At some point in your time as a business owner you most likely agonised over your business name, or the name of a new venture or project. You probably switched back and forth between the ‘practical/descriptive’ name and the ‘creative/unusual’ name, and everything else in between. You probably asked friends and family what they thought of your top choices to gauge reactions.

That process was important. Not only because your business name is a key aspect of your business, but also because it gave you lots of opportunities to evaluate what your business is about and what you want people to ‘hear’ or ‘see’ when they come across your business name.

But is the name the be all and end all? That is, does your choice of business name determine the success or otherwise of your business? In some extreme cases, when you’ve chosen badly, the answer might be ‘yes’. But in general, your business name does not matter that much.

Over 99% of your success is going to come from the decisions you make after you name your business. There’s no ‘magic’ in the name. You could have chosen the most perfect, fantastic name in the world, but if you make lots of dumb marketing decisions after the fact, then it will be wasted. Conversely, if you market well, develop your brand, consider products carefully, have great customer service and so on, your name becomes secondary.

You have probably learnt a long time ago that there’s no ‘magic formula’ for anything in business – if there was we would all be doing it! Business success, no matter how well or poorly the business is named, will come from hard work, determination and will power.

Michelle Grice writes a weekly column for business women in The Western Weekender