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Most business owners know their visuals matter. But there’s a specific problem that tends to sneak up on you as your business grows, and it’s not that your graphics are terrible. It’s that they’re almost right. Good enough…but not quite there. And you can’t explain why, which means you can’t fix it.
That’s exactly where Sarah Greener found herself. Business coach, podcast host, multiple businesses running across two countries, a capable team doing their best… and graphics that were sticking to the original templates but slowly drifting off the mark. If you’re feeling like you’re in the same place, this blog is one worth reading.
Delegating well and why it matters for your brand
Sarah has a framework she uses in her coaching work: the difference between delegating and abdicating. Delegating means handing something over with the skills, tools, and support for someone to do it well. Abdicating means dumping it on someone and hoping for the best.
Before joining the Co+Creation Design Club, Sarah estimates her team was running about 70% delegation, 30% abdication on the design side. The brand templates were there. The structure was there. But nobody had a real design eye, including Sarah, and she couldn’t give her team the creative direction they needed to improve, because she didn’t have the language or the knowledge to articulate what wasn’t working.
The result? Things went out. They weren’t bad. But they weren’t as good as the business deserved.
What Sarah’s Approval Process Actually Looked Like
Before the club, Sarah’s approval process was essentially: the team would create a graphic, she’d look at it and say “I love it” or “I hate it”, and struggle to explain which. She’d go hunting online for references and send it back with feedback like “the orange is too much.”
Not unhelpful, exactly. But not the creative direction her team needed to improve.
Now? Every external piece of design goes through the Co+Creation Slack channel before it gets to Sarah. My team reviews it, edit it and record themselves making the changes so Sarah’s team can see what shifted and why, and hands it back polished. Sarah then reviews the copy.
And when she inevitably rewrites the copy and breaks the layout, she has a laugh with her team about it.
How the Club Plugged Into Sarah’s Existing Content Creation Process
One of the things Sarah is most clear about: joining the club didn’t add time to her process. It just replaced the gap in her existing one.
She and her team plugged the club into their monthly content engine. Every post, every podcast graphic, every carousel going out for public-facing platforms now runs through the Slack channel first. The team use it on the daily.
Sarah joins the fortnightly calls occasionally. And the whole thing runs without her needing to be the creative bottleneck, because she now has the design expertise from the Co+Creation club to support her.
How Consistent Branding Carried Sarah’s Business When It Evolved
Sarah opened up about going through perimenopause and a season where her copywriting and content weren’t at the level she’s known for. The brain fog, the cognitive load, the slipping consistency in her long-form work… it was real, and she felt it.
But here’s what she noticed: the visual consistency held. Her brand kept showing up professionally, warmly, on-brand, even when the words weren’t quite there. And that visual trust carried the business while she found her way back.
“The designs carried what potentially the copywriting wasn’t,” she said. “Where my long-form content wasn’t good, the brand actually carried us a little bit where I was slacking on other stuff.”
That’s not a small thing. That’s brand doing exactly what good brand is supposed to do.
What Sarah Would Tell Anyone Sitting on the Fence on the Co+Creation Design Club
She didn’t mince words.
“Do it.”
If you’re producing content regularly, updating your website, showing up on social media, and you’re anything less than genuinely skilled at design, you need to be in the club.
Whether you have a brand already or you’re starting from scratch. Whether you’re solo or have a team of five. Because right now, while you’re telling yourself you’ll figure it out, you’re working in what Sarah calls “mud mode”, doing everything yourself, getting in your own way, and capping the very growth you’re working toward.
“You spend more putting fuel in your car at the moment than you would on having your own design team on call.”
And she’s right.
Ready to get design support for your business and your team? The Co+Creation Design Club is open now: https://whitedeer.com.au/designclub
WORK WITH JACQUI:
// DIY Design My Biz: The best course for business owners DIYing their own brand and graphics in Canva. Learn more: https://whitedeer.com.au/diy-dmb
// The Co+Creation Design Club: Design WITH the help of a professional designer in this high-touch coaching space: https://whitedeer.com.au/designclub
// Design Studio: If you’re after fully done-for-you design services my studio team can help! https://whitedeer.com.au/designstudio
