Inspiring Women in Business Podcast - Episode 39 - Should you use your own name for your business?

podcast Feb 14, 2023

Should you use your own name for your business? You don’t want to be stuck in thinking and procrastinating over the perfect name for your business. Thus, naming your business after your name might be helpful to get going. However, there are opposing views on this matter.

In this episode, I tackle one of the most frequently asked questions in my social media accounts: Should you use your own name for your business? I share the pros and cons of using your name as a brand to help you decide on what you should name your business.

Listen and Enjoy!

Key takeaways from this episode:

Using your own name means you are developing a personal brand. Whereas if you create a business name, you’re building a brand and a company that’s bigger than just you.

Pros and Cons of Using your Name as your Brand:

PROS:

Quicker to get going
Quicker decision-making
Quicker to get traction
Quicker to get engagements
Quicker to get clients
Quicker to create that know, like, and trust with people

CONS:

Quite difficult to sell a personal brand to another company
Harder to raise finance to expand
Harder to exit for someone else to run the business
Harder to outsource certain parts of your business (social media or marketing) because you are the face of your business

Episode Timeline:

00:00 Episode Intro

00:23 Podcast Intro

01:28 One of the most frequently asked questions

02:28 My usual advice when naming a business

03:03 Why I came up with her business name

04:27 How my business evolved since 2009

05:51 Pros and cons of creating your personal brand

07:28 The conclusion

07:52 Outro

More about Ruth:

Hi, I’m Ruth, a business coach specializing in helping freelancers and business owners adjust their mindset and their marketing so they can get fully booked with clients they LOVE to work with. I’ve helped hundreds of self-employed women achieve the time and money freedom they craved.

I’ve started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I’d created a glass ceiling for myself.

In 2017, I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn’t doing what I loved and fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. I don’t want the same to happen to you.

You can expect practical advice, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you have been putting in your way.

I’m on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business.

Connect and know more about Ruth here:

Coaching: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/coaching

Free Masterclass: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/the-sold-out-solution-2022

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruthgilbeymarketingandcoaching/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruth_gilbey/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthgilbey/

Transcription

Ruth Gilbey 00:00

Hi there. So in today's episode, I'm going to be talking about should you use your own name for your business. And I'm going to be going through the pros and cons of whether you should build a personal brand using your own name or whether it's better for you to actually have a business name and a brand that's bigger than just you.

Ruth Gilbey 00:23

Hello, and welcome to the inspiring women in business podcast. My name is Ruth Gilbey, and I'm a business and marketing coach. I'm on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business. Now I started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was just grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I'd created a glass ceiling myself. It was in 2017 when I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn't doing what I loved, and I wasn't fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. And I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You can expect practical advice, interviews, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb. All the obstacles you've been putting in your way.

Ruth Gilbey 01:28

Hi, everyone, welcome back to the inspiring women in business podcast. It's great to be back recording again. In today's episode, I'm going to be tackling the question that's asked quite a lot. Should you use your own name for your business? This must be one of my most frequently asked questions. And it was a bit of a sign last week, the last week alone, I was asked about my membership, the online business collective, and my Instagram DMS by a podcast listener. And here are their questions. First of all, in my Instagram, DMS, the question was, how important is it that the name of your business reflects what you do? She said I haven't 100% decided on my business name yet for this reason. And I said great question. You know what? I'm going to answer that in a podcast and I'll share it with you when it's done. And then in my online business collective good question was I'm rebranding, I'm just changing the name of my business. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to change it to something else like my own name.

Ruth Gilbey 02:28

So usually, there's a reason why I do this, which I will explain. I've always advised just going with your own name when using and then using the strapline and messaging to explain what you do and how you help people. The reason being is because I want you to get to that part faster, I don't want you to get stuck in the name of your business, what you're naming yourself, I want you to really think about who you help and how you help people and who you're working with. But I've seen opposing views on this. So I wanted to do this episode. So I could tackle and share both options with you.

Ruth Gilbey 03:03

So there are two options, use your own name, or come up with a business name. The reason why I often suggest using your own name is that when you're starting out in particular, you might be testing out an idea. I also see people procrastinating over the name a lot or taking ages to come up with a name and then changing that name or adapting their business doesn't make sense anymore. So if you change what you're actually doing the name might not make sense. So I think just using your own name gives you a lot more flexibility and then using your messaging and your copy to really make it clear who you are, how you help people, and who you work with. I spent ages myself trying to come up with a business name as I saw lots of people launching businesses and creating businesses similar to mine. And they were using business names a lot of the time however, and I think I was in such you know, I got so overwhelmed by googling domain names, names of my business that and watching people's reactions when I was coming up with names that didn't make sense. And I just thought you know what, I'm just going to be Ruth Gilbey Limited and my domain name will be Ruthgilbey.com and then I will use an I'll adapt the strapline so and the reason why was because I knew that my business was going to evolve I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to doing one particular thing.

Ruth Gilbey 04:27

So here's how my business has evolved since 2009. So I was Ruth Gilbey, the operations manager, Ruth Gilbey, the TV production manager, the Social Media Manager, and the digital marketing manager. So these kinds of evolved over the years from 2009, digital marketing consultant and then from 2018. I was Ruth Gilbey's marketing and coaching and I haven't really changed that for the last five years. So, you know, what's that? 2018, nine years of me wondering, you know, testing out ideas for a business and coming up with this and that and that's why this was a good reflection process for me that I've actually, it's taken that long for me to actually decide this is what I want to do. This is who I want to help. And this is what I want to do. So it hasn't really changed.

Ruth Gilbey 05:18

Of course, in hindsight, I could have picked a business name that didn't have any of my job titles in it to give me flexibility. And I could have had a business name, and what that business was, could have been adapted. But so using your own name means really, that I was doing this accidentally, I didn't realize I was doing this because I didn't know about personal branding back in 2009. But using your own name means you're developing a personal brand. Whereas if you create a business name, you're really building a brand and a company that's bigger than just you.

Ruth Gilbey 05:51

So I want to just quickly summarize some of the pros and cons to help you decide the pros of just using your own name and creating your own brand, your own personal brand, you can be quicker to get going, which is what I've just talked about, you can make the decision quite quickly. It's quicker to get traction, quicker to get engagement, quicker to get clients, quicker to create that know, like, and trust with people as well. However, the cons are, it's going to be quite difficult to sell a personal brand to another company. So if that's part of your mission and your business plan, you know, reconsider whether you know that really think about a business name instead of your personal name, it could be harder could be I don't know, I haven't explored this in loads of detail but this is from the research I've done online. It could be harder to raise finance to expand. It could be harder to exit for someone else to run your business. You're always on if you think about it. Also, it can be hard, but not impossible to outsource certain parts of your business like your social media and some of your marketing and I found this challenging as well because it's my business is me. So getting help. I definitely get help with my marketing. But I write the posts it's pictures of me really the help that I get with repurposing and the graphic design and marketing sort of assets but I write my posts I do my videos. I'm not saying that's the right way but that's what I do at the moment. So yeah, it could be difficult could be challenging to outsource certain parts of your business if you are the face of your business. So if you want to exit your company one day if you want to sell your business on, if that's part of your plan, whether you're selling to someone else or replacing yourself with someone else to run it for you really do consider and think twice before building your business as a personal brand.

Ruth Gilbey 07:52

Thanks for listening to the inspiring women in business podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, I would love it if you would leave me a review. Also, I would love to connect with you on Instagram. That's where I hang out most of the time. I'm @Ruth_Gilbey. I'll put a link in the show notes for you as well to come and connect with me. Tell me about your business. And also tell me what you'd like to hear next on the podcast. And lastly, go and check out the business building hub on my website. There you can find more amazing free resources to help you take the next step in your business. And you can also find out other ways that you can work with me. I'll see you soon