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Watch Your Words: Don't Sink Your Business
With the Wrong Name
One of the first things you must do as you consider beginning a new company is to find
a name. For most small business owners, however, this process all too often relies on
cuteness, happenstance, or other irrelevant modes of decision making. Naming your
business should not be left to fate or the whims of your best friend. It takes as much
procedure and research as any other aspect of your business. If you fail to realize this
you might make a terrible mistake when naming your business, putting yourself at a
disadvantage right out of the gate. If you want to give your business a name that will
last, avoid some of these common mistakes and you’ll be much more likely to succeed.
One of the first and most common mistakes to avoid is letting others make the decision
for you, particularly by committee. When naming your company, it’s best to go it alone.
You’ll get better results, and no one has to have their feelings hurt in the process. Save
the "friends committee decision-making" for less creative solutions.
One of the worst trends in naming is when a business owner takes two unrelated
words and tries to combine them to make a new word. This is overplayed and should
be avoided, unless you can come up with something extremely clever (like
"momtrepreneur"). There is a rising sentiment against such names, perhaps brought
on by the media and their insistence on using the same technique with celebrity
couples. Your business deserves better than to blindly follow this nonsensical trend.
Come up with a name that is unique and different and doesn’t leave people scratching
their heads or rolling their eyes.
Perhaps the single worst mistake you can make when naming your business is to
choose a common word as your name. For one, you are guaranteeing the fact that there
are probably at least a hundred other companies across the country with the same
name. Secondly, you’ve made your company impossible to find through use of an
Internet search engine. With so much of today’s business being done online, you can’t
afford to intentionally lose yourself in the shuffle. Even if you don’t have a website and
won’t be making sales over the Internet, it’s still important for people to be able to find
your business with a simple search. If your name is too common, that will be next to
impossible.
Is a name everything? Not at all. But by following these hints, you can at least come up
with a name that doesn’t kill your business before you even get started. Avoid the same
mistakes others have made. If you have to, make your own mistakes. Forge new
territory in business-naming faux pas. But to fail to learn from history is to doom yourself
to repeating it.
With the Wrong Name
One of the first things you must do as you consider beginning a new company is to find
a name. For most small business owners, however, this process all too often relies on
cuteness, happenstance, or other irrelevant modes of decision making. Naming your
business should not be left to fate or the whims of your best friend. It takes as much
procedure and research as any other aspect of your business. If you fail to realize this
you might make a terrible mistake when naming your business, putting yourself at a
disadvantage right out of the gate. If you want to give your business a name that will
last, avoid some of these common mistakes and you’ll be much more likely to succeed.
One of the first and most common mistakes to avoid is letting others make the decision
for you, particularly by committee. When naming your company, it’s best to go it alone.
You’ll get better results, and no one has to have their feelings hurt in the process. Save
the "friends committee decision-making" for less creative solutions.
One of the worst trends in naming is when a business owner takes two unrelated
words and tries to combine them to make a new word. This is overplayed and should
be avoided, unless you can come up with something extremely clever (like
"momtrepreneur"). There is a rising sentiment against such names, perhaps brought
on by the media and their insistence on using the same technique with celebrity
couples. Your business deserves better than to blindly follow this nonsensical trend.
Come up with a name that is unique and different and doesn’t leave people scratching
their heads or rolling their eyes.
Perhaps the single worst mistake you can make when naming your business is to
choose a common word as your name. For one, you are guaranteeing the fact that there
are probably at least a hundred other companies across the country with the same
name. Secondly, you’ve made your company impossible to find through use of an
Internet search engine. With so much of today’s business being done online, you can’t
afford to intentionally lose yourself in the shuffle. Even if you don’t have a website and
won’t be making sales over the Internet, it’s still important for people to be able to find
your business with a simple search. If your name is too common, that will be next to
impossible.
Is a name everything? Not at all. But by following these hints, you can at least come up
with a name that doesn’t kill your business before you even get started. Avoid the same
mistakes others have made. If you have to, make your own mistakes. Forge new
territory in business-naming faux pas. But to fail to learn from history is to doom yourself
to repeating it.