Is It Time To Rename Your Culinary Business? {BIG News!}
Have you ever felt the urge to change your business’ name? Do you cringe every time you say it out loud?
Today’s episode is about rebranding, specifically changing your company or brand’s name. It's an important decision you don't want to take lightly, so tune in to hear my top 3 criteria to consider when deciding if you should make the switch to a new name.
This topic is very fresh in my mind because I just went through a renaming and larger rebranding process. And yes — I’m going to unveil my new name in this episode!Be sure to listen for my special announcement and a valuable free training event.
Links from this episode
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Say hello to Cynthia on Instagram → @culinarycynthia!
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Cynthia Samanian: Cynthia Samanian: Hey there friends! Welcome to The Experiential Table podcast. I'm Cynthia Samanian, your host and creator of Cooking Class Business School. I help culinary business owners like you get off the exhausting hamster wheel of your in-person food business and teach online.
Have you ever felt the urge to change your business' name? Do you cringe whenever you look at your website because your company name just doesn't do it for you anymore? Well I get it. Today's episode is about rebranding, specifically changing your brand's name.
This topic is really, really fresh in my mind because I just went through a renaming and larger rebranding process. And yes, I am going to unveil my new name in this episode. Notice that I referenced renaming and rebranding separately. That's because your brand is more than just your name. It's also the visuals, the experience you create and the words you use. There's a lot when it comes to branding so today we're focusing just on renaming. And I'm going to share with you three criteria that will help you decide if you should consider a new name for your business. I have to say this episode is certainly inspired by my students. I think probably once every few weeks there's a student who asks me if they should change their name so I really wanted to create this as a resource for them, as well as a resource for you listening. And I also thought why not use this as an opportunity to share a little behind the scenes of what I'm working on when it comes to renaming my business.
I do want to give you a word of caution. Just because you don't love your name, or maybe you're feeling bored with it, that doesn't mean that it's the time to rename your business or that you even need to. Yes, I'm talking to you, shiny object chefs. If you are the type of person who loves getting into new projects, you find yourself getting distracted often because you like the idea of starting something new, proceed with caution here, okay? Rather than jump to a new name, I would encourage you to dig deeper and understand why you don't like the name you have before choosing a different name. This may take a while and it should because my guess is there's something bothering you or challenging you with the name you have today. Usually it's a symptom of a bigger issue.
Also renaming is costly, not just financially, but also with your time. Sure, it's pretty cheap to buy a domain, but the work that you need to do to get everything linked properly can be a doozy. I'm in it right now so trust me when I say it's not as easy as it seems. It's also the sort of thing that you don't want to do often because when you choose a new name, you have to do a lot of education to get people familiar with your new name, hence this podcast episode.
So when should you rename your business? Well, I have three criteria to help you decide. And with each one, I'll share with you how I made the decision for myself in my business.
The first question to ask yourself is, does your name cause confusion? There are many different reasons why a named could be confusing. Perhaps you have a name that's spelled unconventionally and people never understand how to actually go to your website. Maybe your name is too close to a competitor that's also in the culinary industry. Or in my case, maybe you have too many names and people don't know what name represents what. That's exactly what happened in my scenario.
So I have Hidden Rhythm the company, The Experiential Table podcast and Cooking Class Business School, which is my program. Now most people are like, well, what's Hidden Rhythm because 99% of my business is Cooking Class Business School. That's what I talk about most of the time.
So why even have Hidden Rhythm? Hidden Rhythm is a company name that I've had for years before I started teaching online. So it's just kind of this legacy name that I've carried with me. One thing to keep in mind when it comes to confusion, is that when people are confused, they are less likely to take action. There's a famous quote in the marketing world, which is "a confused person never buys." If people don't understand what it is you do, or they can't find you, or you go by three different names, they're less likely to take that next step with you. Whether it's to sign up for an online cooking class or follow you on social media, whatever it may be.
So I want you to ask yourself, does your name cause confusion? And you'll know this because people will most likely tell you. And it won't be super obvious, but it'll be subtle things like "oh, I tried to find your website, but I typed in a different name" or "I tried to find you on social media, but I missed the spelling. It wasn't the same." I know that in my business, people are confused when they get an email from me that's from Hidden Rhythm when they're in my program, Cooking Class Business School. So when those questions come up often enough, it's clear to me that that's something that could be solved by cleaning up the naming.
Now the next two questions are around alignment. Does your name align with what you offer? Let me share with you a story about what I experienced and maybe you'll see yourself in this example. So around the end of 2021, things felt much harder in my business. And when I say harder, it doesn't necessarily mean that business wasn't good. In fact, the end of last year was a great time of the year, but my motivation was dropping and I just felt slow and sluggish, and I knew that something was off.
It was really a red flag because I'm the type of person that usually can crank through a work day and still want to do more work later. Now, fortunately, I have a family that keeps me balanced, but I love my work. I absolutely love spending time in my business. So I knew that something was off, if my motivation had dropped.
As I thought about it more I realized, yeah, I really don't like Hidden Rhythm as my Instagram handle. I even did an Instagram poll and I think this was back in November and I polled my audience. Maybe you were there and I asked you, should I change Hidden Rhythm to something a bit more personal? I really liked the idea of bringing my name into the handle because I felt like I was hiding behind this company name rather than being the business owner that I am and I'm the one posting and commenting and sending messages.
The feedback from the poll was a resounding “yes, we want it to be more personal, put your name in it”;. So I brainstormed a bunch of names and I thought that I was going to just change my Instagram handle and everything would be good, but I knew that there was more to it.
So I held off. I held off on changing my Instagram handle and that came much later. In fact, a few weeks ago, I changed it to CulinaryCynthia. But again, I knew that there was more behind that feeling, which was truly not being aligned with my business and that the name was just a symptom of that. So what did I do? Well, I spent more time to think through what was going on in my head and what I realized was that Cooking Class Business School actually was outgrowing its name. Cooking Class Business School started as a program that taught culinary pros how to teach online cooking classes but since then it's evolved and grown.
We now talk about corporate experiences, recorded courses and even memberships. So that was part of the feeling that I was experiencing. It was this lack of alignment. The names that I had floating around the internet were not fitting the experience that was being offered. And for that reason, it was impacting how I even talked about the program and how I felt about my business.
Isn't that crazy? Something as simple as the name can really change your thoughts around your business. So I knew that Cooking Class Business School, as a name had to change. And that brings me to my next question which is does your name aligned with who you serve?
So here, I'm going to talk about Hidden Rhythm and The Experiential Table. Hidden Rhythm was the experiential marketing agency that I ran before running my online business. And at the time it was the name I loved because it really made sense in the context of in-person events and my competition, well, they were agencies who tended to have more boring names like XYZ Experiential Marketing, something like that. Hidden Rhythm had a great story behind it. I loved how it sounded and it just really made sense. And it also, wasn't just food-focused because my clients, while many of them were food brands, we also had clients in the health and wellness space. This is a great example of a name that I could keep. It doesn't necessarily hurt my brand, but it also doesn't help my brand. Hidden Rhythm as a name didn't really align with the audience I served, which is all of you, people in the culinary industry.
Now the name, The Experiential Table. Well, it's probably obvious now how I came up with it. This was a podcast that was all about experiential marketing. If you go back and listen to episode number one, you will see what I mean. It's a completely different topic and while, there are some things that overlap when it comes to experiences, whether it's teaching online or offline. At the end of the day, I would not have renamed my podcast, The Experiential Table, if it were launching today. I certainly know that the word experiential is not a word that I used before I was working in the experiential marketing space. And I am pretty certain that most culinary professionals don't use the word experiential on a regular basis so that was definitely a reason to consider changing the name of the podcast. Especially while I was considering changing the name of everything it felt right to just rip off that band-aid and reevaluate everything at the same time.
One thing that you can take away from this real life example is, does your name include words that don't make sense to your audience? Most of the case, I think in food, the words are a bit simpler and it's more straightforward, but if you have something that kind of going back to the earlier question is confusing or doesn't necessarily connect the dots for people, you may find that it's worth reevaluating that name and coming up with a name that includes words that your actual audience or your intended audience would find themselves using or would have a good grasp of.
To recap the three criteria you should consider or ask yourself when you are wondering if it's time to change up your name are the following. Does your name cause confusion? Does your name align with what you offer? Does your name align with who you serve?
So now that we've gone through all three criteria, ready to hear what our new name is? Say hello to Culinary Creator Business School. That is also the name of this podcast and it's also the name of my program. So that's it. Super simple. Culinary Creator Business School.
I really like the term culinary creator. I actually polled a bunch of you on Instagram to see if you identified as a culinary creator and a lot of you voted yes. And in my mind it made sense because whether you're a chef, baker, caterer, registered dietician, food blogger, you want to create in the kitchen. That is what you love doing. That is where you shine. And you're also all very capable of creating a meaningful online culinary business and that's what I'm excited to support you in doing.
Next week, you're going to see this podcast updated with the new name and new branding. Again, it will be called the Culinary Creator Business School podcast. So you will not be able to find The Experiential Table, but all of the old episodes will still be here. And finally Cooking Class Business School is now Culinary Creator Business School. And I have to tell you, I am so happy that I can still refer to it as CCBS. That is ingrained in my head so that would have been a tough one to change. In this program, you'll be set up to launch your online cooking classes in 90 days or less, even if you've never taught before. Even if you are terrified of the tech. There are some incredible updates to the program I cannot wait to share with you. I've simplified the program and even worked with an educational designer to help it work no matter how you learn. Ultimately, I want you to get results faster, and that is exactly what this program will do. Now that we've gotten the big news out of the way I want you to take your next step.
Renaming is just one decision you'll have to make out of a long list of decisions when you take your business online. If you want to learn the most final decisions that you'll need to make when starting your online culinary business, then I want you to join me for my new pop-up podcast series. It's called Zero to Zest. This is a pop-up podcast, meaning it's just temporary and you can only listen to it by getting a secret link from me. That's right. You can't find it in Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen.
In this free private podcast series, you are going to learn my proven plan that has helped hundreds of culinary pros take the leap online. You're going to learn the top three marketing mistakes that are most likely leading you to missing out on thousands of dollars in sales. And you're going to learn how you can speed up your results because time is money. And I'm going to show you how you can launch your online cooking classes in 90 days or less through my program.
Zero to Zest kicks off on May 23rd and episodes go live daily all week long. There's also a free Facebook group where I'll pop in to answer your questions live. Make sure you sign up before May 23rd. That's when our first episode drops, you can go to zerotozestpodcast.com. Again, this is just our pop-up podcast to celebrate the launch of the new program and to help you get started with teaching online.
Thanks so much for listening and I can't wait to see you in Zero to Zest!
