaging, publishing, posting, being serious about their business, obviously, what do you think is the main reason that they don't seek?

alignment in that brand experience. Like what what do you think causes it to go to the back burner and what's the cost of that?

Christi Cooper (06:47)

Mmm. I think that sometimes they just don't realize that it's so inconsistent from the outside point of view because it's like it's so easy when you're in your own business and you know all the things that you do and I've put out there and you feel like you're being consistent or you feel like you're you're saying this thing all over the place, you know, but

people only see like one snippet here and one snippet there. And so their experience is a lot different than your experience. ⁓ So I think a lot of that has to do with not really realizing that it is out of alignment or maybe they fell into a...

Amanda Kaufman (07:15)

Yeah.

Christi Cooper (07:27)

someone, expert guru, someone on the internet saying you need to do it this way and you need to do this and you need to do this and they follow that or they're trying to copy someone who they admire, right? And they're like, if I just do it like them, I'll be successful. And then then they don't have like what makes them unique in that in that picture.

So I think there's like a few things going on. So maybe they're not realizing it. Maybe they're following the advice of someone or they're trying to emulate someone that they admire thinking that's the key to success.

Amanda Kaufman (07:59)

Yeah, you know, it's so interesting. I love this subject, especially as a high performance coach, because I work with lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of coaches on their performance more generally. And branding is one of those things and like driving the consistency of message and consistency of experience. I love how you said that. There's no greater tool, I think, for activating your own personal growth and development, right?

You know, it forces you to really say, am I for this? Am I against that? You know, like, what am I really trying to say? And why does that matter? And like, that feels like a really cognitively hard thing to work through, you know? And so I can see why, you know, copy and pasting seems like a good thing, or like hopping into Canva and just like, bloop, you know, or just speaking into AI, like, give me logo.

What do you think is the missing piece people often have when they do decide? You know what, I wanna be more intentional with my branding. Like what do they usually focus on and what should they focus on instead?

Christi Cooper (09:04)

Sometimes people get hung up on logos, which as a designer, I should be like, I love logos. I really don't. They serve a purpose as a brand identity, especially in the online world. They really don't have a big impact on your brand and your business, as long as they're legible and they kind of go with the personality of it. People sometimes think they need to redo their website.

But really what they need is more of like clarity in their messaging and their offers and their audience. Like sometimes there's that.

I get a lot of kind of different things. It's interesting. So I do what's called a True Brand Power Plan. And it's basically a deep dive interview. And I ask a bunch of questions. And people get hung up in different places. Sometimes it's like, what are your core values? And people are like, wait. Let me sit down. Let me think about that for a moment. Because your values are really the anchor of.

your business brand and your personal brand and they drive you and like that should be reflected in your messaging and the look and feel of it can come across like what kind of feelings and emotions are we trying to communicate? So yeah, or people get hung up. I do ask the question like, are you for or against something specific in your industry? And sometimes people just don't know like it's like, let me think about that.

It's an interesting thing. I think I got off track there, actually. ⁓

Amanda Kaufman (10:21)

Not at all. No, it's perfect.

I think I think that's the thing about brand is, is that, you know, I know. So part of my brand from the very beginning was that I was anti brand. Right. And I looked at it. I saw it as being something that was, you know, what nefarious people did or deceptive people did to, you know, my wallet open. Just being totally blunt about it. So I was I was very anti branded. I was like, oh, you know, like branding doesn't matter.

It's just a waste of time. No one cares what color it is. No one cares. And what I've learned is there's levels to the game, right? I think when you're very first starting, it's more about having the courage to start and it's more about having the courage to ask and to invite and to connect and to serve. there's a lot of courage activation that starts at level one of the game of entrepreneurship.

But very quickly, very quickly, when you're starting to move to the next level and the next level and the next level and you start encountering these ceilings on your growth, this friction, like, you why am I not being chosen for this opportunity? Or why am I not being thought of first? Or why the hell am I not getting the referral? I would think I'm beginning a referral. Why am I not getting a referral? you know, like there's these questions that start to come up as you start encountering the next ceiling and the next ceiling and the next ceiling of your growth.

What would you say is like the time that somebody, you know, and I'm assuming you agree with me that like branding maybe doesn't matter in the first few days of business. But like what is the point where it's like, look, this is not a negotiable. Like you need to sort this ish out.

Christi Cooper (11:48)

you

Yeah, yeah, I would say, yeah, as people have started to see success in their business and

they might start to be getting bigger opportunities, but then they're kind of wondering why other opportunities aren't also falling into place. A lot of times it has to do with that online impression that people have when they go and visit. Like it's really hard. I network a lot and I talk to people and I love to refer people out to others. But if I go to your website and it doesn't say that you do the thing that you told me you do, I can't share that with people. Like, or...

Amanda Kaufman (12:32)

Right. It's

not congruent.

Christi Cooper (12:34)

It's not congruent or if it looks like Like if it looks confusing or they can't find the contact information or it just looks really outdated Like like I had a client last I think it was last year. We worked together like

She launched a book and she was getting all this PR and she really needed her website to be redone. She's like, I did it myself, you know, it looks okay, but it's not national level visibility, professionalism. And because we redid it.

then that opened doors for her for bigger opportunities. It made it really easy for, you know, Hello Sunshine to like say, hey, we can bring her in and speak to our, do these workshops and things. And so I think there is an expectation of a certain level of, I say professionalism, but professionalism is such a catch word, like.

People have different opinions of it, especially if they come from corporate space, right? But I think there is a certain level of like image. I mean, we're an image driven society, whether we like it or not, that people expect when you're at a certain level. So if you're seeing yourself at that level and you're getting to that bigger level, you kind of have to look like you're at that level for people to take you more seriously. ⁓

Amanda Kaufman (13:39)

Right, yeah, I do think there is

such a thing as professional standard. you know, I, when I left corporate, you know, again, like, I love this subject because it really does bring up a lot about personal stuff and like, how are you, how are you processing your transition from what was to what is and navigating the realities of the difficulties as well as the benefits of entrepreneurship.

Christi Cooper (13:44)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (14:05)

And and and I remember you know just I didn't want like I've got a nail color on right now If you're on YouTube you can see it if you're listening It's like the this like ICC foam kind of a color never ever when I was in corporate America would I ever you know have a color that was so bold or or add like Sparkles to it or even bread frame glasses like just like those personal choices of the expression of my style

I wouldn't do that in a corporate setting because the professional standard was that as a consultant, I was meant to blend. I was meant to be a part of a larger organization and a team and a representation of the team. I even got reprimanded once for being too colorful in my dress. And I learned very quickly, I'm like, oh, okay, like jewel tones are like the max of what I can do.

Christi Cooper (14:53)

my goodness.

Amanda Kaufman (15:00)

in a corporate setting. And as an entrepreneur, I really enjoyed the freedom of being able to express myself, however I darn well chose. it's kind of like I was saying with the game. When you're in level one of the game, no one cares what you look like because they just love seeing an underdog get started. But when you start to represent the interests of more and more money, more and more people, more and more influence,

there are standards that depending on what industry you're in, like that is a reality. So I almost think of like branding is like, what's my answer to that? Right? Yeah.

Christi Cooper (15:35)

Yeah, yeah, for sure,

for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of people don't realize, yeah. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Amanda Kaufman (15:41)

Well, Christy, go ahead. No,

I was going to say thank you so much for spending your time with us and sharing your valuable perspective. Your brand, so approachable, right? You obviously appreciate color and design and all of those things. But I think one of the things I really appreciate about you is that you're just so down to earth. And I love that. It's a beautiful thing and so needed in our space in particular.

Christi Cooper (15:49)

Yeah.

Amanda Kaufman (16:08)

So thank you so much for being here on the show to share some of your wisdom with us.

Christi Cooper (16:12)

Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Amanda.

Amanda Kaufman (16:15)

Yeah, my pleasure. And what's the best way for somebody to keep up with you?

Christi Cooper (16:19)

Yeah, I'm most active on LinkedIn, so you can find me over there. It's Christy, C-H-R-I-S-T-I, Cooper. Yeah, follow me there. I'll be sharing more content as we go.

Amanda Kaufman (16:30)

I love it. I love it so good. And dear listener, if you've got a friend who's been, I don't know, a victim of ugly websites, make sure you share this episode with them with a big heart and saying, it's not about you. I just have another friend that needs to take a look at their branding and design. Just grab the link to this and share it with three of your friends who are working on their brand presence. And you know what? If you haven't already, make sure you smash that subscribe button. A lot of people rely on my Instagram or

LinkedIn to tell them when the next episode is out, but you can actually hit subscribe and that does two things number one You don't have to keep track of us on social media Which means you can stay nice and focused and number two it actually signals that our show is great So we really appreciate you doing that and if you're just like my god I love you guys doing a review for us is just always super appreciated because you know people have so many choices when it comes to podcasts especially and we just Genuinely really appreciate your honest feedback on the review

Until the next episode my friend we will see you again very very soon and until then just stay sharp stay focused and do what matters