How To Create Brand Names With Buzz

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Welcome to the Legacy Leavers series on Success Secrets Exposed. Tune in live every Tuesday at 7 PM Eastern Time or Wednesday mornings in Australia on W4CY Radio and Talk4TV. The series showcases experts, changemakers, and disruptors Leaders leaving a lasting legacy with those sharing their wisdom with the world.

Good morning, good afternoon, and g'day to you all, and welcome to another episode of Success Secrets Exposed. Today we're going to be talking about brand names that live for a lifetime and beyond, and my guest today is Alexandra Watkins, who is the brilliant mind behind the naming firm Eat My Words, and she's the force that's been creating unforgettable brand names since 2005. From iconic names like Wendy's Baconator to countless memorable brands for companies, coaches, consultants, Alexandra is a true wordsmith. She's also the author of Hello, My Name Is Awesome, which is named top 10 marketing book by Inc. magazine. What's Alexandra's legacy? To help businesses create brand names that stick, stand out, and live on forever. So let's dive into her insights today on the smile and scratch test. I bet you've got— bet that's got you curious. Well, and why personal brands can hold your brand back, as well as the art of crafting names that truly resonate. So please help me welcome to the show Alexandra.

Hi, Sally!

Hello, how are you?

Good, greetings from California.

Thank you. It's so exciting to, um, be talking with you today, and I know we've just had an even more exciting pre-conversation about even more questions and things we can dive into. Um, but for the audience's context, can I ask you to tell us a little bit of your backstory and how you got started and created Eat My Words?

Sure. So I started my career as an advertising copywriter, and every once in a while I would get thrown a bone and get to name something, and I loved it. I love naming. It was so much fun. But I had no idea that naming was actually a profession because I was in advertising and Naming is really part of branding. So branding comes first, you know, you're making the logo and this new product or new company. And then advertising was always at the end. So they lived two separate, two separate worlds. So yeah, I didn't realize it was a profession. And once I figured that out, you know, nearly 20 years into my career, I switched gears and became a namer.

Yeah, absolutely. So I can literally see that, you know, that idea blossom and open up and you just did you deep sort of did you great big pivot and deep dive into the naming side of things? Because I could absolutely see you light up as soon as you started talking about that.

I love what I do. I love what I do. It's been in March, it will be 20 years and I still absolutely love it.

Yeah, awesome. And you've been the name or the influence behind some really iconic names. And I know we mentioned in the intro the Wendy's Baconator, but what's been some of your most fun naming experience or your weirdest and your quirkiest? Tell us some stories.

Well, okay. Well, my, my favorite name that I've ever done is a frozen yogurt franchise that I named Spoon Me. Um, and we'll talk about that later because I want to talk to you about monetizing your name. I'm going to tell you how Spoon Me monetized their name and made cold hard cash, uh, from their cool name. Uh, so, uh, a funny naming story is, um, I had a client one time and they were developing the first cannabis breathalyzer for law enforcement. And I was in their office and I saw a poster and it said smoke weed for science. And I was like, oh, what's that? You know what it said? You could get paid $250 to do it. You know, $200 Amazon gift cards, $50, you know, Uber card so you wouldn't, you know, drive there and back. Smart. Um, so I'm like, I want to do that. And they're like, oh, you can just do it in our office. I'm like, no, no, that It's a really bad idea. Like, really? Like, who would do— no, no. I have some really cool clients, but like, sorry, I draw the line with like that. So, and this is— I think cannabis was— medical marijuana was legal in California at the time. But yeah, they let me sign up for the study, and it's like BYOC, you know, bring your own cannabis. And it was held at San Francisco General Hospital where I was living in San Francisco at the time. And it was hilarious, just the whole thing was hilarious. Um, they kept wanting me to smoke more and more because they want you to get super high because they're trying to test the breathalyzer. Um, I was like really out of it. So then they release you. Like, it's not like, okay, just chill in the waiting room. Like, there was no waiting room. It's like when they were done with you, it's like, okay, we're all done. And that hospital is a total maze, you know. You know what hospitals are. Oh my gosh, I could barely find my way out of there. So I, um, I'm not a fan of Uber, so I took a Lyft home. I paid my own money, took a Lyft home, and then I had the munchies, so I ordered Uber Eats.

That's brilliant. Love it. Fantastic. Um, and you've, you've talked, uh, when we were talking earlier today, you were recently asked a question as it relates to what would you rename yourself. Or something along those ideas if you could. So yeah, share some of that with us as well.

Yeah, someone asked me today if I could rename myself, would I do that or keep my own name, Alexandra? Um, I— and I do love the name Alexandra, and, and I've had it much longer than most people named Alexandra. Uh, yeah, I would rename myself Roxy. Like, I love the name Roxy. I just— anyone I meet, anytime I meet someone with the name, like, it's just one of those super cool Badass girl names. I'm like, I love that name. But what's funny is I have named 2— worked on 2 baby names recently. And one, I actually— I was, while I was talking to this guy, telling him my baby naming story, my friend sent me a photo of the baby. So the baby's name is Max. I didn't name him Max. I did his middle name. And this is my friend Angelique. And you know, it's really hard to name a baby before you've even met the baby. There's really no context for the baby. So she's my former intern, and I was at her baby shower, and she was very pregnant. And I said, can you feel the baby moving around? She said, yeah, you know, when I put on Bob Marley, I can always feel the baby like dancing around. So they were gonna— they were considering 2 middle names. One was Amadeus, which I love. The other was Elon, which I think is pretty polarizing, um, here in the States. And so when I got home, I was like, Marley. And so I texted her, I'm like, Max Marley is such a good name. Like, please consider Marley as a middle name. So she literally just texted me like half an hour ago with, with, with Max taking his first bite of food, avocado, and he's wearing the little Bob Marley bib that I got him. It's so cute. Yeah, I got him all these. I got him Bob Marley baby books and Bob Marley bibs, and there's onesies, there's all kinds of stuff. So yeah, I was really proud that I could tie a baby name into something actually about the baby. And so when he tells people his middle name, he'll be able to say like, oh yeah, I could dance around in my— can you imagine? Like, how cool would that be? So silly. But, um, I named another baby recently. This is my friend, um, Jen Nikolai. And I was— she was having a boy, and I'm like, what about Nick Nikolai? And she's like, no, that's too clever for her. So I said alliterative names like that. And this works in anything, not just with babies and businesses. The alliterative names where they start with the same letter. So they were stuck. So I came up with Nathan, Nikolai, or Nate as the nickname, and they love that. So I just met baby Nate the other day.

Beautiful. So you do baby names as well as business?

No, I don't. Yeah, no, I put that in my family Christmas letter this year that I named 2 babies and I have no charge for that. Yeah. No, I have. The first time someone asked me to name a baby, it was my friend Melissa. And I said, I will name your— she's like, how much do you charge? And how much— what, you know, what can I pay you? And I'm like, give me $1. Then I can forever say I've been paid to name a baby. But like, no, I'm not gonna charge someone to name their baby. I mean, not one of my friends.

Yeah. That's such a great story. We've just had actually a question coming in. Oh, someone's just asked, do you do voiceover cartoons? Because your voice sounds familiar.

Oh no, gosh, I wish I knew what cartoon character that was. No, no, I don't.

She might let us know. So that's awesome. Thank you for sharing some of those great stories. And I think with, as you've just said, with the baby scenario, having that, you know, the name or the story behind the name or the story behind the story is give somebody such kudos and juicy, interesting, intriguing storytelling opportunities for a lifetime. So that's where that forever, forever comes.

A lifetime. Oh, and like Nate, like Kath, his, his mom told me, she said, yeah, Nate, he'll be forever able to say the woman that came up with my name named the Wendy's Baconator. Like, how cool is that?

Exactly, exactly. So So that's, uh, yes, uh, super cool. Now, one of the questions that we talked about, um, that I said I was going to ask is the question around how most people, and I'm certainly guilty of this, um, start a business and companies as a personal brand versus a business mistake and what a mistake this can be. Can you walk us through that as a challenge?

Sure. So like when I, before I had Eat My Words, I was just using alexanderwatkins.com. And that didn't say anything about who my personality or the personality of the brand, the— that I named things, nothing. Um, so, you know, I can tell you after 20 years from changing my business name, I mean, it's phenomenal. People— it's really hard for people to remember someone's first and last name. I mean, we— that's why we wear name tags, right? People struggle with names. So if you have a name that's easier for people to remember, it's all about referrals, right? We want people to refer other people to us to do business with us. And if they can't remember, I mean, Sally, your name's really easy.

Yeah.

But most people don't have easy names. And so we were, I'll give you an example. I'll give you a couple. Leila Benajamali, she is an attorney. She knew that her name— she was like very outgoing. She went to tons of networking things and she knew like, hey, if somebody needed an attorney, they're not going to remember Leila Benajamali. They're not going to know how to spell it. People struggled with pronouncing it, all those things. So she worked with startups helping them get their foundation documents in order. And this is in San Francisco. So we, and she was very fun and cool. So we re— we named her firm Bedrock. Um, and it was, you know, where I, where, yeah, it all started. Their tagline was, it all starts here. Isn't that great? Yeah. And then, and then, um, another one of my favorites that I write about in my book, by the way, this is my book. If anyone wants to get it, it's called Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick. It's in the second edition and it was named an Inc. Magazine top 10 marketing book. And I think, I think you did say that in your intro. Lynette Hoy is a fiery publicist, but you would never know that by the name Lynette Hoy. And like Lynette Hoy PR, like, like the PR gets lost, right? So we rebranded her Fire Talker PR.

Gold. Yeah, yeah.

With the tagline Hot on the Press because she was relentless. She calls herself the fire chief. She works in the firehouse. Like, you can call your office whatever you want, even if it's your kitchen table, right? Um, she has a theme song, Fire by the Ohio Players. When you have a theme song, you can crank it up, you know, before a presentation, a speaking engagement. Um, I always forget to tell people to play my theme song. My theme song is Sugar Sugar by the Archies because we're Eat My Words.

Yeah,

by the way, we're named Eat My Words because we started out naming things that make people fat and drunk.

Love it. Thank you. I have no comeback for that, but I love it.

So I said that once I was speaking at Stanford at the grad school, and I was looking at the tweets later and someone accused me of fat shaming. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I was like not— I was not fat shaming at all. I didn't call anyone fat. No, that's like harkens back to like, you know, names like the Baconator. And we still name— I'm naming 3 different wines right now. So I mean, it's fun. I mean, people have these like super serious elevator pitches. Yeah. Like, come on, it sounds so forced. But like, no, like fat and drunk, like people remember that.

You know, we've all, we've all been it or know somebody and have had all of those experiences. Uh, so it's, it becomes so relatable, doesn't it?

Yeah. And when it's fun, then when you say it, it sounds really natural. You have no idea that I've said fat and drunk, that I've told that like a gazillion times. But like, because it's fun to say and it feels normal. And my, by the way, my rule doesn't really have to do with naming, but it has to do with just language is Don't say anything like if you're giving an elevator pitch or whatever, if it's not, or don't write it if it's not something that you wouldn't say, right? So don't use big highfalutin words in your elevator pitch, you know, like, like just think of how you talk and then write the same way.

That's such a true thing. I remember coming into marketing in my very, very early days, you You don't— do go into, and I refer to it when I speak into your clever voice, and you actually get too clever for your boots, therefore, and use all these big words, as you say, and people just don't, um, don't get it, don't resonate it. Uh, you think it's funny and you know what you mean, but nobody else does.

Yeah.

And it's really about bringing it back to that everyday, uh, language, isn't it?

Yeah. People like things that they can relate to and are familiar.

Yeah, absolutely. So let's go back to Spoon Me and the monetizing, um, the Spoon Me story. So start at the beginning.

Okay.

What do you like in that story?

Okay, so Spoon Me, so this is the frozen yogurt store franchise and they wanted a name. So their target audience was teenagers and they wanted a name that they could monetize with merchandise. And that really helped us narrow it down when we were, and we came up with so many. If you ever read my book or do my online course, you'll see lots of names we came up with for them. But Spoonie was the one that I knew people would want to wear on a t-shirt. And here's the thing, if you can get someone to pay you to wear your brand name on a t-shirt and essentially advertise your brand for you, they're paying you to— usually you have to pay for advertising, right? But in this case, they're paying you To advertise your brand for you. I mean, that's— think about that. That's amazing. And yeah, it happens with, you know, like Nike and, you know, Gucci and things like that. But that takes years, right? And that's about a different kind of thing. But if someone sees a shirt with a clever name, or that, you know, Spoon Me had— they had booty shorts, bumper stickers. The bumper sticker was, if you're driving this close, you might as well spoon me. The t-shirt was, shut up and spoon me. So yeah, lots of fun with that one. But we named a laundromat one time. We named it Stuff a Sock in It, and they were able to fill laundry bags with their name on it. Yeah. And it's just fun. Stuff a Sock in It, because it's a phrase, and I'm a huge believer in phrases as names. Eat My Words, obviously being a phrase. Stuff a Sock in It. It's a long kind of phrase, right? But it's familiar, and that's what I was just saying. People like things that are familiar. It's better to have a long name that's familiar than a short name that people can't remember.

Yeah, so true.

The phrases, we've heard them over and over, and I don't know if in Australia stuff is socking it is a familiar phrase, but here in the States it is. It is. It's kind of like old school, like retro, like, you know, you might hear it on a, you know, old TV show.

Yeah. Stick a sock in it in Australia.

Stick a sock in it.

Okay. It translates beautifully regardless.

Yeah.

No, I love that. So, um, and you talk— so that's how they've monetized it. And I can imagine from, you know, just those, the facts, the t-shirts and all those sorts of things, you're actually really building that community, not necessarily around the product. It is around the product, but you're building that community of people that are, that are sharing their t-shirts and their merchandise with the friends. So that's where it sort of— I'm going to use the word goes, goes viral, but It just builds the momentum.

Yeah.

So that's a massive opportunity in it.

Yeah. And yeah, people want— people— yeah.

But just because it's quite a quirky thing, you know.

Yeah. Another one, um, we named a cupcake store the Church of Cupcakes, and my favorite t-shirt that I did for them is, forgive me, Father, for I have binged.

So love it.

Yeah, we had fun with that one.

Yep, that would be a t-shirt I would wear very happily as well.

Yeah, having a name— sorry to interrupt you for a second. Um, we were naming a, uh, you guys have The Simpsons over there, I, I trust? Okay.

Yes.

So speaking of cartoon voices, so, um, we were naming a, a vegan So like a plant-based, plant-based vegan kind of fast food kind of restaurant. They did not, they didn't want a name with plant or vegan or anything that sounded healthy because that wasn't gonna, they would get all the vegan people coming automatically, but they wanted to attract people. They wanted people to walk in the door that might not necessarily do so otherwise. So what's the name that's going to be appealing to them? And the name they came up with is Don't Have a Cow. Like, you know, people would want to wear that on a shirt, right? Don't have a cow, because they're saying don't eat meat, right? But it's like the funniest way to say it, and it's taking a familiar phrase and using that same phrase but just using it to mean something else. Like, literally, do not eat a cow or a product that— or, you know, meat from a cow.

Just love that. We've just had another question come in, which is from Paul. Does, what does your online course provide work-wise?

Okay, work-wise. So the online course has 36 lessons and it takes you step by step through how to create a name and you're going to fill out, you, you like, everything is broken down. First of all, it's really like, you can see my background if you're watching. It's very fun and colorful. It's like, you know, my, I always say it's like my book on My book on steroids in Technicolor. And if you can tell my personality, like, imagine if everything I was saying came out in colors. Like, it's

fun.

And if you can't see me, I'm wearing purple glasses. Sally and I'm— Sally has her red ones on.

Yeah, red matching and then purple matching. Yeah.

So yeah, the course takes you step by step. You fill out the creative brief, that will help guide the creative process. And then there's 10 brainstorming lessons. So it, and then there's, there's lessons on name changes if you're going through one of those. And if you are, there's the ultimate rebrand checklist, which tells you everywhere you could possibly ever need to change your name so you don't forget anything when you do roll it out. But yeah, the course is a lot of fun. And then you can just get the basic course. Which I call that version Just the Meat for those of you who are familiar with that old commercial. And then there's a— if you work with me one-on-one, you can upgrade to do that. And that I call Private Chef because you get to work with me and you get a couple calls with me with that one. And often most people choose Private Chef just because after they hear me or see me on a webinar, they're like, oh my gosh, I have to work with you.

Very true.

And yeah, and often when I am doing private, private stuff, I do come up with the names for people. Um, but yeah, if— and that's at namemasterclass.com is how you can find the course.

Beautiful. We've got a couple of other questions which we'll come back to in a sec because I want to do a bit more of a deep dive into, um, SMILE and SCRATCH frameworks because I know we talked about this way back when we, when we first met and I've forgotten. So I would love you to, uh, to share with us the Small and scratch-friendly.

Sure. And someone just asked, is this all in the book? No, most of this isn't in the book as far as the stories and stuff that I just told, but the SMILE and SCRATCH S, which is the most important thing, and I think probably some stuff on personal— yeah, FIREtalker PR, but the SMILE and SCRATCH S, which is the most important thing, that's in the book and in my online course. And the online course has a lesson on each of the letters. So Smile and Scratch, the Smile and Scratch test was inspired by my philosophy, which is a name should make you smile instead of scratch your head, right? Because we've all seen those head scratcher kind of names, right? Where you're like, oh my gosh, what were they smoking? Like, where are the vowels? You know, those kind of names. Yeah. Often companies named by engineers. So Smile is an acronym for the— so it's a 12-point name evaluation test. Smile is an acronym for the 5 qualities that make a name awesome. SCRATCH is an acronym for the 7 deadly deal breakers. Mm-hmm. So SMILE, and when you read the book or take the course, you're gonna see lots of examples of these. So SMILE stands for, the S stands for suggestive. So you want your name to suggest a positive brand experience. The M is for memorable. We talked about things being based in the familiar, right? Like it's easier for people to remember something that's familiar than something that's not. The I stands for imagery. When people can picture something in their head, like if I told you about an energy drink, an energy drink for women named Bloom, let's say 3 months from now you're at the store, there's that giant wall of energy drinks and you're like, what was that one Alexandra talked about? People close their eyes, they're accessing the data bank in their brain. And like suddenly that— you can picture the flower, right? Because people remember images and pictures much more easily than they remember words or especially random letters. So that's why imagery is really important in a name.

Mm-hmm.

The L in SMILE stands for legs. And we talked about fire talker PR with hot on the press, you know, the firehouse, fire chief. That's a name with legs. Oh, she has packages, controlled burn. Firestarter. So when you have a name with legs, you can really extend your brand. And then finally, the E in SMILE, really important. They're all important, but you have to have a name that makes an emotional connection. Otherwise, it's going to go right over people's heads. So you want a name that resonates with your target audience, not just with you.

Love that. Thank you. And now to scratch when you're

Yeah, scratch is scratch it off the list if it makes you scratch your head. My publisher's like, pick one or the other. I'm like, no, it's both.

Yeah.

Okay, the S— this is huge, people— spelling challenge. You do not want a name that looks like a typo. It will haunt you forever. If you have a hard-to-spell first or last name, you know what I'm talking about. Do not curse your name with this or any of these disadvantages. But spelling challenge, it will— people will— their emails will get bounced back. They won't be able to find you online. I mean, it's just going to be a world of hurt for everyone. So don't, don't, don't start there. A lot of people make this mistake because they're trying to find an available domain name. All the domain names are taken. I mean, once in a while they're not. We've actually been really lucky lately and gotten a couple that aren't, but just add a modifier word. If we weren't eatmywords.com, we could be eatmywordsnaming, or, you know, nobody cares. And when you add a modifier word, it actually helps with your search engine optimization.

Hmm.

Okay, so, so that was, um, S. The C, first C in SCRATCH, stands for copycat. Why be somebody else when you can be yourself? Really, don't copy other people. And also, this, this is also important for trademark infringement. You don't want to have a name similar to any, the same or very similar to anybody else's, because you will infringe on their trademark and get one of those nasty, depending on what country you're in, here it's called the cease and desist letter.

Cease and desist. Yeah,

you will shake in your boots if you get— and it's expensive to rebrand, let me tell you. Um, okay, so the R in SCRATCH stands for restrictive, and that's where your name locks you in and you outgrow it.

Yeah.

But you— but, and a lot of people, they just, they just keep going. There's a store in Canada called Canadian Tire. They sell They started out selling tires, but now they sell toys, TVs, trampolines, you know, trees, tropical plants, tools, and lots of things that start with other letters. But that just helps me remember what they sell. So, um, don't— by the way, I don't know if they sell TVs. I just made that one up. Yeah, but it's funny because I was reading this book. I'm obsessed with true crime, and I was reading this true crime book, About this couple in Canada, and it talked, and they were very wealthy, and it talked about how the husband got his belt at Canadian Tire. And like, I got it, but if I didn't know that Canadian Tire sold belts, I would be like,

it wouldn't make sense.

Yeah, a Canadian Tire, like, it would make no sense to me. And also, if Canadian Tire wanted to roll into the U.S., like, they would have to spend millions of dollars.

Right. Yeah.

So they should have changed their name early on, but they, they kept it. And now we've changed names of 2 companies that were more than 100 years old. So it's never too late to change your name.

Yeah.

So that's, uh, that's restrictive. The A stands for annoying, and annoying is when you frustrate people, right? So you have a letter in the middle of your name, right? Coast to Coast. You're always gonna have to spell it out for people. That's going to be annoying to you. It's going to be annoying to your customers. Then also, that's one where people would spell it wrong. Um, spelling something backwards. Yeah. Is that creative? Yes, that's creative. Just because something's creative does not mean it's a good idea for a name. It's a bad idea to spell anything backwards. Don't make people guess. There's a bra company here in the States called ThirdLove. And the owner likes that the name is ambiguous. And that's what she says. I'm like, do not have anything about your business be ambiguous. People don't have time. No one has time. We're not at the breakfast table reading the back of the cereal box, right? We're always in a hurry, right? And we're so impatient. Everything, especially now with ChatGPT, which I use for everything. Not— it's a— I don't use it a lot for naming, but I use it for everything else. And we get so impatient, right? Like now Google's not fast enough for me. I need ChatGPT. So we're just becoming— no one has time to find out why you named your company Third Love, right? Or what that weird name means, right? So, um, that was A, annoying. And then we have T stands for tame. And you don't want your name to be— sorry, here's my microphone for those of you. Tame. Um, you don't want your name to be tame because your name needs to stand out in a sea of sameness. You cannot afford to be a wallflower, right? If you want to get noticed, you've got to be bold, right? Don't be afraid to be— to have a personality, right? It will take you far. It really will. So yeah, stand out and have a name that, that has some, some oomph to it.

Feisty. We call it Feisty in my world.

So yeah.

Feisty.

Yeah, feisty name. And then the second C stands for Curse of Knowledge, and that means that you know what it means, but you forgot that other people don't know. Um, you know, like foreign word— foreign words, and I mean foreign both ways. Either it's in a foreign language or that it's foreign, meaning, yeah, I don't know that ukunuba Like, I don't know, Eukanuba meant the tops in the jazz era. How would I know that? That word is— it's old and dated. And yes, you named your pet food company Eukanuba, Eukanuba, but, um, who knew? Who knew that Supreme, the tops in the jazz era? Sorry, no one is alive from the jazz era. Like, we don't know that anymore. Yeah. So yeah, don't have the curse of knowledge in your name. And finally, The H in Scratch, super big deal breaker, hard to pronounce. You want your name to be intuitive to pronounce, unlike Eukanuba.

Yeah.

By the way, if I don't know how to pronounce a name, tip, um, call the company after hours and listen to their voicemail. Uh, but okay, quick example. I was at the craft store. Oh no, a woman hired me And she's the queen of something spelled C-R-I-C-U-T, right? And I had used this stuff for years. It's a crafting material, and I called it Cricut because it's spelled C-R-I-C-U-T, Cricut. So when she hired me, she hired me online. And then I'm having the call with her. I'm like, oh my gosh, I love Cricut. I've made a bunch of stuff with it. And she's like, actually, it's called Cricut. I'm like, oh my— I was so embarrassed, right? So that's one reason alone not to have a name that's hard to pronounce. No one wants to embarrass themselves, and you don't want somebody to embarrass themselves because we all hate that. Like, like my neighbor Bob, for 7 years he's called me Alexandria. He put an I in my name. Like, I would be so embarrassed at this point to correct him and say, my name is Alexandra, there's no I in it. And he— think how embarrassed he would be, right? No one wants to be embarrassed, whether you're in a French restaurant, you know, you don't want to embarrass yourself in front of the snooty French waiter, you don't embarrass yourself in front of your date or your client. So yeah, just take embarrassment out of the picture. So don't make your name hard to pronounce. Yeah. And so Cricut, they recently changed their logo to have like little antennas on the C, which is cute, but— and a little bug. But when your name is in a press release that's in black and white in the Wall Street Journal, when it's online, you're not going to have those visual aids there. Yeah. You're just going to have your proper noun name. And don't, don't, Have— don't spell your name with like a lowercase capital letter. Don't have that weird camel casing where you have a hump letter in the middle of your name. Just have it look like a proper noun.

A word. Yeah, I remember talking to somebody that had chick, chic, schick in their name. So there's all sorts of versions of— and everyone would go, well, how do you spell it? And you know, when you're talking on a podcast trying to say that, that the full name with that, that word in the middle. It was like, but you get stuck on that word in the middle, and it was, uh, it was spelt really simply. It was C-H-I, but it could be C-H-I as in chick, C-H-I-C-K, or it could be shit with an S. And it was sort of like, well, you know,

yeah,

I'm stuck now because I don't know how to spell that bit in the middle, uh, which makes it very, very difficult.

Yeah, that's true. And you have to say your name out loud when you're— and, and also if you Just not a big fan of asking people, what do you think of this name? What do you think of that name? Just look at my book or take the free name test. But freenametest.com, and Sally has that link too.

Yep. Across the screen shortly.

You want to make sure, though, that people— I made this mistake once in my career. I named a company Altimeter Group, and I thought everyone knew how to pronounce altimeter because I knew that word from a pretty young age. And then, um, and it was a very, uh, it was like for a consulting company and like, you know, wealthy clients or clients with a lot of money, but not, not everybody knew how to pronounce it.

Mm-hmm. That makes it difficult in that scenario. Um, so I'm going to ask you, we've, we've already asked the quirkiest, and that actually, no, I'm going to ask that again. Because you've done lots of really fun, fun names and you've talked about all of the different types of clients that you've had. Is there one that is the quirkiest? So the weirdest, quirkiest is my thing. What's the quirkiest one that you've ever done?

Quirky, quirky. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, okay. Kind of a fun— oh, I mean, I think all the fun ones are kind of quirky. Like there was a— in San Francisco, a lot of people don't have yards or just, you know, they have a balcony and they're planting in containers. So there was a container gardener and I named her the Pot Lady with the tagline, flower power goes a long way. And then, um, and then I named a GPS for dogs Retriever. We had a show back in the '60s here called Leave It to Beaver. It was very wholesome, right? June Cleaver. So I was recently naming an ethical butcher, and she wanted a name that she could monetize with merchandise She sold at a local farmer's market in the Midwest, so Middle America. And but not everyone was gonna buy meat, right? Because they were at a farmer's— they were tourists at a farm. There was a lot of tourists in the summer. So she wanted a name that she could sell merch with. So, um, I named her Mrs. Cleaver, with the— from June Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver. who was the mom, always wore pearls and a dress when she vacuumed. And so the logo was 1950s housewife with a meat cleaver in her hand, like winking.

Yes.

And then I had her descriptor of what she sold, wholesome meat, because organic is a very coastal kind of thing, but Middle America, very wholesome. My wholesome me, and that works so well with Mrs. Cleaver from that very innocent era of black and white TV. Everyone was so polite. Mrs. Cleaver, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. Love that. Um, so I'm gonna— you've sort of touched on this, but I'm just gonna ask in case there's another. If you could rename one famous brand or product, what would it be and why?

Oh, okay. Well, okay, it's not super famous, I mean worldwide, but in the States I think most people know. So this is an app, it's called HotelTonight. And when they started, it's a really smart concept. Hotels have excess inventory that they can't sell. So HotelTonight gets— they sign up on HotelTonight and then they can offer those rooms at a discount that night, right? Or that day. So HotelTonight, very, you know, it's a good name, you know, says what it is. Um, has a nice sound to it. But then, then they expanded to be— you could get a hotel up to 365 days in advance. So suddenly Hotel Tonight really outgrew their name, right? So what I would have named it from the beginning is Get a Room, because come on, Hotel Tonight, that's really what— that's really what it was probably about in the beginning. Like You know, come on, get a room.

Yeah, yeah.

And then, but Get a Room works, works year-round.

Yeah, and it's giving. Yeah,

it's fun, it's memorable, it's cheeky. Like, people want to wear it on a t-shirt. Like, do you— like, like, I would want a key, a key tag with that Get a Room on it. Like, I— yeah, it's like, that's what I mean about monetizing your name. Like, you can do it if you have a cool name. People want to wear your brand on merchandise.

Yeah, and I think that for me has been a real penny drop moment because I think racing ahead and doing all those sorts of things that we do in life when we're in our business, we actually don't think of that. I haven't, let's say I'll put it that way, I haven't thought about all those quirky things that we say as experts, as repeatable quotes that people love about us and repeat to other people about us when they're telling our story, for example. They're those things that you can actually build and create merchandise around. And that is an opportunity that is so easily left off the opportunity because it's so close to us, we don't see it. So I think for me, from a monetizing your content perspective, that's been the like, duh moment for me. And you mentioned my business name being Monetize Your Content. That's only relatively new because I was, you know, had something boring like trying to Boring and Clever that said I'm a content repurposing whiz that meant nothing to nobody and didn't do anything. And it was actually somebody that said to me, don't you just help people monetize their content? And it was that fresh eyes perspective of somebody coming in. It was like, oh, hell yeah, that's exactly what we do. But it had never dawned on me. But we have challenges around the spelling of it because in the States it's spelled with a Z and in Australia it's spelled with an S.

Really? That's interesting that in NZ it's spelled not with the Z, with the S.

Yeah, yeah. So there you go, we've all got things. So, um, let's ask the, um, I suppose the legacy question. Your quest is absolutely totally in the fun and everything that you bring is about creating, uh, brands or creating names that last forever. When you think of the legacy as it relates to you, what does that mean for you? What does legacy And what you do, the work that you do mean to you in the deep depths of you, of your soul?

I just want to bring joy to people, you know, and I think that's what my names do. You know, they make people smile, whether it's, you know, Smitten Ice Cream. And so many couples have had their first date at Smitten. They've gotten engaged at Smitten. They've, you know, had Smitten cater their wedding. Yeah, Spoon Me. I met this guy one time. He told me that And it's in Utah, which is our very conservative state. And he was going to Brigham Young University and he had a friend, Kim. His name's Seth Adam Smith. He's an author. And he wanted to move his friend Kim from the friend zone into the dating zone and he didn't know how to do it. I found this out years after I named Spoon Me, but he took her to Spoon Me on a date and she got the hint and now they're married with kids. So like, I love things like that and I love that it brought joy to people. I love that when I say names like, you know, I love the Baconator is my legacy, right? You know, with all the, you know, a Wikipedia page. Um, that, yeah, I just love that how many times I've seen, I've said the name Eat My Words and I've just seen people break out into a smile.

Absolutely. Yeah. And how much have we laughed? How much have I laughed today? Um, as a point of that, and I love that. you've just talked about Smitten just briefly in that, and that people are getting engaged there. And just if you just slow down, and for me, I've just— what I've just heard is people go to an ice cream parlor to get engaged. That's the significance of the name. Mm-hmm. And the resonance and the emotion that's attached to it because it's— and as you've just expressed with your friend that took his You know, want to, want to be more than friends person to that, you know, just to, you know, the innuendo and the, the emotion and the resonance with that. That's just gorgeous.

Yeah.

Amazing. So, uh, from an on— for all of the people that are listening today, and we've got some more questions around, um, the book and the online, um, program, I'd love to just ask the question, what's the first step that somebody should take When it comes to brainstorming the naming process, keeping in mind we've talked a little bit about smile and scratch. What's the very first step?

The first thing you want to do before you start brainstorming is you need to have a roadmap. So that's the creative brief. If you get the book or take the course, you'll get the creative brief, and that's going to have you write down on paper what Who's your target audience? And even if you think you know this stuff, it's really helpful. You know, what are some desired brand experiences you want them to have? What's the tone and personality of your brand? Because then that way, and then once you have your brief, I tell people, take your brief, then choose 12 starter names out of your brief and use those as your words, as your, and if you do my course or read the book, it's all in there. You use those as your jumping off point. And then from there, and they're not words that necessarily need to be in your name, but like Spoon Me, that just came from me doing a search for eat frozen yogurt. Eat was one of the words. I just did eat frozen yogurt and boom, there were the spoons and Spoon Me. But yeah, a lot of times I'm just skimming. Yeah. And the brainstorming, there's this A lot of techniques that you'll learn. I mean, the course is more updated than the book because the course I had to put a lot more in than the book. And plus it cost a lot more than the book. So yeah, I really did more. But yeah, there's some great examples in there.

I think too, what you've just said there of, um, you know, those, uh, you called them, uh, jump-off— was it jump-off words?

Starter words. Yeah.

Yes. Starter words. I think listening to you hearing that, um, and I, I, experience this when I'm working with my experts and they're unpacking their knowledge, is you've actually got to allow time and inspiration for that creative process. And we talked about how we're so busy in a busy world that we want everything instantaneously, which is true. I'm the worst version of wanting everything yesterday. But when, when it comes to that creative process and the longevity of a legacy, You actually need to allow that time to do it, go through the process. Would that be your experience?

Absolutely. Yeah. That's why I don't use ChatGPT for names. It's fast and it doesn't allow the creative process. But I need to— I was naming a men's athleisure brand and my client was really into MMA fighting. And so I'm like, okay, these guys are sitting at home eating Cheetos on the sofa, but they aspire to— they're wearing their athleisure clothes, but they aspire to be more active. And I knew my client was really into MMA fighting, so I Googled top 50 movie fight scenes and top 50 movie chase scenes. Yeah. And then I just started skimming and I'm always looking for interesting words to pop out at me. And I saw it, stunt double. I'm like, stunt double. And that became the name. And it's a perfect thing. Like, here's this guy like fantasizing about, like, in a way, like, he is— that's his alter persona, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Totally, totally get that. And I love that you've expressed that because that's that version of, you know, uh, 50 top or 10 top articles or 10 top blah or movies and Those sorts of things is exactly how I use ChatGPT for an inspiration. I'm looking for something. I don't know what I'm looking for, but when it jumps off the page at me, you'll see it. But you have to find creative resources for that inspiration. And that has been a great place for me and been a game changer for our business. And it is so quick and does give people those really good jump-off points. Which is excellent. So can I ask you, I know we're getting close to the end of the show already, how is it— how and where is the best place for people to connect with you?

Um, if you go to eatmywords.com, that is, you know, the website has all the info on it. Um, I'm on LinkedIn, Alexandra Watkins. Um, I'm We have an Instagram, Eat My Words Names. I don't, I don't update it very much, but if you want to read my Elon Musk April Fool's prank from last year, it's at the top. It's hilarious how he named, how he named his new baby, and like so many people fell for it. It was hilarious.

Yeah, beautiful.

Yeah,

excellent. And any closing last thoughts that we haven't covered off that you feel that does need to be shared with our audience?

Um, I just want to reiterate how important it is— how not important it is to have an exact match domain name. Nobody expects you to have one. And if you do want one, we have a client right now that we, we gave them 5 really great names and one had an available domain name. I bought it for $12, but they want this other name that's really good. And they're, they're willing to pay $100,000 for the domain name, but domain names are not cheap. So just, and we're like, why don't you just add, it's a TV kind of thing. I'm like, why don't you just add .tv? No, we want the exact match domain name because they're in Silicon Valley and they're like, you know, our investors expect it, which I don't really think they do. Yeah. But you know, hey, if they want it, I mean, looks good, looks good on, you know, in our portfolio, but Yeah, I would never advise anyone to spend $100,000 on a domain.

Yeah, yeah. So they don't need to be matched. I think it's all from what you've been saying, it's simple to read, simple to understand, and it's memorable, e.g., Eat My Words, Spoon Me, and all those. I've just absolutely loved sharing all of the stories with you today. It's been an absolute pleasure. It's been absolute fun. Um, I've personally have had lots of aha moments, so I really hope and imagine that the audience has as well. And if you're wanting your inspiration for yourselves, you've obviously got the book and the online course to take advantage of all of this great, uh, wisdom and creating the legacy for yourself. And obviously do reach out to Alexandra and connect with her if you're wanting her to be your chef, um, there as well. Brilliant. Anything else that just as we finish off and we say see you to our audience today?

No, I think we covered— we got covered a lot of ground. This is— I've been on more than 100 podcasts, radio interviews, and this is definitely one of my favorites. I got so many good stories in and a lot of great—

yeah, yeah, thank you. I think it's so important to be able to share those stories because for us, both of us, it's those memorable stories that are going to enable people to be able to share and talk about our interview today. So I look forward to being able to share more of those and cutting this into small little snippets to tease people back to the full episode as well.

So yeah, no, I can't wait to post this online. This is definitely a favorite.

Lovely. Thank you so much for sharing so much of your wisdom with us and so much of your fun and making me laugh today like I haven't done in a long time this early in the morning. So thank you. We will look forward to seeing each and every one of you on another episode of Success Secrets Exposed. Till then, take care.

Bye. Bye.

Remember, if you want to be sought after and sold out, as well as being known as the obvious expert in your industry, you need to speak with Sally, our host of Success Secrets Exposed. Sally is the founder of Monetize Your Content, a done-for-you content marketing agency that helps you be easy to buy. See you next week on another episode of Success Secrets Exposed. Tune in live every Tuesday at 7 PM Eastern time or Wednesday mornings in Australia on W4CY Radio and Talk 4 TV.