Brainstorming a name for your business

If you’re starting a business, you’ll need to name it, and will probably require a website. That means registering the name as a domain, most likely dot com, though possibly with a country code such as dot com au.

The web has been going for 30 years or more, which means that most of the good names have been taken. However that’s not a cause for despair.

Hundreds of thousands of domain names are for sale on sites such as Atom and GoDaddy. Be prepared to pay a lot for a good one.

Or you can invent a name yourself, then register it.

PAIR KEYWORDS

No, this isn’t a hopeless task. Start by thinking of the keywords associated with your business and write them down. For example, if you’re a graphic designer, likely keywords will be design, image, hue, visual, display, color.

Then think of general words that could pair with these keywords: my, maxi, sure, true, sense, flair, skill, streak, style, vibe.

Pair off a keyword with a general word, eg visualflair dot com, and see if the domain is available on ICANN. Mostly it won’t be.

NEW GROUND

Here’s where the game gets fun. All the easy and obvious combos are registered already, so we need to break new ground.

One good way is to use metaphor, which is something that AI and other naming tools don’t understand. Instead of calling your hairdressing studio SnipSalon, try SnipStreet. It’s not literally correct, but works as a brand.

Or you can abbreviate one or more of the keywords, as Microprocessor Software did very nicely. Or extend a keyword, creating HotterLips from HotLips.

Another method is to misspell slightly. Skilsaw has been doing this for 100 years.

A further technique is pure invention, and I’ll pat Nvidia on the back for that. This name doesn’t really pass the radio or phone test, but the world’s most valuable company isn’t worrying.

LYIN’ AROUND

Once you get into this, you’ll find plenty of names that have slipped the cracks. They’ve been lying around a long time.

Sit on the name, think, and check for any conflicts on the trademark sites such as USPTO. Then go register your very own business name.

What makes a great business name?

A top name usually has edge, which means that it intrigues or even needles. Nobody can be sleepwalked into choosing a new brand.

Facebook doesn’t scare anybody now because the title is so familiar, but as business owner it would have given me butterflies.

Google likewise. Apple in its day. Virgin going back even further.

IMPUDENT

Tesla isn’t terrifying as a business name, except for the impudence that the company is in the same league as the developer of AC electricity networks.

My own brand WordMills might be viewed as big-headed, as it chooses the auspicious company of WordPress, Word and WordPerfect.

A name I really like is Pixel. It uses synecdoche, where a small part – pixel –  stands for the whole – phone. This is a tactic that takes guts.

Then there’s the opposite strategy where a big name stands for something small. You need a bunch of courage to call your rock band America.

ONE LETTER AWAY

Other attractive business names include the charmingly modest Airbus, Great Wall Motor (now sadly reduced to GWM), and the cheeky little Poss-Off (a possum deterrent) – one letter away from you-know.

When brainstorming a name, it’s good to start on the side of audacity or gall, then tweak back if the title is keeping you awake at night.

You can’t bore people into buying.

New domain appraisal tool tells you why

Is that name you’ve got your eye on any good?

Domain sales agency Atom dot com has long offered an appraisal service for domain names, awarding a score of between one and ten, and telling you other facts such as the age of a domain, its possible value, and how many extensions the name is registered in.

Now the service has jumped up a level. Atom’s Instant Domain Appraisal gives you written reasons why the domain is a good one or not.

WORD PLAY

The AI-powered evaluation does a pretty good job, although it can miss the subtleties and word-play of everyday language.

I tested the service on some of my own domains. Here’s what it said about Gignome: “Clever blend of gig and gnome, but feels playful rather than broadly brandable.” Okay, fair enough.

How about my BudgetSkil? “Misspelled second word weakens brand credibility and fails the phone test.” Hmm.

RADIO TEST

Let’s try a famous name that truly strains the radio or phone test: Nvidia. Atom’s appraisal tool overlooks that deficiency. “Iconic global tech brand; one of the most recognized dot com domains in existence.”

The tool can also check for Brand Alignment with your intended use of the domain. But here’s where a weird discrepancy shows itself.

I checked my domain GulchCountry for Brand Alignment and was informed that it’s “a compelling choice for a western clothing brand. . . .  Overall, a perfect fit.”

Great, but when I submitted the name for an Instant Domain Appraisal, I was told it’s an unlikely fit for Atom’s Premium marketplace. “Nice geographic pairing with limited commercial brand appeal.”

MORE SOBER

This pattern is repeated over and over. The Brand Alignment test talks up the domain, as if pitching for a sale, while the Domain Appraisal offers a more sober and balanced view.

Not surprisingly, the AI assessment doesn’t grasp the metaphoric subtleties of names. My domain MealCheetah is intended for a speedy dinner delivery service. The appraisal tells me that it “has an unusual animal-food pairing with limited brand appeal.”

On that basis, I suppose it might say that Facebook undermines its brand value by linking the unrelated concepts of body and print.

Overall, though, the Instant Domain Appraisal is a fair and useful tool.

What makes a good business slogan?

Two things in particular: alliteration and rhyme. They turn your slogan or tagline into a little poem.

Black Lives Matter isn’t a business slogan, but it has the same elements of fluency and memorability: the repeated L sound and the rhyming Black and Matter.

Here’s a slogan that I wrote for an Atom.com naming contest for an aged care company: Your Best Years Are Still Ahead. The slogan didn’t win the contest, but it did receive a “love it” rating, thanks I believe to the alliteration and rhyme.

Another of mine, this one for an automotive auction company: Where the Best Buyers Bid. I loved that one. The contest holder merely liked it.

And here’s one I devised for an international pharmaceutical company: Your Worldwide Medicines Supplier. A further like from the contest holder.

Finally, a slogan for a business software platform. Fingertip Facts, for Those Who Need to Know.

You get the picture. Rhyme and alliteration are not essential for a business slogan, but they help. Definitely worth the sweat.

Use it to persuade a stranger

The phone is a great but forgotten business tool. It lets you chat informally with people and communicate warmth, while picking up the nuances of their speech.

The more I replace phone talk with email or text, the less cooperation I find. Despite the use of emojis, written words are coolly transactional and don’t convey the human touch.

You can’t sell as successfully by email as in person or by phone. Even when using the phone for that purpose, it’s best not to leave a voice message asking for a return call. What works is to say “sorry I missed you, will call again”.

Anything that shifts the onus onto the other person is likely to reduce your chances of success.

Text and email are wonderful for friends, associates and family. But when trying to convince or persuade a stranger, nothing beats the human face or voice.

Invent – or just get better?

Who isn’t hoping for the breakthrough that will transform their enterprise – the innovation that will set the world on its heels?

Hard to find, and more progress can be made by the less exciting method of continuous improvement.

Well, it’s not exactly continuous. More ‘fits and starts’. Still, if you’re always on the look-out for these minor opportunities for moving ahead, you will find them. And they do add up.

DIFFERENT SCALE

In a sense, innovation and continuous improvement are the same thing. It’s just a matter of scale. Breakthroughs look like a continuum when they’re viewed from a sufficient distance.

You’re more likely to advance with accumulating baby steps than if always looking for the transformative ‘smash hit’. Occasionally you’ll enjoy one of these, but it’s difficult to plan for.

Bust the charts or succeed by stealth? The answer is at your feet.

Nine Secrets of Expert Content Writers

1. They start the story with a hook and end with a punch. If these two parts of the content are sound, the rest of the material will sit easily in between.

2. They treat words like goldleaf. Each one has its own glint. They don’t need to elaborate with adjectives or adverbs, or say the same thing in three different ways. People will get it the first time.

3. They know that writer’s block is a form of stagefright. Practice of your craft will give you the confidence to write under the toughest conditions.

4. They understand that writers also get stuck when they don’t have a clear picture in their mind of whom they’re addressing. Clarify that and the writing will flow.

5. They’re happy for their first draft to be rough. And the next two rewrites. After that, they’re getting close to the finished piece.

6. They find that reciting a story aloud is an excellent way of checking its flow. (That doesn’t apply if you’re writing for The Guardian, where tortuous prose may be a sign of cleverness. For every other media brand, it’s good advice.)

7. They never write on a per-word basis of payment, which is a blueprint for poverty. They charge per article or by the hour.

8. They understand that while everyone can write, few people can do it really really well. Most of us are able to cook a meal, but that doesn’t make us Nigella Lawson.

9. They’ve found that working to a word limit is a tough but good discipline. Most online articles are fewer than 400 words. Any clown can add more. The hard part is leaving stuff out.

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Over The Top, Almost

I recently went to a performance of Verdi’s nineteenth century opera, La Traviata. Like modern musicals, it was a multi-media spectacle, combining singing, dancing, narrative, an orchestra, scenery and lighting.

The outdoor harborside setting boosted the opportunity for grandiose effects, including fireworks and cast members arriving by boat. An enormous 3.5-tonne chandelier with 10,000 Swarovski crystals overhung the stage.

SWEET SPOT REACHED

The whole enterprise was over the top – almost.  This is surely the key to success in entertainment, communication or almost anything, which is knowing how far to push and when to ease back.

The sweet spot is the point just before the effort falls over the line into absurdity or ridiculousness.

Changing entertainments, watch any motor race and check the lead car. You’ll see lots of small evidence of the traction limits being approached, such as brief wheel locks during braking, sideways judders on the bends, tail wag under acceleration.

The winner is the person who can drive fastest without spinning out, colliding or failing to take a corner.

JUST THIS SIDE

The skill of motor racing is not to drive safely and under control, but to keep the car just this side of catastrophe. Similarly, an accomplished producer or communicator knows exactly where the traction limits lie.

Of course each medium has its own parameters or variables. Opera is not the same as motorsport or a politician’s speech.

But people who have mastered the sweet spot principle are invariably the most successful. This was just as true in Verdi’s time as it is today.

Photo by Borna Bevanda

Three Shades of English

scrabble words

There are only three types of sentences in written English.

  1. This is the first sort.
  2. This is the second sort, which has a number of clauses, normally separated by commas.
  3. This is the third sort that is separated by conjunctions and just runs on and on until it stops.

Good writing isn’t hard. Create variety in your prose by using a mixture of all three types of sentences so that the readers don’t get bored with your style. It’s simple, it’s attractive, and it works.

The previous paragraph is composed of these sentence types. See what we mean?

Photo by Amanda Jones

No need to tell it all

A problem that often stumps people when they’re naming their business is finding a word or combo that fully describes it.

This difficulty is added to by the fact that the new company may not be sure of its eventual direction. The result can be a name that sounds broad, vague and not particularly distinctive.

Here’s the thinking: “Yes, we fly passengers, but we also do a bit of cargo, and have a sideline in emergency medical supply flights for the state. Let’s call ourselves Air General. That way we cover everything, and also insure ourselves against business changes in the future.”

Not a great idea.

JUST AN EMBLEM

Business owners fear that if the name doesn’t include or imply the whole range of services, then people won’t choose the company because it sounds too specific. This, in practice, doesn’t happen.

A name is like a badge or emblem. It creates imagery – a picture in people’s heads. It need not cover all your activities. And usually it can’t.

wells fargo

I love the name Wells Fargo, which conjures up pictures of the gold rush, stagecoaches, bank holdups and the pony express – and it doesn’t matter that the company is now a financial services giant.

London Fog is another favorite, for a similar reason. Who cares that Britain has had a clean air act since 1956?

A current trend is to adopt a business name that doesn’t mean anything much at all, like Uber or Slack. That let’s you off the hook, if you can find a word that’s still available. But you’re missing out on the imagery.

WATER HAZARD OR BUNKER

Long-established companies often reduce their names to initials, because of the belief that the original handle is too narrow or outdated. This can work okay if you’re IBM or KFC, because these companies have been able to spend enough on promotion to implant their acronyms in buyers’ minds.

It can also be effective where the business initials are actually pronounceable as a word, such as Qantas or Audi.

For the rest of us, opting for initials is like a water hazard or bunker on a golf course. VMLY&R is the result of a merger between marketing companies Young & Rubicam and VML. Any easy name to remember? No. Search for the erroneous VLMY&R and you’ll find that even the company itself gets it wrong at times.

Not much hope, then, for the struggling customer.

The Winter Olympics are not taking place

Is Beijing 2022 the first winter Olympics without natural snow? The ski runs and jumps have been carved out above an ordinary-looking industrial area surrounded by brown hills.

Completely absent is the charm of a ski town in an alpine setting, where the gorgeousness of the surroundings is a vital element of the event. The Tour de France cycle race, staged in the world’s premier tourism nation, understands that the scenery is more important than the actual contest for many viewers.

Banff

Banff, Canada. This town was once an Olympic contender.

What comes next, in terms of this trend towards artificiality? Surely a winter Olympics where the hills are erected, like a roller coaster frame, on a flat area in the suburbs of a major northern city.

Why stop there? If snow can be synthesized, so can the cold conditions necessary to sustain it. Refrigerant pipes can be laid underground, to preserve the white stuff once it’s been made.

Or the whole scene can be moved indoors, into a sort of large hangar, in which the ambient temperature is kept low. The skating and curling events have done this forever, so let’s ski inside as well.

BRISTLE-BRUSH

Once we accept that snow spewed from pipes is as good as the real thing, we should take the next logical step and glide on plastic toothbristle, as seen in indoor ski venues in places like London and Canberra.

And since Covid has made international flights and quarantining such a pain, there’s really no need to travel at all. The contestants can phone in their performances from the local ski run or ice rink, leaving them to be expertly melded into a race on your screen.

VIRTUAL OLYMPICS

From there it’s just a short step to using avatars instead of actual contestants, and the whole thing can be devised in a CGI studio in the Hollywood Hills, Silicon Valley or Wellington, New Zealand.

This accepts the fact that the Covid-era competitions have few on-site spectators and are mainly staged for the benefit of people watching at home. The concocted event can look better than the real thing.

The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, wrote French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard in his celebrated monograph in 1991. He was even more prescient than he knew.

Photo by Braden Jarvis

 

Hey, give me back my day

Commenting on web forums can be a lot of fun, and what’s wrong with that? Nothing, except that it can divert your creativity away from more productive work.

A useful rule for me: Participate only when you have deep knowledge of a subject, so that the airing of your authority can help you and others.

Social media such as Facebook can be just as addictive and time-wasting, and this is well-documented. Still, their purpose is often personal, and we all need diversions from the serious stuff of being in business.

Professional forums undoubtedly have a social aspect too, so the delineation isn’t clear-cut.

TOP COMMENTER

Forums encourage activity by rating contributors on the number of posts, upvotes or karma points. You can become a Gold account holder, Pro level, VIP, Established Member, and so on. Who doesn’t want to be a prestigious and recognised contributor?

On one forum that I read, though don’t comment on, the top person has posted 77,000 times since he joined in 2002. He no doubt believes that he “owns” the forum, as he’s willing to slap down contributors whom he feels are not up to the mark.

I’ve happily spent a whole morning commenting on sites that have left me hot as a scramjet by lunchtime, though completely uninterested in doing any other meaningful work for the rest of the day.

EMPTINESS

The buzz is wonderful but is also addictive. It’s hard to resist doing the same thing the next day and the next.

The result? An empty sense of time and creativity wasted.

For the purposes of productivity, it’s good to set a strict rule for yourself on the conditions in which you may or may not post – in the same way that a gambler needs limits on when she or he can continue.

Otherwise you end up asking what happened to your day.

Photo by Andy T

 

Planned, or just an accident?

“I was never particularly ambitious. Things just happened.” So says cricket legend Ian Chappell.

Think about your own successes, those that put you in the top one percent, or even one-in-a-thousand. Were they chosen goals, or did the good outcomes just occur?

Example 1:  Mark Zuckerberg didn’t plan on being a business star with Facebook. It began as a sort of game, an online jest.

Example 2:  Supermodel Kate Moss was discovered at JFK airport in New York at the age of 14 while returning from a holiday with her parents.

Instead of having big audacious goals, perhaps all we need is to place ourselves in the way of opportunity, watch for natural or accidental gains, then develop them as far and fast as possible.

Goals are often applied to activities in which feel “behind” or inferior, eg weight loss or passing exams. These goals help us succeed, although the results are unlikely to be world-beating. They may simply raise us to normal levels.

This type of achievement can be even more satisfying than where we outrun a lot of people and finish up in the leading bunch.

But the really top results may be those that were never actually planned.

Photo by Elisa Ventur

 

No, boredom isn’t always bad

In a previous post, we talked about having more than one project going at once, to provide continuing progress. When one gets stuck, you can switch to another.

This sounds fine, but there’s a caveat. Changing projects can undermine the boredom that got you going in the first place.

Huh?

OUT OF BED

With luck, our work provides not only an income, but also the fun of creating, problem solving and completing. Work can be interesting and stimulating, something that gets us out of bed in the morning, ready to take on the challenges of a new day.

sleep

An antidote to dullness and ennui, in other words.

However there’s more than one way to slice this apple, and the truth is that alternative projects can undermine interest in the first one, killing the urge to complete it. This isn’t just about using up the energy or time that can be spent on something else. It’s about the hunger that impels the task.

Example 1: After jousting with your editor on the phone for an hour, you’d rather slit your wrists open than make those marketing calls.

Example 2:  Designing your new kitchen online was fun. Too bad about the client newsletter that’s now overdue by a week.

Ideally, our ventures should work to satisfy different internal masters, rather than competing to achieve the same ends. Otherwise there’s a chance we’ll lose interest forever.

Don’t let your projects fight each other to keep the boredom at bay.

Photo by Nastya Dobryvecher

 

Blowing your nose in space

We all know that goal-setting is an important forerunner to improvement. And hard goals are supposed to be better than easy ones.

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon,” said John F Kennedy in 1961.

The Americans met the deadline, although three astronauts died in a capsule fire in 1967 because of an untested escape process.

Big goals stretch our resources and make the adrenaline flow. We therefore become successful, faster. Or so the theory goes.

Alright, I’m going to grow my business by 15 percent each year and retire before I’m fifty. That’s a nice hard goal. Should help me get there.

Problematically, it doesn’t.

FOCUS ON PROCESS

Leaders are fond of thinking up quantitative goals, sometimes call performance goals. But the troops can do better when working for qualitative outcomes, often called learning goals.

There is a difference. Instead of saying “I’m going to reach the quarter-finals of Wimbledon this year”, it’s more effective to declare “I’m going to improve my best weapon, my backhand slice.”

Focus on the process, and the outcome will look after itself.

SMALL OR LARGE STEPS

Performance goals look attractive, because it’s simple to adjust the quantity in order to get the right degree of difficulty. If Wimbledon 2021 seems too hard, let’s aim for 2023. If 15 percent business growth is too tough, we’ll cut it back to 12.

Yet learning goals can be just as easily tweaked. One big step can be divided into two smaller steps, or vice versa. For now, the ambitious tennis player can aim for a great slice into just one side of the court.

It’s said that what can’t be measured can’t be managed. But a quantifiable goal (which looks great on a graph or spreadsheet) assumes a degree of control over the outcome that in practice often isn’t there.

The moon within nine years? How about scratching my nose in a spacesuit?

Photo by Fionn Claydon

 

A Fool Such as I

It’s humiliating to make business mistakes – especially the habitual ones that have gone undiscovered until now. “Why have I been doing this, all these years? How idiotic.”

After that, it’s gratifying. Embarrassing realizations are forerunners of steps forward, precursors to progress. 

RED-FACED

In a sense, continuous improvement is a matter of moving from one mistake or omission to another, seen in retrospect.

  • Color blind people can’t read our logo.
  • Google isn’t indexing a lot of my pages. Why didn’t I submit a sitemap? 
  • We qualified for that subsidized loan 24 months ago, without being aware of it.

Continuous improvement, once you’ve got over the red face, can feel like a dull way to make progress. How much more exciting to create breakthroughs.

But when viewed closely enough, “continuous” actually looks like small steps or innovations. It’s just a matter of scale.

On that basis, make a fool of me anyday.

Clear and hot – or strain and pain?

focus

Focus is good, they say. It’s supposed to be a key to success – concentrating on what works, and not getting distracted. Whole books have been written about it.

Short-term focus means fixing on a task and not wasting your day on side activities. Then there’s sustained focus, over a longer period. Enemies of this are said to include acquisitions, new ventures, and sitting on too many eggs at once.

Unrelenting focus isn’t always for the best, though. It can lead to number watching, impatience and unnecessary fiddling.

Not everything happens just when we want it to. Projects get stuck. Trying to push them forward isn’t always going to work. We need to rest, wait for inspiration, let time to pass. 

NO ITCHES

That’s when alternative ventures are valuable. They allow us to lie fallow on the prime one, without the feeling of going nowhere. We can move from one to another without getting itchy. 

Two side projects are good. Three may be even better.

Contrast between activities is useful, for example gardening as a break from book writing. The secondary projects need not be profit-related. When business progress is stubborn, you can switch to improving your tennis slice.

Everyone wants Unicorn rates of growth, like those of Airbnb or Uber or Clubhouse, but mostly this isn’t how it happens. Growth typically occurs on a compounding basis, which means that the first few years show modest returns.

Maybe it’s like planting an orchard. No matter how ambitious we are, or how much effort or intelligence is applied, a few seasons have to pass before the first crop. There’s a natural maturation process that can’t be rushed.

Focus sounds clear, hot, laser-like. Just what we all want to be. But it can also lead to forced thinking, strain and pain.

Focus isn’t always sharp.

Photos by Michael McAuliffe and Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum

How not to end a business connection

We’ve all been jilted at the office. By that, I mean we’ve had to face the end of a business relationship. Sometimes it’s done well, other times poorly. ghosting The worst kind of ending is ghosting, where a client or customer goes silent, not contacting you or returning calls or emails. In dating, when your current love becomes an ex, the effect can be brutal, tolerable, or even welcome, depending on the state of the relationship. NOT JUST INCOME In business, the pain can depend on how long you worked together. If that was years, the effect can be devastating. We’re not just talking about the end of an income – though of course that matters. Ghosting creates a feeling that the good bond you thought existed is of little value to the client, who doesn’t care if you drop out of their life forever. This surely isn’t the right way. All business tie-ups end sooner or later, but the finish deserves a full explanation to the other party, preferably face-to-face, no matter how uncomfortable this process may be. Ghosting should be something that went the way of the black and white television.

Photo by Stefano Pollio

2021: A Break Odyssey

Instead of making new year resolutions for 2021, here’s a better idea. Break something, pull it apart, and remake it.

The problem with resolutions is that the associated actions have to be continued for at least three months in order to convert them into a habit.

The brain pattern – and the muscle memory that goes with it – needs to be replaced by another. No easy task. Each time that we fall back into the legacy, comfortable way of doing something, it continues to be strengthened. A clean break is needed.

One problem with forming a new pattern is that until it’s properly in place, we keep making silly errors and causing ourselves to look stupid to others.

Too bad. It’s an unavoidable part of the process.

Most people don’t attempt to build a new habit. Instead they try to get a better result from the old less-than-optimal pattern of thought and action. That’s as likely as persuading your dog to bring in the letters instead of chasing the mailman. 

If you’re a cruel-minded kind of person who loves to win against others, their habits are invaluable. You can use them as a guide as to what these people are likely to do next. They rarely alter their routines.

Still, in a year that’s been a nightmare for many, there’s been progress. Folks have been forced to adapt to new situations, which has meant changing the old ways of doing things.

Let’s make that a harbinger of 2021 – a year for the dissolution of bad habits. Many of them are not actually bad, just not as useful as they could be.

Break, pull-apart, remake. A tenet for the twenties.

Where did it all go?

Most of us have heard of the resources curse. The notion is that countries blessed with natural resources don’t end up doing as well as those that start out with nothing. Think Venezuela with all its oil, versus Japan, possessing few natural advantages.

The concept can apply equally as well to people.

Those endowed with gifts sometimes cruise along, not as diligent as others, and often accomplishing less with their lives.

GIFTS GONE

Having never worked for their blessings, these people may not know where these came from. Consequently, they don’t know how to protect them or reclaim the gifts when gone. 

Possible types of bestowed advantages include sporting talent, family money, social connections, educational opportunities, good looks and intelligence.

Big achievers often come from behind, spurred on by an acute awareness of what’s lacking in their lives. They get enormous satisfaction from filling this deficit.

The “lucky ones”, meanwhile, sit back and wonder where on earth it all went. 

It’s not how you start out that matters, it’s what you become.