MBA2372 Q&A Wednesday: Should I hire to create a logo or create it myself?

0:08Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show. No fluff, just the good stuff with every single episode. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is Q &A Wednesday. On Q &A Wednesdays, we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. Today's question is from Tom, and Tom asks, Should I hire someone to create my logo, or should I create it myself? I understand the brand and what I want, and there's a lot of tools and logo creators out there.

0:48I'm asking if it's even worth spending the money hiring somebody to create my logo. This is a solid question by Tom, especially when you're starting out. Money is tight. You need to make sure you're saving money everywhere you can because it's all expenses at the start and no revenue. So this is an interesting question because I've done both. I've created my own logo for some businesses, and I've also hired somebody to create my logos. I'll share with you the benefits of hiring and what you're actually paying for, as well as when the option of creating it yourself might be the best option for you.

1:22So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I want to start with an exercise you may want to do when you're in front of a computer. This exercise is very simple. You're just going to research popular brands and the first version of their logo, and then go to the Images tab in Google Images and look at all these logos of brands you know like and trust. And you're going to see that a lot of their logos were not that good looking, right? They were simple. They were very basic. In fact, sometimes you'll see that the logo didn't really change a lot over the years, over the decades. The founder of Nike, Phil Knight, shares the famous story of only spending$35 on the creation of his logo, the swoosh of Nike, where he paid a student, a design student that was still in university for that logo.

2:13Now, if you're wondering, don't worry. Phil and I did take care of the designer with stock that made her a millionaire. But the point here is that when you're first getting started, when you're pre-revenue, your logo matters a whole lot less than when you have hundreds of thousands of customers because your brand is not that big. And your brand doesn't matter as much as it will in the future because, you guessed it, your product matters more, right? Your business and what you offer actually matters more than your brand in the beginning. So, does this mean you shouldn't hire somebody to create your logo for you?

2:48No, that's not what I'm saying. And I'll explain why in a moment. But I would say you shouldn't spend a lot of money regardless if you're doing it yourself with a tool or some sort of software or if you're hiring somebody. I'm talking don't spend thousands upon thousands of dollars. A lot of people spend thousands of dollars on branding kits for businesses that are pre-revenue. They're spending$10 ,000,$15 ,000,$20 ,000,$30 ,000,$50 ,000 on creating a brand and a logo and all that kind of stuff that has nothing to show for. You don't have any revenue yet. You don't know if this business is actually viable yet.

3:26So it's not a really good investment. This is not actually going to sell you much. It's going to matter later down the line, and it's worth investing later. But in the beginning, get this logo done and dusted and make it as good as possible with as minimal investment as possible. I'm talking about money and time and effort. So let's explore the two options. Creating yourself. So first of all, creating a logo yourself has never been easier. There's so many different tools. The one that I know that is very popular is Canva's Logo Creator over at canva.com, where you plug in a bunch of suggested words that describe your brand, and then the logo gets created.

4:05There's some options for you. When I started out, I actually knew a lot of graphic design. It was a little bit of a hobby of mine to mess around in Photoshop. So I actually knew how to design logos and actually did it for other clients for a period of time in my business when I had my consulting service. So I knew my way around graphic design and I actually created the$100 MBA logo myself. I had more time on my hands at the time, and I wanted to really create something quick and easy just to get started. And that's what I did. And the crazy thing is that in most of my businesses and brands, whether it's the$100 MBA or Webinar Ninja or Course Ninja, these logos evolve over time.

4:45It's not like one logo is the logo forever. It's not Coca-Cola. For the most part, logos get refreshed. Branding gets refreshed. That's because certain fonts kind of get outdated and you have to update them. And that's okay. And that's a good thing, especially when you're starting out, because, hey, you don't want to spend too much money on it because you're going to have to probably refresh it later on. So I actually figured out how to create my own logo with my expertise. I didn't have any logo creators. But if I was doing this all over again, I might explore that option, going through a logo creator or software like Canva.

5:15But that was my experience with the$100 MBA. Now, with Webinar Ninja, Course Ninja, I actually hired an expert to create those logos. I had a bit of money in my hands to invest because I already had a successful business. and the business was actually moving and growing quickly. So I wanted to make sure I have an established brand and logo that I can use for the next few years to come. Now, there's an advantage to hiring an expert. Now, when I say an expert, I mean like a graphic designer. It doesn't mean it has to be expensive, okay? You can hire a graphic designer to create your logo for a couple hundred dollars and it'll be brilliant, okay?

5:50You can go to Upwork.com. You can go to Fiverr.com and just rank for the highest reviews or best reviews. And also, you can pay a little bit more to get great quality. Now, the advantage of having an expert is not only that the design is probably going to be better than yours if you're not a great graphic designer, but also from a technical point of view, they're going to give you the format of the logo in the formats you need, meaning it has a transparent background like a PNG file. they're going to create different versions like a light version and a dark version so that your logo looks good no matter if the background is dark or light they're going to create a vectorized file that means that the logo will not change resolution it'll still be crystal clear and sharp regardless if you blow up that logo to the size of a billboard or if it's just you know on a website and vectorizing a logo is not straightforward and even if you create your own logos like i did I got somebody else to vectorize it because it's just too time consuming and tedious for me.

6:52And it cost me a few bucks to do it. So if you're not a big designer, if you don't know you're around design software, if you don't know really what you're looking for, what to do with, you know, these software apps out there that create logos like Canva, and you have a couple of hundred dollars, even a hundred dollars can get you a really good logo from a good designer and will get you started and get the ball rolling. This episode is brought to you by The Jordan Harbinger Show. This is a podcast you need to add to your rotation. It's smart, it's interesting, and it's by far, in my opinion, the best interview podcast out there.

7:31It's hosted by my buddy Jordan Harbinger. I've known him for years. And in a lot of ways, I look up to Jordan. He's one of the best podcasters I know because he does his research. His episodes are really well done. He asks his guests questions that other shows just don't ask. It's almost like he's predicting what I want to hear from the guest and what I would ask him if I was in front of him. The Jordan Harbinger Show won Best of Apple in 2018 and is for good reason. Let me give you some of my favorite episodes to get started with. I absolutely love his interview with T-Pain, the rapper. It's more than meets the eye.

8:03It's hilarious and such an education on how to live life. His interview with Matthew McConaughey was incredible, as well as his chat with Terry Crews. I also love his Sunday episodes. They're called Skeptical Sundays. The one he did on 5G was so, so good. I'm a huge fan of the Jordan Harbinger Show and Jordan himself. You can't go wrong by adding Jordan Harbinger Show to your rotation. It's incredibly interesting. It's never dull. Search the Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Now, if you're going to hire somebody to do your logo or you can do it yourself, I highly recommend you don't just do a logo, but you do a branding guide.

8:43A branding guide is basically a rule book for your business to stay on brand. And it typically includes things like your logo in different versions, light and dark versions, as well as an icon version, just like one icon, like if you had an app on a phone or if you just want to represent your brand with a symbol and then the long form version, which is with the name brand, with the font and all that stuff. So again, your logo in different versions. It also would include your branding colors, which I would recommend to keep it simple with three branding colors and two accent colors. And you only use these colors with those specific hex codes.

9:18It makes things simple. Anytime you create an ad or you create any kind of image or things for social media or your slides when you're speaking on stage, you stick to these colors, right? And you stick to those logos, of course. A branding guide will also include the fonts that you use for your business. Usually it's one font or font family and then different versions of that font, like bold, thin, italic, whatever. Usually a brand will use one font throughout its branding, sometimes two. And then some rules around what kind of imagery would you use? What's your brand voice? Describe what your brand is about.

9:50For example, in our branding guide for Webinar Ninja, we really explicitly say we love to celebrate diversity. That means that when we have stock images to incorporate in our marketing, we try to have as much diversity as possible. Diverse ethnicities, genders, age, all that kind of stuff. So you may want to put some rules there. So if somebody is going to take over your marketing, you can just hand them this branding guide and say, hey, follow these rules. But more importantly, when you're getting started, you have a guide that you can follow to make sure you follow the rules. So asking for a branding guide to be included with your logo creation may cost you a little bit more, but it's well worth it because it's what you'll use to keep things branded.

10:32So to sum up, if you can spare$100 to$200, don't spend more than that, then I highly recommend maybe hiring somebody if you're not handy with graphic design tools. They can create your logo, your branding guide, everything, and you're set to go. And you're not out of pocket too much money. This is a good investment just to get the ball rolling. Of course, you can refresh things later on when you're rolling in the dough and you're making all this revenue for your business, hopefully. but if you are savvy with graphic design if you want to dip your toe into one of those logo creators create your own branding guide see if you could do that i know that canva is really good with that branding kit inside of canvas you may want to check that out but make sure you vectorize your logos so that they look crystal clear no matter what format they're in or wherever you're using it there you have it thank you so much for listening and if you have a question you want to ask on q a wednesday go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net let us know what you think of the show.

11:27Leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast app, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. We'd love to hear what you think of the show. I personally read every single review. So thank you in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Your logo is not unimportant, but at the same time, you don't want to spend too much time dwelling on it. So that's why I kind of recommend hiring out for it. Within a week, you'll have your logo and your branding guide. You're all done and dusting. You can just get started. Okay. You could focus on your product, your service, your whatever you're offering your customers so that you can bring value to the marketplace.

11:59Thanks so much for listening, and I'll check you in Friday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

12:24Thank you.