Franziska: Hi and welcome back to Basic Bananas TV. Today, I would like to discuss a question with you that I just got asked on one of our Helpdesk calls that I was running for our members. The question actually comes up quite a bit. The question was asked by one business owner who is launching a new business and he said, “should I call my business my name?” or “should I call my business something else?” So should I use my personal name like Franziska Iseli for, that‘s obviously my name which is a little bit hard to spell so I probably don‘t want to use that name, or should I use a different name like Basic Bananas or the Business Hood or Ocean Lovers?

There is not a very definite answer because it really depends on your strategy and it most importantly depends on what do you want to achieve with your business and what‘s your exit strategy? If you think that you‘re going to build a business around your name and you‘re happy to be the main person that is running the business and that people will ask for, then you can definitely use your name. You can see this a lot in consulting businesses. So in consulting business, you often have the person‘s name, some of them even add associates. So Franziska Iseli & Associates, for example. Accountants do this a lot. Lawyers do this a lot. So that‘s one way. It just means that you will definitely be the person that people will probably want. It‘s a little bit like the Anthony Robbins model. People will Anthony Robbins when they go to an Anthony Robbins course.

Now if you want to exit this business or you want to maybe sell it to a larger company after a few years and you want the business to be self sufficient without you having to be the person, the spokesperson in it, then I would say you use a name that is not your name. Like what we did with Basic Bananas or we did with Ocean Lovers or the branding agency. It‘s got none of my names or any of the founders‘ names in it because we want it to be a separate entity mainly because it means that our team members can run the business, it could be sold if in the future we choose to sell it. So it really is a matter of which way do you want to go in the future.

Now, the interesting thing is that I have half observed with businesses and building businesses is sometimes in a consultancy when you do use your own name and you already have a bit of a good reputation, it can be a little faster in the beginning. So if you have a good reputation, people know you, buy your name and they trust you. Calling your business your name can definitely help you gain traction a little bit quicker. However, I personally really like building businesses that are detached from me because it means I can build 20, 30 whatever 100 businesses that make an impact that don‘t have my name on it. Then, on the other hand, again if you are running a speaking, so if you are the person that is required, if you are a speaker, for example, and you have to do the work, then you can go, of course, to use your own name. So those are the considerations to ask yourself where do you want to be in the future? How do you want to exit it? Do you want to always be the person that people want or do you want to build something that other people could maybe run or take over that doesn‘t need you to always be in the business? If you know anyone who is thinking about setting up a business either way, you can share this video with them so they can have a little bit of a think about how they want to operate in the future and this might be helpful for them. Thank you so much for watching and I‘ll catch you next time.