I had been called the "Office Goddess" at my 9-5 for over 2 years when I started my VA business. My hubby said "if you're going to be a VA, doesn't that make you a VIRTUAL office goddess?" The rest is history

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Lily Chambers, The Virtual Office Goddess, LLC
Author "How to Do Your Own Small Business Bookkeeping"

I'm still in the process of coming up with a business name. Most of what I thought of are already taken. I hope I'd think of a name soon so I can already register a domain name.

Since I had been doing business on the Internet for over 8 years under my name saundrajackson.com and several other names I had become the Diva of the Internet by peers. i didn't want divaoftheInternet, and I was often called to consult with others on how to do many things, I naturally went with divaconsultant.com.

Diva is search over 800 times daily on the Internet and has over 47M websites that mentions diva in Google. Consultant is 211 times and over 132M. So I knew what keywords to have on my website and my description and metatags. I could optimize my website using the searched keywords and write articles to generate traffic to my site and my business.

Plus it is a reflection of my personality.

OMG!!! I've heard of adding a bit of bling to things, but that is just OVER THE TOP!!!! (although, it's just cutesy enought that I LOVE IT....does it come in pink )

I thought it would take me forever to come up with a good name and, just like with men, it seemed like all of the good ones were taken. Including the name that I original had my heart set on, Rising Pheonix.

Quick background story...

Three years ago I got laid of from my job. I was with the same company for 15 years almost to the day (I started just before I turned 19). I had just bought my house not even 2 years before and a fully loaded 2004 Tahoe. Then, when I got laid off, my world just kind of crumbled around me so it seemed. I decided to sell everything and move closer to home (my mother and stepfather live in the same town that I do, but I'm not from here). Anyhow, it was like taking a 15 year step backwards in time. I actually made less here than I did at 19 years old. I have a better job now but still make about 40% less than what I was making in the corporate world. The scary thing is that this is one of the best jobs around. I decided that if I wanted to make it in this town (or save enough to get the heck out of Dodge), I needed to get creative. And, decided on this. The way I look at it, this could be my saving grace if I can make it work.

Ok, moving on (sorry). I liked "Rising Pheonix" because it means rebirth, literally rising out of the ashes, and that's kind of what this is to me. It's may way of coming back, so to speak. Unfortunately, that name was taken so I had to do some research. I though of "Renaissance" because (and I didn't know this) it means rebirth in French, but couldn't quite make it work in my head. Then I started thinking of beachy kind of names because one of my goals is to move to FL. I mentioned "Under the Sun" to my Mom just as a brainstorm exercise and she added the "..." to make it "...Under the Sun". I thought about it somemore and then, after researching, found out that Sun is synonymous to Rising Phoenix. The sun rises every morning and "dies" at night when it sets. Just like the Rising Phoenix rises up out of ashes and dies in a ball of fire only to repeat the process over again (hopefully, that won't happen to me...lol). Also, the three dots mean you can put anything in front of it, so it can stand for just about anything.

As for the back part of it, I didn't want to use "secretary" because that's kind of outdated and I didn't want to use "services" because I really wanted to sound like I was a problem solver. So, I decided on Administrative Solutions.

P.S. My tagline is still sort of up in the air at the moment.

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Stephanie
New VA in the research phase :daisy:

I wish my story was as interesting as the others I've read so far.

I went to an all girl catholic school in Jamaica and the visiting nuns from the Sisters of Mercy would visit once every year to teach latin to the upper high school. I looked forward to it because I was tired of the french and spanish classes. Unfortunately for me the year I moved into the upper school the Sisters didn't visit (their visits became less frequent). So I never got a chance to learn latin.

I took the opportunity to use a language I love from a far and what my business will be to others 'help" but not plain help but "good help".

BONUS PROFICIO

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Tania Knowes
Bonus Proficio
"Vision is the art of seeing things invisible"

LIA Virtual Secretarial Support.

Well:

1. LIA is a nickname for me; and
2. LIA means Luxurious, Invaluable and Affordable - which is basically the ethos of the business

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Julia Neal ...because we ♥ admin!
http://julianeal.wordpress.com

Mine is so generic. However, after I had my logo created, and I came up with my tag line - its all coming together now. I have two domains - www.fortierbizsolutions.com (original business name) and www.YourBranchOffice.net (which is the new tag line). My secondary tag line is: "Hang on...help is on the way!"

My hubby, who is a cartoonist, is going to draw me a 'toon of a guy hanging from the branch in my logo (my logo is a branch with two leaves, hence the tag line - Your Branch Office).

So, anyway, the logo came about because I wanted a tree in my logo. I don't know why, except I really like the Survivor Tree from the Oklahoma City bombing (I'm from there origially before I moved to Michigan 13 years ago). Anyway, the Survivor Tree is trademarked, so I started researching trees and their meanings, and I selected the Alder Tree for two reasons: First, its Ogham symbol is for "F", which is the first letter of my last name. Second, its "meaning" is strength, durability and tenacity, which are traits I seriously hope that I have.

All of my marketing materials are going to start having "Fortier Business Solutions - Your Branch Office".

The dude in the tree is going to go on sticky pads and mouse pads for my clients with my contact info on them.

Dana,

I don't think that's so generic. I like what you decided to do for your new tag line. It's actually quite creative. Be sure to let us know when its ready to see. Also, great marketing solutions.

~Joni Snowden

I had originally wanted to go with something tree related (because I love trees) and was considering the name of Branches Virtual Office Resources. (I still like it quite a bit) but then I was driving one day and it came to me that I should call it JK Virtual Office Resources. The "J" is the first letter of my soon-to-be husband's name and my name, of course, starts with "K". I think I chose this in part for practical and for sentimental reasons.

On our second date, my fiance had burned me a copy of James Blunt's CD "Back to Bedlam." On it, he had written the artist's name and the name of the album mostly in one color, but he used another color just for the "J" in 'James' and the "K" in 'Back' to represent the first letter in each of our names. I thought this was so sweet that he had taken the effort to do this. I also later found out that he went through writing this on several discs because he wanted it to be just right!(Ok, everybody all at once...AWWWW!) I found it endearing that on only our second date he was already thinking of us in a "together" kind of way....I'm also just a mushy romantic at heart and he was able to capitalize on that!

Anyway, so the JK to me represents "us" in so many ways, but it is also a way in which I am recognizing that even though this is my business and I'm creating and running it, I really couldn't do it without him and his support in so many other ways.

Also, JK are next to each other in alphabet and seem to roll of the tongue naturally. (As a side note, his last name and my soon-to-be last name starts with "L", so we will actually be JKL....) seems like destiny to me!

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Kimberly
Facebook Marketing Magic!

I came up with my new company name, Your Office People, after noting the cleverness of the H&R Block "You've got people" campaign. My target market is those professionals that don't have an office or don't have a staff (tradesman and small businesses) so I thought it worked out perfectly.