In this episode, Ruthie and Bekkah talk through the different approaches you can take to choosing a name for your business. We cover the benefits of an industry specific business, the cons of being vague and not vague enough, and how that translates to your domain name options. Stick around till the end for some ridiculous business names we found on the internet.
Welcome to Business Talk Sister Gawk. I’m Bekkah! And I’m Ruthie!
Bekkah: Today we are going to start an episode about how to choose a business name. We’re super excited about this because we probably spent at least 20 minutes laughing about ridiculous business names before we started. So stay till the end because we are going to Gawk about that for a little bit. The first question we have is, Ruthie, where should we start?
How to Start Picking a Business Name
Ruthie: I would say you should start by just asking yourself what you want to do with your business. Do you want to be more versatile and all the things that you do? Do you want to be very specific? You have to think through what you are willing to do, what you’re wanting to do, and what you’re wanting to do long term. Don’t just think about the short term and what you want to do right now. Think 10 years out. Where do you want to be at as a business and will your name constantly reflect that as you continue to progress and move forward? Where I would start is just do some brainstorming. We found this really cool business name generator.
Bekkah: Oh my word! It’s so fun!
Ruthie: We found some good places to start with that which was mostly hilarious but it gives you some good ideas of kind of what things would sound like if you threw different words together. Then think about the keywords that you want to have associated with your business.
Bekkah: Think about what services or products you’re offering. If you’re saying, “Okay, well, this is the product that I have.” How does the name relate to that product? Or how does the service you’re providing relate to the product that you would like to be using? Take a step back and think about this is something that I want to provide. and ask your friends and family, “Does this reflect that service? Is this something that looks right? Or would you suggest a couple of things?” I’m going to tell you right now, any person you ask is probably going to tell you yes or no or have 80 more ideas for you.
Get Feedback On Your Business Name Ideas
Don’t feel like you need to be tied to one specific person’s opinion about that. Get lots of different feedback before you start but also think about the characteristics of what describes you. If you’re providing a specific service and it’s something that’s near and dear to your heart or something that also reflects a little bit of your personality, it would be good to ask people and your friends and family people close to you, “What exactly represents me? What characteristics or virtues would you say that I have?” And off of those responses, you can even get a whole bunch more ideas.
If somebody says, “Well, you’re really energizing.” Okay, so there’s a characteristic word but what does that look like to then make that into a brand? Does that mean I give life to situations? Does it have something to do with maybe a tree or whatever when you’re thinking about logos to describe your business and your personality? Another thing we talked about or have had discussions about is keywords and industry specificity. Should you have what you do in the name of your business? Ruthie is going to talk a little bit about that.
Should I Include What I Do in My Business Name?
Ruthie: I think one mistake that people make often is they pick a business name right away. I, honestly, would recommend sitting with it for like starting the process and then ending in about a month. You start and in the first week, you’re doing all of that brainstorming. You’re compiling your keywords and thinking about your industry-specific keywords, you have your descriptor keywords, you have your personal keywords of things that you want. Kind of split it into those categories so then you have almost this bank of words that you can use to describe your business but also name your business.
You’re doing that in the first week. You’re compiling this list and then you’re really hitting the ground and asking all of your friends and saying, “What do you think? Here’s what I want to do? What words would you use to describe that, keeping me in mind, specifically.” Then as you ask people about that then keep adding to that bank and keep adding to that bank. Then at the end of that week throw together some of your top five ideas. So you have this list of top five ideas of things that you think would be good for a business name that makes sense and keep in mind too you could have a really good idea of what you want to do and you say, “Oh, I could make it really abstract!” But think about if someone was just looking at that would they be able to tell what it is that you are wanting to do with your business?
Should My Business Name Be A Play On Words?
It’s all well and good to have something that’s really catchy or and witty but if nobody is going to understand it they have to think really, really hard to be able to make the connections, it’s not worth it. Think about that too. You’ve got this week and on the last day, you’ve got your list of five and then sit with that for two weeks. Just tell yourself those names every day. Narrow it down to one and then tell yourself those names every single day. If that’s what you want moving forward that’s going to be with you again, thinking long term, potentially for 10 years or longer. Really make sure that it sits well with you. I don’t want to make this super like paralyzing to people but I think it’s worth taking the time to think through it.
Be Careful Not To Let Your Business Name Lock You Into Only One Service
Bekkah: At the same time, I’m just going to come from the opposite angle of what Ruthie’s talking about. I’m the kind of person that I can’t stick to just one type of business in my business. When I came up with my business name it was because of the story behind it. For some people, if you’re not good at articulating the story and making the story memorable, you totally need to take Ruthie’s advice. Absolutely. But if you can talk with people and say, “This is why I picked this name.” And you can do that in less than 30 seconds and it’s a story that they’re going to always come back to and say, “Oh yeah. I remember that company.” That’s fine too.
Having A Memorable Story About Your Business Name Increases Recall
I’m just going to say in the exploring of my business name. Here’s is where I feel like maybe I shot myself on the foot but at the same time I don’t regret that so if you get it wrong or if it’s not exactly what you wanted it’s okay. My business name is Wise Elephant Consulting. I have had a ton of people say, “Okay yeah we were working with you, White Elephant Consulting.” And I’m like, “Yep, I am not a giant garage sale.” That’s a little bit awkward, but it’s funny, but the reason I picked Wise Elephant Consulting and I’ll tell them that “It is because I believe it is wise to talk about the elephant in the room”. All of a sudden when you say that and it’s very short everyone remembers it in the future. “Oh, yeah! That’s what her company name means!”
If you can tell that story really quick and why I have that company name it sticks with people and they remember into the future. Maybe they don’t remember in the right detail but then they go, “Oh, yeah! That elephant in the room! That’s what it is! It’s an elephant company!” I really don’t work with elephants.
Ruthie: I think a good corporate example of that is that mattress company Purple. When you think about the name Purple you don’t think mattress company but they’ve done a really good job of telling their story and the marketing that they’ve done has been actually really good. So they’ve been able to build their brand around that. They’ve done a good job of telling the story of their company even though their name doesn’t necessarily reflect what they do.
Bekkah: The nice thing about having a little bit of an ambiguous name is that if you diversify into other things. For example, if Purple the mattress company were to say, “Okay, now we’re going to start selling sofas,” Or whatever else. They’re not just tied to “number one mattress company,” right? They have lots of options for how they can diversify their business.
This is good to think about because if you start say maybe as a car detailing company and then you expand further but your name is “Car Detailing”. It’s a little bit harder and confusing for people who are looking for a different service that you also do offer. Think about how you can make it a little broader so you can branch out into new categories if you need to in the future. That is going to be helpful if you ever have to pivot your business based on industry disruption or like something else with an economic issue. You want to be able to be flexible enough to move your business if you need to.
Ruthie: I think that comes back to you too like Bekkah was saying earlier, knowing yourself well enough to know am I going to be able to articulate this well and tell people the story if I do pick a more abstract name.
How to Check to See If A Business Name Is Available
Bekkah: The next thing we’re going to talk about in that is: is that name actually available? Does somebody else already own it and can you use it for your business? Now sometimes people think, “Well, there’s someone on the internet that has this name.” Okay, but they’re in a different state or a different country. They might have a good website that has the domain name in it but you can actually still use that name in a different state because you register your business name with the Secretary of State.
Ruthie: Woop, Woop! Yeah!
What Is A DBA For A Business Name?
Bekkah: And that’s a way you can search they have a search function within each state to find whether or not that name has already been taken. Now it’s important to know that if you have a specific business structure and you file your name it will have that business structure on the end unless it’s a certificate of assumed name. Lots of big words. I’m going to try to break it down for you.
Ruthie: Good.
Bekkah: If you file a name, for example, my business is an LLC. When I filed my business it was Wise Elephant Consulting LLC, but because I don’t want the LLC in my name I then had to file a certificate of assumed name or it’s also known as a DBA,
Bekkah and Ruthie: “Doing Business As”
Ruthie: Wow! We didn’t plan that!
Bekkah: Just talking out loud together, right now. If you’re a sole proprietor which means you are basically the company. You yourself and you’re paying yourself straight through. You usually just file a certificate of assumed name with the Secretary of State. When you look at that and say, for example, “In the future, I want to start this whole product or whatever and my business is this but I need to do something with this, but I want to run it during the same thing.” Surprise! You can actually file another certificate of assumed name for your original business, as well. So you can have more than one if you need to. An example of this would be Business Talk Sister Gawk. That is a DBA.
Ruthie: Yes, it is.
Bekkah: Ruthie forgot that’s how we filed that.
Ruthie: No, I just made that noise and then I was like, “That made me sound like I was surprised…” So then I was like, “I should state, ‘Yes, it is.’ Like I knew that!” I did know that!
Bekkah: It just made you sound even more like, “Oh, yeah! We did that!”
Bekkah: Okay, so, when you file your business so you’re going to look it up you’re going to see if it is available and no one else has that name. Great. So you do the website information. You file it with your address and all of that and then, surprise! You’re going to get a whole bunch of junk mail about businesses, just so you know because if you register with Secretary of State everyone knows that you now have a business and they’re going to try to sell you stuff.
You’ll also get lots of spam in the mail saying, “You need to renew your business name!” Those are independent companies trying to freak you out. You can actually renew your business name, I think it’s like every two or three years, on the Secretary of State website so and it doesn’t cost anything to renew it unless you have not renewed it and expired. Then you have to pay to get it back up and running again. Found that out!
How To Pick A Domain Name
Ruthie: Tell us about the domain name situation. How do you pick a domain name with your business?
Bekkah: Yeah, okay. Another good way to start looking at whether or not a name is available is to look at if anyone else has this specific website domain name. You can look that up on any major um hosting company that sells domain names like Godaddy and see if someone already have this. Sometimes someone already has purchased it and you can’t get that but if you just change sometimes they’ll be like you should get like a .io or .net instead of .com because then you can have the same thing. I mean, that’s fine to do but most people are more familiar in the United States, specifically, with .com, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend going straight to like a .net or something else for an ending. You can! Probably not the most universal for people trying to look up a website though.
What you can do though if you have the same name as someone else in a different state is actually in your domain name add that. A lot of things up in northern Minnesota have Northstar in it, Northstar.com, but you could say northstarmn for the state. Or you can add Northstar development or whatever you want part of your business name. When we were talking about keywords, especially, within your industry something you should really think about is search-ability on the web. If you have in your domain name what you do so say like construction or cosmetology most people are actually probably looking for hairstylist.
If you put those things in your domain name it’s going to show up for those things. Especially, by geographic location for people looking for those services. Definitely think about that as you’re choosing a domain name. It’s just as important to choose a domain name as a regular business name. Most people do them the same. For mine it’s wiseelephantconsulting.com What does that look like? Is it searchable or is there a specific niche market that you want to go after to make it more specific to an area? Maybe it’s the city name are you adding that to it? It really depends on what your target market is, as well.
Think about that within how you choose a domain name. When you choose a domain name make sure that you’re not paying a ton of money for it. Sometimes people will buy a whole bunch of domain names and then sell them for like a thousand dollars each. There’s no way you should be paying that much money for a domain name.
What Keywords Should Be in My Business Name & Domain Name?
Ruthie: Basically, how they can do that is find keywords and things like that that are competitive right now and they find all the domain names that they can be associated with those keywords and they buy them from someplace like Godaddy and then they will resell them to people who want them. Or there are some people who watch and say you have a domain name that’s going up to expire and you have to renew it. They’ll watch and wait for it to expire and before you can go in and renew it, they’ll buy it and then you have to go in and buy it from them. Which is just a sneaky mean thing to do
Bekkah: A lot of people do that.
Ruthie: Competitors will do that often, too. Even if it’s not the same domain name as them but they know that your domain name is going to expire soon. They’ll just go in and buy it and then your website is kind of sunk at that point.
Bekkah: Well, I think it’s important to just pay attention to when your hosting provider says, “Hey, you need to renew your domain name!” Don’t let it expire! That’s a big thing because a lot of stuff with your website if you lose your domain name that’s a lot of the authority that you’ve built with search engines over time. Then it’s like, “Oh, just kidding! We’re picking a new one! We don’t have this old one anymore!” You lose a lot of ranking.
Ruthie: Then you have to rebuild that all over again because you’ll have to make a new site.
Bekkah: I mean if you have a hosting provider and you just plug in a new domain name, you can do that, but in terms of authority it’s basically like having someone you’ve had a relationship with for a really long time and then saying, “Sorry. This person no longer exists now you get to work with this guy.”
Ruthie: Same qualifications, but you have to rebuild that trust again.
Bekkah: Working with search engines is like building a relationship.
Ruthie: Yeah! Also, recently I learned that Bing has an actual system of how they rank people. They have it all detailed that if you have these things on your website, in general, this is how they will rank you. Google doesn’t have that. They just leave it ambiguous so they can rank people however they want. That is a little sketchy to me but I just found that out this weekend! Bing actually has a thing that you can look up and they keep it updated. If they have new algorithms that roll out then they put that on there to say, “This is a new way that we’re ranking people.” I just thought that was kind of sneaky that google’s like, “Yeah, we’re just not gonna tell anybody and do whatever we want.”
Bekkah: You will have to figure it out.
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