Evan Sargent Is The Founder Of Leap_year Branding: A New Kind Of Branding & Marketing Agency
I’m Evan Sargent, founder of Leap_year Branding, a new kind of branding and marketing agency. We focus all our work around creative sprints, and we even have an offering where we build a brand (and website) in 1 day! I’m passionate about innovation in the creative services space as well as civic engagement, music, woo woo stuff, and art. I’m a mom of 3 boys ages 10, 13, and 15, and I’m also co-author of a book for young people called We the People: The US Constitution Explored and Explained.
What motivated you to become an entrepreneur? Is having your own business something you always wanted?
I have been doing what I do since a very young age. My first branding project was making stationery for my grandfather by coloring “Tim” with a rainbow in the corner of 100 sheets of paper. Cut to me designing the logo for my high school anthropology teacher’s fishing business (which can still be seen around town on his truck). I can hardly remember a time when I wasn’t working on brands with clients. I spent over a decade in advertising where I soaked up an enormous amount of knowledge about strategy, business, the creative process, and how to concept and execute almost anything imaginable! All while working with my 1:1 branding clients on the side. As soon as I had my third maternity leave, I left my job and became an entrepreneur full time, and never looked back.
When did you consider yourself a success? Did you ever have to deal with the imposter syndrome? How do you overcome the imposter syndrome?
I am one of those people who doesn’t love the term “impostor syndrome” because of how it sounds like a womens’ issue or disease. This hilarious commencement speech by Reshma Saujani is a must listen and sums up how I feel about it! I tend to experience a sense of awe about what I am doing, which is similar in a way. I think it’s mostly a positive thing that fuels me, and helps me to not take my success for granted. That said, in the future, I would like to feel less awed and astounded whenever I achieve something. If I feel more neutral and unsurprised about my own accomplishments in the future, I will consider that growth!
How do you push through your worst times? What are some tips on how we can motivate ourselves when we’re not really feeling it?
Go easy on yourself. It’s too easy to beat yourself up about all that you should be doing and achieving — I’m over it. I just read Bending Reality by Victoria Song and started over from the beginning as soon as I was finished. I believe that chasing success and gripping tightly to outcomes only leads to misery. It’s so important to detach your success and achievement from your sense of self worth. Try to enjoy life and orient to pleasure even in hard times. Get flowers, take a shower, take a walk, don’t forget about fun. Feel all the feelings! If you’re “not really feeling it” there are probably some emotions you need to process. Let yourself experience them fully, and your creative and generative self will be back in no time. Sometimes things take longer than you want them to, and that has been a hard lesson for me. But I am not a fan of hustle culture and believe when you treat yourself really gently and really well, you can create everything you want from a place of ease.
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