Speaking of mistakes… What's one of mine?

I have made many. I have also avoided many by listening to the mistakes my mentors and teachers made and avoided them. But here’s my big one. (In business anyway. We won’t even begin to get into my personal mistakes! Let’s just say, I chose the hard way every time. Haha)

I named the company something no one can pronounce or spell correctly. No THAT is about as idiotic as one can get.

How did it happen?

First, I had heard somewhere you want to have a name towards the beginning of the alphabet because let’s face it, alphabetizing lists is fairly common, why not be at the top! Mostly though, it’s a hold-over from phone book days. (Once upon a time, long, long ago… there was a book that arrived at your door every year or so that had the name and address of everyone in your town! Those pages were white. AND there were yellow-colored pages that had most the businesses, not all cause I think you had to pay to be in the yellow pages, but I don’t now for sure. Ok, end of story time, back to work.) Hence, the alphabetical order advantage.

Box checked. My massage company starts with an A!

Then, name it something creative that still has the name of what the company is or does in the title. Another box checked… I am on a roll y’all! I didn’t know any other companies with this name, check. And, yup, I included the word “massage” and even “oils”. (I was really into oils at the time. Still use them, but they aren’t my main focus or selling point.)

What else? Oh, MAYBE make it easy to spell. Nope. What about clearly pronounceable? Also, no.

Even my accountant spelled it wrong when filing my corporate paperwork, so it had to be re-done. So why did you choose the name? Cool story. I named my company after an Irish goddess that healed with herbs and had a brother that died. I have mostly Irish heritage, I love and healed with herbs and oils, and sadly the boy I grew up with like a brother passed suddenly at 17 in a car wreck. (Sad, yes, but still cool how it all matched up right?)

Yeah. Well. The name is Airmeith. I thought it would obviously be pronounced air-may-ith. Kinda pretty, no? Yeah. Everyone calls it Air-meeeth and then makes a face at how weird it sounds, looking to your for help. Sigh.

On top of that, everyone leaves out the second “i”. Well, when your website address is both Airmeith.org and/or AirmeithMassage.com…. (We’ll cover website names later.) How many people couldn’t find me because they spelled it wrong? How many people emailed me Candace@airmeith.org or even airmeithmassage@gmail.com, but misspelled it and I never got it? I don’t want to know the answer, but even one could have cost me a lifelong client.

It likely cost me a lot more.

Did I survive? Yes. My company is still going strong, generally booked out weeks in advance with 6 employees not counting myself. But WHY make it harder on yourself? Business is hard enough.

So. Easy to spell. Easy to remember. And NOT too long!

Little pet peeve of mine? “Hands” in the title. Totally an opinion thing of mine, but it seems overdone. I’m probably wrong on that though, because it is so over-done that people recognize it and recognition is good. Happy naming!