Sometimes, new entrepreneurs are in such a rush to get started at their businesses that they jump right into working with customers without giving much thought to their BUSINESS NAME. “I’ll just do business under my own name for a while, until I find something I like.” While it seems easy at the time, you might want to re-think the plan to change business names down the road. You will find that, as your professional recognition and customer base grow, people have started to IDENTIFY you with the name of your company. A name change in mid-stream can be costly and confusing.

First, you will lose ground in the marketing arena — it takes time and effort to build up BRAND RECOGNITION, and that time is lost when you change names. You may also lose customers to the competition — what are they to think when they go looking for “Joe’s Mobile Car Wash” in the yellow pages and you’ve changed your name to “Fast and Easy Auto Detailing?” They might think that you’ve gone out of business and it’s time to find someone else to clean their cards. And finally, changing names can cause you increased PAPERWORK and EXPENSE — changing your bank accounts, credit cards, marketing materials, incorporation documents, DBA registration, etc. So why not get it right the first time? Here are some suggestions for choosing a business name that will serve you well for years to come.

IS IT MEMORABLE?

When people hear the name of your company, will they be able to REMEMBER it 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 3 hours, or a week later? When they decide to hunt you up on the web or in the phone book, will they be able to easily recall your business name? It doesn’t matter if you are choosing a fictitious business name or using your own — the same rules apply. Your name should be UNIQUE enough that it will stick in a potential customer’s mind — “Smith’s Gym” isn’t going to be nearly as easy to remember as “Work That Body.”

You also want to stay away from names that are likely to be CONFUSED with another company. You may think it’s a cute idea to come up with a name that closely resembles (without exactly copying) another company’s name. But calling your personal coaching company “Joys-R-Us” is confusing, unoriginal, and likely to bring about a lawsuit! And beware of phrases or ACRONYMS that are overused in your profession. You wouldn’t believe how many Professional Organizers use some combination of words that spell out SOS (usually “Someone’s Organizing Solutions”). Your company will stand out more if your name is truly unique.

IS IT EASY TO SPELL?

However, the next question is “when they do recall it, is it easy enough to spell that they can immediately find your listing?” You want to stay away from challenging spellings and pronunciations. Calling your restaurant “Phine Phoods” is just asking for trouble — how is your customer going to know to look under “p” instead of “f” in the phone book? And if your last name is Piccalopoupoulis, you may be better off creating a fictitious business name. A good rule of thumb to follow is to pay attention to what happens when you tell other people your name — if you are always having to SPELL or PRONOUNCE it slowly, it will be hard for people remember and find later on.

This is particularly important if you are planning to turn your business name into a DOMAIN name. Websites with long or hard-to-spell names get overlooked during standard searches. And try to avoid having to include a hyphen or underscore in your name to make it appropriate for the web. Short, snappy, easy-to-remember names work best in the translation from brick-and-mortar to internet.

DOES IT DESCRIBE YOUR COMPANY?

Will customers learn something specific, unique, or descriptive about your business, just from hearing the name? Will they get a feel for WHAT you provide or HOW you provide it? Many individual service providers try to sound like high-end firms by using some derivative of their first and last name for their company identity - “Joanna Carrol and Associates,” or “JC Consulting,” or “Carroll and Company.” But what does that really tell a potential customer about your company? I don’t know if you are an insurance agent or an attorney or a professional organizer. Include something in your name that describes your product or service — “JC Graphic Design” — so customers aren’t left WONDERING what type of business you have.

You can also include some information about those special CHARACTERISTICS that make your business DIFFERENT from the competition. Okay — so you’ve told me that you are a printer. Why should I hire you instead of the printer down the street? You might be faster, cheaper, provide better quality, have more experience, offer a higher-end product, or provide more services than the other guy. If it’s appropriate and pertinent, include one or two of those traits — “JC Full-Service Graphic Design” — in your name.

DOES IT LIMIT YOU?

If you are joining an industry that allows for “branching out,” be careful about giving your company a name that traps you in a very small service area. For example, a company that starts out putting in tile floors — but has plans to expand into vinyl, hardwood, and carpeting down the road — wouldn’t want a name like “TileMasters.” Something more along the lines of “FloorMasters” will give the company the FLEXIBILITY they need to grow and change later on.

And if you have intentions of ever expanding your service area, you need to be careful about a GEOGRAPHICALLY limiting business name. “Hair Over Atlanta” isn’t going to work as well when you open locations in Seattle and Los Angeles and New York. Be sure to check the US Patent And Trademark Office’s online database (http://tess.uspto.gov) to make sure your name is available for national use before you start printing it on your cards.

You also have to stop and think about whether naming your company after yourself — “Bob’s Bar and Grill” — will limit you in a different way. If you have ever read “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber, you know that having customers identify your business as an EXTENSION of you brings about its own special pitfalls. You become indispensable to the company — people get used to seeing Bob behind the counter every night and that’s what makes it “Bob’s” — the business can’t run without you. And if you ever decide that you want to take a break, let someone else run the place on your behalf, or sell the company, you will run into a roadblock. Quite often, what seems like a great way to PERSONALIZE your business ends up turning it into a stone around your neck.

This business is your baby, your investment in the future, and you will have it with you (hopefully) for a long time. Don’t short-change your business by skipping out on one of the most important steps you will take during start-up — selecting just the right name.

Ramona Creel is a Professional Organizer and the founder of OnlineOrganizing.com — a web-based one-stop shop offering everything that you need to get organized at home or at work. At OnlineOrganizing.com, you may get a referral to an organizer near you, shop for the latest organizing products, get tons of free tips, and even learn how to become a professional organizer or build your existing organizing business. And if you would like to read more articles about organizing your life or building your business, get a free subscription to the “Get Organized” and “Organized For A Living” newsletters. Please visit http://www.OnlineOrganizing.com or contact Ramona directly at ramona@onlineorganizing.com for more information.

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Bill Gates has a plan, why don’t you? Bill Gates is moving away from direct involvement in the operations of Microsoft to spend more time on the other things in life that he values. The most successful people don’t get where they are going without a plan and neither will you. Frequently professional service providers don’t think of themselves as independent business owners, but you are. The sooner you realize that you are an independent business owner and begin to conduct your business as a business the sooner you will begin to make progress toward the top.

Having goals is not the same thing as having a plan. Many of you have short and long term goals, but goals themselves are not an overall plan for your future. They are an element of your plan. Frequently your goals are vague and not very motivating, and as a consequence you don’t achieve them. A plan is a bigger picture view of your future. Well defined goals move you closer to the attainment of that future.

Are you focused on your career goals at the expense of the other aspects of your life? When you place all your emphasis on just one aspect of your life you get out of balance and decrease your overall likelihood for success. You feel overworked, stressed out, and cheated. When you are working that hard you expect to see super results, but they just don’t seem to fall in line like you expect that they will. You are looking at life through a magnifying glass and fail to notice the world around you and the opportunities that exist right under your very nose.

Without a clear vision you’re like Alice in Wonderland and any path will do. Alice didn’t know where she was going so it didn’t much matter which path she chose. You know that if you want to travel to a specific destination that you will get there faster and with less problems if you use a road map or GPS system than if you just hop in the car and start driving. Yet everyday you hop in your car and start driving and you don’t even know where you want to go. That’s because for the most part you don’t think in any detail much beyond today, this week, this month, or perhaps this year.

The first step to a better future is to create it through planning. Many of you have never put together a strategic plan for your business let alone for your life. You have to know what you are working toward in order to identify the critical success factors that must be accomplished to have your ideal future become a reality. These are the key areas of accomplishment that are both necessary and sufficient for the accomplishment of your vision of your ideal future. From the identification of these critical success factors you are then able to break these areas down into specific goals and action steps that you must take to have this ideal future become a reality.

Balance is necessary for fulfillment, but balance isn’t the same for everyone. Having balance between your personal life and your professional life will enable you to lead a more fulfilling and pleasurable life. People who have balance in their lives tend to be more successful in business as well. Realize that balance is relative and determine what balance means to you. For example, I like coffee but a perfect cup of coffee for me isn’t made up of 1/3 coffee + 1/3 sugar + 1/3 cream. How you portion out your life will be unique to you and should be based on your values and purpose.

There is a chasm as large as the Grand Canyon between goal setting and goal getting. Which side of the canyon are you on? Do you set a lot of goals and get very few? Well if that is you it is time to cross the Colorado River over to the goal getting side. First, realize that goal getting is not an academic exercise or something you do to please someone else. Make your goals as specific as possible so there is no doubt in your mind where you are in your progress toward the accomplishment of the goal. Identify the true driver for why this goal is important to you so that you will be self-motivated to work toward its accomplishment in spite of having to do things you don’t want or like to do.

“I’ve tried planning before and it just took up a lot of time that I don’t have and I didn’t really see the benefit”, you say. That’s part of your list of excuses for not planning. You think you don’t have time to plan, but if you did a better job of planning you would use your time better and have more time. More than likely when you did this planning it was really for something pretty short term and when that was done so were you with the planning process. You haven’t made the connection in your mind yet, if you do a good job of planning your future for the long haul you will be able to take charge of your life rather than allowing life to happen to you. You may also feel a little uncertain or uncomfortable about doing something like this because you have never done it before. Well everything in your life was a first at some point and that hasn’t stopped you from getting where you are today! So take the plunge and experience the difference a little planning can make in your life!

Effective planning can help you to join the elite group of the most successful people who enjoy both personal and professional success. Start today with a little dreaming about what your life would look like if you were able to live your vision of the ideal future. Take those dreams a little closer to reality by creating a vision for your future. Make your vision long-term and then ask yourself what you can do in the next year to move yourself closer to that vision. This becomes your mission. Break that mission all the way down into the action steps that you will need to take to achieve your mission. Be specific, be realistic, hold yourself accountable, make sure it’s what you truly want; schedule the action steps in your planning system, and monitor your progress. The river is rough for the unprepared so make your plans to cross the river over to the goal getting side where dreams turn into reality through your conviction and purpose that comes from well laid plans.

Cheryl Clausen is a business coach specializing in working with professional service providers such as financial planners, insurance agents, and realtors, and small business owners. To contact her call 402-926-1134 or visit the Measured Success Inc. website at http://www.measuredsuccessinc.com and sign up for her ezine “Short Notes.”

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When a Florida attorney learned that her mother was being abused and neglected in a what she thought was a highly reputable nursing home, she sued. But in the course of the lawsuit, she learned how pervasive the problem is in many poorly-run nursing homes. She became passionate about this issue and formed a non-profit organization to help prevent nursing home abuse and neglect and advocate for reforms.

Within a short time, suing nursing homes and advocating for seniors became her entire law practice. The non-profit organization she had created and still operated, gained nationwide publicity, including a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal. The non-profit and her law practice developed a synergy that made her a national hero to some and vilified by the nursing home industry.

As a direct result of forming the non-profit, she created a marketing and publicity machine for her law practice, and she was able to lobby for much needed reforms to protect seniors from abuse and neglect.

Could your business benefit from starting a cooperative non-profit organization? Yes, but only if you are truly passionate about the cause.

Here are some other businesses and professionals who started non-profits that also resulted in generating publicity and new business:

• After a classmate of his daughter was killed in an automobile accident, an insurance agent started a non-profit to educate teenagers on how to be safer drivers. He spoke at every high school in his city and was the subject of frequent news stories. His insurance business experienced dramatic growth as a result.

• A CPA firm started a non-profit to offer free tax preparation and Medicare counseling to seniors.

• A mental health counseling group formed a non-profit after several teen suicides became big news. The organization went into local schools and conducted free counseling sessions for students and free workshops for the parent-teacher organizations.

• Another law firm supported area churches by offering free will preparation at local churches to anyone who gave a donation to the host church.

If you do choose to start a non-profit, here are some tips to help it become a success:

1. Align the goals of the organization with the needs of the target clients you seek for your business.

2. There are some excellent books by Nolo Press that can give you the nuts and bolts information you need to set up your non-profit. Every state has different laws, so make sure you are in compliance with local laws.

3. Issue press releases about the efforts of your organization. You should find that journalists who would otherwise be hesitant to publicize your business, will gladly feature your non-profit efforts.

4. Don’t attempt to raise funds. Your organization can operate as a non-profit with much less red tape if you don’t seek status to make giving tax deductible. Fund the operation out of your business instead.

As a final word of encouragement, please remember to choose a cause you are deeply committed to. It’s one thing to align your cause with your business, but it’s another thing altogether to come off as exploiting a cause for your own purposes.

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