What’s in a Name?

What’s in a Name from Blumer CPAs on Vimeo.

Transcript:

What’s in a name? And I’m talking about a person’s name. So I know this young guy, he’s in his early 20s and when I met him, I asked him, “What’s your name?” And he told me, “Well, people call him different things, like three or four different names.” And I’m like, “Well, what do you want me to call you?” And he was never definitive about what I’m supposed to call him. And it was interesting. It’s hard to relate and interact with him because I don’t know his name because he doesn’t care. It seems he doesn’t care about what you call him. And people have called him many different things, many variations of his actual name.

And it just got me thinking that a name is a signaling thing, right? A name, all it does is it signals the human, the person behind the name. And so a name is important and I don’t think we always know it, but when people ask us our name, we’re the ones who tell them what our name is. We don’t say, “You give me the name you want.” No, we walk around in the world as humans and we represent our value by our name and we want our name to have value. We want it to be recognized. We want it to be honored, taking care of.

And it was just interesting when I couldn’t get out of this young guy, what his name was. It made me think that names are so important and it’s a lot like things in business. A price is a similar thing. When there’s value, it’s so unknown what is the value? It’s subjective. It’s emotional. It’s important that a price is used to signal the value. It establishes what that value is and so that everybody’s talking about the same thing. Whatever the value is, is determined by this thing that everybody agrees on called a price, kind of like a name.

So your name is very valuable. And I just wanted to tell that story to say your price is also very valuable. Your price is you establishing what that value is in the world. It represents you, it represents your company. And it’s important to be bold about stating that price and not letting your clients come up with the price because they’re not the ones who set the price. That’s what you do as a valuable firm owner.

So I just wanted to give that story on what’s in a name. There’s a lot in a name and so boldly tell people your name. Correct them when they say your name wrong. Tell them how to spell your name, because that represents you as the human. And it’s the same with the value. State your price. State it boldly. Come up with it. Be courageous when you share your price, because that is a representation of who you are and what your value is to the world.

I hope that helps. Thanks for listening. If you need help, just reach out to us at [email protected] and we’ll help you with pricing. That’s what we do for creative agency owners. Take care.