NoCodeOps Rebrand

In this episode of The Debrief, we are sitting down with our pal Philip Lakin, former CEO and co-founder of NoCodeOps. What do we mean by former, you ask? Well, a few weeks back our friends at NoCodeOps were acquired by "their favorite player in the space" — Zapier.

Focus Lab CEO, Bill Kenney, sits down with Phil to relive their rebrand experience with us from two years ago and discuss how the brand has helped get them to where they are today. They touch on topics such as:

👉 The strategy behind making tough brand architecture decisions

👉 The success behind a community-based approach as a SaaS company

👉 How the brand investment helped with the Zapier acquisition

And so much more!

Resources:

NoCodeOps / Zapier Acquisition Press Release: https://www.nocodeops.com/zapier

NoCodeOps Case Study: https://focuslab.agency/work/nocodeops

Full Transcript:

[Bill Kenney]

Hey everyone, this is Bill Kenney, CEO and co-founder of Focus Lab and Odi, two global B2B brand agencies. I'm back with another episode of The Debrief. A special episode, I'm sitting down with our dear friend now, Phil Lakin. Phil Lakin is the co-founder of a company called NoCodeOps. We worked with Phil two years ago. NoCodeOps was just acquired by Zapier two weeks ago.

So there's a big trajectory. There's a big journey here that we talk about going from early-stage company deciding it's time to invest in brand and what that means. We talk about the project itself and some really strategic decisions and how to architect the business structure. Let’s call it brand architecture through the design phase, writing phase, into web, all that coming out the other side now having been acquired and what that whole trajectory was like such a fantastic episode. Uh, side note, I recorded the whole thing through my headphone mic, early apologies for the sound quality. Uh, I'm now on my good mic. You're going to hear that leap when you jump into the episode.

I only mentioned that because Phil and I actually talk about the importance of sound quality in the episode. It's worth mentioning it. I hope you enjoy the episode.

[Bill Kenney]

All right, Mr. Phil, we meet again.

[Phil Lakin]

Here we are.

[Bill Kenney]

Welcome to the, yeah, welcome to The Debrief, as we call it. I'm excited to chat with you. A lot has happened since we've worked together. What are we, like, two years removed now from the branding work? Something like that?

[Phil Lakin]

Yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

Does that feel like it flew by?

[Phil Lakin]

It feels just like yesterday, but I think it also feels so close because we never stopped talking.

[Bill Kenney]

Yes.

[Phil Lakin]

Like you and I just continued to jam even post engagement. So here we are.

[Bill Kenney]

Here we are. Here we are. But now we get to relive it. We'll go kind of like we'll go back to that memory lane and we'll relive what it was like to go through that rebrand for NoCodeOps and actually even kind of deciding to go as NoCodeOps and not as Operator and these types of things. All these fun things.

A reminder to you and to everybody here. The reason that we record these is simply just to uncover what it's like to go through a branding effort, whether people want to call it a refresh or rebrand. I don't get caught up in the weeds on that, but just this idea of investing and taking a brand journey is interesting.

It's challenging. It's different for everybody. So I love sitting down with our past partners like yourself and just getting your perspective on that journey. But first, why don't you just take a second here and tell everybody who you are and what the hell you do now.

[Phil Lakin]

Yeah, sure. My name is Philip Lakin. Up until recently, I was the co-founder and CEO of NoCodeOps. But we just announced the other day that we've been acquired by Zapier, which is super exciting. So, thank you very much, sir. Our community is moving over to Zapier, so the NoCodeOps community will continue to live on.

Most of our team is going over and joining, and I will be joining as the Head of Enterprise Innovation. So, just helping push Zapier up market across all the different channels and departments internally. I'm just super jazzed. It's a cool journey and couldn't have gotten to this point without some really good clarity about who we were and what we were.

So big thanks to y'all on that front.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Exciting time, sir. Super happy, timely conversation. Um, when I saw that news break, I was like, wow, good for them. What a trajectory you've been on pre- us working with us all the way to this and only a couple of years. Rocket ship status. Yeah, great. All right. So let's go back to the beginning, though, of our engagement.

The first question I generally lead out with is how did you know it was actually time to consider brand as far as an investment as a tool as a lever for your growth? What spawned you deciding that was necessary?

[Phil Lakin]

There were a few factors, but I think the biggest one for us was that we weren't the standard SaaS company in that, like we had built software and now we're looking to build a community or like a distribution lever on top of that we went the opposite way. Um, and we built the community and newsletter before we even built a product. Um, and the community was always called NoCodeOps. We didn't want to call the tool NoCodeOps. We knew that from the beginning, so we called it something separate. Initially we called it Switchboard and then that became Operator which was a fun mid journey pivot for you and your team.

Thank you for dealing with us on that one. Um, so we have these two brands, and we knew that we didn't want to have them be the same thing, but we also knew we wanted them to be related. And we just didn't know how to do that. Um, and there were very few, uh, folks in the market that had gone about building a software company in this way before, uh, Noetic is one that comes to mind, like their CPO HQ community and their software product.

But there were just very few examples. So we just wanted to work with an expert. First of all, you know, the branding work we'd done was very, very minimal. I think it was like me and my co-founder in Canva, very simple stuff. Uh, we called it just professionally passable was our inside joke.

Um, um, and like that was on the software side and then on the, you know, we had to work with like some freelancers on the NoCodeOps side, but like. We didn't have a cohesive way of how all of those things talk to each other. And we wanted to think through folks, like, how do we not just slap more brands on this thing or link the sites together?

How do we get really intentional about how these two brands are, you know, now Operator, the software platform, and NoCodeOps actually work with each other. Look, present themselves. Um, and we just wanted to go to folks that were incredible. That was that.

[Bill Kenney]

Yes. Yes. I think it's a similar story, honestly, to what most people's journey to brand is: we had what we had and it worked until it didn't work. And then we realized we had ambitions and things to do, and we needed some help.

And again, going back to the point, whether people called rebrand, refresh, whether it's a brand architecture issue, or it's just that we're trying to move up a market and look more mature issue.

Like everybody's kind of like brand challenges are different, but brand is there to serve in that way. Yeah. So, so you found, you found us. But more than talking about us, I'd like to hear like, what, what were you looking for in the right partner?

As people are considering an investment in brand, man, the landscape is crazy wide. Right. You've got freelancers, you've got people fresh out of school. You've got like your friends' kids that know how to design stuff. Then you kind of move up a tier. Then there's another tier. Then there's another tier. The price ranges are all over the damn place. So how did you know what you were looking for?

[Phil Lakin]

Yeah, we were looking for one. We knew we didn't just want to group together a bunch of freelancers on this front. Like this was too important to us and we didn't want to have to do this like 20 more times. Like we wanted to do it right once. We also knew that we didn't need to go with, you know, the extreme opposite end.

Right? Like, right. We knew we weren't going to spend like a half a million or a million bucks on things like rounding the corners on stuff, right? Or designing like the Pepsi, you, you know, universe logo, right? So, we weren't in that camp. We knew we were somewhere in the middle.

We knew we wanted to do everything with one agency that already had folks working together cohesively that knew B2B SaaS really, really, really well. Um, that was, uh, fun in how they had done some B2B SaaS, not totally just like, all right, make it blue because that's trustworthy. Right. Like, um, so had a little bit of flair to them, um, and can handle all the different parts of this, including like.

You know, some copy, brand voice, giving us the assets we needed to be successful on our own in terms of just like all the social that we were going to do. Right. Not try to just like, say we need to be a part of every little piece of this thing. Like, trust us as well. And so that's what we were looking for.

So, you know, a bit more mature, but also had that scrappy spirit. Uh, And I mean, I'd love to tell you, I went on this really complex journey and like went through every Clutch review and did like this, that, and it's like. No, man, I just saw Salesloft. I was like, whoever did that, it was that simple.

I was like, whoever did that. Great. It's one of my favorite rebrands. It's so beautiful. So fun. And then it was an added bonus when you had also done Tango. So Tango, one of the co-founders is one of our investors and like, So I just like back channeled it, you know, Dan and I was like, what did you think?

He was like, just don't even think about it and do it that easy. And we're like, okay, that was it.

[Bill Kenney]

Love it. And you're in Atlanta, right? So the Salesloft connection there. So like proximity to you, it probably was on your radar.

[Phil Lakin]

Oh yeah.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah.

[Phil Lakin]

So we knew them locally. right. But like when we saw how beautiful, like, I just love the currency and like money stuff, like I just thought it was so cool.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I think the spectrum that you created. Is real and it is helpful. It's kind of like freelancers are great and they're appropriate for certain people at certain sizes and certain scales.

I think what we find is that people that hire us, they're trying to reduce risk. You didn't say those words necessarily, but it is kind of what you were getting at, like, I don't want to group a bunch of people together and do it 20 times. That's not a knock to freelancers. There's probably great freelancers that you'll do it once with and be like, ah, but I can see somebody in your perspective is going to have the like, but I don't know what I don't know.

And that is riskier.

[Phil Lakin]

I don't know what I don't know. The problem with freelancers is you have to end up managing them on some level. Right? And so I feel confident in doing that when I really know the space. Right? So. A good example, right? Like, video editing, right? Like I feel totally fine hiring a video editing freelancer because I myself know about video editing a bit and like feel confident in managing that and exactly what I'm looking for.

When it comes to brand and brand architecture and like all these other things, I have no, you know, I know what I like. I've got a little bit of taste, but like, that's about it. And so, uh, and I don't know all the things I don't know. So I wanted someone to manage the team of folks around this stuff.

And like, that was not just going to be one freelancer or a group of freelancers that would have created more work for us and more risk.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well said again as I have a fair amount of design community following specifically, right? They're like, Oh man, we're knocking freelancers. We're not knocking freelancers. But I think it's important for founders similar to Phil and for all of us to understand what their pain points are. Um, and you've expressed it quite well, which is like, this is what I needed.

And this is what I was fearful of. Uh, and that we sit. Yeah. Right in that category you're talking about. So I love to hear that quite honestly. Uh, so we get into the project. Okay, great. Found the team, fell in love with them in the sales process, putting words in your mouth. Uh, and we start the project.

Projects like this, doesn't even matter actually whether they're eight week projects, 18 week projects, the scope, all this, they are a mountain climb regardless for everybody. It's their version of a mountain climb. So I'm interested to hear first, what was most challenging for you and your position as a founder going through a project like this?

[Phil Lakin]

Wow. There was a lot. First it comes right back to not knowing what I don't know, right? Like how many things do we need? And like, went for the easy route and I'm happy we did, but just like, just let's just do everything right.

[Bill Kenney]

Cover all the bases.

[Phil Lakin]

Give us the Cadillac baby, you know.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah.

[Phil Lakin]

I'm like the type of person that really despises when you go to a restaurant, it's like quick service.

And then it was like, options where you create your own salad. I hate that. Like I like the prepackaged ones. Uh, like I don't like making those types of decisions. So like give me everything, like, let's just go for it. And so I think that was the first thing. I think that this, the, the next piece really came down to, um, look, there's a bit of work that you have to do on your end, even if you're bringing in folks on this front and being prepared on that front is really important.

And as much as we'd love to say this on, like when you're an early startup as a founder, there's like all this work that you'd love to think that you can outsource or like give to a team member. And you just can't. You just have to do it. And so I think that it was that realization of like, Oh man, I'm gonna have to fill out all these questionnaires.

I'm gonna have to do all of this stuff. Like I can get help. I have to do this because, uh, you know, and/or like with my co-founder, uh, because We are just so close to this and have seen its evolution. And, um, and so it was a commitment, you know, I think there's this fantasy of like, uh, the Mad Men fantasy of like, you just tell them what you want.

And then you sit in a room and they pitch you really cool stuff. And it's like, that's not how it works. You've got to give people the arsenal of information that they need in the way that they're used to working with it. And so it was a bit of a commitment on our end in the beginning to like, as a small team, to like, put aside the time and get that together.

And I'm going to be honest, man, I got pushback from my team internally. Like, Phil, this is a pretty big commitment. Are we sure? Like we need this at this point. We sure we're ready for this? And I was like, uh, you know, I had to take some credits out of the trust bank and go, trust me, like, Oh, this is all going to be worth it.

And I ended up winning that bet. So I was very happy on that front. Uh, but it was a bet. And so we did the work and that was the first challenge was like getting everyone together and getting the buy in that like, this is worth it. The work that we need, not only the resources by way of finances we're putting in, um, but all of that stuff is worth it.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Let me, I'm going to stop you there and focus on this commitment piece because it is so important. Funny enough, you mentioned Tango when I interviewed Ken and then Dan subsequently, both of them noted as their final points at the end, like, what's the most important thing, which I'll get to you. Like, what would you tell somebody?

They both mentioned the commitment side, right? I think you're right. Whether it's a fantasy or a mirage and it's not right or wrong, but I think it's the don't know what I don't know of the commitment side, right? Well, I'm going to hire this company. They've got it all figured out, so they're just going to run and they're really going to help me. And I do want people to feel that way. But what they don't realize is that the level of commitment is very high. It's very high. This is a two way street and we need people like you, Phil, involved in the project.

And not just in the beginning, like you mentioned, which is the big kind of onboarding portion, which can feel very heavy. But also this week to week cadence that we work on, right? Hey, we're going to meet again. And we're going to look at things. And we're going to meet again. And we're going to look at things.

And we're going to meet again and look at things. And I think what we found is people at your size, and this is kind of broad strokes, so I'll probably protect myself here in a second.

[Phil Lakin]

No man, lean in. Take a gamble.

[Bill Kenney]

People are, are really, they're really able to say, I got it. This is a commitment we've made and I'm fully committed to this.

I think it's because the companies get larger, larger, larger. Some of those cracks can really show up. I don't have time to go to that. I've got a big ELT offsite thing and it's two weeks long. I can't go to the next two weeks worth of meetings. That's going to be a challenge, right? Cause we don't want to make things in the dark for two weeks without involvement from the other side.

I guess what I'm getting at is the larger the company, the more things are pulling at those people. Not to say you're not busy in your own right.

[Phil Lakin]

It's a good thing because it is a highly iterative process. And if you're just thinking you're going to waterfall it and just be like, here you go, here's all of our stuff. Come back with us. And you know, two months with every single asset, like. That is not how this works. And you think you might want that, but you don't because nothing was a surprise to us, right.

As things were progressing. And that was really, really, really valuable. And look, there's all this work that goes into thinking about these things before they become assets that are even, uh, reviewable.

[Bill Kenney]

Yes. Yes.

[Phil Lakin]

It's work. Um, now it is work that any, any early-stage founder is very capable of doing, but it can't be skipped and it takes time.

[Bill Kenney]

That's it. That's it. Just carve out the time. That's the like. What's the biggest expectation piece that you might miss? I think it's just the time and involvement. So if I tell you now, maybe you won't be halfway through going like, Oh my God, this is taking so much time. It's like, no, no, we set out to climb a mountain.

It was never going to be easy climbing it, but we know getting to the top is where we're trying to go. Um, so again, thank you for saying that. I just wanted to note that because the goal of these interviews is to share that type of stuff. So when people engage, whether it's with us or anybody, they realize, Oh, Oh, I see.

[Phil Lakin]

The way that I would think about it, is like. If you're a novice climber, right. You're going to get a guide, and it doesn't mean that, uh, they're going to carry you on their backs all the way up the mountain.

You still have to climb a mountain, right?

[Bill Kenney]

That's right.

[Phil Lakin]

But we're going to be there with you every step of the way. And they've done this a hundred times. They'll do it a hundred more and you feel safe in their hands. Everything feels attainable. Like when you're working with them. And so it's the same thing. You are going to climb this mountain.

There's no, there's literally no way around that.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Cause we cannot, we can't climb it for you. You couldn't come to us, fill out a couple of documents and then however many weeks, months later, we go like, here it is a great solution. It's done. There's so much nuance, whether we love it or not. There's also objective and subjective opinions that have to be a part of the climb.

It is just how it goes so therefore it's a lot of work on both sides. Okay, great challenge point I actually won't even press you to deliver more challenges unless you have one top of mind. Is there any other particular point that you're like? Oh, that was actually a pretty hard part of the project.

Maybe the decision around Switchboard.

[Phil Lakin]

I think, yeah, the decision around, uh, that was tough. That was tough because we genuinely didn't know what to do.

[Bill Kenney]

Explain how that went for you.

[Phil Lakin]

So we knew we loved the brand NoCodeOps, right? Owning the dot com was also not an insignificant part of that either. Right? So I don't for years. Um, and so, you know, We love the NoCodeOps brand.

We love that there was a tool agnostic community part of what we did. And that NoCodeOps is associated with that. We love the tool being a separate brand, but what we didn't know was, are they two separate entities that just are somewhat related to each other, or is one the sub brand of the other or vice versa?

So three different options, right? So was it Operator by NoCodeOps, NoCodeOps by Operator or NoCodeOps and Operator, two separate things that just have links to each other.

[Bill Kenney]

Yep.

[Phil Lakin]

And we've seen people do all of those things and be successful. And we've seen people do all of those things and be not successful.

Um, and one of the things that we noticed with the people that were successful was that they were super intentional about it, and put a ton of thought into it. It wasn't just like a fly by night decision. Um, I know because we talked to them and we asked tons of questions, uh, and got a lot of insights there. And so the, the, the reality is.

When we came to, well, when we started working with you guys, it was still called Switchboard and then halfway through a change to Operator, the tool side. So we kind of put it in your team's hands to be like, here's everything we know about this, right?

Here's all the research we've done. Here's why we like them as, you know, separate brands, but related, but we don't know how to relate them. And y'all asked us a ton of questions. We talked about this a bunch, but you came back with this recommendation that you were, you know, that you said NoCodeOps is just such powerful branding.

You've built all of this great brand equity around this already. Um, and what if you flipped the SaaS thing on its head and said, instead of doing the thing that most folks do on this front, which is like, we're SaaS and we also have this community or we're SaaS and the SaaS powers, this community, what have you just totally flipped that on its head, because that's kind of what you're doing already.

But like, what if we owned and amplified that story that you're already naturally kind of doing. And to be honest, man, we were scared. We were like, man, if we do this, are we ever going to get another SaaS VC investor? Are they just going to think of us as a community that happens to scrappily build some software?

Like we had all these fears about it. But you know what, it worked out and we, we trust y'all. And I remember that decision being really scary. But we leaned in.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. And then you also had to present that to investors slash board level people. Yes. Right. Hey, this is what we're doing. Was there also fear there?

[Phil Lakin]

There was a little bit in presenting that some of our more major investors and like presenting that, you know, kind of like with upcoming investors, right. Um, there was fear in that but what we got back from them and especially, well, a lot of them, uh, loved that we were working with you guys. In fact, after, uh, I remember, I remember one call, this one set of investors we have, um, when I was on the phone with them telling them about our update, they're like, Oh God, brand update.

They just had this moment of fear, right? Like, Oh God, like. This is like such a death knell for so many folks, right? Like, you know, uh, and then they saw it and I saw the reaction live and they're like, Oh, my God, this is incredible. Um, they're like, please tell us who did this. We want to know, like, so we can tell everyone else about these people.

[Bill Kenney]

Love it. Mm hmm.

[Phil Lakin]

And so look, uh, the research that went into that and you guys have done this so many times. I think that that lent a lot of credibility and trust. And then when people saw the result, it was just like, you can't deny them. And to this day, I get a founder asking me every week, every week, who did the brand?

Who did the website? You know, how did you architect all these beautiful pieces together? Right? Like, Oh, I love how the half circles make up the logo, but then they also make up all of the sub brands. Like we just get every week. I have someone asking me about that. Um, and so still working.

[Bill Kenney]

I appreciate it. I appreciate the kind of like behind the scenes perspectives too, because again, that's exactly why we record these like we could, I could build case studies all day, but you don't get the essence of what it's actually like to go through it again, the highs, the lows, let's get to some of the highs now and you kind of like segued into that a little bit.

What was the most rewarding aspect that maybe you haven't touched on indirectly yet?

[Phil Lakin]

Ooh, man. I, I think that a few of the moments for me are like, You guys do this cool thing where you have, uh, mock ups, on like the shirt, you know, like all the swag and stuff, like when you're like thinking of logo, like, uh, I have this one buddy Edmund here in Atlanta, really cool guy. And he always talks about this thing called the t-shirt test, which you're passing right now. Is your brand cool enough or awesome enough that it can live on a t- shirt, uh, and on its own. Um, and would you wear that t-shirt? And when Brent and I saw the NoCodeOps logo, just as it was on a t- shirt, we were like, that's it. And like, that was a cool moment. Passes, total pass.

[Bill Kenney]

It’s kind of, and I don't speak for you, but it's kind of like one of those first moments where it starts to become real, right? You're like. It's kind of the It's Happening meme.

[Phil Lakin]

That's what it felt like. We were like, Oh yeah. And then both of our wives, when they saw the shirts, me and my co-founder, they liked it and wanted the shirts. We're like, okay, now we really knew we did a good job.

[Bill Kenney]

Really on to it.

[Phil Lakin]

Um, so that was, that was pretty cool. I also just think like seeing people's reaction when we launched the rebrand, like the site.

[Bill Kenney]

There you go.

[Phil Lakin]

People were just super jazzed about it.

I mean, this might sound silly, but, uh. You know, the people in our audience that we were representing and are representing through NoCodeOps are part of the reason that people gravitated towards the community and all of this stuff is because these folks have not had an identity, right? They're like, you know, the systems person on their sales team on their CX team.

Uh, um, on their marketing team. And yes, terms have started coming up like marketing ops, sales ops, people ops, and all of that's awesome. But a lot of these people identified as no code operations people, and that itself didn't have a really good brand around it or anything around it. And so to show people like this is who you are, like you are one of us on this front and here's something that you can relate to, like that just articulated even further the advocacy part of what we did, which is like, no, this is the role, this is a track, this is something you can grow in and here's a beautiful presentation of that, um, that you can feel really, inspired and confident about it.

It's pretty cool.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, I'm also assuming there's a bit of the: We released it to the world. It's being embraced well, my final fears are over, of the climb.

[Phil Lakin]

Yeah, people like

[Bill Kenney]

The final fear is going to be like, does everyone hate it? And we've still got to own it. But like, damn, a little bit sad.

[Phil Lakin]

They liked it. They really liked it.

[Bill Kenney]

I know that's always, as much as some people want to say, I'm not so worried.

I'm not worried about that. I know it aligns to our mission. I know it will help us. Everybody's worried about that, right? Will people like it?

[Phil Lakin]

It resonated

[Bill Kenney]

Quite a psychological battle is the brand game that we all play. Uh, alright. Post project. I feel like I'm throwing you a total softball, so do, do what you want with this question. I generally ask, have you seen ROI from this? Like what's the impact, what's the impact of the efforts that you invested in? Do what you want with that, sir.

[Phil Lakin]

Oh man, well look doubling down on community was totally the right choice for us, right because um, And therefore investing in the community and investing it as like the top of our brand. Um, and that was all those were all the really those were the right choices Like black and white, that was the right choice.

And the way that we, uh, kind of laid out our brain architecture was like NoCodeOps is an ecosystem. We have this community that's called NoCodeOps, but we also have education and we also have, you know, then we eventually added all these other things like, you know, a job board and an Academy, right.

And they all fit in really beautifully, to what we were already doing. And so, that was really, really, really helpful. It also helped with cold outreach, right? Every SaaS company that called outreach to folks, right. It was just like, Hey, come talk to us about buying our SaaS new demo. Whereas we were saying, Hey, we've got this free community that can help empower you and like with free education materials, like.

You know, we'd love to invite you into this and like, yeah, if it makes sense, we'll talk to you about the SaaS, but like, really, the bigger win is like, let's just get you in the community. And that ended up being really powerful for us. Um, and people just trusted what we were doing. There's like this trust, like when you see something really well put together and articulated, uh, that like, you just, you trust it more.

And I think that that's a powerful thing. And so, uh, this well articulated brand that people really loved, um, went a long way for us. And making the decisions that we did using this for growth in the way that we did, right. Not only in terms of where we architected the brand, um, but, just how it made every interaction easier for us, right?

Was part of what led to the inevitable not, but, you know, the outcome that we did, right? Which is, you know, being acquired by our favorite company in the space. That was, uh, yeah. So now working with Zapier, right. Thanks man. There's, there's this, I think this trust that Zapier has with us. And it was very apparent through the whole, you know, kind of vetting process and, you know, negotiations, due diligence, and even now starting to collaborate with them, there's this trust that like, we really care about brand.

It's very important to us.

[Bill Kenney]

Uh, yeah.

[Phil Lakin]

They care about brand a lot too. It goes a long way for them, needless to say, right. It's like, especially one of the leaders in programmatic SEO, one of the leaders in PLG, right. Um, you know, brand goes a long way for them too. And I think that they saw that in us and that DNA and, uh, match made in heaven.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah. Dude, love that. Love it. Love it. Love it. We exist only to propel our customers to whatever. Their potential should, or could be. And whether that's a small portion of that, a large portion of that, we don't get caught up in the nuances there. It's just, we feel like what we do can help people on that journey.

And you've mentioned a couple of key points that I'll just highlight the reduced friction of how we talk about ourselves here versus there and all this stuff is kind of an unlock on its own, this idea of like: People do judge a book by its cover, perception is everything. I don't go into a lot of strip mall restaurants in town because I assume that if they look like that on the outside, the food must suck.

And that might not be true, but that's the name of the game. And ultimately, all those things combined in your trajectory puts you in an awesome position, and even beyond the visual perceptions, that strategic decision to put community first, And the impact that that created now into the outcome of where you are.

What a decision, right? What a decision. Hat tip and to even the strategy team.

[Phil Lakin]

So glad, so glad we doubled down.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, really, really happy that you shared that point. And what I was going to say is it's often that design gets the trophies. Right. It's just kind of the world is very visual. Right. And then it goes to words and it's often like, what about that strategic effort in the beginning, that kind of North star and all of these decisions and that one particular for you is so substantial.

[Phil Lakin]

Lots and lots and lots of ripple effects. And look, I'll, I'll be the first to say this. If what you're offering customers does not give them value, right? I don't care how good the brand is, right? It's not going to save the day. It might delay the inevitable, right? But it's not going to save it at all.

Right. However, um, If you've got something that now is getting to that spot of like, oh, wow, people are getting value from this. Um, and you're starting to understand. What the repeatable version of spreading that value to others is starting to look like, like that is the inflection point where brand becomes really important because, uh, we say this like, you know, I, you know, before tech, I was in acting, right.

And like, when I was an actor, I also like directed and produced stuff like short films. And, um, we always, we always used to joke that one of the problems with short films, uh, you know, this is like, now technology is a lot better, so it's not as big of a problem, but one of the problems used to be sound, sound design, and, uh, in sound design, uh, you would watch someone's short film and you'd just immediately be distracted by how bad the sound sucked.

Right. And you’d just instantly be distracted and it's not because you've got such great taste. It's just because you're used to seeing movies and TV every day where the sound is professional grade. And so you know, when the red flag goes up, like there's something weird here.

And I think that the same is true for brands like people every day are interacting with these SaaS products at work, in life, and B2C tech, right? Like, and so you just know, like, you might not be able to know what it is, but you know, when something's off and that becomes an inhibiting point when you're going toe to toe with all these bigger brands and companies.

And so at a certain point, you've got to match that and go beyond it. And I think you've got to nail what your value is before you do that. Right? Like good sound design is not going to save the plot of the movie or the bad acting. Right. But like, it sure can tank something at the right point. And so I think it's the same thing here.

[Bill Kenney]

Yeah, that's very well said. And, um, what I was thinking as you were speaking about that is like brand becomes a propellant, right? It goes on there and it really kind of fires up the rest of the system that is already working, but you're right. It won't save it in the same way, going back to the strip mall restaurant thing, like a really great facade on the outside, but bad dinner, is a one time dinner. Right. So it kind of like might be good enough to get people through the door, but it's not going to build a sustainable, strong business. You need both.

[Phil Lakin]

Unless, unless. You have the brand of Casa Bonita in Denver, which is in a

[Bill Kenney]

Tell me more.

[Phil Lakin]

It is the best place ever. Uh, so Casa Bonita got really famous from South Park, right? It's um, it's like a, it's a Mexican restaurant that is like a themed restaurant on the inside with like Cliff divers, literal cliff divers and a waterfall and like caves that you can explore and games and shows.

[Bill Kenney]

In a strip mall?

[Phil Lakin]

In a strip mall.

Yes, yes, yes. And it had some trouble during the, uh, like a lot of restaurants, uh, during COVID 19 and then the owners, uh, the, the creators, Matt and Trey from South Park bought it, put 50 million into it and then reopened it. And it is. The best. And in fact, uh, when I went out to go see the, this was pre-acquisition, spend some time with the team at Zapier, in Denver.

Uh, I went with Wade and the team, uh, to Casa Bonita, and it was like the best time ever.

[Bill Kenney]

Wow. Okay. So if that wasn't maybe the biggest takeaway of this whole interview, I don't, I don't know what's going to be. Oh, wow.

[Phil Lakin]

Talk about, yeah. When you were like, restaurants and a strip mall. I'm like, do I have a funny story on that front?

[Bill Kenney]

Hell yeah. Awesome. Uh, I'm going to find my way there. I don't get out in that area much, but you better believe that's going to be a must do when I get out that way. So my final question for you, was going to be, if you were sitting down with another founder and they were telling you, I'm about to go through a rebrand, regardless of who they pick, what would you tell them is the most important thing that they should care about or get right? One thing.

[Phil Lakin]

I think it's, I think it's this: don't look for shortcuts. They're just going to waste your time. It's really, it's just that simple. If you've started to hit this kind of inflection point where you're like, all right, brand's going to start making a difference for us. You know, like, Oh, we don't really have time to really invest here.

Like, I don't know. Let's just get a freelancer to just like jeuge up things or like maybe get it just a new mark, right. Or whatever it is. You're just going to spend money and time on that anyway. And then you're going to redo it all once you have to redo everything. So it's just like, it's almost better to just not do that and not invest.

And then when you're at the point where you really want to double down, then do it when you have the time, money, resources, buy in, I, I just don't take shortcuts.

[Bill Kenney]

Do it right. Uh, I have nothing to add. If I did, it would sound biased. Obviously would plus one that Phil. Thank you so, so much for not only spending time with me today, trusting us from the beginning for actually leaning in and doing it right for committing to the project, even though it takes a lot of time and we couldn't be happier for you and your team with the news of the acquisition.

I look forward to staying close to you following your journey. It's been a pleasure, sir, from start to finish.

[Phil Lakin]

Back at you, man. Back at you. Not only have I, you know, your team is one of the teams that we worked with agency wise, that I feel like I've stayed in touch with almost every member of the team.

[Bill Kenney]

Ah, love it.

[Phil Lakin]

Personally, professionally, just amazing people, amazing experience and, um, and just you yourself, like, both as founders talking each other through stuff and helping each other out with stuff. Just really appreciate your guidance and friendship along the way too. So yeah, man, happy to be a part of it. And thanks for, thank you for everything.

[Bill Kenney]

Of course, of course, of course. Alright, that concludes this episode. See you out there.