Lorenda Howell Events formally LH Xperience

Hi guys. I’m Lorenda Howell and I am owner and full service planner here at Lorenda Howell Events. This is my first blog. Yay, how exciting!!! I want to talk about the name change. I started this company in February of 2017 and I wanted to name it “LH Experience”. Why? Well for a couple of reasons. First, I care about the experience. I care about the experience you have with me. I care about the process. I care about the things you and your guests experience.

Secondly, I’ve always had a one of a kind personality and over the years my friends and I have labeled it as the Lorenda Howell experience (the LH Experience). And to be honest, when you choose me as your planner, you get the Lorenda Howell experience. You get my one of a kind personality. It’s great, I find humor in almost anything. We’ll have inside jokes, we become our own “vibe”. It’s a good time, it really is.

The name change was prompted by growth and education. When I first started out I was like a lot brides that come to me. I had no knowledge when it came to branding. I had common sense and I knew a thing or two about running a business, but I had no insight or knowledge on branding, marketing or advertising. Truly, why would I? That wasn’t my thing. It’s not what I do for a living.

When I went to create my website (which, technically is not the first thing you should be doing according to Ohio State of Secretary) The first step is actually registering your business name. In my case it was good that I didn’t follow the steps, because when I went to buy my domain (web address) LH Experience wasn’t available and that’s how I ended up with LH Xperience. I didn’t want to part with the name because it had been a part of me for so long. I didn’t want to let it go, because when people heard my name I wanted them to immediately think about the “experience”.

As time went on, I found my name being difficult for people to spell. I would say “ it’s LH (e)xperience, without the “E” at the beginning” and for some reason, most people could not wrap their head around that. They would become so confused and ultimately just ended up asking me to spell it out. And even then there would be a typo (go figure, lol). I, then found myself becoming frustrated that others were frustrated and just couldn’t get the hang of it.

With all the frustration surrounded by the spelling of my company name, I started to realize that the spelling wasn’t just an issue because it was confusing to spell, it wasn’t user friendly. It wasn’t searchable, either. I thought to myself “no one is ever going to introduce me and say “this is Lorenda from LH (e)xperience, spelled with an “x”.” It’ll never happen and so it made branding very hard. I’m sure with a dream team, I could’ve found a way to market it, but I didn’t have dream team. I just had me, but me was enough. Not enough to market the name the best way possible, but again thats not my expertise. But I was enough, in regards to getting education from conferences like Wedding MBA, Refine Wedding Planners Community, and many educational business books and podcasts channels.

In April 2020, I made the decision to to rebrand my business. The rebrand included a brand new website and website host, updated services and pricing and the way I approach marketing for my company. Yesterday I made the announcement on social media of the official name change and today I am proud to say that my very first billboard went up with my new name.