Does Your Name Matter?

Should I call myself Birmingham Plastic Surgery or Staiano Plastic Surgery?

This is a question that I thought long and hard about before I set up my own company (staianoplasticsurgery) and I still reflect on it now.

Whenever I go back and think about changing the name, I always come back to keeping it as it is.

I have had a few conversations with potential consulting clients about this recently.

I can see how you may want to call your company a different name to your own name.

There are several distinct advantages.

1. If you want to attract other surgeons to work with you, it will be easier.
2. If you want to exit the company at any time, it will be easier to sell.
3. If you want to attract a large number of patients and don’t want to be the one who is treating them all, this may be easier.
4. If you call yourself a generic name, like ‘Perfect Cosmetic Surgery’ it can look like a big company and some patients may prefer the perceived stability associated with a bigger company.

In fact, if you look at the plastic surgeons who have set up their own clinics, many of them have chosen generic names, such as Aurora Clinics, La Belle Forme and Purity Bridge.

So why use your own name?

Well, I see two major advantages:

1. You don’t have to think of a generic name (this may sound frivolous but it is actually quite hard coming up with a good name that hasn’t been used by someone somewhere already)
2.  People like to buy from people.

I went to a meeting last year all about how to become a ‘Key Person of Influence’ in your field.  It was run by Daniel Priestley who has written several books on the subject and I highly recommend them.

At the meeting, he said that he had googled the people who were attending the meeting and was disappointed to see a lot of corporate looking websites where it wasn’t clear who was behind the company.

He knew we were all small business owners as this is who the meeting was aimed at.  But many were trying to look like a large corporation.

He felt that this was a mistake.

If you look at the large successful companies in the world, they will often have an individual behind them.

Apple had Steve Jobs

Virgin has Richard Branson

Tesla has Elon Musk

Microsoft has Bill Gates

These individuals are the ‘faces’ of the brands.

I don’t actually think that it matters too much whether you call yourself by your name or if you use a generic name like Birmingham Plastic Surgery or Perfect Plastic Surgery.

Like most things in life, there are pros and cons for each and there is no ‘right’ answer.

But I do think that either way, you need to make it clear in the message that you put out, who you are and what you stand for.

You need to be the ‘face’ of your brand.

In this day and age, people are more accessible than ever.

You just have to look at the Government of the United States being conducted through the President’s Twitter account!

People like to talk to and feel understood by a human being, especially for something as personal as their medical treatment.

I think it is good to have a vision to grow and become something bigger than yourself.

I encourage this and it is something we spend time on in my Private Consulting Class provided, that is, that growing and scaling your business is one of your goals.

However, no matter how big you grow, you need to have solid foundations grounded in what you believe in and how you personally treat your patients.

This needs to be set up at the beginning and I encourage people to write this down and have formal company values (even if it is only them that are treating patients) from an early stage.

You can read my company values here.

This all goes towards the development of your practice as an asset that is worth something when you retire, but it also serves as an exercise to focus your priorities and provides a means by which you can communicate your ethos.

So don’t spent too much time worrying about your name – spend time on developing your practice and building it in to something that people will actively seek out, regardless of what it is called.

*picture courtesy of QuoteFancy.com