Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining us from Point Loma California actually San Diego, it's just a kind of a suburb, but it's a real popular one is Alexandra Watkins. And the book is Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick. Alexandra, how are you today?

Alexandra Watkins
I'm great. It's nice to see you again. I was like nice to hear you say point low one. It's great that we've met in person here.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, we actually got to meet in person that doesn't happen often with me because my guests come from all over the world. But it's a pleasure having you here. I want to say something this particular book is The completely revised and updated book with new tools times and train wrecks as she said so and it does have lots of tools in it for you. So this is an option for my listeners. Also, she's got free mini classes Her website is eat my words.com there there's a test in name. There's a pet tab about her services, you can contact her also her course and her free mini master classes which I'm going to encourage my listeners to go up and check out but do check out eat my words.com That's a great place. So Alexandra, let me tell them a little about you. She's the Chief Executive boss lady at Eat My Words is a leading and outspoken authority on brand names. Her breakthrough creativity book Hello, my name is awesome. The one we're going to talk about is considered the brand name Bible and was named a top 10 marketing book by Inc Magazine. Since 2005. Four. She has in her firm created love at first sight brand names for clients from Amazon to Xerox. Her own name Hall of Fame includes Wendy's Baconator, the Nitro robotic vacuum, smitten ice cream, Spanish language, and Gringo Lingo frozen yogurt franchise and spoon me. And Church of cupcakes. I love that one. Priority. My words, she was an advertising copywriter working at leading West Coast ad agencies, including Ogilvy and Mather, where she worked for five years helping launch Microsoft Windows and learning the language of geekspeak. In the mid-90s, she jumped on to.com gravy, and rode the train until it crashed on her in San Francisco, in her backyard in San Francisco. So in her free time, she's very creative. She's imaginative succulent arranger, and unexpected containers. And I've been to her house. So I can tell you, she's got them all over. But there's more about her at her own website. So again, just go to eat my words.com and check it out. Well, let's get into the book. All of our listeners out there, have many of her own businesses or work for a company have gone through, you know, branding, exercises and changes. tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. I mean, I skipped a bunch, because your bio was a lot bigger than that. And how you became so well known in the art of branding. Why was it that you know, you got this accolade for being like ink Magazine's Top book plus the one that wouldn't help somebody named their company?

Alexandra Watkins
Well, my background is I was an advertising copywriter for a very long time. And every once in a while I would get thrown a bone and get to name something, and I loved it. And I was really good at it. So when I found out that naming was actually a profession, which I did not know, I switch gears and became a Neymar. And how I made a name for myself Ha, is I realized pretty quickly when I was freelancing for all of these other naming firms that naming firms do names that are based on you know, Latin linguistics, they're not really conceptual. And in advertising, I was used to making ads that made strong emotional connections with people. So I realized there was a gap that needed to be filled. A naming firm that would do names that made people smile instead of scratch their head. So that's what eat my words does. So yeah, like with the Wendy's Baconator or spoon me frozen yogurt or the Spanish language school gringo lingo. Those are all names that make people smile, and that's what we're known for.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and you and you have so many really great examples of the work that you've done. And I want to say, you mentioned in this book that your first book was published in 2014. And that this newly revised edition has a lot more ways of brainstorming tools, or a lot more brainstorming tools, and that you made significant modifications to what you call your 12 Point name, evaluation. And at the website, you've got taken name, test or test name. Could you tell the listeners a little bit more about the tools and how they might use them to basically create a new brand for their business? Sure,

Alexandra Watkins
well, that's the tool the smile and scrub Well, the free mini masterclass can help you if you go under Course naming course. You'll learn about the course and I think they'll just some free will be we're just changing everything on the website right now. Should be some free lessons a mini masterclass you can do that will help kind of teach you how to create better names, but the smile and scratch us where on the homepage, you just click on testing name. That's where you can that's the 12 point name Evaluation Task. It's been featured in The Wall Street Journal and used by, you know, 10s of 1000s of people to evaluate their name. So smile is an acronym for the five qualities that make a name awesome. And Scratch is the flip side when they're all the deal breakers. So I always say if it makes you scratch your head, scratch it off the list. So the acronym smile stands for the S stands for suggestive. You want your name to suggest a positive brand experience, right? Don't make people guess. Don't be ambiguous. The M stands for memorable. What makes the name memorable is if it's based. It's something that already exists in our knowledge base. So for instance, the bike lock company kryptonite, we all know kryptonite from Superman. We see the correlation hey, if kryptonite is repelling Superman and kryptonite bike locks, is going to repel bike thieves. So that's like a memorable name. That is a great metaphorical name. The AI stands for imagery. So like kryptonite, right? I was great imagery. You You hear it? You see Charlie picture Superman like ah, so yeah, so you want your name to have imagery, because if people hear your name, and they can picture something in their head, it's going to be easier for them to recall it later. Okay, yeah. Well,

Greg Voisen
let me ask you a question. While we're in the middle word SEM. I know we have Eleni, but I do want to throw one out you. You you've been mentioning a lot about coming up with this and kryptonite is, is the reason I say this. When somebody does this, and there was a question I had, we might as well get to it. Now. When you go to get a domain name, or you find out that somebody else has the kryptonite thing. What is it that you tell people to iteratively to do? Do I mean, you obviously don't say don't give up. There's other ways to change the name. If this is like, Well, I gotta have kryptonite. No, you don't have to have it because legally you're gonna get a cease and desist from somebody who's already got it. Right. What did you find in that arena? As far as I don't

Alexandra Watkins
think everybody knows not to give up. A lot of people do give up a lot of people start looking for a name, they just start on GoDaddy and like that's the last thing we do or look for domain names. So yeah, of kryptonite. It's not available because you know, and it wouldn't be because the bike lock or something else how's it who knows? Um, we just say add a modifier. So, you know, kryptonite locks will be a really easy modifier? If so, there's a lot of creative workarounds with domain names. So for instance, we were naming a popcorn gourmet popcorn or pop psychology. We couldn't get the domain name so we use the tagline which was crazy for popcorn. My favorite one is a gourmet. It's a smoked turkey mail order Turkey is right. And its name the company has called Greenberg smoked turkeys, you know, not a clever name or anything family name, but their domain name is unforgettable. And it's Gobble gobble.com.

Greg Voisen
Oh, that's good one. That's a really good one. Well, let me content let me have you continue on. For the listeners. We were at VMI L.

Alexandra Watkins
Yeah. So the L and smile Hold on one second. Have a bit of a cold that Edelman's milestones for legs. And legs means that you can extend your around through wordplay. Right? So an example is, uh, I think Jimmy Buffett, God rest his soul has, you know, he's licensed his name to a number of things, and one of them is a retirement community. And it's a big shame for us 55 Plus, and it's called latitude Margaritaville. Right? So we know Margaritaville from Jimmy Buffett song. So and there's changes in latitude, right? So the street names are like cheeky Charice. One is, I think, salt shaker way he has. There's the post office is called the coconut telegraph. The gym is called fins up. The dog park is called barkery DeVille. So that's a name with legs, right? Eat my words, my company, you know, we have a new value menu. We, our blog is called the kitchen sink. We have packages, like our new packages names are really cute. They're small fry. So these are for like, you know, really, you know, bootstrapping entrepreneurs, small fry, fun size and snack pack. Those are really fun, evocative, memorable. And they all tie in to eat my words, right food and beverage. So that's why a name with legs. It's hard to do. But if you have one, you're golden. And your employees, your customers love it too, because they'll come up with ideas for you.

Greg Voisen
Now, what's the E four? E

Alexandra Watkins
stands for emotional, your name has to make an emotional connection with your target, or it's going to go right over their head. So yeah, you want so that's why if you can have a name that makes people smile, you know, that's a great emotion now, right? That's really one of the best emotions to have is making someone smile. And that triggers something in our brain that's gonna, you know, it's that little jolt of dopamine, right? We all want that. So that smile?

Greg Voisen
Well, that's a good one. I always wonder, and you probably know more about these. But I want you to talk to the listeners. You mentioned some memorable domain names, you were just talking about some of them that people had, as a result of creative workarounds, which you mentioned even before when we run into a roadblock, or we don't want to give up. Can you speak with us about getting a domain name? And how not to get hung up on the one that we want? If it's not available? Yeah,

Alexandra Watkins
well, let me tell everybody this that will make I think people feel better. For the first 13 years that Tesla was in business, their domain name was not tesla.com. So if you had gone to tesla.com, you would have seen a very ominous looking screen that said, this site is owned by Gandhi net. Now, if you were in the market for Tesla, what would you do? Would you give up like, I can't find it? No, you just get just go to your browser, go to Google and type in another word where Tesla Tesla cars test drive a Tesla with, you know, whatever Tesla showroom, and boom, you would you would see Tesla, you click on it, you're there? Have you even noticed what the domain name is? No. Do you care? No. Are you not going to buy a Tesla? Because they don't know tesla.com? No. So if Tesla was able to be wildly successful with Tesla motors.com Was their domain name, then you can do the same Facebook for until 2010 was the facebook.com Basecamp and Dropbox both both have millions of users, and their domain names were respectively Basecamp HQ and get Dropbox. So let the roadblock stop them. Do you just add in a word. And sometimes company is they then they come around, they get the money. They pony it up, and they buy it. But other times they don't. And you don't nobody expects anyone to own an exact match domain name anymore.

Greg Voisen
Very good. That's great advice. It really is. I mean, because I know there's a lot of people that come up with these brainstorming great ideas, and then they go look on Google and they go oh crap, it's already taken by somebody or somebody wants you know, about or $10,000 for it, whatever. They're asking for the domain name I get that.

Alexandra Watkins
It can I just tell everyone if you want to see like how bad it is out there, go to a website called brown bucket. They sell their aftermarket domain names, and they're hideously bad. They are terrible. But that's all that's left oft, you know, in there, they're not real words. And if they are real words, they don't make any sense mash together. So yeah, that's all that there is. Just add a modifier word, make your name, a name that people can spell pronounce. And remember that yeah, and no one cares about your domain name. They, they really don't.

Greg Voisen
That's great. That was a great story about Tesla, too, because I just bought one in December. I don't remember typing in Tesla, or whatever I just typed in, test drive Tesla, like you said, and that's gonna take you where you need to go. So I think people need to remember that. Now you you speak in the book with about creative brief. And I don't think a lot of people listening here know what a creative brief is, but somebody like you and advertising is, what is it? Why should we do this before we start to brainstorm the name, a

Alexandra Watkins
creative brief is your roadmap. So a lot of people start brainstorming by, you know, they're having a glass of wine with their friend, or they are in a conference room sitting in, you know, like, sitting in a white room, staring at a whiteboard, is not how colorful ideas materialize. Right? So the first thing you want to do is fill out a creative brief. So you have some type of so you have something you can check back with to make sure does your name fit your strategy and your goals? So the brief is, in the brief is in my book, by the way. And it's also if you do my course, you get the brief. The brief is, it will ask you for the you know, the background of your company. What tone and personality do you want for your brand? And name? You know, do you want a name? That's playful? Do you want a name that's more serious? So we'll ask you that? What are tell us about your target audience? Whose Do you want to be aware of them, and you want a name that resonates with them, you know, we talked about making an emotional connection, it's really important that your audience gets your name. You know, people want to feel clued in not clueless. So the brief will ask you to write an acid test sentence where you use your name and the sentence. So you're going to be doing things like that in that way. And also, when you start brainstorming, you can look to your brief for words, just start brainstorming with, you know, they're not going to be your name. But if you were naming, you know, new bike law, like kryptonite, and you were, you know, security, you know, secure was a word in your brief, you could look up metaphors first security, right? You might see Fort Knox. So things like that. So yeah, that's what a brief can help you with. And you absolutely I can never start a project with other brief.

Greg Voisen
You know, you were mentioning earlier over a bottle of wine or people in a whiteboard room or whatever. And you're saying that, you know, that isn't really where you should go to do this? What are some of the secrets for brainstorming? And how can we create the best name if we're alone? In other words, we're just, hey, we're entrepreneur, come up with an idea. And we want to brainstorm, we're not going to take it to a lot of friends. We're not going to have bottles of wine with Joe and Mary and Bob to do the name. How can I prepare myself to get into this compressed creative state of mind that I need to be able to actually do some brainstorming around a name?

Alexandra Watkins
Well fill out your creative brief, so you have some somewhere to start. And then just, you know, look, go to a thesaurus, right? Like if you were looking up the word secure, go to it. The Saara, if you get the book there's tons of brainstorming exercise of my course is like my book on steroids and Technicolor, there's way more brainstorming lessons in there. But you will, you know, do things like you know, one trick I do is I look at stock photos. So, you know, if I was looking at security, for instance, I could look at stock photos like what are some images that are coming up? You know, this RS Chachi BG really sucks for names right now. But it can help you kick off your brainstorming by giving you other words to explore. Yeah, you know, I use rhyming dictionaries, right? I was naming you know, the frozen yogurt stores spoon me. I like they the client really like the word yo. And so I looked up yo and I saw it, you know, I came up with Joe and Chad, Chateau yo. So yeah, do you not discount a rhyming dictionary? The one they use is called rhyme zone. So

Greg Voisen
yeah, good. That's a good guy. Yet People you know, I know that in the past when I've done it, the most creative space I've been in by myself, was exactly what you said, I actually picked up with a thesaurus. And I use the thesaurus to stimulate my brain to actually come up with some creative names. What's your sense about testing these names once you get them? In other words, hey, I want to take these out to my group of friends, I want to see what they think, you know, there's always going to be doomsayers out there, but what do you feel about testing a name? Not

Alexandra Watkins
a fan? Right? Now know what, what happens when you show names to people, whether it's a Survey Monkey, or you're asking someone, you know, what do you think of this new name? What they hear is, what don't you like about this name? When you ask someone for their opinion, it's an invitation to criticize. So instead, run your name through the smile and scratched us. If you really want to get an opinion on it. I just was on one of these calls. have, you know, you can hire me to do a professional name review, I'll review up to 40 of your names. And they're really, they're really enlightening and eye opening. And I encourage anybody to do one before you pull the trigger. Smile and scratch us can help you. But there's, there's if you have a lot of names, you know, go for the name evaluation. But yeah, do not ask people what they think the only time we do that is if you're not in the target audience, so you're, you know, advertising to teenagers, like you don't know their latest slang, you want to make sure that that and not Don't ask what do you think of this name? Just name, you know, what does this name mean to you? Or do you just want to even check the Urban Dictionary? Right? That's a hotbed of, of slang. A lot of it's super sexual and gross. But, you know, the way I use the Urban Dictionary is, if there's a lot, you know, if there's 500, or more thumbs up to something, that means it's probably in the lexicon of teens. But if there's not a lot of people that commented on it, we just go for it.

Greg Voisen
And all these dictionaries that you're recommending, are they all online? People can just type in your dictionary and then just do the search. Yeah, so much. Okay. So look, rebranding is a big deal for people out there listening, and it's happens a lot people talk, well, we need a facelift, the company needs something more, it needs some juice, or there's somebody very similar to us out there. That's stealing part of our audience, because they have a very close and they're in the same business. Right? It's not that they're in the same. Lots of people think that they need to rebound and it happens a lot. What are some of the pros and cons of rebranding? Well,

Alexandra Watkins
to me, the only con is that, you know, you're gonna have to pay for new materials. But we have renamed to businesses that are more than 100 years old. And so it's never too late to change your name. The great thing now about rebranding and changing your name, compared to the old days? You know, in the old days, you know, how would you let your customers know, there was no Internet, there was no email, and now you rebrand, you do a redirect of your website, from your old name to your new name. So it's really seamless, people don't even notice until they get to the new site, you send out emails to your customers is a great reason to get back in touch with everybody you ever worked for. And tell the story of why you're changing your name. Um, you do you know, in social media, it's just really easy now, for somebody to find you. And for you to get your story out there. And it's it doesn't cost anything, right unless you're doing advertising. You know, you're paying for you know, people subscribed to like MailChimp, so you know, extra to send out an email to let people know. But yeah, I recommend rebranding if like the, one of the ones we did for one of the 100 year old companies was a bank, and it was named First National Bank of Syracuse. But it was in Syracuse, Kansas, not Syracuse, New York. So yeah, and it just sounded like every other First National Bank. So they were really a maverick bank. They wanted a maverick name. The first naming agency they hired wanted to name the maverick bank. And when I talked to them, because they needed someone they knew said, Hey, call Alexandra just check in. And I said, Look, nobody wants a bank to be a maverick with their money. You want your bank to be a safe place. to park your money, you're getting a modicum of interest, but it's safe, right? FDI FDIC insured. Maverick who you want to be a maverick with your money is your stockbroker. You know are like investing in NFT isn't and crypto. That's a maverick thing to do not have bank banks are safe. So we, we they were all about making dreams come true. They were an agriculture company. They funded a lot of farms. They help people buy really expensive farm equipment. They had served generations of families. So we rebranded them dream first.

Greg Voisen
That's very cool.

Alexandra Watkins
Thank you.

Greg Voisen
That's a good name, then that the National Bank of Syracuse became Dream first.

Alexandra Watkins
Yeah, First National Bank of Syracuse became dream for so they got the first.

Greg Voisen
But yeah, well, I'm sure they were happy with that one. Because yeah, yeah.

Alexandra Watkins
And I'll tell you, that was a tough one. Because there's most of the people, the bank had been there for, like 25 years or more. And so you know, there's people get emotionally attached to names. But yeah, everybody loved the new names. And that happened with the health care company, health care chain of healthcare service, service centers that we name, they were called Queens care, and they had had that name for 100 years or more. Everybody was attached to the name, they were forced to change it. And they didn't want to change it. And that's always really hard for us. Because, you know, here they are, they're so attached. And like, anything we present with them, it's not going to hold a candle to the old name, but we gave them a name that they love. And it's Grace Light, because it's a faith based health health care centers. And so Grace Light is a really pretty name. Yeah, Grace Light health centers. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
question for you on those old names. You know, you look at like Ray Kroc bought bought McDonald's or the franchise, right? And you know, McDonald's brothers and ranch in San Bernardino started it. And then you know, he got in there. And the brand grew and grew and grew. Things like that, or Apple or others you haven't seen and I don't think they ever would change it. But I have seen tag lines change. Yeah, talk a little bit about the tag line and how important it is. Yeah.

Alexandra Watkins
tag lines can change like. For the longest time, fast signs, had the tagline more than fast more than signs. They clearly outgrew their name and should have changed. And I saw they finally did change their name. But yeah, if you have an iconic tagline like Nike, just do it. They're never going to change it. Yeah, you can change your tagline. As your business evolves. It's perfectly fine to change your tagline. Your tagline should play off the name. So our tagline is fresh names and taglines that stick and a fresh lens and taglines to go, I think is what I change it to. But yeah, tagline. It's important. It can elevate your name. And it really helps if you have a name that your tagline can play off of. So for instance, we worked on with Oregon hazelnuts, and their tagline that I did is indulgence in a nutshell.

Greg Voisen
adulterous in a nutshell, that's a good one.

Alexandra Watkins
The Church of cupcakes, their tagline as worshipers welcome.

Greg Voisen
You, I love those taglines. And I know a tagline when you get a really cool name. And you want it to connect with that tagline, meaning, you know, the tagline, the tagline can be really, really important. And some of the ones you just shared with me are really cool. And there's 1000s and 1000s of others. So I'm going to direct my listeners to go to your website, eat my words.com because that's where you're gonna find more about the free mini classes in the course, the book, the services and her portfolio. So, in wrapping this interview up if you were to leave our listeners with three key points from your book, what would they be and how can they put these ideas in place? Either during a rebranding or with a new name? What three things would you want to leave them with? Um,

Alexandra Watkins
definitely. Look at the scratch part of the chest of all the things that you don't want your name you don't want her to be spelling challenge. hard to pronounce like those are the two really big one. So make sure take the take the free jazz You'll go through scratch. The other thing is yet, don't start at GoDaddy and looking for a name. Just worry about your domain name later. A great place to brainstorm domain names is called name studio.com. And then, the other thing is, rethink if your name like your name is going to last longer than any other investment you make in your business, think how long you've had your own first and last name, how many times you've used it, you've written it, you've set it, other people have written it and set it and think about your brand name the same way. And when you're starting out with a clean slate, like if your name has any difficulty, like write your last name is hard for people to pronounce and spell. So when you're naming a brand, like why would you want to give your brand the same disadvantages. So when you're starting out with a clean slate, don't give your name any disadvantages. And keep in mind that your name is going to last forever. So make it good and make it a name that you love.

Greg Voisen
interesting you say that because a long time ago when I was in the financial services industry, my last name is voice and it's actually pronounced if you're French was on but in here it's voice in and I actually put a hyphen in between voice and in. VO I hyphen i and i put I'm in your voice in your financial future. Oh, I like that. That's good. So So in other words, I just put voice hyphen i en. And it you know, it worked. I used it for a long time. I think people remembered it. The thing was, is it's real easy to remember, when you do something like that. If you do have a hard last name.

Alexandra Watkins
Oh, absolutely. I always tell people and I asked people that have difficult names like how do you get people to remember that? Remember it? So yeah, if you do have a difficult first or last name, give people an easy way to reach to remember it. Right? Yeah.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, very cool. Well, great advice for our listeners. And for all of our listeners, please go out and get a copy of this book, we'll have a link to Amazon will also have a link to our website where you could you can learn more about the book as well. She's got a button in her website, let's talk do reach out to Alexandra and talk to her because she's really got some great ideas she will get back to you. She's interested in helping you create an another new brand and name for yourself that is memorable. That you're not going to scratch your head when you when you look at it. So if it's if it has the, as you said the attributes of the smile and scratch test, which is in the book, when you buy this book, that's one of the tools that you get. That's the best way to go. Any parting words?

Alexandra Watkins
No, I'm just gonna tell everybody my favorite name ever is a bike pump named Joe Blow. Oh,

Greg Voisen
that's a good one. Was that one you named?

Alexandra Watkins
No, unfortunately not.

Greg Voisen
But it is a good one. Joe, that is a good one most? Well, it's been a pleasure having you on inside personal growth and spending a few minutes with our listeners, giving them an idea and talking about your new book. Hello, my name is awesome. And how to create brand names that stick and actually how to use the smile and scratch test. That was a really good, really good advice. Thank you, Alexandra for being on our show and spending some time with me. So the rest of the listeners can learn more about you and your website which is eat my words.com Namaste.

Alexandra Watkins
Thank you.

Greg Voisen
Bye.

Alexandra Watkins
Bye.