Need to Change Your Business Name? Here’s the Right Way to Do It

My entrepreneurial story should sound familiar to anyone who’s thought about launching their own business. I’ve been building and managing websites since the 1990s, starting with GeoCities and evolving from there, eventually becoming an expert in WordPress. When it became clear that I had hitched my wagon to the right horse, I started to look for opportunities to manage WordPress sites.

Since I was only freelancing at the time, I established Junger Media, L.L.C. for tax and legal purposes. Junger has been my nickname for years, and I envisioned one day owning a portfolio of websites, so “Media” made sense. But the name didn’t need to mean a lot, because I wasn’t marketing or actively trying to sell my services when I had a day job.

When I did quit my day job to go full-time and hired our creative director, the new Junger Media was born. We had a great couple of years providing website management and graphic design and helping startups, nonprofits, and small businesses. But as I worked on our long-term plan, I realized that our name didn’t effectively communicate who we were, our values, and what we do to help our clients. So I made the decision to change our name.

And then I thought. A lot.

I bounced ideas off of family, friends, and partners to get their reactions to specific words and phrases we were considering. I looked at other businesses. I even bought a few domain names we never even used.

When the idea for Digital Ink came, it was a hit. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, and it just felt right. We announced the new name at our annual bash and officially made the switch on January 1st, 2016.

But even though it was fun to buy new stickers and coffee mugs with the new name and logo, it was a big process behind the scenes. Here are a few of the insights we learned along the way that can hopefully help if a name change is in your future.

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