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I’ve a tendency to put my hands over my nose, across my eyes while deep in thought. I can’t do this since my contact lenses mutinied, and now my damned eyeglasses are in the way.
So I sit with pad ‘o paper, silver laptop before me, trying to conjure up with a fictitious business name for myself. I am stumped. I can’t imagine how people mange to name their infants.
My ideas are clouded with the names I already know and like: Asian Pacific Family Center, New Leaf Center, Balanced Rock, Asian Pacific Psychological Services, La Familia, Center for New Beginnings. Heck I need some original, untainted notions.
I find fault with all the existing ideas.
What is my vision?
Well, I want the business name to be more than just “Helen Hsu, Psy.D.” since I envision future partners, associates, and services beyond my current scope. I could mimic my dear friends at “Fruge Psychological Associates” and be ‘Hsu Psychological Associates.” But frankly I worry that HPA sounds like some kind of acronym for a communicable disease. Anyways the the term "psychological" does not roll off the tongue.
While being broad in potential scope, my ideal business name would also hint at my specialties, namely psychological services, particularly to and about Asian American and other minority client communities. My work in tough yet beautiful cities like Oakland, San Francisco, Richmond, and New Orleans have gifted me with quite the rainbow perspective. But how to do this without pigeon holing the business into an ethnic enclave?
My favorite Chinese symbol is the phoenix, which seems a wonderful metaphor for therapy, what with rising up from the ashes and all. Yet I don’t want people to confuse the business with a Chinese restaurant. There are too many Phoenix Inns and Dragon Palaces out there serving tasty meals…not my expertise area to say the least.
A colleague Dr. Ing named her business ‘Compassionate Spirit.” A lovely name, but too nebulous for me, and my practice approach is not spiritually oriented. I also don’t want to be mistaken for a church movement or new age bookstore.
Finally, I decided a brainstorm could break up this logjam. I sat down, journal in hand, to just cough up as many names as possible, internal editor on shore leave. No matter if the names are ridiculous or unusable, just output for this page.
In fact, when I started brainstorming funny ones on purpose I had a great time.
From the brainstorm list:
Cultural Psychological Services
Hsu Health
Primal Asian Resources
Optimus Prime
H 3
Jambalaya
Panda Psychology
Psychology perspectives
and my all time favorite: Ragin’ Asian, Inc.
Ragin’ Asian may be the fave, but it doesn’t convey the compassion and tranquility that my practice provides. It’s more like a name for my aggro trail running, road racing, hell raising and protesting personal life.
By the end of all this, what do we have?
We have me with 20/20 vision thanks for laser surgery.
And we have: Balanced Life Consulting.
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