Should You Name Your Business After Yourself? w/ Jodie Cook | Ep 423

I think that so many people avoid building their personal brand because they think it's going to make their business reliant on them. And I feel like when I was building my agency, which I accidentally named after me, people would ask me this all the time. Like, oh, woah. Your name. Your initials. And it would be this really big problem. And I feel like you might have been asked this question as well or a variant of this question. And I feel like there's so much more to it than just personal brand equals can't get away from your business or business reliant on you that I thought it would be a really good topic for us to dig into today. There's a couple ways we could look at this, I think. Many entrepreneurs, solopreneurs build a business, and the easy name is to call it something after yourself, like, no and associates or, like, how attorneys and ad agencies do this. And there's just a bunch of last names put together. And then eventually they grow, and they grow to a certain point where they think they wanna exit or sell or be acquired or something like that. So let's just unpack that without adding more personal brand in there. Because if we can understand that, then we could just see what the difference is with a personal brand. So you sold your company. I sold my company. It was called JC Social Media. My name is Jody Cook. It was actually my initials, but I named it completely by accident. I named it in two seconds when I was at a networking event when I realized I didn't have a company name. I felt like I needed a company name. Everyone in the room was introducing themselves. It was about to be my turn. I sensed a pattern with all the businesses in the room that they were all called ML Accountancy and JP Entertainment and JS Electrical Services and that kind of stuff. And I just kinda went, okay. JC Social Media, and that was literally it. There was no more thought that went into it whatsoever. And then, also, I feel like it's like the ad agencies like Sterling Cooper, Draper, Price, however many more. Last names were added onto that. But then, also, my great granddad had a family business that was named using their last name. And so it's just so unbelievably common that people do this, and it's almost like we've got this this idea that this is the way to name a business. Yes. Because this doesn't require a lot of creative input from the person. And most businesses are not started by creative entrepreneurs. They're started by entrepreneurs, and so they go with their last name. So if your name is baked into your business, and we can just look at history and say, they seem to be doing fine without the founders and the owners in the company …