How Did You Come Up With Your Company Name?

First, I am SO behind on the red nose thing. Can anyone point me to the story on that?

So why Sparky Firepants Images?

I used to be "David Billings," as in "Illustration and Animation by."

Not exactly memorable, right? At least it was easy for the IRS.

When I was a kid my favorite book was about Sparky the Firedog. At the time I even named my real dog "Sparky." It also describes my general nature.

Firepants was a fun phrase I thunk up to represent my efficiency and get-er-done attitude.

I had to tack on the images part so people would know that I don't fix cars.

Professionally, that is.

Ah, David. I was a first grade teacher for 10 years and I remember the book, "Sparky the Firedog."

I absolutely LOVE the name of your business. We have a stray cat we named "Sparky." You know, highly verbal, swatting at you now and then. We have taken to calling him Sparky Firepants, thanks to you. It just seems to fit him.

The cat and the business (Cat's Eye Group, our still existing graphic design and copy-writing business) are both 15 years old.

I love stories about how and why people named their businesses.

I wanted to give our company a name that would let people know that we could handle it all. Anything that you want to throw our way, we can do. The Seattle Organizing part was easy...

The definition of WORKS seemed to really bring it home..."everything; all related items or matters" Just like a hamburger with the works.

Seattle Organizing Works

It is kind of fun to have the acronym SOW as well. We like to say "If you are a pig we can help"

We named our last business (circa 1989-2001), Touch Menus, a software development company providing touch screen point of sale systems to the hospitality industry.

Our specialty niche was individual restaurant menus that you could touch to place your order and pay with your credit card with no employee intervention. Your food would then be delivered to you at the counter or your table.

I talked with friends, brainstormed, had a friend/family mailing list vote, etc.

It took quite a while to find a word that was specific enough to get at the heart of my personality, and general enough that it could morph as my business(es) grew. I added "Northwest" to Spark because a)I believe in a local focus and b)it made it more unique (I found there were quite a few spark variants). Spark Social Media (which came later) carried the same energy, but to the tech side of what I do. For me 'sparking' is about -igniting change, getting things going, inspiring, bringing fun and creativity, etc.

When we thought about the name for our product Brake was the easy part, but thinking about it and my thater background, I kept seeing a human brake sitting in a Director's chair with the baret and the sunglasses and the megaphone. We have since semi-retired the logo, but the name stuck and we have even been praised for the nane even though a lot of professional branders told us it was a lame branding early on.

Just goes to show that what's in a name is what you put into it and behind it to define it.

Glad to see your face again, Bob. Work the nose.

I found that a lot of people would point and stare at my work, (web design, web development, photography etc) so the name just seemed obvious!

123 Social Media was on a long list of social media domains that I had purchased a good time ago (waiting for the industry to pick up)

I went with 123 Social Media for several technical/geeky SEO reasons. When placed on a list of other sites, the 123 places our site alphabetically on top. The 123 also gives me a quick way to brand the name on the search engines, as no one was using it as a differentiator in my industry.

From a strategy perspective, our company is about helping businesses understand social media tools and techniques. I thought the 123 eluded to an educational mindset. (as easy as 123, etc)

Being an online promotion company, we also had to tie in our domain and company name. 123SocialMedia was the shortest domain we could have that also included the keywords "social media" in regards to helping us with SEO results.

My previous endeavors also included TechnicalDisaster.com which critiqued screw-ups in online media and advertising (now my personal blog), and NameReality.com (which was a reputation consultancy I ran for a few years, now discarded)

Ha love everyones comments. My business name came out of 2 things...I didn't want a woowoo name like Healing touch, or the like because I wanted to reach a broader base. So we moved into our current house which has a beautiful view of the "foothills" thus the name came about!

I knew I wanted a name with "pole" in it but also something to reflect the meditative and spiritual nature of my business. So I posted on my personal blog and asked my friends what they would do with the word pole and what spiritual things they could attach to it. One person posted a comment about using the word "soul" and some one else saw this comment and posted a reply to it with "Pole for the Soul." I fell in love with the name immediately. It conveys the spiritual side of what I teach and is also catchy enough to remember. I recently had to trademark it as two other pole schools liked the name and copied it for their schools.

Those who have been on Biznik for a while have probably already heard my biz name creation story because I lived it publicly on my profile. But here it is again:

I had realized that what I was doing in my old biz (blog coaching) was turning into something else.

In the midst of this realization that my calling was something different, I was having tea with Susie Bruce who was helping me brainstorm about what a transformation process felt like.

It's hard to remember for sure, but I think she came up with "fog" for how the Before part felt, and I got "fire" for the After. And it just gelled for me, because that's absolutely the sensation I want to help my clients get.

I also like how unusual it is. The only downside was learning how to ennunciate it properly. People used to hear it as "frog to fire," until I got it down. :)

Oh, and I had a hilarious experience of an unintended meaning within my biz name. I had a client ask me if the "fog" part was an acronym for "Fucking Opportunity for Growth"!

I'm now sportin' the "nose."

My name story: prior to kicking off the company I was just freelancing on Elance alone. So I had to create a username. Elance is popular world-wide and there are a lot of VAs from many different countries, so to differentiate I chose american_admin.

So when I decided to really go forward as a company, I just tacked "All" to the beginning and there it was.

Back in 1987 I made an attempt to name my business "Logo Motive" and it was met with negative reactions from clients, peers, family and friends. At that point I'd been working professionally as a designer for about a decade and everyone was concerned about me losing the brand equity I had in using my own name to promote my work.

In 1994 I started playing with the name again and met with similar feedback.

In 1997 I finally realized I could add "Jeff Fisher" to LogoMotives" and it would convey both who I was AND what I did. Fine-tuning the name, and the ten years spent on my own logo design, played a major role in the development of the national and international reputation I have as an identity designer today.

Jeff Fisher | Jeff Fisher LogoMotives