Episode 14: Let’s Talk Rebranding

Zach: All right. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Founder Problems Podcast. My name is Zachary Oshinbanjo. I’m a recovering founder and aspiring strategic project manager, and I am joined by my cohost Sarah and Lee.

Sarah: I’m Sarah Schumacher and I run a website agency that is only going to retain the current name for exactly one week. So I am in the middle of a rebrand and dealing with client work and just juggling all the things right now.

Lee Z: I am Lee Zuvanich, I am not a recovering founder. I’m just a founder. I’m in the middle of. Of it. I build apps and web apps, and I am pivoting all my businesses into a big old AI startup because I’m original.

Zach: Very inspiring. We’ll definitely have to unpack a little bit [00:01:00] of that, but we’re gonna be really focused on branding, specifically rebranding all the activities, all of the, thoughts and emotions that drive decisions diving into personal experiences, finding new visions, and charting a course.

So that’s gonna be the emphasis of what we’re talking about today. Without further ado, big question. When do you know it’s time for a rebrand?

Sarah: Okay, this is something I’ve been asked a couple times recently, and I think my answer has been it’s been 14 years and it’s time. I don’t think that’s always the case, but I think it’s common because when you start a business, you usually end up taking this meandering pathway and things change and you pivot and all of that.

So for me, I started Cyclone Press. The word press was intended to refer like a printing press [00:02:00] because we were a brand and print agency and because we did branding and clients asked add websites, we added the websites and then that’s became clear that’s what I should be doing a hundred percent of the time.

So we pivoted to websites only so the name no longer makes sense. And to be honest, the name has always sounded like a publishing company, which we are not. I got an email in the last couple years of someone being like, Hey, do you own the trademark for this?

And there is a literal publishing company that, that is using Cyclone Press now. And I assume that they went through the trademark process. ’cause I had not. ’cause I didn’t care. So it was a combination of things. It was Lee saying, I can never remember your business name. It was, a fact. It sounds like a publishing company.

It was the fact that I feel like I have not outgrown it. ’cause the, I spent so much time on that brand and as a brand designer I’m proud of it. It still looks good. I could, continue with it if I wanted, but it just felt like it was time to move on. A little bit of a gut thing, a little bit of a business direction thing.

There’s some external pressure from [00:03:00] things like trademark or maybe there’s a competitor in your area that has a similar name. I know we have two similar agencies in town that have very similar names, and that to me is a little bit confusing. So it’s, I think all those things come together to a point where you just have to acknowledge it’s time and you just know.

Lee, what would you say though? ’cause I’m, in the middle of a rebrand. I’m at the end, I should say. I’m at the end of a rebrand and you are just now falling into it. So I guess, what’s your perspective?

Lee Z.: Somebody actually registered the name adva digital.com people actually started asking me about it like getting it confused with my business which is crazy cause Avid like where do you even come up with a name like that I made it up from my

Sarah: Yeah,

Lee Z.: I don’t know if they did it on purpose or what but they trademarked it and

Sarah: they did. Ooh.

Lee Z.: was at a point where my business was really starting to blow up and I was getting leads through my website and strangers and like social media I was like this could be a problem But I just decided [00:04:00] to write it out and not worry too much about it because I have friends in the startup world who have spent dozens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on trademark disputes And it’s a good way for a competitor to drain your resources honestly So instead of giving it any of my energy I just ignored it And it turned out I think they seem to be pretty defunct after about a year So

Sarah: Yeah that’s, really common actually. So I think that’s good advice. If anybody is like freaking out, like you, first of all, they probably didn’t research first, that’s all. Say people come up with an idea and then they will go register the domain or whatever. And they don’t do any research about does someone have a trademark?

Is there a similar name? Is there a similar name in the space that’s more important? Is there a similar domain name? Is there a bigger company that if you Google, you’ll always get the bigger company and you’ll never get your smaller business. So research that first, that’s important. But I also, I did the same thing.

So whenever I heard about the, they’re like, oh yeah, we’re gonna trademark cycle and press. I’m like, okay, whatever. And I didn’t worry about, it’s been like a couple years at least, so it’s been in the back of my brain, which

Additional weight towards the [00:05:00] rebrand, but not right away. And I wasn’t gonna rush into that.

I agree. I think you need to be aware of trademarks and those potential issues, but I don’t think you should be

Lee Z.: Yeah

Sarah: super worried. There’s a client that I worked with once the exact name that they had the.org, someone else had it and then went defunct and I got access to it by guessing what their email was for, I think, I forget which account.

Lee Z.: Wow

Sarah: I think it was a Twitter account. They were trying to get all the social accounts for this business name for this nonprofit, and they, somebody had the Twitter, it was defunct. No one had ever used it. And I got access to it because they bought the domain name and I set up the email and I made sure it was the same as what would’ve likely have been the other email.

And that’s how I got access to it. So

Lee Z.: Wow

Sarah: businesses get started and stopped all the time. Yeah, sometimes it’s good. Just wait things out.

Lee Z.: Yeah So I’m at the beginning of my big pivot so I wanna talk a little bit about that because maybe it’ll help someone who’s in the same place I’ve done this so many times something that I [00:06:00] always think of whenever I am in this stage of branding and I love branding personally It’s most exciting part for me I love starting things and I hate finishing things But I had a friend in business school once tell me when I was in the middle of trying to brand I think it was my yoga studio or something I was trying to come up with the name for and she was in the middle of a branding exercise herself for business school And she said oh you’re not supposed to come up with the name right away You’re actually supposed to come up with the product and what problem are you solving and figure out your market and all this stuff And she was trying to advise me Meanwhile I’d already had a few successful businesses at this point And so I was like thank you but I have this really strong belief and I still have this belief and I feel like it carried me very well from that moment too but my belief is that you come up with the brand first the name specifically you come up with the name that you know is not trademark that you know has good SEO that has a good.com You buy the.com you get the social media setup You create a presence that looks just [00:07:00] alive with a recognizable brand and a logo which I know sounds hard but there’s a lot of hacks that I can share to make it really quick but once you have that presence then you’ve got the momentum of a brand behind every conversation you have whether it’s with your family members your friends on social media Like for instance when I was Talking about Abta when I first started getting it going I was posting incessantly on social media cause I was at the beginning stage of an idea where you have tons of energy and you wanna talk about it And I made sure I had the brand put together and knew what I was doing before I went off into the world telling these stories about how passionate I am about vendors being held accountable And that resulted in my first investor coming to me and writing a check because he saw my writing and he saw that it was a real brand It wasn’t just something I was tossing around anyway me at the beginning my whole process at the first stage is to come up with a list of viable names see if [00:08:00] there’s a.com that I can purchase If not then name’s gone I can’t use it unless you can get get name or like little prefix you wanna add to it But it has to be a.com It has to be easy to say easy to spell easy to remember SEO Viability So if you Google it is it gonna be easy for people to find you or are you gonna have a ton of competition in that space where they can’t even figure out who you are in the midst of everyone else’s links then lastly I always check the US PTO website So just Google trademark U-S-P-T-O don’t pay anything to anyone just go to the United States Patent and Trademark Office and search trademarks And then if you see a trademark you probably shouldn’t use that name just like Sarah and I were saying we didn’t care that other people were trademarking our names because we both hold things that pretty loosely And both of us have service-based [00:09:00] businesses that are based on our relationships So kind of comes ahead of needing like a global trademark but conversely I would never ever a name that was already trademarked because I do have global aspirations

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee Z.: that if Abbot got big enough and I was gonna be this big Massive agency which I didn’t have any plan to do But if it ever happened I would just rebrand with like real intention at that point cause Adva was just a backwards into my lap kind of business so globally act locally 

Sarah: I agree with that. I have a caveat and a comment. I agree on creating the brand first and having that momentum behind you,

But I want to define. Like when you talk about branding, there’s a wide spectrum. So there is, you go on Fiverr and you pay some underpaid freelancer to throw together some crappy logos for you for however, five bucks where they charge, I don’t know.

And then you have an expensive brand agency. [00:10:00] ConvertKit famously rebranded to Kit and they spent like $230,000 on it. So you have a wide range. So when we’re talking about branding, and I also wanna clarify former brand designer. I started Cyclone Press as a brand agency. This was literally what I was passionate about and what I did for years.

I don’t believe that a startup should be spending thousands of dollars on a brand. So when Lee’s I wanna spin up this brand, that’s not what he’s talking about. We developed a startup package, I don’t like turning people away.

I had to call this week Hey, I have this new concept. I’m trying to come up with a name. I’m gonna need some sort of logo. I need like a landing page to show I exist. I’m like, that is what I built the startup package for. And we have a quick logo that we do as part of that.

Or I have logo cleanup and you can give us your AI rough drafts and we’ll do something with it. That’s what I’m talking about. And that’s what Lee’s done as well. There’s ways to really efficiently create a consistent brand that does not involve you spending your entire budget, ’cause you don’t need that.

But you do need something that’s out there so that you can talk about it. I also agree with the process. I would say that’s a similar process to what I [00:11:00] do. My comment on that is for. The trademarking. Dammit. I forgot what I was gonna say. I’ll have to come back to that.

Zach: Not as legal counsel or advice I’ll also put out there I can’t remember what the actual stipulation regulation whatever it’s called but I think it’s called it’s like fair use or effective use or whatever if you have a brand and you’ve been out here selling ho hos and cupcakes as

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Zach: for 10 years where you have presence and you’ve done business under the name enough that it justifiably represents you and your undertakings that’s often enough to refute Someone’s like domain squatty like claims.

Had even a couple over the years someone say Hey undeniably probably spam most of them but one of em it’s because it is Hey gonna [00:12:00] trademark intelligence Pay up buddy And I was like this is terrible Ransom I don’t care

Sarah: That’s a really good point because that is, I think, what they were fishing for with that email I got about Hey, like we’re gonna trademark cyclone press. And I think they wanted to see like how I would react, because I could have probably disputed that because at that point I’d been using the name for a decade.

And so you’re right, there is, there’s a legal precedent where if you’ve been using the name for a certain amount of time, again, not a lawyer, I can’t speak to that specifically. But there’s also, when you file a trademark, there is a intent to use and an in use trademark. So part of what I am scrambling to do right now is to finish getting my website launched. When I launch it I am then filing the trademark. Like that day. So you can see the website in use, right? I’m cutting all my stuff over because I don’t wanna file an intent to use because if I do that, then there’s more paperwork basically.

I remember my other comment. On the brand, like the trademarking all of this, you are [00:13:00] not Nike. And you will never be Nike. Okay. When we’re talking to founders and our brands and rebranding and all this stuff we do. I know. It’s like really it’s so important.

It’s like this baby to people, like all my brand, my logo, my icon, all this stuff. 

Lee Z.: Do

Sarah: I know you take it.

Lee Z.: what do all designers say Kill Kill your darlings

Sarah: Yeah, but as a founder, you’re like this is, the thing. I can’t change. No one cares. Okay? Unless your previous logo really sucks or unless you rebrand something that really sucks, there’s standards. Let’s keep that in mind. You’re never gonna be Nike.

You’re never going to be a brand that is so huge and so recognizable that you’re going to lose brand recognition when you choose to rebrand. None of us are that big. None of us will ever be that big. Okay? I’m just gonna be honest here. If, and honestly, ConvertKit did a great job. They were massive and they did a great job of rebranding it.

It’s a great example actually of how to do that. If you are big and do have some recognition, but I think sometimes people hold this too tightly is, oh, I can’t, people won’t, people I have this name, I’ve been using this name for [00:14:00] 14 years. No one cares. No one’s gonna care that I’m not Cyclone Press anymore, okay?

Even though I’ve been using the name for 14 years, people do business with me, not with my brand name. So remember that when you’re stressed.

Lee Z.: I don’t know about Zach but I think else that knows you we say oh Sarah’s business 

Sarah: Exactly. Yeah. And that’s usually how most of this goes. If people really loved your existing name maybe that’s slightly different still at the end of the day. I’m just saying don’t be too worried about it. I.

Zach: I guess I to that point if Lee’s the the beginning and Sarah if you’re in the middle I guess I’m the end of a brand a rebranding process going through multiple iterations and trying to identify and find my vision cause I think originally I started out with this very socially conscious socially driven mission to support military folks through their transition And then I got to this place where I was more focused on data management personnel [00:15:00] analytics and some of that So I had to make a really strong shift from going from this Army feel good-ish type organization to moving into something more data centric

a lot of things came with that process And since I it took me so long to identify that I wanted to do a rebrand I think some of the signs that I saw over the years I would get so many calls emails and communication that would start man we really love what you’re doing for the animals and veterinarians and stuff like that And this is oh it’s not my name why is this so bad cause I made a cause the name is a was a Portman to

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: Veteran and intelligence So I thought at the time this is very uniquely me in a way that there’s no way this can be mixed up with anything But here I am four years later and hundreds of emails asking about what services I provide for dogs [00:16:00] and vets And so this was like I think that was a real motivator

Sarah: I think you just revealed why I keep getting cold emails for manufacturing.

I just deleted one yesterday. I’m like, where are you guys getting my information? It’s we know in the manufacturing industry, it’s just I’m not what?

Zach: I

That

Sarah: maybe it’s the word press. I don’t That’s interesting.

I’ve literally, it’s been driving me nuts.

Lee Z.: amazing

Zach: And I

Lee Z.: digital solutions everyone knows what they’re targeting me for I get that crap

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

Zach: I guess on that since you’re both going through this rebrand process and I’ve gone through it I wonder And this kind of I think speaks to something we spoke about a few times is pivoting what is a rebrand versus what is a new brand Where is the line in the sand or what is the distinction of when you’re starting something that’s a new brand or when it’s a rebrand.

Lee Z.: There’s the legal parameters for what you’re [00:17:00] building right There’s for me I have an umbrella company called Zuvanich Holdings and it’s because I specifically had an ambassador ask me to put my agency and my funded startup under one umbrella because he was effectively funding both sides of what I was doing and he wanted to invest in the holding company. So now I have a holding company and I wasn’t feeling particularly creative so I named it my last name Holdings because I’ve had a tendency in the past to get hung up on naming things Appsta I took three months to name and I could not come up with anything I liked I don’t like Abta I didn’t find anything I liked so I crowdsourced a I took a bunch of names to founders and business owners in groups that I was part of And Abta is what won I I’ve got that I’ve got Adva which I just made up on the spot when I needed to go file my LLC to cash a check and so those two live under the umbrella I don’t feel a particular affinity towards any of these names And now I’m pivoting my marketplace startup into [00:18:00] basically a stripped down version of the underlying that I built for business use cases And it’s AI driven it’s the sexy thing everybody wants right now and I already built it two years ago and I have had multiple clients and hospitals and whatever big clients come to me asking me to build this same thing for them So now that’s where I’m headed with my startup I feel like I need a new brand and so I am straddling two different territories right now One is the umbrella company exists I paid a lot of money to a very good legal team to put together the Umbrella company and the C Corp startup and the S corp agency And I’m not dissolving any of them I have safe notes still with umbrella company and the C Corp so now this new app that I’m building that I already have customers for is just going to be a new brand and I don’t have the [00:19:00] name yet kicking around a few names that I might share with you guys You can tell me how much you hate them in a little bit but I am changing my mind like every day right now And anyway it’s I’m just coming up with the brand and it’s the story It’s the story that I tell when I go to Google and Facebook and Instagram and wherever I need to be shopping this around to people and saying this little AI bot system that I built for businesses It’s called this cute name You can find [email protected] it’s memorable You’re gonna remember it’s an AI system You’re not gonna be confused about is this that marketplace thing that Lee was building last year named Appsta Whereas this his agency that we are hearing about and I think it’s also an A name it’s gonna be totally different so legally I’ve still got the same entities And then basically if somebody wants to write me a check accidentally to my brand the storytelling side the cute name.com I’ll just be doing DBA right DBA cute name Adva Abta and Steven Inch Holdings will still exist [00:20:00] So when I was trying to figure all this out trying to figure out how to structure things I was really kinda agonizing over it because I had an investor asking me to do the umbrella company I had other investors saying don’t do that That sounds crazy That’s confusing I have since had investors ask me multiple times they want to invest but what are they getting They don’t even know Because there’s confusion around the story I’m telling So I brought in an amazing \ brand person who’s been doing this stuff at a high level for 20 years And she basically just said it’s all about the story you tell Don’t agonize over the legal structure do whatever’s gonna keep the investors you want to make happy and what will make you happy and what’s the long term play for your VCs and that whole game do whatever the lawyers and you all agree on but then turn around and tell a very cohesive seamless story your brand else is just paperwork So I’ve really [00:21:00] taken that to heart and I’m about to shed it feels like a lot of dead weight with a lot of confusion around a bunch of brands And I’m going to roll everything together into one entity that’s going to be doing one focused thing And it’s this AI that businesses need to sell to other businesses So now I just need to name it

Sarah: I just looked really quick and I had over a hundred names on my name list when I was working through this.

Lee Z.: I only have 10 here on a couple of sticky notes and I just feel crazy just

Sarah: this was over like a couple months though. So I’ve been working on this for I, man, I should look at when I actually decided to do this. It definitely, it’s been months. It’s been a slow process. But yeah, I should actually go back and find out like, when did I first say I was gonna do this?

Or when did I first decide. And then how long did it take to start to finish? Just that might be useful for people. But yeah, it was over a hundred names. Some of ’em are variations do you add the word digital or do you add the word whatever to the back of it? So some of ’em are variations ’cause then you’d figure that out.

But

Lee Z.: Yeah[00:22:00] 

Sarah: was a list that I had where I’d rule out . Domain’s not available. Someone already bought the domain. This was too similar, right? So I had to go through all of that. So there’s a, big chunk of them that are unavailable. There’s chunks that are variations. So yeah, there’s a lot of that you have to, work through.

Zach: I think one of those big issues that maybe some people may have more than others is determining if you wanna invest or bring in someone Like you said Lee you brought in someone who been in the game 20 years or with design say you wanna do the rebrand you want to re-envision and recreate everything So if your startup or your business is your baby or your darling it’s hard I think to hand it off to someone and say Hey this is what I was originally thinking of It’s gonna be this super get everybody a job type company but now I need it to be a data company I need you to turn the Salvation Army into Databricks Can you do that And I [00:23:00] think you’re handing off the reigns to someone and giving them this almost insurmountable task cause I think even in my limited observation of that I handed it over to someone and what they built was just so inconceivably wrong and far from the vision I was like oh okay So it is I who in a sleepless days will configure and put this together. So it’s I think how do you balance Designer no designer or choosing a if you do choose a designer how do you choose the designer

Sarah: Okay. That’s something I can definitely speak to. ’cause I, first of all, I did this professionally for a long time and I just wanna clarify, was a brand designer used to be passionate about brand design. I don’t do it anymore. I paid someone to do my branding, which feels like a really weird thing to do

Zach: have

Sarah: and I want it.

Lee Z.: Yes

Sarah: Yeah. There you go.

Lee Z.: sense

Sarah: That totally makes Yeah, you’re too close to it. That’s part of it. But I also wanna emphasize that [00:24:00] I feel like there is this assumption among people that have not maybe worked with professional services. It’s like this kind of thing before.

It’s a collaboration. It should be a collaboration. It is not that you hand something off and you magically receive back exactly what you need. It is a collaboration. It is a back and forth, it is an editing process. It takes time, it takes good communication. The person that you choose at their level of experience really does matter.

So don’t go to a print shop and say, Hey, I need you to print me business cards and also, can you make me a logo? Okay. They’re not gonna do a good job. Don’t just go find a designer that’s good at layouts and be like, Hey, can you make me a logo? Logo design.

Brand design is a different. Specific thing. Look for someone, that specializes in that and look at their portfolio. I am shocked by the number of people who will hire any designer and they will not look at their portfolio. That will tell you a lot. And it may be that this particular designer has a very heavy hand, or that they’re illustration heavy and you want super clean and you might just [00:25:00] not be a good match, right?

Because you, it doesn’t mean that they can’t do other styles, but you need to find someone who has a style that you like.

Look at the portfolios.

Lee Z.: also personality wise

Sarah: Yes.

Lee Z.: paths you can take

Sarah: Yep.

Lee Z.: is and I experienced this as an app designer too it’s very similar

If

Sarah: Website.

Lee Z.: a micromanaging nitpicking difficult person and you know that about yourself I would say take go find someone if you are gonna insist on being that way in this process go find a more junior developer on Upwork or someone who’s just an order taker and clarify Hey I wanna give you very specific direction I want you to show me what you do with that direction And then I’m going to want a lot of changes How many changes will I get Be very upfront about your personality If you wanna have a good time with this person and you want it to go well cause if they hate that they will tell you to go cake rocks

That and they’re willing to charge you the money that that should cost then great that’s the person you should be with The other side of [00:26:00] that is what I would recommend which is to find someone who’s very experienced and who has a great portfolio and then get out of their way and

Tell them what you want To some degree maybe expect two to three changes right Sarah I don’t know if you could say does that sound right

Sarah: it depends on the project. Be upfront for sure. I think that would be a very frustrating process, what you just described.

Lee Z.: yeah

Sarah: If you know that about yourself and that’s what you wanna do, that’s what you wanna do.

There’s different types of brand packages. So what I used to do when this was one my focus, I would do concept sketching. Because you always wanna start with sketching. Typically, I would develop tons of concepts for things and narrow down the best.

Like it is a very involved process. There was a lot more to it, it was more expensive, right? We don’t do that anymore because we’re not a brand agency, but clients need logos. So I would say what we do now, we will say two to three revisions, and we have a very regimented process. If you get like four concepts, you pick a concept, we might refine another concept.

Then you get the color revisions and then you get this, right? So it’s two or three on that. [00:27:00] But that’s more regimented. So, think about how much time you wanna spend on this project because it doesn’t have to be i’m gonna spend six months and we’re gonna talk about all, ’cause there’s positioning too, right?

So a really in-depth brand designer. We’ll talk to you about your positioning. What’s your differentiators there’s so many layers to this, right? They’re not gonna just talk about a logo. ’cause a brand is not just a logo should sit of that at the top. So you could get really in depth there, but I think you can also.

Touch on those things enough to provide direction in a more cost effective way if you find the right person. There are people that I have seen that do this. I have referrals that I’ve made for people that will have a package that is all in one. They cover the stuff, they talk about what they need to, they deliver the things with, yeah, like two, three, whatever, revisions.

And it’s not gonna be crazy in depth, and it’s not gonna be crazy expensive, but it’s still gonna get you somewhere. But you still need to understand that as a collaboration and that you’re not gonna love the first thing you see that’s just never gonna happen. And you don’t walk away and you don’t go find another designer and you don’t throw it out.

[00:28:00] You talk about it. At some point when I get through all of this, I’m gonna write up a post on what this process looked like. Because I think it’ll be really fascinating for people to see, like with screenshots, because I had already done, I did the sketches, I’d been working on my own logo, and I just was so incredibly unmotivated to, I just didn’t wanna do it again.

I don’t do branding anymore. I, and it’s my own, I’m too close to it. I knew that. So I had my sketches and I had this direction, and then I had some digital rough drafts and I’m just like, man, I’m just not, so I paid someone and I gave her everything I had. I gave her a project brief.

Here’s what I’m looking for. Here’s my rough drafts, here’s where these are coming from, here’s what’s important to me, here’s what I’m trying to communicate. And she brought me back something and it was like 90% of the way. It was good, but it wasn’t right. Okay. And, this is again, me working with a professional brand designer.

And so I said, okay this, is gonna need some work. Here’s some suggestions. We talked through some of it. She sent me back the stuff. I am finishing up, I’m tweaking what she gave [00:29:00] me. And that’s a little bit different. But I would say there’s still like a back and forth process.

I really, at some point, I really wanna have a post that I guess I can come back and share. It’s not gonna be ready by the time we publish this, but at some point I would like to share that. ’cause I think it really matters to understand that it’s not an order taker,

Lee Z.: Exactly

Sarah: You’re not walking into a fast food restaurant and saying, give me a burger. Okay? You need to work with them and communicate. If you don’t like it, it’s okay to say that, but you need to be specific about why.

Lee Z.: Zach you did you say that you took your project back from your designer you didn’t like their results then you went and did it yourself

Zach: Yeah I think I went on like Upwork or Fiverr and I did the initial consultation or exploration something like that and I just ended up doing it myself

Lee Z.: I

A good job actually I was pretty impressed with what you had put together

Sarah: Proof of intelligence

Lee Z.: Yeah

Zach: Not the

Sarah: you,

Zach: part of it cause the web part of it obviously Sarah redid [00:30:00] I think it was last

Sarah: but yeah, but like the logo you sent over to me, you ended up refining that yourself because I, also think that’s good. So if you worked on that yourself.

Zach: was yeah The 

Lee Z.: colors and everything that

When

Sarah: yeah. No, I think you did a great job. If I didn’t realize that you had done some of that yourself. Yeah. That’s great.

Lee Z.: Yeah

Zach: said they helped me a cohesive vision but it just I knew that they weren’t gonna get all the way there so

Sarah: That’s typical of five and Upwork. I will say that again I’m speaking of this perspective of finding a professional that specializes in branding. You do still have to collaborate with them. If you are using Fiverr or Upwork, you need to expect it’s the same as ai, but you’re working with a human.

You’re never gonna, not never, but you’re unlikely to get all of the way there. I, don’t love AI for generating logos, but I do think it’s really helpful as kinda a brainstorming thing and as a way of providing some examples to someone of this is what I’m going for. That’s one of the things I tell people, if you wanna play around with AI and then send us over what you think is close, we can then take it the rest of the way there.

Lee Z.: And I wanna bring it [00:31:00] full circle back to what I said that may have helped kick this exact off which was lead with branding When you’re pivoting when you’re thinking of a new brand or got a new concept you wanna have a brand someone can go Google after they meet you and it’s oh man that really excited person that have that great idea What was it you’re branding yourself you’re marketing all the time when you first get started and you’re excited you wanna have That’d be easy to find online but I don’t spend money I don’t spend any money at all the

Time I have ever hired help was when I brought Sarah in to help me maybe a year or two after I had initially gotten the funding kicked the startup off and already built the application I’d already done all of that I’d already created my own brand And then I got more funding was getting ready to go to market and went to Sarah and said I think I I’m ready to actually like level this up and make it look more polished now I don’t wanna speak for [00:32:00] Sarah but I feel like I tortured her I think I know I did a little bit

Sarah: Just with the color palette,

Lee Z.: I was

Sarah: you gotta make decisions.

Lee Z.: colors I didn’t understand you’re supposed to only have a few colors for a brand it took me I don’t know months

Sarah: It took us a year, it was off and on because we would talk about it before we were like professionally working on it together, and I was just like, dude, down the colors.

Lee Z.: Yeah it was labor of love on Sarah’s part I would never wanna put her or anyone through that ever again And I know that about myself So what I tend to do is I go to ai and before I had ai it was just like me and my brain and whoever would listen to me and I’d be like about this name and I Google and spend hours then I get sick of it all and just pick something because what Sarah was saying before it doesn’t matter No one cares about the name They care about the energy that you’re bringing to it The problem you’re solving Did you solve their problem Do they like you Do they trust you nobody understand what the hell is a Google [00:33:00] a fucking sound

Sarah: Okay. Sorry, I have to correct you there. It’s actually one followed by a hundred zeros,

Lee Z.: You know what I mean Like it’s a

Sarah: but it’s a nonsense word. Yes. It sounds like a nonsense word. That’s the trend now for all of these companies. Just make up a word.

Lee Z.: Grab a word outta the air that’s your startups name io and you state enough times and now it’s a brand name I always tell myself that when I’m trying to figure this out So I go do the can it be a.com Dot com is very important to me I try to

Dot co cause it confuses people Depends on

Sarah: Yep.

Lee Z.: But I’m tend I tend to approach a pretty broad demographic with whatever I’m building So I’m going for a.com that you can easily say spell remember doesn’t rhyme with anything offensive Wouldn’t make it really easy for someone to make up a horrible rhyming ad that hates on us and then Is it trademarked Is it good SEL Like I said once I get to that point once I find a name I don’t absolutely hate that I can see myself [00:34:00] saying to my friends and family without cringing I’m done I’m good And then I go pick a color palette based on my gut What do I feel like is trending What’s popular If I’m not sure I go to dribble.com I Google like 20 20 whatever the year is color palette brand modern And I just I do what I like I do what because I do have a tiny bit of creativity and so I just lean into that And then for a logo I feel like this is really cheating but I’m so serious about getting this off the ground like within 24 hours if you can like for my startup pivot right now I’ve got over a million dollars soft circled And coming together rapidly and there’s a lot of energy behind it And I’m sending out pitch decks and spreadsheets and it’s got a brand name and a logo on it And I don’t even have this fully solidified yet they’re gonna be okay with me changing it if I come back and I say actually it looks like that one was we’re getting too close to someone’s trademark Which is what just happened I thought I had a brand name I [00:35:00] was getting a little close to someone else’s territory So I think I’m gonna pivot it I already have a logo for it because what I always do is I just pick the first letter of the brand name It’s usually an A that’s just cause I wanna be the top of every list Everything I do I try to be strategic about And if I can’t find an A name it’s fine But now it’s a thing I do So whatever letter it is I google that letter So if it starts with a DI Google d geometric letter logo and then I see like a million examples I go find one that I kinda like And nowadays I just find one I upload it to open AI or whatever and say I want something like this but maybe with this other influence or these other colors and gimme some examples and then it creates me a logo and I am done And I’m ready to go to market with my little MVP brand and I don’t consider it to be a solidified brand that I care about [00:36:00] until I’ve been making some money and people are now looking up that brand and Googling it And then maybe at that point I start thinking about putting some money into my marketing

But not until then

Sarah: That’s a good way to think about it is waiting and see where it goes first and have an experimental mindset around it.

Do logo cleanups quite a bit too, like logo refreshes. ’cause if we’re building a website for someone and I get a terrible logo, I’m like, I can’t see your website’s gonna, it’s gonna drag the whole thing down.

So even with what you did for Abta, I just cleaned that up because a lot of what I do is like invisible work in terms of, cleaning things up and just refining lines and you, won’t really be able to tell, but you can tell.

And so sometimes it’s that simple. I think yours is a really simple example. ’cause I didn’t change a ton on it, I just clean it up. But there’s other clients I’ve done that for where it’s I’ve changed the typeface. We kept the same icon and we just tweaked a few things and it just brings it up a notch.

So if you like the name and you like the brand you have and you’re just like, it just doesn’t feel very professional. Sometimes you can just refresh it and, you don’t have to [00:37:00] completely overhaul everything. That absolutely is a good solution for a lot of people. 

Zach: I think one of the other pieces cause we’re talking a lot about the digital components to a rebrand I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention some of the like social or in-person aspects So like when I was doing my rebrand I think the thing that was important to me was that I had a lot of my identity tied to being this Feel good get vets jobs kind of guy And a part of my rebrand had to shift cause my target customer changed too So a lot of who I was and a lot of the things that I spoke about had to adjust So I think I ended up moving from a lot of non-profit circles a lot of foundation philanthropic kind of areas to moving to more okay let me go to a lot of military briefings cause a lot of those are open to the public It’s just you have to be aware of where they’re happening Fort Bevo Fort Jackson [00:38:00] whatever it may be So I started going to a lot of those briefings some DARPA briefings some other organizations And I started carrying myself with the idea I’m interested in personnel analytics I’m not in military transition or anything like that So I think was also a very key part of my rebrand was making sure that I was delivering myself in the same circles that I wanted to actually be able to approach

Lee Z.: Yeah that’s a really good point I feel like I’m in a very different arena now with being like a agentic ai B2B in San Francisco right now and it’s everywhere it’s honestly it’s intimidating and overwhelming a little bit and it’s not something I would’ve chosen I am also more comfortable in the social feel good space but it’s what the market It me it wanted over and over again until it was basically hitting me in the face with

Zach: Yeah the market can be aggressive with that

Lee Z.: clients at the same [00:39:00] time asking for the exact same thing You better and you’ve already built it Like you better do something with this information so now I’m in a space where I’m not even always a hundred percent confident that I’m using the buzzwords the way that the investors are using them I know what I built I’ve already built it it’s good work but I’m in a different space It’s it people carry themselves differently like you were saying. They’re speaking a different language in some ways And I have to be ready to speak that language and I have to even be thinking about my brand positioning in terms of colors and fonts and how am I being compared to others in the market Thankfully I tend to lean a little cute and fun and I was thinking about that this morning and doing some brand research and lovable just got like what Billions in valuation multimillions in

Zach: A Drup billion Yeah

Lee Z.: Yeah And if you go to their website it

Sarah: A.

Lee Z.: very like abta two years ago It’s just like pastel and yay and fun And that’s exactly what you want to do in my opinion with technology you wanna make it [00:40:00] accessible It should be fun it should be creative People should feel excited to use it not intimidated not like this Excel vibe or whatever that was what we were doing 20 years ago and it wasn’t fun for anyone and we all just had to do it for work But now it’s about play and creativity So I’m gonna do what I always do and I’m just gonna be creative and have fun and inject my personality into it and hope it works out

Zach: Yeah I wonder in that kind of approach like I said Sarah you’re in the middle Lee you’re at the beginning How do you truly prepare there’s a level of research and information that you have to look into but I think It’s difficult to find the starting point of what is preparation Yes You’re gonna look and make sure that the name makes sense You’re gonna say it a bunch of times make sure that people actually get it You’re gonna make sure that you can get the web domain and all these sort of things But is there a mechanical or a more I don’t know like more [00:41:00] process Or is it mad scientists at the chalkboard 

Lee Z.: I

Sarah: mad song with chalkboard.

Lee Z.: I think it’s a mad scientist that needs to sleep Like you gotta sleep on your ideas write it down the ideas I’ve been kicking around I’ve been writing them down and keeping them by my desk and then I look at them every six hours or so and then I sleep on it and then I see it the next day and I’m like oh that’s a curse word If you move one letter

Sarah: Yeah,

Lee Z.: while we were talking just realized this looks I’m talking about someone’s butt with one of these names It’s it

Sarah: nix that one onto the next.

Lee Z.: buy the.com I might still buy it I might still do it

Zach: You have to prepare for slander

Lee Z.: You do And you have to prepare for people to have a kindergarten sense of humor about things sometimes

Sarah: And when you design logos, you have to prepare for everyone to find a phallic symbol in them.

Zach: Yes[00:42:00] 

Sarah: It’s a whole thing. It’s a whole thing. Yeah. So I, agree with the process. I’m curious if everybody is like this, if this is just like a founder brain thing. ’cause I think it is, but yeah, it’s definitely, it is not being able to sleep or being half asleep and waking up at 2:00 AM to write down a new name you just thought of, and then immediately Google the domain to see if it’s available and then go down a rabbit hole of what about this other version?

And then try to go back to sleep repeatedly on end for a very long time. And then eventually you get to it. It’s interesting about the name I ended up going with, it was a friend of mine that suggested it, friend for 20 years serial entrepreneur, happened to be in multiple circles and knew my nickname and knew my business.

And is also a client, like just again, just overlaps things. And he’s the one that suggested it. It is actually my nickname, which is funny ’cause I did not expect that at all. And I was like, nah, but what I did is I went to, I am in a Slack group that is my target client, my target demographic that I work with.

And I threw it out there. I threw it out with [00:43:00] everybody that, again, not, don’t ask your mom, don’t ask this random people ask people that are your target client, what they think of the name. And I presented a couple options that I was thinking about. I did this a bunch of times and this really, resonated with people.

And it also has a connotation that when they hear it, like no one knows that it was my nickname. That’s just a fun little, that’s where it came from. And I already had the domain ’cause I’ve had for 20 years, whatever. So I was really surprised by the response. And then it was like, oh, it’s ’cause they’re seeing.

They’re reading it as this in a way I didn’t expect. So I think it’s also important on top of all the research to go talk to people and see how they react. I don’t think I emphasize that enough. I’m glad that you brought that up. But that is what one thing I did is I had access to a group of people and then just people I work with and I’m like, what do you guys think?

Or long time clients multiple clients have been with me for a long time. I’m like, Hey, as I’m rebranding what do you think about this name? And made sure that it resonated before I invested all this time and energy into the actual work of it. [00:44:00] The other prep stuff, I would say and I’m actually at the end of this, I would say I’m not so much in the middle anymore.

I have my logo is 95% done. I have to do all the finessing cleanup that I mentioned, that takes me, frankly, longer to do the finessing than it does to actually do the initial design on a lot of these things. So I haven’t done that yet because I just need to find the time for it. I have a temp logo that I can use for the website, build out and everything.

’cause it’s not just about the brand, it’s also about the collateral. So how will the logo be used? And how will design elements be used to create a cohesive look? It, is, also about how you lay things out and how you use color and how you use graphic. Like all of it. There’s more to it than that.

And so when I get a close enough logo, so in this case my 95% of the way there temp version, I just start building stuff. A lot of times with clients I will do a business card because clients will typically, they’ll see a thing on a screen and it’s hard to imagine it. And so I’ll also do like a business card design.

They could picture it like, oh, okay, this I get this. [00:45:00] So I just start designing stuff before the logo’s a hundred percent complete. So I’ve been working on the website like crazy ’cause that’s the biggest thing I have to get done. I’m about to do a business card design, but I’m already thinking about how I’m gonna use that.

I have some other collateral print items that I

Lee Z.: I

Sarah: do not a lot.

Lee Z.: You have to

What one color two color black and

Sarah: yes. Not so much anymore. That used to be a bigger deal back in the day. Again I came from printing it four. Color printing is not that, it is very achievable these days, so I would not say that’s as important as it used to be. If you’re doing like envelopes, then yes.

Make sure it’s, I think,

Lee Z.: I always

Sarah: yeah. Yeah. I would say it’s more important to think about the fact that logo should always be able to be reduced, very small. I’m gonna add a note here to, there’s a link I will have of the five, principles of logo design that everyone should be aware of. But one of those is you should be able to shrink your logo down to very small sizes.

Like a pin, right? Let’s say you do a convention or a trade show and you wanna hand out like promotional pins or something, right? If you shrink your logo down, is it unreadable? I would say that’s more [00:46:00] important. And when you do think about that, you typically wanna reduce it to a single or a two color version as well.

So make sure it works on reverse black and white. Does it reduce small can you do a couple colors? But again, I think colors only matter for promotional stuff, primarily like T-shirts or apparel, embroidery, that kind of thing. But for print, most of the time, unless it’s like envelopes you’re fine.

You can do full color now. So that’s less of a big deal. But anyway. I’ve been working all that stuff. What I’ve been doing is every time I see a thing that has my brand name, I add it to my, massive, huge ginormous clickup list of items to rebrand, and every time I see something, I just add it to the list.

I don’t even wanna look at how long it is right now. A lot of it’s digital. Every account, every reference to the name, every link back to the website, every email, it’s massive. But it also includes oh, I need it. I’m gonna have to print business cards, right? That’s the main print item. I’m also have to print these other things that I send out.

I’m gonna have to do whatever. So just start making a [00:47:00] list every time you see a thing. And it’s gonna get me 90% of the way there. I’m sure I’ll miss some stuff like my project management system like the my client portal. I’m gonna have to rebrand all of that, my invoices, my proposals, every single onboarding email I send clients, I have to design a new template and I have to update all of them.

Lee Z.: I’m not gonna do any of that I’m just you have more assets than I do but I’m just

Sarah: I’ve been doing this for 14 years. I have a lot of stuff.

Lee Z.: I’ve had adva for nine I’ve had apps to for going on three so I’ve got like social media with a presence right under those names I don’t have anything printed really so I don’t have to worry about that But I’m just going to say Hey rebrand redirect go here now And then when people go to those locations they will be redirected to the new LinkedIn new Facebook New

Sarah: Yes. And you should do that. Absolutely. So in my case, one of the things that I’m gonna have to, it’s gonna take forever because we’re a web agency. When we build a website, we have a link in the footer [00:48:00] that needs to reflect the new business name and the new brand. The new URL. Yes. It will be redirected.

It would still go back. But I don’t want people seeing the old brand name, and I also want the domain authority to go to the new domain. Because I’m having to update that. So that is a really important point though. If you are updating a website, you need to make sure that every single page is redirected on your new website.

That’s something that a less experienced web designer will not always take care of. And that is really important if you are moving from an old domain to a new one. But yeah, I’m just saying I have a lot of stuff and I’m not sitting down and thinking of things. I am just adding to the list when I see a new thing.

So I would highly recommend doing that because it’s gonna be I have to update my wholesale vendor accounts with, actually, I mean I technically I have the same EIN so maybe not, but like that, kind of stuff, right? There’s like things you don’t think about. And some of those can wait, right?

I’m gonna slowly work through these, but I just make a list [00:49:00] ’cause it’s gonna be more than you think.

Zach: I think when I was looking for a process that’s probably the most effective way to do it But I think as I envisioned it it’s like when you get a new debit card it’s a chore It’s just

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: Especially I’ve had the same kind of setup like my cell phone It’s easier example I couldn’t imagine changing my phone for all the things that I need I’ve had the same phone number since I was 14 so

Sarah: Same.

Zach: just it sounds insane to go through the process of changing everything but I guess if you go through a very methodical process and outline everything that would but I am surprised and I guess it’s obvious but in your setup as you’re building out these different websites you’re changing the footer but I would imagine there’s you probably have a running Excel of the hundred or so web a hundred 200 whatever the number of websites

Sarah: It is just every client,

Zach: you’re just gonna that just that sounds just

Sarah: but it’s also login names too, right?

Zach: wild

Sarah: When we log in [00:50:00] and my team’s emails are at Cyclone Press on a client website, I have to update, all their emails need to be updated. And that is a branding exercise because it doesn’t matter. The domain will redirect if some, you email my team at their old address you have this my project manager’s got

Lee Z.: Yeah

Sarah: her log, her login on your backend or your website or whatever.

It’s going to redirect if you email the old address. But we don’t want people to see that name. We want them to see the new name. So every single one of those I have a checklist I don’t have to go through for every single client website just to update that. And again, it’s not a high priority, but it does need to be done at some point.

Zach: A professional

Sarah: higher. There’s a hierarchy.

Zach: aesthetic professionalism basically

Sarah: Yeah. It’s the consistency that really, matters. That really sets people apart when you’re paying attention to all these little things. Don’t use a Gmail account for your

Lee Z.: I

Sarah: business. Okay. Get a Google workspace. Use it with your domain. Yes. Yeah. 

Zach: You couldn’t be bothered for that then the people [00:51:00] start

Sarah: I can’t take you seriously.

Zach: What else

Sarah: I assume that your business and your personal bank accounts might also be mixed, and that’s just asking for disaster.

Lee Z.: Yeah

Zach: Yeah that’s

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: So how do you go about not only implementing the new brand but how do you launch the new brand Because I think there’s a lot of conceptualization that happens and execution is often the killer of ideas just being able to get things done. How do you have this big brand vision or this idea you’re gonna shift everything over. It has to be very intentional. When I shifted from military transition into personnel analytics I had to take a very intentional approach but Without giving myself some bad press think there’s a certain level of activity that maybe could [00:52:00] have helped to spur things a little bit more Or maybe just diving in cause there’s a certain commitment level that’s necessary for startups to be successful yada yada yada We’ve talked about these things but how do you go about implementation launching the new brand You have everything mapped out You can get the domain your card looks cool it feels good in your hands People are like wow is that embossed that’s really cool People were doing 

Sarah: It’s my favorite part.

Zach: American Psycho.

Lee Z.: your

Sarah: Everybody references that because I, that’s the only thing I print anywhere is business cards. Everybody talks about that and I’m like, I haven’t even seen, 

Zach: You have that

Sarah: I’ve seen the clip. I had to go look it up.

Lee Z.: I’ve

Zach: I,

Lee Z.: watched it

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: oh my gosh.

Sarah: Yeah. I had to see that clip. ’cause everybody referenced it so much and I do the same thing.

I’m like, your business, yeah, your business card should be as firm as your handshake is always what I say. So I’m like. I’m gonna do a different style of business card this time for mine. ’cause I love coming up with weird stuff like that. So

Zach: You’re, going through that whole process and you want to create, so how do [00:53:00] you go about actually implementing, what is that activity? You have a list. How do you carry it out and ensure that your launch is successful? ’cause you can put it out there and nobody can care. You could do I guess it’s not really branding.

I was good.

Lee Z.: do you ensure success Sarah

Zach: Yes.

Sarah: I guarantee success. Yeah.

Zach: do what

To bash,

Lee Z.: all been waiting to

Sarah: three

Easy three step process. But wait, there’s more.

Zach: How do you not, 

Lee Z.: actually I can speak to that because it’s the same thing I always say it’s all about energy and Zach I have no idea what was going on with you and your energy when you made your brand pivot But knowing you personally it did feel like the energy shifted

Zach: Yeah.

Lee Z.: I don’t know if it shifted in a bad way or a good way or just a different way but You lit up when you talked about intelligence when I first met you

It was like I’m gonna help these people transition into their career after [00:54:00] the military I like I understand this need I’ve gone through this and you had a story and I believe I said something like that sounds like a nonprofit And you realize that actually you do need to go make money and the money’s in the data And it was a very solid pivot a very solid business decision But I am not sure if your energy followed the decision 

Zach: It probably didn’t. I think. I think realistically I felt like, shoot, man, when’s this coming out? I felt like I had to do I had to do certain things. push this one out a couple weeks, a couple months.

Lee Z.: That that is when you’re a founder that’s taken funding You have obligations to people outside yourself and your family right And I get that I feel that too I think my energy would be lower if it weren’t for the fact that I literally already have paying customers like [00:55:00] my house being like I want this thing I’ve given you money already built it If it weren’t for that I wouldn’t be as excited about something that isn’t community centric because I’m just a community kind of person so for me with this pivot it has to be all about the people I’m serving the story I’m telling branding is storytelling right if you’re good at branding you’re a good storyteller and you bring people on a journey with you and you’re the guide and they are the hero and all this other stuff that you can read about in books I really believe that any success I’ve ever had in business or especially marketing and branding comes from This huge burst of energy that I get at the beginning of a new thing cause I am a quintessential a DHD founder that just has enough energy to power half the country when I first get started on something and I just I can’t stop talking about it I don’t wanna sleep and I can still keep going I’m nine years in on adva and I still love what I do for the startup [00:56:00] community and I’m still building apps and having a blast with the things that I get to do every day But new idea There’s no other drug like it That’s why I say this is like a mental illness and so in that when you’re writing that wave that in my opinion is when get your collateral right your nice business cards your logo your name your color brand whatever And you weave that into whatever the heck you’re doing So if it’s a nice business card you take you don’t just hand out the business card you take a picture of yourself holding it up smiling like you’re fricking high because you are cause it’s so exciting It’s exciting stuff And if you can’t nerd out about your own idea then no one’s gonna get excited alongside You you have to kinda lead the charge there So you take pictures with the T-shirts you just got and unboxing them and putting one on your 2-year-old and it’s too big and it’s really cute And someday they’re gonna wear it when it’s all tattered and you’re a success and you’ve made [00:57:00] millions And like you share the vision and the story wherever you’re comfortable sharing it For me I like to write on LinkedIn because it’s low pressure it works for me people are really good at short form videos I don’t know how to do that So if you can do that can rule the world apparently but I think it’s all about energy and tapping into why are you doing this anyway just get the story told and weave those subliminal messages into it oh and the logo and the name and here’s what it is and here’s why I named it this and I feel really good about it and you should too how I get the brand out That’s what I plan on doing with this pivot is just being like guys I’m so excited to share this huge pivot Here’s why I’m doing it And just talk about it a lot incessantly

Sarah: is so funny that I feel like it’s the quintessential dynamic between you and I that you’re like, it’s the energy and I’m about to say it’s the preparation.

Lee Z.: lists

Sarah: If that is a theme. Anything [00:58:00] we add to anything that we’ve ever recorded, it’s always like Lee’s like energy and I’m like preparation.

Lee Z.: I’m in Clickup man I put my kids on Clickup We are on Clickup every

Sarah: I honestly find clickup overwhelming. I had so much stuff in there. It’s wild. Like it’s, it is a lot to deal with, but yeah, it’s, I wasn’t even gonna say Clickup. It is clickup. I use Clickup to manage it. But I was gonna say , yeah, all of that is true, but it’s like when you go to paint a room, the most important part is not the painting, it’s the taping off

Lee Z.: Ugh

Sarah: the trim.

It’s the prep, it’s the sanding, the drywall. It is the stuff that no one wants to do. That makes a difference between a well painted room and a badly painted room. And it takes longer to do the prep than it does to actually paint the room. So all the energy should be harnessed and directed. And so when I say make a, list of all the things that need done, one of the things on the list is how are people gonna know about the rebrand email?

So I need to have an email newsletter template, and I need to write an email that explains. Why the rebrand and what [00:59:00] the new direction is and who we’re looking for as clients. Because part of the reason I’m rebranding is to be more direct and specific and talking to consultants, coaches, solopreneurs the, type of people I really wanna work with.

We still do the guy in the truck. Anyone’s selling services online, but we’re more directed now. So this is gonna reflect that and I need to communicate that. So I need to have an email written. That means I need to have the template. That also means I need to have a updated current email list.

So I have to make sure that I have that ahead of time, right? I have to set a date, I have to have that work done by that date. There’s now a deadline for this. I have to have the website launch, which means I need to have a list of every single redirect that needs to be put into place when I launch the new website so that nothing is broken.

So that list needs to be done ahead of time. I need a plan for the downtime that’s gonna happen. When am I gonna launch the website? There are so many things, and if you don’t think through that before, you’re like, I’m just gonna tell everybody we’re a new brand on August 1st. Without that work, it’s not gonna go very smoothly, right?

When is my email gonna get updated? Are [01:00:00] people gonna continue emailing me at Cycle and Press? Or can I say in that email, here’s my new contact information. Are we gonna use the same business number? Is this a good time to get a new business number? All that.

Lee Z.: wanna disagree with you just for the benefit of the people listening even though I do agree with you I think that

Sarah: All about balance.

Lee Z.: process is probably the better process but if you are already on the energy train you can follow me with this and you guys know Izzy Redwood right Everyone knows Ezzy

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee Z.: City He’s just a business powerhouse amazing guy he had taught me a lot I got to meet with him a lot when I was more naive about everything and he would just give me advice on whatever I was trying to do One of the things he said to me that always stuck with me was that we were talking about specifically events How do you get people to come to an event He said it’s hand to hand combat You have to each person individually He would message hundreds probably thousands of people individually This was before you could write a script or use an app to do [01:01:00] this This was like 15 years ago he would text every single person He would email them he would LinkedIn message them hi Chin He would do it too They’d team up they’d do stuff together and hundreds of people would show up and it was like a turnout that you wouldn’t see at anything else that anyone was doing in town And it was really because he made you feel seen And listened to and he did listen to people and he went on to go lobbying government and tell entrepreneur stories because he was always listening and advocating on other people’s behalf and we knew that and we had his back too I really took that to heart I’ve baked that energy into everything that I do I don’t like getting spam emails I don’t like getting impersonal emails I’m signed up for Sarah’s newsletter I love reading it but I don’t always read it like I wanna talk to Sarah and so for me I would not do a form email I would text every single person individually And I’m not kidding And it’s because I want to follow up with the client that has been with me for nine years that [01:02:00] had me build a system that has carried their whole business forward I want to text him and call him and email him personally I’d be like I’m so excited to share with you what I’m doing I don’t know if you’ll use it I don’t know if you care but I know you care about me and I just wanna say hi And yeah I might copy and paste part of that message or something but I’m going to reach out to individuals because am working inside of an ecosystem that has built me now I’m trying to give back to that ecosystem That’s why we’re doing this right now That’s why we’re talking about this I think we’re all busy and nobody wants to open an email that just is this random email that they sent to a thousand people through MailChimp You might open it cause you wanna hear what they’re doing but it’s not as exciting as oh a text from my friend who we talk startup stuff over drinks and haven’t seen them since Pipeline It’s a different vibe And that kind of energy that you put into those relationships carries forward And it feels a little more exclusive too It doesn’t feel like [01:03:00] everybody knows this everyone got this email It’s more have you heard what Lee’s been doing He texted me about it last night at 2:00 AM and That kind of circulates And I’ve seen that happen in the ecosystem that we’re a part of the startup world Like people are more excited to talk about stuff that they think is just exclusive information right So I am not totally crazy and just flying by the seat of my pants all the time It is somewhat strategic I think a lot about in my gut would make me wanna open this message What would make me wanna tell someone about it it you just saying on LinkedIn Hey here’s the new website or is it like take me out for coffee and tell me the story Why did you do this And then I wanna know the story before it comes out and Startland News And then when Startland News releases it I wanna share it cause I already knew the story Now I have I can share my little anecdote about it I might not be able to scale this I am meeting with people right now I have mentors in my [01:04:00] life who are helping me figure out how to scale Like how do you go from making a half a million dollars a year to 10 million I don’t know cause I’m very community oriented But if you are only trying to make half a million dollars a year or a million dollars a year I think this is a good place to start And that’s my soapbox And I think Sarah’s probably right and I’m wrong but

Sarah: It is both though.

Lee Z.: Yeah

Sarah: You don’t have to do one or the other. And first of all, the email should not be a stodgy. We changed our name. Look at a new website. Like it’s, that’s not what it is, right? It should tell the story. It should be fun. It could have more again, this is like a, sell for writing good marketing copy.

Put some thought into this, have somebody help you with it, but there’s different people that you’re reaching. So I have a client right now that has rebranded and we’ve already cut over his email and his new site is technically live. He’s got some updates to make and stuff, but he hasn’t even sent out an official announcement yet.

So if you see his truck, it’s wrapped with the new name. If you go to his office, everything’s the new name. You just have noticed it, but there’s not been a big [01:05:00] announcement because he needs to get me this email list, or I think he already has and he just needs to send it over so that we can announce it.

Because the thing is, you are gonna have people on that list that forgot you even exist. So the close people, a hundred percent, you connect with those and if I can ever get around to producing some merch, I will be sending some people merch that gave me feedback on things and be like, Hey, like thanks for helping with this.

Here’s a hat or something. So that will still happen. There’s already people that know the name, even though I haven’t publicly announced it they’ve got the inside scoop. I’ve asked them for feedback. They feel special. I have done that too. But when you send out like an, official announcement or you do a press release, or you do get an article in Startland or something like that, you’re going to hit people that are like, oh.

I forgot you existed. Or I just talked to a friend that needs a thing, right? You’re just reminding people that you exist. And so I think you need both of those things because part of the branding processes is people need to see the brand seven times before they reach out. That whole thing.

So do both. Definitely do both. But I think the key is to understand that there’s a lot of chunks that you’re gonna miss [01:06:00] if you don’t think strategically before you’re just like, Hey everybody, guess what? Whoops, I forgot to actually redirect that link from clutch. I gotta go update all these dang account profiles or whatever.

Lee Z.: someone like you because I that’s the help I need as this

Sarah: Do that. Yeah.

Lee Z.: operational scalable part is really

Sarah: So delegate. Find someone that does this and then delegate that to the, there’s the advice.

Lee Z.: Yes

Sarah: Awesome.

Zach: I think that’s probably as good as any wrap up. Definitely want to thank everyone for tuning in, continuing to listen as we were trucking into season two. We’re getting back into things.

Lee Z.: Year two trucking into year two

Zach: yeah, year two. Wow. Holy moly. I feel like I’ve aged myself in the podcast 

Lee Z.: Yeah

Zach: getting into things after a little summer hiatus, but we’re definitely gonna keep pushing out good episodes.

If there’s any particular content you want to see, message us. We have an open inbox.

Sarah: [01:07:00] [email protected].

Zach: Follow us on socials. Follow Lee and Sarah, if you wanna see how their rebranding journey goes.

If you need help with your website definitely talk to Sarah. Talk to Sarah about that. If you are crazy and like to work on multiple projects, juggling multiple things and want to see how it turns out talk to Lee about that. 

Lee Z.: Don’t

Zach: And if you 

Lee Z.: that’s fine

Ai

Zach: if you think, yeah if you

Sarah: There you go.

Zach: to someone, talk to Lee. So that’s probably a good,

Lee Z.: fair

Zach: footer there. And as always, remember everyone has problems.

Sarah: Especially founders.

Lee Z.: Okay Don’t stop recording I need your advice I need you guys advice And you might we might wanna include this but we might

Sarah: Okay.

Lee Z.: but I wanted

Sarah: Okay.

Lee Z.: give me five more minutes Do I have five more minutes Is that okay it’s late [01:08:00] It’s

Sarah: I think so. Let me see if my developers responded.

Lee Z.: All right I’ll go fast serious very seriously This is part of my process I was gonna do this with you guys before we even recorded I wanna run some names by you The names for the because I’m still stuck Is that okay

Zach: Let’s do it.

Lee Z.: I want honest feedback

Zach: Objective feedback.

Lee Z.: yes Not like Chad GBT Chad GBT is just blowing smoke every day all day It’s oh

Zach: It’s so nice, right?

Lee Z.: It’s always saying things like oh that’s the one that’s the game changer

Sarah: Every answer

Zach: that.

Sarah: or every

Lee Z.: that’s a terrible name that’s weak You’re weak okay so I started with Data Hub So just to remind you guys this is a ent AI system is kinda like Stripe It’s middleware So if you are a startup that needs a AG agentic ai Thing like in cause you wanna offer the people [01:09:00] buying what you’re selling ag agentic AI and something you would come to my platform and you would be able to plug and play an LLM agnostic ag agentic AI system Just the way that you can plug in auth zero for authentication or stripe for payments I’m building something you can plug in for use for your clients So instance Mercy is going to be building this in to ingest data that has to do with community benefit reporting and it touches 90 departments and they have to share a lot of data throughout the year And then it’s a big push at the end of the year and it takes an average of a month for worth of work per director apparently so this like AI agent base is going to ingest data from all the different data platforms they use understand it Be aware of what it needs to report on produce custom reports and then also push data back out to the systems it needs to report to if it needs to [01:10:00] my system is going to do the bulk of that The only part that they are going to have is this little customization on top like colors brand whatever and then they’re going to resell it to other hospitals And then similarly this marketplace or this what is it Manufacturing company is doing the same thing and they’re reselling the platform they’re building to other manufacturing companies So it’s very B2B to B I started by calling it data hub because it was inside of Abta I was just like this is the brain this is the data place If you look up Data Hub on trademark the U-S-P-T-O it’s just a wall of trademarks for the word data hub I wasn’t ever gonna use it but it’s comical how many people have used it I pivoted to Soma Base I talked about in the founder Problem Squad chat and I explained why and then I learned that somebody just literally trademarked it for AI use in healthcare two [01:11:00] weeks ago So not Soma based but Soma ai which is too close in my opinion So then between yesterday and today I came up with ais several people have trademarked and then all those businesses have failed so I was gonna steal it 

Zach: How do you spell that?

Lee Z.: A-G-E-N-T-I-S and the meaning’s beautiful It’s strong system that does things in other systems or whatever It’s it’s a great meaning I can’t remember why I scrapped it I think there’s another AIS AI system out there It’s not really a competitor to me but I could not get ais.com I couldn’t get my ais Get ais ais Ai like none of the good ones are available I have a few others that are bad that I even bother with cause Oh I was thinking doppel like doppelganger [01:12:00] google came out with Doppel AI two weeks ago and

Sarah: Oof.

Lee Z.: an AI system for trying on clothes or something so then I was like okay what is the what I need to think of bad ideas What is the worst idea I can think of And I just started to think of stupid ideas cause that was like helping just help clear crap outta my brain and I thought of Good bot because in Reddit if you see a bot people say good bot to it If it does a good

Sarah: Oh yeah,

Lee Z.: And my good bot.com is available and good bot with two ts.com is available

Zach: Two Ts.

Lee Z.: know I know So I was like that’s it that’s that works It was this was like one in the morning I was like that works That’s good enough Good but.com

Sarah: that’s the one you were referencing on the thing. Okay.

Lee Z.: good but.com

Zach: Yeah, you’re gonna

Sarah: It’s AI porn.

Zach: of.

Lee Z.: good or bad

Zach: You’re gonna have a[01:13:00] 

Traffic going over there.

Lee Z.: It is a bot It’s fun It’s cute you know what actually yeah My good bot.com is available and good bot Honestly I think it’s cute I think it’s usable it’s kinda like lovable That’s why I was looking at their brand 

Sarah: like Wally

Lee Z.: it’s a nice balance to the very heavy subject matter that’s very dry and it’s just very like AI agentic ai bullshit like everyone is talking about right now I feel like it breaks the narrative there a little bit It’s not ais Atlassian neocortex like it’s d

Sarah: Neocortex,

Lee Z.: So that’s I’m literally I’m stuck It’s either gonna be good bought or I have to start over again

Zach: I think you can.

Lee Z.: go back to St base and just take my chances

Zach: I think you can play with goodbye. There’s a lot of activity on that name. Maybe a [01:14:00] different word than good.

Lee Z.: There’s activity on it What do you mean

Zach: I mean with one T, but I feel like SEO is gonna be a chore.

Lee Z.: Google Good bot all one word Good Bot ai Oh shit Good Bot do AI is a GitHub I didn’t see that earlier This is what happened

Sarah: Yet,

Lee Z.: based too I didn’t see the

Sarah: it’s always something. Yeah.

Lee Z.: Yeah So like even so yeah there’s always gonna be something I don’t know how I didn’t see

Zach: Bunch of Canadians apparently do stuff with the two.

Lee Z.: Yeah I guess like the fact that it wasn’t specifically an AI healthcare SaaS platform was progress because I’m literally coming up with ideas that are ai SaaS healthcare trademarked like Soma Base that’s our soma Soma AI is healthcare SaaS ai and I thought of some [01:15:00] others last week that also kept pinging like already done healthcare ai So yeah I think Good Bot HQ or my Good bot talk com could still like with the word ai the only yeah Okay I remember now I did look this up and I was comforted by the fact that it was all just people who were trying to do like governance and ethics things which puts me in good company without Intruding on what I’m actually doing which is like a agentic data analysis and data management for business to business It’ll be a very different brand than all of these other people And it’s a short list So okay with a short list of people that come up I’m not okay with the millions of data hubs that are out there yeah I don’t know I guess I shouldn’t be asking you guys to give me ideas [01:16:00] I’m asking do I have to start over

Zach: no, I like, this is where my brain would go with it. And you could probably take this as walkway if you want to.

That’s a good bot. And then maybe you could. Could abbreviate it like TIGB or like you could, make it fun, but that’s a good bot. Woo.

Lee Z.: actually

Sarah: Interesting. That’s a good bot tag B, that’s a good bot.

Lee Z.: That’s

Zach: that’s what you could call your, the little person or the,

Sarah: Things called tag me. He’s Wally, but he’s tag me

Lee Z.: my

Zach: that’s a good

Sarah: like our founding.

Lee Z.: But tag me.com is taken only

Sarah: Of course, it is

Lee Z.: Yeah but that’s good bot.com Let’s try that That’s available one penny who would want that

Sarah: what[01:17:00] 

Lee Z.: Honestly

Zach: No contest.

Lee Z.: I’m gonna owe you royalties That’s a good bot AI is available too

Sarah: I told my my friend that gave me my nickname. I said, I guess I owe you dinner. Because I, because he didn’t even know I texted him. He actually knows the guy that recommended that I, make it my business name. And I was like, so he just suggested this. It looks like it’s gonna happen. I think I owe dinner for giving me that nickname.

It’s funny.

Lee Z.: Okay so a good bot and my good bot and that’s a good bot are all available and good bot with two t’s

Zach: Yeah, I think you could I think you could run with it.

Lee Z.: Yeah I love your idea Honestly I still like good bot with two T’s even more knowing that it is like good but or

Sarah: It’s so close. So you can’t, you’d have to buy good butts.com so no one can get it. Actually, it’s probably

Lee Z.: I

Sarah: already.

Zach: no way [01:18:00] that’s open. Yeah,

Lee Z.: Wait what $525 for good but.com Are you fucking kidding me right now I will buy this right now That is crazy

Sarah: good. But com or good but com.

Lee Z.: good but.com is

Sarah: That’s funny. Actually you could lean into that and it could be hilarious because then what you could do is you could make like the you know how the, have you seen the Duolingo Owl butt photos? You make, like your little, you, it’s just go to the website and it’s just the little bop like with this little butt showing and that’s it.

It’s just like a landing page.

Lee Z.: Yeah Yeah No I’m

Zach: Make it the back,

Lee Z.: Zach

Zach: make it the backside of your website. On the regular website you see all your normal page. But if you put in that good,

Sarah: Oh, that’s even better.

Zach: and it’s like you see the webpage and you see his butt.

Lee Z.: but

Sarah: Every, that’s amazing. I love it. I love it. It’s like an Easter egg that people would have to [01:19:00] look up and if they come up, if they like dirty minds and they come up with it, then they just get a little Easter egg. I love it. That’s awesome.

Lee Z.: Okay would you guys go for it If it was your brand would

Sarah: Good bot. You said the good bot.com is actually available good bot.com

Lee Z.: with

Sarah: and it’s not like thousands of dollars.

Lee Z.: it’s like dollar something $5 I don’t know It’s cheap Let me see

Sarah: Oh dang. What are you, where are you buying it? Through?

Lee Z.: I’m looking on GoDaddy but I’m not it’s one penny but I’m not buying it through them

Sarah: Don’t look on GoDaddy. GoDaddy looks for your searches.

Lee Z.: I just 

Sarah: will.

Lee Z.: the UI on godaddy.com I

Sarah: No, Use name, cheap name cheap.com. You should also register it through Name Cheap.

Lee Z.: been using them too Okay

Sarah: Yeah, don’t search through GoDaddy.

Lee Z.: What

Sarah: look at searches and domain names Disappear that were previously available and are suddenly more expensive after you search them on GoDaddy.

I have heard too many people say that. And GoDaddy is trash. They, are unethical. Do not search there. [01:20:00] So if you wanna buy that now. Name cheap.com. You already have an account ’cause I think I had you register or move something there.

Lee Z.: do, but I

Sarah: so you can’t use a new coupon, but [email protected] or whatever.

You can throw a coupon and you get it for nine bucks. It’ll renew for 1718.

Lee Z.: to DreamHost right now. Can I just buy it through them?

Sarah: No, keep it separate. You can, I don’t recommend it. I think it’s better to use a registrar. You can point it anywhere you want.

Lee Z.: Okay.

Sarah: I don’t know how Dreamhouse does with that kind of stuff. And name Sheep is really easy to share access for other people as well. Again, you should be running it through CloudFlare or something anyway for the DNS, but,

Lee Z.: true. Okay.

Sarah: Yeah, just don’t, search on GoDaddy. It, they, yeah, they there’re too many stories I heard from clients searching a name that was available and then the next day it was magically triple the price.

Lee Z.: That’s crazy.

It’s

Sarah: [01:21:00] yeah.

Lee Z.: for 500. Sorry. Good. But I’m still hung up on good. But $525 renews at 1698 a year, $16. So

Sarah: Yeah, that’s always how it is.

Lee Z.: and they’re just trying to make 500 bucks. That’s hilarious. Good. But AI, 90 bucks. I’m gonna just go crazy with this.

Zach: Buy them all.

Lee Z.: I

Okay. I’m gonna do the trademark.

Sarah: good bot.com.

Lee Z.: Good.

Sarah: good bot dot com’s register. It says it’s taken good bot just,

Lee Z.: two t’s

Sarah: Oh, 

Lee Z.: dot com. 

Sarah: I missed that part.

Lee Z.: Yeah. I really like it. I’m at.

Sarah: I don’t love the way it looks. I don’t know why, but that doesn’t really matter that much.

I know that’s, I had multiple, I bought, I have I’m sitting on [01:22:00] 3, 4, 5 other domains that I bought that I’m not gonna be using. So it happens. You just buy ’em for a yearly on Lux expire. Our founder therapy just expired. That we bought ’cause we couldn’t come up with a better name. And then we did, and then it’s let it go away.

Zach: I’m pretty famished. Leaf rose.

Sarah: Yeah. Good call. I, my developer’s over here asking questions, so I 

Zach: rose and dropped. I think that’s a good sign to go.

Sarah: okay. I guess technically I haven’t hit stop yet either. Okay. We wrapped, we’ll just cut all the rest of this out. I’m gonna hit stop recording. 

Zach: All right. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Founder Problems Podcast. My name is Zachary Oshinbanjo

I’m a recovering founder [01:23:00] and aspiring strategic project manager, and I am joined by my cohost Sarah and Lee.

Sarah: I’m Sarah Schumacher and I run a website agency that is only going to retain the current name for exactly one week. So I am in the middle of a rebrand and dealing with client work and just juggling all the things right now.

Lee Z: I am Lee

Zuvanich

I am not a recovering founder. I’m just a founder. I’m in the middle of. Of it.

I build apps and web apps, and I am pivoting all my businesses into a big old AI startup because I’m original.

Zach: Very,

very inspiring. Let’s,

we’ll definitely have to unpack a little bit of that, but I think as we,

level set and get things situated for this episode today, we’re gonna be really focused on branding, specifically rebranding,

all the activities, all of

the thoughts and [01:24:00] emotions that drive. decisions that go into getting things,

brought back to life.

if you had an idea and it just fell apart, are all the steps you did to change it up? Put some things into it that make it go again, footing gas back in the car,

diving into personal experiences, finding new visions, and,

charting a course.

So that’s gonna be the emphasis of what we’re talking about today.

without further ado, big question. When do you know it’s time for a rebrand?

Sarah: okay,

This is something I’ve been asked a couple times recently, and I think my answer has been,

it’s been 14 years and it’s time. So

I don’t necessarily think that you reach like, oh,

like you hit the 10 point mark and the 15 point.

then

it’s just a natural thing. I don’t think

that’s always the case, but I think it’s [01:25:00] common because when you start a business, you usually end up taking this meandering pathway and things change and you pivot and all of that.

So

for me, I started Cyclone Press. The word press was intended to refer like a printing press because we were a brand and print agency and because we did branding and clients asked add websites, we added the websites and then that’s became clear that’s what I should be doing a hundred percent of the time.

So we pivoted to websites only so the name no longer makes sense. And to be honest, the name has always sounded like a publishing company, which we are not. And there was also, or is also another company in the last, I forget when they emailed me. I got an email in the last couple years of someone being like, Hey, do you own the trademark for this?

And there is a literal publishing company that, that is using Cyclone Press now. And I assume that they went through the trademark process. ’cause I had not. ’cause I didn’t care.

so it was a combination of things. It was Lee saying, I can never remember your business name.

it was a fact. It sounds like a publishing [01:26:00] company.

It was the fact that I feel like I have not outgrown it. ’cause the, I spent so much time on that brand and as a brand designer,

I’m proud of it. It looks,

still looks good.

I could continue with it if I wanted, but it just felt like it was time to move on. A little bit of a gut thing, a little bit of a business direction thing.

There’s some external pressure from things like trademark or,

maybe there’s a competitor in your area that has a similar name. I know we have two similar agencies in town that have very similar names, and that to me is a little bit confusing. So it’s,

I think all those things come together to a point where you just have to acknowledge it’s time and you just

know.

Lee, what would you say though? ’cause

I’m in the middle of a rebrand. I’m at the end, I should say. I’m at the end of a rebrand and you are just now

falling into it. So I guess, what’s your perspective? I like why did you,[01:27:00] 

oh, no way. Oh, that’s close.

Zach: We lost him.

Sarah: I think we lost Lee. Dang it. I was just gonna say the connection issue’s been great so far, or connection has been great so far.

it’s frozen. See,

I should have pulled up our hold music. I picture a different one though. Not the one that you were talking about last time. Oh, and he’s gone.

Zach: All right. Fantastic.

Sarah: Yeah. You need like a,

we’re just gonna chop it out anyway. It would be a lot funnier if we just left it in. It’s like founder problems, bad connections in an Airbnb. And we’re just sitting here

again, this, that would be [01:28:00] funnier if this was YouTube or if this is YouTube. But again, I don’t think anybody’s watching this over there.

Zach: Yeah.

Sarah: Cat’s leaving my desk

Zach: this is,

Sarah: pressing. I’m really afraid to edit

our one that we did last week. It looked like it imported correctly.

cause it was like, do this recovery thing. And I was like, okay. And I like clicked the things or whatever, and it so lee’s in the thing, but I didn’t try to record it right then. ’cause like I had to jump into projects.

And so I haven’t even looked at it. And I’m like, man, I really hope I don’t go to edit the one that had issues and find out,

it didn’t even recover. ’cause

I’ve never seen that error before.

Zach: So what was it like?

Sarah: Dang.

Zach: Good grief,

Sarah: We’re totally fine. The whole beginning of this.

it’s like, why did it cut out now

Zach: because we [01:29:00] needed it to not do it.

Sarah: Murphy’s Law,

Zach: And I was ready to unpack. I was,

Sarah: I know.

Zach: my, branding piece, things like, ’cause I think we’re like, one of the next questions, why did you decide, when did you like some things that I noticed and observed along the way that would’ve been helpful and,

now that I don’t have to protect relationships, I can crap all over the name.

Sarah: Did you ever get an answer from those people on the money? The

Zach: They,

after 23 days, they decided that they wanted it back. they wanted me to calculate to the cent how much money I need to give to them and their partner. So that’s pretty,

Sarah: Good

Zach: pretty dumb.

Sarah: to know going forward.

Zach: Yeah.

like they took forever to answer and then they were just like, [01:30:00] are there,

any other investors?

no. Do you have any intellectual property? No.

read the agreement and tell us how much money you’re gonna send us back. I was like,

Sarah: They usually do that ’cause they think they’re gonna get more money if they do that.

Zach: yeah. And then the whole, do you have any intellectual property? I almost said, I was like, no.

there’s the proof of concept, whatever that was

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: I was like, no, this isn’t some,

what is it? A fire sale where you’re just gonna be emptying? Ouch. Stuff.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Like they think there’s more they can get their hands on stuff or something.

Zach: Original ip. Let’s sell it. Huh? It’s.

Sarah: yeah. God. That was a conversation I had with my ex-partner too. ’cause it was just like she sent her the dumbest agreement,

when I was leaving. To

say like she owned all the property and anything I would create in the future that had anything to do, it’s

you fricking idiot.

Like first of all, there is no intellectual property here. Like [01:31:00] I used existing outta the box tools in a novel way. Like it wasn’t, it’s not like I wrote an entire program from scratch or

there’s nothing to trademark.

there’s nothing here. Like it’s just like I could literally turn around and do this again for somebody else and there’s nothing you could do about it.

I didn’t say it, but it’s like that’s literally what it is.

anybody could go out and buy the stuff I did and built the thing I did. And frankly, what I built is not even that unique. The irony of like when I say I invented the product ’cause I did is that I basically recreated my own process in a new novel way for her business in a new novel.

that’s it.

but there’s lots of people that build stuff like that all the time. And like frankly, I don’t view it as being even that impressive because this is the world I live in. But it hurt was like mind blowing.

I need to own all the property and blah, blah, blah. Here’s the.

Zach: Is this

the toughest thing, the tough.

Sarah: Yeah, for sure. Okay. How’s the internet connection now?

Lee Z.: I was running too many programs and I didn’t see that it was frozen. ’cause I have something [01:32:00] I, my camera’s right here in the middle of my screen, so I just kept talking.

Sarah: Oh, so this whole time, Zach And we were like, do,

Lee Z.: I,

when the internet freezes, you’re supposed to keep talking because it’s actually saving it locally. But my computer froze, so I’m pretty sure you didn’t get anything I said

Sarah: oh

Lee Z.: and then I was like, wait a minute, this is not normal. And I

Sarah: yeah, I didn’t say I didn’t send save, I didn’t say anything about initially. ’cause sometimes you will

blip a little bit and then it seems like it records and I thought that was it, but then it was completely frozen and then I DMed you in here.

you know what, if this happens again, let’s d in signal.

Lee Z.: I did

Sarah: Oh, I just saw that. I checked it.

Lee Z.: Yeah that’s

Sarah: so you start Yeah,

sorry. Zach and I guys started talking about

his,

investor stuff for an update. So

Lee Z.: Wait

Sarah: feel it.

Lee Z.: what do

Sarah: So you, the last thing you said,

what was the last thing?

Lee Z.: me

you said something about me being at the start of a [01:33:00] rebrand and I

Sarah: yeah,

Lee Z.: about how

Sarah: you didn’t get very

Lee Z.: hear what

Sarah: into that.

Zach: said

Sarah: I would just start over.

Zach: names and you’re no

Sarah: Oh,

no.

I, you had said that somebody else registered Avid Digital

I was like, no way. And then you started saying something else. So

just pretend that you, that was the last thing that you said. And then start from there again. ’cause we got,

Lee Z.: can I just

Sarah: yeah,

Lee Z.: Okay I’m

Sarah: it was after that. I remember specifically that what you said about avid digital.

Like

that was good. It was after that. So just, yeah, just start from there.

Lee Z.: there Okay cool

Sarah: Cool.

Lee Z.: Yeah so I was actually thinking about that

you said oh God I’m gonna redo this part What was it that you said That reminded me of my

Sarah: The trademark. I said somebody else trademark. Oh. Oh,

no. I said if you have two agencies,

in a state plate, like the similar name. ’cause I was thinking of active logic

and,

lifted Logic

Lee Z.: Oh I always get those two confused[01:34:00] 

Sarah: exactly. And I was thinking of you because you thought I was talking about the one on the other, and I was like, that’s exactly why that’s a problem.

So that’s what I, that’s who I was referencing. I’m not gonna say their names.

Lee Z.: Yeah

Sarah: give them any, don’t give either of them any airtime, please.

Lee Z.: No they’re both

Sarah: Yeah, they’re both terrible anyway. Yes.

yeah. So I said something about the names.

it’s not good. The names are similar. And so then that’s when you said, yeah, active digital and then I don’t remember what you’re saying after that.

Lee Z.: Okay

Sarah: add the digital, sorry,

Lee Z.: yeah So yeah that reminded

Sarah: sounds.

Lee Z.: reminded me

Somebody actually registered the name adva digital.com people actually started asking me about it like getting it confused with my business which is crazy cause Avid like where do you even come up with a name like that I made it up from my

Sarah: Yeah,

Lee Z.: I don’t know if they did it on purpose or what but they trademarked it and

Sarah: they did. Ooh.

Lee Z.: was at a point where my business was really starting to blow up and I was getting leads through my website and

[01:35:00] strangers

and like social media I was like this could be a problem But I just decided to write it out and not worry too much about it because I have friends in the startup world who have spent

dozens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on trademark

disputes And it’s a good way to drain your resources Like it’s a good way for a competitor to drain your resources honestly So instead of giving it any of my energy I just ignored it And it turned out

I think they seem to be pretty defunct after about a year So

Sarah: Yeah,

that’s really common actually. So I think that’s good advice. If anybody is like freaking out, like you, first of all, they probably didn’t research first, that’s all. Say people come up with an idea and then they will go register the domain or whatever. And they don’t do any research about does someone trademark have a trademark?

Is there a similar name? Is there a similar name in the space that’s more important? Is there a similar domain name? Is there a bigger company that if you Google, you’ll always get the bigger company and you’ll never get the, your smaller business. So research that first, that’s important.

but I also, I did the same thing.

So whenever I heard about the, they’re like, oh yeah, we’re gonna trademark cycle and press. I’m like, [01:36:00] okay, whatever.

and I didn’t worry about, it’s been like a couple years at least, so it’s been in the back of my brain, which

additional weight towards the rebrand, but it not right away. And I wasn’t gonna rush into that.

I agree. I don’t, I think you need to be aware of trademarks and those potential issues, but I don’t think you should be

Lee Z.: Yeah

Sarah: super worried about,

there’s another example. There’s a client that I worked with once they,

the exact name that they had the.org, someone else

had it and then went defunct and I got access to it by guessing what their email was for, I think, I forget which account.

Lee Z.: Wow

Sarah: I think it was a Twitter account. They were trying to get all the social accounts for this business name for this nonprofit, and they, somebody had the Twitter, it was defunct. It been like, no, no one had ever used it. And I got access to it because they bought the domain name and I set up the email and I made sure it was the same as what would’ve likely have been the other email.

And that’s how I got access to it. So

Lee Z.: Wow

Sarah: businesses get started and stopped all the time.

yeah, sometimes it’s good. [01:37:00] Just

wait things out Yes,

Lee Z.: Yeah So I’m at the beginning of my big pivot so I wanna talk a little bit about that because maybe it’ll help someone who’s in the same place I’ve done this so many times something that I always think of whenever I am in this stage of branding I and I love branding personally It’s most exciting part for me I love starting things and I hate finishing things But

I had a friend in business school once tell me when I was in the middle of trying to brand I think it was my yoga studio or something I was trying to come up with the name for and she was in the middle of a branding exercise herself for business school And she said oh

you’re not supposed to

come up with the name right away You’re actually supposed to come up with the product and what problem are you solving and figure out your market and all this stuff And she was trying to advise me Meanwhile I’d already had a few successful businesses at this point And so I was like thank you but I have this really strong belief and I still have this belief and I feel like it carried me very well from [01:38:00] that moment too

but my belief is that you come up with the brand first the name specifically you come up with the name that you know is not trademark that you know has good SEO that has a good.com You buy the.com you get the social media setup You create a presence that looks just alive with a recognizable brand and a logo which I know sounds hard but there’s a lot of hacks that I can share to make it really quick

but once you have that presence then you’ve got the momentum of a brand behind every conversation you have whether it’s with your family members your friends

on social media Like for instance when I was Talking about Abta when I first started getting it going I was posting incessantly on social media cause I was at the beginning stage of an idea where you have tons of energy and you wanna talk about it And I made sure I had the brand put together and knew what I was doing before I went off into the world telling these stories about how passionate I am about

vendors being held accountable And that resulted [01:39:00] in my first investor coming to me and writing a check because he saw my writing and he saw that it was a real brand It wasn’t just something I was tossing around anyway me at the beginning my state my whole process at the first stage is to come up with a list of viable names see if there’s a.com that I can purchase If not then name’s gone

I can’t use it unless you can get

get name or

like little prefix you wanna add to it But it has to be a.com It has to be easy to say easy to spell easy to remember

SEO Viability So if you Google it is it

gonna be easy for people to find you or are you gonna have a ton of competition in that space where they can’t even figure out who you are in the midst of everyone else’s links then

lastly I always check the

US PTO website So just Google trademark U-S-P-T-O don’t pay anything to anyone just go to [01:40:00] the United States Patent and Trademark Office and search trademarks And then if you see a trademark you probably shouldn’t use that name just like Sarah and I were saying

we didn’t care that other people were trademarking our names because we both hold things that pretty loosely And both of us have service-based businesses that are based on our relationships So kind of comes ahead of needing like a global trademark

but conversely I would never ever a name that was already trademarked because I do have global aspirations Like

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee Z.: that if Abbot got big enough and I was gonna be this big Massive industry or agency which I didn’t have any plan to do But if it ever happened I would just rebrand

with like real intention at that point cause Adva was just

a backwards into my lap kind of business

so globally act locally

Sarah: I have,

I agree with that. I have a caveat and a comment. So [01:41:00] when, and I agree on creating the brand first and having that momentum behind you,

but I want to define. Like when you talk about branding, there’s a wide spectrum. So there is, you go on Fiverr and you pay some underpaid freelancer to throw together some crappy logos for you for however, five bucks where they charge, I don’t know.

And then you have an expensive brand agency.

ConvertKit famously rebranded to Kit and they spent like $230,000 on it.

So you have a wide range. And I, so when we’re talking about branding, I do not, and I also wanna clarify former brand designer. I started Cyclone Press as a brand agency. This was literally like what I was passionate about and what I did for years.

I don’t believe that a startup should go be spending thousands of dollars on a brand. So when Lee’s

I wanna spin up this brand, that’s not what he’s talking about.

we developed a startup package, so we like, that’s

a not always a big part of what we offer, but basically I don’t like turning people away.

So someone comes to me, I literally had to call this week this woman’s

Hey, I have this new concept. I’m trying to come up with a name. I’m gonna need some sort of [01:42:00] logo. Like I, I need like a landing page to show I exist. I’m like, that is what I built the startup package for. And we have

a quick logo that we do as part of that.

And I, or I have logo cleanup and you can give us your AI rough drafts and we’ll do something with it. That’s what I’m talking about. And that’s what Lee’s done as well.

there’s ways to really efficiently create a consistent brand that does not involve you spending your entire budget on, ’cause you don’t need that.

But you do need something that’s out there so that you can talk about it. I also agree with the process.

I would say that’s a similar process to what I do. A hundred percent agree with all of that.

my comment on that is for. The trademarking. Dammit. I forgot what I was gonna say. I’ll have to come back to that trademarking.

Dang it. You said something about trademark. I’m like, okay, this is really important to clarify. No, I don’t.

Lee Z.: Was that

Sarah: No, it wasn’t that don’t spent any money was the searching the trademark. Gosh.

Lee Z.: I didn’t say anything else

Sarah: Searching the U-S-P-T-O.

Zach: I guess while you’re

Sarah: Oh, it was important. Yeah. Go for it.[01:43:00] 

Zach: not as legal counsel or advice I’ll also put out there I can’t remember what the actual stipulation regulation whatever it’s called but I think it’s called it’s like fair use or

effective

use or whatever

if you have a brand and

you’ve been out here selling ho hos and cupcakes as

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Zach: for 10 years You have

dang There’s a very particular legal term for it but basically like where you have presence and you’ve done business under the name enough that it justifiably represents you and your undertakings where that’s often enough to refute Someone’s

like domain squatty like claims to what you got

had even a couple over the years

someone say Hey

undeniably probably spam most of them but one of em it’s because it is

Hey gonna trademark intelligence Pay up buddy And I was [01:44:00] like this is terrible Ransom I don’t care

Sarah: Yeah, that’s, no, that’s a really good point because,

that is, I think, what they were fishing for with that email I got about

Hey, like we’re gonna trademark cyclone press. And I think they wanted to see like how I would react, because I could

have probably disputed that because at that point I’d been using the name for a decade.

And so you’re right, there is, there’s a legal precedent where if you’ve been using the name for a certain amount of time, again, not a lawyer, I can’t speak to that specifically.

but there, there’s also, when you file a trademark, there is a intent to use and an in use trademark. So part of what I am scrambling to do right now is to finish getting my website launched ready.

So I, when I launch it,

I am then filing the trademark.

like that day. So it is, so you can see the website in use, right? So

it’s already being used. It’s in all of my, I’m cutting all my stuff over because I don’t wanna file an intent to use because if I do that, then I, there’s a, there’s more paperwork basically.

I remember my, sorry, I remember my other comment.[01:45:00] 

on the brand, like

the trademarking all of this, you are not Nike. And you will never be Nike. Okay. When we’re talking about like to founders and our brands and rebranding and all this stuff we do. I know. It’s like really,

it’s

so important.

It’s like this baby to people, like all my brand, my logo, my icon, all this stuff.

Lee Z.: do

Sarah: I know you take it.

Lee Z.: what do all designers say Kill Kill your darlings

Sarah: Yeah, yo, but

just

as a founder, you’re like,

this is the thing. I can’t change. No one cares. Okay? Unless your previous logo really sucks or unless you rebrand something that really sucks, like there,

there’s standards. Let’s keep that in mind. You’re never gonna be Nike.

You’re never going to be a brand that is so huge and so recognizable that you’re going to lose brand recognition when you choose to rebrand. None of us are that big. None of us will ever be that big. Okay? I’m just gonna be honest here.

if, and honestly, ConvertKit did a great job. They were massive and they did a great job of rebranding it.

It’s a great example actually of how to do that.

if you are big and do have some recognition, but I just, I [01:46:00] think sometimes people hold this too tightly is, oh, I can’t, people won’t, people,

I have this name, I’ve been using this name for 14 years. No one cares.

no one’s gonna care that I’m not Cyclone Press anymore, okay?

even though I’ve been using the name for 14 years, people do business with me, not with my brand name.

so remember that when you’re stressed.

Lee Z.: I don’t know about Zach but I think else that knows you we say oh

Sarah’s business

Sarah: Exactly. Yeah. And that’s usually how most of this goes.

like

if people really loved your existing name,

maybe that’s slightly different still at the end of the day. I’m just saying it’s not, don’t be too like worried about it. I.

Zach: I guess I to that point I if Lee’s the

the beginning and Sarah if you’re in the middle I guess I’m the end of

a brand a rebranding process going through multiple iterations and trying to identify and find my vision cause I think originally I started out with this very socially conscious socially driven kind of [01:47:00] mission to support military folks

through their transition And then I got to this place where I was more focused on data management personnel analytics and some of that So I had to make a really strong shift from going from this

Army feel good-ish type organization to moving into something more data centric And so I think A lot of things came with that process And since I it took me so long to identify that I wanted to do a rebrand I think some of the signs that I saw

over the years now obviously this is just choppy and not good AI outreach code outreach and SDRs BDRs and all those folks But I would get so many calls emails and communication that would start man we really love what you’re doing for the animals and veterinarians and stuff like that And this is

oh it’s not my name

why is this so bad

cause I made a[01:48:00] 

cause the name is a was a port mani Portman to

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: veteran and intelligence So I thought at the time I was like this is

Uniquely

at the time I thought it very uniquely me in a way that there’s no way this can be mixed up with anything But here I am four years later and hundreds of emails asking about what services I provide for dogs and vets And so this was like

I think that was a real motivator

Sarah: I think you just revealed why I keep getting cold emails for manufacturing.

I just deleted one yesterday. I’m like, where are you guys getting my information? It’s

we know in the manufacturing industry, it’s just

I’m not what?

Zach: I

that

Sarah: maybe it’s the word press. I don’t

that’s interesting.

I’ve literally, it’s been driving me nuts.

Lee Z.: amazing

Zach: And I

Lee Z.: digital solutions everyone knows what they’re targeting me for I get that crap

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

Zach: I [01:49:00] guess on that since you’re both going through this rebrand process and I’ve gone through it I wonder And this kind of I think speaks to something we spoke about a few times is pivoting what is a rebrand versus what is a new brand Where is the line in the sand or what is the distinction of when you’re starting something that’s a new brand or when it’s a rebrand Because I think I don’t know

I think it a mud a muddy

muddled area

as okay you’re

Lee Z.: there’s the legal

like parameters for what you’re building right There’s for me I have an umbrella company called Zuvanich Holdings and it’s because I specifically had an ambassador ask me to put my agency and my funded startup under one umbrella because he was effectively funding both sides of what I was doing and he wanted to invest in the holding company So now I have a holding company and I wasn’t feeling particularly creative so I named it my last name Holdings [01:50:00] because I’ve had a tendency in the past to get hung up on naming things

Appsta

I took three months to name and I could not come up with anything I liked I don’t like Abta I didn’t find anything I liked so I crowdsourced a I took a bunch of names to founders and business owners in groups that I was part of And Abta is what won I I’ve got that I’ve got Adva which I just

made up on the spot when I needed to go file my LLC to put cash a check and so those two live under the umbrella I don’t feel a particular affinity towards any of these names And now I’m pivoting my marketplace startup into basically a stripped down version of the underlying that I built for business use cases And it’s AI driven it’s the sexy thing everybody wants right now and I already built it two years ago and I have had multiple clients and hospitals

and whatever

big clients come to me asking me to build this same thing for them So now [01:51:00] that’s where I’m headed with my startup I feel like I need a new brand

and so I am straddling two different

territories right now One is the umbrella company exists I paid a lot of money to a very good legal team to put together the Umbrella company and the C Corp startup and the S corp agency And I’m not dissolving any of them I have safe notes still with umbrella company and the C Corp so now this new app that I’m building that I already have customers for is just going to be a new brand and I don’t have the name yet kicking around a few names that I might share with you guys You can tell me how much you hate them in a little bit but I am changing my mind like every day right now And anyway it’s I’m just coming up with the brand and it’s the story It’s the story that I tell when I go to Google and Facebook and Instagram and wherever I need to be shopping this [01:52:00] around to people and saying

this little AI bot system that I built for businesses It’s called this cute name You can find [email protected]

it’s memorable You’re gonna remember it’s an AI system You’re not gonna be confused about is this that marketplace thing that Lee was building last year named

Appsta

Whereas this his agency that we are hearing about and I think it’s also an A name it’s gonna be totally different so legally I’ve still got the same entities And then basically if somebody wants to write me a check accidentally to my brand

the storytelling side the cute name.com I’ll just be doing DBA right DBA cute name Adva Abta and Steven Inch Holdings will still exist So when I was trying to figure all this out trying to figure out how to structure things I was really kinda agonizing over it because I had an investor asking me to do the umbrella company I had other investors saying don’t do that That sounds crazy That’s confusing

I have since had investors ask me [01:53:00] multiple times say they want to invest but what are they getting They don’t even know Because there’s confusion around the story I’m telling So I brought in an amazing

like brand person who’s been doing this stuff

at a high level for 20 years And she basically just said it’s all about the story you tell Don’t agonize over the legal structure

do whatever’s gonna keep the investors you want to make

happy and what will make you happy and what’s the long term play for your VCs and that whole game

do whatever the lawyers

and you all agree on but then turn around and tell a very cohesive seamless story your brand else is just paperwork So I’ve really taken that to heart and I’m about to shed it feels like a lot of dead weight with a lot of confusion around a bunch of brands And I’m going to roll everything together into one entity that’s going to be doing one focused thing And it’s this AI that businesses need to sell to other [01:54:00] businesses So now I just need to name it

Sarah: I just looked really quick and I had over a hundred names on my name list when I was working through this.

Lee Z.: that’s

Sarah: ’cause I was like, I wonder how many, eh,

Lee Z.: I only have

10 here on a couple of sticky notes and I just feel crazy just

Sarah: this was over like a couple months though.

I, so I’ve been working on this for I, man, I should look at when I actually decided to do this.

it definitely, it’s been months.

it’s been like a slow process. But yeah, I should actually go back and find out like, when did I first say I was gonna do this?

Or when did I first decide? Decide. And then how long did it take to start to finish? Just that might be

useful for people. But yeah, it was over a hundred names. And then some of ’em are variations,

do you add the word digital or do you add the word whatever to the back of it? So some of ’em are variations ’cause then you’d figure that out.

But

Lee Z.: Yeah

Sarah: was a list that I had where I’d rule out like. Domain’s not available. Someone already bought the domain.

this was too similar, right? So I had to go through all of that. So there’s

a big chunk of them that are unavailable. There’s chunks that are variations. So [01:55:00] yeah, there’s a lot of that you have

to work through.

let’s see. I.

Zach: I think one of those big issues that maybe some people may have more than others is determining if you wanna invest or bring in someone Like you said Lee you brought in someone who been in the game 20 years or with design it’s a very challenging Idea as far as determining say you wanna do the rebrand you want to re-envision and recreate everything So if your startup or your business is your baby or your darling whatever the phrase may be it’s hard I think to hand it off to someone and say Hey this is what I was originally thinking of It’s gonna be this super get everybody a job type company but now I need it to be a data company I need you to turn the Salvation Army into Databricks Can you do that And I think you’re [01:56:00] handing off

the reigns to someone and giving them this almost insurmountable task cause I think even in my limited observation of that I handed it over to someone and what they built was just so inconceivably wrong and far from the vision I was like oh okay So it is I who in a sleepless days will configure and put this together rather So it’s I think how do you balance Designer no designer or choosing a if you do choose a designer how do you choose the designer

Sarah: That’s okay. That’s something I can definitely speak to. ’cause I, first of all, I did this professionally for a long time and I just wanna clarify, was a brand designer used to be passionate about brand design. I don’t do it anymore. I paid someone to do my branding, which feels like a really weird thing to do

Zach: have

Sarah: and I want it.

Lee Z.: Yes

Sarah: yeah. There you go.

Lee Z.: sense

Sarah: That totally makes Yeah, but it’s, and it

is you’re, you too close to it.

That’s part of it. But I also [01:57:00] wanna emphasize that

I feel like there is this assumption among people that have not maybe worked with professional services. It’s like this kind of thing before.

It’s a collaboration. It should be a collaboration. It is not that you hand something off and you magically receive back exactly what you need. It is a collaboration. It is a back and forth, it is an editing process. There is, it takes time, it takes good communication.

the person that you choose at their level of experience really does matter.

So don’t go to a print shop and say, Hey, I need you to print me business cards and also, can you make me a logo? Okay. They’re not gonna do a good job. That is not, don’t just go find a designer that’s good at layouts and be like, Hey, can you make me a logo? They’re not gonna do,

it’s not logo design.

Brand design is a different. Specific thing. So if you’re going to

look for someone that specializes in that and look at their portfolio. I am shocked by the number of people who will hire any designer and they will not look at their portfolio. That will tell you a lot.

and it may be that this particular designer has a [01:58:00] very heavy hand, or that they’re really like illustration heavy and you want super clean and you might just not be a good match, right?

Because you, it doesn’t mean that they can’t do other styles, but you need to find someone who has a style that you like.

look at the portfolios.

Lee Z.: also personality wise

Sarah: Yes.

Lee Z.: paths you can take

Sarah: Yep.

Lee Z.: is and I experienced this as an app designer too it’s very similar

if

Sarah: Website.

Lee Z.: a micromanaging nitpicking

difficult person and you know that about yourself I would say take go find someone

if you are gonna insist on being that way in this process go find a more junior developer on Upwork or someone who’s just an order taker and clarify Hey I wanna give you very specific direction I want you to show me what you do with that direction And then I’m going to want a lot of changes How many changes will I get Be very upfront about your personality If you wanna have a good time with this person and you want it to go well cause if they hate that they will tell you to go cake rocks

that and they’re [01:59:00] willing to charge you the money that that should cost then great

that’s the person you should be with The other side of that is what I would recommend

which is to find someone who’s very experienced and who has a great portfolio and then get out of their way and

give tell them what you want To some degree maybe expect two to three changes right

Sarah I don’t know if you could say does that sound right

Sarah: yeah,

it depends.

Lee Z.: Don’t expect

Sarah: It depends on the project. Yeah. So I will say

yeah, I think, no, I think be upfront for sure. I think

that would be a very frustrating process, what you just described.

Lee Z.: yeah

Sarah: if you know that about yourself and that’s what you wanna do, that’s what you wanna do.

There’s different types of brand packages.

I don’t, so what I used to do when I did this full time, or was one of my focus, I should say, I would do like concept sketching. I would start with all, because you always wanna start with sketching. Typically, I would develop tons of concepts for things and narrow down the best.

Like it is a very involved process. There was a lot more to it, it was more expensive, [02:00:00] right? We don’t do that anymore because we’re not a brand agency, but clients need logos. So I would say what we do now, we will say two to three revisions, and we have a very regimented process. If you get like four concepts, you pick a concept, we might refine another concept.

Then you get the color revisions and then you get this, right? So it’s

two or three on that. But that’s more regimented.

so think about how much time you wanna spend on this project because it doesn’t have to be amazing.

amazing.

I’m gonna spend six months and we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about all, ’cause there’s positioning too, right?

So like a really in-depth brand designer. We’ll talk to you about your positioning.

what’s your differentiators from your,

there’s so many layers to this, right? They’re not gonna just talk about a logo. ’cause a brand is not just a logo should sit of that at the top. So you could get really in depth there, but I think you can also.

Touch on those things enough to provide direction in a more cost effective way if you find the right person. So I, and I have, there are people that I have seen that do this. I have referrals that I’ve made for people that, that will have

a package that is

all in one. They cover the stuff, they [02:01:00] talk about what they need to, they deliver the things with, yeah, like two, three, whatever, revisions.

And it’s not gonna be crazy in depth, and it’s not gonna be crazy and expensive, but it’s still gonna get you somewhere. But you still need to understand that as a collaboration and that you’re not gonna love the first thing you see that’s just never gonna happen. And you don’t walk away and you don’t go find another designer and you don’t throw it out.

You talk about it. So I. At some point when I get through all of this, I’m gonna write up a post on what this process looked like.

because I think it’ll be really fascinating for people to see, like with screenshots, because I had already done, I did the sketches, I’d been working on my own logo, and I just was so incredibly unmotivated to, I just didn’t wanna do it again.

I don’t do branding anymore. I, and it’s my own, I’m too close to it. I knew that. So I had my sketches and I had

this direction, and then I had

some digital rough drafts and I’m just like, man, I’m just not, so I paid someone and I gave her everything I had. I gave her a complete, like a project brief.

Here’s what I’m looking for. Here’s my rough drafts, here’s [02:02:00] where these are coming from, here’s what’s important to me, here’s what I’m trying to communicate. And she brought me back something and I wasn’t, it was like 90% of the way.

it was good, but it wasn’t right. Okay.

and this is again, me working with a professional brand designer.

And so I said, okay,

this is gonna need some work.

here’s some suggestions. She tweaked some suggestions. We talked through some of it. She sent me back the stuff. I am finishing up, I’m tweaking what she gave me. And

it’s, that’s a little bit different. But I would say there’s still like

a back and forth process.

I really, at some point, I really wanna have a post that I guess I can come back and share. It’s not gonna be ready by the time we publish this, but at some point I would like to share that. ’cause

I think it really matters to understand that you, you don’t just, they’re not just gonna hand, it’s not an order taker,

Lee Z.: Exactly

Sarah: You’re not walking into a fast food restaurant and saying, give me a burger. Okay? I, you need to work with them and communicate. If you don’t like it, it’s okay to say that, but you need to be specific about why.

Lee Z.: Zach

you did you [02:03:00] say that you took your project back from your designer you didn’t like their results then you went and did it yourself

Zach: Yeah I think I went on like Upwork or Fiverr and I did

the initial consultation or exploration something like that and

it I just ended up doing it myself

Lee Z.: I

a good job actually I was pretty impressed with what you had put together

Sarah: Proof of intelligence

Lee Z.: Yeah

Zach: Not the

Sarah: you,

Zach: part of it

cause the web part of it obviously Sarah redid

I think it was last

Sarah: but

yeah, but

like the logo you sent over to me, you ended up refining that yourself because

I also think that’s good. So if you worked on that yourself.

Zach: was yeah

the

Lee Z.: colors and everything that

when

Sarah: yeah. No, I think you did a great job. If I didn’t realize that you had done some of that yourself. Yeah. That’s great.

Lee Z.: Yeah

Zach: said

they helped me a cohesive vision but it just I knew that they weren’t gonna get all the way there so

Sarah: Yeah,

Zach: I

Lee Z.: Yeah

Zach: was able

Sarah: that’s typical us, that’s typical of five and Upwork. I will say that again,

I’m speaking [02:04:00] of this perspective of finding a professional that specializes in branding. You do still have to collaborate with them. If you are using Fiverr or Upwork, you need to expect it’s the same as ai, but you’re working with a human.

You’re never gonna, not never, but you’re unlikely to get all of the way there.

I don’t love AI for

generating logos, but I do think it’s really helpful as like a kinda a brainstorming thing and as a way of providing some examples to someone of

this is

what I’m going for.

I,

that’s one of the things I tell people, if you wanna play around with AI and then send us over like what you think is close, we can then take it the rest of the way there.

So

still typically will

need that if you’re like, if the, if you’re going with the really underpaid designer route.

Lee Z.: and

I wanna bring it full circle back to what I said that may have helped kick this exact off which was

lead with branding When you’re pivoting when you’re thinking of a new brand or

got a new concept you wanna have a brand someone can go Google after they meet you [02:05:00] and it’s

oh man that really excited person that have that great idea What was it

you’re branding yourself you’re marketing all the time when you first get started and you’re excited

you wanna have That’d be easy to find online but I don’t spend money I don’t spend any money at all

the

time I have ever hired help was when I brought Sarah in to help me maybe a year or two after I had initially gotten the funding kicked the startup off and already built the application I’d already done all of that I’d already created my own brand And then

I got more funding was getting ready to go to market and went to Sarah and said I think I I’m ready to actually like level this up and make it look more polished now

I don’t wanna speak for Sarah but I feel like I tortured her I think

I know I did a little bit

Sarah: Just with the color palette,

Lee Z.: I was

Sarah: you gotta make decisions.

Lee Z.: colors I didn’t understand you’re supposed to only have a few [02:06:00] colors for a brand

it took me I don’t know months

Sarah: It took us a year, it was off and on because we would talk about it before we were like professionally working on it together, and I was just like, dude, down the colors.

Lee Z.: yeah it was

labor of love on Sarah’s part I don’t I would never wanna put her or anyone through that ever again And I know that about myself So what I tend to do is I go to

ai and before I had ai it was just like me and my brain and whoever would listen to me and I’d be like about this name and I Google and spend hours

then I get sick of it all and just pick something

because what

Sarah was saying before it doesn’t matter No one cares about the name They care about the energy

that you’re bringing to it The problem you’re solving Did you solve their problem Do they like you Do they trust you

nobody understand

what the hell is a Google

a fucking sound

Sarah: Okay. Sorry, I have to correct you there. It’s actually one followed by a hundred zeros,

Lee Z.: You know what I mean Like it’s a

Sarah: but it’s a nonsense word. Yes. [02:07:00] It sounds like a nonsense word. It’s

there’s, that’s the trend now for all of these companies. Just make up a word.

Lee Z.: Grab a word outta the air that’s your startups name io and you state enough times and now it’s a brand name

I always tell myself that when I’m trying to figure this out So I go do the is it a dot

can it be a.com Dot com is very important to me I try to

Dot co

cause it confuses people Depends on

Sarah: Yep.

Lee Z.: But I’m tend I tend to approach a pretty broad demographic with whatever I’m building So I’m going for a.com that you can easily say spell remember doesn’t rhyme with anything offensive Wouldn’t make it really easy for someone to

make up a horrible rhyming ad that hates on us

and then

trademark Is it trademarked Is it good SEL Like I said once I get to that point once I find a name I don’t absolutely hate that I can see myself saying to my friends and family without cringing I’m done

I’m good And then I go pick a color palette based on my gut What do I feel like is [02:08:00] trending What’s popular If I’m not sure I go to dribble.com I Google like 20 20 whatever the year is

color palette brand

modern And I just I do what I like I do

what because I do have a tiny bit of creativity and so I just lean into that And then for a logo I feel like this is really cheating but I’m so serious about getting this off the ground like within 24 hours if you can like for my startup pivot right now I’ve got over a million dollars soft circled And

coming together rapidly and there’s a lot of energy behind it And I’m sending out pitch decks and spreadsheets and it’s got a brand name and a logo on it And I don’t even have this fully solidified yet they’re gonna be okay with me changing it if I come back and I say actually it looks like that one was

we’re getting too close to someone’s trademark Which is what just happened I thought I had a brand name I was getting a little close to someone else’s territory So I think I’m gonna pivot it I already have a logo for it because what I always do is I just pick the first [02:09:00] letter of the name the brand name It’s usually an A that’s just cause I wanna be the

top of every list Everything I do I try to be strategic about And

if I can’t find an A name it’s fine But now it’s

a thing I do So whatever letter it is I google that letter So if it starts with a DI Google

d

geometric logo letter logo and then I see like a million examples I go find one that I kinda like And now nowadays I just find one that I kinda

upload it to open AI or whatever and say I want something

like this but maybe with this other influence or these other colors and

gimme some examples and then it creates me a logo and I am done And I’m ready to go to market with my little MVP brand and I don’t consider it to be a solidified brand that I care about until I’ve been making some money and people are now looking up that brand and Googling it And then maybe at [02:10:00] that point I start thinking about putting some money into my marketing

but not until then

Sarah: That’s, yeah, that’s,

a good way to think about it is. Is waiting and

see where it goes first and have an experimental mindset around it.

do logo cleanups quite a bit too, like logo refreshes. ’cause if we’re building a website for someone and I get a terrible logo, I’m like, I can’t see your website’s gonna, it’s gonna drag the whole thing down.

So even with

what you did for Abta, like we,

I just cleaned that up and

it looks different in a way that you can’t sense, because a lot of what I do is like invisible work in terms

of cleaning things up and just refining lines

and

you won’t really be able to tell, but you can tell.

And so I sometimes you, it’s that simple. I think yours is a really simple example. ’cause I didn’t change a ton on it, I just clean it up. But there’s other clients I’ve done that for where it’s

I’ve changed the typeface.

we kept the same icon and we just tweaked a few things and

it just brings it up a notch.

So you don’t always have to,

if you like the name and you like the brand you have and you’re just like, it just doesn’t feel [02:11:00] very professional. Sometimes you can just refresh it

and you don’t have to completely overhaul everything. That absolutely is a good solution for a lot of people.

Zach: I think one of

the other pieces cause we’re talking a lot about a lot of the digital components to a rebrand I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention some of the like social or in-person aspects So like when I was doing my rebrand I think the thing that was important to me was that I had a lot of my identity tied to being like this Feel good get vets jobs kind of guy And I a part of my rebrand had to shift cause also in that my target customer changed too So a lot of who I was and a lot of the things that I spoke about had to adjust So I think I ended up moving from a lot of non-profit circles a lot of foundation philanthropic kind of areas to moving to more okay let me go to a lot of military briefings cause a lot of those are open to the public It’s just you [02:12:00] have to be aware of where they’re happening Fort Bevo

Fort Jackson

whatever it may be So I started going to a lot of those briefings some DARPA briefings some other organizations And I started carrying myself with the idea I’m interested in personnel analytics I’m not in my military transition or anything like that So I think was also a very key part of

my rebrand was making sure that I was I I was delivering myself

in the same circles that I wanted to actually be able to approach

Lee Z.: Yeah that’s a really good point I feel like I’m in a very different arena now with

being like a agentic ai B2B in San Francisco right now and

it’s everywhere it’s honestly it’s intimidating and overwhelming a little bit and it’s not something I would’ve chosen I am also more comfortable in the social feel good space but it’s what the market It me it [02:13:00] wanted over and over again until it was like basically hitting me in the face with

Zach: Yeah the market can be aggressive with that

Lee Z.: clients at the same time asking for the exact same thing You better and you’ve already built it Like you better do something with this information

so now I’m in a space where I am I’m not even always a hundred percent confident that I’m using the buzzwords the way that the investors are using them

I know what I built I’ve already built it

it’s good work but I am I’m in a different space It’s it people carry themselves differently like you were saying like they’re speaking a different language in some ways And I have to be ready to speak that language and I have to even be thinking about my brand positioning in terms of like colors and fonts and how am I being compared to others in the market Thankfully

I tend to lean a little cute and like fun and

I was thinking about that this morning and doing some brand research and

lovable just got like what Billions in valuation multimillions in

Zach: A Drup billion Yeah

Lee Z.: Yeah And if you go [02:14:00] to their website it

Sarah: A.

Lee Z.: very like abta two years ago It’s just like pastel and like yay and fun And that’s exactly what you want to do in my opinion with technology

you wanna make it accessible It should be fun it should be creative People should feel excited to use it not intimidated not like this Excel vibe or whatever

that was what we were doing 20 years ago and it wasn’t fun for anyone and we all just had to do it for work But now it’s about like play and creativity So I’m gonna do what I always do and I’m just gonna be creative and have fun and inject my personality into it and hope it works out

Zach: Yeah I wonder

in that kind of approach like I said Sarah you’re in the middle Lee you’re at the beginning How do you truly prepare

there’s a level of research and information that you have to look into but I think it’s

it’s difficult to find the starting point of what is preparation [02:15:00] Yes You’re gonna look and make sure that the name makes sense You’re gonna say it a bunch of times make sure that people actually get it You’re gonna make sure that you can get the web

web domain and all these sort of things But is there a mechanical or a more I don’t know like more process Or is it

mad scientists at the chalkboard

Lee Z.: I

Sarah: mad song with chalkboard.

Lee Z.: I think it’s a mad scientist that needs to sleep Like you gotta sleep on your ideas write it down the ideas I’ve been kicking around I’ve been writing them down and keeping them by my desk and then I look at them every

six hours or so and then I sleep on it and then I see it the next day and I’m like oh that’s

a curse word If you move one letter

Sarah: Yeah,

Lee Z.: while we were talking just realized

this looks I’m talking about someone’s butt with one of these names It’s

it

Sarah: nix that one onto the [02:16:00] next.

Lee Z.: buy the.com I might still buy it I might still do it

Zach: You have to prepare for slander

Lee Z.: you do And you have to prepare for

people to have

a kindergarten sense of humor about things sometimes

Sarah: And when you design logos, you have to prepare for everyone to find a phallic symbol in them.

Zach: Yes

Sarah: It’s a whole thing. It’s a whole thing. Yeah. So

I agree with

the process. I’m curious if everybody

is like this, if this is just like a founder brain thing. ’cause I think it is, but yeah, it’s definitely, it is not being able to sleep or being half asleep and waking up at 2:00 AM to write down a new name you just thought of, and then immediately Google the domain to see if it’s available and then go down a rabbit hole of what about this other version?

And then try to go back to sleep,

repeatedly on end for a very long time.

and then eventually you get to it. What’s, it’s interesting too about my, the end of the name I ended up going with is it’s, it was a friend of mine that suggested it, that his friend for

20 years serial entrepreneur, happened to be in multiple circles and knew my nickname and knew [02:17:00] my business.

And is also a client, like just again, has

just overlaps things in a way. And he’s the one that suggested it.

it is actually

my nickname, which is funny ’cause I was, I did not expect that at all. And I was like, nah,

But what I did is I went to, I am in a Slack group that is my target client, my target demographic that

I work with.

And I threw it out there. I threw it out with everybody that, again, not, don’t ask your mom, don’t ask this random people that,

ask people that are your target client, what they think of the name. And I presented a couple options that I was thinking about. I did this a bunch of times and this

really resonated with people.

And it also has a connotation that when they hear it, like no one knows that it was

my nickname. That’s just

a fun little, that’s where it came from. And I already had the domain,

cause I’ve had,

for

20 years, whatever. And so I, I was really surprised by the response. And then it was like, oh, it’s ’cause

they’re seeing.

They’re reading it as this in a way I didn’t expect. So I think it’s also important on top of all the research to, to go talk to people and see how they [02:18:00] react.

I don’t think I emphasize that enough. I’m glad that you brought that up. But that is what one thing I did is

I had access to a group of people and then just,

people I work with and I’m like, what do you guys think?

Or long time clients,

I, multiple clients have been with me for a long time. I’m like, Hey, as I’m rebranding,

what do you think about this name? And made sure that it resonated before I invested all this time and energy into the actual work of it. The other prep stuff, I would say get, and I’m actually at the end of this, I would say I’m not so much in the middle anymore.

I have,

my logo is 95% done. I have to do all the finessing cleanup that I mentioned, that I, it takes me, frankly, longer to do the finessing than it does to actually do the initial design on a lot of these things. So I haven’t done that yet because I just need to find the time for it.

I have a temp logo that I can use for the website, build out and everything.

’cause it’s not just about the brand, it’s also about the collateral. So how will the logo be used? And how will like design elements be used to create a cohesive look?

it is [02:19:00] also about how you lay things out and how you use color and how you use graphic. Like all of it. There’s more to it than that.

And so when I get a close enough logo, so in this case my 95% of the way, there temp version, I just start building stuff.

a lot of times with clients I will do a business card because clients will typically, they’ll see a thing on a screen and it’s hard to imagine it. And so I’ll also do like a business card design.

Like here it is if you like, hand someone and

they could picture it like, oh, okay, this,

I get this. So I just start designing stuff before the logo’s a hundred percent complete. And I, so I’ve been working on the website like crazy ’cause that’s the biggest thing I have to get done.

I’m about to do a business card design, but I’m already thinking about how I’m gonna use that.

I have,

some other collateral print items that I

Lee Z.: I

Sarah: do not a lot.

Lee Z.: You have to

what one color two color black and

Sarah: yes.

not so much anymore. That used to be a bigger deal back in the day. Again,

I came from printing it four. Color printing is not that, it is very achievable these days, so I would not say that’s as important as it used to be. If you’re doing like envelopes, then yes.

Make sure it’s, I think,

Lee Z.: I always

Sarah: yeah. [02:20:00] Yeah,

it, I would say it’s more important to think about the fact that logo should always be able to be reduced, very small.

I’m gonna add a note here to, there’s

a link I will have of

the five principles of logo design that everyone should be aware of.

but one of those

is you should be able to shrink your logo down to very small sizes.

So that’s

more applic like a pin, right?

let’s say you do a convention or a trade show and you wanna hand out like promotional pins or something, right? If you shrink your logo down, is it unreadable?

that’s, I would say that’s

more important.

and when you do think about that, you typically wanna reduce it to a single or a two color version as well.

So make sure it works on reverse black and white. Does it reduce small,

can you do a couple colors? But again, I think colors only matter for promotional stuff, primarily like T-shirts or appar, like apparel, embroidery, that kind of thing. But for print, most of the time, unless it’s like envelopes

you’re fine.

You can do full color now. So that’s less of a big deal. But anyway. I’ve been working all that stuff. What I’ve been doing is,

every time I see a thing [02:21:00] that has my brand name, I add it to my, I have a massive, huge ginormous clickup list of items to rebrand, and every time I see something, I just add it to the list.

I don’t even wanna look at how long it is right now. A lot of it’s digital. Every account, every reference to the name, every link back to the website, every email, like it’s massive. But it also includes

oh, I need it. I’m gonna have to print business cards, right? That’s the main print item. I’m also have to print these other things that I send out.

I’m gonna have to do whatever. So just start making a list every time you see a thing. And it’s gonna get me 90% of the way there.

I’m sure I’ll miss some stuff like

my project management or,

system like the my client portal. I’m gonna have to rebrand all of that, my invoices, my proposals, every single onboarding email I send clients, I have to design a new template and I have to update all of them.

Lee Z.: I’m not gonna do any of that I’m just

you have more assets than I do but I’m just

Sarah: I’ve been doing this for 14 years. I have a lot of stuff.

Lee Z.: I’ve had adva for nine I’ve had apps to for going on three [02:22:00] so I’ve got like social media with a presence right under those names I don’t have anything printed really so I don’t have to worry about that But I’m just going to say

Hey rebrand redirect go here now And then when people go to those

locations they will be redirected to the new LinkedIn new Facebook New

Sarah: Yes. And

you should do that. Absolutely.

so in my case, one of the things that I’m gonna have to, it’s gonna take forever because we’re a web agency. When we build a website, we have a link in the footer that needs to reflect the new business name and the new brand.

the new URL. Yes. It will be redirected.

It would still go back. But I don’t want people seeing the old brand name, and I also want the domain authority to go to the new domain. Because I’m having to update that. So that is a really important point though. If you are updating a website, you need to make sure that every single page is redirected on your new website.

That’s something that a less experienced web designer will not always take care of. And that is really [02:23:00] important if you are moving from

a new domain to an old domain to a new one.

but yeah, I’m just saying I have a lot of stuff and I’m just making,

I’m not sitting down and thinking of things. I am just adding to the list when I see a new thing.

So I would highly recommend doing that because it’s gonna be,

I have to update like my wholesale vendor accounts with,

actually, I mean I technically I have the same EIN so maybe not, but like

that kind of stuff, right? There’s like things you don’t think about.

and I’ll, and some of those can wait, right?

I’m gonna slowly work through these, but I just make a list ’cause it’s gonna be more than you think.

Zach: I feel like this is that sounds and I think when I was looking for a process that’s probably the most effective way to do it But I think as I envisioned it it’s

like when you get a new debit card just a it’s a chore It’s just

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: Especially like I’ve had like

like similar or the same kind of setup like my cell phone It’s easier example Like I couldn’t imagine changing my phone [02:24:00] for all the things that I need I’ve had the same phone number since I was 14 so

Sarah: Same.

Zach: just it sounds insane to go through the process of changing everything but I guess if you go through a very methodical process and outline everything that would but I am surprised and I guess it’s obvious sense but in your setup as you’re building out these different web pla

websites you’re footer you’re changing the footer but I would imagine there’s you probably have

a running Excel of the hundred or so web a hundred 200 whatever the number of websites

Sarah: It is just every client,

Zach: you’re just gonna that just that sounds just

Sarah: but it’s also login names too, right?

Zach: wild

Sarah: It’s also all of our, so when we log in and

my team’s emails are at Cyclone Press on a client website, I have to update, like all their emails need to be updated to the new. And that is a branding exercise because it doesn’t matter. The domain will redirect if some, you email my team at their old [02:25:00] address,

you have this,

my project manager’s got

Lee Z.: Yeah

Sarah: her log, her login on your backend or your website or whatever.

It’s going to redirect if you email the old address. But we don’t want people to see that name. We want them to see the new name. So every single one of those,

I have a step, a checklist I don’t have to go through for every single client website just to update that. And again, it’s not a high priority, but

it does need to be done at some point.

So

Zach: a professional

Sarah: higher. There’s a hierarchy.

Zach: aesthetic professionalism basically

Sarah: Yeah. It’s the consistency that

really matters. That really sets people apart when you’re paying attention to all these little things.

don’t use a Gmail account for your

Lee Z.: I

Sarah: business. Okay. Get a Google workspace. Use it with your domain. Yes. Yeah.

Zach: you couldn’t be bothered for that

then the people start

Sarah: I can’t take you seriously.

Zach: what else

Sarah: I assume that your business and your personal bank accounts might also be mixed, and that’s just asking for disaster.

Lee Z.: Yeah

Zach: Yeah that’s

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: I think so you [02:26:00] have this process and going through this so how do you go about not only implementing

the new brand but how do you launch the new brand Because I think there’s a lot of conceptualization that happens and execution is often

the killer of ideas

just being able to get things done I think I wonder how do you have this big brand vision or this idea you’re gonna shift everything over Like I said it has to be very intentional When I shifted from military transition into personnel analytics I had to take a very intentional approach but Without

giving myself

some bad press think there’s a certain level of activity that maybe could have helped to spur things a little bit more Or maybe just diving in cause there’s a certain commitment level that’s necessary for startups to be successful yada yada [02:27:00] yada We’ve talked about these things but how do you go about implementation launching the new brand You have everything mapped out You can get the domain

your card looks cool

it feels good in your hands People are like wow

is that embossed

that’s really cool People were doing

Sarah: It’s my favorite part.

Zach: American Psycho.

Lee Z.: your

Sarah: Everybody references that because I, that’s the only thing I print anywhere is business cards.

everybody talks about that and I’m like, I haven’t even seen,

Zach: You have that

Sarah: I’ve seen the clip. I had to go look it up.

Lee Z.: I’ve

Zach: I,

Lee Z.: watched it

Sarah: Yeah.

Zach: oh my gosh.

Sarah: Yeah. I had to see that clip. ’cause everybody referenced it so much and I do the same thing.

I’m like, your business, yeah, your business card should be as firm as your handshake is always what I say. So I’m like. And

I love that I’m gonna do a different style of business card this time for mine. ’cause I love coming up with weird stuff like that. So

Zach: you’re going through that whole process and

you want to create, so

how do you go about actually implementing, what is that activity? You have a list. How do you carry it out and ensure that your [02:28:00] launch is successful? ’cause you can put it out there and nobody can care. You could do I guess it’s not really branding.

I was good.

Lee Z.: do you ensure success Sarah

Zach: Yes.

Sarah: I guarantee success. Yeah.

Zach: do what

to bash,

Lee Z.: all been waiting to

Sarah: three,

easy three step process. But wait, there’s more.

Zach: How do you not,

Lee Z.: actually I can speak to that because it’s the same thing I always say it’s all about energy and Zach

I have no idea what was going on with you and your energy when you made your brand pivot But knowing you personally it did feel like the energy shifted

Zach: Yeah.

Lee Z.: I don’t know if it shifted in a bad way or a good way or just a different way but You lit up when you talked about intelligence when I first met you

it was like I’m gonna help these people transition into

their career after the military I like I understand this need I’ve gone through this and you had a story and I [02:29:00] believe I said something like that sounds like a nonprofit And you realize that actually you do need to go make money and the money’s in the data And it was a very solid pivot a very solid business decision But I am not sure if your energy followed the decision

Zach: It probably didn’t. I think. I think realistically I felt like, shoot, man, when’s this coming out? I felt like I had to do,

I had to do certain things. push this one out a

couple weeks, a couple months.

Lee Z.: That

that is when you’re a founder that’s taken funding You have obligations to people outside yourself and your family right

And I get that I feel that too

I think my energy would be lower if it weren’t for the fact that I literally already have paying customers like my house being like I want this thing I’ve given you money already built it If it [02:30:00] weren’t for that I wouldn’t be as

excited about something that isn’t community centric because I’m just a community kind of person so for me with this pivot it has to be all about

the people I’m serving the story I’m telling branding is storytelling right

if you’re good at branding you’re a good storyteller and you bring people on a journey with you and you’re the guide and they are the hero and all this other stuff that you can read about in books I really believe that

any success I’ve ever had in business or especially marketing and branding comes from This huge burst of energy that I get at the beginning of a new thing cause I am a quintessential a DHD founder that just has

I don’t know enough energy to power half the country when I first get started on something and I just I can’t stop talking about it I don’t wanna sleep

and I can still keep going I’m nine years in on adva and I still love what I do for the startup community and I’m still building apps and having a blast with

the things that

I [02:31:00] get to do every day But new idea There’s

no other drug like it That’s why I say this is like a mental illness

and so in that when you’re writing that wave that in my opinion is when get

your collateral right your nice business cards your logo your name

your color brand whatever And you weave that into whatever the heck you’re doing So if it’s a nice business card you take you don’t just hand out the business card you take a picture of yourself holding it up smiling like you’re fricking high because you are cause it’s so exciting It’s exciting stuff And if you can’t nerd out about your own idea then no one’s gonna get excited alongside you

you have to kinda lead the charge there So like you take pictures with the T-shirts you just got and unboxing them and putting one on your 2-year-old and it’s too big and it’s really cute And someday they’re gonna wear it when it’s all tattered and you’re a success

and you’ve made millions And like you share the vision and the [02:32:00] story wherever you’re comfortable sharing it For me I like to write on LinkedIn because it’s low pressure it works for me people are really good at short form videos I don’t know how to do that So if you can do that can rule the world apparently but I think it’s all about energy and tapping into like why are you doing this anyway And then just get the story told and weave those subliminal messages into it

oh and the logo and the name and here’s what it is and here’s why I named it this and I feel really good about it and you should too how I get the brand out That’s what I plan on doing with this pivot is just being like guys I’m so excited to share this huge pivot Here’s why I’m doing it And just talk about it a lot incessantly

Sarah: is so funny that I feel like it’s the quintessential like dynamic between you and I that you’re like, it’s the energy and I’m about to say it’s the preparation.

Lee Z.: lists

Sarah: If that is a theme. Anything we add to anything that we’ve ever[02:33:00] 

recorded, it’s always like Lee’s like energy and I’m like preparation.

Lee Z.: I’m in Clickup man I put my kids on Clickup We are on Clickup every

Sarah: I honestly find clickup overwhelming. Like we, I had so much stuff in there. It’s

wild. Like it’s, it is a lot to deal with, but yeah, it’s, I wasn’t even gonna say Clickup.

it is clickup.

I use Clickup to manage it. But I was gonna say though, yeah, all of that is true, but it’s like when you go to paint a room, the most important part is not the painting, it’s the taping off

Lee Z.: Ugh

Sarah: the trim.

It’s the prep, it’s the sanding, the drywall. It is

the stuff that no one wants to do. That makes a difference between a well painted room and a badly painted room. And it takes longer to do

the prep than it does to actually paint the room. So all the energy should be harnessed and directed. And so when I say

make a list of all the things that need done, one of the things on the list is how are people gonna know about the rebrand email?

So I need to have an email newsletter template, and I need to write an email that explains. What, why the rebrand and what the [02:34:00] new direction is and who we’re looking for as clients. Because part of the reason I’m rebranding is to be more direct and specific and talking to consultants, coaches, solopreneurs,

the type of people I really wanna work with.

we still do

the guy in the truck. We still do like service. Like anyone’s selling services online, but we’re more directed now. So it’s like this is gonna reflect that and I need to communicate that in that. So I need to have an email written. That means I need to have the template. That also means I need to have a updated current email list.

So I have to make sure that I have that ahead of time, right? I have to set a date, I have to have that work done by that date. There’s now a deadline for this. I have to have the website launch, which means I need to have a list of every single redirect that needs to be put into place when I launch the new website so that nothing is broken.

So that list needs to be done ahead of time. I need a plan for the downtime that’s gonna happen. When am I gonna launch the website? There are so many things, and if you don’t think through that before, you’re like, I’m just gonna tell everybody we’re a new brand on August 1st. Without that work, it’s not gonna go very smoothly, [02:35:00] right?

Like

when is my email gonna get updated?

are people gonna continue emailing me at Cycle and Press? Or can I say in that email, here’s my new contact information.

are we gonna use the same business number? Is this a good time to get a new business number?

all that.

Lee Z.: wanna disagree with you just for the benefit of the people listening even though I do agree with you

I think that

Sarah: All about balance.

Lee Z.: process is probably the better process

but if you are already on the energy train you can follow me with this

and you guys know Izzy Redwood right Everyone knows Ezzy

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee Z.: City He’s

just a business powerhouse amazing guy

he had taught me a lot I got to

meet with him a lot when I was more naive about everything and he would just

give me advice on whatever I was trying to do One of the things he

said to me that always stuck with me was that we were talking about specifically events How do you get people to come to an event He said it’s hand to hand combat You have to each person individually He would message hundreds probably thousands of people [02:36:00] individually This was before you could like write a script or use an app to do this This was like 15 years ago he would text every single person He would email them he would LinkedIn message them

hi Chin He would do it too They’d team up they’d do stuff together

and hundreds of people would show up and it was like a turnout that you wouldn’t see at anything else that anyone was doing in town And it was really because he made you feel seen And listened to and he did listen to people and he went on to go lobbying government and tell entrepreneur stories because he was always listening

and advocating on other people’s behalf

and we knew that and we had his back too I really took that to heart I’ve

baked that energy into everything that I do I don’t like getting spam emails I don’t like getting impersonal emails I’m signed up for Sarah’s newsletter I love reading it but I don’t always read it like I wanna talk to Sarah

and so for me I

I would not do a form email I would text [02:37:00] every single person individually And I’m not kidding And it’s because it’s my

I want to follow up with the client that has been with me for nine years that had me build a system that has

carried their whole business forward I want to text him and call him and email him personally I’d be like I’m so excited to share with you what I’m doing I don’t know if you’ll use it I don’t know if you care but I know you care about me and I just wanna say hi And yeah I might

copy and paste part of that message or something but I’m going to reach out to individuals because am working inside of an ecosystem that has built me now I’m trying to give back to that ecosystem That’s why we’re doing this right now That’s why we’re talking about this I think we’re all busy and nobody wants to open an email that just is this random email that

they sent to a thousand people through MailChimp You might open it cause you wanna hear what they’re doing but it’s not as exciting as

oh a text from my friend

who we talk startup stuff over drinks and

haven’t seen them since Pipeline It’s a different [02:38:00] vibe And that kind of energy that you put into those relationships carries forward And it feels a little more exclusive too It doesn’t feel like everybody knows this everyone got this email It’s more

have you heard what Lee’s been doing He texted me about it last night at 2:00 AM and That kind of circulates And I’ve seen that happen in

the ecosystem that we’re a part of the startup world Like people are more excited to talk about stuff that they think is just li exclusive information right So I am not totally crazy and just flying

like by the seat of my pants all the time It is somewhat strategic I think a lot about in my gut

would make me wanna open this message What would make me wanna tell someone about it it you just saying on LinkedIn Hey here’s the new website or is it like take me out for coffee and tell me the story Why did you do this And then I wanna know the story before it comes out

and Startland News And then when Startland News releases it I wanna share it cause I already knew the story Now I have[02:39:00] 

I can share my little anecdote about it

I might not be able to scale this

I am meeting with people right now I have mentors in my life who are helping me figure out how to scale Like how do you go from making a half a million dollars a year to 10 million I don’t know cause I’m very community oriented But if you are only trying to make half a million dollars a year or a million dollars a year I think this is a good place to start And that’s my soapbox And I think Sarah’s probably right and I’m wrong but

Sarah: It is both though.

Lee Z.: Yeah

Sarah: can’t do, you don’t have to do one or the other. And first of all, the email should not be a stodgy. We changed our name. Look at a new website. Like it’s, that’s not what it is, right? It should tell the story. It should be fun. It could have more

again, this is like

a sell for

writing good marketing copy.

put some thought into this, have somebody help you with it, but there’s different people that you’re reaching. So I have a client right now that has rebranded and we’ve already cut over his email and

his new site is technically live. He’s got some updates to [02:40:00] make and stuff, but he hasn’t even sent out an official announcement yet.

So if you see his truck, it’s wrapped with the new name. If you go to his office, everything’s the new name.

you just

have noticed it, but there’s not been a big announcement because he needs to get me this email list, or I think he already has and he just needs to send it over so that we can announce it.

Because the thing is, you are gonna have people on that list that forgot you even exist. So the close people, a hundred percent, you connect with those and

if I can ever get around to producing some merch, I will be sending some people merch that gave me feedback on things and be like, Hey, like thanks for,

whatever, helping with this.

here’s a hat or something. So that will still happen. There’s already people that know the name, even though I haven’t publicly announced it,

they’ve got the inside scoop. I’ve asked them for feedback. They feel special. I’ve, I have done that too. But when you send out like

an official announcement or you do a press release, or you do get like an article in Startland or something like that, you’re going to hit people that are like, oh.

I forgot you existed.

or I just talked to a friend that needs a thing, right? Like you’re just reminding people that you exist. And so I think you need [02:41:00] both of those things because part of the branding processes is people need to see the brand seven times before they reach out. That whole thing and every, all of that.

So do both. Definitely do both. But I think the key is to understand that there’s a lot of chunks that you’re gonna miss if you don’t think strategically before you’re just like, Hey everybody, guess what?

whoops, I forgot to actually redirect that link from that,

clutch. I gotta go update all these dang account profiles or whatever.

Lee Z.: someone like you because I that’s the help I need as this

Sarah: Do that. Yeah.

Lee Z.: operational scalable part

is really

Sarah: So delegate. Find someone that does this and then delegate that to the, there’s the advice.

Lee Z.: Yes

Sarah: Awesome.

Zach: I think that’s probably as good as any wrap up.

definitely want to thank everyone for tuning in, continuing to listen as we were trucking into season two.

we’re getting back into things.

Lee Z.: Year two trucking into year two

Zach: yeah, year two. Wow. Holy moly. I feel like I’ve aged myself in the podcast,[02:42:00] 

Lee Z.: Yeah

Zach: getting into things after a little summer hiatus, but we’re definitely gonna keep pushing out good episodes.

If there’s episodes or any particular content you want to see, message us. We have an open inbox.

hello at founder Problems.

shoot.net is

Sarah: Dot com. No, we’re the.com. I remember.

[email protected].

Zach: in my defense, I auto fail, so I never look at it.

at, so yeah, continue to follow us on socials. Follow Lee and Sarah, if you wanna see how their rebranding journey goes.

If you need help with your website,

definitely talk to Sarah. Talk to Sarah about that. If you are crazy and like to work on multiple projects, juggling multiple things and want to see how it turns out,

talk to Lee about that.

Lee Z.: don’t

Zach: And if you,

Lee Z.: that’s fine

[02:43:00] ai

Zach: if you think, yeah,

if you

Sarah: There you go.

Zach: to someone, talk to Lee. So that’s probably a good,

Lee Z.: fair

Zach: footer there.

and as always, remember everyone has problems.

Sarah: Especially founders.