Almost a month later, after the contract was ended, I approached Mike about a project deliverable that we both overlooked (amongst a long list). Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting much of a response. But without the slightest hesitation, Mike reminded me of what he said when we initially connected, ‘he promised to ensure I was more than 100% satisfied with the value he delivered” (which he had already accomplished). Immediately, Mike kicked into drive and started working. Seriously, no one does that! 

To have the skill he has and then the heart to go alongside, is incredibly rare. Mike is also incredibly kind, hardworking, down to earth, and to be honest, just a tad eccentric. You’ll probably realize that as soon as you communicate with him. But this is what makes him so great and fun to work with. He sees the world differently than most people. His artistic ability is undeniable and unbelievable. You wouldn’t hire Dilbert to create your brand, right? I hope not. I was totally blown away when we started on this project. I didn’t have a logo, I didn’t have a brand. I barely had anything. We were starting from scratch, except for my existing makeshift website, using one of Shopify’s free themes which hosted some stock product photos and automated logo maker – it was an awful ‘placeholder’ site. 

On our first call, he told me we needed to explore and understand what we’re creating. We needed to understand my WHY. Mike is like Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Inception, he is effortlessly able to dive down about 10 levels into your psyche and extricate your core beliefs in your brand. (I’ve now learned what ‘scary awesome’ means). We were able to do this this because we both subscribe to the principles taught by Donald Miller, who authored, Building a StoryBrand. I’m a big fan of this book, and unbeknownst to Mike, this was a big factor in hiring him for this project. Sticking with the Leo movie analogies, Mike extracted more value than DiCaprio did in all of Blood Diamond. He’s got skill. Just be careful not to start talking about your daddy issues : ) 

After we knocked out the Storybrand and we had a strong foundation, we started designing logos. I’ve worked with a lot of graphic designers, but I’ve never worked with one who was confident enough to screenshare (LIVE) with me as he was designing logo options. That takes some gusto my friends. Like all great creative processes, it took some time (2-3 hours) to come up with the logo. But he NEVER forced me to choose one. In fact, after we spent considerable time on a few options, I thought I liked, I was starting to get fatigued (not him) and was considering caving in and just choosing one to keep the project on schedule. Nope, not on Mikes watch! He could sense my hesitation. He would not allow me to accept something that didn’t bring me joy and would resonate in my core. And then BAM! We (he) nailed it. 

Again…C’mon! This is so uncommon! The entire logo creation process was incredible. I don’t just mean watching the logo and brand start to form a life of its own. Yes, of course, it was amazing. But even just watching him dance around Adobe Illustrator was mesmerizing. The speed at which he works in Adobe is like a world class musician. It’s 100% confirmation that this guy has been doing this for a long time. It’s amazing how in-tune he is with his ‘instrument’. 

After we buttoned up the logo, we were able to start creating the Shopify store. He helped me to identify a custom Shopify theme that I was excited about, and that would suit my brand and strategy and I am very happy with the direction we went. Mike went beast-mode on the Shopify theme and just started breaking stuff (in a good way). He subcontracted a video guy to help with our intro home page, it came out great. One of my biggest issues with my site was being able to organize our SKU’s in an easily digestible format. I have 20+ SKU’s and I was completely stumped on how to organize them. Enter Mike. Problem solved. MD created a world class Shopify website that I’m over the moon about.