There are endless ways to cultivate a healthy culture in your workplace, and your employees probably have some great ideas of their own (which is why you should ask them for feedback!)—but if you need help getting started, here are some creative and simple ways to make wellness a regular part of your practice:

Physical Health

• Leverage Your Influence: One of the best ways to foster health is to make it easier for employees to prioritize. For several years, we partnered with our local YMCA and exchanged marketing services for gym memberships—the Y was walking distance from our office, so our employees had easy access to the gym before, during, or after work. Now we’re incorporating a “home gym” as part of our new office space on our property. If you can’t do either one of these options, you can negotiate corporate discounts at a local gym, dedicate extra office space for fitness (even if it’s just a yoga mat and some dumbbells), or provide a map of walking trails near your office.
• Fitness Challenges: Fitness challenges are one of the most fun and easy-to-implement wellness initiatives. At LMG, we host a fitness challenge every year right before the holidays to remind our employees to keep moving during a time when most people feel lethargic and unmotivated. We split up in two teams and compete for prizes—not only does this get people excited, but it builds camaraderie and team spirit. There are tons of apps and websites available that build challenges for you (our most recent competition was a “zombie attack” where team members had to log steps to avoid getting eaten alive), and we provide trackers for team members who don’t already have one.
• Walking Meetings: Studies have shown that walking meetings can increase creativity, productivity, and employee wellbeing, while simply being in nature has a host of other health benefits.¹ Even if your team is working remotely, you can hop on a conference call while you walk and get the same benefits. If you need to take notes during the meeting, consider recording it and having it transcribed (we’ve found services that cost around $1 per minute), or designate someone on your team to take notes.
• Office Ergonomics: As an advisor, it’s likely that most of your team’s work takes place on a desktop or laptop. Sitting in front of a screen for hours at a time can be draining, which is why we’ve added convertible desks (with an option to stand or sit) at our new office space. You can also provide ergonomic keyboards and computer mice to ease wrist strain.
• Offer Healthy Food: This one is pretty simple—any time you provide your team lunch or snacks, make sure there are healthy options available. While everyone loves free food, it can be frustrating for employees who are trying to practice healthy habits to frequently be tempted by unhealthy food at work. If you supply snacks at the office, consider a curated variety that helps your team meet their health goals but can also satisfy a sweet tooth. Then store the healthy options in easily accessible areas, but keep the treats a little more “out of sight, out of mind” to encourage healthy choices.

Mental & Emotional Health

• Share Resources: In another blog, we discussed how we share resources for self-improvement during our Character Development meetings, and this is a principle that can also be applied to employee wellness. Find articles, apps, podcasts, and books that promote emotional and mental wellbeing and share them with your team. Look for resources that focus on building good habits, improving positivity, and strengthening personal weaknesses—it’s free (unless you purchase books or a paid app), it doesn’t take much time, and it cultivates healthy discussion and peer support among your team members.
• Check In: We often refer to my husband (and our COO) as “Pastor Coby.” Coby has a knack for making people feel comfortable, and one of his passions at LMG is checking the mental and emotional temperature of our team members. When someone on our team has an issue they need to work through, they go to him. Even if someone simply isn’t having a great day, they know they can talk with him and not be judged. Beyond that, Coby makes it a point to proactively check in with team members (especially our remote folks)—which is something every good boss should do. You don’t have to have an innate gift for deep, personal conversations (although as an advisor, you probably do), but it’s important to give employees the opportunity to talk when they need to. Even if your team members don’t discuss their personal business with you, you want them to have confidence to tell you when they need space, support, or guidance.
• Recognize the Signs: When you spend a lot of time with your team, you get to know them fairly well. If you notice one of your team members seems a little “off,” ask them about it. Again, they don’t have to confide in you about their personal business, but it’s important to recognize when an employee might need help finding a counselor or to take time off to focus on their mental health.

Start Small, Start Somewhere

Incorporating wellness in your workplace takes time and effort, but I promise it’s worth it. If this list seems overwhelming, just start small—pick one item and build from there. The key is to listen to your employees’ needs and follow through. It’s better to do one or two things consistently than make big promises you can’t keep. 

Address all Aspects of Wellness

Workplace wellness doesn’t only apply to your employees’ physical wellbeing—it applies to their mental, emotional, and spiritual health too. These aspects of wellness affect and complement each other, so it’s important not to get “wellness tunnel vision.” By focusing only on physical health, for instance, you could unintentionally neglect the equally important component of your employees’ mental wellbeing. And because mental health affects physical health and vice versa, you want to give each aspect of wellness the support it deserves.

As you think about how to incorporate wellness into your practice, consider how you can address all aspects of your employees’ health, not just their physical wellbeing.

Don’t Ignore Spiritual Health

This one can be tricky, especially if your team members have very diverse beliefs. You might prefer to leave spiritual health off the table entirely, but fostering spiritual growth is an incredible way to strengthen your team and boost employee morale. At LMG, we pray for and with our employees, and we share resources we think are helpful for mental and emotional development.

The goal is to strengthen and support your team, so it could be as simple as allowing people space and time to practice their beliefs as they see fit. Ultimately, you know what will and won’t work for your team, but I’d encourage you not to overlook this vital aspect of your employees’ wellness.

If you’d like to learn more about fostering all aspects of wellness, check out The Art of Energy Management and Understanding Your Four Forms of Energy from leadership guru and Life Church pastor Craig Groeschel.

Begin with Purpose: Team Discovery

“Well, great advice,” you might say, “But how do I find that perfect balance between mental, physical, and emotional health?”  

Start with fact-finding, just like you do with clients. 

Consider conducting an anonymous employee wellness survey—you don’t have to get too personal, but you want to gain an understanding of how you can best help your employees improve various aspects of their health. This will help you determine where you should place the most effort when developing a wellness program.

Ask questions like: 

• What prevents you from making healthy choices during the day (lack of time, stress, access to exercise equipment, access to healthy foods, etc.)?
• How would you rank your stress level on an average work week (1-10)?
• What motivates you to be healthy (feeling good, being there for family, looking good, monetary incentives)?

These kinds of questions will help you understand where your employees struggle, how you can help, and what motivates them (which is especially helpful if you decide to implement a wellness challenge of some sort).

You might find that your employees need help addressing stress more than they do curbing unhealthy eating habits, or want resources to develop their confidence more than their exercise routine—but you won’t know unless you ask. That’s why when you’re determining where to focus your workplace wellness efforts, it’s a good idea to first get feedback from your team.

Quick Tips: Make the Most of Your Wellness Efforts

Here are some additional ways to ensure your wellness initiatives are focused and effective:

• Set a Budget: Just like any important aspect of your business, “wellness” should have its own line item. Granted, it doesn’t have to be a large amount (there are tons of free ways to foster employee wellness), but you should know ahead of time what you’re willing to spend—that’ll help you determine what kind of initiatives to implement and how often.
• Appoint a Wellness Champion: Everyone is busy, and as the business owner, spearheading wellness initiatives probably isn’t a top priority for you. Finding someone on your team who’s passionate about wellness to handle the logistics of your program can take a load off your plate and foster better engagement. (Pro tip: ask for volunteers in your initial wellness survey.) The key is to find someone who’s excited to help in this area, rather than someone who might view it as a burden. Otherwise, it’ll have the opposite effect that you intend. If you find the right team member who has creative ideas they want to share, they’ll enjoy this new responsibility rather than resent it.
• Know Your Team: To get the most engagement and benefit, make sure the competitions and rewards you offer resonate with your team. This, again, is insight you can leverage from a survey, but if you know your team members’ personalities, you should have a general idea of the things they’d enjoy. For example, if your firm consists of more experienced professionals, they might not get excited about a zombie fitness challenge they track with their smartphone. They might, however, appreciate a fitness club membership that allows them to try new sports with their spouse or kids.
• Be an Example: It’s one thing to encourage walking breaks or healthy lunches, but if you as the business owner don’t practice what you preach, it’s very unlikely your team will. So if you set the bar high or offer enticing perks, be willing to reach for those goals or use those benefits yourself.

The New Norm

“Work-life balance” isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a powerful movement in our culture. Most employees have always been concerned about missing time with their family or feeling pressured at work, but now those concerns have a name, and the cultural norms are shifting. Employees want flexibility, freedom, and balance, and they’re not afraid to ask for it.

Not only that, but more companies are realizing they have to compete with each other to attract and retain this increasingly selective workforce. Employees care about where they work, and if you want to stand apart from the crowd, proving that you care about the wellbeing of your people is a great way to do that.

Appreciate With Purpose

Our company, like many of our clients’ financial practices, is a busy place to work. And the busier you are, the more you as an employer should care about the health of your employees. After all, the more work there is to be done, the more you rely on your team to perform at their absolute best (something they can’t do when they’re physically or mentally unwell). Similarly, the more you rely on your employees, the more you should be willing to pour into them. And if you’re anything like most of the advisors we work with, your team feels like family—an appropriate term, given that most people spend more waking hours during the week with their work family than their actual family.

When you care about your employees and want what’s best for them, supporting a healthy work environment is one of the best ways to show it. In this first blog of our three-part Wellness in the Workplace series, we’re discussing some other important reasons you should care about workplace wellness.

Why Workplace Wellness Matters to Your Practice

• Improve Employee Health: Obviously, the overarching goal of workplace wellness is to improve the health of your team. So it makes sense that one of the most concrete benefits is that it improves basic health metrics. Wellness initiatives at work have been shown to reduce risks for preventable diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer—conditions that are especially prevalent for office workers who remain sedentary for eight-plus hours a day. This alone is a great reason to pay attention to your employees’ health.
• Reduce Burnout: Whether it’s from a hefty workload, stress, or sometimes just plain monotony, jobs can wear on your employees. Even the most dedicated, passionate individuals can experience burnout when there’s no break from routine or reprieve from stress. In fact, sometimes your most committed team members are the ones who need help the most. Think about it—you probably have someone on your team who (like you) won’t quit until the job is done, takes on extra responsibilities, and gives 100 percent day after day—and that can be exhausting (no matter how fulfilling the work)! Incorporating wellness initiatives into your workplace ensures your hardworking employees have a chance to evaluate and nurture their overall wellbeing. When your employees are more relaxed, healthy, and satisfied, they’re more engaged, productive, and likely to stick with you for the long haul.
• Reduce Presenteeism: You’ve probably heard of workplace wellness as a strategy to reduce absenteeism (which, in this context, refers to excess absence due to illness). But workplace wellness initiatives can also reduce presenteeism—a phenomenon where employees are physically present but feel disconnected or aren’t wholly engaged in their work. If an employee is depressed, anxious, or feeling unwell—yet still coming to work—it’s likely they’re not enjoying their work or giving it their best effort.
• Build a Strong Culture: Now more than ever, our workforce is looking not just for any place to work—but a fun, fulfilling place to work. If your business offers wellness perks and demonstrates that it truly cares about the wellbeing of its employees, you look more attractive to those superstar employees you’re after. Not only that, but wellness initiatives build camaraderie and strength among your current team members, which ultimately creates a culture that other people will want to be a part of.
• Reduce Costs: Improving the overall health of your workforce could also decrease your corporate insurance costs (and expenses from absences). We’ve listed this one last because, while it’s a nice perk for you as the business owner, it’s a tertiary benefit you get from genuinely caring about your employees. If your goal of a workplace wellness program is simply to save a buck, your employees will be able to tell, and it won’t be nearly as effective and beneficial as it could be.

To start, the marketing firm you hire should be three things:

#1: Highly Experienced

One of the most important “rules” of hiring the right agency is to find a firm that has ample experience working with advisors. That’s because many of the traditional (and trendy) marketing strategies most agencies use won’t work for an advisor’s business. Instagram and other social platforms are extremely popular right now and as such, they’re strategies a savvy marketer might suggest—but they likely won’t work for an advisor.

Not only are these platforms typically not allowed, but reaching advisors’ target markets usually requires different strategies altogether. It’s an important, often lifelong decision when people choose their advisor—and not one they take lightly. They’re looking for someone who they can trust with their livelihood and the wellbeing of their families, and they’re generally not looking for that person on Instagram. The bottom line is, there are a ton of creative and timely strategies that a well-meaning agency might suggest—but if the agency hasn’t worked in the financial sector before, many of those strategies won’t be effective (or allowed) for an advisor.

Apart from potentially wasting your time, this can also be frustrating for the agency because they can’t leverage time-tested strategies they know to get results. They won’t have benchmarks with which to measure your progress, and it’ll be difficult to set expectations and create a repeatable process. Because of that, they might want to charge you additional fees for the time it takes to sort out your strategies. You’ll also likely spend more time explaining compliance rules—which of course, defeats much of the purpose of outsourcing.

An experienced agency will offer effective ways to leverage current trends while also working within compliance boundaries. For example, they might suggest a modified lead generator for your website—if you’ve ever tried this before, you know that adding a lead generator might seem like a compliance impossibility, but a firm that’s familiar with the industry will know that you can create one so long as you adhere to specific rules. 

#2: Compliance-savvy

A marketing firm well-versed in the financial industry should have a solid understanding of basic compliance regulations, as well as a system for discovering unfamiliar rules before they cause an issue for you. Some rules vary from broker to broker, which means an agency might be educated about compliance rules for a particular broker, but not as well-versed in another. But that’s okay—a reputable agency will take time to learn what’s allowed for your specific situation, even if they haven’t worked with your parent company before (or if you’re an independent agent). And because experienced agencies are well-versed in the compliance arena as a whole, they’ll know what they can and can’t do without first getting approval from your compliance department.

That said, there are some regulations that apply to all advisors, and the right agency should be aware of these too. For example, the former inability to include testimonials on an advisor’s website was a ruling determined by the SEC, so it applied to advisors at any company. The right firm will not only be willing to gain an understanding of your broker’s regulations, but possess knowledge of these broader rules regulated by FINRA and the SEC.

#3 Results-Driven

Most advisors grow their business through referrals, rather than directly targeting strangers—that said, measuring your ROI for relationship marketing requires a little more digging. But that doesn’t mean agencies that focus on this type of marketing can’t provide proof that their strategies are effective. Agencies that have experience working with advisors should be able to define how and why their methods help advisors grow.

Additionally, they should be able to help you determine what methods could be most helpful for your situation. Experienced agencies will have a conversation with you about your practice and your goals and be able to outline a tentative strategy from there. They should also be able to provide case studies or examples of their work so you can get a better feel for their capabilities.

1. Save Your Expertise

At LMG, one of our hiring philosophies is to get the right people “on the bus,” then make sure they’re in the right “seat.” We want our team members to use their talents where they’ll provide the most benefit to the agency and get the most satisfaction from their workday. You should look at your firm the same way—if you’re great at building relationships, solving problems, and identifying creative solutions others don’t see—why waste your valuable time writing your LinkedIn bio or creating a slide deck? Outsourcing your marketing can ultimately make your job more fulfilling because you get to focus on what you do best. After all, you’re in this business for a reason—don’t waste your talents on something you find frustrating or tedious.

That said, your next thought might be to hire a college intern or one of your relatives to handle some of these tertiary responsibilities. But while these young hires are typically driven and even marketing savvy, their best intentions could also turn into your worst nightmare. Which brings us to our next point…

2. Save Yourself from a Compliance Disaster

This is usually one of the biggest concerns for advisors when it comes to hiring someone to do their marketing. Your industry has a unique set of rules and restrictions, and while they’re inconvenient at times, it’s important to remember that compliance exists for a reason, and they’re on your side. They’re the ones who keep you out of (potentially) serious trouble.

And while you may know the rules, it can be difficult to communicate all of them to a team member, intern, or agency that isn’t used to working with advisors. Anytime you outsource your marketing (even to someone in-house), you have to make sure they’re clear about compliance rules before they ever have control over your marketing initiatives. Otherwise, their proactive nature and marketing know-how could mean your firm inadvertently breaks a few compliance rules—which will only make your life harder. That’s why if you outsource, you need to find an agency familiar with compliance rules (we’ll cover more about this in our next blog, How to Hire the Right Marketing Agency for Your Financial Practice.)

That said, if you decide it’s best to hire an in-house marketing professional, be sure you have the time to train them properly. Even the most experienced professionals will need clear instructions and systems in place if they’ve never worked in the financial sector before. Otherwise, you run the risk of them taking the reins (with perfectly good intentions) and doing something that could get you in trouble with compliance. Even if they are committed to learning, that’s time, money, and energy your firm could better spend elsewhere.

3. Save Time & Money

Everyone is busy, and the more successful you become, the more precious your time is. You could hire someone in-house to focus on your marketing, but as we mentioned, you’ll have to spend time training and onboarding them, which is a hassle you can avoid by working with a reputable agency. And by outsourcing your marketing, not only do you give yourself more hours in the day, but the agency will likely be able to achieve what you could do in half the time. And while it is an extra expense, when it frees you to focus on building your business in ways only you can, you get more out of your time and money.

It’s also more cost-effective than hiring a full-time team member to do the job. (That said, you could hire a part-time person to work on a few marketing initiatives, but again, unless that person has ample experience marketing for advisors, you run the risk of him or her doing something that isn’t compliant, or simply isn’t effective for your market.)

4. Save Your Energy

Targeting the right people and generating referrals requires an in-depth knowledge of your industry and understanding of your clients’ behavior. When you outsource to an agency that understands advisor marketing, you gain access to professionals who help you avoid much of the trial-and-error strategies many entrepreneurs waste time on.

Hiring an agency also gives you the ability to “set it and forget it.” This is especially beneficial for ongoing initiatives like social media. An experienced agency should be able to spend time with you gathering initial information, then handle your social media completely so you don’t have to keep track of it. When you’re on retainer with a reputable company, you don’t have to delegate or brainstorm (not often, at least) to keep things moving—you just get to relax knowing someone behind the scenes is making you look good.

Myth #1: I don’t need a Business Card in the digital age

We may live in a digital age, but advisors are in a personal business. Consequently, the first time a prospect encounters your brand is usually when a client refers them, or you meet them in person. And when someone asks, “Can I get your card?” you don’t want to let them down with a boring, cluttered, or nonexistent card. If you’re an advisor serving the youngest generation, you may leverage a digital business card for some of your clients, but in the end, you should still have a physical card to reference and share. Digital card apps don’t always allow you to personalize the design the way you can with a physical card, and certain apps only allow you to share your card with others who have the same app.

Your card is often the first encounter a prospect or client has with your visual brand—so it should be impressive and memorable. And because your card is used to point people back to your website, your online presence should be up to par when you hand out your cards. Your website, social media profiles, and anything else a prospect sees should have current contact information, a cohesive style, and compelling messaging; all of which will round out the story of your brand. 

In the end, the purpose of your business card is to do one of two things: 1) Give someone a way to contact you directly because they’ve decided they want to speak with you, or 2) direct someone to your website so they can learn more about you. 

Myth #2: I can’t have a Modern Design and be Compliant

Because of the disclosures and licenses required on advisors’ cards, they often assume they can’t create one that’s visually appealing and compliant—but that’s simply not true! There are creative ways to include all the necessary information as part of a beautiful design. That’s why using your parent company’s standard template is a huge missed opportunity. Most advisors think they can’t have a great card that meets compliance standards, so you have a greater chance of standing out by creating something custom. Check out Miguelangel, Hillary, and Chris’s business cards—they’re sleek, effective, and totally compliance-friendly.

Now that we’ve busted that myth, what exactly should you include on your card? It might be less than you think…

Myth #3: I have to Fit Everything In a 3.5” x 2” space

Your business card should tell people how to contact you directly or find your website for more information—it doesn’t have to tell the entire story of your brand. Some people are afraid to make their business cards too simple, but you don’t need much to create an effective card—just enough to leave an impression and guide someone to the next step.

Your card should include:

• Your name and title
• Website URL
• Email address
• Phone number
• Required licenses and disclaimer

That said, including a disclosure and licenses often throws advisors for a loop (where do you fit all that extra verbiage?). That’s why you should always leverage a two-sided design; otherwise, you’re wasting valuable card real estate. If you want a more minimalist design but can’t sacrifice any text, this card we created leverages a folded style so you have twice as much space to work with.

Myth #4: Templates are the Best Option because they’re cheap and easy

Companies like Vistaprint are successful because they create multiple templates that thousands of people use—which means your chances of creating a card that looks like someone else’s are pretty big. Your goal with a business card is to stand out and give people a glimpse of your brand—and you can’t do that very well with a template. Even when you pay for a custom design, business cards are a relatively low-budget marketing expense, and they’re well worth the price. You can choose a cheap template that delivers a so-so card, or you can pay just a little bit more for a card that wows people—the choice is yours.

When you hire a professional, designers will pull the custom color codes and replicate fonts from your website to create a card that matches your brand (even if they didn’t design your website)—so ordering an on-brand card should be a seamless process for you.

How does the ADA relate to my website?

While you’re probably familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act, you may not know that it applies to websites. The ADA’s goal is to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities in “places of public accomodation,” and in our digital age, that means the World Wide Web. In short, your website should be accessible to everyone.

Why should I care about being compliant?

1. Everyone should be able to experience your website
   Since these days practically everyone uses the internet, your website should be easily accessible and usable for any individual. Simply put, that means folks who can’t hear have a way to watch your videos, and people who can’t see have a way to read your text.
2. Be ahead of the curve
   As of 2020^[1], businesses under Title I and Title III are required to have ADA compliant websites. That refers to businesses that operate 20 or more weeks a year with at least 15 employees and those categorized as “public accommodation,” respectively. It’s pretty likely every website will need to meet those requirements soon, so it’s best to get on board now.
3. Avoid a lawsuit
   On top of that, we’re seeing more and more lawsuits issued against websites that aren’t in compliance. Many of these are what you’d call “ambulance chaser” lawsuits, but either way, they’re becoming more and more successful. Granted, we can’t claim to offer legal advice, so if you have any questions or concerns about the legal ramifications for your website, it’s best to ask your attorney.
4. Improve your SEO
   When you optimize your website to be ADA compliant, you have to implement a lot of “best practices” that Google likes, too—which means you improve your search engine rankings. For that reason, the two services are typically coupled.

How do I make my site ADA compliant?

While the tasks required to make a website ADA compliant are mostly code-based, there are a few things that you can do without involvement from a web developer:

1. Add captions to your videos
   There are multiple platforms you can use to create and add captions to videos you use on your website, which allows the hearing impaired to easily enjoy your videos. Think of all the educational content you have offered solely in video form on your site—you want that to be accessible. We like a service called Rev.com for creating the captions from your video. Then, you just need to add the SRT file that Rev gives you to your video with a video editor like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker.
2. Share transcripts of videos that don’t have captions
   There are also services that will transcribe spoken text for you – and Rev.com does that too. This is a simple way to offer a read-only version of videos you share. These are also a nice bonus for those clients who’d prefer to quickly scan text rather than watch a video, and it allows Google to offer your page in search results for appropriate terms that may otherwise have gone unnoticed because they were all contained in your video.
3. Make sure every image on your site has “alt” tags
   Alt tags are mini-descriptions of photos or other images on your site. You can add them to the code on the back end of your site (and we do with every site we build), but most platforms have a way to type them in when you upload an image. These essentially tell Google (or screen readers for the visually impaired) what an image is, since they can’t view the actual image. 
4. Avoid putting text in images
   For the same reasons as #3, this makes it bad practice to put important text in image form. For instance, if you have a cool graphic that describes your planning process, but it’s on your site without any accompanying descriptive text, this prevents screen readers and search engines from “seeing” it. So not only are potential users missing your information, but you’re missing out on valuable keywords for your site’s SEO. As much as possible, make sure your text is in text form, not an image. (If you can’t highlight the text with your mouse, there’s a good chance it’s not in text form.) There are a couple areas where you can’t avoid this (like including logos from awards you’ve received), but that’s where the alt tags come in.
5. Avoid low-contrast text and audio
   To make your content easier to read and hear, you should also avoid low-contrast backgrounds – this applies to your text as well as audio. Putting dark gray text on a light gray background can make it very difficult to read, even if it’s something a screen-reader could translate. Similarly, if you create a video of someone speaking over background music, make sure the music or other background noise is approximately four times quieter than the speech content^[2]. Not only does this help your site be ADA compliant, but it creates a better user experience overall.

Using a Word or Phrase Allows Room for Growth

Using a word or phrase for your DBA as opposed to your own name can provide more flexibility for the growth of your business. Despite the ability to add team members or partners to a DBA with your name (using the “Edwards and Associates” or “Edwards Group” model), some people (even subconsciously) prefer to work for a company that’s not associated with one specific person. Sometimes the “your name” approach gives the impression that the business is yours alone, and there is no room for a partner (even if that’s not your intention). Because of this, using a word or phrase can make it easier to attract talent, grow your team, or recruit a partner in the future. Similarly, your business and brand could be easier to sell in the future if the name is less tied to your person.

You Can Tell Your Brand Story

If you have a unique name idea (along with an explanation for that name), your DBA title can be a great talking point with prospects and even help tell the story of your business. The name doesn’t need to be complicated or even have an immediately recognizable significance—one of our clients, Forge and Link Financial Group, draws a connection between the forging of metal and the cleansing of old financial habits, along with the link between client values and their goals for their finances. You might not be able to decipher the connection at first glance, but the name allows them to tell their story and explain their brand promise when they meet new clients. A clever name can express your company’s mission in a memorable way and describe how you run your practice.

A Caution with Creative DBA Names

There are a few basic rules when choosing a name for your DBA which I’ll list below, but the first one is this: don’t confuse people. Don’t try to be so creative that people don’t grasp what you’re trying to portray. (I have a similar rule for answering the question, “What do you do for a living?”) If the name is so obscure that it takes you ten minutes to describe why you chose the word or phrase, it’s probably too complicated. It’s also not a good idea to choose words or phrases that are difficult to spell or pronounce. Even something seemingly simple like “Entrepreneurial Financial Strategies” can leave people a little tongue-tied and consequently more likely to forget the name or misspell it when trying to find your website.

Make Sure It’s Your Own

As with using your own name in your DBA, using a word or phrase in your branding requires some research before you make a final decision. No one can stop you from using your own name, but there are existing trademarks on certain words and phrases. If you have a DBA name idea, you should complete a trademark search before you purchase a domain name or submit it for approval to your compliance department. You can have an intellectual property attorney do this for you or let us help you with the process. 

Slim Pickin’s

One downside to the word or phrase model is that in this day and age, so many of the good options are taken. You may have an idea that sounds clever, but the name has been used or several other people have had the same idea. That’s why it’s important to do your research as you brainstorm DBA names.

Getting Started Choosing a DBA Name

If you know you want to create an original DBA name, searching for existing businesses and domain names on Google and GoDaddy is a good place to start. When you have an idea, search for it and see if the business already exists or if that domain name is taken. If you have a concept you like but the word itself isn’t catchy or original, you can consider a translated word or Latin phrase. “Always Strong Financial” might not sound catchy, but our clients at Semper Fortis have established a brand name that resonates with clients by using the Latin phrase for “always strong” as their DBA name.

You can also choose a nonsense word or something less literal (think, Yelp, HubSpot, and Coca Cola). People don’t always consider this option, but because it’s not English or directly related to your industry, these options are more readily available. Your nonsense word could even be an acronym that expresses your brand promise, so you have a story to tell clients and prospects when they ask about the name. 

Myths About Branding with Your Name

Lots of people hesitate to use their own name in their company’s title because they believe it will work against them—they fear they won’t be able to hire someone or bring on a partner because that person won’t want to work under their name. Or they think it will prevent them from selling their business in the future. But this isn’t necessarily the case—for one, if you name your business something like Edwards Financial Group, you have room to add staff or partners under the “group” umbrella later. If you go the law firm style route of “Edwards and Associates,” you can easily add a partner by transitioning the name to something like Edwards, Walker, and Associates. Law firms, CPAs, and other financial firms adopt this method all the time, and it works incredibly well.

People Hire People

The best part about using your own name is that in your industry as a financial advisor, people hire people. Your clients work with you because they like and trust you as a person, and you’re the primary person handling their account, or at least overseeing it. When a friend asks your client who she uses for her investment management, she’s usually going to mention your name, not the name of your practice. That’s why at the end of the day, using your name can be a very simple and effective approach—because people hire people. I’ve even known advisors who named their DBA in memory of a family member, which provides a personal touch but also opens a door for storytelling with new clients and prospects.

Cautions When Branding with Your Name

Despite the benefits of personal name recognition, there are potential disadvantages to using your own name for your DBA. If you have a very common last name, for example, your brand could get lost in a sea of “Smith” financial firms. On the other hand, if your name is very difficult to pronounce or spell, people might have a hard time remembering it or finding it online. Unfortunately, some people also make judgements if your name is associated with a certain ethnicity or religion. It’s not fair, but it happens. It’s good to take these factors into consideration when deciding whether to use your name for your DBA.

It’s also a good idea to search the market in your area to find out if there are any deceptively similar names to your own. You don’t want to try and establish “Edwards Financial Group” if Edward Financial Strategies already has an office in your city.