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SPEAKERS
Ami DeMelo, Amr The Internet Guy!
Announcer
Online with Amr the internet guy, stream it today on your favorite podcast platforms. This podcast focuses on entrepreneurs and business owners helping them become more successful in conducting their business on the web without being stuck with technology, getting a headache, pulling their hairs out, or buying expensive software.
Amr The Internet Guy
Hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Online with the Internet Guy. So every business owner goes through this. You start a new business, you need a new website, and you think, okay, I have two options. I can either hire somebody and pay them to create a professional website for my new business. And the other option would be, I don’t wanna hire anyone at all. I wanna wing it, I want to do it myself. I want to DIY my own website, because right now, as a startup, I have a lot of money.
Sorry, I I meant I have a lot of time, but I don’t have a lot of money, so I’m gonna wing it. So each route of these two routes has its pros and cons for once. Let’s, let’s have examples. So you hire someone to professionally design and create your new website. A you’re gonna be free to actually focus on your clients and focusing on your prospects and communicate with people and try to get more business to your business, right? And b, you know for sure that you’re gonna get something professional because you hire the right person. And this person is a professional. They have many years of experience. They’ve done so many websites before, and you’ve looked at their portfolio and you like their work, and you’re pretty sure that you’re gonna get a good return on that investment.
And then you have the other way, which is, B as I said, you have a lot of time at hand, but you’re not making money yet. ’cause you’re a startup. Even if you have another business, I’m talking about you are not making money yet in this specific startup business yet. So you want to DIY it. And now the benefit of this, of course, is that you’re not gonna be paying for a professional service. So you’ll save a little bit of money. But what I’ve seen happening almost 99.9999% of the time is that that business owner trying to create their own website would hit a block somewhere, somewhere, is gonna get too technical or too difficult, or you’d, you’d skip a, a, a step or go too far somewhere and then realize that something is not working.
Almost nine times out of 10, you’ll be somewhere with a half-baked website that looks like, I don’t know, a 5-year-old did it for you, or you hired your teenager nephew or niece to do it for you. And it is not only that, but if you’re not tracking the time that is taking you to try and create your own website yourself, that will be crazy. Because in the stories that I heard from every single business owner I’ve interviewed or I’ve met in my life who created their own website, the least amount of hours they spent creating their website was 65 hours. And that’s the least amount of hours. I have a very dear friend, she’s brilliant and her website looks great and works great, but she spent about 175 hours creating it.
That is crazy because you know, how much is your hourly rate? I mean, even if your hourly rate is below 100, let’s say your hourly rate is $50, you go figure, go do the math, 175 hours times $50. What’s the cost of the website to you? The website that you made yourself. And in many cases, that website still doesn’t look as professional as the website that you’ll get when you hire a professional website designer. So is there a middle, like, you know, is there something in between? Can I have the best of both worlds? Right? And so some people think, okay, you know what, I’m gonna hire a web designer, but I’m not gonna hire somebody from my own city or somebody from my own country.
I’m gonna look for people overseas. I’m gonna use some of the platforms, you know, that exists today like Fiverr, like Upwork and, and the likes of that. And I’m gonna hire a designer overseas who’s not gonna cost me as much as the local designer here, and this will make my website cheaper. And they think this is the happy middle. But again, a it’s really hard, you know, for people who will be like in another country and from another completely different culture, business culture, I mean, who don’t know much about your business to design the website as per requirements. And it’s not easy for you to kind of project the idea and what you are about and what your business is about to somebody who doesn’t live in the same country or at least in the same continent.
And you may or may not get a good website. You, in some cases you will get a website. So I’m not saying that that option doesn’t work, but in many cases there is the, the communication problems, there is the business culture difference and understanding problems. There is a delay also because sometimes you give the requirements and the other party will not see it for 24 hours, and then they have a question, they come back to you, there’s 24 hours for you to go back with your response. And it’s kind of, you’re playing ping pong while your website is taking longer and longer. So instead of it being ready in, I don’t know, six weeks or eight weeks, it’s gonna take you three months or six months.
So I don’t know if your business can afford not having a website at all for like six months because you’ve chosen this. So I, I was always thinking about what if I can get some professionally designed, you know, template of a website that I can use myself.
So here you have like also the two options. You have an option to go to one of these networks like Wix and Squarespace where they have their own templates and you pay just like a monthly payment, it’s hosted for you. They do the maintenance and everything of the network and all what you have to worry about is just creating your own website, using one of their templates. What ends up happening almost most of the times is that the templates are not many of the templates that you see. None of them is like really representing your business, but you just choose whichever one is closer, I guess. And the other thing is, while you’re trying to customize the template to fit your text and your images, you run out, you know, or you run into issues and problems is that the text is too much.
And then once you spread it, it doesn’t look nice and things like that. And then sometimes these templates also for these networks, they come from third parties. So sometimes when you’re trying to customize a template, you need some support and that support does not exist because the person who created the template and sold it to Wix or Squarespace is no longer supporting it. So you’re not getting updates and stuff. And that’s one thing. The other thing is when you’re on one of these networks, you’re paying forever. So you’re paying this monthly fee or annual fee forever for as long as you have the site there.
Once your business grows and you want something that is more flexible and you want a website that will grow as your business grows, you want something different and now you’re locked into a network, you can’t even export your website. You can export maybe the content, which is your text, and you probably just have the same images that you used on that website, but there’s no way to export the whole website and put it into a different structure, like, or, or a different framework like in WordPress. So that was the, the issue. Like people would go to these networks like WIC and Squarespace just to, you know, because they’re easy to use, especially for a startup.
And hopefully they’re also easy to learn and think, people think that WordPress was too complicated and they didn’t want to spend time learning it and they always thought that they don’t want WordPress. But what if there, what if there’s like a a WordPress site that you fully own, that you fully control that’s very flexible and it’s easy to use and the template is ready made for you by a professional graphics designer as well as as a professional web designer. Together they combined efforts and they provide you with that happy medium. So you get somewhere in between hiring a professional web designer to do a bespoke website for you and using Wix or Squarespace.
Up to very recently I didn’t see any viable, like happy middle until I realized that our guest today has created that already. So without me going more and more into talking to myself here, let’s meet Amy. Let’s meet our guest today. Hi Amy, how’s it going?
Ami DeMelo
Hi Amr I’m good, how are you?
Amr The Internet Guy
Well good. So today guys, we have Amy Dello and we wanna learn a little bit more about what she’s doing because she’s doing a lot of exciting stuff.
So just like, you know, full disclosure, Amy and I know each other for like, I don’t know, is it two years now,
Ami DeMelo
Give or take? Yeah, yeah,
Amr The Internet Guy
We haven’t met a lot ’cause we use the same coworking space, but I’m never there when others are there, so
Ami DeMelo
Me too though. So we must be on opposite days.
Amr The Internet Guy
So Amy, please tell the listeners like who you are, what you do. Feel free to introduce whatever got you here.
Ami DeMelo
Oh boy. So as we stated, I’m Amy Dello. I am primarily a brand identity designer. I’ve worked in creative fields though my whole adult working life. And so it’s been a bit of a twist and turn to get me to where I am now. I currently own two businesses, which would be my freelance like brand design, graphic design business where I work as a solopreneur. However, I work with, you know, a network of other freelancers and then I own something called Brand Kit Studio, which is kind of like an online marketplace with affordable design. I think we’ll get deeper into that today.
Yeah. So that’s, we
Amr The Internet Guy
Will, Yeah.
So what got you into design to start with? Like how, how does anyone know that they are a designer or they want to be a designer?
Ami DeMelo
Yeah, good question. I’m, I’m a really creative person and as a kid I was a little bit of that nerd that was always drawing on everything, had the best covers for all their work and really was into art. But of course you grew up thinking that you can’t make a living in art. So I wanted to be an architect and then I found out you had to be good at math. So I threw that out the window so fast, just forget about it.
And honestly, I don’t know, I then decided I wanted to go into fashion and that’s where I started. So back in 2005 or six, somewhere in there, I got my first fashion gig and worked in the industry for around 12 years doing all kinds of stuff. Production, manufacturing, worked at New York Fashion Week, did so much cool fun stuff.
Opened a brick and motor store in Gastown where we sold my own line that me and a business partner manufactured made right here in Vancouver. And it didn’t really work out.
Some could say don’t go into business with a best friend. So yeah. That came
Amr The Internet Guy
Or a family member. Yeah,
Ami DeMelo
Exactly. And hate to tell everyone they told me so, but I can now say that they told me so.
And then, so after that I was like, what do I do? And you know, when you’re reevaluating where you’re at, what do you wanna do? I kind of realized that through that process because in our store we were selling, at the time I left around 42 other small businesses, local brands, we gave them a platform to sell in retail whereas they otherwise couldn’t because of the cost of running and operating a store. So that was kind of the premise of it and I was like, you know what? I loved that. I loved building other small businesses. I loved helping them succeed. And I loved all of that way more than I loved doing that for me, or building my own brand or my own business or my own, you know, clothing line at the time.
So I made the big jump, which isn’t really a big jump, just the different application from fashion design into brand design is basically how I got to where I am now.
Amr The Internet Guy
So, you know, like the word brand sometimes means different things to different people. How do you define it?
Ami DeMelo
Yeah, so it does, and I often use the word incorrectly to industry standards because I’m trying to speak direct to clients in the way that they might understand it. But basically a brand is an umbrella term. It is in essence what makes your company from, its, you know, from aesthetic wise, which is where I come in. But it’s everything. It’s your mission, it’s your values, it’s how somebody perceives you slash your company.
And that is beyond the visual like logos and the part that I do. So technically in the industry I would be called a visual identity designer. Yeah. But when I identify as that or tell people that they don’t know what on earth that is. So I just, you know, commonly say I’m a brand identity designer, meaning I do the logos, the visuals, the graph, like the graphic side after, ideally after you have your message guide and your brand strategy and direction in place.
Amr The Internet Guy
And do you find it, I don’t know, sometimes a little bit difficult because people are not prepared.
Like I, I would assume you work with startups and someone who’s a great entrepreneur, but this is their second or third business. Hmm. They have the great idea to, to start the business itself, but they’re not prepared in what comes to branding.
Like they probably don’t have a mission and vision. I mean, many people don’t even think about mission and vision, right? And, and many people think of it as a cliche rather than actually why am I doing this?
I mean, every business wants to make money, right? But I, I’ve never met anyone who’s successful, who’s passionate about what they do. Whoever told me I started it to make money, they would usually see something else. You know what I mean? Yeah. Money is the byproduct. But
Ami DeMelo
Yeah, I mean, okay, put it this way to touch on the stages that I come across people tomorrow. I met with them last week and tomorrow I meet with them again. This is a company who is 60 years old, so they
Amr The Internet Guy
66 0 6 0.
Ami DeMelo
Okay. They have been in the industry that they’re in. I’m not gonna identify them. Yeah.
Amr The Internet Guy
They are making, you don’t wanna know the name or anything, but like they’re, they’re
Ami DeMelo
Making multi multimillions of dollars a year. This is a big company, so we’ll just put it that way. I was contacted last week because they’re having trouble with their web designer, getting them to the finish line, getting this website. They’ve been working on it for a year and a half after that meeting. I know, I know. Right after that meeting that I took with them, with the owner of the company and his like head of marketing, it was quick, it was easy for me to identify that they hadn’t done any strategy. They hadn’t worked with a brand identity designer. Their logo is from like the seventies.
Yeah, yeah. They have no Yeah. 60
Amr The Internet Guy
Years.
Ami DeMelo
Yeah. Right. And so they, like, they needed, I, I told them from the client’s perspective, what they want is a website. But to get to the website, the website is the last piece of the puzzle. You actually have to start at the beginning with your strategy. Yes. With your brand identity, with the logo and all that. So they were working with what they want versus what they need. And once I reframed to them that they were starting at the end trying to start where you went. Yes. It regrouped and reframed them and now they,
Amr The Internet Guy
So they were doing it kind of back to front.
Ami DeMelo
Exactly. Like, ’cause you know, like, you know, I’m a web designer, so exactly what happens in most cases. Like, I, I can’t even remember, I probably just did one brand new website in the whole of the last year. Right. And all the other work were like either maintenance Mm. Which it starts as maintenance. So it starts as someone coming to me saying something is not working on their site, the forms are not sending mail or something else is not working. Yeah. Whatever. Like, you know, something in the functionality is off. Yeah. And then when I take a look, I realize that the whole website is off.
It’s like, it’s kind of old dated, the logo like, I don’t know, is sometimes square. And you know, somebody tried to make it rectangular and it looks odd and I don’t know, it doesn’t look good.
And the whole website is kind of the infrastructure. It’s like, it’s like when you have a great house that looks really great, but the plumbing, the water is leaking somewhere. And as long as it’s not visible, people ignore it for as long as it is. But then when they start to see water running on their floors, they realize they have a problem and then they call me and then
Exactly.
Amr The Internet Guy
You have to go and tell them, you know, we have to bomb this website like it, we can’t use anything in it. Maybe the text. And probably that text was written 15 years ago. So even that, maybe you want to go back and, and rethink it. Like figure out what you represent today to your clients and to your prospect clients as, as a business, what do you represent today? And then we can start there. So you need to give me new text, you need to give me new imagery, you probably need to go and redo your logo. And then I can build a website. Like I’m as a web designer, I don’t do any of these things.
I don’t do text, I don’t do images. Like I’ll build you a website that works, but you need to give me the components.
And then maybe when we’re working, I can edit a little bit here or change like a place of a button to make it more prominent or whatever. But like I have, we have to start with the stuff that you give me and then they realize that I’m making them work. Yeah. It’s like, oh, we hire people so that we don’t have to work. I said, no, you hire people to make things work for you. Yeah. But that doesn’t mean that you, you’re gonna do zero work.
Ami DeMelo
Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I run into that too because as a designer too, just even at my point, oh I need a postcard mailer made or a brochure made and they’re like, some clients will want me to like show them something. Yeah. But what they don’t understand is that you design for the content. Yes. So content is always first because how am I going to take a piece of text and Oh, I didn’t turn my slack off.
How am I gonna, how am I,
Amr The Internet Guy
It’s not appearing on the screen. We’re good. Oh,
Ami DeMelo
That’s good. So how am I gonna take, you know, a piece of text? My job as a designer is to make that information interactive and get your points and story across. It’s not to build something pretty. So I think sometimes that people confuse like design and art, whereas design is strategy led and, and strategic and it’s layout and information presented like in a way that you want to communicate. Whereas art and, and I,
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah, our website isn’t a painting.
Ami DeMelo
Exactly. It’s not, it’s a, this pretty,
Amr The Internet Guy
You know, I always call it a living organism. Exactly. Because it, it should be alive and it should do something.
And you have to decide as a business owner, what do you want your website to do for you.
Ami DeMelo
Absolutely. And you know, it’s not like, I don’t know, some people think it’s to wow the visitor, but then okay, maybe if you’re in art, if your industry is art, yes your website should wow the visitor. But if you’re in any other, other industry, no matter how well you make it, it, it is not gonna make money for you. Like it if it doesn’t convert, it could be the most beautiful website ever, but the page takes 30 seconds to load. No one will see it. No one will wait that long. Exactly.
Yeah. So, And then people spend so much like I’ve seen sites that cost like $25,000, but the page is so sluggish. It’s like, I know, how do you spend $25,000 on website and not even optimize the looting? Like
Yeah, it’s crazy. I mean we of course when we work in the industry we, or
Amr The Internet Guy
By the 2 99 hosting, oh my god. Right?
Ami DeMelo
Yeah. I mean what can we do? Right. I think the problem with our industries though is such a lack of knowledge and clients don’t know what they don’t know. So we,
Amr The Internet Guy
You said something that, it’s interesting because like I suffer from it as well in my business, which is we design as per the content. And then what happens sometimes people, they don’t want a bespoke website, like fully customized website. ’cause Yeah, for startups and small businesses it’s expensive. Like I think it would be north of $5,000. And then they want something simple, especially when they’re thinking it’s a new business, we’re not making money yet. We have a lot of time, but we don’t have a lot of money. So we want something that is kind of cost conscious but still looks good.
So they went to, or they go to like a template based website. Some people take different routes. So some people go to Square Squarespace or Wix or whatever because of the premise that it’s easy, it’s hosted, you don’t have to worry about anything. Your domain is there, your hosting is there. They present you with three or four or sometimes even 100 different templates. You choose one and you fit your content in. But then soon enough, like within, I don’t know, some people discover it within two months. Some people discover it after one year. Yeah. But soon enough you realize that you’re locked into a system that is not flexible, that doesn’t work for you.
Like you can’t add any design, you can’t customize much.
Sometimes even the template that’s there is a third party template that they no longer offer support for. And then now you need to switch your work into a different template, which means you redo your work again. Yeah. And it’s like pain in the backside. So yeah.
And then I only work with WordPress exclusively. Yeah. I mean I used to build website using HTML code, but like, I can’t even remember when I ditched that like maybe 2010. Right.
Ami DeMelo
Yeah. In favor of WordPress. But the new like business owners as well, they sometimes find it a little bit difficult because it’s kind of like a blank canvas and they can’t do it on their own.
So you did something that I find very interesting with brand Kit. Yeah. And like you are, you are giving them the Wix in WordPress. If I’m like, if I may say that like, so tell us a little bit more about it and then we’ll get into the details.
Okay. So brand kit, like I mentioned at the beginning is my second current business. I have a business partner for this one. I, and she is the website of everything. So she is a developer that I have worked on with for about four or five years now on various projects. And then last year we kind of were seeing like this hole in the market, we started researching, we found some competitors that were doing something similar but not the same that we were. And essentially we just built a website called Brand Kids Studio.
We, it’s kind of an online marketplace for affordable, professionally designed pre-made WordPress website templates and essential brand par like brand kits, meaning a logo and a couple layouts.
Color palette and font pairings essentially. And one non-negotiable that we had from day one though because we are working in the industry, is that all the logos would only ever be sold once. So they’re not like a template that Perfect.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah. That you are rebuying or that everyone can have. And they’re all original designs that technically I owned or made or created first. So I’m not buying them online and reselling them. I’m not, you know, their original that I created. So we kind of wanted to make this to bridge the gap between the clients who they really, like you mentioned, they just don’t have the funds. Their star startup, maybe they haven’t proven concept, maybe they just need to get something up fast. These people would’ve otherwise just DIYed it themselves and probably spent weeks or
200 hours. 200
Ami DeMelo
Plus hours, right? Yes.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yes. So, and and then still ended up with what
I’ve done that calculation with a, with a, with a friend, not a client. Yeah. When they were, they’re pretty like they’re it,
Ami DeMelo
Right? Yeah.
Amr The Internet Guy
But they don’t have time ’cause they’re running the business. Right. So they were doing it and they were bringing sometimes help like sometimes nephew, niece, friend. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. And then I asked the simple question, okay, once you had your first iteration of it, did you like track how many hours you worked on it? I think it was 178 hours. Yeah. I said, okay, what’s your hourly rate? And then they started laughing ’cause I realized how much it cost them. Exactly. Like in, in, in lost revenue. And it still looked like a kid in, I don’t know, year six did it.
Ami DeMelo
I mean, as a professional working designer, it takes me like 30 to 50 hours to do logos of course. Oh,
Amr The Internet Guy
Of Course. Oh yeah. So, and that, and that’s with, because there’s so much that goes into it. And I think clients, especially nowadays kind of get stuck in that Instagram reel mindset where, you know, it takes five minutes or less to make the most simple looking thing. So it, I don’t blame them for wanting to DIY if they can to save costs if they don’t understand the process. But I mean they shouldn’t have to, like you said, they need to focus on skills.
Yeah. So we’ve got, we’ve got the two words. Yeah. Like we’ve got, Hmm. I wanna hire a graphic designer and an identity maker or an aesthetics, you know, expert. Yeah. Yeah. To create my brand. Because this would be what sticks in people’s minds when they see anything to do with my business. Like a card or a brochure or come to the website or the social media pages or whatever. So I need to hire like a graphic, a good graphic designer, and I need to hire a web designer developer to deal with the website stuff. And maybe I will also end up hiring some social media manager or SEO manager or, or someone to help me, you know, with marketing.
And this is expensive, but it gives me the best result if I can afford that. Yeah. And then on the other end of the spectrum is I’m a startup.
I am not making revenue yet, but I have so much time so I want to DIY it and there are like pros and cons to every method because you, DIY you are wasting so many hours of your valuable time that you could be spending in actually talking to prospects.
Ami DeMelo
Exactly. You’re talking
Amr The Internet Guy
To past customers in your past businesses or whatever to, you know, tell them about your new venture and what’s going on. And there was no happy medium. And the only happy medium that existed, which would’ve been your competitor, was the template based. Like you can buy a template Yeah. And then fill it in, fill in the gaps. But the problem with this, that template is used in like 100 if not more other websites. And it’s not even, sometimes these templates are not versatile. Like if you have two extra lines of text, it breaks the design.
Ami DeMelo
Yeah. Like you have to do your text Exactly. As per how much text is in the template when you see it. Yeah. You have to do your image exactly the same size that you see the image on the template. Anything different. And the thing will look completely different and it will be odd.
Yeah. So again, it’ll start eating up some of your time because you, you’ll need help, you know, resizing the images. You’ll need help with fitting your text here or there. Or maybe create a new row. Do you want the two columns? Do you want it four columns? Do you want to put an image here? And the text there, like before you know it, you are again spending so much time on it. So it’s not exactly how you wanted it. ’cause you already bought the template. So I feel that with brand kit, you hire a professional designer and a professional developer for the price of the template and then you’ll get the support in getting everything in without problems.
Is it, am I saying it right? Is it
Sort of, but not really. So okay. The, the logo kits will, ’cause it’s a two-parter. Yeah,
Amr The Internet Guy
It’s done. The logos are done, right. Yeah.
Ami DeMelo
But we update them to the pers like to the business name. And I do that still. So when you purchase the logo kits, after you pay for it, it redirects to a questionnaire. So I can edit the files to match your business name. Then I send you a complete set of all the files that you need. You know, the transparent background logos and all the things Yeah. Are often missing. And then for the website templates, we have, I wanna say seven or six available right now.
And they vary with how many pages, but they come with all the bells and whistles. Like a 4 0 4 4 page. They’re SEO friendly, all that. They come with 15, I believe it’s 15, 15 training videos, which walks you through the steps of installation set up and how to edit that template, how to change out the colors, the global settings like it, we really wanted to empower small businesses to have a little bit more understanding and control over their website and their branding.
And if you did know code, great. But you don’t have to, so we explain how you can use these templates as essentially drag and drop. It’s, yeah. There, there’s a guidebook we have, I made a PDF guidebook for it. There’s so much links, resources. And then of course if all else fails, you can email us and one of us will reply, we can help you if needed or we could be hired. So it is a bit of an extra
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah. On an hourly rate. Yeah. To Yeah,
Ami DeMelo
We have a small fee. I I wanna say it’s 260 or $280 for us to just do the install for you. And it’s right on the checkout page. So you can decide right then and there if you just, or no, just you guys install it for me.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah. Yes. If, if like, if people don’t want to go even through, I wanna install, I wanna buy hosting first, and then I wanna install WordPress. Yeah. And you probably also tell them where to buy the hosting from if they didn’t know
Ami DeMelo
It. It’s in the guidebook step by step. It walks you through. It’s really clear. It, we make it as easy as possible to use these templates and, and yeah, like there’s full training videos that we personally created and everything and it comes with every purchase.
Amr The Internet Guy
That’s perfect. I mean, I think this is like a no brainer for somebody who doesn’t wanna hire designers outright. Yeah. And then when the time comes, the time will come maybe later, five years from now, two years. Like it depends how successful Yeah. They are, you know, with their business or if they do something that warrants a change. Yeah. Like they wanna change their brand, they want to change their website or they’ve, they’ve added some other services that, you know, they were not doing before and these new services will warrant like a complete makeover or something like that.
But in general, because I, I find this, for example, like I have a questionnaire on my website that asks people, when people want like a, an estimate, they want a new website and they want an estimate. So I take them through a journey that it, it takes less than three minutes to complete. But it also enables me to figure out is this a good fit for me or not. Because here’s an example, I don’t do startups.
Ami DeMelo
Right, Right. Unless it’s the second business for the same entrepreneur. But I don’t do anyone who’s starting a business for the first time.
It’s just, I don’t have the capacity. Like, ’cause this needs so many meetings where we put work on the strategy where we do things where I explain, you know, how building a website is, like building a house. You’ve got your, your, like the infrastructure itself. You have to have the basics. You have to have the frame that goes like if you’re building a house, and then only after you’ve done these two steps, you look at the interior design, which is how the page looks like. Exactly. So how they can write their content, where to go and find help. There’s a lot that comes into it that I don’t have the time for. So I simply can’t do it.
But I can whip up like a website in let’s say, I don’t know, I would say six weeks if you have all your content ready and it’s not your first business, you’ve done this before, you have your hosting, you have your domain name and you just want a website. I can of course help with these things. But like, I don’t have time to explain what these things are like.
Exactly. I mean, neither do I. My sweet spot for my custom design, I like to work with companies that are in that three to five year mark. Yeah. And they need professional design and they need custom work done at that point. They have direction, they have a bit of strategy or they’re getting strategy in place. Like they’re trying to take their business to the next step or Yes. The next direction. So that’s what I typically do in my day-to-day custom design world. But exactly that. Like,
Amr The Internet Guy
And that’s why you created the brand kit. ’cause like it’s disheartening when you talk to aspiring, you know, business owners, new entrepreneurs who have great ideas, like, you know, they’re, they’re going to conquer the world, but they just don’t have that cost upfront that they can do it right the first time. And you feel like I would love to help them, but I can’t, like I simply don’t have the tools to help them.
Ami DeMelo
But beyond that too, it’s like sometimes you recognize that in general because they don’t have as much clear direction. They just have this idea that they themselves, even if they have the funds, aren’t always ready for that custom experience. And it doesn’t make sense because they’re gonna have to go through it again in like a year and a half, three years. Yes. Two years, something like that. So why should, like ethically and morally, why should I direct them? Oh yes, I can take this project on knowing that in the next year they’re gonna find, yeah.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah. So,
And it’s the same thing, like when people, I don’t know, like I get asked the question, do you do Wix or Squarespace? And I say no. Yeah. Why? I said, because I believe that people who go to Wix and Squarespace, they do, they go there because they, they want not to need to hire somebody. Hmm. So what’s the point if you’re hiring somebody to help you with a Wix or a Square Squarespace project where you cannot take the design with you if you decide to leave. And also you, it’s kind of, I, I’ve always explained it like an Airbnb. Yeah. You go and rent an Airbnb, everything is there for you, you use it when you are finished, you get out, you can’t take anything.
And while you are in, you can’t, for example say, oh you know what? I don’t like the internet connectivity. Can I apply for, you know, show, tell us whatever Verizon, whatever I’m, you know, I want a higher internet speed or no, sorry, this is what it comes with. Yeah. Oh, you know what, the chairs of the dining table are not comfy. Can I get my own chairs? No, you can’t. This is what it is. You leave, you just go with your clothes on. That’s it. You can’t do anything and you start
Ami DeMelo
Over and you start over. Yeah.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah. And then, so I always tell people like, okay, I’m not against these like networks, the sub subscription based network. Yeah. You’ll be paying this subscription for as long as you’re using the service. So it’s an added cost. You see it as, ah, you know what, it’s a few dollars a month. Yeah. But like times five years, how much is it gonna take? It’s gonna be equal. You doing your own custom website, which you own like this
Ami DeMelo
Keyword, they own it. Right.
Amr The Internet Guy
Own it. You’re not renting it somewhere. You own it. You can just buy new hosting. Like let’s say you’re unhappy with your hosting company, they’re a bit slow or whatever, or you got hacked or they had a problem. You can just take your site with everything in it. Buy new hosting, you’ll be up and running in two hours. Exactly. Like you don’t even need anybody. Like if you know how to take a backup and you know, know what I mean?
Ami DeMelo
Did wanna hire somebody for that. It’s just a couple hours. It’s
Amr The Internet Guy
Couple of hours of work. Yeah.
Ami DeMelo
The cost is minimal compared to having to get a website hacked, locked out of it. You don’t own it. Yeah. You can access it and now you have to rebuild it somewhere.
Amr The Internet Guy
Or compared to you being on Square, Squarespace or Wix. Yeah. And then you’ve been there for years. You now have, like I, I had somebody who had 400 posts, I can’t remember, was it Wix or Squarespace?
Now if we redesign even to WordPress, there’s no, there’s no tool to export the 400 posts. Yeah. Like you’re gonna have to copy, literally copy the text and then create a new post in WordPress and then paste the text again.
And like who’s gonna, like, you’re gonna need to hire somebody who does data entry or get somebody’s, you know, teenage kid who’s looking for a few extra dollars and your EO o just to do copy paste, copy paste, copy. Yeah. And your SEO. Yeah.
Ami DeMelo
On Essential. So this is the people always need, sorry to think down the line. Yeah. You are a startup now. But think also when you’re successful and you have, I don’t know, 1000 clients, how would this existing website fit you? Like what do you want to do later? So start with something that can grow that is not limiting you, you’re not locked into a system that you cannot get out of.
So WordPress is, is brilliant with that. It’s open source. There are literally millions of WordPress experts in the world. You don’t have to use Amy, you don’t have to use am you don’t have to use anyone. You can just find anybody who you wanna work with because everybody, you know, the millions who use WordPress daily, they know WordPress. So it’s easy. And it’s not proprietary software. It’s not, it’s open source
And you can grow into it. Yeah. So if you started with a three page website and you don’t need all these bells and whistles at any time, you can add crazy booking system or an involved blog, or an e-commerce store. Yes. Whatever you need in the future can be added to WordPress. So of course it’s, you know
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah. If you have an event and all of a sudden you want like a, a landing page specific for the event.
Ami DeMelo
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a, you can hire someone just to do that landing page. Yeah. Of course. You can always go back to the same designer you worked with if, if your experience with them was good. But like, you know, I, I hear stories that designers like, I don’t understand it to be honest. Like, I don’t know, I, once I got into internet stuff in 1999 when it started for me, I’ve always loved the stuff. And no matter what other job I’m doing, I’m always doing some web related stuff on the side. Even if I’m like working full time for, for a company. And I don’t understand sometimes when I get a client who said that their designer is no longer doing design and it’s like
Tough industry to make money in. I remember when, like this is an offside story, but I remember when I was making the switch into being this kind of designer, the amount of people that told me, oh you won’t last long because designers are broke. Like, they’re like poor artists, they don’t make money. They don’t no do anything. And I’m like, Hmm, okay. But so it, it’s like a, one of these weird industries that I think because I have a lot of business background as well, that perhaps I succeed easier if I could say easier than some other designers where some other designers, they hide behind the screen.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah. They Only wanna be, they don’t know how to network get out there. They don’t know how to get business for themselves or they don’t know how to run the business side of things. Yes,
Yes. They
Ami DeMelo
Don’t really make enough money to support themselves. And then they leave the industry.
Amr The Internet Guy
They may be like very, very creative people.
Ami DeMelo
Absolutely. But they’re not 10% business people.
Exactly. So the business dies, the creativity is high. Yeah. But the business is low. It doesn’t like that balance is not easy.
No, absolutely. It’s not. And it’s not even easy for me who has a lot of background in this because you are having to split your brain two ways.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yes, yes. Throughout The week.
You know, you can’t have Right. Dominance or left dominance, you have to make them like a little bit equal. Yeah.
Ami DeMelo
Yeah. So I get into like, I, the way that I deal with that is that I schedule in like complete work focus days where I know I’m doing nothing but design this day. And I’m like focusing in on this brand and I ignore anything business related. So that’s the only way I can do both.
Amr The Internet Guy
I love that. Actually this is a great advice because like I have a DHD so my brain is always right. Yeah. Going round in circles. But luckily it’s a light version of A-D-H-D-I don’t know if I can say light version. ’cause my daughter has it and, and she’s completely different from me. Like we, we are similar in some ways. Like, you know, we’re both loud, we’re both passionate. And then sometimes it comes across as you’re shouting at somebody when you’re just talking.
I’m, believe me guys, I’m not mad, I’m just talking. But, but there are different things. And of course me being an adult, like I learned to reign it in. Yeah. But in general, there are days when like, oh my God, anything distracts me, anything. Oh,
Ami DeMelo
Me too. Absolutely. Me too. I just always hope those happen on my days that aren’t my focus design days.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yes. Yeah. Yes. And this is one of the reasons sometimes why I don’t come to the coworking space. Oh, me too. The fact that I have to put my clothes on and leave.
I know that I’m gonna waste the whole day. Yeah. Rather than if I’m home, maybe the distraction will take a couple of hours and it’s usually something in the kitchen. Right. Like, you know, I’m, I’m, my coffee takes one hour to make. Or
Ami DeMelo
You need a new coffee maker then
Amr The Internet Guy
A human coffee maker. Yeah. No, but this, this is good because I, I feel like, you know, we help each other as entrepreneurs, we help each other be successful. So if you have something that can cut down the time for somebody, rather than them spending 200 hours building their own website or spending $5,000 hiring someone to build a website for them, that’s a happy medium. Yeah. They can, they can go to brand kit. And, and I love the fact that you included the graphics because there are so many website that sell website templates. And again, we said yes, this template, you know, it’ll probably be used by thousands of people.
’cause it’s just a template that people buy. Right. Whereby at bracket it’s something like a cross out between being specifically done for you and and being something that’s a template that everyone else is using. And at the same time, the graphic part, which is, is there’s so much pain when someone is trying to build a website but they haven’t had the graphics done for them yet.
Ami DeMelo
Yeah. You know, and then they go to like, people go to Canva, other people go to what’s, I forgot about it. There’s this, there’s this service that enables you to print your business cards. But they have like print, vista Print Yeah. Their own design template as well. So, oh, get your logo done and get whatever. And it’s like you can get lost there and still get something that doesn’t even describe what you do as a business.
See quite a few Vistaprint templated logos and business cards in my networking journey. ’cause I’m out there all over the place all the time.
I gotta admit it breaks my heart because I, if I, well I work in the industry so I see often the same repetitive logos and designs. But other people can, even if they’re not aware of why they’re seeing it or familiar with it, they know that it wasn’t necessarily like a custom built anything. And it’s just a generic Yes. Template. Like tell the generic template
Amr The Internet Guy
And then there’s no, sometimes also there’s no, I don’t know if I can say that. Like there’s no human behind it. Like okay, a human created the template, but right now it’s on an e-commerce website that sells templates and you buy it and then if you have a, like anything, if you need like a human interaction, it’s really hard to go back to the same designer. ’cause that designer had sold that design to so many other companies that are now selling that design. So it’s really, really hard to go back to the maker Yeah. And ask them if, can I do this with it or you know, would it support whatever.
But if they come to you at brand, you’re there, you and your partner, you are there and it’s just us too. Respond to the email. You tell them whether there’s a cost involved in you customizing that part of the template for them. Or if you can just do it right away if it’s something to be done on the spot or, or whatever. And you could, you could literally, you know, spend an hour on the phone like, or a zoom call with them. Not free, but like, you know, to make sure things work.
Ami DeMelo
Yeah. We encourage people to reach out.
Amr The Internet Guy
It’s a service. Yeah, Exactly.
I mean it’s a human service. Exactly.
Ami DeMelo
In The age of AI and like automating.
Yeah. On that note, nothing on our website is ai, meaning none of the logos were generated using an ai. Like everything is authentically still my work. Yes.
Amr The Internet Guy
And that’s very important. I’ve just found processes within the way that I do things that made it me able to be able to mass, mass produce. Yeah. A bunch of logos that, so it’s not as time consuming for me, but it’s all a hundred percent done by me. There’s no, there’s no generation there by,
I think it’s beautiful. ’cause like you, you got like the the aesthetic port covered Yeah.
From the brand identity itself and then the web part also covered and all what people need to do is to have a domain name and hosting. That’s it.
Ami DeMelo
That’s Practically it.
You pick out the template that you like best and when you purchase the websites, you get immediate download access to it, like immediately with all of the videos with all
Amr The Internet Guy
Of that would show you how to install it. Yeah.
Ami DeMelo
And, and get that domain and what you need to do next and what the next steps are. The videos are easy to digest too. There, there’s like 15, but they’re only a few minutes long.
Yeah. Share screen so you can see like, we make it as seamless as possible to update it.
Amr The Internet Guy
I love that. And I think I checked the website and I looked at the pricing and it, there’s a range. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t, I can’t remember. So I don’t wanna say something wrong, but I remember it ranges from maybe 700 Canadian to 1000 something.
Ami DeMelo
So individually we have a couple logos and I’m working on getting more at 3 2 95 or 3 95 Canadian. And that includes the font pairings and all that. And they go up to just under 700. Yes. And the lo the websites range as well from I believe it’s 400.
Amr The Internet Guy
400. Okay. If it’s 800 and where the variations are and, and Canadian dollars Yes. Where the variations are. Just check out what it includes because some of the websites are longer, you know, like six pages and blogs Yeah. And more involved. And some of the websites are just shorter, more streamlined. So you just have to check out what they include. The same goes for the logo kit. Some are more expensive because they come with illustrations which you own and also aren’t being resold either. They’re kind of illustrations that didn’t make the cut in my life.
Yeah. So. Right. And so, and Pat brand, some of them come with brand patterns, so they come with some extra components and that’s why they’re a little bit more expensive.
That’s perfect. I mean, it’s like for anyone trying to get their message out there and needing like a professional representation of their business. If, if like, I don’t know if Yeah. That
Ami DeMelo
Works to say this.
Amr The Internet Guy
I think so. Yeah, because I mean, for me the word brand means different thing. Like a brand is a promise, right? Yeah. So like if I see the golden arches
of McDonald’s, I know that I’m getting burger and fries, like, you know, I know McDonald’s has so many different things now, but in my head is burger and fries.
When I look at your logo, it looks for me like a ceramic tile. That, that’s how I see it. Like your your like
Ami DeMelo
My personal logo. It
Amr The Internet Guy
It’s, yeah. Your business’s logo.
Ami DeMelo
It’s literally, Yeah. Yeah. And in my head it it, it just brings up mosaic and art and like that’s how I perceive it. Yeah. I didn’t know that you intended it this way. Yeah, we’ve never talked about this before, but
Like, oh, okay. Yeah. Yep.
Amr The Internet Guy
For me it looks like, you know, the kitchen backdrop tile, like,
Ami DeMelo
So literally my background of course is Portuguese and I try to spend as much time as a can over there.
Quick history lesson.
Portugal was under the rule, an Arabic rule for 800 years. And that’s where a lot of our tiles came from at the beginning. And I am obsessed with the tiles in Lisbon, the Portuguese tiles. Like this is one of my favorite things in the whole world. I have, I couldn’t even tell you how many photos on my phone of tiles from when I’m over there. And I was just scrolling through them when I was trying to come up with a new brand direction for myself a few years ago.
And I literally pulled one of them out and I said, yes, this is my logo. And I traced it from a tile that I took a pic.
Amr The Internet Guy
I love that. In Portugal. So that is exactly where my logo came from.
So it’s very authentic. It’s like, you know, you had to go look inside you first, you know, get the Portuguese out. Did I tell you I got lost in Lisbon before? No,
Ami DeMelo
I’m not surprised though. I mean, the roads are like this.
Amr The Internet Guy
I was trying to take the bridge to go to the south and Oh, okay. I rented the car from the airport and somebody like explained to me, at this time it was 1999, I believe. So there’s no Google maps. There’s like, we had actually printed maps.
Ami DeMelo
Yeah, I remember that. MapQuest.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah. And then I, I kind of, I got lost and I’m trying to get on the bridge and of course I don’t speak any Portuguese, but I speak French. So I tried to remember that the bridge in French is po Mm. So I said, and then I stopped in the street and I kept on, ’cause I can see the bridge, but I don’t know where to enter it from. Yeah. Until somebody understood what I wanted. He said, El Ponte. I said, yes, yes. How do I get,
Ami DeMelo
Yeah, it’s quite far back. You’d like to enter. I I don’t drive home there. I know the subway state, like metro station, like the back of my hand. It’s really easy to get around there with public transport nowadays anyways.
But I hope you were going to the beaches in the south and that’s why you were crossing the bridge. Yeah,
Amr The Internet Guy
And I, I used to go to a small VA small fishing village. Oh. To the big, not, not the big crazy touristy places. The one called I was in Alvo.
Ami DeMelo
Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And it, it’s, I loved it. The, there’s like a, oh man, the food
So good. Yeah.
Amr The Internet Guy
So yeah, so go to brand kit and then we’ll tell you what the best places in Portugal too. Yeah.
Ami DeMelo
I often enlisted as a Portugal tour guide unofficially just because my friends wanna know all the things. And of course it’s become so trendy to go there right now, so everybody wants to know.
Amr The Internet Guy
It’s one of my, like, it used to be one of my favorite holidays when I lived in Europe ’cause it was so close. Yeah. Flights were not expensive and I even, you know, caught the time when the currency was the kudo.
Ami DeMelo
Oh, I know. Before the Euro. Oh, I enjoy myself so much there and everybody thought I was Portuguese, but like, you know, they would approach me and then I respond in English and they look like why is the Portuguese guy not wanting to honor his own language? I said like, because I’m not,
Yeah. I can, I can understand that. Definitely.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah. So Amy, thank you very much for being here today and you guys, I’m gonna put her links below the video and you know, if you’re getting this in any of the podcast platforms, you’ll have some, some of the platforms can display links, some can’t. But what I always do, I create a post about the podcast that goes on my website and that post has all the links in it. So it’ll be easy for everyone just to go to the post and get all the links and can contact Amy. Amy, I can’t wait for us to meet again in person and or maybe ask you a little bit more about Portugal. Thank you very much for being here today.
Ami DeMelo
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
