How My Parents Named My Business

How my parents named my business.

Newbie entrepreneurs always get hung up on their business name, and I always tell them: “You’re worrying about the wrong thing.”

Naming your business sometimes seems like the hardest part. 

It’s not. Trust me. 

But your name does matter. For me, my name tells the entire story of who I am and why I do what I do. 

My parents named my business when I was just five years old. They didn’t know it, but the clubhouse & wooden sign they built me for my birthday became the namesake of my business. 

My dad built the clubhouse and my mom had my sign made at a flea market in Garland (anybody remember Vikon Village?) by some old man with a burning iron and a hunk of wood. 

Kind of perfect for a girl who grew up to make signs out of wood, huh?

“Brookielynn” is what my family called me when I was little. Although my name is Brooklyn (with one n) sometimes creatives just don’t spell so well. 

My neighbor Dustin and I used to play in my tree house for hours after school, on snow days and all summer. Mostly we played school, house, store, tag, and lawyer. I was always the teacher, checker, and “it,” he was always the lawyer, and the treehouse was always “base.”

And no matter how many friends were playing with us, I was ALWAYS “Mom”.

Once we created a library in the clubhouse while our moms were at work, and I think we pulled every single book out of both our houses and stacked them up in Brookielynn’s Bungalow so that everyone could come over and read with us. We didn’t really read; we just wanted to make the neighborhood want to come over and play. 

I’m guessing we only did that once because putting away books isn’t fun and neither is dealing with exhausted moms yelling at us for clearing out all the bookshelves in the house. As a mom now, can you even imagine? LOL

What so funny to me is that Dustin is my real life lawyer now. I still play store in Brookielynn’s Bungalow. It’s still my “base.” I still feel like I’m “it” after all these years— seeking out the others. And of course, I’m always Mom. 

I still have harebrained ideas like the makeshift library, and I still go to great lengths to try out my crazy schemes— most of the time for the same reason as when we were little: I want people to come play with me!

When it works, I beam and glow and smile from ear to ear. When it doesn’t, just like our library, my parents and close friends come and sit, pretend to read my library books, help me clean up, and offer advice for next time. 

Brookielynn’s Bungalow is still my clubhouse. It brings me back to being a kid and all the optimistic, everything-is-possible, dream-big thoughts I’ve always had. 

I was derailed for a little bit with public school teaching, but now for 7 years I’ve been doing all the things my brain thinks of doing. 

So when I say you should come play in the club house and dream big dreams with me, you should know I am an expert big-dreamer and a professional make-it-happener. Right here in my back pocket I’ve got several different ways to facilitate your own harebrained schemes. 

Want to host a workshop? 

Need one-on-one mentoring?  

Want a big wooden sign?

Need help building your social media empire? 

Want to craft at home but don’t know how to get started? 

Just need a girl’s night out — one that also recharges those creative batteries? 

Is there some other big idea you think I should be a part of? Message me! 

The game of life is short, so let’s get busy! Tag, you’re IT! 

xo -Brookielynn