Theresa Chaney
I’m always impressed by how much my clients care about their clients, and Theresa is no exception - she gives 100% each time to delivering a polished professional site that reflects their unique business. She has a particular affinity with those who find tech challenging, and once she’s finished a site, she really goes the extra mile to make sure that her clients feel fully comfortable navigating and updating their new site. She’s very warm, patient and approachable and is great at making her clients feel that no problem is too small or too silly to raise with her.
When I started working with Theresa, one of her main concerns was how on earth to differentiate herself from the thousands of other Squarespace designers out there? She designs elegant sites that are carefully tailored to each client’s needs and tastes, but she’s not someone who wants to focus on her own visual branding. How could she stand out from the crowd? And how could she compete without joining the race to the bottom with pricing?
The process I use with my clients is to uncover the story at the heart of their business, so that they can become known for being who they really are. They don’t have to try to fit into a mould that they think or hope is going to be popular - instead we capitalise on their natural strengths.
When I first talked to Theresa about using this story-based method, she was skeptical. “I can see how this works for other people, but I don’t have an interesting story.” However, one of the nice things about working with her is that she’s always willing to give something a try, so she agreed to give it a shot.
And oh my goodness, I’m used to clients not realising the goldmines they’re sitting on when it comes to their stories, but Theresa was ignoring a real humdinger of a story.
Here it is as we eventually added it in to her About Page:
“My Story
My parents brought me to the US from Africa for a higher education when I was 16 years old. After three short days together, they left to return home and I was completely on my own, in a new country, on a different continent and in a very different culture. The familiar world as I knew it for the last 16 years of my life had completely changed! How was I going to make it?
I spent the first year having to figure absolutely everything out for myself. What I learned was that I'm a fighter - you can put me in any situation and I'll be able to pull myself out of it. I learned that it's always possible to find a way to survive, even if the odds are stacked against you.
What I've carried over from this life changing experience into how I run my business is an understanding that relationships are key - if you can build good relationships, you can work your way through anything. And I'm incredibly persistent - if you need your Squarespace site to function in a particular way, I will keep going until I find a way to make that happen.”
From this story we figured out that her Unique Selling Point is a combination of her focus on relationship-building, her determination and her willingness to fight for her client’s vision. Of course, we could simply have listed these qualities on her About Page without the accompanying story - but the story makes them unforgettable. If you come across this story when you’re browsing several designers’ sites, you’re now much less likely to get mixed up about which designer Theresa is. And if having a designer who will do what it takes to bring your vision to life is top of your wishlist, Theresa has just become your first choice. If you want to work with someone who understands how lost you feel in the bewildering world of tech and web design, why not work with someone who has huge empathy for culture shock - an empathy born out of her own lived experience of being thrown into an environment that initially made no sense at all to her.
That’s the power of stories - we’re hard-wired to understand the world through stories. They engage our emotions and, because they make us feel something, we remember them.
If you’d like to find out more about Theresa’s web design services, you can do so right here.
And if you’re interested to discover more about how you can uncover the story at the heart of your own business, you can find out how to work with me here.
* Update in 2025 - Theresa and I worked together way back in 2018. She’s recently done a full rebrand and her story as shared above is no longer on her new site - but her messaging is still leaning into everything that this story distilled. I think this is a good example of the longevity of messaging that is really rooted in your personal story. Even as your business evolves, your core qualities still shine through.