I've set a fair few businesses and brands up over the years and the art of choosing a name has become more and more challenging. Back in the day it was simply a case of checking you weren't infringing a trademark or using the same name as someone else in the local/national scene. But with the expansion of the internet, mass numbers of new businesses as well as cyber squatting, you now need the all important www.brandname.com as well as your local country (.co.uk) variant plus of course a suit...

I was approached by a writer recently researching a piece for the Royal Bank of Scotland's ContentLive website for businesses. Rather than do a telephone interview I decided to write down a few thoughts on networking. And I thought I'd share them here. What would you have added? On the principles of networking I think it’s important to listen more than to talk. Not only does that make you a nicer person to be around but in a networking sense you can then better adapt your story to serve that p...