Choosing a good company name is a difficult and not idle question. Moreover, this is not a secondary issue. It is necessary to choose a name that will "work" for the business for many years, will embody all the values \u200b\u200bof the business, and characterize the company for the better.

Of course, it is best to entrust such work to specialists, professionals, but, as a rule, such services are expensive and not all beginner entrepreneurs can do it.

The first and simple thing that you can do at the start on your own and at no cost is to create your own, small focus group consisting of relatives, friends and just acquaintances.

This focus group can be given “to the tear” of the options for the name of the company that you have already come up with. Ask them to express their attitude to a particular name, ask what they like or dislike about the name.

Put the results in an impromptu table, mark each name minus / plus. Ideally, if all opinions about a particular name of your amateur focus group are well-reasoned.

Surely with such a squeak you will determine for yourself several winners. From the pool of such impromptu winners, you choose the name that will work for your business.

Interesting company names - a way to stand out

On the Internet there are whole lists of beautiful company names that everyone can use.

Yes, it stands out from other competitive names. It is not easy, but it is the main thing. Many may say: “You need to stand out with a service or product. The quality of service, etc. ” No doubt - that's right.

But imagine yourself in the place of your consumer. That consumer who has not yet begun to study your proposal, but only selects a company from a dozen or even hundreds of offers.

Your task is to offer him a name that will interest him immediately, highlight your business and perhaps even put it in the first place in the search. Even before he decides to study the price or description of the products. To be the first at the very first step of the consumer is very important, this is the key to success.

  This means that the names of successful companies play a big role in the success of the entire business.

Of course, many factors should be considered when choosing a name. For example, a bright, catchy and even trendy name does not suit companies that offer financial or consulting services. Here you have to sacrifice brightness and originality.

Just because it is not solid. Who would have the idea of \u200b\u200bcalling a consulting business: “Orange Elephant” or “Hippo Hilarious”? Of course, we exaggerate, but here we really need to be careful.

Large companies with large advertising budgets can afford a less thorough choice of name, as any name can be easily promoted for money. It is better for novice entrepreneurs with limited advertising budgets to think a hundred times and only then “cut off”.

How to choose a company name? A small but useful instruction: use language tricks

•   Choose a name that lends itself to a pun.  A great example of such a pun is “Baby Potato”. Just great! With humor, with warmth and at home. We are sure that many who read such a name will treat such a business with warmth and great hope for tasty and high-quality food from the first minute. A great example of a smart marketing move. Five points!;
•   A strict name should be simple.  Choose the name of your business that you can easily remember and write. A simple example: you follow to work on your own car and an interesting advertisement, say on a roadside billboard, has come into your view. What do you quickly remember: “International Communication Liberty” or “Inkomli”? Even better is Incol;
•   Choose a name that you don’t ask again. We have bitter experience when in pursuit of originality we chose the name of the company: “Audit Profit Engineering”. Countless times we were asked how the name is spelled. Sometimes, we repeated the name several times, until people learn it. We are sure (peculiarities of psychology) that people don’t like this, which means that many people already had a little discomfort when they first got acquainted with the business, and therefore a negative connected with the name of the company;
•   Avoid the name puns.  A pun in the name of your company is a risky move. Even if such a name is easily remembered, one should not risk the authority of the company and immediately tune the consumer to slight disrespect;
•   Never imitate the famous.You can easily “get” into serious legal proceedings and lose a lot: money for the maintenance of lawyers, legal costs, changing the name of the company, fines, etc. The most important thing is a good name, which will be difficult to restore even for a lot of money.

Original company names and domain name

  Interesting company names in the examples.

Beautiful names for companies must be chosen because your future consumer associates the company name with the quality of your business.

When choosing a name for their new business, many novice entrepreneurs miss the most important point - the domain name. Today, any business must be present on the Internet.

Especially the business that plans to enter not only local markets, but also regional markets, and possibly international ones. ("The soldier who does not dream of becoming a general is bad.")

Both in the first and in the second case, the business will need a website and its domain name.

And how will the domain name sound in English? (We do not recommend using a domain zone for the Russian Federation for many reasons).

How do you spell? How to read? And most importantly - is such a domain name currently free?

Also, how will search engines react to the name of your domain name? Believe me, we are not new to promoting an online business and understand how it becomes important when a business grows and a business website grows with it.

“The more people find you and your company on the Internet, the more you will have buyers, consumers and people who are simply loyal to your business.”

  The name for the company in the examples.

•   A short domain is not a good choice. If you are going to choose a domain consisting of less than six letters - this is not the best choice. Type abbreviation: "monsters" of a business can afford it, but not a beginner at all. Need to look for more;
•   Play a combination.  For example, the domain name of your business may consist of a set of abbreviated words: "Vetprom.ru". A fictitious domain name might belong to a fictitious company: Windmills;
•   Use the translation.  Often, business owners use a translation from the national language and vice versa when choosing a domain name. Example: the word "Thank you" in Hawaiian sounds like "Ubunchu", this sound was taken as the basis for a domain name written in English - Ubuntu;
•   Watch out for the CEO.  Many companies, in the hope of promoting their business in issuing, resort to tricks - they use keywords in the domain name. Firstly, Google no longer pays attention to it and does not give preferences to such a domain name, and secondly, it is possible to satisfy sanctions in the future. Changing a domain name is not easy and expensive;
•   You are in Russia? So - RU!  If your business is located in Russia, it will be better in all respects if your domain name is located in the zone - “RU”. Believe me, you will not regret such a decision in the future.

Key Business Ideas by Jason Freud and David Heinmeier Hensson

Rework is a book on how to start a business. And how to improve the existing business. And how to look at your business with different eyes. This book is written by practitioners: Jason Fride and David Heinmeier Hensson are highly successful Internet entrepreneurs who founded the legendary 37signals company, which employs only 14 employees and whose products are used by more than three million people around the world. With the permission of SmartReading, we publish the summaries of this business bestseller that she has prepared.

Smartreading   - A new project by Mikhail Ivanov and his partners, co-founder of one of the leading Russian business literature publishers Mann, Ivanov and Ferber. SmartReading releases the so-called Sammari - texts that summarize the key ideas of best-selling non-fiction genres. Thus, people who for some reason cannot quickly read the full versions of books can get acquainted with their main ideas and theses. SmartReading uses a subscription business model in its work.

Training

Everyone can do business today. Previously inaccessible tools became available. One person is able to carry out the work of two, three employees, and in some cases the whole department. Things that were impossible a few years ago are simple today.

Now you have the opportunity to work from home and interact with people who live thousands of kilometers from you.

“In the real world, it will never work” - you hear it every time you tell people about a fresh idea. Our company fails the "tests" of the real world in all directions. In the real world, you cannot have a dozen employees distributed across eight different cities on two continents. You cannot attract millions of customers without ads and sellers. Don't risk revealing your success formula to the rest of the world. But we did all this and succeeded.

Turning guesses into plans, you enter a dangerous territory. Plans allow the past to control the future. They put blinders on you - plans are incompatible with improvisation.

Acting according to circumstances is normal. Just board a plane and take off. You can buy a nice shirt, shaving cream and a toothbrush when you get to the place.

The prospect of working without a plan can seem daunting. But blindly following a plan that has nothing to do with reality should scare even more.

It is believed that the larger the company, the more professional and powerful it is.

Why it happens? Is the size of the business related to its success? What is wrong with finding the “right size” and staying in it? Does it ever occur to anyone to say about Harvard or Oxford: “If only they began to expand, they hired several thousand more professors, and in addition opened other campuses around the world ... then these would be great schools”? Of course not. The value of these educational institutions we measure differently. Why should business valuation be different?

Do not be shy about your desire to be the owner of a small business. Anyone who runs a stable and profitable business, no matter whether he is big or small, can be proud of himself.

Act!

To do first-class work, you need to believe that you are doing something special. That you leave a significant mark in the universe. That you are part of something important.

If you're going to do something, focus on what matters.

The easiest and most obvious way to create a first-class product or service is to do something that you yourself want to use.

At 37signals, we make products that we ourselves need to conduct our business. For example, we needed to learn to keep track of who we were talking with, what the conversation was about and when we needed to call back the next time. So we created Highrise, our contact manager. We did not need focus groups, marketing research or intermediaries. Each of us has a friend who says: “I myself had an idea to make eBay. If I started working on it, now I would be a billionaire! ” Such logic looks pitiful, if not to say - delusional. The authorship of the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating eBay has nothing to do with the direct creation of eBay. What matters is only what you do, not what you think, say, or plan.

An idea will remain just an idea until you start to do something.

“I don’t have time for this” is the most frequent excuse people use. This is just an excuse. Time is always enough if you spend it correctly. And for this you do not need to leave your permanent job. Start working on your project in the evenings.

The ideal time to start a business will never come. You are always either too young, or too old, or too busy, or too tired, or anything else. If you are constantly worried about choosing the perfect moment, it will never come.

During your work, do not forget about why you are doing exactly what you are doing. Great businesses have their own point of view, and not just a set of products and services.

For example, Whole Foods sees its mission as selling top-quality natural products. They do not spend time on endless discussions about finding suitable products. No one asks: “Should we sell this product with artificial flavors?” - because the answer is obvious. Therefore, you cannot buy Coca-Cola or Sneakers in their stores. This conviction means that products at Whole Foods are expensive. Some envious people even call the company "tidy sum" and taunt those who shop there. Well, so what? Whole Foods feels great.

Do not forget that there is a huge difference between really firmly adhering to a certain position, and having a formal mission of the company, which says about following this position.

Defending your beliefs does not mean just writing them down. This means believing in them and living them.

One of the first questions you are likely to ask is where to get the money for your project. Perhaps too often, people think the right answer is to attract them from the outside.

Regardless of which business you want to start, attract as little external money as possible. The idea of \u200b\u200bspending other people's money may seem attractive, but by doing so you put a loop around your neck, because:

you lose control of your business;

spending other people's money is addictive;

this is usually a bad deal;

customer opinions are discounted when developing a business.

raising money is incredibly distracting. You need less resources than you think.

Do you really need ten people or two or three for now? Do you really need 500 thousand dollars or will 5 thousand be enough? Do you really need a large separate office or can you rent an office together with another company for some time (or even work at home)? Do you really need a warehouse or can you use your garage / basement? Do you really need to buy ads and hire a PR agency, or are there other ways to get noticed? Etc.

There is nothing wrong with being economical. First-class companies usually start in the garage. And yours is no exception.

Start a business, not a startup.

Startup is a magical place. This is a place where costs are not your concern. Where the annoying concept of profit is never discussed. Where you can spend other people's money until you find a way to make money yourself. This is a place to which the laws of business are not applicable.

Anyone who applies the point of view “we will figure out how to become profitable in the future” to business is ridiculous. Without a clear understanding of how to become profitable, a business is not a business - it is nothing more than a hobby!

Creating a company with the intention to sell it in the future, you incorrectly place accents. Instead of winning the love of customers, you are looking for a buyer. This is the wrong position.

Suppose that you ignored this advice and managed to successfully cope with the task. You created a business, sold it and received a great reward. What then? Moving to the island and sipping pinacolada all day? Does it really make you happy? Are you sure that this is better than doing business that you like, whose success you believe in?

Evolve

The lack of opportunities for waste forces you to be inventive.

Southwest Airlines, unlike most other carriers that fly on several aircraft models, uses only the Boeing 737. As a result, every Southwest pilot, flight attendant and member of the ground crew can serve any of the company's flights. In addition to this, in Southwest, all spare parts are suitable for any of the aircraft. This means lower costs and easier business to manage. They themselves simplified their lives.

Create half the product, not the unfinished product. Better to have a cool half than a stupid whole.

When you start something new, there are a number of forces: there are things you can do, things you want to do, and things you have to do. From what you have to do, and you need to start, that is, from the epicenter.

For example, if you want to open a tent for selling hot dogs, you can worry about seasonings, the tent itself, the name, design. But the first thing you should take care of is the hot dogs themselves. Hot dogs are the epicenter. Everything else is secondary.

To understand where the epicenter is, ask yourself the question: “If I take this away, will what I sell still exist?”

Take decision making seriously. Do not wait for the perfect option. Make a decision and move on.

It doesn’t matter how long you plan, anyway, things will go awry.

When something does not work, the usual approach is to throw more resources at solving the problem. All this ultimately leads to an increase in the problem. The right approach is to act in the opposite direction, that is, to reduce.

If you start to shift deadlines and increase your budget, you will never stop.

Your whole business should be built around what remains unchanged. That which interests people right now and will interest them ten years later.

Amazon.com focuses on fast (or free) shipping, great assortment, good return conditions and reasonable prices.Japanese automakers are also focusing on basic principles that remain unchanged: reliability, affordability and practicality.At 37signals, we focus on things like speed, simplicity, usability and comprehensibility. These desires are timeless.

Use what you already have, or what you can get inexpensively. Then act. It’s not your inventory that matters. The bottom line is that you show the maximum of what you are capable of using the means at hand.

Set aside all that you do not need to run. Create everything you need now, and leave all the luxuries for later. There are a lot of things that you will not need right on the first day.

But do not confuse the proposed approach with saving on quality.

Productivity

The business world is littered with dead documents that only eat up your time. Real understanding arises in the transition to something more real.

Here is a list of important questions you need to ask yourself to make sure: you are doing exactly what matters.

Why are you doing it? What problem do you solve? Do you add value? Is there an easier way? What could you do instead? Is it really worth it?

Before diving into something, determine the real value of the upcoming business.

Sometimes stopping work is the right step, even if you have already put a lot of effort into it. Do not waste good time on poor work.

Do not go ahead in making decisions! Look for a judo-style solution, one that will be most effective at the lowest cost. All “judo decisions” come down to making more and getting more.

The more time a business takes, the less likely it is that you will finish it. But even if you bring it to the end, most likely, it will not be performed well enough.

When we assume how much time is required for certain actions, we are not just mistaken - we are mistaken very much. A possible solution is to break up large tasks into small subtasks.

Try to divide time segments into small parts. Instead of planning a single project for 12 weeks, break it down into 12 one-week projects. Instead of witchcraft over tasks that require more than 30 hours, break up your work into more realistic 6-10 hour segments. And then move forward step by step.

Big decisions are hard to make and change. It’s best to have achievable goals.

Competitors

If you are successful, people will try to copy what you have done. But there is a great way to protect yourself from imitators - to become part of your product or service yourself. Embed your unique mindset in what you sell. Add something to the product that others cannot offer.

Copying in business is a failure. The problem of copying is as follows: the stage of understanding, awareness of the underlying mechanisms by which business grows is skipped.

If you think your competitors suck, say so.

For example, Dunkin ’Donuts likes to position itself as“ anti-Starbucks. ” Their ads taunt the "Frytalian" terms that Starbucks uses instead of the usual "small," "medium," and "large." Even a special site, Dunkinbeatstarbucks.com, was created on which visitors can send electronic cards to their friends with the following statements: “Friends do not allow friends to drink coffee at Starbucks.”

The generally accepted wisdom says: to get around your competitors, you need to have an advantage over them, that is, do more than they do. Is there any other way? Yes there is. To defeat competitors, do less than them.

Feel free to know that your product or service does less. Show it off. Be proud of it. Sell \u200b\u200byour “minimum” as aggressively as competitors sell their long lists of opportunities.

Instead of manic studying competitors, focus on yourself. Spending time worrying about someone else, you cannot devote it to improving your own affairs. If you plan to create an “iPod killer” or “next Pokemon,” you are already dead. You let competitors set parameters. You cannot beat Apple in their field. You can not beat those who establish the rules of the game. You need to change the rules, not just improve the product a bit.

Evolution

“If I listened to my clients, I would have to give them a faster horse” - Henry Ford

Answering customers “yes” is very easy. Yes - adding another feature, yes - overly optimistic milestones, yes - mediocre design. Soon, the mountain of everything you said “yes” will become so high that you will not see the true goals that you really should strive for.

Do not believe that "the customer is always right." Being able to bring joy to several loud customers is not worth it to spoil your product for everyone else.

This does not mean that you need to automatically say no to customers. Just be honest. If you do not want to give in to the client’s request, be polite and explain why.

The main thing is that you like your product yourself.

Perhaps you have come across a similar scenario before: the company has a client who brings her a lot of money. The company is trying in every way to please him. Such a policy leads to "sharpening" the product to the requirements of one client and cooling your relations with the bulk of them. Once it all ends with the Big Client leaving the company, and you are left with a “suitcase without a handle” - a product ideal for someone who is no longer with you, but poorly suitable for everyone else.

The number of those who do not use your product will always be more than the number of users. Do everything so that as many people as possible can easily start using it. This aspiration has continuous growth potential.

Promotion

When you first start, you do not know. Use this time to make mistakes that the whole world will not hear about, make adjustments, work on imperfections.

Broadway shows serve as a great example of how ideas first go on the run in small stages. Before debuting in New York, the premiere is usually held in some small town. Such “testing” allows actors to study the public’s reaction before the show is presented to the court of harsh critics and taste-setters.

Each company has customers. Happy ones have fans. And the most successful ones have audiences. The audience can be your secret weapon.

When building an audience, you do not need to buy people's attention - they themselves give it to you. This is a huge advantage.

So create your audience. Tell, publish ... anything. By sharing valuable information slowly but surely, you are sure to create a loyal audience. And then, when you need to be heard about you, the right people will be ready to listen.

Train - and you will “bind” people to yourself in a way that fans of traditional marketing techniques did not dream about. Training is your chance to beat major competitors.

If you want to attract someone's attention, it is foolish to follow the example of the bulk. You need to stand out.

Drug dealers are very far-sighted businessmen. They know: their product is so good that they are ready to give a small portion for free for testing. They know that what is caught on their fishing rod will return for the next portion - already with the money.Copy the drug dealers. Make your product fantastically good. Addictive. A product that is "not to be missed." So that you are sure, giving customers a piece of the sample for free: they will return already with cash.

To get started, create a small trial version of your product. Make a simple and understandable presentation that will give consumers the opportunity to try the product without spending a lot of time and money.

Do not be afraid to share for free. You should know that people will return "for the supplement." And if you are not sure about this yet, it means that you have not yet created a sufficiently strong product.

Do you have a marketing department? If not, good. But even having such a department, you should not think that its employees are the only people responsible for marketing. Marketing, unlike accounting, is not a department, but a way of life, something that all employees of your company do 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Recruitment

Do it yourself first. Never hire anyone until you yourself try to do it. So you will be able to understand the nature of this work, understand how its good result should look.

Hire when it becomes unbearable.

Avoid hiring people who delegate responsibilities, those who only tell others what to do. For a small team, such people are a dead weight.

Hire the very best candidates no matter how far they live from you.

Our head office is in Chicago, but more than half of our team lives in other cities, states and even countries - Idaho, Canada, Spain and five more places. Limiting the search for candidates only to the city of Chicago, we would have missed half of the excellent specialists we are working with.

Geography is no longer critical. Hire the best talents, despite their location.

Repair damage

If something goes wrong in your business, it will be better if you yourself make bad news, without waiting for the emergence of fertile soil for the spread of rumors and false information. Be a source of bad news about yourself.

Do not think that you will be able to hide unpleasant information. Nowadays, hiding is pointless. Secrets no longer exist. Remember the children's game of "spoiled phone." The same principle applies to the company. The longer the chain of intermediaries between customers and employees performing work, the more likely it is that along the way the customer message will be distorted or lost.

Negative responses are almost always louder and more emotional than positive ones. This is an axiom. Even if aboutmost of your customers are happy with the changes; you only hear negative voices. Against this background, it is important to refrain from a rash step and not back up the necessary but contradictory transformations.

Inspiration does not last forever

Each of us has ideas. They are immortal - unlike inspiration. If you have a desire to do something, you need to start it immediately.

In a state of recovery, you can do the amount of work in 24 hours, which in a normal situation would have to spend a couple of weeks.

There is something magical in inspiration, but it will not wait for you. Inspiration is momentary. If it has visited you, grab it and make it work.

"Work". What comes to mind with this word, especially considering the beginning of a new working week? Maybe an office table littered with papers since last Friday? The boss who is again gathering you all for a meeting with a report that should have been prepared “for yesterday”? Or maybe a colleague who all morning is violently outraged that someone stepped on her foot in the subway? And so at least half your work day will pass ...

If at six in the evening you notice with surprise that you have done one or two of the 5-8 tasks planned for today, then it's time for you to read this book. If you cannot understand how to survive in the office until the evening and why your eternal employment does not bear any fruit, then this is the time to read this book. If your boss wants you to live at work, and the “40% of salary” prize is earned by heroic efforts, coming to work at 8 in the morning and leaving the office at about 11 in the evening, then it's time to read this book not only to you, but to your boss . This is not a panacea, not a universal “recipe for happiness”: this is a look at the office reality that we are all used to seeing it, and at what it should be. An objective look at another work from the creators of such well-known things for our readers as Ruby on Rails, Basecamp and Highrise.

Jason Fride is a successful entrepreneur, founder of 37signals. The programs created by this company (in which there are only 14 permanent employees!) Are used by more than 3 million people around the world. Among them, Basecamp is a project management system, Backpack is a knowledge management system, Highrise is a CRM system and Campfire messenger.

Quotes from Jason Freide from Rework. Business without prejudice "

1. The easiest way to create a first-class product or service is to do something that you yourself want to use.

2. Workaholics are not heroes. They do not save time, they just burn it. The real hero has long been at home; he has found a faster way to complete his business.

3. While a person is a beginner in some field, all he needs is just to start creating. The most important task is to get started.

4. If you have a desire to do something, you need to start it immediately ... Later, you may not be so much inspired by it.

5. Failure is not a prerequisite for success.

6. You can quickly turn a set of great ideas into one lousy product if you try to implement them all at once.

You simply cannot do everything you want right away at a good level. You have limited time, resources, and concentration. It is very difficult to do at least one thing at a decent level. What about cool doing ten things at once? Forget about it.

7 .... the perfect time will never come. You are always either too young, or too old, or too busy, or too tired, or anything else. If you are constantly worried about choosing the perfect moment, it will never come.

8. To work no longer means to care more about the success of the business or to do more. It only means that you work more.

9. The more time a business takes, the less likely it is that you will finish it. But even if you bring it to the end, most likely it will not be performed well enough.

10.Energy of movement feeds your motivation. It makes you move on. She inspires you. Without it, you will not go far. If the work does not motivate you, you will not achieve a good result.

11. Do you regularly work late into the weekend at home? This does not indicate a huge amount of work. This, alas, suggests that you do not do much to the end. The reason for this is breaks

12. Lack of time is no excuse.

13. Instead of trying to win the competition — to sell more, spend more, sponsor more — try to educate your audience more than your competitors. Education is an area that they most likely don’t even think about.

14. Plans allow the past to control the future. "We are going this way because we said that we will go this way." And therein lies the problem: plans are not compatible with improvisation.

16. The Camper shoe brand opened its store in San Francisco before the repair work was completed and called it Walk in Progress. Visitors could paint directly on the walls of an empty store. Camper exhibited shoes directly on cheap plywood laid on top of shoe boxes. And the most famous inscription left by the visitor on the wall was: “Leave the store as it is now”

17. The point is not in the number of hours spent at the desktop, but in the productivity of these hours.

18. Live it or give it up.

19. The only thing that matters is what you do, not what you think, say, or plan.

20. Motivation is the fuel of any intellectual work. With motivation, you can do more in a day than in a week. In the absence of motivation, you can lose a week on a day job.