When’s the right time to let go of a brand that’s no longer serving your business — even if it’s been working for 10+ years?
In our latest episode of The Debrief, Focus Lab CEO Bill Kenney talks with the GigSalad team: CEO Mark Steiner, CTO Locke Bircher, and Product Designer Nichole Baiel. Together, they discuss the bold, intentional rebrand that helped them level up and better align with their future audience and goals.
They unpack the creative decisions, moments of friction, and meaningful conversations that shaped the transformation from the brief to the big reveal.
In this episode, we touch on:
✅ Why holding onto a legacy brand can quietly limit future growth
✅ How “playing it safe” in B2B branding makes it harder to stand out
✅ Why designing for your audience—not yourself—drives better results
✅ The often-overlooked value of soft skills when choosing a branding partner🎧 Whether you’re evolving your identity or evaluating your agency partner, this episode offers candid insights into what bold B2B branding really takes.
===
Full Transcript:
[00:00:00] Bill Kenney: Hey everyone. This is Bill Kenney, CEO, and co-founder of Focus Lab, a Global B2B branding agency. I'm back with another episode of the debrief. I love these because this is where I get to sit down with past Focus Lab partners. This is two years removed from this particular partner and we get to relive the project.
The goal is to get away from case studies and how beautiful and long they are, and they show how we got to the outcomes. The goal of these episodes with the people that went through the project is to uncover the realities of the project. How do you know it's time to rebrand? What is it like to try to find a partner and what matters in finding that partner?
These three people had great answers to that. Then we get into what was the most challenging. These projects, even when successful like this one, are challenging. So we get three different perspectives on what those challenges were. This is a unique episode because you're getting the perspective of Mark, the founder of Gig Salad.
You're getting the perspective of Nicole, who's only been there two to three years now, more product and design internally, [00:01:00] and then you're getting the perspective of Locke, who is the CTO. They were all key parts of the project and had wonderful points to share.
Super valuable, super practical if you're considering going through a rebrand yourself or you're another agency, wondering what clients actually care about, what they learn and what matters in the end with that learning, these are the episodes for you, and this one is especially for you because it's packed with three people's perspectives.
Enjoy.
[00:01:44] Bill Kenney: GigSalad team. Here we are. I think we've had this, at least in our brains for a while to have this recording. Uh, the project is now officially finished. I mean, are are we like two years removed? Are we, what, what are we a year removed? It's been a [00:02:00] while, right?
[00:02:00] Nichole Baiel: Since 2023.
[00:02:02] Bill Kenney: Okay. All right.
Yes. Oftentimes I'm speaking with people maybe only three to six months removed, so this is gonna be a deeper dive, which is good. It's gonna give us a unique perspective on having been away from the work for that long. And we're also gonna talk a bit about why. Why is it that long until it went live? But first, if quickly go around for the listeners and the viewers, introduce yourselves and tell us what you do.
[00:02:28] Mark Steiner: I am Mark. I'm one of the founders. I'm CEO and I've been, uh, at Gig Salad. I've been at this, this thing since concept, which was around 2002, 2003.
[00:02:43] Bill Kenney: That's like, I graduated high school a little bit before that.
[00:02:47] Mark Steiner: Wow. Wow. Bill,
[00:02:49] Bill Kenney: not to age you, sir, but Yeah, that's a long time ago,
[00:02:52] Mark Steiner: that's a long time ago. And this is me saying goodbye. Thank you for coming everyone. See you later. What the heck, [00:03:00] bill?
[00:03:01] Bill Kenney: Uh, she might cut that out. She might cut that. She might keep it. Uh, Nicole, I will, I will not do that to you, but go ahead.
[00:03:09] Mark Steiner: No, do it. Absolutely do it. No, it
[00:03:12] Nichole Baiel: was, that was around the time I graduated high school as well. So you're not,
[00:03:16] Mark Steiner: Okay. Everyone pile on lock. What were you, were you in diapers then? Locke
[00:03:21] Locke Bircher: Yeah, now I graduated high school then too.
[00:03:24] Mark Steiner: Yeah. Okay. Well good. Well, I'm sorry I mentioned that.
[00:03:28] Nichole Baiel: Hey, you survived the com bubble, you know, it all worked out.
[00:03:32] Mark Steiner: right. That is correct. So anyway, I passed the baton.
[00:03:39] Nichole Baiel: I'm Nicole. I'm the product designer here at Gig Salad. Um, compared to Mark and Locke, uh, it's very new. I started here in 2022 and it's been, uh. Pretty much just working on this brand refresh has been the thing I've been working on for most of the time here, and it was a really exciting project to just like tackle out of the gate. So that was really cool for [00:04:00] me being a newer employee.
[00:04:01] Bill Kenney: Yeah. Love that. And Locke I.
[00:04:03] Locke Bircher: Yeah. Uh, I am the quote Chief Technology Officer at GigSalad. I'm the original employee. I've been around from day one. I pretty quickly became a partner in the company and have been here working on the tech end of things all along long.
[00:04:21] Mark Steiner: And then some. He's not just a tech guy, tech guy. He, he does it all. That one,
[00:04:26] Bill Kenney: Employee number one. I know that resume bullet list gets real long, right? What, what do you do there? I've literally done everything.
[00:04:33] Locke Bircher: yeah. I have a whole collection of hats.
[00:04:38] Mark Steiner: it's.
[00:04:38] Bill Kenney: right. So we're gonna get into, um, let's get into the project. And the way that I start these conversations is in an effort to help people understand why an organization goes through a rebrand, if their pain points is maybe similar, if they're watching and listening. So I want to ask how did you know it was time to actually stop and think about this branding effort. was the [00:05:00] catalyst?
[00:05:00] Mark Steiner: Yeah, well, um, in the, there were several factors. Steve Tetro and I are, are who the founders of Gig Salad are, and Steve went to FIT and he was a graphic designer and he, got into web design. Right around the time that I had started my own booking agency. And so all of a sudden, I see this opportunity, to bring a couple parties together 1 1, 1 side was event planners looking for talent.
The other side was talent, looking for representation and looking for gigs. Steve and I started conceptualizing. We went from concept to beta and we're working with, outside developers, and such and we could always count on Steve to do design. And that was the case from 2003 all the way up until, around 2020 everything was done in-house. And, Locke and I bought Steve out in 22.
[00:05:57] Bill Kenney: Okay.
[00:05:58] Mark Steiner: And so, we had hired [00:06:00] Nicole and we were ready for a fresh, fresh skin at a minimum and. The interesting thing about Focus Lab that I'll, I'll say is, um, Steve, we had, we had started this process when he was still around, I think it was around 2020. You guys can correct me on dates such, but, there was a small team of folks within the company that were doing searches, looking for branding agencies, and Focus Lab was at the top of the list then, and then it got shelved
and
[00:06:30] Bill Kenney: Ah,
[00:06:31] Mark Steiner: and then separately independently. After Nicole joined the team, we charged her with, um, Hey, go find us a branding agency. And I don't think we've shared any of the past details with Nicole. Maybe. Maybe so. But, here we were at the end, we're doing our vetting. We're, we're picking our, who, who we want to go with. There was two or three, which I think is fair, but Focus Labs was at the top of the list again, and, and here we are, so.
That's, that's how I recall we [00:07:00] got there. But I'm old, so I'll let the youngsters, um, fill in the blanks or correct me where I might've been wrong. And I think we were also at a stage in the company, and some could argue well beyond the stage in the company where we, we probably needed to be looking outside, uh, a little bit more.
There was a, there was, there was definitely a tunnel vision aspect to what we had done in the past. And, you know, when we did it, we were always happy with it. But the last design change was in 2015.
[00:07:30] Bill Kenney: Oh, okay. Yeah. So it starts to get a little bit tired.
[00:07:32] Mark Steiner: yeah, we went for a, we went for a long time with this last one, so anyway, that's how I remember it.
[00:07:37] Bill Kenney: did you have that short list or did we randomly pop up again?
[00:07:44] Nichole Baiel: I think you might've come up again. I went through so many directories. There were so many not great people out there, but yeah, you, you got on the, the short list again, I think Locke had seen the, the list at its various stages.
Like, you know, having a base group [00:08:00] of like 50 and then kind of whittling that down to like the top 10. And then I think that's when I presented for the rest of the team to vet and be like, all, let's pick like the top three and further engage and see what that, you know, whole project plan would look like. From timing to. Who would we be working with on the team? Like what sort of people, what are their backgrounds, all that sort of thing. And then eventually it was Focus Lab. That was the, the big winner. And I think we, we picked, we picked a winner for sure. Like
it as you'll, as you'll find out as we talk through this, this story and this journey, like the, the brand has been so well received.
Both like internally, like having the developers work on it and work with this new brand. And then kind of rolling that out to the, the customer facing part of the company and then getting acquainted with it all the way to the end where the end users are getting it. I personally braced myself for, you know, there's always backlash in some capacity when something changes.
And there was [00:09:00] surprisingly very little of it. It was very, it was shocking, but a pleasant kind of shocking.
[00:09:05] Bill Kenney: yeah. Not, not every project is a Cracker Barrel. but I Uh, lock, what do you think for you personally was the catalyst? Like why did the rebrand need to happen?
[00:09:16] Locke Bircher: A few members of the team, just anecdotally over the course of six months, started mentioning the, that tiredness of the, the current website, whether it was developers or the customer happiness agents, or the three of us. I think we heard from every team leader, or I did, just randomly in Slack, we'd be talking about something and someone would say, oh yeah, well we can't do that because this old thing looks poor and so it doesn't make sense to do this marketing campaign or this email campaign. We've got this tired old layout look and feel that doesn't really fit and we want to do a nice new, modern thing and well, we just keep [00:10:00] shelving. Every idea like that and
[00:10:03] Bill Kenney: Yeah.
[00:10:03] Locke Bircher: the leadership, we all kind of concluded like independently. And then we would talk about it in our, our group meetings and it organically came up like, we need a new look and feel.
And that conversation quickly became we need a brand, like that's what we're describing, that we need. We need like a cohesive brand. We didn't really have that. We just had a look and a feel that
was a color and a, a font face. And we weren't really trying to build a brand. We just kind of put stuff together and it was our brand without us really contemplating that. And the more we talked about it and the more we looked at agencies, we realized, oh, it's a branding agency. That's what we need. We need a brand. We need to be cohesive and we need a voice. And we were already talking about like how we needed to use this new voice that we were developing as our audience was [00:11:00] growing.
[00:11:00] Nichole Baiel: Yeah.
[00:11:00] Locke Bircher: the last five years, we've grown a lot and, and the more we talk to people, the more public we are, the more we need to be branded.
[00:11:09] Bill Kenney: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. what I hear from that, which is, is very common, which will always be common, thankfully in my world. Brand is always gonna be a necessary element.
Um, you didn't even have the tools or the assets you needed to help push forward, right? Oh, we can't do that marketing campaign or like, I don't know, like that becomes a lot of friction. That really sucks, quite honestly, when a business has that in front of it, right? You wanna be excited, you wanna like make stuff and put your voice out there. It makes me think about when you've got like tired old clothes, but you don't realize it until one day you're like, I'm just wearing the same tired clothes every day from Old Navy. What am I doing? I don't know. Why don't I go out and get some new clothes? I'm like 10 years older, I'm a different person now.
[00:11:50] Locke Bircher: And you wanna be deliberate about it. You don't want just random clothing you want. Wardrobe a look a a specific higher end. A [00:12:00] higher tier. You're, you're at a new level.
[00:12:02] Bill Kenney: Yeah.
[00:12:03] Nichole Baiel: I always like that analogy 'cause it's like once upon a time those clothes were new and exciting and fresh and you just had 'em for a long time and they. Weren't really exciting anymore, but they were functional and you can get stuck like in that rut of kind of like, well, it's a shirt, you know? It covers me, it keeps me warm, but you're not excited about it.
Or maybe it doesn't even reflect who you are. You know? The stuff I wore when I was in my twenties is very different than what I wear now at this point in my life.
Things.
[00:12:31] Bill Kenney: mean that those things were wrong, right? Like those things could have been right at that time and they served a purpose, and then now they don't serve the same purpose anymore. You need new clothes. Awesome, awesome. So then you get, well, my next question usually goes, we kind of went there, but it usually goes like, and then you have this painstaking journey of finding the right partner.
Because like you said, Nicole, there are hundreds if not thousands of agencies, I think a lot of people, when they enter this kind of question and now they're looking for the [00:13:00] partner, they're like, oh God, this is almost harder than deciding we need the thing. Now we have to figure out who the hell's gonna serve it up.
So maybe I would ask, what were you looking for then? Like what were some of the criteria that you cared about most in your search?
[00:13:16] Nichole Baiel: Yeah. I honestly, a lot of the things that you mentioned, bill, and maybe I'm gonna make the assumption, correct me if I'm wrong, that a lot of people are looking for someone to implement that brand, meaning implement a website for it, or the code or the tech. We were actually the opposite. We were more interested in people that focused.
Totally on the brand because we knew, and that kind of segues into why we lingered for so long between, um, concluding our relationship with you all and then implementing the brand is that we not only were doing that in our own code base with our team of developers, but we did a complete refactor of that code base.
And that takes time.
So for your question, like we wanted someone that was very brand oriented, [00:14:00] very new, all the nuances of design and type and language writing copy. We didn't really, we didn't need that sort of, um, you know, development shop part of it. And I, I think that both helped and was kind of tedious 'cause a lot of people were kind of these turnkey, we can do everything for you.
And a lot of times those are the people that were kind of mediocre 'cause they were just spreading everything across the board. I honestly don't remember if, if you all do implementation, but if you did, it's probably a very small part of it. I, I feel that's what we liked about you is that your teams were very brand, you know, you didn't think about the development side.
Like we knew we were gonna be
[00:14:37] Bill Kenney: Brand only
[00:14:38] Nichole Baiel: cognizant of that. Like, how are we gonna implement this brand? We wanted people to know, you know, that's why we hired y'all. We don't have a brand sort of person in there. We got developers and me as a designer, but we have no one that understands like what it is to create a, a, a new brand from the ground up.
[00:14:55] Bill Kenney: right. Yeah. Mark Lock. What, for you personally, [00:15:00] what was the most important criteria when you were trying to find a partner outside of what Nicole has said?
[00:15:05] Mark Steiner: well, I have very rich tastes. So if I, if, if, if it can ever be, I want the best, you know, it, it can, the, it, it, who's the best. and I'd like to start there and then can we afford the best? And if we can't afford it, how much are we gonna, you know, throw in extra to, to get there? this is not my forte, as both Nicole and Locke have mentioned, we grew to a place where we just couldn't take for granted anymore.
That we could rely on our laurels. because we've always grown, we've always, you know, we've done well, we've always done well, and we've, and we continue to, like Locke said, the past five years has been even greater still. but I know I was one of the ones that was saying.
It's old, it's stodgy. Let's go it, it was 2015. Come on. We need to do [00:16:00] something different. And um, and I didn't know what, and I had forgotten that that part of it, that it really was, we're not really a brand. I, and that that was it. That was what started to come up. And, it made perfect sense. It was, it was time.
You know, it, it was time. It was, it was an evolution. But we got there.
[00:16:21] Bill Kenney: Yeah. Like when you're thinking about that agency partner search and you're gonna, oh, okay, we're gonna meet with these final two or three people. Like I'm really trying to uncover so other people know what they should be looking for in that discernment versus the crap that doesn't matter. So like, what were you really trying to scout for?
[00:16:40] Locke Bircher: There were a couple things. my recollection was that a strong web portfolio was like, one of the key things we were looking for an agency who has branded web platforms before. Because we're a web platform, we don't really have a physical presence. It's web. We are a, [00:17:00] a marketplace online, so we looked for portfolios that kind of fit that. Oh yeah, they've done either other marketplaces or they've done a lot of web branding.
that was a key thing that eliminated a lot of people from the pool. Uh, the other was, uh, and I, I'm not sure I even verbalized this to you guys. But it was kind of my own personal criteria is, I prioritized and or eliminated people from the pool who did not mention typography in the first conversation.
[00:17:32] Bill Kenney: Wow. First time I heard that one, and this is why I do these shows.
Yes, sir.
Let's go.
[00:17:41] Locke Bircher: Yeah. If you don't mention type, I figured, uh, you're probably not keen enough to work on a large web platform like ours.
[00:17:51] Bill Kenney: Sure. Yeah. Love it. Love it, love it.
[00:17:54] Mark Steiner: I do. I, I, and I, I can speak to the one, one of the [00:18:00] main criteria for me personally was, must be effective communicators. Not only did you need to articulate what it was that you would do on our behalf, uh, and the questions that you asked us. But it was, um.
In terms of correspondence was were things, timely and, were we confident at the end of a conversation that they really did sound like they knew what they were talking about. Um, you know, um, not no hum and a hum and a humina sort of stuff. It was, you were pros, you were clear. And I put that at somebody being at the top of their game.
They don't have to embellish, they're not faking it. And, you know, I got the impression that you wanted our business, but, um, you were trying to earn our business. But I also, I I, I also knew that you didn't necessarily need our business. That you were, you're working, you don't have to go out there and, and beg and I, that gives, that gave me as an owner, as an [00:19:00] entrepreneur, A sense of, you know, confidence that, um, no, we got, we got people that want to work on for us and care about it and want to do great work and it, and it's a partnership. It's a collaboration
[00:19:12] Bill Kenney: That's it. A hundred percent.
[00:19:13] Mark Steiner: yeah.
[00:19:14] Bill Kenney: Yeah. I'm glad you felt that. We are a pure play branding agency. At the end of the day, uh, we were the right match for all the reasons discussed. And then we get into the project, we put a lot of time in our case studies and we make them look beautiful, and we show all the final outcomes. But what I'd also like to talk about is the realities of a project. These projects are hard. They're challenging even when they're going really well.
Like I'm sure everybody can read on all of our body language and faces in this interview. It was a successful, enjoyable project, but it's not always easy week to week, right? There's nerves, there's tension, there might be second guessing. Um, so what I wanna do now is start to pose some of those questions and uncover some of those topics.
So let's go around the room again. Mark, I'll start with you. What was the hardest part of the project for you?
[00:19:58] Mark Steiner: When [00:20:00] we were being interviewed by you all, and I think the question was posed. So who, who will be the decision makers and how many, how many will be on your team?
Right.
And
[00:20:10] Nichole Baiel: My answer,
[00:20:12] Mark Steiner: Yeah. So, well, so for me as a, as a, as an agent, as a salesperson in the past, I always wanted to know who was the single person that I need to be accountable to? Who's the single person who's gonna tell me, give me direction. And I think we, when, when we were doing this, did we have five? There were six of us.
I think at a minimum. I, I definitely took a, a backseat or I was waiting for the typography people to make those decisions and the, the, the, the ui, you know, all the stuff. And then just tell me, tell me where we got to everybody.
And I, you know, I chimed in throughout the process and enjoyed it very much. 'cause I love collaboration. I think it was getting our team to [00:21:00] be united on a decision on a weekly basis. And we
are, we are, yeah, we're an opinion. And, and, and I love this. We have no yes people, and we have people with a lot of opinion.
Everybody has strong opinions. And that's why I felt like, okay, I, I do not need to be one more of those. First round, strong opinion sort of folks, you know? And
so that was, that was it. Did I, I hope I
[00:21:25] Bill Kenney: Without,
[00:21:26] Mark Steiner: question.
[00:21:26] Bill Kenney: yeah. You did. Yeah. And one thing you touched on there that I want to just unpack a little bit and then Nicole, I'll go right to you 'cause it looks like you were kind of in a similar thought process here. You touched on the, and we had to do that weekly, there's kind of the rub, right? So not everybody that's gonna watch this or listen to us has ever worked with us.
Some agencies, their process is totally different. Strangely, I feel like ours is still very unique and in the minority, which is like we ship work every single week and we are on a repeatable cadence the whole entire project. We don't follow the creative process, which is [00:22:00] like, oh, I don't have a great idea this week.
We'll get something to you on Tuesday and then the next week you get something on a Thursday and then the next week you, we stay on the beat. We stay on the beat and we stay on the, and it forces everybody to show up and what you're saying, which is like you had to then receive that on a Friday end of day, coalesce your team on the Monday, or everyone's looking at it over the weekend, get together on the Monday, get opinions.
And those are due by demand of our process before the meeting on the Tuesday. If y'all met on the Tuesday
[00:22:29] Mark Steiner: That was it.
[00:22:30] Bill Kenney: and you're, and you have to do that every single week. So let's inject into that. Oh, somebody's out sick. Oh my God. We have some other stuff come up internally in the company. Oh my God, we don't know if this is the right decision yet, but the meeting is in an hour.
What are we about to tell this focus lab team? That's quite the pressure cooker now. It is. It is ultimately good for the project. It keeps progress and everything's a conversation, right? It's fine. Uh, but that's a hell of a pressure cooker. So I just wanted to really highlight that one point so people could understand.
Nicole, go [00:23:00] ahead.
[00:23:00] Nichole Baiel: No. Uh, mark, that was gonna be mine. And for me it kind of jogged my memory of one of the reasons why I really personally liked Focus Lab is there was a, there was a schedule and it was, it was flexible, but it was also, it was rigid.
Like we knew what to expect. There were these weekly expectations. We knew what was coming down the line. We knew what had dependencies on what that gave me personally, peace of mind. 'cause I, that's how I operate in my daily life.
Um, that was a challenge. We, as Mark said, had six people. I was the driver for the project, so I was doing all the liaising with our project manager and scheduling all those meetings on their side and then all the internal stuff that we would meet beforehand, before our big meeting.
It was very challenging getting, you know, everyone to together to talk about it, to come to some sort of consensus so we can then give feedback to your team, which, you know, then you would deliver on what was gonna be delivered that week. It, I think we [00:24:00] did it very well. I don't, I don't think it was painful or, or anything.
It was just, it was very, um, it was challenging 'cause it meant that we all, we all needed to do our jobs. We were expected to do what we needed to do, and you all delivered on what we expected you all to deliver on. It was a good challenge though. It, it made everything go really smooth.
[00:24:20] Bill Kenney: Great. I'm happy to hear that. Yeah, I think you're right. You know, you identified it if it suited your personality, and I think that's a, that's an important note too, right? You find some people that, that feels really limiting and tight and like the pressure cooker. I just kind of like said before where I think some organizations, when they have their act together and they can keep in March, step by step, they find that rhythm to be quite refreshing and um, almost like relaxing.
[00:24:46] Nichole Baiel: Yes, very much so.
[00:24:47] Bill Kenney: What do you think Locke, what was the hardest part of the project for you, sir? Besides typography?
[00:24:52] Locke Bircher: you guys probably, I, what's funny is I thought Mark was gonna say this, um, but, but then he didn't, uh, to me the hardest thing by [00:25:00] a mile was the color, uh, conversation. And that was the one time where I think we said, we need an extra week. We kind of delayed things by a week because we argued internally a lot about color and I mean, uh, maybe, maybe Nicole wasn't in the major arguments that I was having, but, uh,
[00:25:26] Nichole Baiel: I may have blocked them from my memory. I don't know.
[00:25:28] Locke Bircher: yeah, no, it was, it was primarily myself and, uh, two others that, had some very heated conversations up until the minute the meeting began.
On those Tuesdays, we, we were like, we started talking at 8:30 AM up until like, I think the meeting was typically around 11 or something, and we would like, it would be 11 and we'd be just biting each other's heads off about colors and, uh, that, that was a very, very tricky two or three weeks there. [00:26:00] Uh, that was a, that was a major challenge.
[00:26:03] Bill Kenney: Give me the inside dirt. Like, so remind me, I was not in the project. Now we know where it landed. Right? But like, so where did it almost land?
Who was not, who was fighting for what, but what was being fought for? What was the
[00:26:16] Nichole Baiel: Was this a blue argument? Was it about blue?
[00:26:19] Mark Steiner: Yes,
[00:26:20] Locke Bircher: it was, it was a big argument about the color blue. So our old brand was blue. That was the color we, the primary brand color we shifted from that. We had used for a decade was blue and some people did not want to give that up
[00:26:39] Bill Kenney: Ah, got it. The classic. Okay.
[00:26:42] Locke Bircher: and, and not only, not give it up, but just personal favorite colors, that kind of conversation of like, well. It's my favorite and it's the best. Uh, and it's like, I'm not saying it's a bad color. I'm not saying your favorite is invalid. That's not what [00:27:00] we're getting at here.
[00:27:01] Bill Kenney: Yeah, but does it differentiate, differentiate us in the market? Is it something that we can own and is uniquely authentically us as a business? is it right for our customers and what we're trying to express as our voice and our energy? It doesn't matter who likes it. It wouldn't matter if, quite honestly, if none of you liked it.
If, here's the thing, like if I could, if you can wave a magic wand and I could tell you 20 years from now this color as a result or not of, you're gonna get to a hundred million dollars recurring revenue, but I changed the color to blue and that number went down, you would pick this color no matter what, right?
[00:27:35] Locke Bircher: yeah,
[00:27:37] Bill Kenney: Opinions would go out the window. So somehow you have to enter that conversation knowing that that's what we're trying to achieve though.
[00:27:43] Locke Bircher: yeah.
[00:27:44] Nichole Baiel: Well, you know what, herb just wouldn't look good as blue. Now that we know.
Nope. Do you know that we named our logo Mark. His name is Herb.
[00:27:52] Bill Kenney: Yes, I did know that. Yes. So y'all had that, that fight. Let's call it a fight. Let's be dramatic.
[00:27:59] Mark Steiner: Yeah.
[00:27:59] Bill Kenney:
[00:28:00] Mark Steiner: They were
[00:28:00] Bill Kenney: you can't imagine. Or you probably can imagine, you know how many times we have that blue conversation with customers in any given year in this organization? That is a recurring theme for probably a decade. This color blue, this is a thing. Y'all were on a thing, so just so you know.
[00:28:21] Mark Steiner: I remember where I was parked in my vehicle during the conversation. I remember the one or two times exactly where I was, I remember the points being made. I kept thinking we're being, you're being too rigid. Come on, you gotta let
[00:28:36] Locke Bircher: I mean some, some of our team members tried to back it up with data about like why statistics prove that blue is the best brand color.
[00:28:47] Nichole Baiel: I mean, bill probably hears the trustworthy argument. All the live long day. Blue is trust that we gotta be blue.
[00:28:54] Bill Kenney: Yeah. It's really what it is. It's rooted in, in safety, right? Whether [00:29:00] people know it or not, it is just wanna be safe. I'm gonna stick with what I know because that is safe. They would never portray it that way, but that is what's happening in their mind. Purple. I don't know, what does it mean? Oh, it's not us.
It's too playful. It's, it's too feminine, right? You'll hear every argument in the world. just a color, honestly, like don't even overthink it that much, right? Anybody can own any t T-Mobile's bright ass pink and they love it so much they sue everybody that tries to touch it. If that was a different founder or different organization, maybe that person would've never touched pink or magenta, right?
They would've never gone near it. You can make any color work if you can own it. Going back to the clothes thing, if you can own an outfit as wild as it is and you look confident in it, that outfit works. Simple as that doesn't matter what the color is. Um, and, and y'all are owning it, so, hey, that's cool.
Thanks for uncovering that. Like, what's a brand project without a big internal [00:30:00] breakdown over the color blue?
[00:30:01] Locke Bircher: I, I think we even joked about how we almost dissolved because of this debate that you guys had no idea happened.
[00:30:09] Bill Kenney: Yeah. And here we are in the background, just, Hey, look at this color palette, look at these alternatives. And you're like, man, we're falling apart over here. Uh, okay, so there's, there's a common challenge, a good challenge though. It's generally that color, not necessarily blue, but color or logo. That's generally where the biggest kind of like meeting of the heads come together.
Um, beyond that, I think people start to really fall off quick when you get to type is that a lot of people kind of fall in Mark's camp. Like, I mean, I don't know, y'all pick something like, that's not my thing.
[00:30:43] Nichole Baiel: I don't know. Locke was pretty, pretty intense about the type, honestly, I think we were pretty, the logos, I honestly don't remember any of the other logo choices. I feel the logo was pretty straightforward for us. Just clicked for whatever reason. Do you remember [00:31:00] any of the other ones? Locke or Mark?
[00:31:02] Mark Steiner: I do not. just know when
[00:31:03] Nichole Baiel: Yeah.
[00:31:04] Mark Steiner: it, I loved
it and I would've, I would've died on the hill for this one.
[00:31:10] Locke Bircher: There,
[00:31:11] Bill Kenney: Yeah,
[00:31:12] Locke Bircher: were several that were contenders, but I, I think we kind of got, got the purple and everyone finally got on the same page and we were good.
[00:31:24] Mark Steiner: yeah.
[00:31:25] Bill Kenney: You know, the logo thing can be really finicky, obviously, you know, going back to Cracker Barrel, but sometimes you do see it and fall in love with it in a project. Sometimes you never truly fall in love in the project. That could be a really weird emotion to process. It can be right. The majority of the team can be going in that direction, but you finish the project as the client. And you might not be like, this is the coolest, best thing I've ever seen. I'm super jacked on it. And then we have to try to remind them what, that, that might not necessarily be the goal, right? It's, is this system going back to the earliest point we made in the call, is this gonna give you, a toolbox of assets that you can now go [00:32:00] forth with and build and actually achieve some marketing goals? Are we gonna hinge the whole project on this one little shape? Are we gonna slow down all that progress if everything else is working?
[00:32:10] Nichole Baiel: Yeah.
[00:32:10] Bill Kenney: tough. That's, I really empathize with clients, right? I'm actually excited to hear, mark, that it was kind of an early winner for you. Because more often than not, people don't get that quite honestly. And I think they're left to resolve their own feelings of, is this bad? Should I feel this way? Is this a failure? All right. Let's go now to what was the most rewarding part of the project During or after Wide open.
[00:32:35] Locke Bircher: It's gotta be implementation for me, actually, like seeing the reality of it the deliverables were great, but as a website, well I wanted to actually see the website that looked like these mockups that we had. I wanna see the reality of it, the implementation, and that took us, two years to do that.
But, the final implementation of it is by far the most rewarding piece for me. And, [00:33:00] and it's, yeah, it's awesome.
[00:33:02] Mark Steiner: Yeah, I was excited that we were, we were going outside the box, that we had finally committed to, working with an outside entity and just to see how that would go. We've always worked well as a company, interdepartmentally mentally you know, we've done pretty well and, um.
I think well to great. Uh, but it was internal and, we have, we had had some folks on the team for a long time trying to get us to do things
with others. And, um, I don't, you know, I don't think there was the, there was necessarily a pushback on my part from doing that. I just thought that we have such a, we have, we have a great, very capable people doing this.
However, um, I think, I think it was the time, but like Locke said, there's nothing compared to I count the day that we launched as one of the finest days of my life.
[00:34:00] I, I'm not kidding. It was, there was so many elements about it. Like I was, I was in New York City. I was in a share in our office share space and, um, there was this anticipation of, how's this gonna go? How are people going to respond? And you know, to a person it was just stellar. And there was no glitches. There was not. So from, from the technical side of it, there was no, no hiccups, no, no nothing. And, and then it was just a really well received thing.
I just was giddy. I was never prouder of gig salad. 'cause like, coming back to what the point Locke said was. This legitimized us.
I recognize this now as a brand. And not just a brand, um, we are a national brand. This was the thing that needed to happen, uh, for a company of our size to be in, it's in a niche, but we're at the top in our niche and we're all over the US and Canada and millions, and millions and [00:35:00] millions of people know about us.
Um, we're not the little engine that could anymore. We're not, you know, we're not a startup anymore. And so I was never prouder and never happier. And it was really like, just a fantastic day. So yeah.
[00:35:15] Bill Kenney: Wow.
[00:35:16] Mark Steiner: implement implementation,
[00:35:17] Bill Kenney: that one up, Nicole.
That was.
[00:35:20] Nichole Baiel: I mean it, I think the greatest thing for me, it builds on what Mark and Locke had both said, but for me, especially in the role of the product designer, is that we have a foundation on which to build and grow. So like everything that we did with the Focus Lab team when it came to, you know, our typography and color, and to this day, there was this concept that was created that, I don't know if you guys dubbed it or if we, we call them marketing icons, like how to build these little
fun. Illustrations out of this icon library that we chose to use for the site, like just having [00:36:00] building blocks like that. So when we make new features or new pages or new marketing material, like it's great that customer happiness when they make, you know, social ads or other marketing material that they designed, they have guidelines to draw upon, like they know which colors to use, they don't have to eyeball the blue.
They know the, the language. Like we have patterns and you know, certain icons and it's just this visual language that can be used in repurposed and just built over time. And that, that's really nice. You know, it's not something that we're just piecing together ad hoc because it looks good.
there's direction and there's purpose for it. And it builds upon everything that existed, you know, prior to that.
[00:36:44] Bill Kenney: I'm so happy for you all. Like these, these are the wins. I'm getting the win of my team right now, right? This is extremely rewarding for me to sit here now two years later and hear how successful and rewarding this has been for you and, and at the end of the day, honestly, like, this is why [00:37:00] I do this business.
I started this thing as a young designer that people just needed help with their business cards. And then it turned into a bigger thing and a bigger thing and a bigger thing. And you're right. And it's, that's extremely rewarding for me. Someone just going like, thank you. Like for you to feel that way, mark in New York City, having been in this business for so long and still be able to get that moment of joy out of your own business and know that we were a, a small piece of really making that a reality is like pretty fucking awesome.
[00:37:28] Mark Steiner: Yeah, no, no. Small piece. I was really, really, um, it was, you know, it was, it was an investment for us. This was an investment in all counts. It, it took time. It took six people on our team, significant time to meet, to meet the weekly deadlines alone. And, um, so proud, proud of our team.
Really happy about how it went with you guys. 'cause it was, I felt like there was no division, you
[00:37:59] Bill Kenney: We had your [00:38:00] back.
We are invested in the project as much as you've invested your time and dollars.
[00:38:04] Mark Steiner: Yeah.
Yeah. So
[00:38:06] Bill Kenney: Yeah. Fantastic. I wanna give you kudos before I hit you with the last question. As an organization, you know, we were, you never really know, right? Like you end a project, clients seem happy, things seem good, and then sometimes you're kind of waiting for things to launch and sometimes they never launch.
There's literally still projects that I go when I check that are like eight years ago and I'm like, maybe they just threw it out and they did something else. Maybe there's all new leadership like, but like surely it's gonna look different when I go to their website and it's still the old thing and I'm like, I wonder whatever happened to that?
And then you kind of like move on, right? So for you all. I think people on our team might have had some, um, understanding of, okay, what you were doing and why things were taking so long, but I didn't. Right. So by the time it launched I was like, oh, it made it, it actually, like, everything's legit. Like they, they kept it.
And the props I want to give you is taking your time, slowing down, knowing that you didn't have to rush it out, and also by the time [00:39:00] you got it out, you also hadn't like bastardized it either for better or for worse. Like that's not even putting judgment on people.
That's just, those things are natural. You sit with something for that long, you might actually maybe go back towards the blue if that was still a recurring conversation, for example. Or maybe something else would've changed 'cause you, maybe you would've run into a complication, but then this thing has a ripple effect and blah, blah, blah.
It came out and it was like, there it is. That's it. That's the thing we all made together. Um, so I just wanna give you props for that. 'cause that is very rare and I don't think you all. Know that we see it so often, uh, that, that, that is a rarity that you were that intentional and it still came out as planned.
Um, good job. Good job. Gigs,
salad, team,
all kudos to you.
[00:39:43] Locke Bircher: Thank you very much.
[00:39:45] Bill Kenney: Uh, so I'm gonna hit you with the last question. Now, try to think about your lanes in the business, you were sitting down with somebody that was going to go into a rebrand, and you need to give them one thing to do right in their branding journey, what would [00:40:00] that be? If there's just like one tip and they did that, that would cover the 80% of what not to mess up in their branding, rebranding, what would you tell that person?
So Mark for you is probably founder to founder.
[00:40:11] Mark Steiner: Yeah, I, well, it's the same thing that I hung my hat on when I was an agent, and I, how I try to think about most things in life. If I'm, if I'm in the process of finding a new service or you know, person, I'm gonna paint my walls. I'm always gonna get. Three estimates, probably three proposals.
But, you know, within that price may be a, may be a thing, but the most important thing is, do I like these folks? Do I trust these folks? And do I think that these folks have my best in interest at heart? Do I get a sense that they are, going to give me the best that they've got?
Are they gonna work hard for me? You know, work ethic, these things. And as I mentioned before, is we were vetting and, had our interview with you while we're being [00:41:00] interviewed. It was, how do they communicate? And um, and, and I think if, if humility is a characteristic that you strive for within the company Bill.
Um, I think that was present. I think when you reach a certain level of expertise, um, you, and you're at the top. At that point you don't have to be boastful. You don't have
[00:41:23] Bill Kenney: you don't have to oversell,
[00:41:25] Mark Steiner: don't have to oversell, you don't have to show off.
You know, like this is the place where you should be the. The most humble, and so I know that what it's taken for you to get there. 'cause I just, I know, I know what it's like to start a business. I know what it's like to grow a business. And so I know that it's been, more hard work than you could ever tell anybody.
More hours spent and, um, and more, you know, making mistakes and learning along the way. but here you are. And so that was my measure. Nicole, do you like them? Do you like talking to them? Do we trust what they're saying? Do we get the warm fuzzies? Are we confident that these are [00:42:00] the folks that are gonna give us what we're going after? And are they gonna walk us through
[00:42:04] Bill Kenney: Yeah.
[00:42:04] Mark Steiner: So that was it for
me.
[00:42:05] Bill Kenney: gotta hire somebody and you don't know the outcome, but you have to rely on those things. I, I just want a huge plus one that it is obviously bias because we put a lot of weight into this, but if those things are true, I feel like I can sit in a room with these people. I think I can trust 'em and I do think they have my best interest.
The rest of the shit works itself out. You don't have to worry about fights over color. You don't have to worry about if we need to ask for another week. All these things now are not an issue if those things are true that you just mentioned.
Great stuff. Nicole, you wanna go next?
[00:42:35] Nichole Baiel: Sure, I would love to go next. I think going into this, you can't just have the mindset of I would like a new brand or to refresh my brand and then expect all the work to just be given to you. Like you have to be ready to collaborate. I mean, to touch on what we said for many other questions, it's a lot of time and me being the driver on this, I was also the one communicating with our project manager in, [00:43:00] in Basecamp and giving our feedback and you know, it was a good chunk of my, you know, daily indefinitely, weekly work.
Like you have to be invested. And I think that's one of the reasons why. The brand and the implementation of the brand was so successful is because everyone on the team was invested in it and we wanted to bring it to fruition. You know, it wasn't just something where it felt like we needed to do it or we wanted to do it and just expect it to get done.
Like we knew that we would have to put in a lot of work on our end as well. And I think that's why we worked together so well, our team and the focus lab team. 'cause everyone was really eager to do the work and do it together. And we made something really great.
[00:43:38] Bill Kenney: Yeah. Plus one. I think people often come into these things thinking, well, Focus Lab. You're the best and I'm paying you good money now. Like,
just go do the
work and bring me the thing. And when we tell them it's a lot of work for you too, sometimes
they're like, I didn't sign up for that. And we're kind of like, well, you did, you just didn't know it.
Apparently we tried to make that clear, but here we are.
[00:43:58] Nichole Baiel: I mean, obviously being, I [00:44:00] was only on one side the whole time too, but dare I say, uh, mean we might have done more work than you all did, like
with just because we had, you know, so many people. Because I think you normally have like maybe two or three people on, on a team that you're working with, and we had fricking six and we had put together and discuss and resolve confl as they arose.
But it, I think it worked out good. I think it's because everyone, like I said, was really invested and we wanted this to come true. You know, it wasn't something that, it was nice at the time and we could just shelve, you know, we knew it needed to be done and we all wanted to do the work.
[00:44:35] Bill Kenney: Yeah, I think, um, lock, I'm gonna cut you off one more time. You know, I, I like to always remind people when they're starting these projects that like, it's gonna be a lot of work on you all, but it's necessary work in this project gives you basically the format to do the hard work you didn't know you needed to do.
We're gonna create the structure in the rails and we're gonna give you a platform. Now that you guys have to talk about these things, you have to kind of, in your daily work, you're not gonna sit down and [00:45:00] say, let's spend a two and a half hours doing a color meeting. Right. Nobody would join that meeting.
They go, that's a waste of time. We got product to build, we get customers to serve. But this project, once you buy into it and you are invested in it, you have to now deal with that. It's like forced therapy. So for you all, it's a lot of mental work for us. It's not as much mental work. We do it so often.
It's more of the actual execution and the craft side of the work. Yeah. All right. Locke, what you got? What would you tell somebody as they enter?
[00:45:25] Locke Bircher: Um, well to sidetrack for a minute, because I, I remembered in the very beginning you told us we recommend no more than five, like on day one, no more than five. And we said we wanna do six, and, and we got a little pushback on that and we were like, let's see how it goes. Is that okay? And you guys said, sure, we'll see how it goes.
And I'm sure you were thinking that probably won't work out. Um. We forced it to work out. It worked out. And [00:46:00] it kind of is echoed in our podcast here. I, I think that she told us we recommend one or two guests, and we said, how about three?
[00:46:09] Bill Kenney: Yeah. Yeah, so it's like, I think ultimately what we also learned here is like that six didn't necessarily, maybe. Hurt us, but it may have made your life more challenging. Right? So maybe in some of these instances we're trying to save ourselves some of these instances. We're also trying to maybe save our new partner from what they don't know.
But you made it work, right? Like we're always gonna be flexible. Going back to Mark's point in the beginning. Like, if you want it bad enough, we'll ride with you. We'll
[00:46:38] Locke Bircher: Yeah,
[00:46:38] Nichole Baiel: Yeah,
buy in.
[00:46:40] Locke Bircher: it
worked.
[00:46:40] Bill Kenney: Yeah. Uh, so besides telling them they should have a smaller group, what else would you tell them? Locke
[00:46:46] Locke Bircher: I would tell them to, uh, be ready for all that work. I would echo exactly what Nicole said, be ready to dedicate significant time to it. If you're not questioning things, if you're not working on the [00:47:00] iteration process, I don't think you'll get the most out of it. You'll get a brand, but you won't get the ideal brand for you if you're not in the weeds.
Getting into every little nook and cranny in detail that there is regarding branding, and you won't appreciate it as much, you won't get as much out of it. So you gotta be willing to put in all that time and effort and ready to put in all that time and effort, which is significant
[00:47:28] Bill Kenney: Yeah. Well
[00:47:29] Locke Bircher: it's kind of like, I think you guys described this a few times to us during the process.
In a way you're like giving us an education on branding, like. A full education, but in a condensed like couple months.
[00:47:42] Bill Kenney: Yes. Yeah. And if you are not really wanting that education, then you're right. Yes. It is not as rewarding and it is largely not as successful. Um, you all were ready. And it was obviously extremely rewarding and in turn it's rewarding for us. I think that's a great way to close. Um, [00:48:00] thank you all. Y'all are fantastic in the project.
I know that to be true. I'm so excited that it has launched and I'm excited. I now get to interface with you for the first time, and I got some of this experience that my team got to have with you. Huge congrats. Look forward to following and watching and celebrating wins as I see them. Continue within gig salad and, uh, until we meet again,
[00:48:21] Mark Steiner: Yeah.
Thanks Bill. Appreciate
[00:48:25] Nichole Baiel: you, bill.
[00:48:26] Bill Kenney: you all rock.
