I used to scroll through my Instagram feed and feel this quiet, creeping dread.
Not because my content was bad. Not because I wasn’t working hard enough. But because I’d look at my posts, then look at everyone else’s, and I couldn’t tell the difference. Same hooks. Same color palettes. Same promise of “helping you build a life you love.”
I was deep in the digital marketing world back then — posting every day, buying the courses, doing all the things they told you to do. And still, I was invisible. Not because I wasn’t trying. Because I hadn’t figured out the thing that actually makes a brand stand out.
It wasn’t the aesthetic. It wasn’t the posting schedule. It was the clarity.
Here’s what I’ve learned since becoming a brand and web designer: most people who feel like they blend in online have a clarity problem, not a design problem. Their brand looks like everyone else’s because it’s saying the same thing as everyone else — in the same vague, trying-to-appeal-to-everyone way.
Think about the last time you landed on someone’s website and thought, this person gets it. Chances are they weren’t using fancier fonts or a better color palette. They were just specific. About who they help. About what they actually do. About why they’re the one to do it.
That specificity is what design is supposed to communicate. But design can’t communicate something that hasn’t been figured out yet.
Before I ever open a design file for a client, I ask them five questions. Not “what colors do you like” or “which brands do you admire.” Questions like:
What do you actually do — in one sentence a stranger would understand?
What do you believe about your industry that most people aren’t saying out loud?
Why you, and not the ten other people who do something similar?
Most people pause on those. Some people go quiet for a full minute.
That pause is where the real work is. And it’s also where the brand actually begins.
When you can answer those questions clearly — not perfectly, just clearly — everything else gets easier. The copy writes itself. The design has something to say. The right clients start showing up because they can actually see themselves in what you’re putting out.
You stop looking like everyone else because you’ve stopped trying to appeal to everyone else.
If you’re sitting there thinking I don’t actually know what my answers are — that’s exactly where I was. And it’s a good place to start.
I put together a free guide that walks you through all five questions, with examples of what vague looks like versus what specific looks like, and a simple one-page framework you can fill in and keep close.
It’s called The Stand-Out Framework, and it’s the thing I wish someone had handed me back when I was refreshing my feed and wondering why nothing was working.
Five questions. Real examples. A one-page positioning sheet you’ll actually use.
Download it here — and start showing up like no one else.🫶🏻
xoxo, Kath
