Once you have decided what type of business you are starting, it’s time to name the new business.  If you are going to concentrate on one area of enterprises (highly recommended), you probably want to make your business name descriptive of the type of business you’re in.  A good example would be “Joe’s Automotive” for an auto repair shop.  On the other hand, if your business is going to be diverse, you may want to have a general business name. 

When we started our business, we had a definite lack of focus.  As I’ve mentioned in another post, we weren’t quite sure what business we were going to be in as we kept adding to it.  So, when it came time to form our LLC (Limited Liabilility Company) we chose a fairly generic business name, T.R. Hicks Enterprises, LLC. 

Of course, creating a generic name did create some issues when we finally narrowed down our business to publishing.  I really wanted to have a more descriptive name and had considered changing our LLC’s name to TRH Publishing LLC, but there was a major problem and that was cost.  You see, it is not cheap to change the name of an LLC (or corporation).  In Arizona, I would have had to file an amendment to our articles of organization with the Arizona Corporation Commission (along with the required fee), then I would have to publish the amendment in the paper (also with a fee), then I would have to change the name on my EIN (employer ID number) with the IRS.  If that wasn’t bad enough, I would have to change the name with the bank and order new checks.  Believe me, business checks, ordered from a bank, are not inexpensive, but we’ll cover this in a later post.

Rather than go through all of that headache, I oped to simply register a “dba” (”doing business as” – a ficticious trade name) with the Secretary of State’s office.  That only cost me $10 here in Arizona.  That was a much better deal.