Tess, you're right. Coming up with a name was the hardest part of setting up my business. I had heard that having virtual assistance in the name was helpful for all sorts of search reasons but it's a bit of a mouthful when you add something to it. We were living in Green Valley at the time and rather liked having Valley in the name. Also, I thought VVA might have some interesting possiblities for a logo. These are not good reasons for naming your business! Now, we're back in Chicago, nowhere near any valleys and it's too long. So, I'm on the hunt for a new, shorter, catchier, name.

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Virtually yours,
Sue Boedeker

Mine "FlashVA" came to me pretty quickly as I wanted the name to reflect quickness and it was available as a .com, which made it even better!. Then the best part came when I realized I could make it stand for something great:
"Full Line of Admin Services Home-based Virtual Asst" so it all kind of fell in place, surprisingly.

I had a problem with the "H" - "home-based" part, but couldn't really find another "H" word to fit in there. If anyone has any ideas? Although using "home-based" does let the client know I'm not coming to their home or office.

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"

As an aficionado of all things retro, kitschy and mid-century, we knew that we wanted our business name to reflect our tastes, interests and personality.

The first name I chose was Sputnik Secretarial. I chose Sputnik because of the era (naturally!) and as a play on words: Sputnik was a satellite. Sputnik Secretarial would act as a satellite office to its clients. The only problem was that my husband thought that Sputnik, being a Russian spacecraft, might turn off some in the American business community (not that we wanted to court the nationalistic anti-commie crowd, but we didn’t want a name that could be construed as controversial in even the slightest way, either). As a result, Sputnik Secretarial morphed into Space Age Secretarial – the concept being that the entire idea of a “virtual” assistant is very retro-futuristic. Instead of arriving via hovercraft or jetpack, though, we arrive via laptop!

On an appearance and branding level, as with our own home, we’ve found that designing with a retro 50s motif never goes out of style – and felt that the same would be true of the outward appearance our business. And, being non-designers (who love and ogle all things design related), creating a cool look for our business (all without having real graphics/design training) just seems easier with the assistance of retro fonts and illustrations. Our website and marketing materials aren’t ready for their close-ups, but we thought that a fun, kitschy look and name would appeal to the types of clients we want to attract, namely creative class professionals. Plus, staid corporate sites packed with stock business photography just aren’t our thing.

We also decided that having an “A” name wasn’t as important as having a name that stood out. The same with the word “virtual” – I have a hard time differentiating between all of the virtual assistant businesses with the word “virtual” as their primary word. We figured that Space Age Secretarial would be memorable. And, hopefully, in a good way!

~Melissa (and Curt)

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.

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

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
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