Loading summary
Transcript13 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is Entree leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches right alongside you. If you got a question you want to ask, click the link in the description. Sean is in Buffalo, Wyoming. Hi, Sean, how are you?
- [00:26]
B
I'm doing great, Dave. How are you doing today?
- [00:28]
A
Better than I deserve. What's up in your world?
- [00:31]
B
Well, I'm a co owner of a commercial roofing company in Wyoming. Actually, my family and I recently acquired the business. It's been around for over 40 years. We have about 25 employees and a three year average revenue of 6.3 million. And we started to think about investing in marketing to expand and diversify and that kind of brought us to our logo, possibly updating it. So my question is, is it wise to rebrand the logo of an established business? And if so, how do we do that without losing the trust that's already there?
- [01:05]
A
I doubt that a roofing company logo is carrying your marketing on its back. I mean, you're not Coca Cola, you know, and so in other words, your, your marketing is the reputation of the company you bought, the name of the company you bought. Now if you're going to change the name of the company, that's a hold that I would hesitate on. Okay.
- [01:31]
B
Right. No, yeah, I fully want to keep, I want to keep the name and it's just that low. That logo is very recognized locally and so I just didn't want to have this perception that, you know, new owners, new leadership, we're changing how this company operates. We're, we're sticking with how it was done. We're still really involved with the previous owners.
- [01:52]
A
Why would you want, why would you update the logo? What's the, what's the upside?
- [01:58]
B
Well, I guess. Well, we were thinking about updating, you know, all the Internet stuff and marketing things. And the logo's been around since the mid-90s. It's slightly dated, but it's a fine logo. So. But we're just thinking about modernizing it a little bit. You know, the founder's name is part of the name of the company and part of the logo. But like you said, we want to keep the name and so we're fine keeping that in there. But we just thought about maybe just updating a little bit so it's not so 90s ish. But yeah.
- [02:27]
A
Yeah. Okay, here's what I would do to test the idea then. And we've done this with a bunch of our different brands here. We've got several different brands. Entre Leadership's one as an example. Okay. I would have a graphic artist develop me 5 to 10 options of new logos with this instruction. When you do the new logo, I need to be able to see, and the customer needs to be able to see a tie between the old one and the new one. And the second part of that is, if we're going to change the color, we have to give the color a nod in some way or another. For the same reason, we have to be say we don't go so far astray from the old one that we lose all recognition of the old one.
- [03:25]
B
Yeah.
- [03:26]
A
And if they put you. If they put five or 10 in front of you and you look at them, you may go, yeah, we'll stay with the old one. Or you may go, well, we'll just change the color. Or you may go this or that. So we went through all of ours because we were having a problem internally. I'll share it with you about. It's probably 15 years ago now, between 10 and 15 years, something like that, that a lot of our brands were functioning in the market and people didn't know they were Ramsey. They were standalone. Entree leadership being one of them. Okay. That you could say Entre leadership. I don't know that had anything to do with the Dave Ramsey show, which was what it was called back then. I didn't know that had anything to do with that money guy, you know, or I didn't know it had anything to do with that. I just knew it was a small business brand. Right. And so we went through all of our brands and all of our look, tone, feel, which is the font that is used, the colors that are used and those kinds of things, and revamped all of them to where there was a connection visually between all of them. And so all of our brands are recognizable, sitting beside each other as having something to do with each other and not siloed off. And so that was a different goal than you have, but we kind of had to go at it with the same thing. We don't want to lose the existing part of it. But entree leadership in those days was all yellow. I mean, like crazy yellow. It was like yellow to where we were sick of yellow. And we still kept some nods to that color, but it's not our primary and our singular color anymore. And it ties back across some of the. And we pick up some blues and things. Picks up some of the Ramsey blues. Like, the background behind me right now is blue. Okay. As an example. And that's the Ramsey blue that's also on the sign of Ramsey Solutions out front. So there's these cross ties. Now, you're not trying to accomplish that, but what you are trying to accomplish is a tie back to the old logo. And that's the visual, which includes the look, tone, feel, color, but also the design itself. If they're really good, if a graphic artist is really good, could give you a nod to the current. And that's the only way I would change it. If it completely abandons everything that's there and it's not recognizable as being tied to the old company at all, then I wouldn't do it. You run a business, so you already know that bad information leads to bad decisions. And everyone is talking about AI. But AI is only as good as the data behind it. The best AI is built on the best data. That's why I recommend NetSuite. NetSuite is the number one AI cloud ERP and more than 43,000 businesses run on it, including us here at Ramsey Solutions. Their AI isn't bolted on, it's built in. And it connects everything that runs your business, accounting, inventory, customer data, all in one place. Because when your numbers are connected, AI actually works like it's supposed to. NetSuite's AI helps flag cash flow problems, spot inventory issues, close your books faster, and cut down on manual reporting. No more guessing, no more spreadsheet chaos. Just clear numbers and real insights so you can lead with confidence. An investment in NetSuite is an investment in clarity. If your revenue is at least seven figures, go to netsuite.comramsey for a free product tour. That's netsuite.comramsey.
- [07:13]
B
yeah, that's really helpful because, yeah, you nailed where I was going with it. I mean, there's some loyalty and there's some trust around that. And it's such a recognizable logo in the community. I want to stay with how we're recognized there. But I also was thinking, well, maybe if I'm going to update and kind of make this push with marketing, should I do that? But I really like that.
- [07:34]
A
I can't think of an example, but I have seen some stuff and you probably just could Google it and find it of company's logos that have evolved over the years. And I think you'll find them sticking with convention that we just talked about that there's always a nod to the last one so you don't lose all the brand equity. But it also is a modernization of, you know, like in the 70s, you remember, everything was lime. You don't remember, you're too young. But in the 70s, everything was lime puke green. Oh yeah, yeah, like parachute pants and stuff. Right. And whatever, you know, and everybody thought that was a cool color. Well, now that's retro and it's somewhat come back, but it's still a very dated color scheme. And so if you had a very 70s color scheme, you know, it'd be like having three inch shag carpet in your living room. Right. And so you gotta update it, but we still have to use the same floor that the carpet sits on. So. Yeah, that's a really cool question. And you're being very wise to think through this critically rather than just go, oh, we're changing it because a lot of entrepreneurs, they just throw stuff against the wall and see what works. And yeah, I like the idea of changing it gradually and letting it evolve. I would also, I'll add back to that, get the five different ones with them, give the graphic designer those instructions. And then I would also look up some other brands and watch their that have done logo evolutions over the years. There's some 50 or 100 year brands that are out there and you can watch them change and grow as they go along without losing the nod to the past, without losing the tie in to the credibility that brought them there. So, hey, that's a cool question. Good question, Shawn. I don't know if I've ever had one like that here. That's a different one. I like it though. It's fun to brainstorm it with you. So a good rule of thumb is number one, when you're to recap number one, what you're looking at is with logos you never want, never's a lot. Small business people listen to this. Very few, like 99.9% of your small business people, your logo's not gonna make or break you. So if Sean totally screws this up, but runs the business, well, he's gonna be just fine. The logo's not gonna like cut sales. We lost 50% of our sales because of a logo change. Nah, not gonna happen. It's not that sensitive. In that situation where a logo would be that sensitive is if you have built a brand, a visual recognition, and millions and millions and millions and millions of eyeballs, right? Like Nike Swoosh. You go screwing around with that, you know you got a problem, okay? You go screwing around with some of the basic things like that. You know, you can't do that. And that's why you can trademark a logo. And the Ramsey R, the Block R, on the side of our building and on a bunch of our Ramsey stuff in the background is trademarked, federally trademarked. And so because we need to protect the visual of that, and it becomes recognizable, and it is the thing that ties all those products together that we're talking about. So if you're gonna change and you're a small business owner, number one, you probably don't have to sweat it too much. But it's fun to put a little bit of burn some brain calories on it and try to do it right. And that would be let the color, the font, the look, tone, feel, and the actual design give you a nod to the past. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to, like, share and subscribe for real world leadership content. I'm your host, Dave Ramsey. This is Entree Leadership.