601: Why Coffees & Content Is Back (And What Changed)

We're back on the mic after a couple of weeks away, and there's a reason for the hiatus, plus a name change we need to talk about. This episode is the full story behind why the show has gone back to Coffees & Content, and what's actually different this time.

In this episode:

• Why the podcast is going back to its original name, and what changed to make it fit again
• The one brand decision that reset everything at The Social Collective
• What "the TSC world" means and why the agency, Studios, Academy and podcast now work as one connected thing
• An update on TSC Studios opening this September, plus what's happening with private bookings in August
• Why this show is now built for marketing managers, marketing assistants and founders who want to understand marketing at its core
• The advice Loren keeps coming back to: don't stay stuck in something that no longer fits

Hit play now and follow along for what's coming next.

Links:

• Join the WhatsApp community
• Follow on Instagram: @coffeesandcontentpod
• Find Loren on LinkedIn: Loren Tomlinson
• Visit us at: www.thesocialcollective.co.nz

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to a brand new episode of the Coffees and Content Podcast. I am your host, Lauren, founder of the Social Collective Digital Marketing Agency, which is the proud sponsor of today's episode. I am so excited first and foremost to be back on the mic. I took a couple of weeks away from recording new episodes, and I'm excited to share why I took a little bit of a hiatus and what I'm up to now. So for those of you who are tuning into today's episode, hi, welcome back. It is so nice to have you joining me. If you are watching this on camera, you will see I'm in a very peculiar lounge-looking situation. I am actually staring out to the most gorgeous mountains right now. I'm recording this episode from Queenstown, which is where I have been for the last week, soaking up all of the winter coldness, taking a little bit of a refresher, I guess, from work before getting into a really full-on second half of the year. For those of you who haven't been keeping up with what's been going on at the Social Collective, we have so many things rolling out. We have our event that is coming out. By the time that you listen to this, the event will be happening on Thursday, which is our cocktails and conversations evening all around the new AI era. So we have a live panel that is happening in Auckland. If you want to come along, there are a couple of tickets left. So message me as soon as you hear this. Then we have a trip to Australia for the social summit that is happening. We are the proud networking sponsor for that particular event, which I am really looking forward to. So the team and I are heading over, we're capturing content, we are sponsoring the networking drinks, and I'm actually gonna be on the stage as well. So that's gonna be really, really fun. And the last thing that we have that has, I guess, been like one of the biggest projects that I've ever taken on is we are launching TSC Studios. I am absolutely fizzed for this to finally be open. I feel like it has been in the works for so, so long. We get our final piece of furniture delivered this coming week, and I am so excited to finally open up the doors. We are aiming to open the doors up for the public from about September. We have a few private bookings that are happening in August. So make sure that you're following TSC.studios on Instagram to stay up to date with everything that is going to be happening in our podcast area and our content creation space. We're gonna have workshops in there. There's just so much that's happening. It's all based in Hobsonville. It is the only content studio on that side of the bridge, which I am really, really excited for. And it is something that I'm really, I think I'm just really looking forward to it because it is a podcast space that is going to host the Social Collectives podcast, obviously, coffees and content, and so many more exciting things. Like I said, we've got workshops coming up, we've got guest interviews that are about to take place. There's just so much amazing stuff. But that's all of the updates. Let's dive into the episode because if you pricked your ears up at the beginning, you will notice that, well, I guess you would have noticed that there was a little something that I said at the beginning of the episode that is a little bit different to what we've been hearing for the last six months. And that is that we have had, I guess get ready to roll your eyes, another name change. Now, this name change is really strategic and it is very exciting. And I wanted to talk about it because I am such an advocate for building in public. I am sharing a lot of my journey through the podcast. I have been sharing a lot about what it looks like to work on the social collective, to be growing my brands, to be growing my personal brand. And so, so much has happened. So I thought I would use this time to catch you up before we start to roll out the upcoming episodes that are going to be taking place inside the TSS Studios and obviously with our events coming up and all of those exciting things. So, for those of you who have been listening to the podcast over the last six months, you would have noticed that I was running it under the name In Her Empire Era. Formerly, before that, for those of you who have been longtime listeners, it was called Coffees and Content. Now, Coffees and Content, when I initially began this podcast, had a very different sentiment to what it does now. The OG OG Coffees and Content was based around me teaching a lot of other small business owners, freelancers, people that are out there trying to figure it out on their own exactly how to run your marketing. It was about sharing tips, it was about sharing tricks, really teaching you what I was learning while I was learning the ropes and kind of figuring out what it looked like to run a business and then sharing it with you all. Then we got to a point where that name no longer resonated. I am obviously no longer a sole trader or a freelancer. I have an amazing team. We have an agency, we have so many big things coming up that it no longer felt like it fit because the social collective has had like a major, major transformation, especially in this last, I would say, probably the last nine months. We have had, we've gone through the biggest transitional period. We are working with different kinds of clients. We work with a lot more corporate organizations now. We work with bigger businesses. We're not just working with the founders, we're predominantly working with marketing managers. And this podcast under the OG name of Coffees and Content felt like it no longer fit the purpose, I guess. It felt like it was no longer where I wanted to change the direction. And it felt like it was no longer fitting the direction that we were moving in. And so after launching an incredibly successful event earlier in the year, we rebranded the podcast to In Her Empire Era, which, like those of you who have been following, know it was going into a lot more business. It was going into marketing and business. It was sharing a lot more of my founder journey. And then we had a rebrand in the social collective. And when I talk about a rebrand, I mean we made a strategic decision to do one big thing that I think really changed the game. We changed our signature color. And I know that that sounds really strange because you're probably thinking, why would changing a signature color make such a difference? But we changed from our bright, sort of bright, bright brown that we had to our deeper, darker brown, which is called espresso. This began a, and I find it ironic that I'm about to say this word considering I'm looking at the mountains, but it created a snowball effect within the social collective. I think changing the color refreshed our personality. It refreshed our brand. It refreshed our creative capacity for what this looks like. And we basically turned the agency on its head about six months ago. We changed who we were targeting our marketing to. We are now marketing for marketers. We are the marketing support for marketers because every marketing manager has to do it all, wants to do it all, wants to see the best things for their businesses, but they don't have the capacity. And so we became the bolt-on support for marketing managers, where we can take care of the socials, the ads, the email, and the digital strategy so that marketing managers can essentially go into their board meetings, go into their team meetings, go and have a chat with their founders or their CEOs and report back on the really amazing metrics that they are turning over. Because after so many conversations, we realized that marketing managers want to do all of this stuff, but they just don't have time. It's never a knowledge gap, it's a capacity gap. And so then when I came back to the podcast, looking at, right, we've done this massive pivot of the agency. We've changed the colors, we've changed who we're for, we've changed the way that we offer our services so that they're a lot more intensive, they're a lot more supportive. We have Morgan, who's our senior account manager. She has weekly touch points with our clients because communication is everything. And we realize that the podcast has actually pivoted too. So I think the reason that I wanted to pivot back to Coffees and Content because it's a new name, but it's it's the same name, but it's a new vision. And I'm really excited to welcome you into the social collectives world in this capacity because this is something I have never had before. And it is something I'm really excited for. One of those things is that my team are stepping up so much more. I am essentially on route to becoming redundant in the agency, which, as a founder, for my founders that are listening, that is one of the most amazing places you can get to as a business owner, in my opinion, is being able to have a team that run everything, have a team that know your business and know your vision inside, outside, and upside down, to the point where now my focus is on the growth of the business, the growth of the social collective world. Hence why we have re-pooled in the podcast. We have opened up TSC Studios, we are about to open up TSC Academy, which is our training academy, which is where we're going to be teaching both founders but predominantly marketing managers how to really grow and scale your business successfully, utilizing tools like AI, being able to keep up with digital strategy, understanding exactly how to do it so that you can maximize the hours you have in your day. And then, of course, we've got the agency, which has always existed, but now basically is in a new font. And I think that that's really exciting because this was a conscious decision that we made as a team a couple of months ago. And we have really strategically been looking at how we roll this out. And essentially what we have done is we have really worked this into, like I said, I would call this the social collective's world because TSC doesn't run as a standalone anymore. The agency is no longer what it was when I originally had the podcast of coffees and content. It is no longer just a standalone agency. We have one world, we have one purpose, and every piece of our world is a touch point for that. And what I mean by this, and I'll I'll put it really plainly, is we have the agency, which is the ultimate place where we want everyone to end up, is we support your brands, we support your businesses, we support you to be able to grow and scale in the digital space. Then of course, we have the studio. If you want to run a workshop in there, if you want to attend a workshop in there, if you want to have a piece of TSC within your content, utilizing our content creation services, and we can create content for you or with you within the TSC studio. So you get the same look and feel that the TSC agency clients get too. So you may not be ready for the agency, but you might be right for the studio. Then of course, if you're not ready for the agency and you're kind of trying to figure out what on earth you would even use the studio for, TSC Academy is where we're gonna be teaching you everything. So TSC Academy, we're gonna have workshops that are going to be taking place inside TSC Studios. So not only do you get the opportunity to learn from us, you get the opportunity to create your own content in our space. And then that left us with the final piece of the puzzle, which was where does the podcast sit? Where do the events sit? And as you've seen, the social collective has been the main sponsor of all of our events and will continue to be in conjunction and in support of so many other businesses as well. And I think when I looked at what the podcast meant to me, I really wanted it to become a space where it's no longer just my podcast. It is a podcast that I can bring in amazing guests. It is a podcast that I can bring in my team and we can share what's been happening and what's been going on. And I think this is where we started to go, you know what? We've gone back to the color of espresso, that is our main color. We have cocktails and content, which is our event that is taking place next week. We have coffees and content, which is the podcast. We love running off of caffeine, high vibes, and great content. And then it just hit us like a lightning bolt. We realized we have to come back to coffees and content. I think one of the coolest things with rebranding the podcast as well is like I said, going into like the social collectives world, and this is something that I think every business should be really conscious of, is make it really easy for yourself. I think that was one of the things I noticed when I rebranded to In Her Empire era, is I essentially alienated the podcast from my brand. I was no longer building up trust and respect with the people that I want to end up at the agency or in the academy or coming to the studio. And instead, what I'd done is I'd kind of alienated the podcast and I'd started to build an additional brand. When I look at what success looks like to me in business, it is being able to have a world that my team can run and can operate and I can scale the brand and the business, knowing that I don't have to do all the heavy lifting on my own. And that's when I recognize that having this whole separate podcast no longer fit the purpose of being inside the world because it's not something my team can build on. And you don't have to just have a team to be able to do this. But I think, especially with marketing, you can get so much further, so much quicker if you are targeting the right person, the same person. And that's what the podcast is now for us is, and it has always been, but it really is now is that trust-building model. So that every episode, we are building trust with you. We are showing you what we're capable of. We are teaching you things that you may have never known, and we are getting you really excited to work with the social collective. So I guess that brings me to who is this show now for and what can you expect? So, like I said, this is a show predominantly for those working in marketing. So you might be the marketing manager, yes, you may be the founder, you might be a marketing assistant. You are the person that really needs to understand marketing at its core for what it does inside the business. We're not just talking running a business, we're talking how we grow it and scale it from the inside out. So this is a show that I am now very excited to produce because, like I said, I want to bring my team into this. I want their opinions, their perspectives. I want them sharing exactly what is happening inside the agency and what they're talking about with clients. I want to bring on people that we've worked with. I want to bring on marketing, amazing, amazing marketing people that I have been looking up to for years and years and years. So when I think about the structure of what this looks like going forward, it is really sharing with you what genuinely good marketing structures look like inside a business. It looks like teaching you how you get in front of the right audience, how you make those mistakes, how you learn from them, and then how you take that to get in front of the right people to grow and scale your brand. We're also going to be sharing so much around how to build and use AI because let's be real, it is running at a hundred miles an hour and we have to keep up. And I really want you to look at AI like it is a great tool to be able to reduce admin time so that we can actually spend more time focusing on the marketing. That is something that we've been doing really consciously at the social collective is making sure that we are utilizing AI where and when possible so that we can reduce the time that we kind of waste doing the admin things. We don't need to be manually typing out reports anymore. Instead, I would love to see you guys doing what we do, which is reading those insights, analyzing the data, then making strategic and critical decisions moving forward. But like I said, I think the at its core, the big shift that we made to changing our color to espresso gave us our purpose back. And that's why I like building things in public because I'm the first to admit when things need to pivot or need to adjust. But I can see how every piece of the puzzle when it comes to building the social collective's world has really come together. Because this to me is what building a really sustainable and scalable business looks like. And I am really excited. I have been able to step away from the day-to-day of the agency stuff. And Morgan, who's our senior account manager, has really stepped into the role of being that support person for our clients so that I can now be here. I can run the world that we are building, I can scale things, I can see it from a bird's eye perspective on what it takes to really grow a successful and scalable business. And I am so ready to introduce you all to the TSC world. So that is everything that I wanted to share in today's episode. I think if I could share one piece of advice with you from today's episode, it is to not be afraid to change if something doesn't feel right. You get no brownie points in life or in business for sticking with something that you feel like is no longer fit for purpose. If you need to change, change it. Because if you sit on it, you just end up regretting it later on. And yes, you could look at me and go, oh, well, she had coffees and content. And then she went to in her empire era and then she came back to coffees and content. But I'll tell you what, we have come back with such a clear vision. We have spent literally the last nine months working through the strategy of the business. And I guess that would be the other piece of advice that I would give to you is good things take time. You need to put stuff out there. Like any good marketing, you need to put content out there, see which people respond to it. It's like when you run an ad, you have to put it out there. You can give it some general targeting. And with Meta, it's very reliant on creative and copy as opposed to audience demographics. Now, you want to put that out there and see who it does and does not resonate with. That was one of the things we took away from some ads we ran a few months ago, is we were targeting all of the wrong people. So we changed our messaging. We reformatted our structure. Now we are getting calls booked in by the right people, people downloading our lead magnets that are the right people. We are getting in front of the corporates. We are selling out our events to the right people. It takes time, but if you are focused on exactly what your ideal outcome is, all of those little changes that you make do compound over time. And as someone who is like a year into re-strategizing the whole business, so that I have a model that is sustainable and scalable, even if I'm not in the day-to-day. And I say that as I'm sitting here in Queenstown, I've been here for a week. My team have kept things running. Yes, we communicate digitally, but I have not been online every moment of every day this week because I've been focusing on other parts of the business. I've been having meetings, I've been brainstorming ideas, I've been recording podcasts like this. So if I could leave you with a final, final piece of advice, it is do not be afraid. And also, if you see something really beneficial in your business that you want to lean into, and I'm really speaking to the marketing managers listening to this, if you see a vision for the business, pitch it. Dive in head first. Look at the kind of support that you need to surround yourself with. And this could go for any role. This goes for founders too. Find the support that you need. Find the people you can trust because there is nothing better in business than being able to brainstorm with other strategic, like-minded humans that get what you're doing, that resonate with your vision, and that are excited to grow something with you. So that is everything for today's episode. I'm going to be back next week with another brand new episode. And then hopefully in an episode or two's time, I'm actually going to be sitting in the TSC Studios. So stay tuned. Make sure that you're following TSC.studios on Instagram because that is where all of the latest updates are happening. You can also head over to the Social Collective official and of course, Coffees and Content Pod. So I will see you all same time, same place next week. Have a beautiful rest of your day. Go and enjoy that morning cup of coffee. Get caffeinated, get ready to dominate, and I will see you very soon. Bye.