With the Woman Wednesday series, CatMax Photography introduces you to exceptional female entrepreneurs who have gone through the CatMax Personal Branding Experience. Today, I invite you to meet Michele Williams of Scarlet Thread Consulting.

Michele Williams of Scarlet Thread Consulting
Photo Credit: CatMax Photography

During Michele Williams’ 20-plus-year career, she’s launched a soft furnishings company, bought, sold, and run enterprises, and produced a home-industry magazine, among other accomplishments. Like countless entrepreneurs and business owners, her problem was never with offering a superior product or service—it was with navigating the details of business that rarely come with a road map. When she branched out on her own, Michele found herself pondering what rates to charge, how to work with frustrating clients gracefully, and more, on top of constantly second-guessing her choices.

Charting a Better Course

Because her background blends a formal education in business administration and time spent in financial software development with the priceless knowledge found not in books but instead in the throes of building companies, Michele is able to offer interior designers and other creative entrepreneurs and executives a unique perspective on growth and success through her business and financial coaching.

“Business owners who seek out my services already know how to be great designers. That is not their need. They need to have financial fluency and a framework for decision making most often, and that is my sweet spot,” she says.

Through Scarlet Thread Consulting, she takes a deep dive with clients into the numbers to wrap their heads around their business’s financial status so they can realistically plan for the future and achieve the income they desire. The goal is to create a strategy for increasing profits and scaling up at a reasonable pace while simultaneously ensuring the entrepreneur and their team are thriving (think more money, less work). In a world where burnout can be rampant, it’s a refreshing approach.

Using Her Voice

Another way Michele counteracts the messaging that tells nontraditional entrepreneurs to put monetary gains on the back burner is with her podcast, “Profit is a Choice.” She says, “Being a creator in my field, whether it is in interiors, magazine production, education, podcasting, or coaching, allows me to use my gifts to continue to elevate and serve others better. Having the ownership and responsibility to do that can be daunting but also empowering. … I love to constantly improve and maximize everything.”

On “Profit is a Choice,” Michele gets to the core of running a business and divulges more of what she’s learned over time. She’s not afraid to cover topics like protecting your CEO position and conducting a midyear employee checkup. Leaders in marketing, systems, hiring, and beyond make appearances. Recently, Michele invited me on the show to share my expertise. If you missed the episode, you can click here to listen to it. We discuss the power of photography to create human connection, and I share how to have a phenomenal brand photo shoot.

Boosting Her Branding

Michele was actually one of the first people to book a CatMax Photography Personal Branding Experience. “I had done a branding shoot before, but it was not as thorough as the one we did,” she says. “Throughout the photo shoot with Catrina, I felt relaxed, like I was having fun, and informed. All along the way, I was able to see what was being captured and give my creative input. I also felt cared for. Catrina and her team took the time to make sure my hair, clothing, and makeup were all on point, and we never felt rushed.”

Michele also credits the photo shoot’s success to the fact that she is further along in her coaching business and better understood the kind of photos she needed and what she wanted them to communicate. One objective was to remove the sense of stuffiness people often assume comes with what she does. “I work with financials and serious business frameworks. Sometimes, due to the nature of this offering, it can seem that everything is so very serious. I love numbers, and I have fun using the numbers in a multitude of ways to get what we need in business. Catrina was able to help me capture the fun of business—even when it is focused on a serious topic like money,” says Michele.

Though she’s a big fan of all the photos, some of the avid reader and book collector’s favorite shots include those of her having tea with her new “daughter-in-love,” throwing popcorn, and stealing a moment with her pups, Abigail and Khloe. “Oh, and the one of me in my drapery workroom—where my love for interiors was first built into a business,” she adds.

Michele suggests others hoping to have a branding photo shoot experience like hers find a photographer who communicates well and encourages collaboration. In addition, she stresses the importance of being prepared and knowing exactly what you want to get out of the shoot.

You can learn more about Michele’s Personal Branding Experience and her business by watching an IGTV replay of an Instagram LIVE we did. Click here to see it. Follow CatMax Photography on Instagram at @catmaxphoto and Michele at @scarletthreadatl.