In the Fall of 2023, Camelia reached out to me as she was embarking on a new journey in her professional life. After 13 years of diplomatic service, 7 years of professional training and facilitation, and 2 years of humanitarian aid work, Camelia decided to leave her development job and become self-employed.
Being trained in non-violent communication and coaching, it felt natural for Camelia to lean into her coaching skills, and explore a role as a full-time coach to help individuals and teams improve their communication and collaboration skills.
I remember the evening we talked about her vision. We parked our bicycles and sat at the terrace of a local restaurant. It was still quite warm outside, though you could already feel the autumn's cold hunger in the air. Camelia shared her excitement about taking this leap of faith. She also shared how scary it is - the uncertainty, the unknown. But her determination was truly inspiring, and it felt empowering to play a role in her becoming.
Getting a business from the ground up is a lot of work, so much so that the Russian proverb "Глаза боятся, a руки делают" (Eyes are afraid, while hands are making) is quite fitting in this situation. Camelia was very clear on what she needed from my side and I was beyond happy to help her realize her vision. A website makes any idea feel more tangible and real. No wonder it's Squarespace's tagline. However, before we could work on the website, Camelia's coaching service required a brand identity. So there were two people I got her in touch with:
- Kirill Ganea - worked with Camelia to create a logo and a brand guideline. The end result was truly an outcome of their collaboration. Upon Camelia's direction, Kirill created an outline of an origami crane, that beautifully represents Camelia's tagline "You become what you fold". The main logo is type-based with Camelia's full name and the services she provides. Kirill also paired warm colors with a rich deep green color, and created unique patterns, that we later used as backgrounds on the website.
- Nadya Glo - a personal brand begs to show the person behind it, so it was natural I have recommended none other than Nadya Glo for a brand photoshoot. Nadya's photos are full of warmth and kindness. She has a natural skill to show the humanity of her subjects, and it felt only fitting for Nadya to capture Camelia's essence. I loved that Camelia brought an origami crane to the photo-session, which tied in so nicely with the final brand work that Kirill executed. Moreover, I loved that Nadya got the assignment right and they did several different settings and different angles. This helped enormously when creating the website, as I could use photos from the same session and it didn't feel repetitive.
Once the branding was done and the photos have been delivered, we were ready to move to the next stage — the website building. Since it was right around the winter holidays, it took us some time to get the ball rolling. I shared a document with questions for Camelia, like what pages she wanted on her site, any content she wanted to be included on these pages, some inspiration websites, etc.
After some discussions about possible website platforms, we've settled on Pixieset for the website host, as it's easy to use and is very intuitive. Disclaimer: I am very biased when it comes to website platforms. I've been over a decade in this industry, helping thousands of creatives build their sites. I launched websites on WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace and Pixieset. But since I work at Pixieset and truly believe in its growth and potential — it was a no brainer choice.
In mid February, we had our first website draft, and after polishing the pages based on Camelia's feedback, we were confident to launch the new site right in time for 8th of March.
I walked Camelia through all the technical steps: purchasing a custom domain, registering for Google Analytics and Google Console. I shared tutorials on how to edit content on her new site, and even helped her set up her appointment calendar with Studio Manager by Pixieset.
While working with Camelia I realized how overwhelming technical information can be, especially when there's a lot of it at the same time. What feels very comfortable to me is far from common sense to people outside of this industry. It made me think about technical literacy, specifically website building. I believe everyone should be able to build themselves a website, because everyone should be able to follow a path of entrepreneurship and try to test out their business and creative ideas. Not to make money, but to fulfill creative hunger and professional freedom.
As a thank you for my help, in June of 2024, Camelia has organized a full day workshop on non-violent communication for our leadership team. It was a win-win: Camelia got experience working with a team and a heart-felt testimonial, while our team members got the chance to learn more about each other, themselves and how to communicate with compassion.
Overall throughout 2024, we met regularly with Camelia. It felt like having a front row seat watching her business come to life from an idea to first regular clients, from a website draft to a full fledged system that got her booked. She shared her wins, her struggles, as well as her knowledge. I shared my insights and tips whenever she needed them, and my struggles as a leader and a communicator.
This experience started as the need to create something tangible as a website, but it gifted both of us with something even more valuable — friendship and connection.
"Working with Polina has been a blessing and a bliss. She helped me with building my website from scratch.
I thought this is rocket science , and here comes Polina , who explains to me step by step how a website is like a book which gets a place in the “library” of internet , and how each element of building it flows organically and logically into placing it on the right shelf.
Polina is so passionate about sharing her knowledge , that she went the extra mile with me and made a clear easy to follow video with step by step instructions, which was very helpful. I received a tremendous support from Polina for setting up my website, designing the interface, understanding how to use the tools for updating and managing it, and sooooo much more. I hugely recommend working with Polina, if you want to get professional support to build your landing page, understand and set up the key elements that should flow in its design, content and layout - and not last to give it the authentic character of your business."
