GAME-CHANGING Entrepreneurial Name Advice | 8 Minutes

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my forum members, GT, who was asking about naming a business. So he wrote, "What's in a name? How do you recommend a marketer goes about selecting an appropriate name? What are the things to consider?" We're talking about a business name. And I wrote back saying I would create a video reply We've had a whole range of different thoughts of people writing in and giving their thoughts on what you should come about, you know, creating a name, is it important or not. For me, it's a tough one. I don't think it honestly matters too much what you name your business. For my case, I was actually upset at the beginning when I was launching my company, theevancarmichael.com. When I first did it, it was just to show where I was. I had just sold my company and I was doing a lot of speaking and helping a lot of entrepreneurs and I used my website just basically to talk about where I was going to be talking and what topics I was talking about. And that's why I started off my name. So it was just where Evan Carmichael was. And then as I grew the business, I thought, you know, at the time there was no revenue model associated with it except speaking. So as I grew and got more content, got more people involved, I thought, "Oh man, I really wish I named my company Entrepreneur Advice or Entrepreneur Tips or something like that with keywords in the name and people would really know what I did instantaneously." I kind of kicked myself later on for not thinking about it back then because now all the good domain names are taken. Then after, I later realized that I'm building a brand here and a lot of people were curious about me. Now I'm really grateful that I built it off of my name. People see the name and they get curious as to who is Evan Carmichael and what is this website all about and what does he have to say. I've been able to transition my brand to being me being more involved and doing a lot more marketing myself and doing the videos and all that stuff. And so now I'm happy that I chose that name. I think whatever name you end up with, it's not going to matter too, too much, but I know people are advocating one way or the other, and sometimes people get really passionate about it. So I thought what might help is to share some of what some famous entrepreneurs went through when picking their name. And we made a little infographic that was originally meant to go on Facebook that we never actually published. So this is kind of a sneak peek behind the scenes of something that might come on Facebook soon, but we haven't done it yet. And it's basically about how to pick a name for your business and how famous entrepreneurs have done it themselves. So I'll quickly load up the graphic behind here. And so this is it. So it's "Need a company name?" And I'll just move that out of the way. So these are different ways that famous entrepreneurs have done it. So the first one is George Eastman, and your number one strategy is make up a new word. So Eastman founded Kodak, and in his view, the name must mean nothing. If the name has no dictionary definition, then it must be only associated with your product. I devised the name myself. The letter K has been a favorite with me. It seems strong, incisive sort of letter. It became a question of trying out a great number of combinations of letters that made words starting and ending with K. So he wanted K at the beginning and K at the end, so he came up with Kodak. Kodak. And it's true, Kodak doesn't mean anything, and when you think Kodak, that's the only definition. So that's how he came up with the name. Number 2, flip a coin. So Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard, they're from the founders of Hewlett-Packard. Their names were Hewlett and Packard, and they flipped a coin to decide whose name would go first. And Packard actually won the toss, but decided to let his friend Hewlett get the name at the start, so it became Hewlett-Packard. Again, here, you know, has nothing to do with the products or companies, the products that they're selling, which can help you as you evolve your business. You know, you can get into different product lines where if you are only called, you know, Jonathan's Microphones, then if microphones go obsolete, or, you know, if you're Bill's Typewriters, you know, typewriters might go obsolete, so your business might have to change. Where if you have it around your name or a name that doesn't mean anything, you can always evolve your brand. The next one here is Richard Branson. So his was "Have fun with it." So when he started his company, he asked the people who were working with him, "What do you think the company should be called?" And they said, "Since we're complete virgins at the business, let's call it that, Virgin." And that's how the name Virgin came about. So again, Virgin could be anything, and he's been able to apply that name across so many different companies, and people just associate the name Virgin with lots of different industries and specifically to Richard Branson. Again, he's not tying himself into one particular product or service. The next one is "be trendy." This is Akio Morita, who is the founder of Sony. When he first started his company, Sony, it was called Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation. It was really long. He wanted something short and quick. He combined the word "sonus," which was Latin for sound, with "sonny boy," which was a popular trendy word at the time. It was to describe a young person, and he combined them and created Sony, and that's where the name Sony came from. So again, a made-up word, something that was hopefully trendy at the time and had some kind of meaning with the Sonas. And again, Sony's been able to branch out a whole bunch of different products and services. You can use an acronym. So this is how Yahoo got started. So Yahoo stands for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. So that's the official name of Yahoo, where it came from. And since Yahoo was already trademarked as a barbecue sauce, they had to add the exclamation point at the end of it. So, you know, originally it was Jerry's Guide to World Wide Web, but we settled on Yahoo. It was a pretty recognizable name, so they originally called it around his name, so, you know, Jerry's Guide to World Wide Web. And then they decided to use an acronym. So again, Yahoo doesn't necessarily mean anything It has a connotation of being fun and exciting, but it stands for— the Y-A-H-O-O stands for something, so they use an acronym. Again, lets them branch out to a whole bunch of different areas. Next one, be meaningful. So this is from Phil Knight, who started Nike. He wanted to change the name. His original company name was Blue Ribbon Sports, and he wanted to name it something else. And his favorite company name was Dimension Six, but his team didn't like that name, so they decided to come up with another name and came up with Nike, which is the Greek goddess of victory. And initially he didn't like the name. He thought, you know, he wanted to go with Dimension Six, but he was managed to be convinced that Nike was a better name, and so that stuck. Imagine if Nike was called Blue Ribbon Sports or Dimension Six. Again, they've been able to branch out to a whole bunch of different products and services too. And then the last one, just for this one here, the quick 7 tips: look up definitions. So this is where Twitter came from. So Twitter was hatched from a day-long brainstorming session between the 3 founders, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone. And they actually began the company without having a name. So one of the quotes here, the working name was just Status for a while. It actually didn't have a name. A name, we're trying to name it, so I need to add a capital W there. We came across the word Twitter and it was just perfect. The definition was a short burst of inconsequential information. So that's the definition of Twitter. And chirps from birds. And that's exactly what the product was. So they looked up meanings of the name, different definitions, and came up with the word Twitter. So, you know, I don't think that it really matters too, too much what your company name is. I know some of you guys might disagree. In looking at how these famous entrepreneurs came up with the name for themselves, You'll see that it's ranged from a whole bunch of different options, and again, a lot of times the name doesn't actually mean too, too much, but hopefully it gives you guys some food for thought and a sneak peek at an infographic that might be heading your way soon on our Facebook page. So thanks for your time. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. I always appreciate seeing those thumbs ups come in, and it makes me want to do more of these videos for you guys. And if you have a comment about this, if you want to share how you came up with your name, or if you have a question you want me to answer, please leave a comment under the video and I'll definitely check it out. So thank you and we'll see you on the next episode.