Why I Added A "Y" To Jane

Why are there not checklists for people who want to start a new business? Here I am, two years into this business, before learning some very important information that could have major implications.

While I'm bummed that I had to deal with all this at all, I am very grateful that it happened early in my business and that I fixed the issue before it became a problem.

I am officially a LLC. When I incorporated, there was already another Sarah Jane Photography, LLC operation in Michigan. That's fine, I'll just use another name for my LLC. Thus I became Sarah Jane Portrait Photography, LLC. Quite a mouthful, isn't it? Since I never planned to use it for the main, day-to-day operations, I didn't care and didn't worry about it. Enter the KJ Business Collection.

They say ignorance is bliss and it really is. I started watching Module 6 which was all about legal things businesses need to know and do. It brought up all kinds of questions of licensing that had never crossed my mind.

To make things more complicated, I couldn't just take the lawyer in the video at her word because every state has their own rules. I had to start searching for the answers directly related to Michigan. The problem is that this is government we are dealing with and giving direct answers is not their forte. For example, you can file a DBA with the state AND with the county. Well, which is it? Do I need to file with both? I was not finding a good answer.

There was about a week when I was so stressed over all this that I was not sleeping well. To be on the safe side, I'd filed a Certificate of Assumed Name (what Michigan calls their DBAs) with the state. A few days later, I got the email that the filing had been... rejected! Apparently, because there is already an LLC with that name, I can't have a DBA with the same name. It doesn't make sense to me, since we have different official names, why they would care if we do business with the same name. I called the number to ask some questions and barely got off before breaking down.

I'd been told before that you need to have a strong reason of why you are doing this for when times get hard. This was the first time I really got overwhelmed to the point of crying. I was disappointed, frustrated, and tired of everything being so hard. My parents started talking through name options with me but that day was mostly devoted to just feeling everything. After a few nights of better sleep, things weren't looking so horrible anymore and I could start figuring out what to do.

I had two requirements for my name - that it be the least disruptive to what I had established and it had to fit my brand. Besides my parents, I talked with my friend who designed my logos and one of my clients who is a perfect example of the kind of people I am trying to reach. Before talking to them, I had picked what I thought were my best two options. I checked and both were available :) After I had everyone's opinions and thoughts, I had a decision to make. Ultimately, I decided that adding a "Y" into Jane was the least disruptive to the business overall.

When I picked my name, I did know that there were other Sarah Janes in Michigan but in my ignorance, I never thought it would be an issue. I wish the LLC forms mentioned something about needing a DBA if you were not planning to use the LLC name in daily business. It seems like something that they should mention but that's not the case.

As I said before, thankfully, it really has not been that big of a deal, overall. It's not too hard to change the name in most places. This website and my Pinterest pins are the biggest challenge and my genius father solved a lot of those issues by suggesting I have my old site & blog just be bare bones to redirect people to the new spelling. I still need to redo several pins so they have the correct, specific blog address, but it's much less daunting than I had been imagining.

You know, of all the things that could have happened, this was the best one. It will end up costing less than $100 to fix, it happened early, and it doesn't really affect my clients. I'd hoped that I wouldn't have any falls but that wasn't realistic, was it? I can't expect to start something completely new and unknown and not make any mistakes, as much as I might like to :)