Company Name
Most of you are aware that I have and occasionally do tech support, web design, web hosting and consulting on the side from time to time. In fact as you are aware this was the case when I lived in California.
Maybe here is where I should clarify things a bit. While in CA I had my own company (Martinez Tech Consulting), during that time I was approached by two people during a “Shasta Technology Meeting” this was back in 2002??? Anyhow, because of my want to expand and the promise of more business I soon entered a partnership. Let me preface this whole thing by saying this. I WOULD DO THIS WHOLE EXPEREANCE OVER AGAIN IF I HAD TO. It really did open the doors to more business, however several factors stacked against me.
When entering the partnership I agreed to a minority share of the company (essentially) 40/60 because of some of the talks we had before entering into the partnership. We acquired several decent size accounts and were doing fairly well, but in truth we were not making enough for the amount of overhead that came with some of the partnership terms. With that said, I will own up to 40% of those issues, after all that was the split.
After some time together it began to become painfully obvious to me that in order for me to make a real living at this I would either have to attempt to take back over full control of the company or ???. During several talks with my partners I expressed a want to do just that. Each time one of my partners was 100% for it, the other never would give me a serious answer, always playing the teacher and wanting to “explain” things to me about … well I never was quite sure what the hell he was attempting to explain to me to be honest. Basically he just filibustered the whole time the discussion came up. It became obvious me taking back control of the company would not happen. We parted ways, me with a contract and a semi non compete clause and them with the company.
Shortly after I moved back here to WI. AGAIN SOMETHING I WOULD DO OVER IF I HAD THE CHANCE. Here I tucked in under my brother in laws roofing company as the office manager. I want to make this very clear also, I have learned a million times more about business and sales in the last few years then I could ever learn in school, I have no doubt! I am not saying that there is nothing more that I could ever learn about business or sales, quite the opposite, I think if you are not constantly learning or trying something new then you will soon fall by the wayside.
All along my adventures I have never let go of my technical side, I moved more to remote support AKA virtual support (where I log in remotely to fix issues) and web design / web hosting. I started a simple company back here (Mad City Computing) where I only serviced accounts that I earned from personal connections or word of mouth. It is far from anything substantial at this point, basically extra pocket change every once in a great while if you will.
I am now ready to start making a go at being serious about my own company again. However I should DEFINATELY clarify this point. I am going to cherry pick accounts no exceptions, you see I have a full time job, and I have NO desire to give it up. In fact quite the opposite, I love it! I am left with quite a bit of free time though and was thinking, why not spark my money making hobby back up into a real business again?!
What is the difference this time than the first? Well a ton of new experience and the fact that I am a little older and not so much of an arrogant bastard. What happens if it starts to eat into my “normal” job? I am not sure at this point, maybe I will hire someone part time to pick up the slack, but I will find a way to keep my hands on both my current job and my business to what extent I am unsure of at this time.
All of this leads to my title “Company Name”. I am in search of a good, solid company name. Here are my requirements:
1: Must be a “global” name. I want the ability to be anywhere in the world and this name not appear to limit me to a specific region, state, or city.
2: Must be able to get a .com domain name for the company name.
Pretty simple right? Sure……….
This also leads to a few other items:
1: Catch phrase or tag line for the company name.
2: Logo for company.
Don’t think all of this is that important when starting a company? I simply point to Jellyfish.com who was purchased by Microsoft. I had a meeting with a part investor in Jellyfish.com at one point about something unrelated to this and was told that they (Jellyfish.com) had spent over $500,000.00 (yes that is half a million) in researching the perfect name, logo, tag line and such. This along with actually executing a well thought out business plan (A major key point obviously) made the unknown company very well known. So well know Microsoft purchased them for the small sum of $50,000,000.00 (Yes FIFTY MILLION US $$).
Now reality sets in and I fully do not expect to ever be purchased for that sum of money. However, it does prove that EVERY aspect of your company is VERY important, even down to the name, logo, and tag line… Don’t think so? Talk to Nike, Coors, the NFL, Coke, McDonalds, Microsoft…. the list goes on.