What’s in a name?

As I often do, I was listening to the radio this morning while working on a cartoon.  My buddy, Eric, and his co-host Matt on JACK-FM in Calgary were talking about how many new parents have taken to buying the website domain name of their child’s name.  Even though the guys were kidding around about it, I know exactly why parents are doing this.  I’m sure at one point or another, every parent considers that their child may be somebody famous and their name will be well known.  The cost of registering a domain name really isn’t all that much, but the difficulty comes in getting it before somebody else does.

When I first started my business, I didn’t really know where things were going.  I figured I might be doing more graphic design or be known more for my syndicated cartoons through my business name, so I put that as a priority.  Thankfully, I got to cartoonink.com before anyone else did.  I’m sure if I hadn’t, and tried to register it now, it would have been long gone.  I did try to get lamontagne.com but it has been registered, and even lamontagne.ca (the Canadian suffix) was taken by a chocolate company in Quebec.  I figured I had Cartoon Ink and that would be good enough, because most English speaking people can’t even pronounce my last name, let alone spell it.  I was shortsighted.

The radio conversation, however, got me thinking.  Many artists, photographers, and designers are known because of their own names, difficult to spell or not.  Ten years ago, I had no idea where I’d end up, and things have turned out a lot better than I could have hoped for.  As I have no intention of slowing down now, it would seem prudent to assume that ten years from now,  I could very well be in a much better place than I imagine.

With that in mind, I contacted my web host this morning, and I finally bought www.patricklamontagne.com.  While I’ll still promote my business as cartoonink.com for now, in a few days (takes time for it to go through the system), anyone who types in the new domain name will end up on this site as well.  Almost every successful person out there was once a nobody on their way up.  When it comes to preparing for a future promoting your skills and talents, it is in your best interest to plan for being much bigger than you anticipate.  It is not arrogance or ego to think that, either.  Ambition and self-confidence can easily exist in harmony with humility.   An artist gains nothing by setting limiting goals or playing small.  Better to put that carrot out there on the stick where you can see it, to remind yourself that you can be more than you are, provided you’re willing to work for it.

Today, buying www.patricklamontagne.com was that carrot, and perhaps when my name and work becomes very well known, people will just type that into the address bar, assuming that they’ll find my work there.