It’s not easy coming up with a business name… I’d argue it’s one of the most time consuming parts of starting a business! There are lots of things you NEED to consider before you rush to pick something that feels ‘right’. I’ve personally experienced what it’s like to both take time finding the right name & rushing it then getting it wrong…. I’ll outline my experiences in this article & help you avoid the mistakes I made! 

I’m going to talk about 2 businesses I have set up (both with my brother) in chronological order as I think this will make things easier to follow. 

As I worked as a junior Doctor in the NHS, my brother & I came up with our first ‘proper’ business idea. We identified an opportunity to create an online platform which helped people to buy, sell or invest in UK property. We spent weeks trying to think of the right name with no success but we didn’t let this stop us from making progress…. We would sit for periods of time trying to brainstorm different name ideas. Meanwhile, we still worked to outline what our initial product would look like from outlining a user journey to creating basic wire frames. As we worked on what the product would be, this helped us to understand what values we needed our name to portray. 

As I explained above, we spent a lot of time trying to come up with names & deliberating about certain names. We had a checklist of things we needed the name to meet which often meant a name we initially thought would work, needed to be disregarded. A few of the things we would check alongside the name needing to match our brand values included:

• Could the name be connected to the property industry in some way? 

(i.e. containing the word brick, property, move etc)

• Could we get a suitable domain name for the name?

(i.e. ending with preferably .com but at least .co.uk)

• Would we be infringing on any existing trademarks by using the name?

(i.e. we needed to make sure that it wouldn’t be illegal for us to use the name)

We came up with A LOT of names which would often fall down at the 2nd bullet point on this list. A quick Google search would demonstrate that the name was already being used by an existing business. It wasn’t until I was trying to get to sleep one night when a thought popped into my head… I had read something earlier in the day which had triggered my imagination and I was randomly reminded of this thought as I was trying to sleep. I’m not sure why but I decided to abort my efforts to get to sleep & started playing around with name ideas (again). A few minutes later and “Doormarked” was born. I wouldn’t have ever guessed that I would come up with a name whilst trying to get to sleep! 

Largely, we (my brother & I) are really happy with the name “Doormarked” that we have used for our property/tech business. We don’t regret the amount of time we spent brainstorming names to come up with it. It resonates with our brand values, doesn’t limit our product offering & we have been able to get the name trademarked. However, it definitely isn’t perfect. There is one thing in particular that still frustrates us & makes us laugh from time-to-time. It’s not particularly easy to say clearly… Lot’s of people hear "Doormark" instead of "Doormarked". There have been more occasions than we like where we’ve had to repeat the name over the phone or correct people who have heard it incorrectly. It’s not possible for us to really quantify the impact this has had on our business but we are aware that it makes it much harder for us to create brand awareness by word of mouth. We don’t know how many people have tried to search “Doormark” to find no results relevant to their search & quickly give up…. We hope it isn’t many! 

My main lessons from this story? 

Firstly, please make sure you add ‘making sure your business name is easy to say & spell’ to your business name checklist. Secondly, you don’t need to worry about taking time to carefully consider your business idea provided you aren’t letting this stop you from getting on with other jobs. As you start a business, there are lots of things you can start doing without finalising a name &/or formally registering your business on Companies House. Please don’t let not having a business name stop you from making progress, make sure you do the other jobs you can get started on in parallel with choosing your business name!

Let’s move on to the 2nd business I want to talk about….

About a year after starting Doormarked, my brother & I were firmly embracing our new roles as entrepreneurs. I had quit working as a Doctor full-time which allowed me to dedicate more time to Doormarked. We were both already fully experiencing the rollercoaster ride of life as an entrepreneur… As a result of this, I came up with another business idea which I thought could help us (& other entrepreneurs). I had the (arguably crazy) idea to create motivational mugs. My vision was to create a brand which made entrepreneurs feel less isolated, supported entrepreneurs on their own journey & helped to motivate entrepreneurs on those days when it feels hard being your own boss (especially Mondays). This idea was arguably largely inspired by Sara Blakely (the founder of Spanx). I would often see her posting on her social media channels photos of her face with a mug featuring a motivational quote using the hashtag #mugshot…. Her posts really resonated with me. It made me wonder that perhaps there would be a group of people who would similarly want to share their own mugshots…. Mugshot Monday was born. 

The overriding mistake I made with naming Mugshot Monday? I didn’t spend any time deliberating about it aside from checking there was a suitable domain name available. As I reflect back now, I know there were a number of reasons why I didn’t do this…. I was excited about the idea. It wasn’t my main focus. I just wanted to get the project off my to do list. I realise now these are all big red flags. My brother & I quickly ran through our “business naming checklist”. We didn’t see any issues so we didn’t really give it a second thought but honestly, I’m not sure we would have thought about what did happen….

After receiving our delivery of 300 mugs (all designed by ourselves & handmade in the UK), we started to market them to the public. We started with social media marketing (including facebook & instagram adverts) thinking this was where we would most efficiently find our target audience… We sold a few mugs but not enough to cover our ad spend. We needed to change our plan. As part of our change in plan, we decided to sell them through online marketplaces such as Etsy. We found this worked better but it still wasn’t great (to this day we still have a lot of mugs0. However, it inspired me to start selling other products to support, motivate & celebrate other entrepreneurs. I realised I didn’t want to be stuck with any more stock so I decided to make sure these new products were all made-to-order. These included personalised company logo prints. We now continue to sell these other products which are essentially thoughtful gifts suitable for all sorts of occasions, from graduating to moving home to celebrating an entrepreneur starting their own business. The problem with all of this? Our customers are completely confused by the name “Mugshot Monday”. It is largely no longer relevant to our brand. It is not good for search engine optimization. It doesn’t help a customer to quickly understand what we offer. It makes me cringe!

I spent a lot of time deliberating about what to do with Mugshot Monday’s name and earlier this year I came to the conclusion that I needed to change it… I came up with the new name “Not Another Gift Company” which I feel is much more suitable. It is excellent for SEO, it quickly explains to a customer what they can expect whilst creating intrigue & it can encompass all of the different products we sell (as well as any I choose to add in the future). I have very recently spent time to rebranding Mugshot Monday, renaming everything to Not Another Gift Company. This has taken me considerable amounts of time which arguably could have been avoided. I’ve also got a lot of mugs with the wrong business name permanently stamped to the bottom…..

My main lesson from this story?

Please make sure that your business name allows you & your business room to pivot. It can be really difficult to predict what service/product you might be providing in the future but naming your business without considering that this might happen, can leave you in a similar situation my brother & I found ourselves in. This could have easily been avoided with a more generic name (arguably any name that didn’t include the word mug).

I hope you have found this article outlining my experiences of naming my own businesses useful. I would strongly encourage anyone trying to name a business to consider the things I have mentioned. If you would like me to share with you a complete “Business Naming Checklist” that my brother & I have created since to make sure we don’t make any mistakes again, please send me an email (elle@gabrielletodd.com) with the subject "Business Naming Checklist". Alternatively, click here if you would like to be kept updated with new blog posts!

Did you know? You can join me on the Business Idea Incubator programme where over the course of 6 weeks you will learn how to go from “no idea” to setting up your business in the most effective & efficient way possible. I will cover the different steps you need to take to launch your business & start serving your first-customers without breaking yourself or the bank. Learn more about the programme here.