Hey everyone, welcome to the latest episode of Operation Agency Freedom. In today's show, I'll be sharing the story behind our recent rebranding from Dude Agency to Bloom. As the host, Chris Martinez, and CEO of Bloom, I'll walk you through our journey and the reasons behind this exciting change.
We'll discuss how our focus has evolved from primarily providing outsourcing services to offering comprehensive management consulting and technology solutions for marketing agencies. Our goal is to help agencies increase profit, maximize value, unlock potential, and ultimately achieve an eight-figure exit.
Throughout the episode, I'll share insights into the rebranding process, the challenges we faced, and the lessons we learned along the way. We'll also delve into the eight key areas where Bloom assists agencies, including fulfillment, client results, cash and profit management, leadership team dynamics, talent acquisition, customer retention, lead generation, sales performance, pricing, packaging, and strategic planning.
Lastly, I'll share some impressive results our clients have achieved within the first 90 days of working with us, such as an average revenue growth of 18.71%, gross margin improvement of 39.47%, and a whopping 234.9% increase in net income.
So, sit back, relax, and join me as we explore the exciting world of agency growth and the story behind our rebranding to Bloom.
Hey, what's happening? Chris Martinez here. I am the host of Operation Agency Freedom, and I am the CEO and founder of Bloom, where we work with marketing agencies and provide management consulting and technology to increase profit, maximize your agency's value, unlock your potential, and achieve an eight-figure exit. So I'm going to do a solo podcast, but I thought it was necessary because if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that not more than a few weeks ago, we were called Dude. Now, or a lot of people call this Dude Agency because our website was Dude Agency. Now, but we recently made a little bit of a pivot. We definitely did a rebrand. And so on today's podcast, I'm going to talk about that process and of course, why we made that decision and to summarize the things that we're doing at Bloom, which are actually exactly the same as what we were doing at Dude. But I just want to give you like a little bit of a rundown with that as well. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode because going through the rebranding process, this is like the second time I've done this. And it's really interesting. I definitely learned a lot. And if you ever have the desire to do a rebrand, I think this will be fun for you to hear about. So with that being said, let's head over into the interview. All right, welcome back. So I am now the CEO and founder of Bloom. What I want to start about, start talking about is why we decided to do the rebrand and kind of like the transition. And this was a process for sure. And like, we kind of felt like we needed to do a rebrand. But then earlier this year, it all just came kind of came together. And one of the things that you'll learn if you ever do a rebrand, especially if you're going to start doing something that's very different than you originally started, is that customers will always associate you with the first thing. Let me give you some context. When I launched Dude, we were just doing outsourcing. So I had this access to at the time, which was a hidden talent pool down in Mexico. So 2017, there are a lot of people that didn't know that they had internet in Mexico, let alone amazingly talented developers and designers. And because I had set up a company there, and I had been using that team for my own agency, I had a unique ability to go in recruit and train and hire people in Mexico. And at the time, you know, this was revolutionary. It's like, Oh my God, you have people in Mexico? That's amazing. I can't believe nobody thought of them. And so our business at Dude to begin with was we have designers and developers, you're an agency, you need them instead of going to the Philippines or India or wherever, or the US, which, which, where it's very expensive. Let's connect you with this outsourced team in Mexico. I love telling the story. I was trying to figure out what to call this company. I had read this book called Selling the Invisible years back. And the only thing I remember from that book is that he said that Americans love companies with the U sound. So you think of like Uber and Google, YouTube and there's there's tons of them out there. And so I was like, I always wanted to create a business that would that had that U sound. Keep in mind, I'm also from Southern California. And we say the word dude a lot. And so I'm sitting in my friend's beach house, just trying to like come up with this new business. It just kind of came to me. I was like, I could call it dude. And then at the time, I thought that each letter needed to stand for something. So I was like, digital updates done by experts. Perfect. We launched it. We start running ads. We start getting client, you know, I felt at that time that there was something bigger that I wanted to do. And it didn't include that agency at the time. This is important. So remember that. So I come up with the name we run the ads, we go to this conference, we get a booth. It was a massive investment at the time. It was like $10,000, you know, $10,000 is a lot of money, regardless of how much money you have in the bank. But with dude, I think it was like $11,000 a month in revenue. Now, granted, we had gotten there in like a few months. So we invest, you know, basically, let's just call it one month of revenue into this conference with the belief that it was going to work. And that's when I wore like the Lucha Libre costume. If you guys have seen pictures of me in that, I dieted like crazy. I didn't want to be the fat Lucha Lucha Lucha door. Anyways, we go to that conference. It was incredibly well. Dude is basically, you know, like off to the races. And from that point on, the focus was on outsourcing. And we had so many amazing relationships that we developed over those years. And we're building this business and like, I was trying to count how many employees I've had in Mexico. It's hundreds, hundreds of employees. And any given time we had about 100 employees working with us. But then of course, you know, people leave and just the nature of the way that it worked. We also paired up some agencies with the employees. One of those, which I was very proud of is there was a gal who was Mexican. She ended up getting American citizenship. And so she basically transitioned from being a Mexican contractor with an agency to being their full time W2 employee, which was amazing. Creating like opportunities for people is something that I'm really, really passionate about because I feel like I've been blessed with people helping with opportunities because I wasn't born into a super rich family that had connections. My first job out of college was sales. I didn't even know what's that meant, you know, but I went into it and I met people along the way and they've helped me tremendously. So I've always wanted to do that for other people is to create opportunities. So let's fast forward. We get to about 2022 and we start to help agencies out a lot more with running their business. So because we had been so good at operations and hiring and staffing and job descriptions and growth plans for employees and the finances and so the agencies would come to us and they'd be like, well, how are you doing this? You know, can you teach me how to do these things in my own agency? And of course, you know, we said, yeah, of course. So, you know, we started helping them with that and then it basically turned into a consulting product. Now, we also recognized that there was this desire, you know, so like one of our products was called dedicated employee. That's where we would have an employee in Mexico and we would have this agency in the US and we would connect them, right? And we would be the middle person. And so we would pay the salaries, we would pay all the taxes in Mexico and deal with the government and whenever the bank, that was a very, very successful program. But eventually what happens is the agent in Mexico and the agency in the US, they want to work together. But it was just kind of like this weird adversarial relationship and this problem is not going to go away. And what's really interesting is now there's technology where you don't really need that middleman anymore. You know, so I started to see that and I was like, do I really want to be running a product or running a company that I personally wouldn't use if I was an agency? We can still play that matchmaker and help you build an international team. We just don't need to be the person in the middle that's essentially doing a handoff with money and dealing with all the taxes and all that stuff. There's better ways to do it. So we saw that and then this is where things really, really came together. We're looking at what do we want to be known for? I was just talking with an agency owner yesterday about the mission and the vision and he was saying, you know, like, I don't feel like we have that. And it's very, very important because this is what people are going to get behind, right? This is what they're going to wake up every day and be passionate about. It's like the big mission and vision. And so I'm looking at ours and our vision before was to help people to realize their potential brought. Like a vision statement is kind of supposed to be a little bit broad. I was thinking about that and like, you know, we were helping the agencies to reach their potential in one area, particularly in staffing. And then with the consulting, we were, there was a much bigger area that we could help with the employees. We were absolutely helping them to reach their potential. We were connecting them with American companies that they would have no access to had we not created that business. And a lot of them, we had connected, we had, you know, who we had helped them to become full-time employees directly with the agency. Well, I should say contractors directly with the agency. Those people are making more money. They're getting much more experience. They're learning life skills like they're probably not going to stay with that agency forever. But that will be a stepping stone for them to get the next job and the next job and the next job. So we knew that we were helping them with that potential. But then we kept going back to the consulting piece. And we started to think about all the other things that we could help these agencies do. The agencies that we're working with on the consulting side, like we saw them grow, like they were getting really, really big and making good money. And that's where it all came together because, dude, was associated with outsourcing. Our big focus and the opportunity that we saw moving forward, both financially, of course, but most importantly, in terms of fulfillment, like what's going to make a super, super happy to wake up every morning, that opportunity was on the consulting side. And we just, we just recognize that those that knew us as outsourcing, as an outsourcing company, they just can't get their mind around the consulting side. There was always this confusion. I've been doing consulting for over a year, in a year and a half, like doing it as a formal product. We've been doing consulting for over a year and a half, maybe closer to two years. And so we just recognize like, if we want to go all in on this new journey and really help our clients, we got to make a switch, right? And so I, then we decided that we're going to rebrand, right? So then I spend hours and hours and hours trying to come up with a company. Like, what's the new company going to be called? Obviously, we can't call it dude. Maybe we could call it dude advisors, right? But here's the thing is like, the brand dude was really fun. Like, we did a lot of silly stuff. And it was a blast. Like, marketing for dude was so much fun. What we recognize though is that if the ultimate goal is to help a company do an exit and sell for $10 million plus, as much as it pains me to the dude name is not serious enough, which sucks because like, I like to have fun and we can absolutely have fun as we're building agencies. So we recognize we needed to get away from the dude name, not just because it was associated with outsourcing, but just because that name isn't as professional as it needs to be with this new with a new direction. So I'm in bed, like hours and hours. And what's really cool now is that we have AI. And so I was using AI to just come up with names, all these names and all these names. And of course, as you know, I want a company that has that ooh sound. And so pretty early on in that process, bloom came to me. And I was like, okay, like, that's an option. It wasn't my number one. So I continue to do the research and I just keep going back to keep going back to bloom. And I think, you know what, this really fits. Because one, it is more professional, but it's not too professional. Mackenzie or Deloitte or like something that sounds like a law firm. That's not us. That's not our clients. We're not that type of industry. But when you think about it, what is it that we're helping a company to do? So they come to us and they're very good. You know, like they've got a pretty good foundation. But what we help them is we help them to bloom as a business. And so, you know, I played with maybe we could put some like, combine some words, like Bloomify or Bloomly or whatever, just go with Bloom Partners. And so we had that in place. And then we had to create this whole new brand identity. So we have this like 50 page brand identity that we did. Actually, that would be a fun webinar to take you guys through that. We had this whole brand identity that we had to do. We had to redo like the messaging and the language and the tone of voice. Customer avatar stayed the same though. Still, it's it's still agency owner, you know, on the low end, around a million dollars in revenue is four to five million dollars in revenue. That's our sweet spot. US, Canada, UK, the 10 to 50 employees, right? So like all these kind of like demographic things that all stayed the same. So that made it a lot easier. We had to revamp our USP. We had to revamp our mission and envision. Not a lot. We had to revamp our core values, which was really, really exciting. They spelt flour. I don't have time to go into them all right now, but they spelt flour. So there was a lot of things that we had to redo. And the date to launch the new brand was going to be August 1st. But then everybody started getting really antsy. Okay, cool. Let's let's move it up. So we moved it up to July 10. And it's been amazing. You know, like our team is so engaged now. The outlook is very clear as to where we're going to with as a company and what we do. The clients are really, really receptive to that as well. And I'm just really excited about building this new brand again. You know, like we have a foothold in the industry or people knew who we are. So it's kind of it's not exactly like we're starting from scratch. But in terms of like what we do it, finally having to go back and educate the public as well about what it is that we're doing now. So just really quickly, I'm just going to talk about a few of the big things that we help agencies with. So the ultimate goal is to help you build this business runs on its own kind of money. And it's giving you the lifestyle that you want. And what I like to say is it's an asset, right? So like right now, there's a lot of agency owners. But if you're honest with yourself, if you got sick for three months, the business would probably crumble, right? It probably doesn't exist. And it would be a burden on you and everybody else. And so when it went, what we like to do is get it to be in runs on its own. And it's not depends on your any one person. And one day you can do that exit that day will come. And I'll be today, two years from now, 10 years from now, that day will come where you will want to sell it. The beauty is that when it's so valuable and you don't need to sell it, that's when somebody comes in and they give you a massive multiple and you walk away with a really nice payday. So I'm going to go through eight things that we help agencies out with. So first one is the fulfillment and the client results, right? Making sure that you have the proper systems and processes and people to fulfill on your deliver and get client results every time. That is a non-negotiable, like you have to have that as an agency. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to grow. It's it's think about any other industry. Can you imagine like hiring a plumber and they come out to your house and you're like, well, I think I fixed your toilet or no, I didn't fix your toilet, but here's the bill. Like it's crazy. You're like the only industry that allows that to happen. Second thing is cash and profit management. This is something that I love doing. I didn't like doing it at first, but we show you how to manage the numbers and the money. Next one is leadership team dynamics. So we help you build out your leadership. Next is talent acquisition. We have so much experience in hiring and training. We show you how to get those folks. Next is customer retention. We've always had amazing customer retention because we know how to build CX teams, lead generation and sales performance. In my opinion, if you have a really good product that gets result, then absolutely we can help you build out the lead generation and sales performance teams. I'm making sure that you have the right. The next one is pricing and packaging. We've got to make sure that you have the right pricing and packaging. Those things are going to evolve. So you have to learn how to evolve those as well. And then the next one is having the plan. Having the plan and the strategic guidance, because we're the ones who are there working in your business, helping you every step of the way. There's literally not a question or a problem that happens in your business that we can't help you fix. Well, always if we don't have the answers, we go out and we find the answers for you. And so these eight things are what we're what we do at Bloom. Now, keep in mind, these are things that we were doing at Dude with Bloom. Another reason why we mapped it out that we decided to do the Rembrandt is because of the results. So when we look at results, first 90 days, clients come to us day one, right? In 90 days, the average revenue growth is 18.71%, which is great. The average gross margin improvement is 39.47%. You're saying, I don't even know what my gross margin is. That's right. So gross margin improvement in first 90. The most exciting step is the net income. So we see net grow by 234.9% in the first 90 days. That's the average, the average of those numbers, 18.71 revenue growth, 39.47 gross margin, 234.9% net income improvement in the first 90 days. So very, very excited about Bloom. And as you're listening to this, if you're like, hey, I would like to see if you guys might be able to help me out, very simple. First step is we do a 20-minute call, see if we can help you. If we can, then we'll do a business analysis one time, or it's a one time and then go through the whole business comes with the money back guarantee. If you're like, and it wasn't your money back, it's not that important to me, you know, like that 1497. What we're looking for are businesses that we can essentially like invest in and help you grow. And then of course, we want to help you do the X. So thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate you listening to the story. And I hope that you'll come along with us as we embark on this journey to build out Bloom. Have a wonderful day. Hey, thank you for listening. And if you enjoyed this episode, it would mean so much to me if you would subscribe to the podcast and also share it with friends, family, and basically anyone you know who will find the same value in this episode as you do. So to get the latest from me, then let's connect on social media on facebook's at facebook.com or Instagram, then you can also find us on LinkedIn, YouTube, and even TikTok. Yes, I'm back with your own TikTok. Finally, go to our website where you can see all of our other episodes of Operation Agency Freedom, register for live trainings on how to run a highly profitable agency, and you can see exactly how we help marketing agencies fix their operations and scale to eight figures and beyond. Thanks again for listening and I will see you next time.
