Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Just how important is the name of your business anyway?

Transcription

Do business names matter?

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

For those of you listening, I have on the screen here a picture of the head of Facebook, when he introduced the new name for the entire company as being Meta. And instead it says Feta.

It’s a play off of words but it also brings up the idea of how silly and how outrageous people were getting over this name.

Whether it was a good name or a bad name, whether it meant the beginning of something completely new, or the end, as we know it of Facebook.

It’s an interesting concept but it brings me back, it’s a thing that I get pulled into a conversation I get pulled into, especially with people starting new companies, where they really spend all a lot of time on the name.

A name can be important, but not for the same reasons that you probably think many times the name is they people go after a name that has a uniqueness or a goofiness to it, or I remember in the late 90s and early 2000s when everyone was trying to emulate Yahoo, and all these companies that had come out with these, these names that were not traditional.

Remember when Google came out, that was a very nontraditional name, but it was very instyle for them. It’s like, just come out with something wacky and goofy and something that’s memorable.

But it’s also spelled funny, you know, and I don’t see the value. Honestly, I think what Google brought to the table and the reason why Google Yahoo, in the long run when it came to the search engine game, it’s because they had a better product. Plain and simple.

People went to Google because Google had a better product, and they to this day has the best search engine available in terms of just pure search, pure search going to where you want to go now there are people that are coming out with some pretty good search engines now.

Ones that are based on different algorithms that and not as in some that aren’t as political and aren’t, as, you know, maybe aren’t as advertising heavy and things of that sort. So there’s a there’s a lot of options out there.

Now, I don’t want to make this a conversation about search engines. But the search engine battle really shows you how names don’t really matter.

They matter in a sense that here’s one sense they do matter. They matter in a sense, in areas where if you are trying to get a point across about what it is that you bring to the table that unique your unique selling proposition. If you can find a way to tie that into your name, then you’ve crossed a huge hurdle that most people take forever to get through.

That is making it very clear about what it is that you offer right off the bat if you can do that with a name. That is the best use of a name I’ve ever seen.

There are a lot of examples out there and you could think of well even something like Kentucky Fried Chicken. It very simple straightforward said what it is to this day, it’s still pretty much means the same thing.

Even though it means something more because it’s going beyond just that original recipe and it’s something much bigger, which is why they switched it to KFC and so forth, I imagine. But the name said it, it said what it was you either wanted it or you didn’t want it and you can move on.

Those type of names I think is the most powerful, those names that really just say what they are. Those are great. You can always come up with something funky you can always come up with something unique.

Nowadays unique is necessary because you got to make sure you can get the domain name and get a trademark and everything based on it. But besides that, don’t obsess about the darn name. Whether metal works doesn’t work.

How that ties into the metaverse and everything else, I don’t think it’s going to be based on the name. I think that is going to work or not work based on the solidness of the idea, especially when you have a company as large as Facebook, coming out with it, I mean, it is, it’s either going to fly or it isn’t going to fly.

There are just no two ways about it and the name is not going to make or break any company. Unless, and I’ll tell you how you could do a name wrong. If you come up with a name that’s difficult to remember and spell.

If you do that, then you could definitely say that the name is a really bad thing to your company. Other than that, don’t sweat it. And here’s the secret.

You can always change it in the future, you know that, that you don’t like to say that, but it’s true. You can change your name.

So don’t freak out about especially if you’re just starting out, which like I said, I’ve worked with quite a few startups.

I highly suggest just grab something run with that. You could always change it later. So that’s all I got for tonight.

Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business if you’re looking to overcome competitive forces in whatever industry you’re in.

That’s why I wrote this book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. It’s to make it Amazon-Proof and everything proof to where you don’t really have competition. You can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

That’s all I have for tonight. You have a good one. We’ll be back tomorrow night.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.