Okay, we’re letting the cat out of the bag. We’ve been thinking about this for quite some time now, and have finally decided to just go for it. We’ve decided to give our company an “extreme makeover.” New name, new look, it’s all fair game.

What’s more, we’ve decided to publish the whole thing out there for all to see. That’s right, we’ve been inspired by some of Ryan Carson’s efforts and decided we love the idea of sharing with the world. That’s what this Internet thing is all about, right? Between blog posts, Tweets, photos, video, and audio, we want to get as much of it out there as possible.

We like to believe there are other people out there who want to see what goes on at a tiny company like ours, behind closed doors. Well, the doors are closed no longer! We’re willing to share our processes with the community. You’ll see our successes as well as our set-backs. What do we want in return? We want active participation and community feedback. We’ll take it all, the acclaims and critiques alike. Whether you want to set us straight, or give us a high five, we want to hear about it.

Why are we doing it?

So why would we do such a crazy thing? We’ve been around for almost 4 years and feel we’ve got a pretty good thing going here. So why throw it all away? First of all, let’s get one thing straight: we’re not just throwing everything away. The best of what we’ve built up we’re keeping around.

The main motivation behind this re-brand is really to give synergy and cohesiveness to the lessons we’ve learned, the theories we’ve formed, and the tools we’ve built over the past few years. We want to take all that, wrap it up in a neat package, and say, “There you have it. This is us.” It’s not about starting over. Its about evolving and refining. We want to create “us, 2.0.”

Something else I’ll point out is that it’s important we not only do this ourselves, but we do it publicly. I don’t want to say much more about that just yet. We will keep as few secrets as possible, but this is one of them. We need to save something for the big “unveiling” at the end. All I can say is, if you enjoy following us on this little adventure, you’ll love some of the announcements we’ll be making once its all said and done.

One other benefit we hope to get out of a public process is accountability. When you’re at a company as small as us, there isn’t a whole lot of “responsibility overlap.” Often times the only person you’re accountable to is yourself. While that’s usually enough for us, there’s something to be said for knowing you have to explain yourself to other people. Rather than having a big company with big expensive meetings in a big expensive conference room, we choose this. We want you to be our ad-hoc team members, and the Internet our conference room.

So What’s Next?

We officially kicked this all off on Friday, so the wheels are already in motion. We’ve also decided we’re going to do this whole thing in 90 days (we feel sleep’s overrated anyways). Considering everything we’re looking to accomplish, we feel a 90-day process is a pretty tall order for a tiny company like us (we do still have client work to keep up on), so we’ve asked our good friends over at digital-telepathy to assist us. They’ve got a really sharp group of people over there, and we think they’ll give us some great feedback along the way.

There are other related tasks behind this (sales, marketing, technology, etc.), but we’re going to allow the creative/branding elements to drive the schedule since this is the area we feel we have the most ground to cover (although we do intend to publish about everything):

• New company name – 2 weeks
• Revised brand identity (including new service offering) – 3 weeks
• Overhaul our online communication platform (i.e. redo the website) – 8 weeks

This is a very high-level overview just to give you an idea of what direction we’re headed and how fast we’ll be running there. We’ll likely publish more granular milestones as we get into it.

We’re Off, and We Want to Take You With Us!

Here we go. We’re not 100% how this is going to work out, but that’s part of the fun right? I can tell you we’re all extremely motivated here, and we’ve got a network of awesome people who are equally excited for us. Those things put together make for an interesting ride at the very least.

As I said earlier, the main thing we’re looking for is community involvement. We’re willing to step outside of a “normal comfort zone” and tell it all. In exchange, we want to hear what you think. Feel free to start right now and comment below.

If you want to stay updated on events along the way, be sure to subscribe to our blog. For more up-to-the minute updates on what we’re up to, follow me, Matt, and Ben on Twitter. Thanks for joining us on this exciting adventure, and wish us luck!