Hey guys, Kevon here. Welcome back to my show. This show is basically where I share my learnings when I'm building this education business. So today I want to talk to you about rebranding, because I'm in the middle of rebranding Public Lab into Small School. And this new name has created some kind of reaction from the people that I talked to so far. What they say is, well, I don't even know what your school is about, from the two words. Or they would say it doesn't get the idea across and most of the time they say why small what's so special about small?
So today, I want to break down the process of me finding this new name for my business. But first thing first, I am aware that naming is very subjective. So I'm, not saying that this is the way to do it. I basically just want to share my experience and the process So that you can take it as reference and maybe you will find some inspirations when you are doing your next name.
First thing I think we should talk about is why my old name, Public Lab, is not such a good name. Well, it's because three and a half years ago, I made up this name when I started my journey. Back then, I was having really good traction with a free guide called Building Public Guide. And then my first product was a building public community, so I called it Public lab. And it made a lot of sense because it was a community. So, a lab means people gathering together and try new things. But the thing is, well, I shut down that product four months later. And since then, I have been embarking on this educational experience. Trying to, build my own education business, but at the same time sharing with so many others how they can do it as well.
So a couple of months ago, I had this new thought that I should expand beyond Build in Public. So I made a video basically a talking video talking about why i'm leaving Build in Public, but more so expanding beyond building in public. I feel like I have So much more to offer in the space to help people build their education business because I've really spent a lot of time navigating this space So the name itself doesn't really capture my latest philosophy And that was the moment. I thought hey, we we need to change it. I need something new to guide me towards the future, you know as big as it sounds now.
Let's explore a little bit about you know, when I was looking for the new name. What did I look for in a name because honestly, I would be telling you this, like, I suck with names. I really have a hard time naming my, my business or even my products or my newsletter or my show. It takes me some time to really get to that. But this time I wanted to do it more intentionally. I knew my mistakes making different names up in the past, so I want to avoid those mistakes. And thankfully I saw a framework from, Alexandra Watkins and the framework itself is called smile and scratch. So it basically has a few elements that a good name has. And let me quickly talk through you what those criteria is.
The first one is the name should be suggestive. So in the past, I actually made a lot of mistakes about this. For example, my book. Find Joy in the Chaos. I pretty much regret that name because it's so vague. It doesn't really suggest what it is about. I mean, it's finding joy, but what kind of joy? We're not looking for the name telling the full picture because I feel like it's nice to have some mystery in the name. But it should at least give you some hints, like, what this business is about.
Second one, you have to be memorable. So the name, it said the name that people would say it a few times, and then they would find it, Oh, this is, this is really nice, like, this is so sticky. That is important, because Public Lab, I don't think it's memorable at all. Is kind of just an interesting name.
the third one is imagery. So looking at the name, can it paint a picture in people's mind when they close their eyes? Can they see something?
And then number four is legs. Can it be used as a theme to extend beyond just the brand name?
The last one is super, super important. Is emotional. Can the name be, you know, taking people's emotions out Public Lab? Honestly, I don't think people feel anything. It's kind of like. Oh, okay, you run Public Lab, sure. But there should be some meaning behind the words that people feel, I really, really that this is the right place for me.
Here are the five elements. And now I want to kind of share with you how I arrived at the name Small School. Basically, it took me a while. to figure out the name, as I told you, I'm terrible at this. So I was brainstorming for about two months and I had a Google Sheet where I mapped out the five elements. all the adjectives, nouns, verbs that are related to my philosophy.
I just wrote everything down because I want to try to mix and match to see would they work together. The thing is nothing really stood out at that time. what makes it even harder is that, you know, when you get a brand name, you also want to try to find a dot com domain. If it's still available, then you're in luck because dot com is still, you know, the best domain that you can get. And I can tell you that I have like three columns of like maybe 20 to 30 words each. And the best name I could came up with was ScaleShare. It sounds like Skillshare. So I was really excited because I think the com was still available at that time. It sounds like a startup that is raising huge amount of capital. It doesn't have that memorable or emotional factor. It tells the story, like you can scale your sharing, but who cares about that So overall, I think the name sucks. So I didn't really pursue it, but I came back out and then I said, I need a new name.
So what happened was that I look at the words and I started trying different combinations. I'm still a big fan of the word school because I talk a lot about ways of teaching and learning. It's really something that I'm passionate about. three and a half years ago, I was passionate about building in public. Now, if you ask me, I'm passionate about really, really figuring out how one person can run a school themselves. Just like me, sitting in my own space in my town, hang out with my family, but still having that influence to a lot of people. in the world. That's amazing. And after becoming a father, I think I'm more interested than ever in this topic because I'm getting into that phase of I need to nurture my own kids as well. So I'm really keen to explore building a school of the future. So yeah, using the word school is exciting to me. I cannot remember exactly how the word small came by, but I was basically writing down all the simple words. It has to be simple because if you use a complicated word, people don't remember it.
So I wrote down the word small one day and I was looking at the combination and small school really hit my heart that day. The two words starting with the same letter S is really good. I've been a big fan of Paul Miller, Pathless Path, Ah, I think that's so smart, Pathless Path, you even use the path twice, so smart. After coming up with the small school name, I sat on it for a few days, I talked to my wife, and I started thinking if that's the right name for me. And I think that the moment really hit me was when I asked myself what I hate about how people do things out there and how different is my approach, the biggest thing I see is a lot of people out there are looking for growth, scale, virality, but I'm just here focusing on all the small details. Like I really care about quality. So everything has to be kind of working with a high standard. And so far has been serving me well.
So that was the moment I think I can really do small school. but when we look at the five criteria, I was telling you that I learned from eat my words. Let's look at it that way. Suggestive. I think it's suggestive. I mean, the word in school implies that this is serious about education. Even though you don't really know who this is for, but you'll figure it out, right? Memorable. I think so. This word really paint the picture of a learning environment around me. And the word small is very, very visual.
So that connects well with imagery. And then legs. Wow, I can start creating a lot of things under the school brand, right? I can do campus, I can do students, I can do, all these different things. And emotional, I think so. Because when people talk about going slow, doing the right things, being focused on serving the people around you, that's a very emotional. Thing to connect with, so it really hits all the criteria under the smile and scratch framework
But at this moment i'm just thinking well I love the name but what about other people what would they think about this name other than my wife? So I started reaching out to many different people. Basically two groups one is peers people who are in the same space and then the other group is my existing customers, aka students. So I reach out to a few people, uh, like Mark Schuss from MDOT Academy, Alex Lowe from Steel Club, Evelyn Chapman. These are all my peers. I love them. They have great work. And they give me really good feedback as well. And then I also talk to some students like Jenny, Janice, Jeremy, and so many others. the hardest part when it comes to asking people, Hey, what do you think of this name? Is that I think a lot of people would seek confirmation on whether the name is good.
Like they would look for a hell yes, like people would be super excited. But I'm not looking for that because I know I'm the one who is closest to my business. I'm the one who knows the future of my business So no one would just read a name and be like hell. Yes Really? No one so I don't really want confirmation what I was very focused on finding out is when someone hear this name, what's their mental journey? What's the reaction? What's the positive or negative feeling in the first impression? And I want to see whether there's any downside or limitation for future, right? If there's something that I'm not aware of with this name, then I better find out right now. And I already know the name has potential because of the framework. What I really want to find out is like, yeah, what people with different background are thinking about this name?
Next, I'm going to tell you what exactly happened. Most people, when I asked them about the name, they said it's memorable, but it's hard to know what the school is about or who the school is for. It's not very clear in the two words. And then a lot of people ask, Why small? Boom. When I hear this reaction, I knew the name was good. And it was the reaction that I wanted. Because I didn't want to give everything away in the brand name.I want to have some curiosity that people would go like, why small? I want to go find out. Because in a very logical way, a lot of people think like a name should be very clear and tells the full picture. In this case, creator school might be the most straightforward name that I can use because it tells people that it's an educational business. It's for creator, okay, you got everything. But to me it's just way too boring, I mean it's not memorable, a lot of creator school out there, so I'm not really buying it. the reaction of, what is this about, tell me more, I'm not clear what you're talking about, this is really what I'm looking for.
The last part of this episode, I want to tell you a particular story that I have with one of the people that I asked I'm not going to share his or her name But I want to share our conversations a little bit. that really Confirms that I have a good name so this person said word to word I'm quoting this person I'm a very ambitious person. So the name is horrible for me. That's the first line this person told me then this person went on, I always want to strive and improve. So joining a small school immediately sounds like I'm being held back. When I heard these few lines, I was like, Uh, okay, that hurts, but let's talk a little bit more.
So we chatted for some more and then I explained my philosophy, I explained how I came up with this name, what's wrong out there, what's my true belief and all of that. This person actually got back to me and said, Oh yeah, that's great. The name could totally work for you. This person said this because this person knows my work. This person knows that I'm the kind that really put care into the details. And the name matches well with the way I think and act. But the thing that got me really happy was that one day, this person said to me, I love the small school name so, so much, completely changed my mind on this. It very much resonates with me, my thoughts, how I try to run my business.I think building small should be the default for everyone. Again, I'm quoting word to word. This is exactly what this person told me.
So from that, I knew I had the name because I went from a curious person to someone who's learning all about my philosophy to someone falling in love with the meaning, the purpose that I'm trying to bring to the world. That is the journey that I'm looking for. At that moment, I was really happy. So to wrap this up, I bought the domain smallschool.is and started rebranding it, you know, I have a checklist of all the things that I need to do and I actually have a really fun story about choosing and buying domain but I think we should leave it for another time because this episode is getting out of hand.
So at this point the name is set, but I'm really curious because now you know that I'm going to rebrand and start running small school. I want to see if you're connecting with the things that I say. would you want to focus on the small things so well that you can build your own school but with great impact? I'm curious about your story and what you're going to say.
So if you want to chat, please reach out to me. I'm always happy to talk. Anyway, I hope that you learned something from my way of choosing this name. Then next time when you have a name that you need to create, for example, a brand name, a newsletter name, a podcast name, a product name, I hope you can reference this story and the thought process behind it, or even the process to talk to people to get their insights. I hope you can do the same and have a very, very good name that fits you.All right. I'll see you at another time, and rock and roll!
