Your Name Is the Brand

Mindy Weiss is an event planner known for celebrity parties and weddings. In an interview with The Particulars, she described how she started. She worked in a small stationery store, and she and her best friend began making custom invitations in her garage. Friends started to ask her to organize their parties too.

She was not keen at first, because the event planners she had met were cranky and unhappy. Then she planned one party. “I did my first party and from that party, I got like twelve parties, so that’s how it all started,” she said.

Her first celebrity client was Brooke Shields, when Shields was marrying Andre Agassi. The party got a lot of press. “Once you do a celebrity party, it’s like other celebs trust you,” Weiss said. “Security is always an issue, so they rely on referrals. It’s a close-knit circle that I found my way into.”

The hosts who booked Weiss after that first party could not test her work beforehand. They had one party to go by, and her name. So your name does for you what a brand does for a company. Here is why, and why one mistake can cost a name so much.

A name tells a client what to expect before they hire you

A client cannot see your work before they hire you. So they take your price as a sign of how good your work is. Your name works the same way. It is one more fact a client can go by when they have nothing else.

In 1999, the economist Steven Tadelis built a model of a firm whose only asset is its name. In his model, the name sums up the firm’s reputation. That makes the name worth money, so firms can buy and sell it.

A company builds its brand name over years. A service professional who works alone has a name instead. In the course’s view, the name does the same job. It tells a client who has not seen your work what your past clients found.

A New York broker began with a sale to a family from her child’s class

Lisa Lippman, a broker at Brown Harris Stevens in New York, used to work as an attorney. She moved into real estate for the flexibility it gave her while her children were young. In 2024, Robb Report described how she began. After “helping a friend sell an apartment to a family from her kid’s nursery class, she recognized her instincts mapped well on to that new career.”

The magazine also reported that she had been the top-producing broker at her agency for the last eight years. She was especially well connected on the Upper West Side.

A nursery class is a group of parents who see each other often and compare notes on the people they use. A name is built in places like that, one job at a time. For you, those places might be a school class, a building, or a club. They might be a circle of friends who give parties, like the close-knit circle Weiss found her way into.

One bad rating cut eBay sellers’ sales and prices

In 2004, the economists Luis Cabral and Ali Hortaçsu studied how sellers’ reputations change on eBay. Their model predicted that a seller’s first negative rating lowers the seller’s reputation. Then the seller’s sales and prices fall. The ratings and prices they collected from eBay broadly matched that prediction.

Those were sellers on a website, and the step to your name is the course’s own. Here is the step. Word of one mistake can reach people who have not seen your good work. For them, it may be the only thing they have heard about you.

A dog walker grew by word of mouth, which also carries mistakes

Ryan Stewart is a dog walker in Long Island City, New York. In 2006, a dog trainer suggested that he work with dogs. He chose walking, because few people offered it in his area at the time.

The Hustle reports that he started by handing out business cards to people on the street. Slowly, he built trust in his local dog community. His business grew by word of mouth and the quality of his service. Today he runs a company called Ryan for Dogs, and he has chosen to keep his team at two other walkers.

Stewart knows that the same talk carries bad news. “Dog people talk,” he said. “If you mess up someone’s dog, word is going to get out real fast.”

During the pandemic, many owners began working from home and walking their own dogs. “The pandemic took out at least half of the walkers I know,” Stewart said. “Only the people with the strongest reputations survived.” His own business dipped for six months, and then it was nearly full again.

Why hiding your name behind a company name goes wrong

Imagine a math tutor named Simone Varga in a town called Westfield. She calls her business Bright Minds Tutoring, because the name sounds established. She builds her website in one evening between two sessions. The site talks about “our tutors” and never gives her name.

Simone tutors Kenji Nakamura, and his algebra grade has climbed all year. At the school gate in March, Kenji’s mother tells another mother, Mrs. Pratt, about her. “Simone has been wonderful with Kenji,” Mrs. Nakamura says.

That evening, Mrs. Pratt searches for “Simone math tutor Westfield.” She finds the Bright Minds page, which names no tutor, and a tutor named Simone in the next town. She is not sure either one is the tutor Mrs. Nakamura meant. So she books a tutor whose name she can find. Simone does not hear about it.

Simone’s tutoring was good, and Mrs. Nakamura said her name. A client looks you up after a friend gives your name. The name Mrs. Pratt heard did not lead to Simone’s page, so the praise went nowhere.

Suppose instead that the title of Simone’s home page says “Simone Varga, math tutor in Westfield.” Mrs. Pratt finds the page with her first search. She writes to Simone that night, and they set a first session for the following week.

You can keep a company name. Stewart’s company, Ryan for Dogs, has his own first name in it. Put your own name beside the company name, so that the name your clients say leads a new client to you.

How to make your name the one a new client finds

1. Write down the name your clients use when they pass you on. It is usually your first and last name, or your first name and your trade. If you are not sure, ask the next new client how they heard of you. Listen for the name the friend used.
2. Put that name on your invoices, in your email signature, and on your social accounts. Put your name, your kind of work, and your town in your home page’s title and first sentence. Those are the words Mrs. Pratt typed when she searched for Simone. If you work under a company name, put your own name beside it. For example, a personal trainer whose studio is called Core House might title his home page “Daniel Ruiz, personal trainer at Core House, Evanston.”
3. Search for that name with your kind of work and your town, the way a client’s friend would. If the first page of results does not lead to you, change your home page until it does.
4. Write down the two or three places where your past clients heard your name. If you have not yet listed the places in your town, map where wealthy households gather. For example, a florist might find that four of her clients know each other from one tennis club.
5. Treat the next job in one of those places as the job the others will hear about. For example, a home organizer might have two clients in one building. When she takes on a third family there, she finishes on the day she said.
6. When a mistake of yours reaches a client, put it right as fast as you can, and pay for the fix yourself. Choose the fix that is best for the client, not the one that is cheapest for you. For example, an interior designer whose sofa arrives in the wrong fabric can reorder it that afternoon. She pays for the second delivery.

Next: You will see why a real limit on how many clients you take makes you worth waiting for.