Promise Tangeman is the CEO and Creative Director of Go Live HQ, a website design company that builds easy-to-use customizable website templates and fast-launching, beautiful custom sites. She’s a professionally trained graphic and web designer (with over 10 years of experience) and a certified digital marketing strategist. You can usually find her working at her desk blasting LANY on her Spotify with a La Croix in-hand.
I interviewed her to know from how she started her own business to end up working with the most famous fashion bloggers such as Marianna Hewitt LifeWithMe, Danielle Bernstein WeWoreWhat, Jenny Cipoletti Margo& Me and even Sophia Amoruso with GirlBoss!
How and why did you start Go Live?
After marrying Brian in 2009, I decided to skip out on the corporate world and go out on my own as a freelance graphic and web designer. Following the rapid success and high demand, I assembled a design team in 2012 and we began hosting in-person events to help creative entrepreneurs by the masses to build, design, and launch their website in two days flat.
Now, in 2018, the business has transformed into a Template Shop, custom website design, and we create more and more resources and education for entrepreneurs and small business owners on the blog and in the form of Clarity Calls.
How did you find your first clients?
Going way back!! In high school, I was doing things for friends and family. Then, in college, I started doing things for friends and family and would be actively posting about it. From there, the referrals have been coming in ever since!
Now you have a team of 10 people working with you, which is amazing! Who was your first employee, how did you understand it was time to grow a team and how do you organise yourself?
My first employee’s name was Alex and we traded services. She needed logo and branding and I need admin help. I knew it was time because my calendar was so busy, but my inbox was filling up and I wasn’t able to give new inquiries the attention they needed. After the trade was over, I realized how desperately I needed the position, so I hired her.
After that, I started utilizing other designers for help, and I was art directing the projects. As that started to be more and more successful of a process, I kept adding on designers. Then, eventually, I hired a social media gal to do social media captions and email blasts. Now, my team has continued to grow! I have a team of designers, a brand strategist, a communications strategist and a support specialist.
Ultimately, I hire people based off what I want on my plate. I figure out what it is that I do best, or what it is that the company needs ME to do to keep running. Then I try to outsource what other people would do better than I would.
You designed Girlboss’ site! How was the project and working with Sophia Amoruso?
Really good!! We had a really good working relationship and attentive to the design. Often, with a lot of high profile people, you end up working with their assistants. I worked directly with Sophia because she had a really strong vision for what she wanted, and whenever she has a strong vision for something, she really invests her personal time and energy into it.
Everything she said she was going to do, she did and even went above and beyond. For example, she would say that she would post about us on her Instagram or Twitter, and I never expected someone with a lot of influence to remember or to take the time, but when she said that, she really committed and gave me a lot of social love. And that’s just one example of how she really gave a lot to the project.
Also, when working with people and just supporting other in general, authenticity is something that is really important to me, and it’s also fun to work with someone over time and see them remain true to who they really are. Sophia definitely is that way.
You also designed famous fashion blogs like Margo&Me, We Wore What, Life With Me and many others. Do you usually contact them or do they come to you? Tell us how it works to develop a famous fashion blog?
They contact us – at least those ones you listed did. Every now and then, we reach out to someone we would love to work with, but otherwise, most of the time we get inquiries from people who have seen our work before.
The really fun part of working with influential brands is that they have an established and time-tested business, and so it’s fun to develop their visuals and vibes and bring it to a place that not only matches their personality and level of success in their business, but also prepares them for and launches them to future success.
No matter the level of influence, we always take all of our clients through the same design and brand strategy process as the rest of our design clients. We’ve spent a lot of time honing in our systems and our processes, and we know that what we do is proven to work. Those influential people appreciate being led through this process that has been tried and true for years!!
Shop our Pitching Guide for Bloggers and take your blog to the next level
How many people work behind the creation of a site? How much time does it take to create one and where do you take inspiration from to design a blog?
We’re really collaborative at Go Live! For any project, we’ll have myself art directing, a designer, my brand strategist working as a project manager, and my communication team all working on the launch of a website. It takes a village! We believe in fast processes and we deliver a website from the start of the design within 5 days. There is, of course, some backend work of getting to know them, signing contracts and the works, but from the design start to finish is a fast, 5-day process.
PS — We love workflows at Go Live! We just have been in the process of refining and buttoning up our client processes with Dubsado
For the inspiration for each project, we draw from the client’s inspiration, our design expertise and the our client’s ideal client or customer. We really want to design a site where their customer feels like we made the site for just for them, not necessarily that we made it for the business owner.
You are now expert and have worked with famous bloggers. What is in your opinion the secret to have a successful blog (apart from a wonderful design ;))?
There’s SO many things, but I’ll keep this one simple: Hard work, consistency, being dedicated to always improving your craft. Oh, and always creating content that you would want to read yourself.
Squarespace or WordPress? Which platform do you advise and why?
SQUARESPACE!! We’ve found that our ideal client and the modern female entrepreneur prefers Squarespace for its ease of use in updating the website because a lot of our clients like to update the website themselves. They can turn the ship quickly and move in a different direction in their businesses without having to hire someone outside, whereas with WordPress, you almost have to have an in-house development team to do all the things.
You also run your personal blog that you update regularly. Are you doing it for passion or business reasons?
A little bit of both. It’s outside of the Go Live brand, but it does bring business into Go Live. I would say it’s things that wouldn’t fit into Go Live’s wheelhouse like fashion and home design, which are both things that I am really passionate about!
