Should you name your organizing business?
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Last month I posted a number of valuable resources to help you start a professional organizing business. As you write your business plan, you’ll likely spend some time coming up with the right name for your organizing business, so I’m happy to welcome back Kimberley Laws with some great advice to help you with this decision.
You know who you are. You are the organizer extraordinaire–a systemization savant, alphabetizing aficionado, filing freak, and methodizing maven. Quite simply put, you are the best at making sense of chaos and turning a nightmarish mess into a calm and consolidated oasis. The one question is “how do you effectively communicate your collection of skills to potential clients–the disorganized masses who desperately need your sorting and streamlining savvy?”
To begin with, your company needs the right name.
And without a name, your business may become the epitome of the proverbial needle in a stack of hay.
But that does not mean that any old name will do. When bestowing a moniker on your beloved business, you will need to keep a few very important tips in mind.
Ring a Bell. Loudly.
Some names stick in your head, while others barely attract your notice. Your company’s handle needs to be easy to remember–particularly when someone needs your services. “Tips from Insightly to take Your Business to 11” (no longer online) adeptly illustrates this point by saying that if Etsy were named Grshkinmiffle, their business might not be doing so well. Why? Only a person with an eidetic memory could possibly recall the name Grshkinmiffle. And even fewer could pronounce it.
The right name, however, will stick to the brain like an errant strip of Velcro does to your favorite sweater.
What name best captures your business?
Observe Merriam-Webster
While the experts concede that “Flickr” is a catchy name–despite its intentional misspelling–they recommend sticking with traditional spellings. The disorganized masses need to be able to find your business easily, whether they are looking you up in an old-school phone book or typing your name into Google. And a trendy, anti-establishment arrangement of consonants and vowels could prove detrimental to your bottom line.
If you spell your company’s name the way it sounds, you will be able to attract a bevy of new clientele–no matter how they let their fingers do the walking.
Harness the Power of One
If you’ve been putting off naming your company simply because you, alone, comprise the entire business, think again. You need potential clientele to do more than just remember your name–you need them to associate your name with a sensational organizing service. As mentioned in “How to Choose a Great Name for Your Organizing Business,” Peter Urs Bender and George Torok, the co-authors of Secrets of Power Marketing, advise one-person service businesses to use their own name in their company’s moniker as it will reinforce your personal brand and attract more referrals. And those are good things.
Random Does Not Lead to Fandom
If its proposed name does not provide some idea as to what service or product your business offers, you will likely miss out on many opportunities. According to Entrepreneur‘s “How to Name a Business,” you should avoid fabricated words or strings of numbers or initials and, instead, opt for real words that people can relate to and understand. The right name, after all, can lead de-clutter cravers right to your company’s front door.
Now that you’ve decided to bless your business with a name, the fun part begins. Get creative. Play with different ideas. And test your choices out on family and friends. And most of all, find the name that best captures what your business has to offer–the name that sums up your brand.
How did you come up with your business’s moniker?
Images courtesy of Thinkstock.com
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In hindsight I do wish that I had used my name in my business somehow. I did think of it but nothing worked. But now that I have an organizing business and a separate blog with another name it’s more difficult to promote. So on social media I am just using my name. That way people get to know me and if they like what I do they can check out what all I am associated with. It’s good as long as you keep your SEO up on all of your sites.
As for my business name Windfall Organizing, I wanted to be a “Godsend” to people. So I looked up a synonym for a godsend and it was windfall. As for the blog, Smart Happy Organized is just how I like to feel! 🙂
Great post!
I’d have loved to incorporate my name into it somehow too. Some people’s names really lend themselves to it.
In the beginning, my business was Barclay Career & Organizing Solutions, which was too long and boring, but I had a clever bookmark made up where the initials BCOS also stood for four steps to creating a life that suits your personality type (obviously not too catchy, since I can’t remember them anymore).
When I transitioned from being an organizing/career consultant to a professional organizer/virtual assistant, I needed to change it, and I wanted one I could keep if I later decided to drop one or the other. I was glad I did that when I stopped offering organizing services, but now that I’m mostly a website designer, Organized Assistant doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore. 🙁
Interesting read and luckily similar advice to that I gave an individual I was mentoring recently. ; ) A couple of additional reasons to use your name in your business name: 1) If you’ve already built a name for yourself in another area, the name recognition will be there already and 2) You are less likely to run into someone already having registered the business name if your name is part of it. I had already done a lot of organizing type work in volunteering for various organizations during the 12 years preceding when I started my business. People recognized the name Sharb and that helped my business get noticed. As far as registering my business name, there any number of organizers who use – “S.O.S.” in their name, but following S.O.S. with Sharb Organizing Solutions meant I was able to register my name with the secretary of state with little fear the name was already registered. Helpful article Janet!
Great points, Andrea! Though I remember my Grade 9 Introduction to Business teacher, whose name was Samuel Cole, saying he’d have a hard time opening either a record store (because of Sam the Record Man, which was a huge entity in Toronto until recently) or a book store (because of Coles, a Canadian bookstore chain). 😉
Good article. When I was choosing my company name, I came up with about 5, some better than others, some just for fun, but all with a message I wanted to get across. I pretty much knew my top two picks but I wanted to use the naming of my business as a marketing opportunity, so I polled many friends, contacts and the few clients I’d already worked with. It gave me the chance to contact lots of people and say ‘Hey I’m going into business officially” even if my emails actually said “what do you think is the best business name for me”. My name has worked well for me. Who doesn’t understand the message and emphasis behind Goodbye Clutter!
What a clever way to solicit advice and make an announcement all at once! And clearly you made a good decision, because you’ve been in business for a long time now.