Alexandra Watkins: From Match.com date to naming The Baconator

My biggest claim to fame is that I named the Wendy's Baconator.

I feel people just feel like they have to conform to what's expected of them, right? Like, you have to go to college or you have to have kids.

I said that my name was Hannah and that my father owned a publishing company. I know I'm going to hell for this. My father owned a publishing company, and I was writing a book on the prison system and I wanted to know what they thought.

Go find someone who's doing what you want to do and ask them.

Drink a lot of Diet Coke.

Okay, I'll do the breaking into the naming business for 500.

All right. I will take you all the way back. It was about 20 years ago. Oh my gosh, like 20 years ago. So it was a Saturday night and it was my third date with Samir. I had met Samir on Match.com. We had a lot in common. I knew he wasn't going to be the one, but we were having a nice time.

He was going to be taking me to a cocktail party where I would be meeting his friends, and I'm really shy when I don't know people, so I asked him to tell me about who was going to be at the party. He told me about Jim from his bike cycling team, and Sue from his office, and then his friend Anthony, who worked at Landor. And I was like, what? Someone who works at Landor? I had been trying to get my foot in the door at Landor for probably two years at that point.

And I had not come into being a namer, or wanting to be a namer, from any traditional background. Namers are traditionally linguists, or they have a degree in linguistics. They know Latin, they know all that stuff. I completely skipped college, so I didn't have any kind of background in linguistics or even know really anything about the naming profession. I just knew I was really good at naming things, and I had named a couple of things at that point.

So Samir told me, yes, my friend Anthony works at Landor. And as we were leaving, I went to grab my cards, which I always kept by the door. I was a freelance copywriter at that point. Samir looked at me and said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I'm getting my cards. I want to meet your friend Anthony." And he said, kind of half joking, half not, "No, you're not." And I'm like, "Samir, what do you mean? I want to meet your friend Anthony." He's like, "Alexandra, it's Saturday night. This is a cocktail party, not a networking party. Leave your cards at home."

And I was like, oh, hell no. I didn't say that, I just thought it. So I'm like, "Samir, why?" And he's like, "Look, every time my friends meet Anthony and they find out he works at Landor and he's a namer, they're like, I'm really good at naming things." And I'm like, "But I am really good at naming things." And he kind of rolled his eyes, and I grabbed the cards anyway, shoved them in my tiny little purse, and off we go to this party.

So we arrive at this party, which is at a very crowded bar in San Francisco, and I have no idea who Anthony is. No idea.

And by the way, on the car ride over, Samir was kind of mad, you know, because I had defied him and grabbed my cards. But I used that quiet time in the car to think about everything I had ever named. I'm going through them all in my head, you know.

Oh, well, I had done some naming for the Gap, so I had named this travel makeup kit Dash, because when you're dashing out the door, you know, dash your makeup. And the tagline I did for that was, "A little color goes a long way." I do taglines too. Names and taglines. And I named some bubble bath Bubble Over.

Thank you. I had named a CRM system. It was for employees to track employee volunteer activity, and it was a charity rewards program. And I named it Angel Points.

Thank you. And then the tagline was "The value of good deeds." Isn't that nice?

Yeah. So I'm thinking of all the names, all the names. So we get to the bar, we get to the party, and I didn't know it was going to be at this crowded bar, right? I thought it was like a regular party.

Packed. A packed bar in San Francisco. So imagine a shoebox, a very large shoebox, like a shotgun house. Yeah, a shotgun house, ton of people in it, bar in the middle. And I walk in and Samir will not tell me who Anthony is. So I'm like, okay.

And I'm painfully shy, right? I spend the first hour of the party eavesdropping on every conversation like this.

Hanging out at the bar. He's standing at the bar. So I'm eavesdropping on every conversation by kind of leaning back. If I was standing up, you know, you're kind of leaning back a little bit. I'm like, I can't find this guy. Till finally I heard this guy who was wearing a top hat, and, you know, us namers, we have big personalities, right? Anthony's wearing a top hat, and I heard someone say his name, Anthony. I'm like, that must be him.

I just kind of worked up all my courage and I moseyed into the group and I'm like, "Oh, you guys look like you're having fun." Good opening. That's a great way to break into any group, for all of you shy people out there at any networking event. If you just go up to any group of people and say, "You look like you're having fun, can I join you?" that's my best networking tip.

So I introduced myself, and Anthony looked me straight in the eye and he said, "Alexandra, what do you do?" And this was my big moment, right?

I totally lied. And I said, "I'm a professional namer." And he said, "No, that's what I do." And I'm like, "You do?" And I played totally dumb. And so Anthony's like, "Well, why have I never heard of you?" I'm like, "I don't know. I came out of advertising. I was a copywriter." And he's like, "Well, what have you named?" And thank God, on the way over I had been thinking of all of them, because, you know, when you get put on the spot, what's your favorite ad? What's your favorite? And you're like, uh. So I knew, though. And I'm like, "Oh, I named blah, blah, blah," and reeled them off.

So this entire time, Samir was watching from the bar. He's watching me have this conversation with Anthony, and I'm very aware of his eyes burning a hole in the back of my head. So Anthony's chatting, and he said, "Do you have a card on you?"

So again, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Went right back to playing dumb. "I don't know. Let me see."

No, what I really should have said is, "Really, Anthony, it's Saturday night. It's a cocktail party, not a networking party. Of course I left my cards at home." No, but I was prepared. So I'm like, "I don't know. Let me look." And while I pretend to look in my purse, you know, with stuff with cards, I look back at Samir, who's sitting at the bar, with the biggest F-you on my face. And then I'm like, "Oh, here, it's my last one." And so I give Anthony my card.

And a couple of weeks later, I get a call from his assistant, who is going to give me a job doing some naming for Frito-Lay. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I forgot to tell you guys, I had tried everything I could to get into Landor, so this was really a coup. Remember, I had no background in linguistics, so they were probably just throwing my resume away. But I sent them, here's a photo of my dog and all the names they came up with for my dog. It was a white dog, so I had a lot of white names. You know, White Owl, Snowflake, I don't know, whatever those words were.

And so that was Anthony giving me my first big break on a Frito-Lay job, and then the San Francisco office of Landor started giving me a lot of work. And then I got work in the New York office and the Frankfurt office. So fast forward a couple of years. Samir to this day takes full credit for launching my naming career. Of course he did. And Anthony became my mentor and then my friend, my colleague, and we still, I got a text from him the other day. Us namers, we stick together. There's a group of us that are friends and know each other, and we run into problems that nobody else would run into. So we often bounce ideas off of each other. The client wants to own all the names, how do you handle that? So it's really great.

He's heard this. Oh yeah, yeah. No, he knows I lied.

Yeah, no, no, he knows I'm a big liar. But you know, sometimes you gotta fake it till you make it. That is the epitome of fake it till you make it.

And that's normally something I would never do. I would be really uncomfortable saying, oh yeah, no, we've named that, or no, we've done this before, I named this. Normally I would never lie, but I just knew that was my one chance.

Well, I'm pretty fearless, I think. And I just wanted to be a professional namer so badly, and I knew that was going to be my big break. And this is way before LinkedIn. When Samir told me his friend Anthony worked at Landor, I said, "What does he do?" And he's like, "I don't know, head of naming or something." And so that's why I really wanted to meet him.

But I was also raised by a feminist, so I think I never let a man tell me what to do. And the fact that I knew this isn't going to be somebody I'm going to have a long-term relationship with, so I was probably a little less intimidated to defy his wishes and do what I wanted to do. Where maybe if it was some guy I was really trying to impress, I don't know, maybe I would have been more subservient. Oh, I don't think I've ever been subservient in my life. I'm so glad I did. I mean, what if I didn't do that? What would, you know...

No, I think I had just tried so many creative things, and Landor was the firm, you know, the big global branding firm, and that was going to be my big shot. And if I didn't take it, it was just back to being a copywriter and not really becoming a namer.

So I was an advertising copywriter for a very long time, and then I got a job at an identity design firm, and that's where I discovered naming was a profession. Because in advertising, naming isn't part of advertising. There's branding in the beginning, where you're developing the name, the logo, all the identity materials, and then there's advertising at the end, and those two worlds never intersect. They don't share budgets, they don't share any resources. They're very separate.

So when I was in advertising, I didn't even know naming was a thing. And it wasn't until I worked at this identity design firm, where they were naming something for a client, I'm like, wait, people get paid to do that? I had no idea. When I worked in advertising as a copywriter, every once in a while I would get thrown a bone and get to name something. And I was really good at it, and I knew that I liked it, but I didn't know that that was a distinct profession. I just thought it was something I got to do once in a while.

So when I discovered it was a profession, that's when I switched gears and said, this is what I'm going to do. But it's one thing to say you're going to do it, and another thing to get your foot in the door somewhere where you actually can do it and learn from people there. So that was a big break. I started freelancing for Landor, and then freelancing for other big naming firms, branding firms, and that's how I made a name for myself.

It's really cool. Most people don't know it's a profession, and why would you? I was in advertising all those years and never knew. But it is a thing, and you can make a really good living doing it. A lot of namers aren't full-time namers, they're doing other copywriting too. But no, I just wanted to do names and taglines.

Well, I never enjoyed learning. I mean, I know so many people are like, "I'm a lifelong learner." I'm like, oh. I don't want to. Okay, just to let you all know, I subscribe to the New York Times, the San Diego Union, our local paper, the LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post. I'm a total news junkie. So I do read. I read constantly. I read for a couple of hours a day. And Reddit, I read that constantly too.

I bet you do. So even though I'm not a lifelong learner, I'm a voracious reader and news junkie, and podcast listener, and true crime fan.

So yes, I did not have aspirations of higher learning. And when I was in eighth grade, I discovered advertising. That's because, growing up here in San Diego, my sister and I used to recycle cans, aluminum cans and paper. We grew up in a very affluent area. God knows why my parents even let us do this, but it was fun. So we would go around the neighborhood and collect cans.

Yeah, kind of. My sister was very entrepreneurial. So we would go around, and one of our neighbors that was throwing away papers got this fashion magazine called W, that some of you may know of. I could care less about fashion, but I loved all the ads. So I would tear the ads out, and my whole childhood bedroom walls were papered with ads with clever headlines. And so I discovered advertising. I didn't know what I wanted to be, but I just knew I liked the cleverness of the ads and I wanted to do that. So that's what...

I kind of... look it up. I remember one for Perrier, but I don't remember what the ad was, I just remember it was cool. I've got to find that. I've got to look that up. This was in my younger years. I won't even say what year I was in eighth grade. I know what year I was in eighth grade, but I won't say it. It was a long time ago, before the internet, we'll just say that.

So I knew I wanted to be in advertising. And my parents are very well educated. My sister went to Harvard Business School. So it was disappointing for them that I didn't want to go to college, but I just didn't want to sit in a classroom anymore. I just wanted to work. So, yeah. And hey, I did it.

Well, I had a job at 7-Eleven.

Yeah. That was such a good learning experience.

Oh, my gosh. I learned everything about consumer behavior, about buying preferences. It was when cigarettes went from 95 cents to a dollar. That's when it was. And a lot of my customers said, "Oh, I'm not going to smoke anymore if it goes over a dollar." It's so crazy, because I think cigarettes probably cost in the teens now. But it was just really interesting to see, because it was all happening right in front of me. It was an education.

Target audiences, or different audiences for different things. I would say the difference between someone that eats Almond Joy versus Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

I don't know the difference, but there's a profile. It was really interesting. No, I love working at 7-Eleven, I really did.

Oh, thank heaven.

A great brand. Still a fan, still go there.

No, I didn't do that, but once in a while I go into the one where I used to work here. That's always fun. Pull up in my Porsche: "I used to work here."

Yeah, I do.

Yeah. But not to be a jerk, like, "Oh my god, I used to work here when I was in high school."

So I was working at 7-Eleven and I was reading our local diatribe, the San Diego Reader, and I saw this ad in the back for this advertising school that was opening up, or I think it had recently opened, the La Jolla Academy of Advertising Art. Now, I grew up in La Jolla, so for there to be an academy of advertising art right in La Jolla, like, really? So I went home and I showed my mom. I'm like, "I want to go to this advertising school." My dad wasn't into it. He was against it, I don't know what the deal was. But I think my parents went down to the school with me, and we talked to the dean of the school, Gary Cantor. My dad worked at a company and he knew some ad guy there, who said, yes, it's legitimate. All of their teachers were working professionals in the field, and it was just a one-year program, so it was not expensive. So my parents said, okay, we'll pay for you to go there.

And after the first quarter, Gary Cantor had my mom come down to the school and said that he didn't think it was a good fit for me because I was too creative. I mean, can you imagine?

I know, I know. So my mom convinced him to let me stay, because it was the only thing that I was interested in doing. So they let me stay and I graduated. And then I just talked my way into an internship, and then eventually got a real job. And then I worked at Ogilvy and Mather, my dream agency to work for. Talked my way into that. I'm good at talking my way into places.

But all these years later, even though I grew up in San Diego and lived here until I was 21, and then I moved and didn't come back here for a very long time, when I came back, I looked up Gary Cantor and I said, "Hey, I'd love to get together with you." By then, I think he knew of my success. So I got together with him, and he's like, "You're one of the top five students that ever graduated from the school." So that made me feel good. But I really wanted to be the most successful student ever. But yeah, because I wrote the book, so.

Yeah, it felt really good to kind of come full circle like that.

Yeah, well, for my mom, it was always, you have to toot your own horn. And then she always would say, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." So that's why, when I didn't want to go to college, they're like, "Okay, we'd want you to do that. But if you don't want to do it, we're not going to spend the money sending you there. That's not your thing." When I can visualize something in my head and I really want it to happen, I'll stop at nothing to make it happen.

Yeah, it never would have worked for me. I'm so glad my parents let me pursue my interest instead of whatever they might have wanted for me.

That's right. But you never know, right? Like Glenn, my partner, he has a business degree from Dartmouth, from the Tuck School of Business, and he runs a handyman business now. So go figure, right? He always says he's the most well-educated handyman. It's probably true. We all end up, I guess, where we're supposed to be. But I never had student loans, and I feel like that's how I was able to get ahead financially. There's people that are just saddled with them for years and years, right?

When we moved here to San Diego, he had always had big marketing jobs, and I thought he would be a big fish in a small pond. Because when I left here it was a small pond, but now it's a big pond and a lot of people want to live here. So suddenly there was a lot of competition for marketing jobs. While he's looking for a job, he's also building out our surfboard fence in the backyard and doing all this stuff outdoors, building things and fixing things. And he's like, "I wish I could just do this for a living." I'm like, "Why don't you?" And he's like, "I couldn't make a living." And now he has a big company with 15 employees. So if you really want it and it's what you're supposed to do, I think you'll end up doing it.

Drink a lot of Diet Coke. Okay, wait. I'm going to get one right here.

Cool. Okay, someone left spunk.

Yeah, I think with Glenn, I don't know about with me, I just made it happen. But with Glenn, it just all fell into place with the handyman thing. And I think at age, too, a lot of people that he went to business school with are doing things completely different than what they might have done with their degree originally. I think maybe the older you get, the less willing you are to put up with something that you don't want to do. And yeah, it's hard. Look, when I started out naming things, I wasn't charging what I charge now, obviously, but you develop a confidence and you can raise your prices. If it's something that you love, then you won't mind working for less. What kind of trade-off do you want? Do you really want to have a job paying you a really high salary, but it's burning you out and you can't enjoy your weekends because you're always working, or whatever it is? You have to ask, what's that trade-off?

And then as far as what you can do right away, I'll give you an example just from today. I was speaking with a trademark attorney who's really just an amazing young woman. And she told me that she was recording her first podcast later today. I'm like, "Oh, that's so great. I've been on, I guess, over 100 podcasts, and let me help you." She didn't ask for help, but I just gave her a bunch of help. It turned out, I looked it up on Listen Notes. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, you're in a podcast in the top 0.5 global percentage of podcasts." I'm like, "Yeah, that's a good first podcast to do." So I just spent some time with her showing her a bunch of tips. I'm like, "Here's how you can find podcasts to be on." I gave her a bunch of ideas. I showed her, here's my podcast one-sheet.

So that's kind of reverse engineering what people need to do. Go find someone who's doing what you want to do and ask them. I had a call the other day with this guy who took our name challenge. We have the Ultimate Name Challenge. He found it on our careers page on our website, took the task, and then he set up a call with me, and he just asked me a bunch of questions about becoming a namer. How did you do it? How do you charge people? What are some things I should know? Look, not everybody might be willing to engage with him like that. But I had so many people help me when I started out, and I was more than happy to help him. So find someone who's doing what you want to do and reach out to them and say, "Would you be willing to have a conversation with me?"

Don't say, "Can I pick your brain?" because people hate that phrase. Just say, "Would you be willing to have a conversation with me about how you got started?" Just something like that. But say, "I'm really impressed with what you've done with your career. I'm considering doing something similar. Would you be willing to chat with me for 15 minutes about how you got started?"

Thank you.

Yeah. I have one more tip in that area. If there's something you really want to do as a profession and you're not in that profession yet, volunteer for something that would expose you to that. For instance, if you want to be a party planner but you're not making a living doing that yet, volunteer for an organization that puts on a party every year, get on that committee, and get some experience doing that.

Thank you.

Did you see, when they made the GIF label, they made one that was spelled G-I-F?

Yeah, they did. Look it up.

Okay, I was in Peru. I've been all over the world. I've traveled to 50 countries, and crazy, crazy places. I've been to Libya. I don't know a lot of people that can say that. So I was at Lake Titicaca, Peru, on a boat trip. I think all there was to eat was potato. Peru has a lot of different potatoes. And yeah, there was a mutiny on the boat. Our boat captain went off with some local village lady, and we're not really quite sure what happened to him. And there was some ritual. Peru is full of crazy things.

By the way, if you're ever in Peru and you want to just freak somebody out when you're at some ruin, just be looking at your guidebook and turn to whoever you're with and say, "Oh my God, this is where the human rituals happened. This is where the human sacrifices happened." And anyway, yeah, there was a ritual.

There was a ritual. I know. There was a ritual where Coca-Cola was poured on something as part of a ritual. It was a crazy trip. But yeah, this was not Carnival Cruise Line.

Tiny little boat.

No, no. This is a tiny little boat with, like, 20 people on it. And yeah, there was a mutiny, and the captain, who knows, when I say the captain, I'm using that phrase lightly. But yeah, we were stuck on this boat. There was really nothing, except I always travel with a jar of Jif peanut butter, just in case. It's high in protein, crunchy. So there was no food, but I had my Jif peanut butter. So yeah, two days.

Oh my gosh, I need to take better notes on my travels. Look back through all this. I can't remember exactly what happened. I know I need to talk to the guy I was traveling with and ask. It was something where, no, I remember the people, I remember the family. Not everyone on the boat wanted to have this mutiny thing, but we did, I think, because I think we wanted to leave earlier because we were staying too long somewhere, and we wanted to take over. And the guy had run off with some village woman.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. Wait.

No one, I think. We were, yes, okay, wait, we were left on this boat with no captain. And I think he was just off doing his thing. And yeah, that's when the mutiny, that's when it was decided that we should just take over.

Made it back, yeah.

No, I'm not. I'm not a foodie.

Delicacies, like stewed camel meat. I think...

Yeah, I wouldn't call those delicacies, though.

Yeah, adventurous foods. Yes, adventurous eater.

Yeah, but not a foodie. So it's like, oh, I've eaten barbecued squirrel and all that, of just having the cool trophies, right? Like, oh, I've ridden bareback on an ostrich, right? So it's always me trying to do things that other people haven't done. I like to be really unique and individual. Like, I don't...

Yeah, or like having a purple Easter egg desk. No one else has this desk, I had it custom made. I like a story to tell. I did go hunting with the Hadzabe bushmen, and they killed a squirrel with a bow and arrow. I have the arrows, not the squirrel-killing arrow per se, but I love their arrows. But at that point I was just being polite. They were eating a squirrel, and, would you like some squirrel? But then I'm like, oh, this would be a good story to tell. How many people...? So yeah, I've eaten some interesting things, the stewed camel meat that was in Libya. I just like being able to say I've done things other people haven't done.

I do.

Oh, my parents are big world travelers. My parents went to Peru and Libya long before I ever did.

No, just on their own. When I was going to Libya, I mean to Egypt, I told my mom, "I'm going to Egypt," and she said, "Oh, you have to go to Libya while you're there," which people are always like, what? I'm like, no, my parents went to Libya, back before, I think, before Gaddafi was in power. But yeah, a lot of places I've gone are places that my parents went to.

I've never traveled alone.

So...

Yeah, I had a boyfriend for a long time that I traveled with. I always travel with someone else. I don't like traveling alone, because I like sharing my adventures with people. I don't think I've ever traveled alone.

Oh, I only like two. I only like two. Because once you start adding more people, then you have to compromise more.

Yeah, well, I like seeing new places. But, you know, the shy thing, I don't know where that comes from. I know a lot of people that are like me, that seem outwardly outgoing, but it's possible to be an introvert and extrovert at the same time. I don't need to be around other people to be energized. I can just, in my own mind, or just being online, that's plenty for me. Or just being here in this house, you guys can't see, but it's really, really fun, backyard with surfboard fence and cheeky bar.

Okay, yeah, a lot of fun.

No, I don't know, I can't cite a specific name. Although I did name the Spanish language school Gringo Lingo.

Thank you. And that's totally based on me, growing up 26 miles from the Mexican border and not speaking Spanish. I cheated my way through Spanish class in high school. We don't tell anybody that. I've always regretted that. In how I cheated, it wasn't regular cheating. So in San Diego, the high school I went to, there's a lot of Hispanic kids, at any high school in San Diego. They all take Spanish 101 because it's easy for them. It would be like me taking kindergarten English in high school. They didn't need to take Spanish, but they could, easy A, right? So they all did my homework for me, and then I didn't learn anything.

I do regret it, because knowing Spanish would have been a big help. Now that I'm living back in San Diego again, I regret not knowing it.

I just don't have a mind for it. I know how to pronounce things, but I don't know how to conjugate a verb. Although right now I'm naming a language app, and it seems like it will be easy to use language apps, so maybe I will eventually learn. But yeah, learning, like I said, I'm not this lifelong learner.

Yeah. It would be nice to know it, but it's not essential to know it. So when I named Gringo Lingo, I'm like, oh, that's me. I'm the ultimate gringo. So that's the only time that I feel like... No, I think my travels have made me definitely more open-minded. But also, just growing up close to the border made me very compassionate towards people from other countries. I grew up in an affluent area, and then going down there and seeing these poor kids selling Chiclets on the street, like, okay, I'm very lucky to have what I have. So I've always felt that way.

But I think what's helped me as a namer is always surrounding myself with very creative and colorful things, because that just, I don't know, you know, I have my little robot clock there, all the color around me, that helps me be creative. I remember when we first moved into this house, my office is the pool house, and the floor in here was that very popular gray flooring. I moved in all the furniture, the purple desk, the stuffed animal sofa, and I never wanted to sit in here and I couldn't figure out why. And one day I realized it was the floor. The color was just sucking the life out of everything. So Glenn, being a handyman, put in a new floor for me, and so I have burnt orange and fuchsia carpet tiles, and they're squares and fun geometric shapes and different colors. Once the color of the floor changed, I totally wanted to be in here all the time. It's just amazing. So many people are afraid of color. And I always say, art doesn't have to match your sofa. And it's true, right?

Well, I think because I grew up with very colorful furniture. My parents went to Denmark in the early 1960s and walked into what we would call a Danish modern furniture store and bought a ton of furniture, and our whole house was furnished to look very colorful. I still have a lot of it, the blue egg chair and some really cool stuff. So I haven't been afraid to use color and have bright things and toys.

But I think around here, with the gray, right? This house, everything was painted beige in the backyard, and there was no personality. All it takes is a can of paint, and suddenly, a turquoise wall. People are so afraid to do anything dramatic. Look, if you don't like it, you can always paint it back to the color it was. But yeah, color just adds life to things.

Okay, Joan. Thank you, thank you.

Yeah, idea orgy. My mom's super creative, and that's where I get my creativity from. My mom's all about play. My mom's a writer, an author. She's always been creative and told me, be fearless with your ideas, try different things, play with words. And yeah, she's my biggest fan for sure.

My parents used to take us on an outing every Sunday to do different things. My mom loved to take us to museums, and the library was an outing. Everything was an outing. We love factory tours. I remember my mom took us to the Blue Diamond almond factory, which is really cool. My mom's a very curious person, like me, and I think people that love factory tours are curious people too, wanting to know how things are made. So seeing that, and then I just remember once with my mom, we were at the beach, and we grew up by the beach, and I'm like, that smell, you know, the ocean. And my mom...

No, not the Coppertone.

No, it's more like seaweed. And my mom's like, people come thousands of miles to smell that smell. And growing up here, you don't realize how spoiled you are growing up in San Diego until you move away and you're like, oh, it's not 72 degrees with no humidity everywhere else in the world.

So yeah, my mom was always really encouraging and making our lives interesting, going to the zoo. I still see my mom all the time, and she and I go to the zoo all the time, just to go on a walk at the zoo, or take the bus ride around, or see what's new. And it's nice. My mom was always very encouraging to open her eyes. You can see over there in the corner I have a jackalope. That's my jackalope. My mom has a jackalope too. So the jackalope was like the family mascot. My mom had a great imagination, right? Or still does. I love that.

And she was always sending postcards. I picked up so many great habits from my mom, like sending postcards. And my dad was really good at bargaining. Bargaining is the Watkins family sport. We learned how to bargain going to Tijuana. My dad taught us how to bargain, so I'm really good at it, and then going to these foreign countries, they like to haggle. It's like a sport to them too.

Oh, yeah. Avery Island, the hot sauce. I love hot sauce. So the hot sauce factory, Jelly Belly factory.

Yeah. That's in Fairfield in the Bay Area.

No, I never went to See's Candy. Oh, Mauna Loa. The Mauna Loa macadamia nuts. Yeah, I did that one with my mom.

Oh, what? No, why?

Oh, yeah. There's a whole book called See It Made in the USA. Best factory tour ever. Okay, a couple. This isn't a factory, but you used to be able to tour the FBI headquarters.

Back in the day. And then Smithsonian museums. Again, not a factory, but a cool place to go. But the Bureau of...

Yeah, where they print the money. That was probably one of the coolest tours as a kid.

The prison story. Okay, let's talk about that. Okay, wait, she's six and there's a prison story? All right, no, we have to fast forward.

Just a couple of years. Okay, high school. Back in high school.

I'm in 12th grade. Coach Ken is my teacher. He was a high school coach, but also taught this class called You and the Law. For our senior project, we had to write a report on the penal system, right? So the California penal system, not California, the penal system in general. This is back before the internet, and so everyone in my class went to the library to copy out of a book. But we were not allowed to copy out of a book in my family. I mean, this is the thing. Talk about curiosity.

Okay, you can't copy out of a book. I mean, it's like plagiarizing, right? So you would have to read it and then interpret it in your own way. And we always had to look things up in the dictionary. And that is something to this day, I constantly am looking things up. If I'm reading an article in the New York Times and I don't understand something, I don't know, look it up, look it up. So I'm constantly looking things up in the dictionary.

So I was in 12th grade and we got that assignment, and I knew, don't go to the library to copy out of the book. Okay, so I had mentioned the San Diego...

Yeah, the penal system. So I'm not going to go to the library. And then I had an idea. Our local diatribe, the San Diego Reader, which I mentioned before, they used to have these classified ads. And for all you young people watching that don't know about ads, there's the personal ads, which were the predecessor to all the dating websites. A little ad in the paper that would say, you know, single white female, 36, whatever, list some interests, looking for a man, whatever.

So back then, one time in that high school era, I had seen these classified ads that said "incarcerated white male," blah, blah. And I'm like, "Mom, what does incarcerated mean?" And she's like, "Look it up in the dictionary." She'd never tell me, she'd say, look it up in the dictionary. Really good habit. Parents, make your kids look things up in the dictionary. So I learned incarcerated meant someone was in prison.

So when we got that assignment, and I knew I couldn't go to the library to copy out of a book, and we're pre-internet, I'm like, ah, incarcerated white male. So I decided I was going to write to these guys in prison who were looking for pen pals. But I knew that I would probably have a better chance of them writing back to me if I included a photo. But no one wanted a photo of me because, you know, I was a dork. Hard to believe, but...

I wasn't Barbie.

I wasn't Barbie, but my sister, no, I know what you're thinking. I didn't send a photo of my sister. But my sister was the school photographer, and I had full access to her darkroom. My best friend Lydia Golobeck was an aspiring model, and my sister loved Lydia and took lots of photos of Lydia. My mom drove this 1966 Jaguar, and we had all these photos of Lydia posing next to the Jaguar. Lydia was Polish, she was European, with her fancy clothes and jewelry. Really nice photos.

So I stole the photos and I started writing to these incarcerated guys. And I said that my name was Hannah and that my father owned a publishing company. I know I'm going to hell for this. My father owned a publishing company, and I was writing a book on the prison system and I wanted to know what they thought. I couldn't give my address, because I didn't want these guys, after they left prison, to come to my house and knock on our door.

Could totally happen. So my mom had the wisdom to at least see that far ahead. Oh my God. That was my family for you. Can you imagine? So this is where my mom, my mom just always being my biggest cheerleader, fan, supporter, curiosity generator. Because I had to tell my mom, look, I want to do this. And my mom's like, that's a great idea. So my mom let me use her IBM Selectric to type my letters to these guys.

And then I couldn't use my return address, so my mom said, oh, use the post office box. My dad had a post office box, Box 9035, down in Pacific Beach in San Diego. And one of my duties in high school, I did the grocery shopping sometimes, and I always had to check my dad's post office box a couple of times a week. So I had the key, I had the address. I was like, just use your dad's P.O. box. He'll never know. How would he know? He never went there. It was my job to go to the P.O. box.

So I wrote to these guys, and at first the letters started trickling in, and then I started getting a lot of letters. Long letters. These guys have a lot of time.

I wrote to six guys.

Yeah, pages. Single-spaced. Letters and photos, I got the letters and photos. So this is a long senior project, so I had time. And then for my report, I just wrote one intro page saying this is what I did, I wrote to these guys, and then it was like 26 pages of letters and photos that these guys sent me. And Coach Ken gave me an A plus. He said it was the most creative report he had ever seen in all of his years of teaching. I'm friends with him on Facebook. I bet if I wrote to him on Facebook and said, hey, is it still... Of course he's going to say yes.

So that was the biggest life lesson for me: you can break the rules and still get ahead. That set the course of my whole life. It's okay to break the rules, be creative. And so anytime I've had a challenge in my life, like getting into Landor, even sending photos of the dog names I came up with, no, it didn't work exactly, but it was a creative solution to a problem. So anytime, what's a creative way to do this? And I would tell anybody listening, find a creative solution. If you were trying to get my attention and we didn't know each other, and you sent me Jif peanut butter, you would have definitely gotten my attention, right?

But you don't have to. It's easy to get someone's attention if you're creative about it. It really is. I mean, okay, behind me, the pink fridge. Adam Grant is a multiple New York Times bestselling author. He wrote Give and Take, Originals. He's written many, many books. I read Give and Take, I loved it, and I wanted to get on his radar. So I took photos of myself in front of the pink fridge holding different business books, and I sent them to authors to get on their radar. That's how I met Adam Grant, and the back of my book has a blurb from him endorsing my book.

I was creative. I have a photo of me holding the book. The pink fridge is full of books, by the way. So it's me standing in front of the pink fridge with it slightly ajar, holding this book. So what's a creative thing that you can do to get on authors' radar? If you ever want to meet an author, they're very easy to meet, especially if you do something fun, like take a picture of their book in an unusual location. See...

Well, I think you have to know your audience, right? Because you don't want to push it too far if you don't think they're going to be receptive to it. So now social media is obviously so important, everyone uses it. If you're trying to get on the radar of someone that is a big influencer, look at their social media. How far are they pushing it? What's going to be interesting for them? There's this, you guys know Liquid Death, the water that I think everyone thinks is an energy drink in the beginning, [inaudible] is water. I have these pirates in our backyard, these skeleton pirates. If I wanted to get on the radar of Liquid Death, I could do something funny with one of the pirates, like pretending the pirate's drinking it or something. And the pirates are dead because they're skeletons. So do something fun like that. Try to put things together. But if I was trying to get on the radar of a more conservative company or brand, I probably wouldn't do that. But also, know yourself. I only want to work with fun brands, or people that think they're fun to work with. So know your audience.

There's so many things that people can do. We were talking about Etsy, with this amazing book that you had made on Etsy. And I'm looking out the window at these cool mile marker signs I had made on Etsy, the ones that say, you know, Bali, 5,656 miles. So something as simple as getting a mile marker sign made for someone. They're very inexpensive to have made. They're colorful. And also, what's something someone's going to keep? My business card is a little pink fridge, and it opens, it stands up on someone's desk. No one ever throws it away. So when you're trying to get someone's attention, what's something that they're going to keep? And don't make it cheesy.

If you pick, say, six people to target, keep them top of mind, really research them. What's something that's going to be of interest to them? It won't always work. But then also just asking, "Hey, does anyone have a connection to Richard Branson?" I finally got my book in the hands of Richard Branson, but you just gotta ask. It's like with Adam Grant, you just have to ask, does anybody know this person? And then just figure out what would make that person smile, and even sending them a photo through social media, and they're going to repost it somewhere.

Yeah, and a lot of people do try using ChatGPT. I think it's okay for kickstarting, brainstorming, but it's pretty mediocre and vanilla, the ideas that you're getting. I'll give you an example. I was working on naming a family travel game company, and just as a test, I didn't need it, I asked ChatGPT, "Come up with fun names for a kids travel game company." And it gave me things like Ridiculous Roadside Adventures, like, really not even funny, or corny, like a dad joke kind of thing. Sorry, dad.

But it's not doing anything original, versus with me working on it. I came up with names like Fee-Fi-Foe-Fam or Fee-Fi-Foe-Fun or Tripopotamus. It's just not there yet. It's so not there yet. I was naming a company. This woman is a butcher, and she sells meat at a small farmer's market in the Midwest. She wanted a name that she could put on her meat company, but also she could put on merchandise and sell to tourists at this small farmer's market. And so I came up with the name Mrs. Cleaver. I helped her make a logo, a starter logo with a 1950s housewife. She has a cleaver in her hand, she's winking. There's no way ChatGPT is coming up with the name Mrs. Cleaver. It's just not.

No, that's not mine. But a really funny story about The Slutty Vegan: I wrote the second edition of my book, and I sent it to my editor, who had a lot of trust and faith in me. And as you're waiting to get feedback on anything, you're biting your nails, pins and needles. So I'm waiting, waiting, waiting. He finally sends me an email and all it says is, "Is The Slutty Vegan really the name of a restaurant?" That's all he said. I'm like, "Yes." He's like, "Okay, it's great. Love it, don't change a word." I turned it in early, so I still had a couple of months to perfect it, so I did make it better. But yeah, I thought that was funny about The Slutty Vegan.

Yeah, Bicycle Pops named Joe Blow. Absolutely my favorite name. Yes. And no, that's not my name.

Thank you.

No, it's a frozen yogurt.

Yeah, they were in Utah. It was right when Pinkberry was coming on the scene, and they didn't want a name with a color or a fruit in it. I'm like, yeah, we're not going to do that. And yeah, Spoon Me became the name. They were in Utah, but they were very self-deprecating. I knew that they weren't these devout Mormons that were going to object to the name, and they loved the name as much as I did. So that was really good.

Sometimes when we're naming things, we always come up with, like, 100-plus names. But that name, I knew right away. I'm like, that's the name. Sometimes you just know that's the name, and that was definitely one of those instances. But yeah, they had merchandise. They had T-shirts that said "Shut up and spoon me," bumper stickers, "If you're driving this close you might as well spoon me." They have booty shorts. Yeah, I love that name. Still to this day in the top five.

It's sad. It's like, oh my gosh. I remember the first time it happened, where one of our companies, it was a financial, like an app kind of thing before apps, and it was called Cake, Cake Financial. And they sold to E-Trade, and then they disappeared, and it was like, no. I mean, we've been in business 20 years, and most businesses don't last that long, so a lot of businesses that we've named are no longer around. But then there's names like the nail salon we named Hand Job. They've been around 15 years. Smitten Ice Cream, same thing. Neato, the robotic vacuum, they were in business for, I think, 19 years, and then just a couple of months ago they said they're no longer going to be in business. For the longest time I really struggled, like, can I keep that name on our website still if they're not in business? And it's like, yeah, no, I came up with the idea, or we came up with the idea.

But no, my biggest claim to fame is that I named the Wendy's Baconator. And the Baconator is a name so famous that it has its own Wikipedia page, and it was an answer on Jeopardy, and in the New York Times crossword.

So the Baconator, we were hired by another naming firm to name it, which is not unusual. We don't do it so much anymore, but in the beginning a lot of naming firms would just farm out work to us, like the Landors of the world. That one was from a company named Strategic Name Development. I just remember they were really good creative briefs, and in the brief it said that the name had to be something that a truck driver would be comfortable ordering. So that was always this image in my mind, of the truck driver.

That's a really good question. I wouldn't say failed, because I don't know what they tested or anything, or if they just saw the name. I mean, to me it's kind of one of those names. But I'd have to look and see what the other names are. I remember, so we were naming both a regular hamburger and then a bacon cheeseburger, and I remember one of my favorite names for just the regular burger was Excalibur. You like that? I feel like you like all that.

Grab mine.

The book, or a name for the company that made the book?

Tell me about the book.

Um, what... who... tell me the purpose of the book.

Yeah, yeah. And then hold a lot...

Yeah, it's so much more than a book. Look at these pages. Oh my God, how are all of these hand-singed, do you think?

That's beautiful. Okay, well, one thing I would do is I would research what guest books were called back in the day. And then even what are these kind of... I would look up all kinds of words around old books.

From the product, and then the whole idea. So it's like, people are signing, their guests, it's like memories. I would just start exploring those words. And then so...

And then it's kind of a lot. I think of a ship's log, that's kind of coming to mind. Something like that. But I need to have my tools in front of me to look for ideas. One thing that's really good for brainstorming is just start speaking out loud, because when you're saying things out loud, it's easy. Like, there's keys, and they're so cool, it's these keys. So I would write down the word key, or mark, or...

Yeah. It's not a diary, but I would look up words that meant recording, recording things. I mean, what have you been calling it?

Yeah. There's rivets on here, right? So do something with riveting, like riveting guests. It's bound, this is a really cool bound book, like bound for glory. I would play around with phrases like that. And then Fox, you do a lot with Fox. Sly. What are properties of a fox, or outfox, foxy, fly. And then there's kinds of foxes, like a velox. Velox is a really cool word, V-E-L-O-X.

Yeah. But tome, you said, tome is one of those words. What could you do there? Yeah, this is so beautiful.

I don't know.

Send me a bacon...

Yeah, I guess not. But if you were just describing it, even when you had this made, you had something in mind that you wanted made, and whatever direction you gave to the woman that made it. And also, if you bought this off the shelf, you could look at what the description says of it. But no, it's so cool. I would just need to look up antique books, and then I would just start. Wikipedia is a great place for ideas.

One thing that I do a lot of when I'm naming something, when I'm researching, is I just skim. So for instance, I was naming this company where it was a men's athleisure wear, so like...

Fabletics, right, but for dudes. And the client was really into MMA fighting. Clothing, you can name clothing anything, that's really hard to name because there is no right answer. It's not like Spoon Me, where we're like, oh, I get it, frozen, you're eating with a spoon. So I'm like, okay, MMA fighting. So I started looking up, I googled top 50 movie fight scenes and top 50 car chase scenes. There's so many nice people that have put together a list, so much content of everything. So I just started reading and skimming. I'm not reading for comprehension at all, that would just take too long. I'm just skimming, looking for interesting words to jump off the page.

So I'm reading about all these movie fight scenes, and I'm skimming, skimming, skimming, skimming, and then I see these two words jump out at me, and it's stunt double. And I'm like, oh, stunt double is perfect for athleisure wear, because you're aspiring to be that guy, that stunt guy, but you're really just at home on the couch eating flaming Cheetos. So yeah, Stunt Double became the name.

No, I didn't see it.

Wait, is it a comedy? Oh, wait, who's in it?

Okay, I'm going to watch it. I love comedy.

Send me your comedy.

No, I'll look it up.

Absolutely. A small boundary makes it easier. Definitely. Give me some parameters. We're naming a pet hair vacuum right now. Pets, okay, here's something I can play with. I can't tell you the names that made it to the finals, but I'll tell you one that didn't, that I love, was Alpha Dog. I just thought that's a really good name.

Bobo.

Dog named Bobo, yeah.

No, it's close.

Okay. It's like the opposite of every author story I've ever heard. I never had a book in me. I did not want to write a book. My parents are authors, and I knew that writing a book was a lot of work for not a lot of money. So I had zero interest in writing a book. I'm just going along, having my naming career, and I get an email one day from this guy named Jeevan saying, have you thought about writing a book? It turns out he works with a publishing company called Berrett-Koehler. And he had found my website, and one of their interns, Grace, I think she saw I was doing a speaking engagement and then she found my website, and she told Jeevan, "This website's really entertaining." My website is eatmywords.com. And she's like, "What do you think about having her do a book?" Which, very high risk for an intern to make any suggestion whatsoever. But thank goodness she did. She was fearless.

So I got the email from him, like, "Would love to, your writing is so refreshing, and you have a sense of humor, which is so sorely lacking in business books, and we would love to publish a book or two by you." And I'm like, "Oh, thank you, but I'm not interested." Which, to anybody listening who wants to write a book, they're probably very horrified right now.

Yeah, exactly. And I didn't have to do that, but I'm like, no, thanks. And then Grace came to see me at that talk that I did, which was when I was living in San Francisco. I did speaking engagements all the time. So she came to see me speak at General Assembly or one of those places, and she recorded it. And then she sent it to Jeevan, who then watched it on a plane. And he's like, "This is your book. Just come in and talk to us."

So I went in there. At Berrett-Koehler, they have author days. That's where the author comes in, and you're allowed to bring in some of your friends, and then the whole Berrett-Koehler staff is there, and they invite some of their colleagues that they think would find your book interesting. So I went to one of their author days and I spoke with the author, and she's like, "Look, I've published with every big publisher, Simon and Schuster, Random House, da da da. But after I published with Berrett-Koehler, I will never publish with another publisher." So that was like, that's all I need. She was the incoming president of the National Speakers Association, so I knew she's a very reputable person. We had a lot of people in common. I'm like, okay, that's good. And then the more I talked to Jeevan, I'm like, okay. And the more I realized what a book could do for me, I was like, okay, I'll do it. And I'm so glad I did, because the book opened so many doors.

And yeah, the money is not in selling the book, because I think I make a dollar every time one of my books is sold. It's in the work that comes from the book. I can't tell you how many times somebody picked it up in an airport bookstore and then either emailed me from the plane or called right after they got off the plane and said, yeah, we want to hire you. And then I was able to raise my prices. We get a lot of work from people that have read the book.

No one ever told me I should write a book.

Yeah, I didn't. And when I wrote the second edition, it had 50 percent more content because I had more stories by then. But what I would tell you, if you want to write a book, is don't write the book first. Write a book proposal and then pitch that to publishers, instead of writing your book first. Although I think a lot of people self-publish now, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if you are going to self-publish, get a really good editor, because so many books need to be edited. Most books are way too long and too full of fluff. People put way more in the book than needs to be in the book.

I'm just speaking about nonfiction right now. With nonfiction, in a book proposal they're going to want to know what makes your book different than any other books on the topic that are out there, and that's really important for a publisher to know. And then they also want to know... You have to have a platform before you write a book. You can't say, I'm going to write a book and that's going to give me a platform. You have to already have a following on social media, or a lot where you've already made a name for yourself, because the publishers want you to have somebody to sell the book to.

If you want to follow somebody really good on social media, just go on LinkedIn and follow Jeevan, J-E-E-V-A-N. His last name starts with an S. I'm tempted to spell it for you, but you'll find him. He works for Berrett-Koehler. BK Pub is their website. Jeevan has the most sage wisdom on writing a nonfiction book, and he tells it to you straight. If you want to submit your book proposal, Berrett-Koehler has a book proposal on their website, BK Pub, that you can use as a template. And once you write the proposal, it will really help you figure out what should be in your book. And then you submit your proposal, and I think you submit a sample chapter or two.

But the book industry is hard. People don't buy as many books as they used to. But what a book can do for you, it can give you tremendous credibility. It can help you get speaking engagements, help raise your prices, really make you a subject matter expert. And if your book is successful, you'll come in contact with other authors who are successful, and I think that really helps. I'm really lucky, my book was named a top 10 marketing book by Inc. magazine, and that really helped. And I have, I think, close to 700 Amazon reviews now.

Writing the book is just half the battle. You've got to write the book, but then you have to market the book. Every publisher wants to know, how are you going to market the book? What are upcoming speaking engagements you have? What are places that you plan to market the book? Because they don't do it for you anymore. It's not like the old days. You're not being sent on a book tour. Nobody does that anymore. Unless you're a really famous author, people aren't doing book tours.

Toys, right? Look at my little robot clock. Actually, when the alarm goes off, the eyes flash. I think surround yourself with toys, color. One thing you can do is, in your email signature, your voicemail. If you call my cell phone and you get my voicemail, it says, "Hi, it's Alexandra. You've reached the bottom of my purse." That's fun, right? And then just your email signature, or how you sign off on things, or your salutation, or just your wireless network name, right? Have a fun wireless network name for your guests and a fun guest password. That's something you can do.

People do take themselves way too seriously. Even just, if you look on LinkedIn, everyone's so serious, right? I remember for April Fool's this year, my friend emailed me, he's like, "What are you doing for April Fool's this year?" I'm like, "I don't have anything." And so I'm like, what can I do? What can I do? Okay, it's celebrity baby names. I named a celebrity baby. So I decided to say that I named Elon Musk's new baby. You know how Elon Musk has like 12 kids, so no one would question that he had a new baby, right? And it's not like Kim Kardashian, where you would know if she was pregnant. No one would know if he was having a kid. So I found this picture of him holding a baby, and I said that Eat My Words named Musk's new baby.

And then I went on ChatGPT. I came up with the name, right? So I'm like, what does Elon Musk love? The letter X, right? He loves that letter X.

So I'm like, okay, what name can I come up with with X? And I'm like, oh, I'm going to say it's a baby girl, and the name is XX Chromosome, right? Because he comes up with these insane names. And XX Chromosome, it sounds totally real, right? So I went on ChatGPT and I'm like, "Okay, I'm playing an April Fool's Day joke. I'm saying that I named Elon Musk's new baby XX Chromosome. Write me a bunch of rationale of why it's a good name, and make it super complex and convoluted." And it did, and it's priceless.

So I put that on LinkedIn. I put the photo of him holding a baby, it's a baby boy, but who would know? And then I said, "As many of you know, Elon Musk recently hired Eat My Words to name his new baby girl, and I'm proud to announce the name is XX Chromosome." And then I had all of the rationale that ChatGPT wrote, which is so good. And then I posted it, and people really believed it. One person even said, "Oh my gosh, do you mind if I ask how you got that gig and what you charged? I really want to get into baby naming." So yeah, people really fell for it. And then I'm like, okay, I've got to send this out as an email, and so I did, on Mailchimp, and people really fell for it. So yeah, it's good.

It's so hard for me to know, because I've never been that person. But I feel people just feel like they have to conform to what's expected of them, right? Like you have to go to college, or you have to have kids, or you have to live in a certain area. And with me, I've never felt obligated to have to do anything, and have rebelled against being normal. But I think people just kind of feel like it's unacceptable to do anything disruptive, right? Or they're just afraid. And so I always tell people, be fearless.

Let's give an example of conference room names, right? They're usually pretty boring. Their conference room name is Paris, because there's a lot of conference rooms named after cities. Oh, who doesn't love Paris? It's so boring. So if you want to just kind of test things out, get permission from someone at the company and just put Post-it notes over the names of your conference rooms and put fun names instead. So...

Like a blabber... Blabbermouth. I was thinking...

Oh, that would be a good one. Blabbermouth is funny. I love Blabbermouth. No, like you do names of candies, right? Because who doesn't love candy? You know, Milk Dud: "Oh, let's meet in Milk Dud." Or Milky Way. Milky Way, that's a good one. Or, you know, Junior Mint. Okay, Snickers. Tongue twisters, those are really good. Names of childhood toys, right?

So just try some fun. Get my book. There's a whole chapter on corporate creativity, and I talk about some really fun conference room names. At Etsy, they have conference room names named after musician-food mashups. For instance, Fleetwood Mac and Cheese, or Oreo Speedwagon, or Sushi and the Banshees. So they're fun, right? And you think about...

It does. Because most people don't enjoy their jobs and they don't want to be at work, you can just add a little levity to their day. And it's a great talking point too. A lot of times in conference rooms, people are coming together from different departments, they don't know each other. But if you put the name of a childhood toy, like Click Clack, which you probably remember because we're older, or My Little Pony, how awesome would My Little Pony be, right? Or Transformers, right? Cabbage Patch.

I used to meet at my Toastmasters club in San Francisco, I met at Charles Schwab, and one of their conference rooms was named the Spy Room because it had all this super high-tech equipment in it, and I loved that it was called the Spy Room. Who wouldn't want to meet in the Spy Room? That was a cool name. And at Riverbed Technology, they name all their conference rooms after fish. And Twitter, when it used to be called Twitter, their conference rooms were named after birds. And Groupon has some really fun ones. They have one named This Used to Be a Forest. So have fun. It's so easy to have fun, and having fun is usually free or inexpensive.

I think you're right.

Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Yeah. The CEO called herself the Fairy Godmother of Wishes, and the CFO called himself the King of Cashola.

Yeah.

Yeah, the Big Cheese, people like that. I make my title the Big Cheese sometimes. It's so easy to give yourself a fun job title. That corporate creativity chapter in my book is really fun to read. And I say, it's not like the CEO of McDonald's is going to call himself Lord of the Fries. But it's funny. Oh, it's great.

Yeah, people let their hair down, right? My sign in front of my desk says Chief Executive Boss Lady. People get so, like, "Oh, I'm the Chief Executive Officer." It would lighten it up a little bit, right?

Well, I don't ever get tired or anything, because I think naming things is fun. It's like going on a treasure hunt, and I never know where the name is going to come from. But just being surrounded by color, having this big blue pool out there and all the different colored surfboards, that's what energizes me, just being around color.

I would say just be fearless, because you only live once. Do not miss an opportunity. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? I think that's just the best question to ask yourself: what's the worst that could happen? And what's the best that could happen? And usually the best that could happen is way, way more advantageous than the worst that could happen.

Yeah. Pull it up, show it. This is the Love Your Name Award, which is an award I created. Actually, this is a good story. I was going to attend a very large trade show with 100,000 people, the largest food and beverage trade show in the U.S. It's called Expo West. And I was debating whether or not to go, because it's very expensive to attend. And at trade shows, if you're a vendor, or if you're just a service provider like I was, no one at the trade show wants to talk to you. They want to talk to buyers. At this show they want to talk to buyers from grocery stores, right? That's the main thing they're looking for, people that are going to carry their products. So they don't want to talk to me. So I'm like, how could I come up with an idea that would be something where people would want to talk to me?

I was talking to one of my clients, the CEO of a food company, and he said, "You should give out a plaque to the top 10 names of the show." And I thought, that's a really good idea. But I would never do a plaque, because that's so off brand for me. I would do something fun. So I created the Love Your Name Award, and I made it the shape of a heart, right? And I decided, top 10 names of the show. First I researched all the vendors beforehand, all the exhibitors, and found some with cool names. I posted on social media, like, hey, does anyone know anyone at Expo West that has a cool name? I'm doing these awards. Then I spent the first two days of the show interviewing people about their names. I interviewed like 20 different people about their names.

Company names. There were some product names, but company names is what it ended up all being. So I interviewed people about their names, and then I just decided, based on what I heard, what I learned, the people I met, who to give the award to. And then the last day of the show, I had one made in advance, and then I gave them to people, and they made videos and took pictures and put it on their display.

The number one name was a gourmet cookie dough company named Doughpamine. So good. Another one that I really love is a whipped cream company called Whipnotic. So that was just... This is going back to, how do you get noticed, how do you get attention, how do you break through. I came up with a way to do something interesting and have conversations with people where they would want to talk to me. I came up with a reason to interview them and then give them something, and I didn't want anything from them.

Yeah. But I also talked to the CEO of this company, saying, how can I, because he was at his booth the whole show, and they don't want just some rando coming up like, "Oh, I'm a naming professional." That's not going to get me remembered or anything. But just talking to somebody about their name would.

Well, I would say if you are coming up with a name and you want to know if it's a good name, go to eatmywords.com and take our free name test, the Smile and Scratch Test, which is a 12-point name evaluation test that will tell you if your name is good or if it sucks. And also my book, Hello, My Name Is Awesome. Hold up, go grab it. Okay, thank you. Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick will help you learn how to brainstorm names and come up with really good ones and avoid potential pitfalls. So that's what I want to say. And then just for entertainment purposes, the copy on eatmywords.com is very entertaining, and

And there's great stories, like about the Teetering Tiki Bar. That's the tiki bar in the book. There's a lot of...

Yeah, but...

Thank you, David.