I’m the co-founder of Lenity Financial, Inc. We’re a financial services company that does financial planning and investment management.

My husband and I have 36 years of combined experience in financial services under the umbrella of global wealth managers and wirehouses. We decided to launch our own business from soup to nuts. From the very beginning, our challenge was how to brand our business, what to name our business, and how to market our business. The critical piece for us was working with a marketing firm that was compassionate, passionate, and had a good level of connectivity. That’s how we are with our clients and with what we do. We also wanted a partner who was interested in understanding how we wanted to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace.

We started talking with JJR Marketing, specifically Jackie Camacho-Ruiz, about starting our own business. Once we were finished with our business plan, we sat with JJR Marketing to discuss their services and how they might be able to help us. Within the first two months of conversations and reviewing what JJR Marketing offers, it was clear to us that they were the right people. Our brand started as a husband and wife team who have a great deal of kindness toward our clients. As a team, we also wanted to educate our clients. JJR Marketing got that. They were great listeners and were able to explain how they would articulate our brand. That was step one.

After confirming that they understood our business, we began working through some of the initial details such as the name and title of our business. They worked with us for a few months to find the right fit and name. Through our collaboration, we—but primarily them—came up with the name we actually use: Lenity Financial. They found that “lenity” means kindness and gentleness. 

They created the logo, which is beautiful. It’s organic looking—which is how we have started our business, in an organic and healthy way. Even though we’re a financial services company, we have health partners. You get that understanding when you look at our brand.

We’ll be sitting with them within a month or so for our next phase of issuing press releases. We’ve personally held off on those because we collaborated on a journal that was launched in February. After that, we’ll be looking back at what we’ve put out so far to make sure the branding speaks across everything we’re doing. JJR Marketing has a good pair of eyes for that.

How did you come to work with JJR Marketing?

I found them through Facebook. A friend of mine had written her love letter to her passion—her nonprofit—and she had shared it on her business page. Apparently, she was a client of JJR in some way. Their Valentine’s newsletter included that beautifully written letter, and it struck a chord with me. I liked that they had shared the story of another business owner, albeit a nonprofit, in a unique way. It allowed that sort of passion and compassion to be out there to strike a chord with people. We’re very personal and not just a business and I could see very clearly that JJR was the same. I picked up the phone and called to see about meeting them.

We paid between $12,000 and $15,000 for their services.

We had our first meeting in February or March 2016. The initial phase is completed, but the engagement will continue.

The early feedback on the branding, logo, and name has been incredibly positive. It resonates with people. It has absolutely brought us business—people are getting an understanding fairly quickly as to who we are from our logo, brand, and website. JJR did a really great job articulating that and we collaborated on the language as well. We opened our doors on August 1st and I figure that we’re just now closing some of those relationships from our branding.

At this point, we have a couple of new clients coming on board just because of the journal. We’re just starting to get that type of information out there, yet we’ve already had positive responses about our journal. It has resonated with people that we know.

We are building our financial services company from the ground up, meaning we aren’t connected to an LPL or a Raymond James type of entity. We work with our own custodian, Interactive Brokers, and we created everything. Our branding looks professional and on par with those entities, so we had a good sense there. It works, especially given our decades of experience with other global wealth managers. As far as dollars, I can’t say anything specific. In our industry, it usually takes two to three months from the first meeting until the actual assets arrive. However, the financial planning part is absolutely underway, and I would say we can attribute that in part to JJR and their marketing.

They did a great job, but there were a couple of bumps in the road. Just like the stock market, it didn’t go straight up. Here’s what we did: we communicated our concerns. Jackie Camacho-Ruiz, who heads the organization, got right to us, listened intently, and heard what we had to say. To our significant satisfaction, they made the necessary adjustments. The working relationship, as you can imagine, is not all perfect, but we found them to be great collaborators. They are good at fixing the problems when they did arise in a very professional and quick manner. We had a good experience in that respect.

It is Jackie Camacho-Ruiz. She is the standout, and it is her creation. She has a good team, which is wonderful, especially when you’re looking for something to touch others—a long-term vision, something bigger than what your dream is. She is capable of creating and making that happen as seen with our visuals, logo, website, and the ideas for our journal. Everything was truly amazing. Our relationship with Jackie started as a conversation of the passion indicator index because we work with indexes in the stock market. That transitioned into an actual 152-page journal with working pages for our clients and a variety of other applications. That is what I think distinguishes them—Jackie and her ability to make things happen that you couldn’t imagine yourself but actually work beautifully within your business. Her team brought something tangible to our business—such as a book—in addition to the intangibles of our service and experience for our clients. That’s a trademark of JJR Marketing.

That’s always the case with any business. The management team at JJR, such as the project managers and editors, can be more hands-on and act a second pair of eyes for Jackie. There are some really strong editors on their team and there are others not as strong. Improvement of the overall team on edits is important and truly just one of the very few issues we had.

The name of our company is Meyer Wealth Advisors. We’ve been in the financial advising business for the last 40 years. Our job is to work with “the millionaire next door,” and try to help them maximize the growth and use of their wealth. I founded the company, and I’m the senior partner here.

We needed two things: we wanted to update our profile and needed to get our print materials and media positions up-to-date.

We didn’t have a good cadre of deliverables before working with JJR Marketing, and that was a thing we really wanted to address. We had already taken a few pieces of our company to the next level when we redesigned our logo. Two years ago, we were called Meyer Financial Services, and that didn’t define what we wanted to do. We would get called for mortgages, tax preparation, and budgeting. That’s not what we do. We manage people’s wealth. That’s when we changed the name to Meyer Wealth Advisors and using a third party, redesigned our logo and colors.

We brought in JJR Marketing primarily to work on the print materials like the handouts and leave behinds. They helped us develop a few pieces. These are pieces I am very proud of when we meet with prospects either on a first-time basis or clients that we meet with on a regular basis. These are things we can add to them that they take away. The print materials help develop our brand recognition with clients. JJR Marketing also helped us redesign our website and ramp it up to more of a current effectiveness in the marketplace.

In the beginning, JJR wrote our blog. Jackie Camacho-Ruiz [CEO, JJR Marketing] helped me understand what we’re trying to communicate. Her writers wrote four or five blogs for us last year, but I’ve taken it over at the beginning of this year.

How did you come to work with JJR Marketing?

A friend of mine in Aurora called us. She is in the business of selling marketing materials like pens and coffee cups. During the conversation, she mentioned that she had time to interact with Jackie at a meeting, and I posed more questions to her about what it is that Jackie did. Both my partner and I decided this sounds like somebody we need to talk to. That’s how we connected with her.

This is the first time we’ve worked with somebody who is more of a multifaceted agency. We had worked with a PR person in Aurora who wrote some things for us, but nothing of any real formal nature. JJR was the first interaction we had with a firm that worked in that area.

It’s been thousands of dollars.

We started working with JJR Marketing over a year ago.

This is all encompassing because we’ve done a lot of different things. We’ve upped our office profile and moved to a higher profile location with a nicer office. Two years ago, we were in an office building that we owned. Unfortunately, when you own a building for 25–26 years, you probably don’t spruce it up as often as you should have. We made a business decision to sell the building and move into a higher profile place.

We’ve changed our logo, position, and interaction with our clientele. We’ve ramped up the whole game, and we have gotten good responses from our clients. They have noticed we’ve ramped it up, and they appreciate it. JJR Marketing is a part of that because they did a lot. Although I can’t say it was 100% because of them, they were valuable and important.

JJR Marketing has been fine in this aspect. They are very good at laying timelines out, but it wouldn’t be a good, fair analysis to compare them to us, primarily because we were going through many changes. Many timelines had to be redeveloped and rethought since we were redeveloping the platform. They are very good at bringing in a timeline and showing you what should be done by which date.

I don’t have anything to compare JJR Marketing to since I’ve never dealt with a company like them. I didn’t interview other firms. If I were to interview a half a dozen other firms, maybe then I would have a better answer for you.

I really can’t think of anything off the top of my head.

I'm the general manager for a software solutions company.

We wanted to improve our brand awareness, so we were looking for a firm to help with everything from press releases to helping us improve our digital presence.

JJR Marketing finds and pitches press releases to potential media outlets. They also make suggestions for online and print outlets and have gotten our CEO profiled in a magazine. They're in the process of helping us apply for different awards to help highlight the organization.

I work with Jacqueline (CEO, JJR Marketing) and Marie (Public Relations Manager, JJR Marketing).

They were recommended to us by a PR firm we worked with on our website.

We've invested between $20,000–$30,000.

We worked with them in 2017 on one project, and started working with them again for additional work in September 2018.

JJR Marketing has been very successful in getting our organization recognized, including a profile in a magazine and a spot on a news network in Chicago.

They're good about meeting deadlines, documenting their work, and following up as needed.

They're very energetic, positive, and come up with effective strategies.

No. They're doing all that they can given the competitiveness of media placements.