So I just got back from spending two days in Austin, Texas at a branding intensive and guess what?

We’re changing the name of the company.

Let’s talk about it

For three years my agency built funnels and automation systems for the biggest names in marketing today since then have transformed that agency into a hyper profitable training and consulting business. While everyone is out there talking about scale like it’s some sort of destination, we’ll be asking the real question, how do you transform your business into a more scalable model using the knowledge, skills, and expertise that you already have? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share the strategies I’m using to build my multimillion-dollar business. My name is Greg Hickman and welcome to Scalable.

Welcome back guys and if you’re new to the show, thanks for joining us. If you haven’t left us a rating and review and you’ve been listening or you’re going to find yourself really enjoying this episode cause I know you will, we’d really appreciate a rating and review. If you’re listening in iTunes, head on over there and leave us a review. We’d love your feedback. And also if you’re on YouTube, give us a thumbs up. Subscribe. We just crossed a thousand subscribers just recently as at the time of recording this, which will be months before you actually ever watch it. But thank you so much for tuning in, asking questions, contributing and, and being a part of this journey. So if you are new, you might want to kind of understand quick concept of wherever we’re at. We have transformed our digital agency, we were building funnels and doing automation for a lot, a lot of online entrepreneurs and we slowly and steadily started adding online training, workshops, consulting and coaching to our business.

Slowly weeding out that the kind of traditional agency style services that we have had, and this is actually what we teach a lot of our clients as well, the digital agencies that are kind of struggling to grow and they don’t really want to continue building out the traditional agency model. And so we kind of help them make a radical transition in how they do business so that they have more leveraged revenue streams from consulting, coaching, training workshops, et cetera, that compliment those agency services. Anyway, that’s what we’re talking about here today. And like I said, we just came back from two days in Austin, Texas at a branding intensive. And I can tell you that I wasn’t really planning on going to a Brendon intensive, but since the start of the business, you know, we sort of just hap hap haphazardly chose the name systemly as I kind of just alluded to when we started, we were doing Infusionsoft implementation for a lot of online entrepreneurs.

Many of you, many of you probably listened to still today and when we started, I didn’t have a name of the business in mind that we didn’t have a website. I mean we were doing 20 to 25 K a month recurring revenue before I ever even really made the business. Uh, you know, officially give it, give it officially a name and, or even have more than just a landing page of a website. And this is actually what we preach to a lot of our clients too, especially in the early days, spending a lot of money on your website and your branding in the early days is typically a waste of money because you’re iterating so fast on who you are, what you do and what you become and for whom that if you put in 10 20 grand into branding and a website in the early days and then you transition into what you’re doing because your execution brings you down a new path, then you’ve kind of wasted 20 grand or whatever you spent on the website and the logos and all that and you’ve got to do it all over again.

So for us, I knew that where we were going was going to be dictated by our learnings from actually building out the agency. And so we got the clients and you know, we had, you know, a fair amount of clients doing work and they started recommending and referring us to their friends and their peers. And it got to the point where I just needed to pick a name and I didn’t want to use something that had the word funnel in it or automation because while we did focus on those two things, usually it was kind of in the grand scheme of more of the systems and operations around how our clients were doing sales, marketing, fulfillment, et cetera. So system came about at the time everyone was doing the dot L Y thing. And so we ran with it, and I can tell you that in 2017 when we started making the transition out of traditional agency model into adding more leveraged revenue streams like coaching and consulting, more and more, the name systemly just didn’t feel right, but I didn’t have anything better.

So we kept growing our business, focusing on serving our clients. We kept our website the way it was. We’d have people coming to us asking if we were a software company or if we were still doing done for you services. And we just kindly told them, no, the website is out of date. And believe me, you hear it over and over and over again. You’re going to want to go rebuild the website. And I wanted to also, we kept getting clear and clear on our messaging yet it didn’t roll up to the name systemly and feel right, but I didn’t have anything else. And I went through, you know, periodic exercises trying to come up with the name and it really wasn’t until just recently, and I’m recording this, uh, October 1st of 2019 for those of you that have been chronically in this whole journal journey with me and you know, we’ve gotten way clear on our messaging, who we serve and what we’re doing.

And it kind of has approached a point where all of the messaging is way clear in our minds. The product suite and evolution over the next 12 to 24 months is way clear. And in order to kind of make that next leap, at least for me as the owner mentally, I’ve kept running into the roadblock of we’re so clear on everything but the name and we need to do something about this. So I started kind of talking with a few close peers of mine, you know, how they came up with their name or if they’ve worked with anybody. And I got recommended to, uh, actually back to a good friend of mine re Perez from branding for the people. So shout out to him all. Then came up below and I went to one of his two day intensives in Austin, Texas. And you know, I reached out to him saying, Hey, like do you help people with naming businesses?

And he’s kind of asked me a bunch of questions and really what he determined was, look, before you just come out with a name, we really need to understand like the bigger picture of your brand, your brand voice, your brand archetype, um, you know, your brand promise, all of these things that I really hadn’t ever formally documented in any way. And many of you probably have an either and that’s exactly why I’m sharing this. So I went to this intensive, you know, really in my mind I said, you know, I hope to come out with a name. But even in I guess in the worst case scenario all come out of this with a much clear understanding of of who we are, who we’re speaking to, how we can kind of bring more of our personality into the business so that we really start to differentiate Elise ourselves from some of the other folks that do similar things in the marketplace, which again is something that you probably want to consider doing in your own business.

And so I went through the process. But the funny thing is about a week before going to Austin after having paid for the intensive and everything, I’m going there and a name hits me, so a new name for the business hits me and it aligns with everything that we had been doing, everything we had been talking about. I shared it with a few close friends and they were like, Oh my God, that is the name. Like you’ve got to keep going. Now. I’m not going to be sharing the name with you today because we’re working on actually bringing this to life and we’re going to do more of a formal launch closer to the beginning of the new year. But the story continues, right? So right before I go to the intensive where I’m hoping to come out the name, I come up with a name, but I go through the process.

I don’t bring up the name until the end of day one. And uh, you know, I let him know that I had come up with a name and I just wanted to run it by him and see how it would feel in addition to all this stuff that we were doing. And he said, let’s wait until we go through the whole process. All these other things. He didn’t, he didn’t want his process to be influenced, which made a lot of sense. So we go through and at the end of the day one, you know, I’m sitting there in my head, I’m like, man, everything that we’re talking about is right in line with this new name. So I shared the new name and he was like, I really it. And it really sort of connected all of the dots. And so for me at this time, now look, we’ve been in business for over four years.

We’ve pivoted or evolved rather from more traditional agency services doing funnels and automation to a coaching and training business that helps agencies build out systems and automation for their sales, marketing and delivery and all of the stuff that we have been saying and talking about where we want to go and how we want to serve them. Finally connected to the name because everything was building up. But then I’d say, okay, well this all Rose up to systemly and it didn’t make sense and didn’t connect and now it does. And we’re really excited. We’re finally rebuilding our website four and a half years later. Um, it hasn’t stopped us from generating revenue. Continuing to grow to, you know, do all of the things that many of you guys chat about is, you know, you want to build predictable revenue, you want to build out these systems, you want to serve more clients, you want to work less hours, all of these goals that you want to hit.

And so often I hear the excuse of, well first I need to, you know, update my website to my new services. And the real answer is no, you don’t. That’s an excuse. Um, breathing proof that four and a half years later, like many of you that I know follow this, follow this show and listen to the podcast you’re trying to get to the consistent 20, 30, 40, 50 K months. You’re, you’re trying to get there right now and you’re spending a lot of time on updating your website and all these things when those are really out of order for where you’re at in your business. And those are things that aren’t going to stop you from making more money, having a bigger impact. And the amount of changes and tweaks and things you’ll learn along the way of actually doing the work, making the transitions and the changes that you want to make to your current business to get to where you want to get to is going to bring you down a path where you’re going to continue to get more clarity that will likely inspire a new name, better messaging, and all of the things that will equip you and prepare you for actually renaming the business.

And that’s why tons of people were saying like, well, I don’t like, why don’t you rename the business? It doesn’t make sense when I get to your website. It doesn’t exactly say what you do. And the last two years I’ve said, I know, but that hasn’t kept us from making money and or growing the business and serving the people that we want to serve. And when we’re ready and we’re confident in the new direction we will, we will go make a new name. And that’s where we’re at today. So really the lesson is, in my opinion, if you are under 30, $50,000 a month in revenue and you’re still making tweaks to how you do business, right? Many of you as agency owners have decided that the traditional agency model is not for you and you want to launch a more productized leveraged service offering like a coaching and training program or workshops or what have you that compliment your services.

Not necessarily erase, but maybe a surpass. Um, and Hey, maybe some of you do want to replace the traditional agency revenue with, with the new, you know, the new model. That’s great. Many of our clients want to do the same. That’s what we did. Excuse me. Um, and so if you’re under 50 K a month and you’re continuing to evolve, you’re continuing to get clear and in your mind, you know that you’re just not there yet. Don’t go spending money on the branding intensives and or the, the new logos or the website because really it’s not going to prevent you from getting clients because if you can speak to your client’s pain and show them how you can help them, that’s all they care about. They don’t care about your business name or your URL or any of those things are what’s your website really looks like.

They just care. Can you solve my problem? And if you can actually do that and communicate that, you can do that. You’ll be able to get clients and hit 2030 40 K a month with either no name or a name you don’t like. Okay. And I’m living proof. So I just want to rid you of this weight on your shoulders if you’ve had it. Cause I know I used to that you need all of these things perfect before you can grow, before you can get the next client, before you can do X, Y, Z. Four and a half years later, I went to my first Brian and Tessa and Brandon intensive and it was amazing. It was super helpful. But all of the work that we’ve been doing for the last two and a half years equipped me to even make that event successful. I would have had to, if I did that in the first six months, I would have probably gone to three of them.

S you know, between the first one and now because we’ve been evolving so quickly, right? We’ve been growing so fast and we’ve had to, to deal with different changes and learnings that we’ve had about how we want to grow the business and where we want it to go. That, you know, it would have been a waste of time, money and energy and so waiting a little bit longer and going through some of those kinks if it still doesn’t feel right. I encourage you to, again, not spend all the money on the branding and the logos and all that just yet. If you’re at that point now, if you’re over that point and it’s now become the one you know, you know, pain and bane of your existence that you can’t move on at all because this thing is foggy and unclear, then that’s when I would probably consider it because for us, the next evolution, me guiding my team into where we need to be next and what we need to focus on was getting more and more difficult when the things I was saying didn’t align with the vision because it felt disconnected.

Again, if I, while I might’ve felt a little disconnected two years ago, I’m way more in tune with who we are, where we want to be now because I’ve done the work. Okay. So if it’s the only thing preventing you and you’re already at 50 K then that’s probably the time where I would start to consider, Hey, is my vision of where I want to go and the impact I want to have and the style of business I want to have aligned with the way we show up in the marketplace right now. And if you’re at the 50 K and that’s the thing that is the obstacle in you communicating the future vision to your team, that is when I would say dive into those things. Now again, this is my personal feedback. You talked to a branding expert, they might disagree, but from someone that’s been in the trenches, this whole, the point of this show is to share my journey.

And up until recently I would have felt like it was a waste of my time and money. But now it’s that point, like I said for us was I can’t have the impact I want to have in the next 12 to 24 months and lead my team, uh, to build, continue to build a business. So that doesn’t revolve around me without having some of the, this, these pieces now aligned with the who we are and, and how we’re going to show up on the marketplace. So do the work. It will come to you. You don’t need a website or a logo to break the 20, 30, 40, or 50 K heck, even 100 K Mark. Um, we’ve been there and still didn’t have the name that we liked. So focus on serving your clients, figuring out what you like to do, what you don’t like to do, eliminate the things that you don’t like to do.

Refine the things that you’re good at and that gives your clients the most value. And in due time, my friend you will, you will say, just like I did now is the time to go focus on really clarifying the brand around who we are and how we’re and where we’re going to go in the future. So I know this is a little bit of a rant episode, but again, wanted to share the journey. If you have questions about, you know, should you be focusing on this yet, leave a comment in the comment section. I’d love to hear your feedback. Again, always experimenting with new types of episodes where I’m really just chronically in the journey for, for myself as well as our team for when I look back and say, wow, like look where we came from, man. Remember that time we changed the entire name of the business and that’s what catapulted our success. It’ll be cool to look back on that. So hopefully you enjoy this episode and we will chat with you guys soon.

If I give you five to 10 new, would you or your agency break if so, your current agency model is broken? I struggle with this too, until I found a better way. By adding online programs, training, and coaching to our agency, we doubled profits without adding more hours. If you want to work directly with me and my team to transform your agency, visit myscalablebusiness.com to learn more.