Episode 267: Cultivating Self-Trust as a Designer with Jen Davis & Esther Knox-Dekoning

In today’s episode of the Brand Strategy Podcast, I’m chatting with Jen Davis and Esther Knox-Dekoning about cultivating self-trust as a designer. These two talented designers are the voices behind Better Brand Designer, and with their combined years of experience in the design industry they know a thing or two about what it looks like to tune into your intuition and trust yourself as a designer. In this authentic conversation, we’re chatting about why self-trust is a necessary tool in every designer’s entrepreneurial toolkit, how we individually have worked to cultivate this inner self-reliance, and how you can, too! Tune in via the audio player above to catch the full conversation or scroll down for the full transcript. MEET JEN & ESTHER With nearly a decade of design experience at her back, Jen founded Hello June Creative with the wish to help creatives with humble hearts and big visions achieve a laid back-luxury and color-meets-class design aesthetic. Her clients raise their prices, attract higher paying clientele, make more money, and finally feel aligned with their business’s visuals. She keeps Hello June’s client experience top-notch with a small but nimble team of trusted designers, developers, and copywriters on a project-by-project basis. Jen is a Florida girl through and through. She is married to her high school sweetheart and they have a baby boy. She swears she runs on Chick-fil’-A, sunshine, and beautiful typography. Esther is a Chicago-based designer with an adventurous soul. Born in Canada, she lived in three different provinces in China and four U.S. states, currently Illinois. Her nomadic roots cultivated her heart to connect with people of all backgrounds and to tell their stories. Esther began her design journey working at global advertising agencies. However, she quickly realized her passion for working with smaller-scale businesses that are boots-on-the-ground changing the world. After 6 years, she quit her 9-5 to start her design studio to help human-centered businesses shape their stories into sensational and soulful design — changing the world each project after the other. She’s obsessed with her many plants, gardening, and has a deep stomach for hot pot and dumplings. Together, they created Better Brand Designer founded on the belief that brand designers need community. They found that the branding world felt secretive, competitive, and sometimes just plain old confusing. They realized their honest, soul-chat-level convos between two designer friends could potentially help other designers. They desire for this platform to be one where we all build a better designer community, one day at a time. CONNECT WITH JEN & ESTHER Check out the Better Brand Designer Podcast at betterbranddesigner.com Freebie: Their resources page on our site is chock full of their favorite courses, templates, and other resources for brand designers! Scroll down to grab their free discovery call template! Connect with Jen here and find Esther here! SUPPORT THE SHOW Buy Me A Coffee FOLLOW ALONG