I once asked a gentleman for business advice. He was working at the Small Business Development Center for the town in which I was living at the time. I went there to find out what I needed to do to “go legit” as it were – what forms needed filing? How should I deal with accounting? Typical business start-up stuff.His first comment was:
“Well… you’re never gonna get anywhere with a name like that.”
I picked the name Tortured Artist in 1989. At the time, I was writing and arranging music for dance companies and needed a publishing company name. I chose “Tortured Artist” for a few reasons:
- To poke fun at my artist, actor, and dancer friends who sometimes took themselves way too seriously.
- To remember not to ever take myself too seriously.
- It conveyed a lot of my personality – a wink and a smile, if you will.
As it turns out, Tortured Artist has been a fantastic business name over the years, for reasons that I never anticipated.
First, it’s weird and unique, especially in the corporate world. I don’t think I’ve ever given my card to someone and had them not ask me about the name or at least chuckle about it. People want to know the origin, and that gives me an opening to tell them a little about myself and what I do. I rarely have the “exchange cards, quick glance, I’ll keep this in mind” type of interaction. It often starts that way, but then they read the name and it jolts them out of the “business as usual” mind frame.
Second, it’s memorable. Because they’ve asked, I get at least two or three more chances to impress the name on them. They remember the name, and they remember me.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, it’s become an automatic client filter. One of the criticisms I hear of the name is that it’s not “business-like.” I assume that the people who think that way consider “business-like” to mean stuffy, boring, and staid. Cards should be on white paper, fonts should be Times Roman or Helvetica, and that’s that.
How boring.
I’ve found that if the person I’m talking to doesn’t “get” the name Tortured Artist, I probably don’t want them as a client. That might sound weird – it did to me at first; I thought that I wanted as many jobs and clients as I could get. The jobs where I felt like I needed to hide my company name have been the ones that I hated the most.
Interestingly enough, it’s normally the play-it-safe, middle-management types that don’t like the name. CEOs and senior executives want to know more and see if there’s something I can do for them. It’s not a sure bet (what is?), but it happens lot more often than I ever thought it would.
There are a couple of lessons I learned from that first encounter:
- Trust your gut. If I’d wavered and gone with some generic name, I probably would have missed some opportunities along the way. My gut told me the name was good and experience has validated that initial feeling.
- “Experts” don’t always know what they’re talking about or, more commonly, have gotten so narrow in their focus that they miss opportunities. I’ve worked hard over the years to avoid that trap.
- Humor opens a lot of doors.
- Don’t waste time with people who can only say, “no.” Find the person in the company with the authority to say, “yes.”