Authentic Creativity: Attract Aligned Clients with Juliana Castro

Did you know that nearly 70% of creatives say imposter syndrome has held them back from charging their worth or sharing their work publicly? Today’s guest knows that feeling all too well because it’s exactly what led her to start her business. I’m your host, Beverly Cornell. I am the founder and fairy godmother here at Wickedly Branded. We’ve helped hundreds of overwhelmed overachieving consultants, creatives, and coaches awaken their brand magic and boldly bring it to life so they feel more confident and attract their most absolute favorite profitable clients. Today I’m joined by the Talented and Heart-centered Juliana Castro, a freelance illustrator and founder of Juliana Castro Creative Designs. You can also call her Juliana and the artist behind. Arete creative Designs. It’s a whimsical, stationary and illustration studio inspired by nature, storytelling and conservation. Juliana’s art is far more than beautiful. It is very purposeful. She collaborates with authors, educators, and mission-driven brands like Wickedly branded to create illustrations that spark imagination and support animal and environmental causes. Juliana, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Beverly. I’m excited to be here.

I am so excited. I had to beg and plead with Juliana to be on the show. She is the master illustrator behind some of our illustrations for our brand, and I just love working with her, collaborating with her. I get so excited when I see her work. It’s just, very magical and, super fun to work with her, to co-create things. I think when you, have somebody illustrate your art or the thing in your mind and you make it come to life, it is literally magical Juliana.

It feels like that for me too.

What you’ve done with our brand and and our look and feel it’s so cool. I literally love every single one of them. It’s like a baby. They’re so good. I wanna go back and talk about how you started your entrepreneurial journey. What led you to become an illustrator, and, what did those early days look like for you and how has your business evolved over time?

So I basically started growing when I was very young. I remember just drawing animals. That’s my favorite thing to do. I lived in a farm in Columbia, so it was the easiest subject to have at hand. It was my safe space, my space to get away from my parents and their divorce and all of that. And that’s how I started drawing. And, when we moved to the US I never thought you could become an artist as a career, Colombia that doesn’t happen. the copyright laws are not that strong people steal the art all the time. Things get pirated. So I never thought art would be a career. When you come to the US I was good at math and all my aunts are engineers. They’re like, you should be an engineer. You’re Hispanic, you’re a woman, you’re gonna get so many scholarships. So that’s what I was thinking when I was in high school. Around junior year, when the colleges start to come to do their talks and you start looking, SCAD came to Fort Lauderdale. I had no idea what it was. I had never even looked at their website, but I was like, I’m just gonna go to a bunch of them and see what they’re talking about and see if I like them. I was blown away. I didn’t know you could do art. It was like my dream college They had, all of this art majors that you could think of, they had a campus in France I always wanted to study abroad there. And they had a minor in equestrian studies, obsessed to the horses. I was like, oh my God, this place is for me.

So this is a Savannah

College of Art and Design.

Okay. So I wanna make sure everybody knows the Savannah. So Savannah, Georgia, right? Which is a beautiful place anyway.

Yeah. It’s so artsy. Yeah.

I love that. Okay, so you changed I’m not gonna do engineering. I’m gonna do art and equestrian studies, which I think is a freaking amazing, by the way. So you went to school and one thing that you said you used to do the art, at the farm, but you never thought you were very good at it.

That’s like going back to, the beginnings. I would just, I never took a class. I know, I used to just do pencil and paper, copy paper from the printer. Just like really, basic art. And I would show my mom. My mom, she’s a doctor back in Columbia. So she would be like, if I was drawing a horse for example, she would be like, I think your horse has the left leg a little bit swollen. She would diagnose my drawings. I just kept drawing, but I never thought it could be something I could do. So when I went to scad, I thought I was gonna major in graphic design because that’s the one artistic major that I knew of. I switched to illustration like my first semester and it’s been amazing since I’ve been drawing and practicing. I wasn’t very good either. A lot of practicing, but I enjoy what I do and I’ve gotten a lot better.

Art is very subjective. Some of the stuff like Picasso and it’s not even balance. It doesn’t matter because what he did was just him. I feel like I did a lot of art as a kid as well, obviously branding and marketing has an artistic, side to it. And I love that. But I’m not a graphic designer. I always say I’m more of a writer, a message copy that’s strategy is more my expertise. I used to love art and I loved drawing, and I think I was okay, like I think I did an okay job. I won a couple of awards in high school, and I do understand the idea of art being just a little bit more of a difficult, it’s so subjective on so many levels.

It’s really hard. And there’s so many different tastes out there just in general, so it can be tricky. So that’s why at school, they like make you focus on finding your style. And speaking to that style. But I have a problem with that because I feel like as artists, as humans, we are always changing and evolving and like constraining myself to a specific way of drawing for my whole life. It feels like I’m trapped,

feels limiting, right? Because there is so many forms of expression. So you have all these different ways to, to express yourself, which is very fascinating. But I also think when you’re under a deadline or you’re under a kind of constraint, it can be really hard to just have that creative, spark flow. I just feel like it’s really hard, even for my work to write on demand. I need to give myself time to think about it. I need to think about in the shower and in the car. I need all those moments to have to really come to the best messaging. So what does your artistic process look like?

It’s messy. So I think, I used to be really scared that I was not gonna be creative enough and I was gonna run out of ideas. And I was always terrified what if this is it? This is my next big idea and nothing else comes. But it’s really I’m inspired by everything. Like really everything and just like reading and maybe the way the light hits on the tree and the leaves, it is just like little things I see life in color. So it’s just all those little like, reflections and like things that inspire me. I’m like, oh, this could be cool for this. So it’s like there’s ideas everywhere and they are always like growing. So I try, whenever I’m feeling a little bit stuck, I do try to do art for me. cause sometimes, it’s when you’re an artist and you’re making art your job, it can be really hard to have fun with it again. It’s like balancing that. It’s tricky. So I’ve been trying to work a little bit more at just like doing art for me. And so during the summer, like I’m in Canada right now, so now it’s cold, but in the summer I would go to like different parks every week with a friend and just sit there and draw from, draw like the leaf that I see or the tree or something that doesn’t require a lot of creative thinking, a lot of just decisions and just sit there and draw and explore and that like recharges my energy a lot. So I think it’s always just being open to trying new things and exploring and that keeps me going.

I love that you talk about that art and everything. It’s funny that you say that because I never really thought about that, this way I was outside the other day and the sun was hitting the leaves and it was like golden hour, so really pretty right? I see that all the time. Oh, look how pretty that is. Or I’ll see, look the sky, the colors in the sky and how the clouds are. I said all time to my son. And now he says it, mom, look at the clouds. And I’m like, yeah, they’re so pretty because it isn’t everything around you. I see it in everything, but that is, I think because of what we do, Juliana.

I think so too. I have a mountain right in front of my window and every day it looks different. And like sometimes the clouds. Come, hug it. And it’s just those beautiful like little moments in life that it just inspires me.

Oh, it’s beautiful. I love that so much. ’cause it is a beautiful world we live in. There’s no question around us is so much beauty. If you seek, you will find, if you look, you’ll find the beauty in everything. But you have to look at the mountain every day. If you just take it for granted, you’re not gonna see the beauty in that.

It’s so pretty.

So pretty. Was there, a specific moment where you found your style or that you felt more comfortable with what you were doing?

For me, I feel like the definition of style has changed for me. Before in college it was more about like how I rendered the art and like how I literally draw. But I think now it’s like it will show up. But I think it’s not about how you draw, but about how the decisions you make and the way you think when you are drawing. So I find that no matter what medium I’m using, the decisions are the same. The way my brain works. And so the style comes through even without me knowing that it’s there. So I feel like now, my, my style’s bright. It’s colorful, it’s happy. I’m a happy person. So I think it just comes through, naturally. And there’s things I just can’t do. If I was gonna do like a minimalistic art style, it just, I can’t function, my brain doesn’t work like that. Yeah. And I just can’t force it. So I think definitely just understanding that it’s a process, and that I just have to do me and be authentic and just not, ’cause I was so stressed out in college, I was like, I have to, be better ’cause no one’s gonna hire me and I’m not gonna get a job. And, all those breakdowns. But now it’s more like I’m making art that makes me happy. The clients are attracted to that because it’s authentic and it’s vulnerable,

yes. How do you go from. Creating a magical brand land to an illustration for a children’s book, because I gotta believe that’s like a different approach. Is there like a process for you to, get into the mode of brand illustrations versus children’s book illustrations?

The process is similar in the sense that, I do sketches, color sketches, and then the final, and we have our visions in between. The difference is the way my brain works, right? For branding, it’s more conceptual, it’s trying to visualize a more abstract idea into one illustration, which requires a lot of research and brainstorming through picture books, it’s more about storytelling through sequential images. So my brain works I have to think of what’s the key moment and what, illustration can I put here so that people turn the page and thinking about layout and pacing in that way. So it is a little bit of a different but the art itself, once I have the idea and the process of drawing it, it’s pretty much the same.

The brand magic land that we’ve created together that’s almost finalized, which I’m super excited about, is still a story. It’s, it is one image that tells a whole conceptual story. I, when we first met, I like did a dump of Hey, this is what I’m thinking. This is what’s in my head. And I feel like I had a pretty strong vision of what I wanted in my head. Like I knew what I wanted, but then I’m like, okay, so take all these things and good luck and bye Juliana. And then there you are stuck with monkeys of distraction and forest of clarity and you’re like, okay, so how do I make this all work? There’s this whole thing when I hand all these concepts together of like monkeys of distraction and the forest of clarity, and then I want you to have a truss balloon and all these different things and then you have to make it all come together. But when we see that first, it’s oh my gosh, she’s in my head. Because it’s like I wanted this very magical land and. I feel like the illustrations inspire me for my brand the way illustrations can work can be so incredibly powerful. I wanna create a comic book now, and I wanna, I’m so inspired by the illustrations of what is possible that I’m like, oh, I wanna do this and I wanna do that, and I wanna do this because I feel like marketing is storytelling.

Like you mentioned that I’m in your head. And I get that a lot from my clients. So she got the vision exactly how I was in my head, and I think it’s because I treat my business more than just me providing a service. To you. I wanna be your biggest cheerleader and I wanna be your partner. And I take it very I like to collaborate and listen. I think that’s how I can get in your head is just listening. Okay, she wants this, what does that mean? How can I draw magic in a way that’s like minimalistic? ’cause your brand is more simple. It is not my picture books illustrations. Yeah. So how can I translate that in a way that’s clear and clean? So it’s all about listening and paying attention. Yeah. So for my picture book authors, I have collaboration calls throughout the process to hear them and listen. ’cause I feel like, yes, the manuscript is telling me a story, right? But when you talk to the author, they are telling you more. There’s more layers in there, the way that their eyes light up when they mention a specific detail. And it’s and then when they see it, it’s oh my God, I didn’t even know that could be there. It’s part of creating a world together.

Creating a world together. I think that’s so powerful and it really is you. But the thing that I see when we work together, Juliana, is we create this world together. It didn’t even exist before. We literally build it brick by brick in some ways, but it’s not bricks. It’s one illustration because that’s what happened. We started with a couple illustrations and then I’m like, Ooh, I want more. That’s the thing too, for the people who are listening, I’m a kind of a creative soul obviously, but, you don’t have to tell a story in a boring way. You can have a little bit of fun with it. And what I saw with Juliana in the illustration she was making for us was that this can be completely ours and we can have a lot of fun. It’s interesting because I’ve had people that we work with, like their bosses come to them and say, is this lady? For us. Like she’s pink and rainbows and it’s like a tech company, right? So it’s like very serious They’ll see me on LinkedIn and they’re like, she’s rainbows and magic and wicked. And my client will say, you just pretty much described her entire brand in two seconds. So I think she knows what she’s doing.

She know what she’s doing.

And they were like, but that’s exactly what these images that we’ve created are now integral to building our brand.

It has your essence.

It’s amazing. It’s just beyond anything I ever could have imagined two years ago before we started working together. I am gonna rant about Juliana, this entire episode. So be prepared. Is such a powerful superpower you have because it, it’s like my essence is in those images. You literally bring it to life in a way. So I know you do more characters for children’s books. Is there ideal clients? What’s a perfect project for you?

I love doing picture books like I adore. They just are really long projects. ’cause they take four to six months to illustrate. But it’s so cool. I like being able to help bring stories to life that maybe, traditional publishing might not necessarily take it because it’s not marketable or it’s not happy enough, right now I’m working on three books, which is a lot. But one of them, it’s about depression and I thought it was like a really cool, it’s told from the mom’s perspective, not necessarily the kid. Traditionally they’re like, no, it should be from the kid’s perspective. But I think kids are so much smarter than what we give them credit for. And having them understand how their parents are feeling or like what they can do to help a parent that has depression. I think it’s a really important thing. To tell. So it’s really cool that I can get to work on these stories that are not conventional, for the traditional publishing market. But it’s really fun that I can just bring those stories to life and inspire children. It just makes me really happy.

So talk about, obviously I have experienced a transformation working with you. I feel like I have more confidence in the brand because of the illustrations that we have. Give me an example of a transformation that an author might experience from the beginning. I imagine there’s a lot of uncertainty and not sure how this is gonna look and what it’s gonna look like. Talk about that process and the transformation that happens.

It’s really it’s hard, for first time authors to find an artist and trust an artist with their vision. ’cause they’re handing me their baby, they’ve spent, months, years writing this story and now they have to wait a little longer for it to be published. So it can be a lot and it’s hard to find a good artist, that fits with you, right? There’s so many different styles, but it’s much more than just cute art. It’s about finding a partner. The best example might be this book about depression I’m working on right now. It’s her first time publishing a book, like a picture book. And she had this ideas. This visions of what she was expecting the story to be like. And as much as I try to be in your head I’m not a mind reader, and I interpret the text differently and just how I see it, the colors and putting on the paper. And when I showed her this first, sketches the whole book sketched out. She was like, wow, I didn’t even think that there’s something, some of these things could be possible. And I add little extra details that are fun for me. Just, the book takes place at the beach. So I added a little hermit crab that just does its own thing. It’s living its best life, has its own story behind the real story. And she like fell in love with him. She’s this is amazing. I wanna make him, my logo just makes me smile. And it’s really cool to see them get excited about their vision coming to life and knowing that I am helping them. She has two kids, a daughter and a son, and they are helping her. They’re tiny, right? Four year olds and they like help her. So when I was drawing the characters, they’re based on her family. Her daughter like saw sketch of the dad and oh my God, that’s my dad. She immediately pointed it out and it just warms my heart. And it’s that’s what I want. I want kids to like, feel seen and noticed and. Happy.

Yeah. Again, goes back to the gift that you’re living in your purpose in so many ways, right?

Yeah,

I know that you struggle with imposter syndrome, but here we keep talking about how you get and you’re like making all this magic happen. So what does confidence look like for you as a business owner? And has there been moments where, you have it versus not had it? Like how does that evolve and change for you?

Yes. I think confidence is like growing as an artist and as a business woman. I feel more and more comfortable, confident now, but even then, like imposter syndrome still shows up and I don’t know if it will ever go away. I just dunno if it’s possible. I’m a very critical person, on myself, and I’m a perfectionist and a people pleaser and like all those things like. Feed onto the imposter syndrome. And so there’s lots of times that you feel that you’re not good enough. Being an artist is already hard. Finding clients, it’s tricky. And I had no idea what I was doing when I started. So there’s lots of times that you have very slow seasons, right? When there’s no work. I would freak out and it’s this is it. I’m not good enough. I’m not gonna get a new client. How am I gonna make this work if I can’t find work right now? And then you get the one client, and maybe it’s a project that you don’t like, but you say yes ’cause you have to take it because you’re so scared that it’s a scarcity mindset, right? You’re so scared that nothing else is gonna come your way. That you just have to do this boring project just to get by. And it used to be like that at the beginning. So every time I had a slow season, I would just freak out. Like I would have a breakdown. I was like, oh my God, here we go again. Maybe this is the sign that I can’t do this. But that’s just how business is, right? Like you have good season, slow seasons, it’s about understanding what to do in those i’ve been like working on myself and like I meditate, I journal a lot, and that helps my imposter syndrome and my ego to calm down a bit. And so this year, at the beginning of the year, it was so slow. I only had one client and even the work for her was very slow at the, so it was like maybe four or five months of very like nothing. And my mindset changed and it’s yes, I could be freaking out right now or I could just keep working on the business. Because I think that’s like something that I was struggling before. Like how do you work in the business and on the business and when do you balance both? And that has helped me like just get over the imposter syndrome. But then again, it comes in every single project as well. In a new book, moment, I’m talking about the contracts and like the legal side, that’s like imposter syndrome comes up and it’s are you sure? Do you know what you’re talking about? Is this like legally right? You sign the contract, it like goes away and you’re like, awesome. And then you read the manuscript and it might be tricky, maybe there’s a concept like the depression one, I don’t suffer from depression. So I felt like, how can I visualize this when I don’t know, it’s firsthand. So then you get poster syndrome and you’re like, oh, maybe I’m not the best artist for this, but then I do research and do all these things to learn more about it. And it’s okay, I can handle it, I can do it. And then it happens when I have to storyboard it as well. I read the manuscript and I have this idea of what I want to put on the page. In my head, and now I was like, can I actually make it work on the page? So you have that blank canvas, like scared moment. And then it happens again in color. Is the color going to work? Can you tell this specific emotion through the palette that you’re picking? It’s just always there.

I feel this too though. I have the monkeys of distraction, perfectionism, fear and doubt. Imposter syndrome is certainly in there. Everybody has their own version of it. They’re very sneaky, these monkeys of distraction. But I have them too. For example, right now I’m working on a project with a, she’s an author from, Simon and Schuster, and we’re writing her copy and I’m like, how do I write copy for a writer? And obviously she thought I could do it, so she hired me. But writing a book is different than writing copy for marketing, and she needs somebody who knows marketing. And I know marketing, so I have to keep reminding myself I know this part. She may have some word choices that are different because she’s a writer, but the format and the formula for the branding and marketing, I know we can help her with. We work with these really big authors, people who I have admired. And I’m like, they’re gonna read this website. Holy crap. No pressure. But what I have found is in those moments where I feel the most challenged is where I’ve had the most growth. And where I have really stepped up my game.

Yeah. I feel like imposter syndrome is a requirement before you level up.

Absolutely. It’s a level up your your monkeys of distraction are leveling up opportunities.

It’s about how you react. It’s I could just stay scared and not do it. Or. Be uncomfortable and just do the thing scared anyway.

So I would say the first step out of the monkeys of distraction is to take an action. So if you’re in the moment of, writing the blog post 10 times because you want it to be perfect ’cause you have the monkeys of distraction of perfectionism, just publish it. Take the action. And I also think give yourself some grace because you can be a masterpiece and also be evolving at the same time. It is a process for sure. Name them, take the action, give yourself some grace. Have a support system who cheers you on obviously, or clients who say you’re amazing.

Yeah. I saw this quote, on LinkedIn. Said that you have survived a hundred percent of your heart moments. You are gonna be fine. And that has really changed my mindset. Whenever I’m feeling like, oh, I don’t know if I can do this storyboard, it’s I have done this before. I have the illustration, the proof that I have done this so I can do this again. And it helps quiet that like imposter syndrome.

Yeah. That’s a great quote. I love that so much. So you’re an artist. How have you developed your brand? Has it been really challenging to like, do the art for you?

Yes. I feel like branding is a very, inner journey, right? You really have to know who you are. And, I think I’ve been meditating for five years, so that has like really helped me like figure out like who I am and why I wanna do what I wanna do, because it’s not just I wanna make art, but like, why? What’s the purpose? Why does this make me so happy? Digging a little bit deeper and it makes you really uncomfortable. It’s a really uncomfortable process. And like having a brand, it’s like such a big. What colors define this? Like how do? I want it to feel and then as an artist, it’s definitely tricky. I’ve made my own logos, my name. I feel like it just needs my own voice in there. And then my brand started developing properly this year, when I defined everything and like my offer and my message and, in terms of colors, I love the earth, like as the planet and animals. I thought earth colors would be like. The color to go but it’s bright. Coffee brown and yellows ’cause yellow makes you feel happy. And so I was thinking of feelings and my art makes people smile and I want that to come through from all the things I’m posting on, the things I’m writing. I changed my colors to like being greens and like yellows and a bit of oranges. And I think it’s very fall, actually fall colors. Just to show that, yes, I do all this cute stuff and my illustrations are full of color and whatnot, but me as a brand, we stand for this, right? Like for helping animals and conservation and happiness and being a partner and I wanted the colors to show that as well.

I do think it’s a journey and that’s why I love the concept we’ve developed with the brand Magic Land. It literally is a journey to finding your confidence. It’s a journey to finding your voice. It’s a journey to finding, your home. It is a home of yourself. Who am I? Exactly. Not in comparison to anyone else, and what magic do I bring? I truly believe it is a journey and it affects you, not just from a business perspective, but in your personal life. When you know who you are it changes everything for you. Business is very cyclical ups and downs. That has to be like the thing most people struggle with the most. But you’re right, you need to work on your business when in those off times. But somebody said the other day, and I love this concept, it was a guest. And she said, I really don’t think if you’re working on your business, you’re working with your business. It was really powerful for me to hear her say, work with the business. I feel like that is what I have been doing, but. To have a name for it was really powerful. Okay. So I have a magic hat and I have all kinds of questions and I let the universe decide. This is the rapid fire round.

Oh,

What are the three most important ingredients for your recipe for success?

Authenticity vulnerability and care.

What’s has been your biggest aha moment as an entrepreneur?

When I signed my contract with this book, with the depression book. ’cause I felt like I finally understood all the legal stuff and I was just like, do this, do that. And I was like, oh my God. Who is that? That’s me. That’s

awesome. What’s a surprising way your personal values show up in your business?

The way I collaborate with, my clients and the content I’m posting online, I try to be as honest as I can, as authentic and talking about my journey and the ups and downs of being a freelancer and an illustrator. That has been really nice.

The journey is messy, right? It’s not Instagram. Perfect.

Yeah. And especially now with, AI and everything you wanna show up more human. You need to like, that makes you relatable and that makes people connect.

It is the differentiator now is the authentic, messy stuff. Absolutely people are gonna pay a lot of money for human stuff going forward. My last question, what’s been your most humbling lesson as an entrepreneur?

I think working on the Penn’s day on the farm was like an eye-opening. Project that like showed me how the real world works. You come out of school and you like fantasize it and you’re like, oh, everything’s great. They’re picking me because they love my talent. All these amazing reviews is, ’cause the book is awesome, but really it’s because they paid these people to review the book you’re like, oh, so it’s not real, and, it made me realize that I wanna do my best, the best that I can. And that’s what Arete means. It’s a Greek concept that it says to live your life with excellence and purpose and not have to step on my values to just make it somewhere. Maybe that’s not how business works, but I wanna believe that it can be done differently.

It’s interesting, that’s insane to me. But there is a lot of pay to play in this world. I have my Glinda wand here and my wand helps us travel. I’m gonna wave the one and we’re gonna take us back to, that girl who’s, looking at colleges and decides to go to the Savannah School of Arts. And, if you could give her one piece of advice for business or marketing to that young girl, what would it be?

I think it would definitely be to learn marketing. it’s so important I think that’s the difference between being a broke artist and actually making it. understanding about like how to, show yourself and put yourself out there so people know, because when you graduate you feel like, director is gonna find my portfolio and all the planets are gonna align and I’m gonna have my perfect project. But life doesn’t work like that. And if you. Don’t put yourself out there, no one’s gonna know who you are. Learn marketing

or just have a really good friend who knows marketing. If your younger self could see you now? What would she say to you?

I think she would be so proud. Never thought that I was gonna become this person. And I think she would be really proud to see how hard I’ve worked and pushed to make this business happen. And yeah, I think she would gimme a hug.

I love that. What do you hope people say about your work, your brand, and the impact that you’ve made?

I hope that they say that it inspired them and even if it’s just made them smile,

I think that’s lovely. That’s lovely. So I’m gonna rave my wand again and I’m gonna ask you, we’re right now, we’re in business today. What is one thing that I can maybe answer for you today to help you with your marketing?

I’m still getting the hang of my newsletter. It’s a pain in the butt. I struggle writing it ’cause I don’t consider myself a writer yet. So I always leave it for the last day of the month and then everything happens and you shouldn’t send your newsletters on Fridays. I guess what strategy do you use to make it work for you when you’re not a marketing person?

I am a marketer and this is what I do because I feel like it needs to have a system and I know that people do better with systems typically if there’s some kind of rhythm or pattern to the work. So I always suggest that you start with your blog. I know you have a blog on, substack, right? Start with your blog. The blog is the center of the marketing universe. Okay? Write a really good blog, okay? And then take that blog and put it into ai, and ask it to write four different newsletters for you. Three that are nurturing and one that has a clear sales call to action. And I even say like I do three nurturing, but I say, do one that’s contrarian. Do one that’s funny. I actually ask it to make it like a little bit different each time. And then once we do that, then you can take the drafts and tweak it and make it yours obviously. But it gives you that conceptual and when you put the blog in, it has your writing it’s your voice, right? You’ve done that work. It’s just reframing it four different ways. You could literally take that blog and send a newsletter every week with those different perspectives for the month. You have four clear blogs, taking that topic, breaking it down in different ways. Funny, contrarian, maybe busting a myth. There’s some things you can do. And then I do the same thing for social posts. I’ll take the blog and say, give me 10 different social posts. Give me a carousel, give me a MythBuster, give me a funny, whatever. I actually make it, give me 10 posts. And then I pick the best five. Even with the newsletters too, I ask AI to give me 10 hooks, like subject lines for each one as well. So that’s something too. And those hooks can go into your social media posts as well. Like you can play off those a little bit. But one piece of content. Do it really well. Make that, spend all your time on your blog, break it into those pieces. Don’t overthink it. Let it come to you as an inspiration. Maybe it is the leaves outside and how you see color and everything, whatever is coming to you, It’s you and your perspective. So how do you see life? So see the world through Juliana’s eyes and write according to that, and then break it into these smaller pieces. Mark it, good piece of content, repurpose it going forward. So after a year or two, you should have a content vault and you should be able to take it and not really have to rethink a whole lot of it. And that is the point, because when you show up as yourself and your brand, it can become a little bit boring because you’re consistent and you’re persistent. That is when you know you arrived because. This is who you are and you show up so don’t think you have to like, recreate yourself every year. Don’t think you have to start from scratch every single time.

I definitely overthink it. Okay. I’m gonna do it.

You’re gonna do it. Okay. Try it for a month and then gimme some feedback. When you have a system like that in place and you can see it play out like that, and you’re like, oh, I can totally, now it doesn’t feel as heavy or hard. You have a process. So hopefully that offers a little bit of clarity and direction.

Thank you.

Yeah. Perfect. So we wave the wand, we’re pretty much set there, but I do want to ask you what it means to be wickedly branded. How do you show up wickedly branded and what advice do you give our listeners to be more wickedly branded?

I think being wickedly branded means showing up as yourself as who you are with all your quirkiness and like weird things, that you have. For the listeners, I think the best way to do it is just to act to post, to write it like, and do it scared. It doesn’t matter. If you think it’s not perfect, just grow in public and keep learning from your mistakes. you will get there. You’ll get to the castle,

It’s actually a state of mind. You will become wickedly branded.

Yeah.

How do you show up as wickedly branded, do you think?

I try to be as silly as I am in person through my posts and like my interactions with my clients always very vulnerable and honest. I try sometimes, and it can be scary, to show the things that you messed up on or how you’re feeling. Cause as women especially, we don’t wanna be too emotional, right? But business, it’s emotional. Freelancing is emotional and there’s an emotional aspect to it that doesn’t get talked about as much. And I think it’s important. A lot of people resonate with it. And when you are the first one to say something, people feel like they can trust you. And that’s what you want to be like. Create the trust by being yourself and. Being just you.

Yeah. It is scary, but it’s also amazing when that person does connect with you on that particular topic. That’s so good because then you know, like you’ve made an impact My fears, my doubts my struggles have now helped other people maybe get more power over theirs in the way that they show up. So there’s something so freaking magical and just being you and silly and quirky with my unicorns and my glitter and all the things. I also, wanna balance that too. But, wickedly branded is something that. Is specific to you in many ways, like how do you show up in the world? So I love that so much. Okay, Juliana, this has been so great. Where can listeners connect with you and your work, find out more about you, maybe hire you to do some illustrations for them?

I am on, Instagram as drawings Juli, JULI. I’m on threads of the same hashtag same handle. And then I’m on LinkedIn, Juliana Castro. On my photo is like a black and white and I have some dinosaurs in my back. My, my banner. So you can find me on LinkedIn as well. And my website is, Hua, C-A-S-T-R c.com. Okay. That’s where you can find my portfolio and my services and connect with me through there.

I’ll put all those links in the show notes that people are interested in getting ahold of you, but I cannot recommend Juliana more. She has breathed life into our brand in a way that I didn’t even know was possible. I really hope to all the listeners that are here today and hearing Juliana’s story and us talk today, that this episode maybe a little bit of a creative fire under you today and gave you some new ideas of how you can show up, how your brand can show up, but most of all, for you to take some action, some step toward growth, mindset change, distraction change, taking action in some way. Because here’s what I know for sure, after working with hundreds of entrepreneurs, your. Work matters. Your message matters, and the world needs to hear more of what you have to say. So marketing isn’t just about visibility. That’s a good thing, but it’s also about the impact that you make on the world. And Juliana’s work with horses and the environment and all the thing is making an impact, but also her work with authors and businesses like mine. It’s about connecting with the right people in a way that feels true to you. As soon as I saw Juliana’s work with a friend of ours named Kelly, I was like, I need to work with her because I just loved the watermelon Math concept. So I want you to keep showing up, keep sharing your brilliance, and keep making magic in the world. And if you ever feel stuck, you know you don’t have to do this alone. We’re here to help you turn your little spark into a wildfire. But until next time, I dare you to be wickedly branded.