The holiday's have come and gone, the turkey eaten and the gifts opened. Now a New Year is upon us and many people have started considering resolutions for a prosperous New Year. I don't believe in resolutions per se, but I have been giving a lot of credence to advice and wisdom from the preceding year. Some of this advice has focused on changing the name of my company, which is officially registered as a Florida Corporation under the name ESTATIC.ORG, INC.
After I explain to people that my business' domain name is estatic.org, people often ask me if my organization is a not-for-profit? I answer simply with "only if we're having a bad year" which hasn't occurred in some time now. Back in August, 2003 Dave Smith and I didn't take too much time to consider a name. As a matter of fact, Dave already had the domain name estatic.org registered, and since we were both next to broke at the time that name had to suffice. We had no idea that our business would really take off, or that nonchalantly deciding a name was just a terrible, terrible idea. As it all turns out, the name has outlasted both our original business model and partnership (but certainly not our friendship) -- still here today to remind me of the significance of choosing a great name. But, I suppose business and life are both about learning new things.
At first glance, changing our name now seems like a really easy thing to do. We do a small number of projects per year (less than 10), which means our customer loyalty to the brand is extremely low. We're not out selling Nike's here, and because of that we feel confident that our service is our specialty, not our name -- a change seems very "do-able". Our customers will likely continue to buy estatic's consulting services even if we sold them under the name SuperDuperMegaAwesomeSoftwareSkillsForSale.com. Sure, there's the issue of buying new letterhead, doing a ton of paperwork to change names on various items and then the dreaded "refocusing the brand" task to attend to -- but that's what business is about, right? We preach on and on about agility through approach in our business and our software, so it seems that changing something as basic as a name could be factored in to our next business development iteration.
One approach we're considering that should lessen the hassle is to register a DBA filing. A DBA (doing business as) filing is an official and public registration of a business name with either the state or local jurisdiction. A DBA name is also called an assumed name, trade name, or fictitious business name. DBA's enable sole proprietors to conduct business under a name other than their own personal name and enable corporations or LLC's to do business under a name other than that which is used on the company’s articles of formation. Once the state and/or county has approved the DBA filing, the business can begin using this name as its official business name by publishing stationery and/or business cards, developing advertisements and/or directories, making transactions on behalf of the company, etc. The typical completion time for the DBA Filing Service is 4 to 6 weeks.
It appears that we can still be ESTATIC.ORG, INC. but push our services through SuperDuperMegaAwesomeSoftwareSkillsforSale.com (which likely has been registered since the publication of this article) without the hassles of revisiting all our paperwork with IRS, D&B, Florida Tax registries, Payroll Services, Bank Accounts, Utility Companies, Leases, Contracts with clients, Contracts with employees/contractors and more. Often, these are the tasks that new technology zealots turned business owners forget about in all of the whiz-buzz celebration of their entrepreneurial spirit (guilty as charged) -- so let my mistake be your lesson. There's a lot in a name.
Look for part 2 of this post as we look at specific options for our new name, and new brand.