How She Built An Online Branding Business With Frannie Wilson

Or if you can see Franny Wilson she's right here when she comes back and shares her area of expertise with me and you , the listener . Franny is the co-founder and chief visionary officer of Ampersand Studios , a full-service branding agency and photography studio based in Boise , idaho .

I like to say Boise , but I notice that everybody who's native says Boise , so I'm going to pretend I'm educated , and she serves small businesses in the Treasure Valley and beyond . But you also , franny , have an online arm , an education arm of your business . You want to share a little bit about that , kwejo ?

Yes , I'm from Boise and , yeah , we have an online aspect of our business as well , which is why you and I have connected and I have been trying to build this online business alongside a brick and mortar agency studio here , and over the past let's see , since 2017 , 2018 , ish we've been working on building the online business and I feel like this might be

relatable for a lot of people who have like a service-based business and are trying to do courses and trying to do things online digital products and it's definitely a challenge because I know the people I look up to that are building these huge online businesses . I always have to remind myself like that's like their main thing .

So I I want to , you know , be able to hang out with those cool kids , but it's not necessarily my main thing , but it is the most fun thing for me .

There's a link in the show notes below and then you can watch this specific episode and hopefully you can give a like and subscribe to the YouTube channel . And then also , if my voice is new to you because you haven't listened in a while , hi , my name is Quajo .

I'm the new host of the Art of Online Business podcast , and if you want to know more about where Rick went and how he chose me wow , that's really loud Then you can go into the show notes below .

It's in the normal range but like now range .

the whole meal and he cuts it up in the video , right , so it's not like two or three hours , it does that . It's pretty interesting .

What does that stand for ? Do you know ? I don't know . Food , diet administration , food and drug administration . I bet you should be food and diet shoot as I'm looking at my stomach what is that thumping sound ?

Oh Lord , she saves us so much time , like if we were chopping up all the vegetables into Tupperwares and then .

It's actually coming after my 25th year anniversary of our graduating class reunion 25union .

So it's somewhere between 300 people businesses , directly , and then indirectly , as in coming through your programs , over a thousand thousands , because you've been doing this since 2009 . And you started off feeling yourself on Diet Coke coke which doesn't , which has more than zero calories .

But you can say zero calories if it's less than like three calories or something like that per serving but it has the aspartame , which is worse than calories , you know .

Which is usually the thing that shocks people the most is that we've had a partnership that has been able to last that long . So we met in college .

We were both graphic design and photography majors at Boise State University and we were in some of the same classes together and actually what happened was , let's see , we both wanted to go and work for design agencies . We wanted to go work for these big branding firms that were local . We both really loved print design . We love branding .

I wanted to work in packaging design . I love toboard . I dreamt of working for snowboard companies and like designing , getting to design like actual physical items and outerwear and like snowboards and things like that . And Nicole really loved like layout of magazines and type work and all that kind of stuff . So that was the plan .

We both had internships with these design firms . We were running the AIGA , which is the like graphic design kind of club basically , and we were really immersed in the whole graphic design community at the time .

But then the recession hit and in our senior year of college all the design firms were actually laying off people , laying off designers , so they were not hiring on any of the interns , that's for sure . So we actually decided to start a business as our senior project Instead of presenting our individual portfolios .

Usually there's like a senior design show where all of the senior graphic designers will present their portfolios and their handoff , their resumes , and professionals from the community will come and kind of take a look at the talent that's coming out of college . And that's a lot of times where people will get new jobs or get internships or start the conversation .

And you throw this big event it's like an art show event you have it catered and you make really cool invitations for it and all that stuff .

So at that event , instead of being like hi , I'm Franny and I'm Nicole , we created Ampersand Studios and we handed out business cards and we merged our portfolios into one business portfolio and we thought we were going to be a design firm , we thought we were going to do branding and all of that , but we kind of were just willing to do anything that people

would pay us for at that point , because we were fresh out of college , I also had a let's see seven month old baby at that time .

So this whole wrench got put in everything and what happened with his business was the because of the recession , they stopped building houses and they had already built him and his brother had a construction company .

They had already built this office building and they owned the property in the building that they built and they were trying to rent it , lease it out to people , and nobody was starting businesses or leasing anything . So they were like , okay , we're not going to build any more houses , let's open something in this empty space that's sitting here .

So they decided to open a bar , and the only things that are this is our joke the two things that are recession proof are bars and weddings . So Nicole and I started saying yes to a lot of wedding projects , because the businesses weren't hiring us for branding .

We were brand new , we didn't have a reputation yet , but we were college graduates and all of our friends were getting married . So people were like , hey , you guys are creative and we were photography minors . So they started asking us to photograph their weddings and that we just kind of accidentally became wedding photographers .

We literally like just slipped and fell on that and it became a snowballed and it became like our whole business . So we started doing wedding shows . We invested in all this gear . We went to wedding show or wedding conferences . We're learning from others in the industry . We were going to little workshops and stuff like that which in 2009 was not very common .

People weren't really sharing like they do now . There wasn't online programs or anything like that . There's just WPPI in Vegas , which is the big one , so you were coming before your time I mean , we were subscribed to blogs on RSS feeds to learn what we could learn .

And we were obsessed with , like the wedding blogs , Style Me Pretty and the Knotcom and all of that . So we were advertising in all of these kind of conventional , more conventional ways . Facebook was a thing , but not really for businesses . Yet Instagram wasn't even really out . Pinterest was . All of that was at the beginning .

So if I could go back , if I could like get in a time machine and go back , like back to the future style and go give him . You know , when we get back to the future where it gives him like the the cheat to like know what to bet on for sports .

I was just starting out in China and we had Android phones and we had this little stick camera thing and we would like take these little videos and send them , sometimes to like our family across the ocean , and like , oh my gosh , had we started the YouTube channel then , like I might not even be managing Facebook ads now or have tried like the other six

businesses . I tried because we just would have had a big YouTube channel like two foreigners living in China , before it became like something that lots of people who live in China do you know .

Or collagesnet , which was this big company where you could show your proofs and order , you know albums and prints from for your wedding clients . They asked us to , they featured us as their featured photographers in their , like national magazine campaigns . I was like look , ampersand studios uses us .

We were doing brand deals and I didn't know that that's what that was or that that it was about to be like this huge thing that you know we were just like oh that's cool sure and they weren't paying you now looking back , I'm like , yeah , no , I think they , I think they gave us some credit toward our stuff , but it wasn't like it just wasn't really a

thing that people did yet it was they just wanted to highlight some of the artists that they were using . And and so now I'm like dang it . Why didn't we see , oh , this is the future of what this industry is going to be like , or here's like another way that we could , we could offer to do that with other people .

Or we're just so , and I'm probably doing it now Cause we're like , as business owners , I think we're just so and I'm probably doing it now because we're like , as business owners , I think we're just so focused on the thing at hand that it's harder to see that kind of future innovation that's happening or that could be opportunity , I guess .

And the fact that you were friends first , because that means you navigated , being friends and then being business partners , and then , sometime along the way , doing all the legal things , and you're still so people ask us that a lot People are always like wait a minute , I want to start a business with my friend and we're like hold on .

Our kids , our best friends , our husbands , like we have gone on vacations together so we like we are like best friends now . But it it definitely didn't start out that way and I think that we , the way that we operate , is actually kind of more like a marriage than anything else , like it's .

It's we understand each other's nuances so well and personalities and then we know we know how to rumble with each other . We can have like healthy disagreements , we can hash things out and come to compromises .

We've really learned how to grow together and how to maybe manipulate each other a little bit , like you do in a marriage , and we kind of have this agreement with which I feel like I have with my husband too , where it's like okay , if we're , if we're not seeing eye to eye on something , then the person who's like more passionate about that thing gets like a

little extra , couple extra points toward winning the argument . So it's just , it's really worked out . We've we've figured out how to pretty much we use EOS language a lot , so we IDS things we identify , discuss and solve in a very specific way . And , yeah , it's awesome .

It's worked out really well and now we're leading a team , which has been a huge learning thing , but okay . So the question was when did we decide , when and why did we decide to bring our business online ? Yes , but before you answer , okay . So the question was when did we decide , when and why did we decide to bring our business online ?

I'll just leave it at that .

Mine was called Snap Say and his was called , I forget , but the point is , Dan is like super unique , cool individual , a little weird , but you know what dan was was way into . After , like , we finished recording the video , he , he , he was into bitcoin and he was trying to convince me to buy bitcoin in 2011 and I was , like , you know , ultra conservative .

I'm like , look , and so I looked into it . I'm like look , and so I looked into it . I'm like , I don't know , this just seems like could be a fad , so I'm just going to keep socking my money away into , not 401k but , like , I just invest with Vanguard , and he did purchase Bitcoin and he purchased a lot of it .

So he's not a Bitcoin billionaire , but he definitely has . He's not a Bitcoin billionaire , but he definitely has , unless he sold . I haven't kept in touch with him , but he definitely has hundreds of millions of dollars , and I'm here with not quite a million .

Anywho , I can't talk about my crypto experiences . It's been a roller coaster , as it has been for a lot of people , but I made money , lost money , gotten really obsessed with it , then totally abandoned it . It's a really bad thing for people with ADHD to try to . A really bad thing for people with ADHD to like try to .

You got to stay on on checking up on your your stuff . I have , like all these different wallets , like I probably have things I forgot about that have money in them .

It was pretty cool to like go there , have my wallet , make a transfer , pull like mexican pesos out and then , uh , be able to walk away and be like , huh , all right , this is what it would be like if I had a hundred million dollars , but I don't sad . So .

When you took your business online and you started like the online education side of it , like walk , like , walk me through the high and the low , and then we get to hop into the next studio and record about like the biggest branding , like misconceptions and mistakes that you've seen , as you've like helped over 300 businesses with their branding High and the low .

It was actually Ampersand Studios , Design and Photography was like the name , like the tagline back in the day , and we started doing all these weddings . We had this wedding business that we were super known for . Then we were like well , we could design wedding invitations for the same , you know , the same audience .

So we built up this invitation business and that was really fun , because we looked at weddings as these like little mini branding projects . We were like our education and everything was about marketing .

We're like okay , what if we thought about weddings like businesses and you , from that very first impression of getting an invitation in the mail , the the guests should know what to expect .

They should know what they're coming to , they should know what , how fancy they should dress , you know whether or not it's going to be a big party or it's going to be a classy , like you know , fancy dance thing . And we wanted to have this experience kind of like carried throughout the whole thing with all of their paper products .

So we were doing the invitations and then the rehearsal dinner menus and then the place cards and like all these big displays and kind of helping bring this whole feeling to life . And it was so much fun because we got to do so many of them .

That was like all these different styles , that we got to really experience designing things for different , like something really modern and then something kind of funny and then something super classic and Victorian and illustrative and all these things . So we for years designed all these wedding invitations . We ended up somewhere in there . We ended up creating .

Our first try at an online business was an online e-commerce wedding invitation store called Dear Ampersandcom .

We had to hire a web developer to create this whole thing because there was no Shopify or e-commerce easy to plug and play websites , so we spent so much money on this thing , but we didn't really know anything about digital marketing at that time either , like Google ads and all of that stuff , so that kind of fell flat after a couple of years of working on

that . So we took all of those designs and threw them onto Etsy once Etsy became a thing and that that worked . So we were like okay , like we can reach outside of our local . That was kind of our first little taste of it , you know .

Then we opened a brick and mortar retail space for our wedding invitation business and we sold gifts and greeting cards and wrapping paper and all of these things . We had a 4,000 square foot space in a high-end luxury retail center . And it was , yes , 4,000 square feet filled with little tiny . You know things that are this big .

And also retail is really , really challenging having all that inventory and so , for example , like we would sell a wedding invitation suite that would be like a five or $6,000 package and then our store would sell like $500 in a day like a product . So , the wedding of the invitations were completely holding up this business .

The actual , actual , like people walking in and buying stuff was never going to be sustainable . And nicole and I were like and a couple of our employees that would help with the assembly of the invitations and stuff were working so hard to offset this huge thing . So we were like , wait a minute .

It did help having that space , did help bring awareness to the brand and it made people feel like really nice sitting in this beautiful showroom and all that stuff and it probably did help kind of get raise , elevate the brand .

But once we had that reputation established , we were like , wait , we can do this in a coffee shop or like at a tiny little studio . We don't need this huge retail store to sell invitations . So we chunked that off . We sold that business with of the invitation business and everything I had .

You know , an established website , seo , all of that , the Etsy store , all of the design libraries , like all that . So we packaged all that up and sold it and closed the retail store and walked away and we're like that was a that was fun . It was a fun side quest .

So it was a good win-win and it was a really smooth transition out , but we didn't have to just like burn down this thing that we spent so much time creating . It still lives , you know . So that's cool , yeah .

So also , while we had our store , we started doing a lot of workshops in person calligraphy , paper crafts , all kinds of fun things that were like related to the store . And one of those things was also a photography workshop .

So we taught people how to use their digital cameras , how to shoot in manual instead of auto so that they could take beautiful photos on their vacations and of their kids and all of those things . And we started noticing a trend . We started noticing that the students coming to the workshops were not the moms and the vacation goers anymore .

They were businesses and they were wanting to take better pictures of their products , better pictures of their process or whatever , so that they could start posting on social media and this was like 2015 16 .

I'd say that we started noticing that transition to where business owners were needing content , but nobody was calling it that yet and business owners were not giving social like like the respect that it gets now .

So a local business , and we were like you guys , like this is this is where it's at . So our business owners were coming and wanting to learn how to take better pictures with their like DSLR cameras kits that they bought at Costco and they didn't know how to drive it , you know .

So that became our first idea where we were like this could be a really cool online course for business owners . So our very first course was how to shoot in manual for business owners with like a brand , kind of like through line and we spent a lot of time on that . What was that ?

We had a big live launch . I joined Amy Porterfield's DCA . I was in the very first DCA group , which is where I met Rick , which is then why I joined Rick's Facebook course , which is where I met you . And here we are . So , yeah , all of that came from . All of that .

Yeah , so that was our first taste of online courses , and then we've just done a bunch of different iterations to try to figure out the best way to deliver . You know what we can , how we can help people .

Because then , like a year later , they were like , no , we don't want to use our digital cameras , we just like want to create content with our phones . So we're like , okay , scratch that , you know . So , like nobody cares about learning how to shoot in manual anymore . But it was like a huge thing 10 years ago .

We were at the Amy Porterfields conference in San Diego and she stood on the stage and said I want you to make a big decision this week .

And she challenged everybody to make a big decision and Nicole and I both had written down that we wanted to go all in on businesses only and we decided to do it right then and there , cold Turkey we pulled the plug on .

We didn't book another wedding after that day and we had a full roster of wedding clients , but we were starting to get a lot more businesses and we always knew that working with businesses was our favorite . We love talking about business , we loved advising our friends and like our other clients on business stuff and we're like let's do this .

Plus , we could shoot like businesses at noon on a Tuesday . We didn't have to just do them on our weekends and nights . And yeah , so we just we just dove all in on businesses from that October 2018 on , and so now we've been doing that for six , seven years and I've never looked back . It's been so much fun .

Our business has grown a lot faster now that we actually have a focus and people know what we do , instead of just doing everything . But I think you have to kind of like you kind of have to experience that doing everything thing for a minute . It's like you have to try everything at the buffet before you kind of figure out .

So I don't know , I always have a hard time when people start a new business , where giving them that advice , where you have to pick something and like dive all into it , which , of course , is going to make you grow the fastest .

But , at the same time , I do think there's some value in testing the waters on all the things that you have skills at , so that you can kind of find your job .

And then , yeah , so my progression , like it was all because of like forced on me classes that I didn't want to take , that I found I actually went from math to architecture , to graphic design and I was like , wait , I am creative , I need a creative outlet , but I like this technical kind of side of things and yeah , so that's a great like yeah , there's a

lot of congruencies there .

Because , we've always done headshots and like photo shoots of some capacity , whether it's weddings obviously the weddings weren't really in the studio or the engagement sessions but we would do like babies and we did everything , like one time we did . This woman came into us because she wanted like .

This is really sad , but she knew that she was getting to the end of her life and she hated the pictures that her family has of her . So she hired us to do pictures that they could put at her funeral wow so when people say , oh , you've done everything , I'm like we've done like pre-funeral portraits for someone and she brought her little dog .

She was really funny . It was like you know , we've done it all .

It was kind of weird , but we made it really cool and like this little artsy cave dungeon thing . And then we moved from there to our first store , retail store , paper thing .

Then we moved from that one to the big fancy at the Village at Meridian , which is like this kind of California-esque looking place with like a fountain and a movie theater and restaurants and all that stuff .

And then we moved downtown Boise into a tiny little studio and then we moved down the street to a bigger studio and then now we own a building that we just moved into and we just renovated over the past six months and we're in that building our forever home , I think .

I had on like pajamas underneath mc hammer pants and some like random shoes and I did like inner tubing and I was freezing the whole time . I was like I ain't seen the slopes . So I haven't been to Coachella . But I can introduce you to Gloria Cho , who is a PR specialist .

If you're looking for interviews on your podcast , because she is very , very good at PR , like getting getting getting visibility on your business . I feel like you as a branding expert and her as a PR expert , could have lots to talk about , because she's all about getting folks featured in whatever magazines , online stuff . Yeah , totally .

You've always had a physical office , which to me is intriguing because that means not only do you have like the chops to run a business , but you can also like balance running a business with keeping the lights on and all the overhead that goes with having an office space , which is a lot more complex than just having an online business .

And so at which point did you decide that you must have the online thing ? That was after Amy Porterfield and after Rick and it just went well . Or was it like a back ? and forth fits and starts .

impact more people and bring more people into our business that we couldn't serve physically . So we were selling a lot of products online through Shopify store , like we were doing a lot of online stuff , and so I think it just felt natural . It's like this is a extension of our business , no matter what , and how can we leverage that ?

How can we grow that and , you know , make it as big as possible ? I'm just like I just want to see how far I could take this thing , like I don't really have a reason for it other than like why not ? And let's see what we can do .

It's kind of always been the it's fun for me , so it's not like a we absolutely have to grow this to keep the lights on or anything like that .

It's more , we have experienced that with the store where , like , the invitations were paying for this thing over here , and so now we really think about the online side of our business , completely separate from our agency side . As far as financials go , we want we don't want them to be reliant on each other . We don't want them to be reliant on each other .

I think about our agency as its own little world and that I should be able to , like , chop that off and sell it someday by itself . So I don't want the financials to be like supporting each other as much as possible .

So whenever we've looked at making a decision on renting a new space , or like when we moved from a small studio to the big studio downtown a couple of years ago , we were looking at a $2,500 a month increase in rent to do that , and this is our justification . Maybe you call it girl math , I call it . Okay , keep going .

Maybe you call it girl math , I call it . So it was okay . If this actually makes a lot of sense , this is okay . So we thought , if we move into this space , what is something that we could offer in this space that we couldn't offer in the other one that can make at least twenty five hundred500 a month ?

We're like , okay , if we sold eight at $500 , that's $4,000 . And we do those every month . That is something we couldn't do in the old space . That we could add , and it'd be one day a month of shooting . We would only have to sell half of those to actually break even , but we could profit more if we like sold out all of them .

We could do eight in a day okay and so that was we were like yeah , I think people will buy that , let's test it out . So we did it with like an airbnb first and do these little mini sessions and they sold out and we're like sweet , sign the lease . So that's been a thing we've done ever since . We still do our mini sessions .

We usually do them once a month , but sometimes if we have a really busy photo calendar then we'll we'll skip it . We'll do them every other month or something , and every quarter we change out the furniture and the colors and the scene so that business owners can like real estate agents or people who just need like quick pop-ins .

They can schedule multiple throughout the year and get a different look . So it's been a thing now that we offer and people look forward to seeing the new scene changes and it's just something that that's why we created it . So that's kind of how we look at things , for like , okay , if we buy this building , our rent like doubled again .

Now it's a mortgage payment or a loan payment or whatever . But what does that mean for us ?

It means that we can have it's a big enough space and the spaces are separated out in a way that we can actually offer a brainstorming session in the conference room while a photo shoot's going on in the studio , so we can actually offer services at the same time , which we couldn't do at the other space because the conference room and the studio were like in

the same area . You couldn't . You had to schedule around each other . So , yeah , it's just all of those decisions come down to like is the space actually going to impact the way that we grow financially or not ?

Viably financial you pick which one sounds more correct and then you tested it . Though . You tested it first kind of like minimum viable product style in an Airbnb , and then you said it sold out and so you decided let's go ahead with the purchase . Where did you get that idea from ? Did it just come from within ?

Had you been like expanding your capacity to like do this sort of thing through reading nonfiction books , like did you have a business coach ? Walk me through that .

She will find every possible thing that can go wrong and like poke holes in it and make sure that it has like a pretty good chance of working out before we like take off with something .

So I'm like the big a bunch of crazy ideas , and then she'll really like think them through or ask me a lot of questions or whatever , or say like we need to test this first or we need a better plan , and I'd be like nah , it's fine . So I'm super , we're super .

We're both really grateful for that contrast that we provide , because otherwise I feel like you know you might you have some businesses where both partners are like really risk averse and they're content and the business doesn't really ever innovate or grow .

It kind of just stays the same for a long time and they're happy with that and they're happy with that and they're fine with that . But then you have other ones where you have two people that are like majorly visionaries and it crashes and burns or runs out of money really fast , so I think you just have to have both people . I agree about it that way .

You know making this whole thing for like a year and then and then launching something . You know making this whole thing for like a year and then and then launching something , doing this huge launch and finding it falling flat and you're like wait a ?

Like our businesses are like freaking out and we didn't know . It was like nobody knew what was happening . But we totally just launched this like fun , off the cuff program , like a four to six week program . I can't remember what it was with live calls , nothing . No slides were prerecorded , nothing was done ahead of time . It was all live .

It was called voice first . It was so we separated our voice and visual program . We started this voice first thing .

We did a buy one , gift one , so you could buy one and then gift one to a business that was having a hard time okay and it was a really affordable price and we just were like we wanted to give back , we wanted to help our businesses during covet , but we also like needed to keep things going too .

And so now we're like , oh , we'll never do that again . We'll never like spend a year recording a course to then launch it without testing it live first .

to now . Which is how many years ? 15 years , 20 years , 15 . 15 years , like all right , I'm going to tell the listener right now . They should go and find you on your podcast , the Something Businessy podcast , when we were trying to come up with names for our podcast .

You know like they they really do and like you make decisions now and maybe it takes you 10 minutes to process , but it's like 15 years of experience that you've had that allows you to more intuitively process like a complex decision , like I think .