What's The Best Name For A Consultancy Practice? (and does the name even matter?)
Should you use your own name or create a new brand? There are pros and cons of both. It really depends on your long-term objectives and the kinds of projects you want to be taking on.
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Does The Name Matter?
It won’t be decisive, but it’s an indicator of where you hope to go.
When you become a consultant, one of the earliest decisions you will make is your brand name.
Will you name your company after yourself or not?
But the name reflects a deeper question:
What will this become?
Do you imagine you will work with large organisations, hire staff, and perhaps even sell the business one day?
Or do you imagine you will be looking to build a good income working primarily on mid-level client projects while enjoying more independence and flexibility in your lifestyle?
Using Your Name As The Brand Name
It certainly makes things a lot easier….
Using your own name certainly has some great benefits.
It simplifies what you’re promoting - it’s just you. You can focus entirely on growing your own reputation and status within your industry. This works especially well if public speaking is a major part of your promotion strategy.
Another benefit is it provides clients with a clear understanding of who they will be dealing with. If they hire you, they’re getting the person whose knowledge and expertise they trust. They know they won’t be getting a junior staff member who does most of the work.
A final benefit, potentially, is it’s easy to rank well in search engines and be talked about at events. This doesn’t work well for the ‘Dan Smiths’ of the world, but it works well for the ‘Richard Millington’s’ of the world.
The downsides are two-fold.
You often won’t be considered for projects above a certain level. It’s not common for solo consultants to win $60k+ consultancy contracts. At that level, organisations typically want to hire a team rather than a single person (unless you’re in Frank Gehry territory).
Aside: Solo consultants have that awkward tendency to refer to themselves in the plural (e.g. “We are the…”). If you’re a solo consultant, own it and all the benefits that go along with it. When you pretend you’re a firm you’re going to be compared to firms. That’s not a battle you can win.
You are the brand. The rules of branding state you should have a simple, consistent, message and tone of voice. If you inconsistently veer from sharing intimate personal thoughts on the same channels you proactively look for and engage with prospective clients, that’s not an ideal situation. You might want to create a separate brand name just to have space and separation between the two.
I’d suggest keeping clear boundaries between the channels you use for work and personal purposes.
Creating A Brand Name
You have a lot more freedom and scope for growth
The benefits of creating a brand name for your consultancy are obvious. It creates a perception of an organisation rather than an individual. It creates a brand with unique value from your own. And it lets you create an identity which is separate from your own.
Rules of Great Names
You can have some fun with your name. Just remember a few things.
It should be so unique people won’t stumble across anyone else if you look for it. People are going to search for it. So when people search for the name, they should find you first. When I searched for ‘FeverBee’ before I created my company, the only competitor was ‘Night Fever - BeeGees’. That’s an acceptable level of competition. RedLorryYellowLorry is a great name, Paradigm Consulting Group is not. The name has to be so unique that people will land on it if they hear about you.
You need to have the domain name. If the .com domain name isn’t available, use a different name. You don’t want any confusion there. By default, this means it should be unique. Use a service like Nameboy or Wordoid to generate a list of options once you settle on the name.
Keep the URL short. This is related to the point above, keep the URL (and thus the name) short. The longer it is, the more likely people are to misspell it.
It should be easy to spell. There shouldn’t be any confusion about how to spell your name. Once people hear the name they should immediately be able to spell it without giving it too much thought. Don’t skip our vowels, multiple consonants in a row, or do anything silly with the period (.). ‘Believ.RR’ for example is a bad name because it’s hard to spell. Onalytica is a bad name because people can easily mishear it. Make sure it’s not something people can easily mishear.
It shouldn’t be too cool or too boring. ‘Cutting Edge Solution’s just sounds a little too pretentious. I’d probably also suggest avoiding some 80s style names like ‘Transformation Solutions Consulting Group’ too…. I’d avoid using ‘group’ altogether unless you are genuinely a group of companies. Pretending to be something you’re not is never a good idea.
Combining two words is usually a good idea. Combining two words usually creates so many opportunities that meet all the rules above which is why it’s my go-to recommendation.
An Easy Way To Generate 100s Of Ideas
Combining two interesting words together usually works well
I personally like combining two interesting words together to create a new word people can easily spell and search for. Hence FeverBee.
If you’re struggling, you can use ChatGPT to spew out at a list of names like this:
Most of them are poor (but so are most names anyone would come up with), but you can adapt your ask. You can easily ask ChatGPT to create 100 ideas if you like instead of 10 or give more specific instruction.
Besides, I kind of like BluePaw Consulting.
Do You Need ‘Consulting’ To Be In The Name?
Personally, I think it sounds better not to have ‘consulting’ in the name itself.
When I look at the list above, they all sound better without ‘consulting’ in the name.
This is also easier when it comes to the domain name too!
Adding ‘consulting’ creates a much longer URL - and adds confusion about whether to add it to the domain or not. There is something just nicer about a name which doesn’t need to add ‘consulting’, ‘advisors’, ‘group’, or ‘associates’ to the end.
You will notice most of the top consultancies and agencies in any field do precisely this. They make what they are obvious without putting it in the name.
I think FeverBee sounds a lot better than FeverBee Consultancy or FeverBee Consulting.
Summary
The biggest decision is whether to use your name or create a separate brand. The former is easier to promote but limiting at the higher levels. The latter helps create separation but means you have to build familiarity with a separate brand.
Names must be completely unique. You should have the domain name and it should be impossible for people to search for your brand and find another website. Make sure it’s easy to spell and impossible to mishear.
Use tools like ChatGPT to generate hundreds of options if you like. You can keep refining the instructions until you find something you like.
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Thanks for reading
This is all excellent advice. The considerations about using your own name become extra important if you need to sell the business or transfer it to someone else