I don’t know about you guys but 2018 absolutely flew by for us. Each day we found ourselves chasing client leads during the day while at night we caught up on the actual client work that brings in revenue. We constantly came up with ideas to improve Cobalt & Sapphire but never had the time to sit down and implement these changes. Before 2019 started to get into full swing, we did something we’ve never done before: Cobalt & Sapphire Retreat Week. One week, a secluded place, no client work, just Cobalt & Sapphire planning. Here are some of the key things we accomplished.

That’s right! Cobalt & Sapphire had a much-needed brand revamp to better reflect the image we are striving for. The biggest change: we are no longer a marketing agency, we are now a creative studio (oh la la!). After looking at the monster list of services we offered, we decided to cut half of them out that we weren’t super passionate about. What we found is that we enjoy the creative work (like creating content and designing websites) and thus changed our company model to highlight our creativity and stray away from solely marketing. With this rebrand also came new collateral! We designed new business cards, postcards, and thank you cards, all in our classic marble/navy blue aesthetic.

When we started C&S we had a bit of imposter syndrome. Who were we to charge someone all this money with no work or past clients to back us up? We started by charging very humble prices, but now, we have been in business for over a year and a half and have serviced close to 40 clients! We know the quality of our work and what competitors are charging, so why not charge a price reflective of our worth?

Working with almost 40 different clients has taught us many lessons about how we should operate our business. To prevent those lessons from being taught to us once again, we took to our client contract to add in all the terms and conditions that come with our services. Not only is it a safety measure to protect ourselves from being taken advantage of in the future, but it also lets our clients see us as professionals and not as two young girls with a laptop.

How oxymoronic that a business that specializes in social media for their clients totally slipped up on their own. We are fully aware that when Cobalt & Sapphire was young our social media got a lot of attention & care, but as more and more clients began signing on, we often found our social media falling to the bottom of our to-do list. This year, we are changing that mindset. Retreat week was a great opportunity for us to sit down and create a strategy that works for our schedules and that we can hold each other responsible for.

Don’t you think for one second that we were all work and no play. We were residing in wine country (Sonoma, CA) after all! Despite the long hours we put into work, we also made sure to live up to the “retreat” part of the week and enjoy each other’s company as we are not always together. Every meal was a fun experience from preparing to eating it. We unexpectedly got hooked on Lohan’s Beach Club on MTV and utilized the big jet tub in the house. All this while sipping wine of course!

Overall, Cobalt & Sapphire Retreat Week 2k19 was a total success and we laid the foundation for what we are sure will be a great year.