MODULE 3 CHOOSING A NAME FOR YOUR BRAND Introduction Hey, this is Stefan and welcome to Module 3, Choosing a Name for your Brand. Now your brand name is the name that will be used for your blog and domain site, your YouTube channel, and your social media accounts, and it s important to pick a brand name that s relevant to your niche, and it communicates to your potential followers what your brand is all about. Now, while I can provide some tips for you on how to come up and choose a brand name, it s important for you to understand that there s no secret formula for picking a good brand name. It requires creativity and just thinking outside the box on your behalf; coming up with different names and ideas and you picking what sounds best and what you think is going to be the best one for your brand name. Now, what are some examples of brand names? Ill list a few of them here, you might recognize a few: Project Life Mastery - this is the brand name that I own; it s a blog and self-development YouTube channel, where I share tips and advice on how to improve all areas of your life. Strength Camp strength training, fitness and health Young and Raw - my friends own that brand and it s a very popular blog on raw food eating and health Double Your Dating very common brand in the dating market for men, dating advice for men
Campfire Guitar Star that s a brand name that my fiend has that shares guitar lessons online on how to improve and play guitar Smart Passive Income that s a brand by Pat Flynn, he shares a lot of online marketing business strategies for making passive income Surf Strength Coach pretty clear what that s about, it s about developing your surf skills and also about developing your strength The 4 Hour Work Week that s a popular brand and work title from Tim Ferris, it s all about productivity, optimizing your life, creating more freedom Passion4Dancing that is a brand for improving and developing dancing, and having a passion or it The Truth About Cancer tips and advice about how to overcome cancer and prevent cancer, and just reveal a lot of the truths about cancer. Testosterone Nation that s a popular online brand for gaining muscle mass for men, you know, working out and fitness Rocket Languages how to develop and learn different languages I Love Basketball TV it s a very popular YouTube channel brand on basketball, sharing different tips and advice on how to be a better basketball player I Will Teach you to be Rich popular brand online sharing different strategies and advice on how to be rich All these brand names, these are really great, popular brand names online and you ll be able to notice that, each of these brand names, when your read each one, it s very clear what each brand name is about, it s very clear what niche and market that they re in just because by reading the name it communicates that, so those are just some really good examples of different brand names that are often used online.
Now, one question that I often get asked is, Can a brand name be your own personal name? Yes, it can be. There are many brands out there that use someone s name: Tony Robbins Tim Ferris Greg Plitt David DeAngelo Gary Vaynerchuk Grant Cardon Brian Tracey Joel Osteen Jenna Marbles Brendan Burchard Joe Vitale And of course I had to include my name, Stefan James. My actual name is Stefan James Pylarinos, but I actually decided a while ago to cut out Pylarinos and stick with Stefan James because it s more of a brand name that can be marketed, especially down the road, more recognizable, and that s the brand name that I m building as well, so you can actually build both, you can build a brand name around your own personal name as well as having a separate brand name or you can just pick one or the other. It s really up to you. Pros of Creating a Brand Name, Separate from Your Own Name When first starting out, I often recommend for people to build a brand name that is different from your own name, and you are free to choose your own
name. I do not want to limit you from that because many people have had success from building their brand around their name, if you choose that, but the reason why I recommend to people to build their brand around something different from their name, is the following: If you use your own personal name than people won t recognize or know your personal name when starting out, so your name doesn t really mean anything to them. If your name is Joe Smith, at the beginning you re going to have a struggle to build that name. Longterm that name can be a recognizable brand, but in the short-term it s going to be very difficult to attract people because when people see that domain name or YouTube channel or that social media, they re not going to know who you are, so that s kind of one disadvantage, whereas if you pick and come up with your own brand name people can clearly see and find out what this brand is about, what niche that you re in, and they re going to relate a little bit better to that. The advantage of creating a brand name is that people in your niche can easily identify what you re about. Creating a brand name gives you the ability to be anonymous online, if you choose, you d don t have to put your name out there, so I know a lot of people that might be going through this program, you might think, you know, Well, you know, I don t really want to put myself out there online, I don t want everybody to know who I am. Well, in that case you can create that brand name and be behind the scenes and you don t have to put your personal name out there, or you can create and use a pen name, which is just a made-up name, similar to David DeAngelo. David DeAngelo is a fictional pen name, where his real name is Eben Pagan. Even for myself, you know, my name is Stefan James Pylarinos, but I just go by Stefan James, so you know, you can use a different name if you choose, or you can just have a brand name and be anonymous.
Also, another benefit of building your own brand name is there is that there s more potential to scale up bigger if your brand name isn t your name, so you can potentially hire an outsource content. So, for example, you know, if your brand name is only around your name than your kind of limited in some ways because your entire business is dependent on you. You know, if you die, your business goes with it, you know, if something happens to you, it s gone, not unless you re a huge iconic figure, such as Michael Jackson or Tupac, where they built their brand name so big, so even though they passed away, they re still making money, the family is still making money off that name, so that s a very rare case where that can happen, however by me choosing to build Project Life Mastery, there s potential for me down the road for me to maybe bring in other experts and authorities under my brand name, or there s potential to potentially sell that business down the road also. Now, building a business around my own name, I could never really sell that, whereas building it around Project Life Mastery, or something separate from myself, that s a different asset that I could potentially sell. So, there s pros and cons to both, this is what I recommend, however, it s up to you, you can choose what direction you want to go, like I said, there s people that have had success building a brand name under their own name versus a separate brand name. Six Steps for Coming Up with a Brand Name 1. Make a list of words or phrases that represent your niche. So this is where you ve got to go into a brainstorming mode. I recommend taking out a journal or a notebook, a document, a spreadsheet, and you can also use keyword ideas by using the Google Keyword Planner, similar to what I showed you in the previous module, you know, just coming up with different ideas and seeing what people are searching for, that will give you some ideas of
the most popular phrases and keywords that are often used in the market or industry that you re in. Also think about the benefits that your market or niche are after; if you can incorporate a benefit into your brand name, then that s going to give you an advantage as well. I mean, think about the brand name, Double Your Dating, you know, that right there is a huge benefit to the brand name. You re going to want to list any other attributes that you personally want to reflect in your brand name. And I also recommend to use thesaurus.com to come up with some additional words or meanings, so if you ant to put in certain words into thesaurus, the website, it will come up with and share a lot of other additional words or phrases that you could use 2. Start putting the words together so that they look and sound good. So now that you have a whole list of words and different ideas, keywords, and benefits, start putting them together a little bit and start to see what looks good and sounds good. You can also get ideas from the other brands that are in your niche, so I had mentioned earlier how you want to research and find out who the other competitors are in this niche or market, who are the top people? You can get ideas from them, not just from their marketing or how they use their marketing channels, but also from the brand names that are used in that market because that can give you some ideas for potential variations or other words that you can use in your brand name. 3. Make sure the domain name is available for your brand name.
You can use GoDaddy for that, to check if the domain name is available, and I often recommend people trying to get the.com version of the domain name, so there s.com, there s.net, there s.ca, there s.org, preferably.com because that s the most commonly used domain name extension, that s the #1 priority that you want to be able to have, because if you don t have the.com it s going to end up confusing a lot of people when you share with them the name of your brand, so ideally get the.com and I m going to show you in a video after this how you can find the domain name and do a check. You can also check to see if its available on social media and isn t being used already, so you can put it into Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and make sure that other people aren t already using that because whatever domain name that you choose, you re going to want to make sure that you have the.com version of it and you re going to want to make sure that you can set up the username for all of the social media accounts as well. 4. Do a U.S. Trademark search to ensure that you are not violating anyone else s registered trademark. I am going to show you how to do that in this video also. Once you come up with the ideas you are going to want to make sure that someone did not trademark it, especially in the United States because that is where the biggest market is. There is a way of checking that, by going to the United States Patent and Trademark Office website. If someone else owns that trademark and you start using that to build your business and your brand, then they could potentially go after you because they own the rights to using that name. 5. Narrow down the names and get feedback and input from others.
Reach out to friends, family, even if you want to use our Facebook group community, ask the other members of the group for feedback. I find that to be very valuable because other people can vote and give you their opinions and ideas and that will help you narrow that down even further and pick the best one. 6. Pick the best brand name. You ve got to decide what is the most suitable and the most relevant for your niche, don t be a perfectionist with is, you ve done the research, now its time to decide so that you can move forward with the next lessons. You re going to want to register the domain name, and I m going to share with you how to do that in the next video so that you can own that. Another optional step is to trademark the brand name; now this costs money, and it does take months to do, but I often only really recommend it down the road in the future when your brand name actually has value, when it means something, when you actually have a reason to protect it, so trademarking is something, once you build your brand, you re going to want to protect that. For myself, when I started Project Life Mastery.com I didn t trademark that name until about a year in. At that point, my brand name meant something and I wanted to protect it. So, let me now show you how to check if the domain name is available, and also how to do a US Trademark Search. Domain name search, using GoDaddy.com You re going to want to go here to GoDaddy and you re going to want to put in the brand name that you re considering, so, in my case, let s say, Project Life Mastery, and if I click on search domain, as you can see, it is
taken, so this is not a domain name that is available. I wouldn t be able to use it, so in that case, you re going to want to continue to go through your list and just make sure that the.com version is available. If you do want to set up a.net or.org, you can do that, but again, I always recommend the.com because that s going to benefit you a lot more for your brand awareness, and don t worry just yet about registering the domain name, I m going to show you how to do that in another video and show you how you can get one cheaper or at a discount, so don t worry about that just yet. I will be covering that in the next video. You are also going to want to do a US Trademark search to make sure that the brand name is not trademarked and owned by someone else. If you go to the United States Patent and Trademark office website, you will find their trademark database section. If you come to this page here and you scroll down you are going to want to go to Trademark Electronic Search System, and then do a Basic Word Mark Search. You are going to want to search for the trademark name here. If I put in Project Life Mastery as the brand name that I am considering, you can see that someone else takes it. I own this trademark; I have trademarked the logo, the image, as well as the name, so that is a trademark that cannot be used. You are going to want to make sure that you do a search, put in those brands names, and again, just make sure that no one else is using that because you don t want to violate someone else s trademark that they are using. Assignments Complete the 6 steps for coming up with a brand name. Choose the best brand name that you will be using to create your online business around going forward. Resources and Links GoDaddy
uspto.gov Conclusion Thanks so much for watching this video! Make sure to leave a comment below. Make sure to let me know that you are engaging, that you are participating, and that you are completing these videos, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.