The Wonder Jam is not some sort of extraordinary spread for toast, it’s husband and wife duo Adam and Allie Lehman and their branding, web design, photography and coaching services that are helping other small businesses tell their story.
Each part of this highly creative couple had been doing their own thing, Allie running her own freelance design business, and Adam working with various agencies and startups on web design and small business marketing.
“It came to a point where we really wanted to work together,” Allie says.
And in the spring of 2013, they didn’t just call each other husband and wife anymore, but business partners as well.
“We started the Wonder Jam, which is sort of a mixture of all the things we really like to do,” Allie says.
Those things they like to do include branding, website design, photography (Allie is also behind the lens at Death to the Stock Photo), and a recent addition to the lineup, coaching.
“We see branding as way more than your logo,” Allie says.
While important, branding also means things like website design, photos and a business’ general online and social media presence. And sometimes branding comes with a side of print design for collateral like business cards, or even packaging and labeling (they designed the sleek labels for simple syrup co. Root 23).
“We get really deep into who your audiences is,” Allie says. “We talk about your customer because it’s really all about them.”
Even if a brand already has a clear picture of where they’re headed, Allie and Adam want to spend time getting to know that idea to the point they can articulate it nearly as well as the business owners themselves. That’s where the best work happens.
It also helps with their ideal of designing websites that reflect their clients’ personalities. While a trusted group of contractors do the build out, all of the sites are designed on WordPress, making it easy and accessible for clients.
“If you need to just change one little thing, you should be able to do it,” Allie says.
If a picture’s worth a thousand words, Wonder Jam’s photography services are helping clients gain millions. Services like product photography sessions leave a business (often larger corporations in this instance) with a plethora of authentic lifestyle images they can use for things like social media.
Allie and Adam have created an efficient and effective way to deliver results that are resonating with local small business owners. Budget-wise, The Wonder Jam lives somewhere between freelancer and agency – they’re not as expensive as agencies, but more robust in their offerings than a typical freelancer. While they could charge more, Allie says the clients that could afford an inflated budget aren’t the ones they want to work with.
Their sweet-spot is businesses that are not unlike themselves.
“Their business is still small enough that they are running pretty much everything,” Allie says. It’s the people that are making the decisions themselves and in the business 24/7 (like Reno Reserve).
That type of client lends itself well to the process The Wonder Jam has developed. While a lot of get-to-know you time goes in before they will even touch a logo or a website, Jam Sessions offer concentrated periods of get-down-to-work time that both speed up the process and eliminate a lot of unnecessary emails.
Clients are asked to block out a couple of days to sit down with the duo in five to six hour sessions and just bust everything out. Clients can’t check emails 100 times a day and constantly be giving feedback and sometimes it’s altogether hard to explain exactly what’s needed through a keyboard. The system helps get the finished project in a client’s hands faster. It’s this method that also keeps overall costs low.
Wonder Jam moved into their Grandview space at 1145 Chesapeake Ave. in 2014, allowing them to get more into the classing/coaching and events side of things. Coaching advice and classes touch on the topics they’ve been through themselves – the processes is generally going to take a lot longer than you think, it doesn’t hurt to know some basic photography, and you should hone your social media chops.
They’ll also bring in other business owners for special events, saying there’s a lot of people in Columbus that are really good at what they do. Opening the Wonder Jam space to others is their little way of giving back to a community they call inspiring.
“We‘re constantly being inspired by our clients and in turn by the Columbus community,” Allie says.
For more information visit thewonderjam.com.
