A Name Change Is Coming
A little over seven years ago I started a blog and called it Simple & Season. I have been asked a few times since then why that name, and that is always a question I’ve sheepish about answering. Because in truth, the naming was cynical. At the time I was starting out, a lot of popular slow living bloggers were named something & something, and I wanted to signal that I was going to be like them, to be recognisable as one of them. And, not having two meaningful things in my life to join together with an ampersand, I opted for two words that would, again, signal what I was aiming for, that tapped into the market I wanted to join.
As I’m writing this I wonder why I’ve felt sheepish about it, why I’ve used the word “cynical” to describe coming up with the name. Because it’s good business, good branding, to create a name that’s attractive and recognisable to your target audience. So why have I always felt a bit ashamed?
In the mid-2010s, no one was quite so forward about intentionally starting an online business. It was supposed to happen by accident – you started a little blog to document your days and be creative and then oopsie daisy it became unbelievably popular and you started making a ton of money. You weren’t supposed to try, you weren’t supposed to intentionally set out to make a business. Your hobby blog had to become popular completely by surprise.
So that’s why I was sheepish about the story of naming Simple & Season, because it ran counter to that narrative. It belied my drive and ambition and my intention for this to be something that was successful in the financial definition of the word. I didn’t want a hobby blog really, I wanted to be known, I wanted to be seen, I wanted to make money. And that felt like something people couldn’t know if they were going to like me. It wasn’t inspirational then to want to do something and then purposefully do it – it had to be effortlessly accidental.
In the end, I didn’t make any money as a slow living blogger, but I did start to make money as a marketing coach. The name Simple & Season just about fit because I was a simple marketing coach and I sprinkled the word liberally around all my copy, but the name came to stand apart from the definitions of the words. It began to stand for itself, to really step into its own as a brand where it didn’t matter exactly what the words meant because people recognised them as standing for what I stood for. It all fit together.
Until it didn’t.
It didn’t stop fitting in one moment. It stopped in pieces and fits and starts and over long months and years of failing to figure out what was next. The idea first popped into my head about a year ago, that maybe I needed to rename the business. And my reaction was to resist it with all my might – Simple & Season was all I had, the name itself was what I had built. It had brand recognition, it stood for something, it had heritage, it was greater than me. Without Simple & Season, I would be starting again.
But it persisted. Everything I tried to do didn’t quite make sense – the writing, the products, the offers. None of them were “Simple & Season enough”. I felt like I was trying to twist and compromise things to fit under the banner of Simple & Season and what it meant, maybe not so much to others, but what it meant to me. To get around it I started publishing writing under my own name on Substack and I tried to cultivate more of a flexibility and freedom in my approach to the business but I always found myself at that same brick wall: this isn’t Simple & Season enough.
Over this year I have dissembled almost every part of this business. I stopped the offerings I had spent two years building, I took a part time job, I moved, I shifted what I talk about, I created new business mentoring offers. The only thing that was left was the name. I thought the name provided consistency, strength, a place to build from, when really it was a ghost. A ghost that haunted my ideas and kept me scared to move forwards. I spent all this time thinking my ideas didn’t make sense with Simple & Season, when really it was Simple & Season that didn’t make sense.
Because I’m not Simple & Season anymore. I have lived 22% of my life since I came up with that name. I’ve moved house four times at opposite ends of the country. I’ve left an unhealthy relationship, entered the circus of dating, and fallen in love. I have lost some confidence, but also learned to be more on my own side. I’ve worked with hundreds of people. But most of all, what I want has changed.
The drive and ambition that named Simple & Season isn’t there anymore, at least not in the same way. That version of me didn’t yet know that love wasn’t dependent on success. She didn’t know that hitting arbitrary targets wouldn’t make her better. She still had a point to prove, wanted to be seen as Successful and wouldn’t stop until she was. That’s not me anymore. I’m no longer buying into growth for growth’s sake or success-as-validation; I’m no longer putting how I want to be perceived above how I want to be.
So for 2024, there will be some changes. Simple & Season will be being laid to rest, the ghost finally allowed to stop trying to pretend to be alive, and I will re-emerge as Kayte Ferris. I needed a name that I wouldn’t outgrow, a name that could reflect all the parts of what I love and what I do, a name that I can stand behind, a name that holds space for my dreams. It feels like a gift that that name is now, finally, my own.
Over the course of December I will be changing the website, Instagram handles, email addresses and the long list of administrative things that come with a business name change – please bear with me if things are a little messy over the next month!
