Business Naming for the Unitiated

You might be wondering, how the heck do I pick my business name if I’m not sure what my winning product is going to be?? Great question.

First, let’s take some of the pressure off: at the beginning, you’re not picking a business, you’re just picking a group of people to try and sell to.

To have lots of flexibility in your offers, your brand can either be linked to you, personally, or it can be linked to a general brand.

• LanceJohnson.com could be whatever I want it to be.

• JohnsonVentures.com could be whatever I want it to be.

• PowerUp.com could be whatever I want it to be (and easily pivot)

  • Devin is a person’s name → an AI developer

  • Apple is a food → computer company

  • Amazon is a geographic feature → e-commerce company

• AccountabilityCoaches.com is a bit limited (not saying that’s bad if you know accountability coaching is the space you want to play in)

• JohnsonPainting.com is a bit limited.

• KitchenCabinets.com or Pets.com are all hangovers from the SEO spam days. Exact match domains limit your flexibility and are just tacky.

You can associate general brands with specific ideas. Picking a name that is currently unrelated to any big ideas is normal, and probably a good thing.

A brand is like a new grad. It’s got no track record, so will have to work extra hard to get a job. But once that grad has some years of experience and an impressive resume, job hunting is much easier (although probably still equally stressful 🤔). Fast forward to when our dear grad starts giving keynotes at industry conferences and you’ve got someone who “made a name” for themselves.

Brand building is the same way. You start off unknown, and if all goes well, you’ll end up famous.

I like general brands so I have maximal flexibility. would rather go with something like PowerUp, Amazon, Devin, or Apple. You can always add your category to your site once you figure it out, but not having to change the domain is nice.

E.g. PowerUp.com can be used for:

• PowerUp Accountability Coaching

• PowerUp Startup Coaching

• PowerUp Author Accountability

• PowerUp Accounting

PowerUpAccountability.com is more restricted.

But It’s So Hard to Find a Domain Name!

True, true.

You’ve got a few options:

1. Non-dotcom domain (e.g. .io, .ai, .net, .org)

2. Meaningless modifiers (e.g. MyPowerUp.com, TryPowerUp.com, UsePowerUp.com)

3. Makeup a word (Web 2.0 did this and we all regret it).

4. Premium domain purchases (spend a few grand to a few million dollars and get the exact domain).

I’m old, so I like .com’s, but you can pick any of the options above.

Recap: link a brand to an audience rather than linking a brand to a person or category before you know where you’re going to land.

If you link it to a brand name, you can always sell the audience even if things bomb. Or if things go well for that matter. It’s hard to sell LanceJohnson.com to someone named Bob Smith.