How did SAID & DONE get named? How does any business get named?

Choose Meaning - Brainstorm - Evaluate - Elaborate

As a marketing consulting services company, SAID & DONE is here to help you figure out a name for your yet-to-be-launched business, or a new name if you need to tweak what you have. That process involves a few principles: deciding what meanings and moods you want to express, brainstorming, surveying, and choosing. Sometimes, the brainstorming and meanings assessment happen in reverse order. You've all been somewhere when without provocation, an idea pops into your head. Then, you analyze that idea. This is a spontaneous brainstorm with follow-up analysis. And the final leg of the process is to realize that a name has a life cycle. It may be appropriate to revise or replace. It may also be appropriate to elaborate as you find out more associations with the name.

If you happen to be in a position to think about your company name ahead of the flash of inspiration, you will want to keep in mind that words have meanings on more than one level. They also call forth emotional associations and moods. Therefore, it is wise to choose a business name that calls up what you want to have called up! Another approach to business naming has to do with picking a name that makes you happy. Many people use the family name with pride, or the owner's initials, or even a word that stands for a special place or person. Either approach is valid.

Brainstorming is the process of listing ideas that relate to the desired outcome. Once you have selected the meanings and moods you want to call forth, you sit somewhere with a piece of paper or at the computer and start listing, without censoring yourself. When I first began technical and marketing writing as a business owner, after some brainstorming, I established the enterprise as a sole proprietor as a d/b/a named Rainbow Writing. I felt that the word 'rainbow' called up mental images of many colors, wide variety, and a happy feeling.

How do you know you are calling forth the meanings and associations that you are targeting? A survey would be a good way to measure your success in this area. A simple survey would consist of simply asking your friends, family, and closest clients to tell you what they think of when they hear your company name. The results of these simple interviews can tell you a lot.

As time goes by, you will collect a set of impressions from others and from your own experience about your company name. That may lead you to consider tweaking or changing the name. A survey has its place at this point, too.

Here is an example of a company going through the steps of choosing a business name in a different order. The company was started by three siblings. Their father owned a different company. It was called Subsea. The siblings were meeting, trying to think of a name for the company they were planning to establish. A Subsea coffee mug was sitting on the table. Someone looked at the name and suggested using that name backwards. Voila!

One of the funny things about unusual business names is what you find out after the fact. At one point, they had a marketing research company conduct research and a survey about the company name to make sure they wanted to keep it after a period of phenomenal growth. It turned out that the name actually means something good in Greek, and that people on the street who didn't know about the company had good associations with the name as it was. The name stayed - with the addition of two words following it to describe the services the company provides.

For my incorporated business name, I was determined to find a way to incorporate my family's first initials. At the time there were four of us, me (Dana), my husband, Ibrahim, and our two children, Sama'an (Arabic form of Simon, the listener), and Alice. Those letters combined produced the following words: DAIS (a royal platform), SADI (cutified girl's name), and some non-English constructions such as ADIS, which would have been good for being obsessed with alphabetical order. The one English word that seemed to be best was SAID - after all, I was in the business of using words to express business advantages and to document technical procedures.

The brainstorming continued. I thought, "What phrases or sayings contain the word SAID?" Almost right away, I heard my mind say, "said and done." To me that called forth a feeling of being fast, down to earth, and simple. Bottom line. Headline. I went with that.  Again, it is funny what you find out after the fact. At the attorney appointment to go over the incorporation papers (and by the way, later it became possible to incorporate yourself on line for a lot less investment), he chuckled when he saw the name I had chosen. "You know the whole saying, right?" he said. "No," I replied. The attorney filled me in. "When all is said and done, there's more said than done."

That thought set me back a bit. Hmm. More said than done? Will people think that my services are all hot air? A lot of talk and no delivery? After a bit of reflection, I thought better of the name again. My business has to do with words, expressions, and communication. It is true that more is said than done in the world, if you count up the number of words spoken and compare to the number of tasks completed for each act of speech. And that is not a bad thing, it's just reality. And if there is a business, it is definitely involved with words and the expression of concepts. Usually in a big company this process is formally called Communications, Marketing, Advertising, or Documentation. So, there is a need for an employee or a department or a consultant to communicate the needed words, which means getting that communication DONE. So I focused on the first part of the phrase: SAID AND DONE.

One more note on finding out information after the fact. SAID & DONE was incorporated. I liked the name, I liked the fact that it carried my wonderful family's meaning within the business, and that a clever saying was associated with it that related to communications. Now I wanted to elaborate. I imagined I could put the phrase that the attorney told me on my website and marketing materials with some clever verbiage around it. I asked a few word nerd friends for their input on where the saying originated. I did some Google research. At one point I was directed to a prominent university football coach's page of quotes, where the quote appeared. Hmm. Would I have to write to his family for permission to use the quote on my website and marketing materials? I decided not to pursue posting the quote on the website. Then one day I was idle for a few minutes, and plugged the quote once more into the Google search window. Aesop appeared. Well, glory be. Apparently it is a wise saying from good old Aesop. No need to write to anyone for permission to use.

So, you are reading my clever verbiage here for the first time.

"After all is said and done, there is more said than done." —Aesop

SAID & DONE knows that there is more said than done, and we're here to help you say it. If you don't have the time to write the brochure copy, develop the documentation, and compose that letter to the board, call on us. Then you will have it said and done.