MBA1250 Q&A Wednesday: How important is the name of my business?

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If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar.net today's question is from Philip and Philip asks how important is the name of my business? I'm starting a new business and I'm in the process of choosing my business name. Should I spend a whole lot of time on this? Is it really that critical? Solid question, Philip, and I'll be answering it in today's episode. Many people wonder, is the name of your business really that important? The way it sounds, how long it is, how it's spelt, all that? Or will people just get used to it and it's totally irrelevant to the success of your business? Well, today I want to share with you the answers to those questions as well as the fact that how the name of your business can make your life easier when you're starting out. Business is hard as it is, so let's try to make things a little easier on us. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So Philip is starting a new business and he wants to know how important is the name of the business. Well, I'm here to tell you 100% the name of your business is not unimportant, but the name is not the single most important thing that's going to determine the success of your business. It can contribute, it can help. So we do want to spend some time on it and consider a few things. And that's what I want to discuss in today's episode. When you're choosing or you're coming up with the name of your business, you got to start thinking of it as a brand, a brand name. Think of it as how people would talk about it, how they would share your business with other people, how they would have you heard about this product X? And I feel like this is a good barometer because if I don't understand what you're saying in that first sentence, in that first time you mention it, then your name is a little bit hard to understand, a little bit hard to hear, a little bit hard to remember. So say, for example, I say to you, have you heard of Amazon? Amazon is not a foreign word. We've heard of this before. It's also one word, so it's not like several words after another. And the response of the person is either going to be yes or no. Yeah, I've heard of them. Or no. The response you don't want to have is like, what is that again? What did you say? A bad example for a name for a business like Amazon would be, have you heard of the online store that sells everything.com? what? That's the name. That's what it's called. Or that's what it is about. So you really want to make sure the name of your business is as short as possible, as well as clear as possible. I really recommend using descriptive names. For example, a landing page software called LeadPages makes sense because it's pages on the website or pages on the web that get you leads. One of our sponsors, Earth ClassMail, for example, great name because you've heard of first class mail. But this is Earth Class mail because you can check your mail from anywhere in the world because it's all digitized. Again, descriptive names keep them as short as possible, as clear as possible, and easy to pronounce. You also want to make sure that they're not too difficult to spell. Why? Because most people are going to Google the name of your business to find your website to learn more about your business. So you want to make sure it's easy for them to write that in Google. Speaking of websites, you really need to consider what is available when it comes to domain names. Because you're going to need a website for your business. Whether you're an online business or an offline business, you need a web presence. Unless you want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars on a vanity domain name, you want to choose a name that has some sort of version of your name in a.com and a.net, and a.co. for example, my buddy Dave runs a software company called proof, and proof.com is not available. It's really expensive. So his domain is Get Proof, which is still good because it makes sense and it has the name of his brand and his business in the domain name. So as a strategy when it comes to picking or choosing a name for your business, I really like the idea of making a list list of possible names for your business. And in the beginning, just write as many as you can think of good and bad ideas. Once you have all your ideas for all the different names, remember the criteria that I kind of advised you on. Easy to spell, easy to pronounce, easy to say, easy, as short as possible, and narrow it down to 10, the top 10 names. Once you have the top 10 names, let's take a look at what's available online. One tool I really recommend is a name mesh name. Mesh.com allows you to put all the words that you would want or use in a name and it will search what domain names are available, what website domain names you can register. So say, for example, I'm starting a muffin business. So I would write a whole bunch of words in Name Mesh like muffin and bakery and delicious and treats and sweet and fluffy and all the words that I would think would be nice to have in the name or would work. And then it will do all the searching for you and come up with all the domains that are available. So it'll show you like fluffymuffins.com or hotmuffins.net, you get the point. Now to organize this whole activity, this whole project of choosing your business name in three sessions. You want to give it enough time, but you don't want to give it too much time because you can go on forever. I would do all the brainstorming in one session. Let's say you knock out two hours of your day and you do that brain dump of all your ideas. And then in the second session you narrow it down to 10. And then in the third session, you do the Name Mesh activity. Now, the reason why I like to break it up in three sessions is I like time to pass a little bit so you can sleep on these ideas, see what resonates with you in the meantime. You can also kind of share them on social or with your friends or with your mastermind group and say, hey, these are the names I'm thinking about. Which one resonates with you? Crowdsource. See what people think and also let these names settle in and see how they feel to you after a few days. So maybe you could spread these three sessions over a week. Having said all this and after giving you the formula, the plan for naming your business, there are plenty of businesses that rebrand. It's not something you probably want to look forward to doing, but it's possible down the line to change your name. It's not written in stone, but it's always best to nail it from the get go.

Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter?

Right.

And the best part? They accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so. Jennifer. Oh yeah. Huh? Discover's accepted where I like to shop.

Come on, baby, get with the times.

Right? So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback, I think.

Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide. Based on the February 2025 Nielsen report.

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To wrap up today's question from Philip, how important is the name of my business? Well, it is important, but I don't want you to stress out about it. I want you to follow the exercises that I laid out and give yourself these free sessions. And that way you'll feel confident that you made an educated decision on this topic. On naming your business, there's also one thing I want to add and that's I really think you should choose a name that you like. I know that sounds strange, but something that makes you smile, something that makes you feel like, yes, this is what I would love to call my baby, my business. You're going to be saying and typing and talking about the name of your business a whole lot from this point on. So you got to like it, you got to love it. You got to feel comfortable with it. It's got to be you. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe right now so you don't miss an episode by hitting subscribe. You make sure that the next episode, when it's available, gets downloaded to your device automatically so it's ready for you to listen to when you're ready. Also, if you have a question you want to ask on Q and A Wednesday, send it in right to my email at omar@100-mba.net alright, before I go, I want to leave you with this. Sometimes we really put too much time in naming our business. We may drag it out for months. I like the idea of the three sessions and this deciding after a week and then working on the business right before your launch. You can always revisit and say, is this the name I'm really happy with? By that time, you know, a few weeks, a few months have passed by and you really had a chance to get used to it. So don't put so much pressure on yourself. Go through the exercises and keep moving forward. Thank you so much and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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