Suzanne Dibble is a passionate, dedicated and ambitious lawyer. She specialises in providing business law services for women in business and has a reputation for providing excellent customer service, a proactive approach and being a very approachable.
Suzanne established her practice, Lawyers4Mumpreneurs, less than a year ago and business is thriving. Suzanne is now ready to take her business to the next level and undertake a rebrand which will help her really communicate her strengths with confidence and professionalism as well as expand the practice.
I have a bit of an issue with her current name. I particularly dislike numbers in names – it usually (not always) makes the brand feel downmarket, and I certainly think that’s the case with Suzanne’s practice – undeservedly so.
I also think the name Mumpreneur is risky. In reality, Suzanne focuses on working with women in business. So whilst many of those women might be mums, she’s potentially chopping out a lucrative part of the market with the title. But more importantly Mumpreneur is a title that attracts controversy. Many business mums (myself included) can’t decide whether we love it or hate it, but people often have some very strong opinions on the subject. I for one, am not certain it’s a title that sounds “serious” enough – so we feel best avoid the negativity of the word altogether. What do you think?
Today we had a mood board session with Suzanne to brainstorm how her brand identity should feel as well as try and help provide her with some inspiration for her new company name. We think she’s come up with an absolute cracker but we would love to gauge your thoughts before we progress with the logo design.
Would you to vote for your favourite name? And if you’d like to share your thoughts or perhaps throw in a few ideas of your own then please be our guest!
Name One: Stellar Business Law
Stellar: star, excellence. This name perfectly sums up Suzanne’s practice. She’s often referred to by her clients as a star. It’s feminine without being girly. Strong without being ball breaking. In practice the Stellar element is likely to be much larger than the business law…
Name Two: Ellevate Legal
Suzanne helps protect and reassure her clients and prepare them to grow their businesses safely. Ellevate Legal helps her communicate the impact she’ll have on her clients businesses whilst the double ll keeps it feeling feminine.
Name Three: Lawyers4Mumpreneurs
You know my feelings on the subject but it does do what it says on the tin. Do you think she should stick with it?
Name Four: Mumpreneur Legal
A numberless version of name three! Again, the Ronseal effect but does it restrict Suzanne in terms of business growth? And what happens in five years if she decides she wants to take on more male clients?
As always we would love your thoughts. Happy voting! (am crossing my fingers for my favourite 
)
I really like the sound of the Lawyers4Mumpreneurs as I think it’s served her well thus far and established her brand. I know her present clinets think that she may well be “Stellar” but any potential new clints don’t know that !
Just saying!
Have a FAB weekend!
Hi there. I get the point about the mumpreneur thing so don’t think keeping that in the title is prob best. What I love about Suzanne’s work is the friendly relaxed and flexible down to earth approach she has. I agree the name has to appeal to all women in business but I don’t think (and obv just a personal opinion) it should sound too corporate as that’s not her approach. I do like Stellar and understand he reasonings but for me Stella sounds like a name and unless seeing it in print you could think that’s her name? Ellavate Legal is good but doesn’t stick in my head, but then I come from a child friendly business called diddi dance!!!! Short and snappy stick in minds but maybe something like legal lady, ladies law probably doesn’t sound serious enough???? Anyway I’m rambling and thinking out loud. Good luck
Thank you so much both of you! Gareth I agree with what you’re saying, but Suzanne’s business is not too old to consider a rebrand. And much of her work comes via personal recommendation rather than the website/ because of her brand name at the moment so I would hope that a change to the right name at this stage would help rather than hinder her business. I think the challenge is that mumpreneur is a controversial word. And the question is whether we want to build around something that’s already controversial? Keep the comments and votes coming! So helpful…
I don’t think Stellar and Ellevate suggest a business that specialises in small businesses and has pricing to match. When I was setting up I was looking for people who understand small businesses -something like SmallBusinessLawyers / LawforSmallBusiness would get my attention. Stellar and Ellevate sound like big firms that think a lot of themselves – but it doesn’t suggest small business to me.
Interesting… Would be useful to get Suzanne’s take but this isn’t about providing cheap law services. It’s about a quality service with a vibrant market. I agree that Stellar/ Ellevate sounds like a confident brand – but I think we can make it feel approachable with the design. With something like SmallBusinessLawyers (which part of me quite likes!) my concern is that we’re then fighting to get people to take us seriously. What do you think Suzanne?
I agree with Hayley Chalmers. I run a small business and if people like me are her target audience then I would prefer to go with SmallBusinessLawyers / LawforSmallBusiness rather that Stellar or Elevate – sounds too much like the names the Apprentice people try to give their teams. Say what it is on the box and even better for SEO results etc etc…..
Thank you all so much for your comments! It is such a difficult decision – not least because I agree with you all! I offer a first rate service so I don’t want to be thought of as ‘cheap’ but equally I am passionate about enabling every business, regardless of the size of the legal budget, to access a quality legal service to fully protect it and help it grow . I take the point that Stellar may sound a bit too corporate and as one of the reasons that clients come to me is because I am so approachable (and I think this is a major differentiator in the legal services market), I do feel that I should find a name to suggets that approachability – though as Fiona says, we may be able to convey that approachability through the logo. So to conclude, I think I will have to give it a bit more thought… (sorry Fiona!!!)
There are certainly lots of opportunities to communicate your approachability : colour, fonts, imagery, brand voice and stories. As well, of course, as your service and your clients experiences and memories.
Naming a company isn’t easy and the bigger the stakes the harder the decision so don’t rush into anything. Just try them on for a few days and canvas more thoughts…
For what it’s worth I think it’s prudent to remember that however approachable your business style law is still a highly respected and professional industry. We want to make your business more approachable and accessible for sure- we don’t want to dumb it down.
I totally agree with the comments so far. For me both Stellar Business Law and Elevate Legal sound too hard – the words are hard when you say them, and thus do not reflect Suzanne’s business accurately or her approach.
However I think the other options are too fluffy – I am not a fan of the word mumpreneur at all.
Without spending too much time thinking about it, and if you need something more generic in case Suzanne wants to work with men and women, what about a variation on Business Legal, or Lawyers for Business? I am not saying that’s the finished article, but just a thought starter!
I agree that naming a company is a huge challenge, and when you think you’ve hit on the perfect idea the domain name has gone, or somebody else is already using it!
Good luck Suzanne!
As a bloke who’s sought Suzanne’s advice and recommended her to other folk of either gender, I have a personal problem with her current name. Except if she particularly wants to work with mums, (there’s no harm in being a big player in that niche), to the exclussion of other business people, I think ‘mum’ might have had it’s day in her business name.
The pity is that I agree with most of the previous comments – though I’ve never seen The Apprentice
Nomenclature’s a tough gig, then again, what’s in a name. Personally I’d go with a variant of Suzanne Dibble.
I agree with Ade but if that is the niche she wants to specialize in then more power to her.
[...] me asking for your help to rename Suzanne Dibble’s business law practice Lawyers4Mumpreneurs? Suzanne came up with the name Stellar which we loved as this name perfectly [...]