051- Rebranding with Amber
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Amber’s old (left) and new (right) logos.
Summary:
What is rebranding and when should you consider doing it? On this episode, Amber from Atta Boy! Animal Care joins us to share her experience and reasoning for rebranding. She clues us into what we need to consider, and some simple steps we can follow to make the processes a lot smoother.
Topics in this episode:
Why rebrand?
How to know if it’s time to rebrand
How Amber defines rebranding
What the process was like for her
Handling the transition with existing clients
Why right now is a great time to rebrand
Main take away? It really doesn’t take that much time and money to rebrand. So why not use this time to start that process?
About our guest:
Amber is the founder of Atta Boy! Animal Care. She been working in the animal field for over 16 years. She started in the field by working in the horse industry - stable hand and pet sitter. She then trained as a local Veterinary Kennel hand, Veterinary Assistant and then an Emergency Veterinary Technician for both small and large animals for over 13 years. She has a bachelors of Animal Science from University of Florida. At home she has 1 husband, 2 human children, 3 dogs - Benji, River + Sookie, 8 chickens and 3 turtles- Blue, Zorro + Stewie
Links:
Atta Boy! website: https://www.attaboyanimalcare.com
Email Amber: info@attaboyanimal.com
Give us a call! (636) 364-8260
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Email us at: feedback@petsitterconfessional.com
A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
logo, graphic designer, clientele, rebranding, clients, company, pet, design, rebrand, people, colors, type, business, ultimately, process, grand reopening, attracting, vibe, amber, printed
SPEAKERS
Amber, Collin
Amber 00:00
This is the best time to remake yourself. Because you may be on hiatus you may this may be closed down purposefully or required. Had it? Why not? You can kind of come out that Phoenix.
00:23
I'm Collin and I'm Meghan and this is Pet Sitter Confessional an open
00:27
and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter.
Collin 00:36
When I say the word rebranding, what kind of emotions or thoughts does that evoke? expensive, costly. time consuming. arduous, doesn't have to be. Today, Amber's from Attaboy animal care. Here's her story on how and why she decided it was time for her to rebrand she discusses some of the technicalities about it, how she chose which process to go through and shares with us just how little it actually costs her at the end. So if you've been thinking that it's time to refresh your logo or change the colors that you have for your business, this episode is for you. Amber breaks it all down and share some of the pointers to look out for and consider along the way. If you've been on the hunt for some online educational courses, check out pro trainings.com especially their pet first aid and CPR class. Use the code CPR dash pet sitter confessional at checkout for 10% off any of their courses. Now let's get started.
Amber 01:43
Hi everyone, my name is Amber van Denson, and as he said I own Attaboy Animal Care located in central Florida. We opened in December of 2013 after I had been a veterinary technician for quite some time. decided that those nights weekends and holidays, didn't like flex with my future schedule of the family style that I wanted. So we were I was very excited to start this journey of pet care after a friend of mine also had a pet care industry company that she started out a few years later prior rather when she also was a vet tech and wasn't interested in that industry as much anymore. So I got inspired by that. On top of also pet sitting on officially when I was in high school as well as one of my first jobs I started embers job services, which kind of encompass pet sitting and babysitting and kind of everything in between, which is where I first got my some of my first clients back in the day as well. So
Collin 02:47
Wow. So you've been in in business for since 2013. Correct. Wow. What has it been like? experiencing the COVID pandemic in the last couple months for you?
Amber 03:00
In the past couple months, obviously, and seven years in, obviously it's the slowest time I would say, besides the very early months of starting the company, and kind of a learning curve, obviously, this is not a realm that we ever thought to prepare for. Not something anything that's any any standard operating procedures that we had planned out, as well as kind of dealing with having staff, an independent contractor specifically, and what that looked like for not only me and the business financially, but for our staff as well.
Collin 03:34
So obviously, we brought you on to talk about rebranding, what initiated that whole process for you,
Amber 03:39
for sure, um, in about five years, and we kind of started noticing that our original design that we had created when we first started when I first started, which we got from a graphic design student, a friend of a friend recommendation, and we noticed it was kind of getting kind of an antique gold five, you could definitely tell it was On a modern graphic, it wasn't as crisp and clean as what would expected what is expected of you know today and what really is interesting to a client's eye and really aesthetically pleasing, pleasing. So we decided to start looking into rebranding by specifically getting a new logo and design and colors even right around year five and year six B definitely decided to move forward with that process. So right our original design, which flowed with our original slogan, which was Attaboy Animal Care pet sitting and dog walking our slogan was, were the key to your pets comfort and care. And then on our design of our logo was a antique skeleton key with like pet bodies in each part of the the key on the busted end of that and then on the head of the key was what looked like partially barn and a business like cityscape at the same time. So it kind of encompassed pets and homes. And that key obviously being someone's home. And it was very similar to many real estate kind of agency logos to a degree as well. I mean, that was just one of our first logos that we created. And then we kind of decided that wasn't the vibe that we were looking for. That wasn't the aesthetic appeal that we were looking for. And we realized, you know, we had an antique skeleton key and we looked at it we decided we needed to move forward you know, and and rebrand which was a very scary thought process because you put all this time and effort for recognition of your brand, you know that that logo was on our website was on printed magnets on our cars was on every printed item, we had a brochure of business cards, you know, even like baggies as well. So the financial piece associated with that and cost associated with that kind of scared me. But moving forward and doing a bunch of research, we decided to move forward With that, and when we decided to do that I kind of looked at a couple things I really ideally wanted to stay local. Like most of my business, I wanted to kind of do a mom and pop of some sort locally. And then I decided against that, which is not common for me. But I decided against that because I didn't want to be stuck in a hole with one graphic designer, and one person's thought process. When creating a new logo, I really wanted a multi faceted multi dimensional, larger like world concept option with a ton of different brains kind of being giving us their thoughts and ideas and designs ultimately, for our branding. So we decided to do a crowd sourced company that we ended up using a company called design crowd. There's another company called Fiverr that's very similar to that and putting out our logo idea and starting that process with a crowd sourced option to get that as many of them As many ideas as possible so we went that route when we first started rebranding.
Collin 07:05
Now you mentioned for you the cue was to you felt like the brand was starting to feel a little old. Are there any other any other signs that it may be time to rebrand if someone's listening to this and they may have had these Inklings but you know, I was wondering if you had any advice for somebody who is of these things should tell you maybe it's time to move forward and rebrand?
Amber 07:28
Yeah, sure. So one, we weren't getting as many clientele and that's a huge key point. We noticed that something was something not much has changed. But you know, we weren't if we had other options, there's other companies and other competition. And when looking at the other competition locally, what type of vibe and what type of feel did that initial interaction which is usually the marketing aspect, which is usually their logo, and what kind of you know feeling did that give us and we looked at theirs and we looked at ours and we said, you know what we look like this grandma older aspect of that. Not in the sense of Do you trust us are we are we modern, you know, and we really want to hit clientele, especially millennial type personas and and persons that have a ton of pets and it just didn't have that happy, exciting, fun vibe that we really were looking for. So we saw that need and we saw the lack of clientele coming in. And also when we were using that logo for printed materials and stuff, the new programs and software weren't appreciating the quality of that JPG or PNG design that we had. So we know that also was causing a difficulty on our end to use our logo as well.
Collin 08:39
Those are great indicators of when the technology is starting to throw fits of the this isn't working and whenever you your clientele of Do you are you targeting people who want to go to antique malls or not, you know, those are, those are very good indicators then,
Amber 08:55
yeah, our you know, our typical, you know, looking at what type of design we wanted, we looked at who we were marketing to because that that rebrand is a huge marketing aspect as well. So we knew our typical clientele was a female between 30 and 60 years old. And it was either that younger family that was going on family vacations or those empty nest, you know, type persons that their families have come and gone and they're kind of vacationing with their their spouses at this point in time. So we kind of had the younger end and the older end that we wanted to make sure that we kept caught their attention. And by doing what we did, by changing colors by changing by changing the logo design as a whole, and then using a certain type of professional we were able to get the logo that we really felt made that difference of ultimately attracting more customers and being usable in you know, 2020 now, we did it last year when we finally ended up finalizing our brand early 2019. We've been using it for about a year and a half now. So and we found that is pretty much we we went from 200 people liking our Facebook page or so last year to over close to 500. This year, we found that upon hiring you know, when we were putting out hiring ads with our logo, we are getting more people wanting to apply because that that vibe of that logo really brought and attracted attention to the right personas that we wanted working for clients and for our team rather as well. So that overall just you know whole compass of what our company embodied. That logo really gave that to us. So you know, we went from a dark plum color and a dark mustard yellow to a bright purple and a very bright yellow. Our logo went from a key with some pet side profile designs to a very happy puppy picture integrated into our name and We ended up having over 107 submittals of logo designs on our design crowd from over 45 different designers from around the world. So we just had so many looks, and so many thought processes and so many things that I didn't think of because when it's your company and you're trying to think of a design option, you're kind of in a box, you've seen your company, you've seen your logo thousands of times, and you really need that outside look in that outside opinion to maybe move towards the direction that you want your company to move towards. And a lot of the designs we got probably easily over 50% were very generic you know if you can think of that generic pet care whether it's a veterinarian or pet sitter or groomer whether it has a heart in it, or you know, a cat and dog side profile, or hands making a heart You know, the or the mass of five different types of species, any animals kind of jumping on top of each other. No offense to anyone that has a logo like that at all. If it works for you, it works for you ultimately, but we wanted to be a little bit different ultimately. And so about half of those have that typical vibe, I would say that you would find it most veterinary clinics, most medicinal type concepts and some earlier, companies that haven't rebranded particularly, and ultimately the design that we chose was brighter, it was fresher, was happy. And we wanted a logo that encompass our name into the design itself. There's many different types of logo types that you can choose from definitely do your research on what you think attracts you the most, whether it's a design, logo that is more of a badge style, like if you think of ups or more of one that has a real life type animal creature on it. So think like the World Wildlife Federation that has a panda it's a clear obvious Panda, but the WWF under it, or more the the logos that are more Like a Nike logo that's a swoop that he that it's not exactly a shoe obviously, but you still recognize Nike for their swoop. And then it came down to or you want text only logos, kind of like the Coca Cola logo or Tiffany unco. And then ultimately a combination of the two where your logo text and your wording is kind of braided into one. So the B of our Attaboy is actually part of the puppy's face so it's kind of a combo effort, which is what we wanted. We wanted an all in one and that's what we ended up getting. And the designer we ended up using was actually from India, and it was love at first sight. Out of the you know, hundred plus logo designs we had but the cool thing with using a crowdsource site is the one we ended up using actually had a voting option to we could share it to our clients to get them involved with the process and get them excited. They could vote on their favorite ones. We shared it with local business professionals to get it out in the community. We shared it with friends and family as well. And there was probably a top two that we pushed back and forth on. One was more of like an outdoors in nature kind of I'd had an oak tree going on. And a sunset that's no Florida. Yeah. And then we had this that this happy puppy design and I would say, you know, some people really hated that puppy and some people really loved that puppy. But ultimately, we moved with the puppy design and we were able to edit it with the designer specifically, you know, move a little this change a little that change a font here or there. And then for under $300 is what it didn't costing us out the door for this logo design and we got all the professional files, which is huge as well. So not just a JPEG, not just a PDF, not just a word document that someone may have created or a publisher document, but a JPEG, a PNG and then some other fancy ones like an SVG i think is what it is that I can't even open in my typical computer. Those are for graphic design type programs that give you the best quality For print type items that you may want, so we use that logo for creating window decals. And you know, that's what the type of files that those graphic designers wanted that gave the best, most crisp lines for printing purposes on larger scale items as well. And that was a huge, huge calling for us that we were able to have all of those things encompassed and editable, and we could give those to in the future other graphic designers if it needs to be edited in the future or changed around. It's still editable in the future as well, which was a huge thing for us to not just think about now, but in the future using our the money that we used and using the best of its abilities as long as possible.
Collin 15:40
I hope by now we're listening through that process and everything that amber went through, that rebranding is not just a few ticks of a box. And this was a whole like a whole holistic approach to a market research how to target them. building that in into everything they do. So Amber, could you tell us how you would define rebranding as a business?
Amber 16:09
rebranding as a business? You know, I think it's personal to a degree because this is your company that you pulled up. But rebranding is ultimately taking what is already there and changing it or your current market or your current current clientele, to make sure whatever you are projecting as a company, whether it's your values, your mission statement, your slogan and the quality of care that you're providing, and being able to show that in a couple of seconds. Ultimately, you know, that first thing that most clients see is your logo, and what vibe Do you want them to have what feelings and emotions do you want that that to move to them in those split seconds that the their eye is looking at that logo and is going to their brain to give some type of emotion, what emotion Do you want them to give? So that rebrand is really making sure whatever you want as your business to be successful and to show to the community is shown in a visual presentation.
Collin 17:15
Wow. Yes. I 100% I love that. I love that. No, no. And because I, it is, I mean rebranding is is a very serious topic. It is because it's the, it's the image of your company that in what you want to project in, and you hit it right on the head of going, it's taking it's not, it's not immediately deleting everything that you are or what you do, it's looking for the best and bringing that together, and now you have to help find a way to communicate that to people without speaking a single word, and the logo and the design of your website and all of your printed materials. All of that goes into that. Whether we like to admit it or not, you know, people do judge books by their cover.
Amber 18:04
Absolutely. That's a great way to say that. Oh my gosh, that's exactly Yes.
Collin 18:09
And, and we'd like to tell ourselves that they don't, but they, but they do. And we do it, you know, kind of not even thinking about it most of the time. And so, really taking the that the time and putting in that for thought and, you know, just love that hit, you know, thinking through your mission statement. And does this. Does this logo match your mission statement? Does it match the quality of care that you're providing? What does it project to people around you and what does it communicate? So it's not it? There's so much tied into that.
Amber 18:37
Exactly, exactly. And ultimately, it worked for us. Like I said, we saw in a year we saw our social media double, we saw our hiring, intake, you know, easily double or triple the amount of income or people that are even applying because people want to work for companies that give them the same vibes as well. The same happiness, the same essence. citement the same passion. And if you look older and boring and not modern and not exciting, what does that show for your company as a whole, you know, my company, you know, we use tech, always were tech savvy. We have the great photo quality for our clients, we have ease of use. And we have happiness and perky and bubbly characters that work for our, you know, work for a company that when you want a happy puppy, you know, you have to have a happy human and our slogan that we also changed as well not just the logo, we wanted to make sure that that slogan matched it. And obviously our previous slogan was we are the key to your pets comfort and care. And we decided to make it short and sweet and exactly what we wanted our clients to feel. And that's exactly what we said happy pets, happy people. And you know, that's what it is with an exclamation mark at the end because our name also has an exclamation mark in it. So we wanted to tie that in. So we not only changed our logo, but we changed our slogan. We you know, brightened our colors and Made it just a little bit more modern and we are still attracting that older age bracket just fine. And we are now attracting that younger age bracket as well. That's something I can put on an Instagram or tik tok or a YouTube and it just be as prevalent and exciting for those that younger crowd of clientele as well.
Collin 20:21
What did this rebranding process do to your and your team's perspective on the company and the outlook that you had?
Amber 20:31
This past year and I would say two years has been a big growth time for us. As a business. The first few years I was a solo pet sitter, it was just me doing my thing. And then I had a human baby. And I said, I can't do that by myself so much anymore. And that's when I kind of first started hiring on my first independent contractor. And then we ended up adopting our son from foster care the year after and I had to step back significantly due to that whole process and the medical needs and For our son, Tristan, who is now seven, then we have a daughter who's now four. And so when that happened, I had just a couple of independent contractors because one it was extremely hard to hire and, and find what worked and just attracting the right person to apply for our company. So that changed drastically. Because right around that time is when I started the rebrand process. And we found again, that we were able to have more clients or more, excuse me, more staff of buy, so we had the better pick of the litter, ultimately, no animal pun intended. And, you know, so that helped significantly as well, because the people that we were bringing in, were the happier excitable, really passionate about the company. Our our sitters are our number one recommenders you know, besides our clientele, and it's because they have a passion or a company they know what good work they do. We know what the good work we expect and we know the excitement And happiness that our our, our staff are able to provide those animals while their pets are away. So we just again that happier excited, lovable but professional vibe was all there.
Collin 22:10
You know, all because you you change some colors and a logo, I mean the process really it
Amber 22:16
never would have if you told me that I would have never believed you if he said, you know what you need to change your logo and your colors, and it'll make all the difference. I would have said some adult words. But I wish most of my staff is aware that I use those adult words quite frequently, in a good way. No, no way possible. But it really was it was you know, we didn't we already had tech on board. We already had social media on board, we already had the same exact quality of service that we are servicing now as we did a handful of years ago. But now we again double our you know, social media, double the amount of clients we have our revenue two and a half times, you know, increased you know, in a year. So when you see that You look at Okay, what are we differently? It's really just that first initial perspective, that passion, that happiness, that that vibe that the clients can trust, to know, that's what you're going to give them in their pets while they're away. And that was the biggest thing that so it was shocking, shocking, but it did its job and it was definitely worth less than $300 investment that we ended up doing it.
Collin 23:25
Yeah, and I want to touch on that because when when as soon as you start throwing out the words of graphic designer, yeah, the design process people start seeing how just how many zeros Tell me when to stop. And and you went through and I you mentioned it, but go ahead and mention again what what site you went through to get that crowd sourced?
Amber 23:44
Sure. So we did design crowd. And we The first thing I recommend with anything if you use a crowd sourced website, like design crowd, there's another one that I know others of us called Fiverr. Is that get on their email lists design crowd? I know emails out promo codes all the time. And not like 10 percents, they're like much more significant because they charge you for a posting fee. And that varies or how long you want your post to be on. And then they charge the fee to add that will actually be paying the graphic designer. So depending on your budget, and depending on how many graphic designers that you may want to use, like if you have one graphic designer in mind, you can choose that and it's a lower cost versus opening it up to a broader spectrum. So they have different packages and stuff. So you just kind of have to look at what best suits your your financial goals and what you want from it ultimately, and that's kind of different. Same thing with fiber. I think fiber comes from you can like charge five bucks or something which you're going to get probably quite low quality product, potentially, but I don't know, I didn't use it. But yeah, so we use that and you know, going through that process. I didn't know anyone else that ever used it. It was a random Google find You know their marketing and videos sold me on it. It's like a money back guarantee. If you don't find somebody that submits a logo that you like you get back the graphic design enough posting fee which is like 80 bucks and when I did it again two years ago but the the other money that would go to the graphic designer Since you didn't pay anyone, they'll give it back to you. So that's a nice guaranteed to have as well as I don't like it. I get most of my money back. Yeah. versus some local designer graphic designers were way, way more than that. And again, it goes back to Okay, you can say this is what I want, I can give you a few options. If you don't like it, you still have to pay them significantly. And it's way more than you know what I ended up investing in this rebrand for that. Now this doesn't include the cost of the fact that I did have to throw away a ton of old branded items. You know, I had an old banner, I had business cards and brochures and printed bags and things like that all of that occurred. couldn't use any more successfully. So all that loss of that and having to reinvest in those core items, new business cards, brochures, you know, new banner, things like that, that did cost significantly as well, I would say probably about, depending on how much you buy each item, obviously, we tend to use vistaprint for our printing, and even a local graphic designer that we use to create our, our graphics for our window clings and stuff on our cart uses with vistaprint for printing purposes, too, but you know, yeah, and we found that that probably cost us $500 you know, to reinvest in just a new group new brochures, new cards, new printed baggies and a new banner ultimately with you know, a larger quantities so that you have to consider that as well as I tried to do it when I was kind of lower on my inventory so I could easily transition without losing too much money and thinking it's just a rebranding, so
Collin 27:00
Sure. Now on that transition, how did you handle the transition of branding of rebranding with existing clients and customers? How did you communicate? How did you communicate that to them, so that they didn't feel lost? Or that the business had been sold or any anything like, yeah,
Amber 27:16
so, you know, that was one of the things we considered a rebranding, which I was really hesitant on, like I talked about, you know, previously was that you put a lot of time and effort that you know, what is it that you have to hit somebody that hits somebody physically, but like, you know, being there I you know, being there i X amount of times before, you know, you kind of were remembered or it's a remembered factor, whatever. And so, you know, the, when you're driving around with your logo and your current or existing, you know, clientele you do worry that are they going to get confused or lost or whatever. So, I'm using that company, the the crowdsource company that we use, we were able to get that on her social media, get them involved, number one, so they could be kind of excited for the process of this is fun to actually get an opinion degree in which was exciting and then to you know, we had email list so we were kind of letting them know when it did happen we kind of had the old logo next to the new logo kind of saying same company, same management rebranded for the new, you know, it was 2019 or 2019. And so we made sure our clientele were understanding of that fact when we had new clients or existing clients after each visit, we were dropping new business cards with a new logo on them. So they saw the new logo in person. We do printed magnets for some clients as well. So make sure we left a new printed magnet with the new logo on it as well. On our website, it kind of showed the old logo and the new logo for a while as well. So a multifaceted you know process to make sure old clients and existing clients or those client or the potential clients, the ones that have kind of been watching you for a little bit but haven't signed on board yet but they knew it was still us. So like our Facebook banner, I think at one point has The old version of the logo in the new version of the logo, you know, together. So they saw, hey, Oh, I remember I remember that old logo. Oh, this is the new company. Luckily, we didn't change our name either. So the name kind of kept it, you know, knowing that it was the same company,
Collin 29:14
as well. I mean, if you ever want to think about the power of brand recognition of just go down a cereal aisle, whenever the Kellogg's or whoever changes the color or puts a new picture on their box, I walk up and down that aisle four or five times going, they don't stock this thing anymore. This isn't real. And then only to have someone go Oh, no, they changed the box last week and I go Okay, whatever. So
Amber 29:35
my four year old can name recognize like branded cereals already, they have a really well trained.
Collin 29:42
And so, so your process of slow and steady, we're going to put both them out there. We're going to communicate a lot and your idea of getting them involved and having them voted. I can't love that enough. I mean, that just sounds so cool. Tonight, it
Amber 29:57
was something I didn't even think of until they also For the opportunity that was like, Oh, that's genius.
Collin 30:02
Yeah.
Amber 30:04
A little bad potentially, too, because what if we didn't get the one they wanted or whatever. So I thought about that, as well as an intimidation piece of it. And then I just said isn't get it, we're just gonna go for it and make it a fun process and get that piece out there to them still and being there I still, which was huge.
Collin 30:20
Somebody listening to this and thinking, should I do this now? Or should I wait? What would you say about now being a good time to think about and starting that process of rebranding?
Amber 30:33
You know, I saw a quote from somebody that I don't know what it was, who it was from, but it wasn't a pet care industry site of some sort. And they shared the fact that you know, this is the best time to remake yourself. Because you may be on hiatus, you may this may be closed down purposefully or required. Had it why not you can kind of come out that Phoenix in a way you know, come out of those ashes as a brand new opportunity. brand new, fresh start in a time, that's been pretty crazy, obviously, during this whole process of COVID. And one that's been a huge piece of it and to have the time probably now to, to actually take that mental capacity that instead of if you're if you're one that's in the, in the industry and walking the dogs and petting the dogs and you have 1314 visits a day, and you're out from, you know, seven to 10pm, you don't have time in the mental capacity to think about this. Now you may have it now you still have a trauma induced scenario obviously going on right now. So don't make drastic concepts right away, still take that time. But when you're using a third party company, whether it is a local mom and pop graphic designer or not, or a larger crowd sourced option, you're getting other people's opinions on it, which is huge, too. But you have the time to you know, take this time and, you know, catch up and do the things that you've been thinking of or whether it's been weeks, months or years, you know, so changing those logos rebranding Looking at what you really want your business to be now, in the next X amount of years of changes, this is probably not gonna be the first time or the last time that this, you know, stay at home shutdown thing happens to us realistically. So take that time to think about that, you know, and take that time to update your SRP standard operating procedures or, you know, send cards to your clients thanking them, you know, or you know, saying, Hey, we miss you, we just sent custom text messages that we made on Canva, which is a free website or a depending on what level you use. I'm just saying, Hey, we miss, you know, Bologna and cheese. I know with a cute graphic and texted it to them to our top 20 clients again, to keep up with our logo, everything's a logo. And and and sending it to them and getting responses back to them and taking that time to make sure your clients rabies vaccines are updated, saying hey, you know, not thinking about now but in the future too. Don't forget your rabies vaccine needs to be scheduled when you're better open to doing your team back things again. Updating things intruding upon your gas mileage and your personal care you know as well as hiring and if you're looking to hire this is a great time to rebrand so you can have a great start to hiring if it's your first IC or your first employee, or if you're needing to re hire new staff or new ICS or whatever you do when this when this stay at home order stop and making sure you're getting the right people to apply for your company and you know, making sure that first image that you're putting out there for your new potential staff is the right one ultimately, taking redoing that website. So first thing before redoing a website probably want to rebrand so you know what the direction of your website you know you want to go to and and taking that time to research. If you want to do a crowdsource if you want to do your local mom and pop you know graphic designers or, you know, companies that may be closer to you. And in taking time to get scheduled grand reopening, whether you're brick and mortar or virtual, you know There's there's a handful of sites out there right now I know there's a big pet care professional that has a website or Facebook group she just started that was like the seven day business COVID something grand reopening page, get on there, she's given some great tips you know, on the next week of like things you can prep for to have a grand reopening. So we didn't fully close in our industry, you know, for our business, we shut down dog walking because it was considered non essential but pet setting was still considered essential. So when a client was unable is away or something or medically necessary. So you know, making sure we're gonna have we're planning a grand reopening virtually say, hey, our business is fully open up and running. We can restart those dog walking clients, we can you know, and try to get new clients in at this point in time, whether that's with video or printed material or you know, social media or YouTube or whatever you use in your business and planning that with your new you know, hey, this is our new look at that phoenix rising out of the ashes It's time.
Collin 35:01
Yeah, cuz right now you mentioned, we have time if I know, you know, a lot of people start they don't put a lot of thought into or a lot of effort into their logo and their branding because they just need to get something and get out the door and start working. And then they look up and it's Yeah, and it's been it's been five it's been 10 years and and maybe you've never really liked it or but you know, the the amount of work and forethought and process involved in this. It's not it's not inconsequential. And so it takes time and now if you've never liked the way the font was or anything like that, or the color or the the figure that was put on there, you know, taking the time right now to to allow yourself some space and as you mentioned, you know, there's obviously a lot of trauma going on so so still breathing and dealing with and working through that and not making massive drastic
Amber 35:50
mental health is where it needs to be before you continue this pathway for sure.
Collin 35:53
Yeah, cuz this is a this is a big deal and you don't want to be making big rash decisions. If If you're not if you're not mentally in a good space and so making sure that that's, that's there and allowing yourself to to address these kind of these kind of things and be creative and it still allows you to be creative and engaging and communicating with other people and just pulls the whole thing together when a lot of times right now, we might not know exactly what to be doing or working on and the idea of a of having a grand virtual reopening just speaks volumes to that. We are still here. This is we're not defeated. We're still here to provide service and and we're reopening not because we you know not because of anything we did but but because of the circumstances and you know, we can celebrate that and make that a celebratory thing and what better way to do that than then being the phoenix rising up
Amber 36:48
and you totally have the time to do it. Right You know, in the sense of you know, okay say in Florida right now we still have easily till early May at minimum that we have a stay at home order for The crowd design process that I did through design crowd took a week only, like you know, from the time I put it on to the set of 100 plus designs that came through to the final editing, it took seven days of back and forth between me and the designer that I ended up using. And the number one thing is like, okay, where do I start? Like, how do I even know what type of logo that I want? I don't know. Like I'm not a graphic designer, right? Okay, go on Google, Google pet sitting company in every other state except worse. And then start saving logos and ideas from those companies so you can see okay, you can be looking at 100 different companies. And look at each logo and if it if it attracts you for whatever reason, right click, save it and say why you like it, say the color, the the style of it, or the picture, you know, whatever it is that you like and do that for an hour or two when you're kind of watching a Disney plus movie in the background to where next flexing and chillin with the tiger King or whatever it may be, but doing that in the background and saving it and then what will happen is after that two hours, you can then take the next day and look at all those logos that you saved and look for the consistency What is one thing or two thing that keeps popping out between those logos that you've liked from all these other companies and say that's what I want in mind. That's the vibe I want. You know, when I when I decided what kind of logo I wanted, I the one that kept coming back to me was the logo in the picture and they're combined making a letter into a picture somehow that really attracted me, you know, it's artistically aesthetically pleasing. I was like that I like that's why my first step was like I want the letter transformed into a picture. And so what happened is when I put up idea thought processes on an idea board or a Pinterest board or whatever board you use, whether you print it off and put it on an actual cork board is I saw That overall consistency of like, this is the look that I want mine to have. So, and knowing that when I was able to hire graphic designer, team or individual, I knew that giving that to them because pictures speak 1000 words, right? Giving them those pictures is going to help them give me the best return on investment for the money I'm investing in to them doing this job. So that first step was literally just looking at hundreds of companies googling and looking at logos and saving what I liked. And then looking at it again and saying what do I like about those things and then dividing it into Oh, I really like these colors. You know, I really find you know, the so when I chose purple and yellow purple is my favorite color. The opposite color of purple on the color wheel is yellow, which is actually my least favorite color funny enough.
39:50
And don't judge me. I'm not a yellow bright happy person.
Amber 39:54
And I said but you know, complimentary on the color wheel. So looking at a color wheel then you know and saying okay, out of the blue color I like well it's my favorite color. Or if it's a fear free color, you know, if you've done fear free certification, we'll talk about colors that you know, send out certain feelings. And then looking on the opposite of that color wheel to make sure those colors complement each other to make sure you have a full compass, you know, multi, you know two to three colors in your designs usually, and then knowing what kind of vibe and feel that gives your clients and yourself and your staff and and then going from then from color, deciding what do you want in your logo? You know, do you want a picture of a deceased pet of yours or current pet that you're really that's what got you into the business? What's the story behind that? You know, that logo if you have one, I wanted happy pets. So a happy dog was really what I was going for, you know, because dogs Okay, yes, putting a dog only kind of scared me to like what about my like, again, you know, not a cat or a horse or chicken or
Collin 40:56
wherever What else? Yeah.
Amber 40:58
But if you look at your clients Tell again, if you are a majority cat client, maybe you consider a cat, you know, majority dog, you know, clientele consider a dog. Or you can do that, you know, multi pet encompassing logo as well, if that's something you're really passionate about. And thinking about that, you know, when I was reaching out to designers, they said, What do you want it and I said, You know, I lean towards things that they have in our county or on our city. Rather, swans are a big cap, the city has swans that they own, so swans are a huge thing in our town. So swans are Florida natural folks or dogs or families. You know, I kind of threw out all those concepts because I didn't want to be stuck on one thing and maybe seeing what other designers created for me that I didn't think of. And so some did have that Florida natural oak tree. Some had swans integrated into it as well. Some had human you know, hands or a family with pets in it as well. And if you google if you google Attaboy Animal Care design crowd, you'll be able to pop up our actual old job posting and see Hundreds of logos 100 hundred plus logos that we got. So you can see an example which is what I also did is I looked at pet care design crowd and popped up all the old jobs because they're open still in on their website, so you can see what designs they got and what designs you were passionate about, because you can reach out to designers specifically, and I really want you to design mine. Yeah, as an option as well. So kind of again, going back to what looking at others looking at other national logos and seeing what, what you like best, or what your team likes best or your company likes best and making sure you're going in that right direction. So looking at originals, then colors and then what you actually want in the logo are the top three things I would say before starting to reach out to a graphic designer, you need to be able to verbalize and put in picture what you want back or you're not going to get what you want. You're gonna be angry and you're gonna be out money.
Collin 42:54
Right? Yeah, two, two things. We don't really want Now what I would like to have is to be able to direct people to a version of your your old logo and your new one. And do you still have those posted? Or would would I be able to include those maybe in some show notes for people to view? And
Amber 43:13
I have I have I have the old logo for sure. I don't have it anywhere openly posted right now or anything. But I could easily go hand that out to you. That shows the old logo and the original sketches. I think I even have somewhere to the new logo as well.
Collin 43:30
I think I think that'd be beneficial for people to see that transition. And then I'll include a couple links to things that you've been talking about, including a link to go see that design on design crowd that you that you mentioned. And if people are feeling like, they want to do this, and they're they're very interested and maybe they have some questions about that process or want some advice, how could they reach out to you and and, and have you maybe, you know, coach them through that process. Give them some encouragement along the way
Amber 44:01
I don't mind at all so I actually started a local pet professionals Facebook group and for just that you know sharing amongst the the pet care industry I think is huge I always say comrades not competition. And exactly you know there's there's so many dogs we can't take care of all I always say is we have to share the wealth. And so I always think that's huge. So yeah, you can contact me through army company what's your email which is info at Attaboy animal gear comm you can find me on Facebook personally, if you're interested, which is Amber and Denton tooless in the States, I'm the older one. But you'll you'll find me there and feel free to you could easily you know private messages on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube as well. That's not a problem as well. Those are all options and I have an assistant but she'll push them out to me When I speak to you directly not Oh,
Collin 45:03
wonderful. Well, Amber, I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. There's a lot to consider and lot goes into this. But it's so as you mentioned, so worth it and so freeing and it just completely changes the atmosphere of your company and your outlook. And so I really appreciate you coming on today and sharing and giving encouragement through those experiences and some helpful tips and pointers for people to get started. As it is you mentioned it's a great time to do that.
Amber 45:30
Absolutely. Absolutely. Take the time that you have, eat some cookie dough, watch some Netflix and then read the rebrand. That's what that's for everyone that needs it. So cookie dough, Netflix and rebranding. There we go.
45:43
three step process right here we go.
Amber 45:46
Just like that. You know, finding the logo, finding your colors and finding your picture that you want.
Collin 45:52
Yes. Perfect. Well again, Amber, I really appreciate you coming on today. And I hope I wish you all The best and we'll be we'll be in touch,
46:02
say appreciated Colin,
Collin 46:03
I hope that got all of your creative juices flowing thinking about what your design currently is, and maybe what it could be if you decide that you want to rebrand and maybe want to kick around some ideas, join our sitters confessional group on Facebook, we'd love to see what you're thinking about. And other people I know would give some great feedback as well, as we all look to reopen and celebrate that rebranding might be a wonderful tool to go along with that, to come out of this with a new look with new ideas with a new perspective and outlook on just where your business can and should be going. Check out our website. Fetzer confessional comm for many links that amber discussed here including being able to see her before and after logo design. You can also call us and I promised Megan I'd get this memorized. So let's see how we do 636-364-8260 Okay, If I'm honest, I was reading that from my notes. But there we go. Megan and I will be back on Monday with a new episode of kitchen confessions. Have a great weekend.
