ConvertKit founder Nathan Barry on undoing a rebrand

Throughout this week, I was trying to understand beyond the dictionary. Trying to truly understand what a powerful word and concept this is. And in that moment, I realized that if we understand even a little bit of what Seva means, the truest way to live that out is to move forward without it.

If you go to our mission page, we believe what sets us apart is caring more. I loved the word Seva because I felt it represented our mission so clearly. And every decision we make as a company should be based on living out that mission.

And the truest way to live out our mission and Seva is to not use it. It was a weird place. I was so excited about the name and then learning the true way to live it out was to not move forward.

Then it was clear: I realized if I understood even a hundredth of what this word means, we can’t move forward. We don’t gain anything by giving it back. We actually lose a half-million dollars in the process. There’s a whole vision for the company that we had planned that we need to reconsider, and I’m not sure what happens with all of that.

Wait. Do you mean you paid someone $500,000 to do the branding? Or that the future product launches of the company were scrapped or changed because of this?

Both. We have spent that amount in hard costs, mostly on the domain. But also there’s a lot of plans that centered around the new name I can’t get into.

I’ll admit, part of me would think, “I’m not letting 25 people tell me what to do!” But it’s more about deviating from the mission inadvertently, yeah?

Exactly. That’s the point going forward and the biggest takeaway: You’re going to find yourself in these situations where you have hard choices. And if you have those mission and values written out in advance, follow those. Put the decision through the lens of the mission and values. For us, it went from being this complicated decision with nuance and stakeholders to being simple. This was the truest way to live our values.

Did you have people coming to you saying “do not change your name”?

We haven’t publicly explained that this is about more than [the people expressing outrage]. We will explain this over time. I don’t want to send mixed messages. So maybe this interview and some other things I’ll write moving forward will tell the full story. I actually had a lot of this in our initial letter but we cut it out.

Do you feel the need to explain? Shouldn’t it be “all is well that ends well”?

There’s that mission thing again. One of our values is to “teach everything you know.” It’s actually on the shirt I’m wearing right this moment. We’re not the first or last business to find themselves in this kind of situation. And if we keep this to ourselves we’re not living our values.

A lot of people will view mission and values as esoteric things that don’t make money. But this framework probably saved you a lot of money and headaches in the long run, because there was no obvious right call here.

Right. Having a clearly stated mission and values gave me peace in making the decision. I have several 3,000- to 4,000-word pieces about the rebranding process. They all end with “We’re now Seva!” So, needless to say, I’ve been working on a different version.

What are you going to do with the domain name?

I don’t know. There are other organizations that might want it. We could sell it. We are a business, after all. We might donate it. Or we might keep it for our non-profit work. But the best thing we can do is just sit with it. There’s actually a Y-combinator startup named Seva.

Oh man. Good luck, guys.

They’ll be fine. One of the founders is actually Hindi.

Should that matter?

They understand the meaning of the word. It’s their culture. Seva is interesting because it is so common. In Hindi, it means “service.” In Sikhism, it means “selflessness.” We like the Sikh definition. It may have been slightly different if we had chosen the Hindi version.

You think the version you chose matters more than the cultural background of the people who chose it?

It’s both. They can say, “I truly understand what this means.” We can only say, “We’ve done our best to learn what this means.” And people say, “You don’t.” And we can’t say it’s come from a language we’ve spoken and a culture we’ve grown up in. We can’t.

I did get emails from Hindus telling me it’s a common word. One email said, “The app on my phone to get my passport in India is called ‘Passport Seva,’” meaning “the passport service.” Someone that comes from that culture could know that and do what we did. We can’t.

Jeff Bezos once said that it’s a competitive advantage to be willing to stretch out your time frame to the long term. That’s what this focus on ConvertKit’s mission feels like to me.

One thing that’s been a great mindset shift for me on that is this last summer, my wife and I moved from a house in downtown Boise to one farther out. So we have this giant field in the back, right? It’s like three acres, just this big open field, nothing in it.

Last fall we planted like 15 trees in it, so we got some progress. And I thought, “Next year I’ll plant 15 more.” Well then this spring comes, and I’m looking at those trees and they’re already taller, more established … and I’m like, “Instead of staggering it, I wish I’d planted them all at once with the first group. Then I would have had that extra six months for them to grow.”

So more and more I’m thinking about businesses in that way. What things am I willing to just put work into and maintain because I know what it’s gonna look like in 20 years? Everybody’s trying to flip their startups and everybody’s trying to get that exit.

That’s the beauty of being heads down and focused. It’s like taking advantage of compound interest.

That’s why I really admire someone like author Ryan Holiday. And not just because he has a farm [laughs]. He’s a relentless creator and he’s chosen his craft of writing. And he just makes things at a rate that no one else does.

I think an important sentence that everyone should complete for themselves at many different stages of life is “I am the kind of person who ….” Fill in that blank.

I think it’s a useful phrase because you can assign things into it and try it on. If you’re honest with yourself, you can swap things into that blank and ask “Am I willing to work that much for it?”

What’s one controversial or unorthodox opinion you have about business?

I have this belief that anyone could be a Tim Ferriss or a Gary Vaynerchuk (or whoever is at the top of your field). But to be that you need to take the idea that you need to show up every day for 2 years and change that to showing up every day for 20 years.

You need a little bit of a healthy dose of James Clear’s “one percent better” too. Combine that with a long time frame and I think you can do it. Anyone can do it. I don’t think successful people have this magical ability. I’m friends with lots of these people. I watch them procrastinate and do all the negative things you and I do.

It’s popular to talk about luck and to believe, “Oh I didn’t actually do this, I was lucky.” I don’t quite know how to phrase my thoughts on this but I don’t think that’s the healthy way to think.

It’s also fake self-effacing. I don’t think any successful person actually believes what happens to them is all luck. We all have a few breaks in our life that could have changed our path. But the main ingredient has to be one’s own agency.

Yes. It’s a harmful opinion. It takes away your agency. Whereas if you show up for 20 years, the chances of you getting lucky are infinitely higher than if you sit around waiting to get lucky reading blog posts by other lucky people.