Whatever Happened to Simplified Solutions LLC?

Those of you who have followed along with us over the last six years might remember our business as Simplified Solutions, LLC. Some of you may have no idea what Simplified Solutions, LLC has do with The Content Squad. Others are wondering whatever happened to Simplified Solutions, LLC. Well, let's answer those questions in today's post. It's overdue.

Simplified Solutions, LLC was/is the parent LLC of The Content Squad and redmug. It was formed in the late summer of 2007 (August 16 to be exact). Originally it was established by myself, Bryce Raley, as a company to do business organization and productivity coaching. We did do that for several months, until a chance meeting with a fellow entrepreneur named Aaron Marshall. I met Aaron in a coffee shop called Java Brewing Co at Landis Lakes. He asked what I did, and at the time it was getting confusing. He mentioned digital coaching to me and it resonated, as I'd read something from Seth Godin on the topic. He suggested that I learn these tools and teach others to use them. These tools, at the time, were Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, 37 Signals suite, Google Analytics, Tumblr, MailChimp, and several others. I paid Aaron an hourly rate to learn these tools, then I began using them to market my own business.

The funny part was the reaction I got. As I began using an email newsletter, publishing blogs on WordPress sites, and connecting and teaching social media, I had people on my list (my permission list) begin asking for websites, social media training, and email marketing. At that time I made a connection with an old friend via Twitter, and he and I began working together. That old connection was Wayne Cox, who is now one of our Content Squad partners. So off we went, from business organization and digital coaching into launching WordPress websites and showing businesses, nonprofits, ministries, and churches how to use these web 2.0 tools. We made connections with the owners of the two earliest and best Premium WordPress companies, iThemes and StudioPress. Our redmug division still uses both their themes and plugins years later to help get businesses online.

As we progressed, I had to make a decision on whether to scale the business or stay small. We also couldn't ignore something else that was happening on the horizon, and that something was a company named HubSpot. HubSpot was preaching this new online/digital marketing but they were calling it inbound marketing. They basically coined the term. They blew up the existing marketing playbook of direct mail, cold calling, TV, and radio advertising. I had found out myself that it didn't work and cost a lot of money. I was a believer in this new way. It really made sense to me, and it made the most sense to hitch our wagon to their software and their culture. We wanted to grow beyond helping just the small business, and we wanted to provide a less disjointed solution for growth-oriented businesses and enterprises. HubSpot's software and methodology made it a perfect solution for some of the larger small businesses we were attracting.

At this time we stopped marketing under the name of Simplified Solutions, LLC, although it remained the parent LLC and still does to this day. We established The Content Squad as a DBA under Simplified Solutions, LLC. We wanted a name that spoke content and inbound marketing. Simplified Solutions was broad enough for an umbrella company, but didn't speak to the inbound marketing niche we were growing in. We moved into our first office in Jtown. Since then we were located in Eastpoint for two years, and we're in Middletown. We hired our first employee, Jessie Devine, and we also brought on partners Jay Stewart and Wayne Cox that same year. Over the past few years The Content Squad has continued to grow, and our agency now includes Sarah Stewart, Joel Gerdis, Greg Ladden, Molly Edds, and Kimi Morrison in both full-time and contractor roles.

Most recently, we launched a new DBA called redmug that focuses back on those early clients from the Simplified Solutions, LLC days. We never really stopped serving that market, but we did stop marketing to that market intentionally. Now as we've grown and developed the team and systems to deliver for both markets, we reentered as redmug this January.

So there you have it. The progression from Simplified Solutions, LLC to The Content Squad and redmug.

This was like a trip down memory road for me. And now when I meet with new interns like Josh Ahlers, I can say hey read this before we talk. I'm always for saving time and effort.

If you own a business and haven't watched the History Channel series, "The Men Who Built America," you owe it to yourself. I watched all the episodes in a few sittings over the Christmas holidays. I happened upon a listing for the show at the bottom of my wife's History Channel iPad App. I looked into it, and found I could buy the DVD at Barnes and Noble. I thought to myself: I love history, I own a business, and I'd love to know more about these titans of industry. One never knows with revisionist history, but I'm assuming the show is pretty accurate.

Besides the nostalgia of the pens they wrote with, the way they stamped stock certificates, and the way they formally corresponded, the show really told a great story of how our country and its industries blossomed after the civil war. The show takes us through the lives of Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Henry Ford. As we make our way through the life of each man, we simultaneously see how industries developed from nothing, and how America experienced periods of growth and expansion that fueled the world. The industries are shipping and railroads with Vanderbilt; oil, gas, and kerosene with Rockefeller; steel with Carnegie; banking and electric with Morgan; and of course, the automobile with Ford.

We get an inside peek at what the men faced. They were faced with unbelief, debt, war, fierce competition, laissez-faire government, and government prosecution. What drove them— some were driven by stature, some by divine providence, some by philanthropy, but all by each other and a singleness of purpose. Where they came from—the only one who came from wealth was Morgan. We see the bad decisions they made and the failures. We also see the great successes. The show also has contributions throughout from current business tycoons like Trump, Cuban, Deutsch, Perlman, and Welch.

On this stroll through history, we also see appearances from Charles Schwab, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Scott, and George Westinghouse. This documentary was well filmed, and really opened my eyes to the events that transpired to form some of America's largest industries and companies. From Standard Oil, to General Electric, to US Steel, we get to see how these companies made us what we are today. Like them or not, we owe much our wealth today to these industries. Did they do everything right? Absolutely not, but that's not the point of this post.

So what did I learn about business? Well here are 10 lessons I gleaned.

Change and setbacks are really truly opportunities in disguise.
Singleness of purpose and competition fueled their growth as much or more than money ever did.
They never quit. I know, I know, I've read "The Dip" but these guys were obviously not in a cul de sac.
Innovation requires a technician.
They picked partners where they had weaknesses.
They saw opportunity around the corner. The old Wayne G. quote. They skated where the puck was going.
They built industries from the ground up. Guess that's why I love HubSpot.
They made decisions quickly. They didn't live in regret.
They were straight forward negotiators. They didn't haggle much.
They had big huge goals.

If you watch the series or have already seen it, then let us know what you think in the comments below.

Image credit.

When starting an inbound marketing program, it's great when the anecdotal evidence starts rolling in. A new inbound marketing partner gets pretty excited when their redesigned website with actual contact forms pulls in a lead. They also get a little worked up when others mention them on social media and start liking their Facebook page. They realize that more traffic can't be a bad thing, and the increased traffic lets them know something is working. All these things are great and typically happen in the first six months of an inbound program.

We have to remember that many times, the business had a bad brochure website with no calls to action, no content offers, no contact forms, no integrated social media, and very little fresh content. They also rarely have a blog or at least an active one. So you have to walk before you run, but at some point, even the giddiest business owner says, "Show me the money." How has the growth in traffic and leads translated to growth in sales? Am I getting a good return on my investment versus money I was spending on old school outbound marketing methods?

Well even though we have the power and analytics of HubSpot in our arsenal, we (Joel Gerdis, Greg Ladden, and myself) realized that we need to know how to calculate some of these statistics on the fly. When prompted in a meeting, we need to translate year over year traffic increases, lead increases, and sales growth increases. It's not enough to say, it's growing. Business owners and our partners eventually want to know how much their social media presence is growing, how much their traffic has increase, and how many leads they have month over month from last year.

When I Googled "calculating website traffic growth," I had to go to page 2 to find a decent equation. I should know how to calculate this with a calculator, but it's been a while since Finance class in college—even longer since high school statistics. So we stumbled on a formula that works, and we wanted to share it and hopefully rank in search with this blog post for the next business professional looking for such a calculation.

Here's an example:
Traffic July 2013 = 1220 visits per month
Traffic July 2012 = 720 visits per month

Traffic now minus traffic last year. 1220-720 = 500
Take 500 x (100) / 720 (the original amount)
Multiplying by 100 converts the number to a percentage by moving the decimal.
In this example the growth rate was a whopping 69% July 2013 vs July 2012.

This same formula works for leads, sales, and any other growth measurement. Hope you found this information helpful.

P.S. This was also a lesson in the basics. This should have been a basic calculation that everyone in our organization knows and uses on a daily or weekly basis. Now I know why John Wooden showed his players how to lace their shoes, and why Vince Lombardi started the season by saying, "Gentlemen, this is a football."

Creative copywriting may not be your style. That's OK. If your culture is a fun one though, then I think some of your copy should reflect that. We all want to laugh. We all want to be entertained. Deep down, it's just a need we all have as humans. One of our partners, Jay Stewart, often quotes Jimmy Buffet who said, "If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." By the way, I love business partners who can quote scripture one minute and a rock star the next.

If it's the case that laughter can be a strength in your lead generation efforts, then taking advantage of fun, creative copywriting could be a big opportunity for your business. Rather than tell you how to write creative copy, which is totally personal and hard to teach, I'll opt for some great copywriting examples in the real business world.

First up is my favorite that I've written about before, Jimmy Johns. Walking into their stores and ordering off their to go menu couldn't be more fun. Bravo to them for having fun and keeping it simple. Check out some of their copy here.
Second, Vitamin Water. Reading their bottles lets me know these guys have fun. Most bottles seem to have a web of fun copy geared toward making you believe all you're missing in your life is a bottle in your bag or purse. That's the job of the marketing department, to make you believe you need (strikethrough) you have to have their product. Next time you're in the grocery aisle pick up a bottle and read it. You can read more copy on their website. Pardon the wonky flash. Not everyone rolls with inbound marketing principles of homepage design.
Next up is a company called Zico that makes a delicious hydrating drink from coconut water. Here is an excerpt from the side of the bottle: "There was a time not long ago when you had to shimmy up a tree and machete-open a coconut to experience this miracle. Not anymore. We climbed the tree for you."
Last is TeuxDeux. These guys created a cool application that may simplify your life, and they write hilarious web copy. This copy makes me laugh more than all the rest, but I had to list it last because if you go and read this page, you may have skipped the rest of my post. It's that funny to me. Please take five from your day and read the FAQs page.

Now your assignment is to integrate some fun copy onto your website, email marketing, and blog posts. Well, get going.

Need help? Why yes we can.

So you waited until the last minute this year. It's time for the annual halloween dress up party, and you don't have a costume. You're heading to a thrift store today and need some costume ideas. Hopefully we can be of some help. After all, we don't just write about inbound marketing around here. That would be boring.

Today we're going to show you how to use social media and search engines to come up with office costume ideas. Actually, we're just doing the work for you.

Up first is a search for "costume ideas for this halloween" that returned a Pinterest page. I'm partial the the Gilligan's Island crew about half way down in the middle.

Next up I Googled "celebrity costume ideas 2012" and found this entry. I know nothing about the online source, but I liked how they did a slide show actually showing you how to put the digs together. Helpful for your aforementioned trip to the thrift store.

Third up we have a search of "halloween office party costume ideas" targeted just for our tech and marketing audience. This search query pulled the following page result from PC Mag. I dare you to dress up as Steve Ballmer. I dare you.

Last we have a the last stich effort. The late game rally. The hail mary. This time I Googled "office party costume ideas". I liked the printable masks and the office name tag bit stolen from Jim on The Office.

If none of this worked, then I would suggest multiple posts to Twitter and Facebook. Do your own crowdsourcing. Your friends and followers know you well, and they always come up with some great ideas and answers in a pinch.

P.S. Have some fun at your party. If it's all business all the time, you'll get burned out. Trust me.

The old adage in life is that too much of a good thing is... well, too much. Excess even in good things can be bad. Moderation is often a key to life—balance a virtue more of us need. Well, throw that aside when it comes to landing pages. The more the better. HubSpot echoes this mantra in the last paragraph of this blog post from this past April. Don't skip to the bottom. The entire post is chocked full of great landing page content.

So if the average B2B business has one landing page (a really bad Contact Us form), and the majority have less than six landing pages, then if you're slightly sharp, you might see the opportunities. The opportunity to outrank your competitors in Google, and the opportunity to convert far more leads than they do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

So go ahead and create a bunch of landing pages. Each page is an annuity that can pay your lead conversions for years to come. Build it once with some care, and it will pay big dividends over time. This would be an appropriate time to inject a badly-timed quote from Field of Dreams, but I will resist. Heck, if you're short on time, build them quick, and they will convert more than no landing pages at all.

We did a couple other posts recently about using landing pages. The first one was using landing pages in coordination with your outbound marketing efforts, and the other was what makes a good landing page. They are quick reads, but if you're looking for a meaty resource on your route to creating killer converting landing pages, then this all inclusive HubSpot page is for you. That was a mouthful.

Wanna get a trial run of HubSpot software? Contact us and we'll give you the nickel tour.