The Name Game
Strategy: Use the name game to pick a name for your company and or product.
I had the rare privilege of working with over 50 plus millionaires. One of them had a cool way of picking names for products. He showed it me one meeting, and I refined it into the NAME GAME.
Recently a few ice hockey friends and I were at an adult ice hockey tournament in Las Vegas. We go to 2 or 3 tournaments, each year as a team. Any way after the games, we were enjoying a relaxing drink and complaining about what we did not like about hockey tournaments. In particular the fact we were in Las Vegas, and there were non in Florida. That spawned an idea, for doing hockey tournaments 2 times a year in Florida. Four of us decided to go into business. I mention this to demonstrate a number of strategies for getting your business up and running.
The first order of business, a company name. No one had a โcoolโ name for our new adventure. But in 3 minutes, we had a name. As I used the Name Game to generate a half dozen ideas. So here is how it works.
Step one: Take a blank piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. Step two: On the left hand side write, RESULT/OBJECTIVE.
Step three: On the right hand side write,
ACTION/VERB/PROCESS
Ok you are all set to create some fantastic names! Here is how it works. You brainstorm on the left hand side the page all the results, objectives you want for your business or clients. Then brain the process, or action necessary to get the result. Then simply combine all the words, separately and come up with some cool names.
Let us take a look at my hockey buddies and I creating a name for our hockey tournaments. We came up with the following result words, and action words.
Result/Objectives Actions/Verb/Process
Fun Link
Hockey Tournaments
Florida Connection
Tournament Hockey
Sunshine Solution
Vacations
As a result we came up the following names:
| Fun Link | Fun Tournaments | Fun Connection |
| Fun Hockey | Fun Solutions | Fun Vacations |
| Hockey Link Hockey Hockey | Hockey Tournaments Hockey Solutions | Hockey Connection Hockey Vacations |
| Florida Link Florida Hockey | Florida Tournaments Florida Solutions | Florida Connection Florida Vacations |
| Tournament Link Tournament Hockey | Tournaments Tournaments Tournament Solutions | Tournament Connection Tournament Vacations |
| Sunshine Link Sunshine Hockey | Sunshine Tournaments Sunshine Solutions | Sunshine Connection Sunshine Vacations |
We ended up with the following names as potentials:
- Hockey Tournaments
- Tournament Connection
- Florida Hockey
- Sunshine Hockey.
- Sunshine Tournaments.
Just by saying the names out loud, and or seeing them you can kind of tell which ones resonate for your business or product. For example most of us like the ring of โSunshine Hockeyโ as we were going through the list (matching names). Others we liked, but not for our hockey business. Sunshine Hockey conveyed the right thought, image and concept for our fledgling new business.
At this point, once you have a half dozen names, it is a good idea to check w th the state and see
if the name is taken, and check on line, and see the domain names are taken.