Coming up with a new business name seems simple... until it's not.
Names Are Hard
Names Are Hard
“We’ve been working on names for the new business” I tell Phil as we trot up the bush trail under a blue afternoon sky “can I run them by you?”
Naming a business is hard, much harder than it might seem.
You might try an acronym, a misspelling of a common word, or a play on words. You can go for something factual and clear, or invent a completely new word.
Back in '07, when Marine and I were naming our first business (a study-travel business for uni students) we spent hours brainstorming and scribbling on paper. We took selections of words and experimented with different combinations.
Eventually, one afternoon, the words "Australian Institute for Mobility Overseas" came together… AIM Overseas! We quickly checked to make sure we could get the URL (Available!), checked trademarks (Clear!) and existing business names (All good!)
(A few years later an Indian company would copy the name, but international trademarks are expensive to obtain and maintain, and even more expensive to enforce. Our micro start up budget hadn’t stretched that far)
Phil and I jog up a rocky hill to a high point that has an expansive view over the national park: rolling hills of trees as far as the eye can see. These trail running sessions are part sport, part debriefing on our businesses, and part counselling sessions. Plus our dogs get their daily exercise.
Iterating with names has become 1000x easier with ChatGPT, so it’s become faster and easier than ever. I’ve told Phil a few of the options we’ve come up with, but he's silent as we pause, resting and taking in the view.
“How long has your YouTube channel been running?” he finally asks. My channel, Choosing Your Uni, has been running for about 7 years. It’s a side-hustle passion project that started almost by accident.
“And how many Subscribers does the channel have?”
“Umm, maybe.. 14,000?” I say. Subs have never been that important to me, serving the community with good content and answering questions has been the goal.
Then Phil drops a bomb on me, “I think you should call it Choosing Your Uni” he says.
I’m silent. I wasn’t expecting that.
“Look, it’s not a flashy name… but it says what it does on the label,” he says, “And, most importantly, you’ve already got a lot of runs on the board: you’ve got 7 years of brand story. 7 years of testimonials and proof of actively helping your audience. Any new brand would kill for that”.
Phil has decades of experience in digital brand and product development. He knows what he’s talking about. Brand is everything... yet it’s time-consuming and fickle to create.
As we start off back down the hill, I mull it over in my head. I’ve got to talk it through with Marine, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.
7 years of existing brand. 7 years of trust.
We head back up the track, this has been a very successful trail-running-business-strategy-session. It turns out the name for our new project was hiding in plain sight all along.
Naming a business is hard, much harder than it might seem.
You might try an acronym, a misspelling of a common word, or a play on words. You can go for something factual and clear, or invent a completely new word.
Back in '07, when Marine and I were naming our first business (a study-travel business for uni students) we spent hours brainstorming and scribbling on paper. We took selections of words and experimented with different combinations.
Eventually, one afternoon, the words "Australian Institute for Mobility Overseas" came together… AIM Overseas! We quickly checked to make sure we could get the URL (Available!), checked trademarks (Clear!) and existing business names (All good!)
(A few years later an Indian company would copy the name, but international trademarks are expensive to obtain and maintain, and even more expensive to enforce. Our micro start up budget hadn’t stretched that far)
Phil and I jog up a rocky hill to a high point that has an expansive view over the national park: rolling hills of trees as far as the eye can see. These trail running sessions are part sport, part debriefing on our businesses, and part counselling sessions. Plus our dogs get their daily exercise.
Iterating with names has become 1000x easier with ChatGPT, so it’s become faster and easier than ever. I’ve told Phil a few of the options we’ve come up with, but he's silent as we pause, resting and taking in the view.
“How long has your YouTube channel been running?” he finally asks. My channel, Choosing Your Uni, has been running for about 7 years. It’s a side-hustle passion project that started almost by accident.
“And how many Subscribers does the channel have?”
“Umm, maybe.. 14,000?” I say. Subs have never been that important to me, serving the community with good content and answering questions has been the goal.
Then Phil drops a bomb on me, “I think you should call it Choosing Your Uni” he says.
I’m silent. I wasn’t expecting that.
“Look, it’s not a flashy name… but it says what it does on the label,” he says, “And, most importantly, you’ve already got a lot of runs on the board: you’ve got 7 years of brand story. 7 years of testimonials and proof of actively helping your audience. Any new brand would kill for that”.
Phil has decades of experience in digital brand and product development. He knows what he’s talking about. Brand is everything... yet it’s time-consuming and fickle to create.
As we start off back down the hill, I mull it over in my head. I’ve got to talk it through with Marine, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes.
7 years of existing brand. 7 years of trust.
We head back up the track, this has been a very successful trail-running-business-strategy-session. It turns out the name for our new project was hiding in plain sight all along.
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