I founded my company three years ago, but I struggled for a long time with the name. Part of the reason I struggled was that in the beginning, I had the same angst that many freelancers do — I was convinced I would have a hard time finding clients [particularly in the economy in late 2008], so I didn’t want to rule out any kind of work that I might be capable of doing. I felt it was best to keep my options open.
Since I couldn’t narrow my focus, the name was particularly difficult for me. I didn’t have anything in particular that I wanted to say…so it wasn’t easy to come up with a name that said nothing yet sounded amazing.
In fact, I actually named the firm one day while I was over at Centresource, one of Nashville’s great web design and development shops. Now-CEO Evan Owens was introducing me to someone and he said, “What’s the name of your company again?” And thus, of desperation, Creekmore Consulting was born!
Well, whether I knew it or not, we did have a great specialization, and we quickly built a nice portfolio of content strategy and information architecture work. I hired some employees, and we’d talk from time to time about the name of the company. “Creekmore Consulting” could be an accounting firm…or almost anything else. We did consult, but all our consultations focused on content strategy specifically. So it seemed silly to keep such a generic name.
Then the crazy-making began. We came up with name…after name…after name…after name. We really liked several, but every time we came up with one we liked, we discovered the URL was not available.
A couple of words on URLs:
Even though we’re in 2012, we still believe that you need to own the URL that is your company name. Yes, it’s hard to find a URL that is available, but it really makes a difference. The more stuff you have to append to your name, the harder it is for people to remember.
And all of you out there sitting on URLs and not using them? A pox on you! We had several great names and the URLs were taken, but not in use. Just maddening. Of course, you can always try to buy an unused URL, but you don’t have any way to know in advance if the person who owns it is crazy or not. While we came up with some good names, we never hit on one that we felt we’d just die without, so we kept searching.
In the end, our new name [Creek Content] happened by accident. Last year at South by Southwest, I decided we really should start tweeting. [An effort at which we're still only sporadically good.] So I created an account while eating lunch one day, and I named it CreekContent. I meant to name it CreekConsult, but I didn’t realize my mistake until I’d finished creating the account. And I thought, Hey! I’m on to something there! I discovered the URL was available and I bought it right there at the bar at P.F. Chang’s in Austin, on my phone.
We didn’t officially decide to rename the company until the summer, however. We spent a day with fabulous business consultant, David Baker, and one of the first things he said to us was, “Rename this company!” It pushed us over the edge.
We got the website rebranded, a new logo, new business cards, and off we went. Of course, the administrativia continued for months — renaming the bank account, filing the name change with the city, the state, our insurance company, the IRS….getting our ongoing clients to update our billing information. But it was absolutely worth it.
While no name can completely explain what a company does, our new name plants us in the right universe before we even start talking to a prospective client. It is easy to remember and spell, and — I still think this matters — it’s shorter than our old URL.
