If you’ve been around here for a while, you may have noticed that our name changed. As of July 2021, the name officially and legally changed from Southern Belle Bookkeeping to Profit Meadow Bookkeeping.
I was doing a lot of work “on” the business in the early summer of 2021. I had just read The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz and was trying to think of any way to make signing up for bookkeeping services easier and simpler. I thought in-depth about every step of the process–from hearing about us to officially signing as a client. I thought, “How can I make this as stress-free as possible? How can I ensure that I’m not turning anyone away in this steps by making it too complicated? IS THERE anything that could turn people away before they even see our bookkeeping work?”
And then it hit me–Southern Belle is a civil-war era term, and could be connected with racism.
It was like a bucket of cold water had been poured over my head. Never in my life had I connected those two terms together, but I realized that it wasn’t a crazy jump to do so. I quickly googled “Could Southern Belle be considered racist?”. Guess what? It can.
Some people might criticize me for changing the name. After all, it would be madness to change my business name every time I discovered it could offend someone–because ANYTHING can be offensive to ANYONE.
If “Southern Belle” was a name that I truly adored, was committed to, and was perfect for my business, I wouldn’t have changed it–but that simply wasn’t true. “Southern Belle” had nothing to do with bookkeeping OR me. When I think of a Southern Belle, I think of a girl with makeup, a frilly dress, family money, and traditions. I am none of those things. I’m not girly at all, I know nothing about fashion, I grew up on food stamps and I hate doing things just because that’s how people have always done them. The true and only reason I chose the name was because I liked the alliteration of “Belle” and “Bookkeeping”.
So, since I discovered that my business name could be offensive and I had no true reason to defend it and try to keep it, I decided to make a change. I let all of my current clients know first and ran several names by them to get their feedback. In this part of the journey, I found out that TWO of my clients were personally offended by the name “Southern Belle”. Both were referred by people they trusted, and both said that was the only reason they even took a call with me. If two people who actually came to like and trust my business were offended by the name, how many wrote it off before they ever gave us a chance? I was costing myself business and I had no idea.
It was definitely time to retire the name and move on. After weeks of research, I decided on the name “Profit Meadow”.
Profit Meadow Bookkeeping
- Profit- positive connotation with money; Implies a gain of money
- Meadow- implies growth and peace; can be visualized
We have been doing so well under the name Profit Meadow, and I am proud of it.