Choosing The Right Business Name

Episode 310: Choosing The Right Business Name

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REIS 310 | Choosing A Business Name

You want to strike out on your own, and you’re thinking of setting up a real estate business. The first thing on your checklist is to come up with a business name. You’re thinking, “How do I differentiate myself from all the other real estate businesses out there?” You want it to be catchy, something that people will easily remember. You want it to be straightforward and able to reach your market directly. You want it to be a household name one day. Mitch Stephen shares the things you should keep in mind when choosing the best name for your business.

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I wanted to talk about choosing a name and how important it is. I’m going to do a two-part series. We’re going to do choosing a name and then choosing your phone numbers, not talking about the prettiness of the phone numbers, but how and why and what kind of numbers you need to choose. There are a lot of choices out there these days. Let’s talk about choosing a name. I think that the name of the business should be your .com name. The name of my business is Cash4Houses.net. This is probably one of the worst names on the planet, but I had this name over a decade ago or maybe even more. I don’t even know when the internet got going. I was so naïve and so not up to speed on techno stuff that I picked a bad name.

The first thing in your name is your name should be your .com, the name of it. The name of my business is Cash4Houses.net, which the first mistake is it needs to be a .com. No matter what, get a .com because whoever has Cash4Houses.com is getting a lot of calls from my advertising because people just go in and they completely block out the .net and put .com no matter how many times they’ve seen my name, no matter how many times they still do it after twenty years, they’re still putting .com at the end of my Cash For Houses. Thank goodness the guy that has Cash4Houses.com doesn’t live in my town. He lives very far away, I think in Baltimore. If you’re out there in Baltimore, I’ll drive you a lot of business. I’m sure. Of course, it will all be from the wrong state, so it won’t be any good business for you probably.

Online presence is key. When thinking of a business name, choose something that your customers can easily look up in the web. Share on X

Number one, get a .com name. Number two, never have a name that’s all-encompassing for your buying and for your selling. You’ve got to have two separate names, like MitchBuysHouses.com and MitchSellsOwnerFinancedHomes.com. These are two completely different thoughts. You never send your motivated seller to a site that shows what you’re selling houses for in his neighborhood. Besides that, the mindset and the emotions of a motivated seller is completely different than the mindset and the emotions of a buyer. It’s a completely different language. They’re not even remotely the same animal. Don’t make them all-inclusive. Have two websites and have a buying name and a selling name.

What’s in the name? The name should say exactly what you do. Imagine that you’re driving down the highway and there’s this billboard and it’s solid black and there’s only one thing on it and it’s someone’s URL. If it’s WeBuyDumpTrucks.com, then we pretty much know what this guy does. We know how to get ahold of him. We don’t even need his phone number technically, because we know his phone number is going to be on the website. Make sure that your buying name says exactly what you do. MikeBuysHouses.com, SanAntonioHomeBuyers.com, whatever it is, you have to get creative sometimes.

Choosing A Business Name: Choose a name that’s specific to what your business offers. You want your customers to know exactly what you do at a glance.

I like names where you can capitalize the first letter of each word in the name because URLs are contiguous. There are no spaces in between the words. I like it so that you can capitalize the first letter of each word for separation. If you don’t think about your name in advance, you’ll put some capitals together. If I want to put TXHouseBuyer.com, which stand for TexasHouseBuyer.com, I’ve got the capital T and the X capital pop up, and H for homes. That messes up the theory. It should be HomeBuyersTX.com. You’ve got the H, the B and then TX at the end. There’s real separation there and there’s not a bunch of run-on capital letters.

These are just my opinions, but it served me well over the years and I think they make a lot of sense. Also in your selling name, it can’t just say Mitch Sells Houses, because everyone in the world’s going to think you’re a realtor. It didn’t say what your niche is. If you’re in owner financing, you have to say Mitch Sells Owner Financed Homes. That brings us to another point. That’s long but shorter is always better. It’s better to be descriptive and let everyone know exactly what you do then not. I would pick a longer name that says exactly what I do over a shorter name and again, always .com.

It costs big time to have the wrong business name. Share on X

Last but not least, I see this all the time and I don’t understand it. People are out there with Mike@Gmail.com, MikeBuysHouses@Gmail.com. Why are we advertising Gmail? They don’t need your help. What needs your help is your business. Your business needs help. You need to have an email address for your buying website name and your selling website name. It should be Mitch@MitchBuysHouses.com and Mitch@MitchOwnerFinancedHomes.com. Every time I send out an email, I’m advertising one of my companies and what I do. You have a choice because the person you’re emailing, if they’re not a motivated seller and they’re not a buyer, they’re just someone down at the Bear County Courthouse, then choose the buying name as your default name because you don’t do anything in this business unless you buy a house. If you have a choice between using a buying email address or a selling email address, always pick the buying one because it all starts with the house.

Nothing happens without buying a house. That’s the primary they may want to advertise. How many emails do you send out a year? Thousands, tens of thousands? Who knows? People are out there advertising Yahoo and Gmail and a thousand hosts of other emails. Why are they doing that? You need to be advertising your company. Never send out an email that doesn’t have yourcompany@yourcompany.com. You may be sending an email to a school administrator about your kid and then they read MitchBuysHouses.com and all of a sudden, I’m buying his grandmother’s house on the other side of town. You’ve got to put yourself in the road if you want to get hit by the money truck. If you want to put yourself on the road a lot more times, then start using your business.com as the email URL and quit promoting Gmail, Yahoo and all these other companies.

Who cares about them? They got enough money. We need to buy some houses. Start using Your Name@IBuyHouses.com and start letting the world know with every email what you do. Believe me, you’ll buy one or two houses a year because of that email address. Make sure it says what you do. Keep it as short as you can, but when you have a choice between short or descriptive, make sure you’re descriptive and use it. When you’re going to send it out, it doesn’t matter if you’re not talking to a buyer, then use your acquisition URL. Use your house buying a URL so if you’re selling houses, then use your house selling URL. If not, then always use your house buying URL because that’s where the rubber meets the road.

I hope I’ve been a little bit of help on how to choose the correct name. When someone asks you what your name or your business is, you don’t say Cash For Houses. You say, “The name of my business is Cash4Houses.net.” It’s the most horrible name in the world, but I didn’t know any better back then. By the time I figured out I had the worst name on the planet, I had already bought a thousand houses, so I wasn’t going to go back and try to fix that. It is what it is and there’s living proof. You can still have the worst name in the world and buy thousands of houses. If you have a name and it’s not perfect but you’ve had it for a long time, maybe you just stick with it.

I just wonder how many extra houses I’d have bought if I’d had a .com on the end of this name instead of a .net. I’m sure the answer is not zero. It’s some amount of houses, and most of the houses I bought usually make $15,000, $20,000, to $30,000. It costs me big time to have the wrong name. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know. Please check out TaxFreeFuture.com. If you’re not investing in a tax-free or a tax-deferred retirement account, you have no idea of what you’re missing out on. This is a very powerful tool. Go to TaxFreeFuture.com because you will not believe what your financial advisors are not telling you.

Choosing The Right Business Name

Episode 310: Choosing The Right Business Name

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