Freelance - limited company name?

[AalyaSecura]

I’m about to take redundancy from my job, with a plan of doing consultancy / freelance work instead. I’m hoping to get some direct work via my existing contacts, but it’s likely that the bulk of my work will be as an associate for a few bigger consultancies - a reduced daily rate but no business development. So I need to set up a limited company - my first thought is just to use my surname + consulting - so equivalent of Secura Consulting Ltd, and the .com domain is available so can get a business email address. Or should I look to create a more abstract business name, that makes it sound a bit less one-man-band? It’ll be much harder to think of something that still has a domain name available. Interested in others’ thoughts.

What type of consultancy do work will you be doing?

It’s in a specialist area of HR; my own work would be biased towards a particular industry that’s niche and demands specific sector experience, but the associate work would be for broader corporates.

I would stick with your name especially if your work is niche. Don’t overthink it- get decent business cards.

God this is spooky - I did EXACTLY the same post redundancy 3 yrs ago, associate to agencies rather than my own clients and decided to use my name - as that's what I was selling!

It got me up and running quickly and I was pleased with the transparency of it.

Today, I have received confirmation from Companies House of my new, abstract name!

Eventually I decided I was ready to 'grow up' as business was good and I felt it was time to push forward into my next phase of growth so it felt appropriate to be more business like and less individual. Resulting name change is also a big rebrand with logo / new proper website etc

Might not answer your question but it was very easy to change once I was ready!

Thanks everyone for your thoughts, I think you’re right thesandwich that I could overthink it. Good to know Fusion that it hasn’t been too arduous to change at a later date. Glad it been working out well for you!

I’ve now had three conversations with consultancies about associate work - one was a ‘maybe’, one was a ‘probably’ and one was a ‘definite interest, come in and we’ll move it forward’ so a pretty good response so far!

People buy people. Your reputation and who knows you and trusts you matters most. Don’t worry about flashy websites. LinkedIn is key. Good luck.