As you do this, keep in mind that users spend 90% of their time on
another site.

If anybody uses sharepoint anywhere else they will be looking everywhere
for the "Site Actions" button and will be confused when they don't find
it.

Our PR guys want it to say "Start Here" so if you find out how, please
let me know.

Well, I went straight to the top on this one, and it seems that the only way to
do it is to write some JS that would look for the sitemenu id and then replace
it with the word(s) you want it to say.