Transcribed by Descript
Erin Marcus: All right. Hello, hello, and welcome to this episode of the Ready Yet podcast. My guest today told me, I read your book and I was excited to learn something I didn't know the answer to and had wondered since I think I was 10 years old. So I'm very excited to have Alexandra Watkins with me today. And before we get into what that is, Brilliant piece of information was because seriously, as a kid, I always wondered tell everyone real quick who you are and what you do.
Alexandra Watkins: Okay, I am the founder and chief executive boss lady of a naming firm called Eat My Words. And Eat My Words started out naming things that make people fat and drunk, and we still do that, but we've named a lot of different things now. But we've been in business almost 20 years my claim to fame is that I named the Wendy's Baconator.
Alexandra Watkins: And yeah, we, we do really fun and creative and clever names that make people smile instead of scratch their head.
Erin Marcus: I absolutely love it. And one of the things, so I work with tons of businesses. And one of the things people are always asking me, because I work with a lot of people who just left corporate and they're deciding to go into business.
Erin Marcus: And this is where, you know, Like everything comes to a screeching halt, right? You see this over and over again, where their efforts come to a screeching halt. So I don't even, I want to jump in in 85 different places, but like, why is this so hard for people? Why does it not, not just to come up with a good idea?
Erin Marcus: I get that. That's like a skill that you have, but why do people get so. Hung up and stuck and trapped on this piece. Because they never
Alexandra Watkins: learned how to do it in school, right? And people don't name things very often.
Erin Marcus: True.
Alexandra Watkins: They, they kind of, a lot of times they, they just will end up using their own personal name as their brand name and they're missing tons of opportunities there, or they're just being really lazy and like adding a, you know, Letter or two at the end of a word that to make a new word or they're, you know, doing the amalgamated clusterfuck where that's like, like mash all of these things together to make a new word.
Alexandra Watkins: But yeah, people just don't know. And they also don't know what makes a good name versus what makes a name. What makes the name suck. And that's really what my mission has been to teach people how to determine if their name is strong or weak.
Erin Marcus: One of the things that I appreciate in the book, That I think you're dead on about is you don't have to remove fun from everything that you do, and you know it's what you're talking about financial firms and law firms and you don't have to remove.
Erin Marcus: There is a difference between whimsy that may be inappropriate and fun that is absolutely appropriate.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah, or just creativity. So there's a an attorney. She's a cannabis attorney. I know a number of cannabis attorneys. I don't even know this woman, but I just remember her, her moniker. So a moniker is where you You give yourself, you're known by as something, right?
Alexandra Watkins: So she, her name is Lauren Vasquez, and she is known as the fired up attorney, which is great, right? So that's fun. It makes people smile. But what I love about monikers is they make, they're super memorable and they make people referable. Yeah. Because if you were asking me, you know, we work with cannabis brands and if somebody said, Oh, we need a trademark attorney or we need an attorney to help project our brand, I would like Lauren Vasquez's name, the fight, like I might not remember Lauren Vasquez, but I will remember the fired up attorney.
Alexandra Watkins: And that's why I always encourage people. If you're not going to name your business, a brand name, at least brand yourself with a moniker.
Erin Marcus: Yeah, because you can Google that just as easily and it will, you know, use consistently. It will, it will totally show up. And then looking at your list of what not to do's, you can, you can totally see like, oh, I remember when that was a total like a theme, like everybody was doing it.
Erin Marcus: Yeah. Especially like the letters. I noticed that now it feels tricky. Like you said, if you put an I in front of something, I think you're trying to trick me into believing that you're Apple.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah, I don't, well, I, I don't, I mean, I think people know 'cause their brand is so strong when something is from Apple.
Alexandra Watkins: But there are, I have an online course and I have lots of slides in my copycat lesson about here's all the people that are using, you know, and I, as in front, you know, I sauna, I grill at
Erin Marcus: the airport. At the airport. There's a least in Chicago called the I Store. Yeah, and it's all this electronic stuff and they make you think that it's an apple.
Erin Marcus: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Alexandra Watkins: No, and it's just like when people see names like that, they just roll their eyes because it's a copycat, right? They're like, oh, they're just trying to copy Apple, but Apple wasn't the first to use the eye, but obviously they're the ones that really dominated with it.
Erin Marcus: Absolutely. So, For coaches and consultants in particular, I'd love to get your take on this.
Erin Marcus: I have my opinion, but a lot of, I think they're different programs. And when you talk about courses and programs, those also need really good names. If you're just going to say group coaching program.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah, they need names. So I'll give an example. So in my online course, IHOP coaching. So the basic, the basic course without any coaching is called, because we're Eat My Words, the basic course is called Just the Meat.
Alexandra Watkins: The one with group coaching is called, called Chef's Table.
Erin Marcus: Nice.
Alexandra Watkins: You can have
Erin Marcus: fun with it.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah. And then the one with, that's private, just one on one. is called Private Chef.
Erin Marcus: Love it. I mean, and I, yeah, and you say this in your book, you, if you don't have a name, you're missing opportunities to create a brand, a brand out of the words.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah, another one that I love. This woman is a PR executive. Her name is Lynette Hoy, and her name said nothing about the, she was a fiery publicist. So we branded her fire talker PR with the tagline hot on the press. She calls herself the fire chief. She works in the firehouse. She has packages like fire starter and controlled burn.
Alexandra Watkins: And she has a theme song and everyone should have a theme song and her theme song is Fire by the Ohio Players.
Erin Marcus: Right, I mean it's all, right, I mean and it makes Marketing so much easier. Yeah. When you have this foundation that you can build around. Another thing that is included in here in your book that I love because I call it, I think one of the mistakes people make is they don't do the work before they go to work right they go out into the world trying to sell their widget, but they haven't done the hard, frustrating work of, Ideal client, client avatar, like they haven't done that.
Erin Marcus: And that's something that you, I think you called it a debrief. I forgot what you called it. I your creative brief to really, before you even trying to come up with a name, what do you, you know, figuring out what it is you're trying to do.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah, you, a lot of people just start like throwing spaghetti at the wall, right?
Alexandra Watkins: And seeing what sticks. And when you're coming up with a name, you should fill out a creative brief. So you have a roadmap that says, you know, here's who we are. This is the tone of that. This is the tone and personality of our brand. So we want the name to fit that. So for instance. You know, eat my words, that's fun and playful.
Alexandra Watkins: And that's the style of names that we do. If we were named strategic name development, that would not say anything about the fact that we're fun and playful. So
Erin Marcus: it also creates a misalignment. I see this in people's branding and in their marketing and in their content, when there's a misalignment between the emotional feeling of a name and the emotional feeling of the visuals and the emotional feeling of the language.
Erin Marcus: People think something's wrong. They're not, even if they don't know what, they kind of like back away slowly because they feel that it's incongruent.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah, no, that, that happens. Or, yeah, brands don't live up to their name, right?
Erin Marcus: That's a really good, right? Be careful what you call yourself if you're not gonna like walk your talk.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so important.
Erin Marcus: So some things that you mentioned to absolutely make sure you do the memorable, there's a lot in the book about being easy to remember.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah, so what makes something memorable is if it's already in our, if it exists in our current knowledge base. So an example of that is the bike lock company Kryptonite.
Alexandra Watkins: We all know Kryptonite from Superman, therefore when we see or hear the name Kryptonite locks, it's easier to remember. And then it's a metaphorical name. So we know that kryptonite repels superman. Therefore, the analogy being kryptonite repels bike thieves.
Erin Marcus: And I love the idea of going to industries or ideas that are not necessarily Within your realm right now.
Erin Marcus: Like I S I said that when I was in corporate and I was starting a department and the CEO kept referring people to me to hire, and it was all people who had already been in the industry for a really long time and they just didn't like what they were doing. And I'm like, I don't want someone else's old habit.
Erin Marcus: I think we can learn the most from other industries. And I think that holds true for names. Like, what can you see that you maybe you enjoy? that has some words that start to trigger emotions in yourself or what you're naming?
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah. Well, I think a lot of, yeah, there are a lot of opportunities to be different instead of a copycat or something that's just very expected.
Alexandra Watkins: So for instance, we've named a lot of law firms and one of them, Specializes in working with startups and helping them with their foundational documents. And we named it Bedrock, right? And when we named it Bedrock, they started attracting the type of customers that are clients that they, that they wanted to work with, you know, like we have a cool name.
Alexandra Watkins: We want to work with cool people. And before that, the attorney, Laila Benjamali, was using her own name, but she knew it was really problematic for people to spell pronounce. So that's why when you have a memorable name like Bedrock, and we all know Bedrock from the Flintstones, it's easy to remember.
Alexandra Watkins: So that way, you know, there's, there's a million attorneys in San Francisco where she is. Not a million, but there's, there's many, many a million. There's a lot that do that work with startups, right? But she differentiated herself with a name and not just a name, a cool name that would make her easy to refer.
Alexandra Watkins: And whereas Layla Benjamali hard to refer. Because people aren't going to remember her name or like, I don't know how to spell it or pronounce it. So when you have a cool name, like eat my words, we're super easy to refer, especially if there's, you know, somebody that wants a food and beverage name, they're going to come to us.
Alexandra Watkins: So when you have a name that's memorable, it's, you're just giving yourself a huge advantage.
Erin Marcus: What do you have as far as insights for people who are rebranding or want to change their business name?
Alexandra Watkins: I think it's never too late to change your name. We have changed the names of two companies that were more than a hundred years old.
Alexandra Watkins: One was a bank in Kansas. It was in the middle of And it was named First National Bank of Syracuse. So you could see the confusion there because they're in Kansas, not New York. And the name wasn't doing anything and it just sounded like any other bank. So we rebranded that they're very aspirational bank that won all kinds of regional banking awards, the bankies, and we rebranded them dream first.
Alexandra Watkins: Because that's amazing.
Erin Marcus: Okay. So like, I just really want people to pay attention to that for a second. Because where would you rather have your money, right? We all like so many of these banks, they have the first national this and first official that there's no differentiator. But that's such proof that you don't have to stay in a teeny tiny box that somebody else created.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah, exactly. And another one that we did is it's what it's a large, uh, health care health, health clinics serving underserved populations in Los Angeles. And for more than a hundred years, they were known as Queens care and they love that name and they love the name. They just shorten it to Queens and everybody knew them.
Alexandra Watkins: And The company did not want to change their name, but they were forced to change it for some type of legal situation. So, we, so they're faith based, so we explored words around faith, and we, we rebranded them GraceLite. It's such a pretty name, isn't it, Gracelyn? Right, and
Erin Marcus: it's something that, and the other thing about all these is the emotions that they invoke.
Erin Marcus: And you, you just, I mean, if you get everything else wrong, I think that's the piece that has to be right.
Alexandra Watkins: Yes, you're exactly right. And in my name evaluation test, the SMILE and SCRATCH test, the SMILE is an acronym for the five qualities that make a name great, and SCRATCH is the flip side of that. But the E in SMILE stands for EMOTIONAL, and your name has to make an emotional connection.
Alexandra Watkins: It has to connect with people. And I recently went to this very large trade show, a hundred thousand people go to this show. It's called Expo West and it's, it's natural products, but it's primarily food and beverage. And I gave out these awards. These are a pink, pink glass trophy shaped like the love your name award.
Alexandra Watkins: And that's
Erin Marcus: awesome.
Alexandra Watkins: Thank you. I gave up 10 to names that just grabbed me. So love it for site names where I love the name before I even tried the product. And that's magical. If you can have that experience and my favorite name of the show. Was a frozen cookie dough named dopamine, you know, spell my God that right?
Alexandra Watkins: Like brilliant. Oh, great. Yeah, it's so great. And like, here I am talking about it. Right. And that's the type of you can't get better marketing than that. Yeah, exactly. So when you have a name that people love, they're going to talk about it there. You know, I always say those are the names that people tweet and repeat, right?
Alexandra Watkins: They're putting it on Instagram. And that's like, When you're starting out with a blank slate and you have the opportunity to give yourself a love at first sight name, that's what you should be striving for.
Erin Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. So what would you recommend? I work, I'm in this boat and I have several clients in this boat where truthfully I have my personal brand and I have my company name and my personal brand is under my name.
Erin Marcus: And then I have my company. How do you differentiate or should you even try to differentiate?
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah, that one's tricky because if you want to sell your company and your company is like you are the brand It can be hard, but I recently finally Started an Instagram account because my clients aren't really on Instagram But when I went to that big food trade show Expo West I knew I had all the all the food companies are on Instagram.
Alexandra Watkins: I'm like, okay, I'll start one eat my words names Is it? And I'm like, okay, but I am a brand and I'm the one posting all these, these reels and, you know, the interviews and everything with, with founders of these food companies. So I am, I am eat my words. So it's, it's hard sometimes to separate them. But eat my words is also bigger than just me, but I think people want to know who is the person, you know, if it is, you know, I'm obviously the, I'm the founder of the company, the big cheese.
Alexandra Watkins: I call myself yeah, people want to hear from me, but I think it's always good to have a company name as well. Uh, and because if you ever want to sell your company, it's good that it it's under a brand name instead of your own name.
Erin Marcus: I 100 percent agree with that. You know, it helps to create a sellable asset.
Erin Marcus: And the other thing I find for a lot of people, especially for consultants and coaches and wellness or in any world where you are the face of the company having that separation in your own mind that here's a company and me, Aaron, is just one more asset that the company owns. It helps you treat your business like a business and you make different decisions.
Erin Marcus: Based on that, right? So I have to tell everybody the thing and I going blank. So I don't know if you remember, but the brand that I was confused by as a child. So I grew up with great Danes. We grew up with big dogs that we used to show. And they used to eat uba. I don't even know if I'm saying it right because UBA , I was gonna say, I dunno if I ever knew, but I never understood what in the entire world.
Erin Marcus: Why would that be a name of a dog food?
Alexandra Watkins: Why? Well, so I had to look it up because I never knew how to pronounce it. And when I don't know how to pronounce something, I'll call the company after hours and just listen to how they say it on the voicemail. That's a great idea. I guarantee you, I guarantee you, if you google how do you pronounce and then you type in Eukanuba there will be, you know, a hundred thousand hits of other people.
Alexandra Watkins: And I'm not going to
Erin Marcus: understand them at all. Hieroglyphics explaining it to me anyway.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah. No, and no one knows how to like make accent marks or anything on their computer or Americans don't, Europeans don't. Americans
Erin Marcus: don't at all.
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah. So you can do, but I looked it up and it was. It was a term back in the jazz era that meant the tops or supreme, but nobody knows that.
Alexandra Watkins: And you know, this is what I always tell people. You're not going to be there to explain your name to someone. And I got an email the other day from this guy who said, I'm thinking of naming my company. This, he had read my book and, and asked, you know, what do you think of this? And I always, I'll always give someone my opinion.
Alexandra Watkins: If it's just on like one name, if they'll write a review of my book on Amazon,
Erin Marcus: that's a huge offer, by the way, like that's, that's a very low ask for a very high value.
Alexandra Watkins: Thank you. I agree. I agree. But The name he had, it, it had an, it, it was a Swahili word. No, it wasn't even Swahili. It was it was a Maasai word from the Maasai warriors and like, nobody knows the Maasai language, you know, I've hung out with the Maasai.
Alexandra Watkins: And I know a little Swahili from going to Africa many times, but like no one knows the Maasai language. Like, no one's gonna, yeah, it's going to be meaningless. Your name has to be meaningful to someone. If it, if it, if it's foreign in any way, if it's a foreign word or if it's just foreign to people, as in, I don't know what Yucca Nuba means that's foreign.
Alexandra Watkins: So that's what I call the curse of knowledge. And that's what the second C in Scratch, the first C stands for copycat. But you, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Because when something has a curse of knowledge, you know what it means. Maybe your engineers know what it means, or your mom knows what it means.
Alexandra Watkins: But nobody else knows. And it's really
Erin Marcus: important that the name of your business should not be an inside joke. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I, yeah, I mean, business is hard enough. Marketing is hard enough. Creating an audience in this, you know, louder and louder and noisier and noisier world is hard enough. Don't, right?
Erin Marcus: Why make it harder on yourself?
Alexandra Watkins: Yeah. Now that's what I say when you're starting out with a blank slate. Don't give yourself any disadvantages.
Erin Marcus: Yeah, awesome. Absolutely. So if people want to continue this conversation with you or take you up on your offer of a, you know, a quick opinion on their business, the name they're using for their business and return for a review of the book, by the way, I mean, it's, it's fun.
Erin Marcus: It's easy to read. It's very funny and it's extremely step by step useful. So Like this is an easy easy ask of people. Thank you. What's the best way for them to get a hold of you and how do they find you?
Alexandra Watkins: You can find me at eatmywords. com. Perfect. You can test your name for free on our website. Just click on test a name or you can go to freenametest.
Alexandra Watkins: com. For the, and then you can follow me on LinkedIn or connect. Now on Instagram. I'm on Instagram at eatmywordsnames. And one thing you can do. So yeah, if you write a review of my book, my book is hello. My name is awesome. How to create brand names at stack. I think it has a 4. 8 average on Amazon which is, and over, it has over 500 reviews, which is pretty exciting.
Alexandra Watkins: It was almost getting close to 600. So what. Yeah, if you write a review, if you just want me to give you my opinion on one name that you have, I'm happy to do that. A lot of times people hire me for a full on professional name review. That's where I'm gonna jump on a call with you for an hour. We're gonna talk about your name.
Alexandra Watkins: If your name isn't there, you know, I'll tell you why. And then I will make some suggestions. What about this? What about that? If your name is there, then we can use that hour where I can give you marketing ideas. I can help you brainstorm taglines. I, or I'm not even helping you brainstorm taglines. I'm going to brainstorm taglines.
Alexandra Watkins: It's
Erin Marcus: going to give you a really good tag.
Alexandra Watkins: I did this with a woman the other day. I came up with a tagline. She wanted an 800 number. I came up with that. She wanted a job title, came up with that. So in an hour, I can come up with a lot of different ideas for people.
Erin Marcus: That's fantastic. And that's a thousand dollars.
Erin Marcus: That's amazing. I hope people take you up on that. We will make sure we'll put all the links right in the show notes so they're able to just click and be with you one click away. Thank you for spending time with me and all your insights. I think this is a piece that makes, it's just such a huge opportunity and it traps people and it doesn't have to be that way.
Erin Marcus: We have resources, you have resources we didn't even know we had. So thank you so much for spending time with me.
Alexandra Watkins: My pleasure. Thank you, Erin.