In December of 2018, I went out on my own and started my own leadership firm, The Pontefract Group. After twenty-five years of corporate and public sector experience centred on the concept of leadership, I felt it was time to build my own company.

When I launched The Pontefract Group—like so many others do when they start a business—I hired a lawyer and an accountant. They helped me with all the nuances of actually getting the firm up and running. I needed a business license, taxation numbers, insurance, and so on. The list seemed endless.

And then, one day shortly after that, I was in business. I was incorporated. Pontefract Group Inc. was born. But I still needed a website. What to choose?

Related but tangential, in early 2019 I committed to writing my fourth book with my publisher. It’s a book dedicated solely to leadership. It will publish in the fall of 2020. After all, if my firm becomes dedicated to all things leadership, it makes sense to write a book on the subject.

We have been playing around with names for the book. As is often the case I come up with words and phrases that are intriguing as a title, and then I get bitterly disappointed. When I search for that fancy new book title as a domain name, it is typically already taken.

The launch of my company and a new book got me thinking about the process I have used to register a domain name associated with each endeavour.

In the case of The Pontefract Group, I went straight to searching for a .com version. Thankfully it wasn’t taken—nor was anyone squatting on it—so I was able to capture it. But it sure would have been nice to have launched it with .inc at the end of it. My new business, after all, was incorporated.

My book writing is somewhat similar. It’s not a business, per se, but each book also needs to possess a unique domain name. I recently reviewed my prior .com domain purchases. After seven years of writing and publishing three books, I realized I purchased over 40 domain names. Why?