How to Name a Practice | PoP 259

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How to Name a Practice

In this episode, Joe Sanok speaks about how to name your practice.

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Confused by all the advice on starting a private practice? I’d love to help. I put together a checklist of the top 28 things to do to launch a private practice.

In This Podcast

Summary

If you are in private practice and are under the $60 000 mark, this podcast series is for you! Joe is going back to the basics and running through the various phases involved in setting up a practice that is going to thrive! In this episode, Joe speaks about how to name your private practice.

Concepts To Consider When Naming a Practice

  • Google your town + ‘counseling’ / ‘therapy’
    • What practices are on the front page?
    • Do you like them?
    • Do they stand out?
  • Check if the domain name of your practice is available
    • Aim for a ‘.com’
  • Chat to your friends and family members
  • Try to avoid using your own name
  • Consider including your specialty

Useful Links:

Meet Joe Sanok

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

 

 

 

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Podcast Transcription

File: POP 259 – How to name a Practice
Duration: 0:07:12

[START OF PODCAST 00:00:00.00]

[MUSIC]

This is the Practice of the Practice Podcast with Joe Sanok, session #259.

[MUSIC]

[INTRODUCTIONS WITH SUBJECT OF PODCAST DISCUSSED]
Joe Sanok: Welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast. I am so excited you are here. We are all about innovative ways to start, grow, and scale private practices, and we are going through a series that’s all about starting a practice. How do you start a practice? What are first steps? One of the very first steps is around naming a practice. I remember back when we were having our first child, we had all these names, and before we had a big gender reveal where we had cupcakes… I think it was cupcakes, yeah cupcakes… that we opened up at a restaurant with our family to see all those pink cupcakes. We had a bunch of names and we kept it a secret until the day that Lusha was born and it took us a long time to land on Lusha. But it was probably like the three or four month mark that we really felt like, yeah, Lusha is the name. That’s the name that we want to name our kid. And we had a lot of time to b0nd with it. Whereas with our second child, all the way until the end it was still like, well, is that going to be her name? Are we going to name her that? I don’t know. And then we were in Labor walking the halls of the hospital. And it’s like, okay, we got to land on a name. And we ended up naming her Laken, L-A-K-E-N, but for a long time it was, ha, do we like that name. I mean now that’s who she is, but for a while we felt like is that the right name. And when I first filed my LOC paperwork for my business, I picked Sanok Counseling – Sanok being my last name – PLLC. Highly original name, much sought after. But then after a number of years I thought, Ah, Mental Wellness Counseling. Now, that’s a name I like. And I changed it. The thing about naming your practice versus naming your child is it’s a lot easier to change. But one of the most frequent blog post that people go to, one of the most frequent questions I get from people is all around naming your practice. So today we are going to talk a little bit about just some basic concepts to consider as you are naming your practice. And then we are going to talk about some action items you can take.

[CONCEPTS TO CONSIDER WHEN NAMING A PRACTICE]
First thing I will say is start googling around. Google your town plus counseling, your town plus therapy… now your town like Traverse City or Philadelphia or Owensboro or Phoenix, wherever you live, plus counseling, plus therapist, plus therapy. What practices are on the front page? Do you like those names, you hate them? Do they just blend in? There’s a lot of names out there, that they don’t really stand out. They may say a lot, but they just blend in. They’re tacky names. They’re just mmm, yeah. I mean you want a name that’s going to be memorable, but also really describes who you are. So starting to look around at names using Google is one of the first steps.

Next, you want to see is that domain name even available. You really want to try to avoid being like, here’s our legal name, but here is our website. That’s just a mismatch in branding. And so you may have amazing name, but you really want to have something pretty close to that as your website. So, we do actually have a blog post that’s all about that. And if you sign up for the free start of practice newsletter, you will get a link to that or if you just go onto Practice of the Practice, you can search domain name or you can search Bluehost or do a WordPress blog, and you can search [Inaudible 00:04:12.12] exactly whether or not that URL is available. So if you have Philadelphia Counseling as your name, you don’t really want to not have Philadelphia Counseling as your URL. And so really make sure that, that name is available to the best of your availability. And usually you want a dot com, usually you don’t want a dot org or dot biz or dot whatever, because that’s sending other people potentially to someone else’s practice.

Then I would also engage friends and family members, start talking to them about who you are, your approach. Do you take a more scientific approach or do you take a more active approach or an artistic approach? What’s the approach that you take, and your friends and family probably have a better idea of that sometimes than even you have. So I would start there.

Few other things that you want to consider when you are naming a private practice is usually you don’t want to have it just be your name. If you ever want to sell, add clinicians, scale beyond yourself, if your name is on everything, if your face is on everything, then it’s not going to be able to really scale up as an institution. Also, when you are first starting out, it makes you look a little bit bigger if you start with kind of a practice name that sounds like a group. So overtime, you won’t be able to scale beyond yourself, you won’t be able to go beyond just sitting in the chair and you being the main one that doesn’t. Also, you might want to have whatever your specialty is, which is why we started with that in the last episode of looking at who do you want to attract. Because if you are going to focus on depression or anxiety or stay-home moms, you want to try to pepper some sort of reference to that into your name as well.

[CONCLUSION AND LINKS]
Well, thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Make sure if you want to take those steps farther, if you are feeling confused or overwhelmed, and you want to stay organized and have a faster launch and grow into 2018, go over to www.practiceofthepractice.com/start. You are going to get my 28 step checklist as well the very first emails of five minute video to quickly show you exactly how to assess your area and then also you are going to get 13 emails. We are going to walk you through that startup and growth phase, so that you can quickly get to that $60,000 mark or so. Thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. You guys rock! I will talk to you soon.

[WITH MUSIC IN BACKGROUND]
Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for intermusic, and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered, is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher or the guest are rendering any legal, accounting, clinical or other information. If you need a professional, you should find one.

[END OF PODCAST 00:07:10.16]