“What’s in a name?” A famous question that is as relevant today as the day it was penned. There are a few things that are completely in your control when you think about starting a business or kicking off a new project, and the name that you select is one of them. It never ceases to amaze me how few people give the name selection process the attention it deserves when they are commencing.

There once was a time when you could take a product almost all the way to the finish line and come up with your name then. The companies who really understood marketing and brand management would spend considerably more time on this exercise, but some of them are the worst offenders when it comes to coming up with names. More often than not, what they would bring to market is a line extension, utilizing some portion of an existing brand (i.e. Coke Zero, Miller Lite). They successfully bi-furcated the target market, and end up losing cumulative share.

The Internet changed the importance of a name in a few ways that may not be immediately obvious when you are thinking through a name, but are exceedingly obvious when you hear them said out loud. The discovery process that consumers go through today for information about your product or company will most likely (I really want to say “absolutely will”) begin with a search engine. Thus the question, “what’s in a name?” Perhaps a more contemporary version (much to the horror of Shakespeare lovers around the world) is “how Google-able is your product?”

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I don’t know about you, but many times when a supposed flash of brilliance hits me, I believe I have the mental equivalent of gold. I tend to get a bit ahead of myself, and start thinking about all of the money that I am going to make, what the product is going to be, how much customers are going to love it, how I am going to sell it, and who is going to buy it. Somewhere in the middle of that process, I start designing the product; making decisions about the absolutes of what the product will and won’t be.

You will find that your first idea is seldom your best one. This is true along two separate axes. First, if you spend any incremental time on design and storyboarding, you are likely to improve upon the original idea in immeasurable ways. Second, if you start letting your mind wander, you may come up with a completely different product/solution that addresses the same need, either directly or tangentially, and does so in a far better way than your first idea.

Just as the notion of testing your idea with only one person is a guaranteed recipe for fail, using yourself as the sole testing point will likely land you in a situation where you could potentially create something that no one will want. This is especially true if you just start building the first thing is that pops into your head.

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The funny thing about great ideas – they are most often loved by the creator and completely misunderstood by those around him or her. Imagine Evan Williams trying to explain Twitter (www.twitter.com) in 2006 to people right before he went live with it. How many people do you think told him that a) they didn’t get it or, b) it was a terrible idea?

We’ve already established that passion for the project is one of the most important factors in determining whether or not there is going to be a success or fail. People with whom you share your idea are far less likely to have the same passion for the project that you have. After all, you have come up with this idea in what you would describe as nothing less than a flash of brilliance. In fact, you have probably spent many hours thinking about this one thing; how you would create it, how it will work, and, most importantly, why people will love it. Those around you with whom you plan on sharing this idea have not, and therefore won’t care and won’t get it.

The single most dangerous thing you can do when you have a brilliant idea for some new project is to ask just one person. Overcoming the gap of single denial is treacherous and terribly important for any new venture to see the light of day. After all, you are in love with this idea, but, like most new entrepreneurs, you are probably feeling terribly self-conscious about the notion that somehow you are going to have this great idea that no one else has had. Further, you will have doubts about your ability to execute against it. It’s very easy, then, for a would-be entrepreneur to become a wayward one by virtue of the fact that they asked but one person what they thought of their idea.

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Another essay for my community book project.

I carry a little notebook around with me everywhere I go. I keep this notebook so that I can jot down the ideas for random businesses which pop into my mind. I’ve had plenty of them, and some of them I have pursued with mixed results. When you are considering venturing off, there’s a two part question you have to ask yourself when deciding to get up off the couch and start your next thing which will drive whether you are searching for happy face or sad face emoticon in your email to your buddies.

First, “do you have any relevant experience?” If the answer to that question is “no,” that’s fine. It’s more than fine actually, as many a successful business has been started by someone who was in way over their head. You need to understand that your lack of domain knowledge will necessarily create some hurdles for you to clear, and some of the hurdles universal to all new businesses will get a little bit higher. However, there have been plenty of people who learn on the job en route to building a very successful business. How you ask? Well, that’s the second question.

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There could be any number of reasons that I finally decided to write this. I guess the biggest reason is that I keep saying that I will.  The astute reader will note that I have been guilty of breaking the very first rule.  I can’t have that, can I?  Besides, I am not a multi-millionaire, despite having worked for Microsoft through the mid-90s, a dot-com before the bust, and for one of Wall Street’s most hallowed names.  “How could that be?,” you ask.  Great question.  I will attempt to answer that within the confines of the essays herein, but I think the most obvious answer is that I’m just not that good.

That must be the reason, right?  I’m just not that good.  I’m not as smart as I think I am.  All of the talent, schooling, and work experience have failed me in my quest to hit it big.  Of course, I could put forth some of the statistics as they relate to the percentages of people who have actually accumulated a multi-million dollar net worth, but that wouldn’t matter.  Rest assured, it’s a very, very small percentage of the population.

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This is the first essay from the first chapter in my community book “The Failing Point” – essays will be published here online first, and I’m looking for feedback from the community.  The permanent site will be live shortly.  Each essay title finished the sentence “Under no circumstances should you…”

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I can’t tell you how many great ideas I have had in the last decade. I am literally a legend in my own mind when it comes to creating awesome products that everyone in the world must buy. It seems like I have a new idea every day. Here are a few examples:

• Spinner rims for baby strollers
• A teddy bear with a beeper network activated voice box
• A book about the Internet for college kids
• A location based dating application for the iPhone
• An SMS based trivia text game
• Fleece gloves which are sleeve length
• Children’s utensils that have cars, trucks, boats built into the utensil

As much as I would love to believe that I am the master of generating million dollar ideas, one look at this list would tell you that I am as much a fool as the next guy. However, being the eternal optimist, when I came up with these ideas I thought they were, in the words of Kenny Bania from Seinfeld, “gold, Jerry, gold!”

In any event, once I have come up with the most awesome product in the world, I come up with the most awesome name, which of course has the proper awesome domain name available, and then of course I figure out how I am going to promote this awesome product via a blog, Facebook, or even Twitter. The romance period of thinking up ideas often involves thinking I am awesome, which I clearly am not. The challenge is that these are all ideas, without any action plan. I never once put in the time, energy and effort to kick start any of these projects.

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