Take Good Care: Season 5 Episode 5 – The Rebrand, Part 3: Same Doctors, New Name. A Nod to Our Past, A Bridge to The Future

Dr. Mironda Williams…: Welcome to Take Good Care podcast.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie…: An endeavor that grew out of our love for obstetrics and gynecology.

Dr. Karen Greene…: Our aim and mission is to serve as a source of vital information for women of all races, ages, and walks in life.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: I am Dr. Mironda Williams.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie…: I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.

Dr. Karen Greene…: And I’m Dr. Karen Greene.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: Welcome to our show.

Welcome to this episode of Take Good Care. I’m Dr. Miranda Williams.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie…: I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.

Dr. Karen Greene…: And I am Dr. Karen Greene.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: At the conclusion of our last episode, we left you on a bit of a cliffhanger. By now, you all realize that we have gone through a rebranding process. We are going to be changing the name of the practice, but as with the previous episodes that we did on this rebranding journey, the first episode talking about our origin story, version two, the next episode, we talked about rebranding and that the only constant is change, and then the last episode, we talked about the rebrand, why now, what are the pros and the cons?

For this episode, we wanted to just do another talk really to just hopefully give everyone reassurance and encouragement that we are the same doctors, it’s just a new name. It’s just a new name. As you’ve listened to the podcast that we recorded this season earlier, you heard a little bit about our founder, Dr. Rosemary Schultz.

We talked about the practice history, how she started the practice in 1984, moved to the current location that our main office is located in, which is in Peachtree City, Georgia. But we have had other offices in addition to this one all over the city. We’ve been ITP, we’ve been inside the perimeter, and we now have a second location that’s located in Newnan, Georgia.

We have currently two offices, one in Peachtree City, Georgia, the other in Newnan, Georgia. As a practice, as surgeons, as physicians, we continue to learn. We continue to retool ourselves. We continue to learn new things, new surgery techniques. I tell patients yes, I do hysterectomies. I’ve always done hysterectomies. I’ve now done hysterectomies for over 30 years, but how I accomplish the hysterectomy has changed. It has improved, it has evolved.

Currently, all three of us are robotically trained surgeons. We perform robotic hysterectomies as well as other robotic surgeries and procedures. The benefit of the minimally invasive surgical techniques are that they decrease pain postoperatively, you have decreased bleeding, you have decreased risk of infection, you have shorter hospital stays, you’re up and back to your life quicker than you would with a traditional hysterectomy when we used to have to make a large incision.

Even in medicine, things change. We find new and improved ways of doing what we do, taking care of women. In this evolution of our current practice, we have a new name, we have a new logo that we’ll be talking about shortly. Dr. Greene, can you talk about… Because you were good at looking back, I had forgotten one of the little logos. Used to be a laser beam. I’d forgotten all about that. Talk about some of the logos we’ve had over the course of our history.

Dr. Karen Greene…: Thank you. Dr. Williams. The laser beam. I had forgotten about that, but I remember when… Because I didn’t know what it was. It was on something, I think it was a letterhead, and I think one day I asked Dr. Schultz, “What is this?” And she said it’s a laser beam, and I went okay. I had to look at it funny.

I asked her why, because I knew that most of the time, Rose had a reason behind everything that she did. In that respect, she’s trained us well. I said, “Why?” She said, “Laser wasn’t a thing when I started the practice that people did, so I wanted people to know this is what I did.” That was the reason for that. It’s an interesting little beam and a little burst at the end, but that was on all of our letterhead for years.

After other people joined the practice and we were doing OB, we decided we wanted to do something that was more obstetric minded, and so the mother child was the logo that one of our former partners came up with. She designed it and drew it, and so that was our logo for years. It was a mother and child because taking care of women, taking care of babies, delivering babies, that was part of our obstetrical journey.

When we let go of that part of our obstetrical journey, we realized that we probably had to let go of that logo so as not to confuse people. We still take care of women, we’ve always been woman to woman, but letting go of that. What we were going to go to next, we thought maybe it would be the rose. That was in honor of our founder, Rosemary Schultz. The rose was our latest logo that has lasted with us up until recently. On all of our letterheads and all of our stationary, there was the rose.

In this journey looking at changing our name, it was heartfelt in terms of if we’ve got to change our name, how are we going to make our logos still represent who we are? We employed that same wonderful group of marketing services to give us suggestions. They gave us suggestions on the name, and then give us suggestions on looking at the logo. When they sent us the examples of what the logo was, we all looked at it and we all had our own thoughts behind what did it make us think? What was it? Our first reaction.

Dr. Williams, I think called me and said, “Okay, so what’s your first reaction? Which one do you like? How do you like it?” She even pointed out something in the logo that I hadn’t noticed that made me go just… Oh. We told them what was important to us about our practice, what was important to us about taking care of our patients as opposed to just saying we just picked it because it was a laser, or we just picked it because it was a baby, this logo represents who we have evolved to and what we represent to our patients, what we want our patients to see about us in terms of the care of women so that when you look at the logo, you can say oh, okay, that’s formerly known as Peachtree City OB/GYN, but now their name is something else, but we understand why.

We can tell our story, and we hope that our patients will tell our story because for a lot of our patients, new and old, they were referrals from other patients. Certainly, someone’s telling our story. We want everyone to tell the same story and how we’ve gotten here and how we’ve arrived at this point.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: Dr. Guthrie, talk a little bit about that process that we went through really trying to hone in on what we thought our new name should be.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie…: As mentioned before, this wasn’t the first time… Or it has been suggested to us to have a name change, and in those times before, we were all just like nope, no way. Not doing it, not doing it, forget about it. It’s just going to have to be this name forever.

But as we explained a little bit in our last podcast, when and why we’re doing this now, finally we were like well, maybe… Okay. Like you said, we’ve been working with this marketing company and instead of us picking a name and then giving it to them to have to figure out and work it out and do everything. Again, all part of the research.

They started out… We tried to tell them, gave them our story, who we are, our history. They said that they would come up with a list of names to get us started. I remember the first list had about three or four names on it that we were like-

Dr. Karen Greene…: Nope. Not doing it.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie…: Nope. They were very conscientious, they were trying to keep with… Because they knew it’s hard.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: They knew we were emotionally attached.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie…: Emotionally attached. Literally, a lot of the names on this list still had ties to Peachtree City. One was even the name of our street and we were like… So they were really-

Dr. Mironda Williams…: Which is Clover Reach.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie…: They were babying us into this process.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: You’re right. They played us. I’m going to tell them that.

Dr. Karen Greene…: We told the story, so they knew we were attached. They had to baby us.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie…: But I think it helped us to focus because once we saw those names that were still lingering at Peachtree City, our street, and things like that, we were like if we’re going to change… Because literally at the end of that first list, we said well, if we’re going to change, let’s change. Let’s get some new names. And so came the second list, and I think there were eight on that list.

What we did, our process was, as Dr. Williams suggested, everybody go to their separate corners with the list and pray over it, cry over it, cuss at it, spit at it, do whatever you want to do, and then rank the names on the list, and then we had a meeting. Everybody gave their first top… They put it in order, and it was like match day. It was like which matched up, which names were at the top of the list for all of us, that sort of thing.

In the beginning, it was a little bit all over the place, but then as we talked through the names, we eliminated, there were a couple on the list that we all agreed that no, that was not the choice. But then we got down to, I believe it was the last two, and we were going back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. Finally looking at all the other reasons to change a name, searchability, length, ease, the history, what does it represent for us? We made our final decision. It was a process.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: It was a process.

Dr. Karen Greene…: It was a process.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: It’s a process. Again, we wanted to highlight a little bit of what that process has been like so that again, our current loyal patient base understands this was not done without a lot of tears, discussion, soul-searching individually as well as corporately about where we are now, where do we intend to go? We’ve mentioned our marketing firm, and I’m going to go ahead and let you guys know because they’ve been absolutely awesome.

The name of the firm that we’re using now is Lenz, L-E-N-Z Marketing. L-E-N-Z Marketing, Lenz Marketing has held our hands and ushered us around.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie…: They’re still doing it.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: They’re still taking us through the process to make sure that we end on the other side successfully. This is a part of the internal launching where we are providing information to current patients, to our current business partners, to business associates, hospitals, the answering service, all those who have been with us, these now four decades of practice to let them know, as an internal launch, A, why we’re doing this, and then what our new name and logo is and then we will shortly launch it publicly. You’ll be seeing it on all of our social media platforms and in everything that we do moving forward.

We feel that this new name reflects or is a nod to our past, but equally as important. It’s a bridge to the future. We feel, and we’re very comfortable in the decision that we’ve come to. Now we’re ready to unveil what our new name and logo will be going forward. We want to take this opportunity to introduce our new name and logo as Rosa Gynecology.

We are excited. We’ll use Dr. Guthrie as an easel. We are very excited. It’s like it took us 20 years to get here, to change our name, but once we’ve made the decision and gone through this process, I think we’re all extremely excited about it. We feel very positive, we feel like this is going to achieve all the goals that we want it to achieve, we feel that it’s going to be easily recognizable, easily searchable.

Rosa, as a nod to Dr. Rosemary Schultz, also to our previous logo, long-term logo that we’ve had in place for almost 20 years, and then the fact that we do gynecology. We recognize that with obstetrics being in our previous name, that was a little confusing because currently, we are not providing obstetric services. We do provide obstetric services through 12 weeks for those who are early pregnant, and then we refer you to other practices that you can provide obstetric care.

But primarily at this time, the physicians, the three of us, we provide gynecology services. We wanted to make sure that what we represented to the public, it gave you a good sense of what we do here every day. The bottom line is we’re still women taking care of women, we’re still the same three physicians who’ve been here now almost 30 years, all of us together, and we intend to be here going forward.

Dr. Greene, you want to talk a little bit about how you feel with the new logo and what excitement or what you’re looking forward to in the future with our new Rosa Gynecology?

Dr. Karen Greene…: It’s funny because it’s like you ever have that nervous excitability, now that we’ve finally shown this, I can feel the butterfly. I remember when we let go of OB, I felt that same nervous energy, and it proved to be something that was very good for all of us. As providers of care, as providers of women care, I think that it was a good thing, and this is a good thing.

You look at the logo and it’s got the R in it, which is what Dr. Williams pointed out, because I didn’t really see it. I looked at it and it was a fresh breath of air when I looked at the logo. I’m really looking forward to other people seeing it so they can be like oh, okay. Knowing our story and knowing how we got to this point, I think is so important so that anyone, in addition to us, everyone in the office, they can tell the story.

We’re going to communicate that to our patients so that they know what the story is so that they know and they can get the butterflies at first and go oh, nothing’s really changed. It’s just the sign out front.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: Dr. Guthrie, what do you think?

Dr. Deanna Guthrie…: It was hard for me, like I said in the very beginning when we were talking about this, to picture this not being Peachtree City OB/GYN, but now that I see this, the fact that it is a shorter name, that it’s just… Who do you work for? Rosa Gynecology. Like I said, I’m excited about that. I love the logo.

It was funny, when they sent proofs for the choice of the logo, the way that it looks now, that’s one way that it can look, but it also had another way where it was an open logo, which in certain instances we may use because of color backgrounds and things like that. But for both of them… And it was funny, there were those two, there was this one that we’re showing now, there was that one that was a more open, and then there were two other choices, but it was like all three of us gravitated to this logo. The other ones, like I said, we didn’t even consider. Like I said, I’m excited.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: Yep, we’re very excited. In this process of evaluation and deliberation, we have included our staff members. Our executive leadership team has been involved with the process as well. We share with them earlier in the process about what we were thinking and why, and they understood because we needed their buy-in, we needed them to understand why we were doing this, because they would be very key in making sure that the transition goes smoothly.

We then introduced it to our staff not too long ago, again, in advance of moving ahead with the public notifications. They also are very excited. I think they really embrace… In some previous episodes, we talked about how the makeup of our staff is different than pre-pandemic. Pre-pandemic, we had a lot of long tenured staff members who were very much like us, wedded to Peachtree City Obstetrics and Gynecology, but as things have changed and evolved throughout the process of the pandemic phase in 2020, we have newer staff.

They embraced the change and they think that it is a very positive thing for us as a practice and as a practice family. Everybody’s excited about new scrubs, and we will be getting new scrubs with our new logo. We really feel good about this. We feel very positive that this is the right direction to go. So much so that we are trademarking our name and that we’re making sure that everything that you see now as it goes forward in the public arena, that we’re able to protect it and that it is represented as we want it to be represented.

We want to remain in control of not only our history in terms of where we’ve come from, but in control of our future and where we intend to go. By having control over the physical mark, being the name of the practice as well as the logo, just solidifies our commitment to the quality of care, the stellar business practices, as well as remaining visionary as Rosemarie Schultz was back in 1984 when she started the practice as a visionary.

She did not just design the practice for where it was in 1984, she designed the practice for where it could go 10, 20, 30, 40 years down the line. What we’re doing as a way to continue to put forth the light that we carry is that we are doing something we feel is necessary to allow this practice to be present in the future and working in the future in any number of ways and capacities.

This just allows us to expand in any way that may be necessary, depending on the market changes and how things go in the future, that this takes off any restrictions that could be present due to a name that specifically was centered around a location as an identifier. We think this identifier allows us to… I won’t say world domination, but maybe state domination.

Dr. Karen Greene…: Starts off small, but she really means world.

Dr. Mironda Williams…: We’ll see about the world. But we’re excited. We hope you all are excited with us. We hope that we have answered any questions, that we relieved any fears or any anxieties about people saying what’s happening with my doctor? Your doctor is fine. Your doctor ain’t going nowhere. We will be right here.

Just as the artist formerly known as Prince, we are now Rosa Gynecology, formerly known as Peachtree City Obstetrics and Gynecology, but it’s a good thing. We are very happy, we’re excited. We hope you’ll continue on this journey with us. As we proceed in season five of our podcast, Take Good Care, we want you to get excited because we will be bringing in guests either into the local studio that we have here, or we may be doing some electronic interviews with them.

Just as we’re excited about expanding the reach of our medical practice, we’re also excited about expanding the reach of our podcast and bringing you even more information that you can find that will be helpful to you for your life, your lifestyle, your livelihood. Thank you for staying on this journey and now coming to you from Rosa Gynecology, I’m Dr. Mironda Williams.

Dr. Deanna Guthrie…: I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.

Dr. Karen Greene…: And I am Dr. Karen Green. Take good care.