Oops. Had to Change the Company Name

Last week I laid out my plan for opening my new business, Laundry Loop, in Dallas, Texas. My goal is to become a legally operational business as soon as possible. I wrote out the requirements to do this as follows:

1. Register the company with the state.
2. Obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS.
3. Obtain a Sales Tax Permit from the Texas Comptroller.
4. Obtain Assumed Name Certificate from the Dallas County Clerk’s Office.
5. Open a Business Checking Account with Dallas Credit Union.
6. Publish the completed initial website including pricing.
7. Acquire payment acceptance through Square.
8. Get laundry bags and print logo, phone number, and website on them.

Last week I was on number 4 and my plan was to go to the County Clerk on Monday. But Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and it was a blessing that the County Clerk was closed. That day I realized I would have to change the name of my business. I had chosen the name Laundry Loop months ago based on the domain being available. However, Texas has strict rules about similar names, and multiple companies existed with similar names. I found Laundry Loops, Loop Laundry, and Inner Loop Laundry. I don’t know why I missed these originally but it was enough to convince me to change the name.

I named the corporation Sandfar Inc (after myself) and Laundry Loop was going to be the official registered DBA (Doing Business As). Then I thought I would just go with the corporation name but it didn’t fit quite right.

This was slowing me down too much. I have been known to take weeks deciding on a name, and I even wrote an article about How to Name a Startup. In that article I explain a method of brainstorming words and putting them together or morphing them slightly to match the function of the startup. hence, Laundry Loop. I had used that method for this company and I had saved that brainstorm worksheet.

I went back over that worksheet and found a new name in implemented it right away: Feather.

• I checked to see if featherlaundry.com was available and it was.
• I checked the search engines to see if any other laundromat or dry cleaners were named feather, none were.
• I checked the USPTO website, no trademarks.
• I checked the Texas Secretary of State website for similar names, none.
• Finally I checked the Dallas County Clerk website and the name cleared all the hurdles.

Within minutes, I began building the website.

The biggest takeaway from this week was learning that publishing my weekly goals in a blog really motivated me to move fast and achieve as many as I could. In the past the name of the company may have held me back a week or more but this time I moved lightning fast.

Public accountability is a super potent motivator.

That leads me to believe that I need to be publishing more often. Not just because of the extra motivation but also because there is so much information that some of it is lost in the 7 day stretch. For example, the story above about the name is only half the story. The other half is the actual website, which is very close to being finished.

Feather

There should have been a blog post about the creation of this site and all the little details and why they are there, but there’s not. Instead all I can offer is the resources I used.

• Strikingly for the template
• Canva and Pixlr for design
• Typeform for the call to action
• Google for analytics
• Facebook for distribution
• Medium for the blog.

Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the best user interface resource on the web —

GoodUI

In the meantime, I think it would be prudent for me to increase the frequency of this blog series to at least twice a week.

Which brings me back to my to do list and next milestone. Of the list above items 1, 2, 3, and 4 are completely done. Item 6 is mostly done. Items 5, 7, and 8 have been initiated. In addition, I have other tasks that are not directly related to the milestone but are necessary nonetheless. So this week my to do list looks like this:

1. Create a Facebook page.
2. Create an admin email.
3. Open a Business Checking Account.
4. Set up the Square account and test the reader.
5. Create a budget spreadsheet and sync it with business checking account.
6. Order stickers with the logo.
7. Order laundry bags with the logo.
8. Conduct a dry run with friends as customers and find the holes in the process.

This week I achieved about 60%-70% of my goals, which is optimal. If you are hitting 90–100% of your goals, your are not setting your sights high enough. If you are hitting less than 50% of your goals, you are not trying hard enough.

My next post should be Wednesday. If you want to follow my story more closely, I’m very active on Snapchat.

This story is part of a series documenting the journey of a 2016 Dallas startup called Feather. If you would like to read more, here is the Table of Contents for the series.

Previous story: Bringing Structure to this Series

Next story: What to do When Others Slow You Down

Thanks for reading!