John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the Salesman Podcast, hosted by will Barron brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Look, if you work in sales, wanna learn how to sell or just peek at the latest sales news. Check out the sales podcast where host Will Barron helps sales professionals learn how to find buyers and in big business in effective and ethical ways. One of my favorite episodes lately, how to personalize your sales outreach at massive scale, who doesn’t want to do that, listen to the salesman podcast, wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (00:45): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Dan Franks. He’s a co-founder and president of podcast movement, the world’s largest conference and trade show for the podcast industry. And he’s a CPA was formerly the businessman manager and director of live events for mid role media. So Dan, welcome to the show.

Dan Franks (01:07): Thanks for having me, John I’m super excited.

John Jantsch (01:10): So, so give me a little bit of the history of podcast movement. I guess let’s start there. The trade show that you run and known.

Dan Franks (01:18): Yeah, so there was four of us who were big time podcast fans and podcasters ourselves. And, uh, this would’ve been 20 12, 20 13, somewhere in there and quickly realized that it was a, a somewhat lonely space sitting in closets recording, you know, your own voice and maybe having a guest. And at that time it was trying to figure out how to record people on Skype. And it was really just a very impersonal, medium to be a creator. And so getting together, we thought it would be really neat to create some kind of environment where we could get together with other creators and learn, you know, learn from each other, but meet each other and really just kind of bring some personal connections to this creation side of things. And that’s where we started in 2014.

John Jantsch (01:56): So, so I guess now tell me, what does it look like today?

Dan Franks (01:59): Yeah, so at that time it was, you know, kind of a community gathering. We about five or 600 people at that first year event, which is, was really big way bigger than we thought it would be. We actually launched it on Kickstarter. So really just kind of throwing it against the wall to see if anyone else was out there. That thought it was a good idea. And since then, it’s grown to a twice a year event where each event gets, you know, somewhere between a thousand and over 3000 attendees each year, and then a Facebook community with 70,000 members, that’s super active, the largest Facebook community for podcasters. So really just grown to, you know, a lot of other things too. We’ve got a daily newsletter, that’s got over 25,000 subscribers. That’s all about, you know, podcasting and news and tips and tricks and all that. So really grown from just that, you know, idea of a game gathering to now, this living, breathing kind of media machine, all for people who create podcasts,

John Jantsch (02:50): You know, it’s funny, you mentioned that about it being kind of a lonely space. I actually started mine in, in 2005. So I, I may be one of the, the old school oldest school, particularly of continuously running because you know, a lot of people that started when I did, I think it was hard to do. It was hard to get people to listen because there weren’t, you know, we didn’t have the iPhone, you know, app that, uh, came, you know, delivered with the iPhone. And so I think a lot of people did give up on it because they really weren’t building any audience or didn’t see any point in it, uh, no, necessarily, but then obviously once it became much more mainstream, probably around 2012, 13 is when it really probably took off again. So, so what’s been your history. I mean, you said you were a, a CPA, uh, that’s not necessarily an industry that jumped into podcasting early on. So, so what was kind of were, was that a real differentiator for you as a CPA or was podcasting just a side gig?

Dan Franks (03:41): Yeah, so, I mean, it started as a CPA sitting, you know, working 80 hour weeks behind a computer, just kind of, you know, plugging and chug chugging numbers and trying to figure out what to do to pass the time. And podcasting was from a listening standpoint, something that really filled that gap. And then from there, you know, just kind of thinking, Hey, maybe I should try this. A lot of people do with while listening to a podcast, it’s very common thing. And yeah, ended up connecting with a coworker who had similar thoughts. We were both accountants. We, at that time were specializing in, they call it outsource, uh, CFP. So we were kind of helping small business owners with their financial, not just taxes, but a lot of their financial planning and book keeping and situations like that. And we thought it would be real cool to kind of talk about small business, best practices and interview small business owners and that kind of thing.

Dan Franks (04:28): Yeah. And now that’s like one of the most common niches in podcasting, a small business, but you know, 20 12, 20 13, it was still a little bit more of a, of a open pond, so to speak and yeah, just started that way and really kind of immersed ourselves into that creator community. And like I said, the one thing led to another and we just really enjoyed being creators ourselves and getting no other creators. And that led to us kind of putting together that, you know, curating that community and, and led to a podcast movement as it is today.

John Jantsch (04:56): You know, you mentioned that. I mean, it was such a great differentiator right early on. I mean, it really kind of raised a lot of people to the ranks of authority, but you have a lot of people now that’re saying, you know, the world doesn’t need another podcast. I mean, there’s too many of ’em. I know the answer to this, but I’m gonna ask you if you were talking to somebody thinking about starting a podcast and they had a good idea and a good platform, would you tell ’em now it’s, it’s too late?

Dan Franks (05:19): No, it’s not too late, but it’s definitely crowded and whatever you can think of that you wanna find a podcast about for the most part, there’s a podcast out there. So really the approach, you know, back then, wasn’t, you know, back then we could say, is there a podcast on this topic? There’s a good chance. It isn’t. So you can dive in and be the one and kind of, you know, have that, that early first to market, uh, effect so to speak. Whereas now there’s pretty much ever everything out there. So, you know, what’s the angle is that you’re going to do it at better quality. Are you gonna tell better stories? Are you going to have better guests? Are you going to bring a different angle of ex your experience to the table? Are you representing a brand that hasn’t ever had that outlet to speak to its customers or its potential customers? So what are you doing that’s different that would just make somebody who’s searching your topic in the iTunes, you know, apple play store or in Spotify searching your topic and come across yours and make you pick yours versus the other one that has to do with, uh, you know, a similar topic.

John Jantsch (06:14): Yeah. And I, I think the good news is yes, the market is crowded, but there’s also, you know, millions and millions of more people listening to podcasts. So, so every niche that you could think of has got a pretty good size audience, I suspect.

Dan Franks (06:28): Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s exciting now because back even five years ago, really to be a successful podcast, a lot of people saw it, meaning you get over 10,000 listeners and you start to be able to sell ads and have advertisers on your show and you make money with the podcast. Whereas now there’s so many different definitions of success when it comes to your podcast. It could be, yes. I want to get a whole lot of listeners and sell advertisements, or it could be, I have this product or service that I’m trying to start on the side. And the podcast is meant to be a funnel for that or, or, you know, some, so, so in that particular instance, okay, success, isn’t 10,000 plus listeners and being able to sell ads it’s can I convert one of my 100 listeners every month to being a customer?

Dan Franks (07:09): And then that’s way more, you know, way more profitable for you if that’s your goal than just trying to, you know, fight for advertisers. So, you know, now I think there’s so many, any more opportunities and with tools like Patreon and all these, where you can kind of, uh, launch these additional add-ons for your listeners. Now, you don’t necessarily, again, need those thousands and thousands of listeners. You just need either listeners who are gonna convert for you or your business, or who are going to kind of support you as a creator from that, you know, crowdfunding type standpoint, that premium offerings type standpoint. So just so many more ways now to define success.

John Jantsch (07:44): Well, and I’m, I’m glad you touched on it too, because I tell business owners all the time, you know, think of it as a potential lead generation, uh, tool as well. I mean, if you’re, I’m a consultant, if let’s say I’m targeting, you know, midsize company CEO as well, I’m gonna do a show, getting best practices of mid-size company CEOs, and I’m gonna have ’em on my show. It’s gonna be great content, but at some point some of them are gonna go, oh, I’ll take your phone call now and listen to what you know, you, I mean, so you’re not using it to sell necessarily, but you’re using it to get access to a potential target market. I, I think that one of the most underutilized, you know, aspects of podcasts, you become a member of the media.

Dan Franks (08:25): Yeah. And, and another thing that kind of, that, that reminds me of is one of the things we see a lot now are like professionals. You know, we talked about the accountant thing, but professionals who are almost talking shop amongst themselves, and it’s not meant for the customer, it’s meant for other people in your position. So for instance, you might be some sort of specialized surgeon that there’s only, you know, a thousand of you in the world, but if you’re doing a podcast just for, you know, you and your fellow colleagues and you start listening, everyone else starts listening to the show. Well, then you’ve got these super high dollar advertisers who desperately want to get in front of that particular type of doctor, you know, people aren’t reading magazines anymore. And, you know, there’s limited ways to get in front of just that targeted audience.

Dan Franks (09:05): But if you have a podcast where, okay, it maybe only has 150 listeners an episode, but 150 of ’em are the exact type of doctor that you’re trying to get in front of for your, you know, piece of medical equipment or whatever it is. There’s hardly any other way to get in front of that group in such a targeted way. So again, like there’s, we see that type of thing start popping up or dentists in a lot of it’s in the medical, but it just becomes such a, you know, such a targeted way that you can, you know, create content and get in front of those advertisers that become super profitable. And some, I talked to one doctor who started taking less and less shifts to put more and more focus. And you know, the starting salary there is already pretty good, but the podcast is doing better. So it’s pretty exciting.

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John Jantsch (10:42): So let’s flip the mic around. Um, a lot of times when people talk about podcasting, they think, oh, okay, I have to start a podcast to use podcasting. I actually started an entire company called podcast bookers, sorry, there’s my ad podcast, bookers.com that that our whole intent was to actually get people on podcasts as guests. And I think a lot of times, certainly a lot of people like to be on shows, but actually making that a very intentional part of your marketing, uh, activity to get on the right shows to get the exposure, you know, to get maybe the scene as well. You know, an expert you’re gonna get content, but the little dirty little secret is, I dunno about you Dan, but when somebody comes on my show, I promote the heck out of that show. I promote the heck out of the links that they mentioned, you know, on the show. So it’s the greatest way to get back links today. So talk to me about, you know, your idea or what you’ve seen people doing to make podcast guesting, just as effecti as podcast hosting.

Dan Franks (11:38): Yeah. So, I mean, obviously there’s services like the one you provide that kind of curates what shows would be best for you as a potential guest, but you know, that’s something and you would say this too, that someone, if they wanted to, you know, roll their sleeves up and put in the dirty work, they could do that themselves. And I think there’s a lot of value that goes into finding those right fits for you as a guest to be on. I, I like to say like, look at the longevity of these shows that you’re potentially sure looking to get on because quite honestly, a lot of people do get that shiny object syndrome, right. And start their own show and you might get pitched to be a guest on that show and it looks good because it’s this fun idea and you go back and check it out after your episode is released.

Dan Franks (12:14): Like six months later, you check it out and the show’s, you know, sunset and no one’s gonna ever hear your show again, because it’s gone it’s off the air. So yeah, I think, you know, as you’re, if you’re looking to be intentional about being a guest go, you know, research shows spend some time find those best practices or again, you know, work with someone like you, but yeah, just getting in front of those audiences. And again, like I said about those people that can, you know, buy advertisements on very specialized shows, that same approach can be taken to being a guest. You can find very specialized shows that are the exact right audience that you’re looking to get in front of. Yeah. And if you bring something compelling other than just a pitch for yourself, but something compelling, you know, an expertise that maybe some, one else couldn’t provide or that, that show was never featured before, you know, you can be as much of a value add to that show as, you know, getting that value in return.

John Jantsch (13:01): I had a client tell me this one and I’d love to hear, you know, if you’ve seen any really out of the box uses that he actually went and found shows that other guests were kind of his profile of who he was looking for. He’d go beyond the show. And then he would go through the list of guests and contact them, say, Hey, I saw you were on this show too. You know, I really loved your episode. You know, maybe, you know, I’d love to, I’d love to meet you and hear more about what you do. And he, he actually uses it as a somewhat aggressive lead generation or lead mining approach.

Dan Franks (13:32): Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a couple different angle there where being on podcasts or hosting podcasts really kind of put you in connection with people that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to. So I know a lot of people who host Joe’s and bring on guests who otherwise, if they had just cold emailed this person, they’d never make this connection, whether it’s a famous person or an influencer in their space, same thing goes with that. If you have that, that, like you said, that, that commonality, Hey, we were both on this show and I, I really enjoyed your episode. Like, can we connect that’s, you know, one, a foot in the door that you otherwise wouldn’t have had that to be able to relate to people. So yeah, a lot of different ways to skin the cat in terms of leveraging podcasts and guesting and being a guest and having guests, you know, to further, you know, your personal or your professional brand.

John Jantsch (14:14): So in the end, we’re really just talking about content, audio content, right. And so a lot of people think in terms of it as a broadcast out to the world, but I’m in, I’m seeing one trend I’m seeing is increasingly companies are using it, you know, even internally or communities are using it internally, just as a communications means what kind of trends along those lines are you seeing?

Dan Franks (14:35): Yeah. We’re starting to see a lot of, like you said, companies who are not necessarily replacing, but supplementing that weekly, you know, company update with an audio version of it, or maybe they’re interviewing whether it’s executives or just interviewing other employees of the company to where you can kind of, you know, learn the stories of the people that you either work with, or that are maybe in other departments. So really just kind of bringing a little more personality to what otherwise would be that weekly team update email. Yeah. I’m also seeing yeah. Municipalities and cities and counties use both YouTube. So video style, but also podcasts for those weekly, you know, updates that the city might send out. You know, don’t forget trash is getting picked up, you know, late this week cuz of the holiday. And that sounds super boring, but there’s a lot of people who, Hey, I just want to hear that, you know, three minute update from the city and I’m more likely to listen to the podcast than read the newsletter. So that’s a super exciting trend we’re seeing. And then, you know, a little bit in a similar way, we’re seeing these, you know, companies use it a little bit more for content marketing and, and communications with customers or, or potential customers. So in a similar way of, you know, disseminating information as, you know, municipality or a company with it for internal communication, we’re seeing a lot of that for external as well. So a lot of kind of newer developments in extensions of what podcasts might be.

John Jantsch (15:51): All right. So a, I know you don’t have the silver bullet answer to this, but I know you also get asked this question a lot. So I got my show going, how do I get more listeners?

Dan Franks (16:00): Yeah, no, that is, and you mentioned in, you know, 2005, it was hard to find listeners because you know, there weren’t that many of them to begin with the limited shows, but limited listeners. And now it’s the opposite problem. Lots of shows and lots of listeners. Lot of what we see working really well are, is cross promotion between shows, right? I know, you know, on some of your episodes, you have, I think it’s paid sponsorships, but it’s podcasts advertising on another podcast and new shows can do that, have that same effect on one another, just by finding shows, maybe in a similar niche or that might have complimentary audiences and really help each other promote like, Hey, if you like my, this other show you should check out. And we know it works because we see the big, the biggest networks in the world cross promoting their own shows on their own shows.

Dan Franks (16:41): So that’s a great way. Just once you’ve got a show going, you’ve got a track record, reach out to similar shows. We also see something called feed drops done on a somewhat regular basis. And that’s when you find those same shows, maybe develop that rapport with them by by cross-promoting. And then you actually drop one of your episodes on their feed and they’ll drop one of their episodes on your feed. So you’re not just telling them about, you know, telling your audience about this show and you might record a custom intro on the front end and say, Hey, you know, this week we’re taking off, but we’ve got this special bonus episode of a show that I think you’re really gonna like, and then the, they listen to it and then they’ll seek it out and subscribe. So a lot of kind of ways like that, where again, everything we do is community focused. Yeah. Um, at podcast movement and that’s a community focused type way to help yourself grow and other people as well.

John Jantsch (17:27): I tell you what I’ve done a couple times and it’s been really fun, especially when I have like a new book coming out or something like that. So I have a reason to be very promo emotional myself is I’ll actually have a guest host. So I’ll actually have somebody come on my show, who does a show and interview me on my own podcast. And now obviously it gives ’em an opportunity to, or, or she to promote their show. So another kind of fun twist.

Dan Franks (17:50): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s all kinds of things you can do. And that’s the fun thing about podcasting and, and YouTube and blogging and anything else where, you know, there’s not really anyone telling you what you can and can’t do. You can just come up with ideas like that, try it. And if it bombs, don’t do it again. But if it works, which a lot of times it does, then, you know, you know, it might go after and do it again.

John Jantsch (18:10): So let’s, we a geek out forever on this. So I’ll try to keep it short. You know, let’s talk just a moment about the tech for podcasting. When I first started, I actually recorded phone calls. I had a little device that I bought from the FBI. I think that plugged in, it was almost like tapping the phone and then it would go into an external recorder and, and I would have to upload that file. It was a mess. It was a lot it’s, it’s why a lot of people quit early because it was so much work. Now, of course, we’ve got where you and I are recording this on Riverside. You know, there’s all kinds of tools to transcribe, do all this stuff at a minimum. What’s in your opinion, the best kind of starter set up for, you know, somebody who wants to get going on a podcast.

Dan Franks (18:51): Yeah. I think the best starter set up is to get a basic USB microphone. There’s several out there that you can research and they’re, you know, 50 between 50 and a hundred dollars. It’s an investment for sure. But it’s not a gigantic one, right. Plugs directly into your computer or your laptop. Uh, they dynamic microphones usually. So they’re pretty good about canceling out external noises. Right. And yeah, so like from a technical setup, like bare bones, USB microphone, the two that we really like are the audio Technica, uh, 2100, I believe is the current model. And then there’s a Q2 Q2 U by Sampson. Those two are very good. They come with little Mike stands. So really those plugged into your laptop and a semi quiet environ, we’ll give you pretty good results just to start. And then there’s all kinds of like hosting companies out there that’ll provide free service.

Dan Franks (19:37): Anchor is the most known one, but some of the really good ones out there red circle is one. I really like, uh, that is free hosting. And you can, yeah. You know, put a, get a podcast ready to go for somewhat minimal investment. Now I don’t necessarily think you should just like get on there, plug the microphone in record, publish a podcast. Definitely think there’s some, you know, planning and, you know, mapping out what you want this show to be and getting some episodes under your belt before launching. But you know, at bare minimum, it’s not a giant investment. We were talking before getting on the air, I’m in a room with a road caster, which is a giant mixer with fancy lights and a bunch of mic microphones all over. Those are cool to have, but definitely think people should, you know, get started, make sure they like it. You know, my parents used to always, you know, we’ll buy you, you know, something small and make sure you like it. And then we’ll get you the expensive bike. If you actually, you know, show us, you actually wanna ride the bike on a regular basis. Same thing with this. Like you can definitely go more expensive, but make sure it’s something you wanna with before spending too much.

John Jantsch (20:34): Okay. My current every day, Mike is as sure what’s this one S SM seven B, I think they call sure. SM seven B into a cloud lifter, which lifts the gain into a two mix mixer channel that, or it’s actually a four mixer channel. I just use two channels. That was probably a hundred dollars. So, I mean, all, all in all pretty professional setup, you know, under a grant. And what’s your current setup,

Dan Franks (20:56): Dan? The one I’m using here in this little, uh, studio at my coworking space, it’s as sure SM seven B the same microphone. Yeah, probably one of the, the, the better high end microphones there. But like I said, the roader a mixer, which it’s a great mixer. It’s really good if you’re recording three or four people at once in the same location and

John Jantsch (21:12): Like the Eagles are there and they wanna perform. There

Dan Franks (21:15): You go. There you go.

John Jantsch (21:17): Cause it could handle that.

Dan Franks (21:18): Yeah, for sure. But yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, like I said, most, a lot of people would not notice the difference between the listener. When I say, say people, the difference between the a hundred dollars setup and the thousand dollars setup, a lot of it is how you use it, what your recording environment is like, if you’re, you know, got the window open and there’s someone mowing the lawn outside, it doesn’t matter how expensive your setup is. It’s still gonna sound like the window’s open and someone’s mowing the lawn outside. But you know, everything from, uh, I, I know people, I know very large podcast who record in their closet because, you know, close everywhere and really dampens the sound and creates a really nice recording environment. I know someone who’s a, a college professor who wears his graduation gown kind of throws it over him as he records. And again, it’s like a little recording booth. So, uh, a lot of the podcasters you listen to on a regular basis, they’re making due with whatever they can in the house. I mean, that’s something that anyone and everyone could figure out kind of a solution for

John Jantsch (22:12): One of my first guests early on was Tim Ferris, right after the four hour work work week had come out and he was on a mobile phone walking on a windy day. So you can imagine what that sounded like.

Dan Franks (22:24): Yeah. And you know, a lot of people now, the iPhone microphone and the, in the AirPod microphones are not horrible, not recommended, but you know, just technology as you, you were referencing earlier has gotten so much better even on those handheld devices again. Yeah. Maybe don’t walk down the streets of Chicago on the phone for, for a podcast recording, but you know, if the best you have is your, you know, your iPhone phone, it might make due for that, you know, some of those test episodes.

John Jantsch (22:53): So Dan tell people where they can find out more about your work and certainly, uh, check out the next and maybe tell us when the next podcast movement is.

Dan Franks (23:00): Yeah. So, uh, podcastmovement.com. We’ve got all of our daily newsletter up there, all kinds of, uh, tips and tricks and advice for new podcasters, as well as, uh, existing podcast and industry professionals and podcast movement right now happens twice a year. So the end of March, 2022 is our next one. And then our flagship event is this August in Dallas. So two big events, hopefully getting back into in person event action this year and yeah. Looking forward to continuing to grow.

John Jantsch (23:27): Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for stopping by the duct tape, mark marketing podcast, Dan, and, uh, hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days at a podcast movement or on the road somewhere

Dan Franks (23:36): Looking forward to it. Thanks, John.

John Jantsch (23:38): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I wanna thank you so much for tuning in, feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also, did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you’ve got employees, if you’ve got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it out. It’s called the Certified Marketing Manager program from Duct Tape Marketing. You can find it at ducttapemarketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by the Salesman Podcast, hosted by Will Barron brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. Look, if you work in sales, wanna learn how to sell or just peek at the latest sales news. Check out the sales podcast where host will Barron helps sales professionals learn how to find buyers and in big business in effective and ethical ways. One of my favorite episodes lately, how to personalize your sales outreach at massive scale, who doesn’t want to do that? Listen to the salesman podcast, wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (00:46): Hello, and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Marc Mawhinney. He’s a lifelong entrepreneur who helps coaches get more clients without paid advertising. He achieves this with his coaching programs, his podcast, natural born coaches, his Facebook group, the coaching jungle and his exclusive print newsletter secret coach club. So mark, welcome to the show.

Marc Mawhinney (01:15): Well, uh, thanks for having me, John, and I should let people know, uh, what a good guy you are. I messed up our original meeting last week where I didn’t up at our time, uh, scheduling snafu. Totally my fault, but you’re very gracious and here we are today. So it’s embarrassing for me, but thank you for not, uh, blocking me and kicking me outta your

John Jantsch (01:33): World. Now you’ve done your public penance there. So all all is right. So, so how long let’s talk a little bit about your journey. How long have you yourself been a coach and kinda where do you get started your training? Cuz there’s, there’s certainly a lot of people jumping into the profession and I’d, I’d love to hear kind of maybe how your, your approach or your point of difference.

Marc Mawhinney (01:54): Yeah, so I officially started March, 2014, so we’re around eight years now. And at the time I thought I was too late to the party of I was crowded and uh, I waited too long and here we are in 2022 and it’s 10 times noisier and way more coaches. So the more of the story, there’s never a perfect time. Just jump in there and do it. Now. My background’s actually real estate. You know, I spent about a decade building up a large real estate company and throughout my twenties, and then everything collapsed in 2009. Right. And basically I went through a rough period of couple years where after nonstop success, it was just a couple years of struggle and everything. I touched, turned to crap instead of gold. And I was held back to my feet by several coaches. And that’s how I found out about coaching. What eventually led me into start my coaching business in 2014,

John Jantsch (02:41): You made a use the word, no, uh, noisy. Mm. And I think that I too have, you know, I work with consultants and have for many years. And when I started my program maybe 10 years ago, I don’t know that there were too many people out there now everybody’s selling some sort of training for digital agencies. And you know, how do you find that you kind of cut through that

Marc Mawhinney (03:01): Noise? Well, I like yourself. I mean, you’ve been at it longer than me and there’s that consistency, you know, since 2014, I’ve released 751 episodes as of today for my podcast, you know? And I’ve gone on a lot of shows like this. I I’ve been doing daily emails to my list since 26 steam and haven’t missed a day there. So it’s not always a sexy superpower consistency. Yeah. Cause everyone’s looking for, you know, the magic bullet, but it’s just showing up every day and then you’re gonna outlast those people that we’ve all seen. They jump into it and the, and they, uh, burn themselves out. You know, they, they don’t make the million bucks in the first month they get frustrated and then they’re gone. So a lot of it was just me showing up every day. Like, was it Woody Allens it showing up half the battle or something? I don’t know. I’m not a big Woody Allen fan, but for his movies. But I think he said that,

John Jantsch (03:49): So let me get this straight. You’re saying you work really hard for a long time. That’s the secret.

Marc Mawhinney (03:53): Yeah. Go figure. Yeah.

John Jantsch (03:55): Who wants? I like that.

Marc Mawhinney (03:57): I’m an optimistic person, but uh, what to things like business, I’m also realistic. So I say I’m an optimistic realist. Uh, so I’m not the type, uh, you know, when you plant a seed and you, uh, sprinkle some water on it and stuff, you don’t expect it to come up outta the ground until the next day, I just assume it’ll happen. So yeah. I mean, everything I do is with that in mind that, Hey, I’m just gonna do my best job possible, gonna hang in there. And then the results usually come, but I don’t beat myself up if I don’t get a bunch of money coming in on day one to trying something. Right.

John Jantsch (04:27): So in the intro, you mentioned that you do marketing, uh, for coaches or teach marketing for coaches without, uh, paid advertising. So I’m guessing somebody listening to this show, I go, okay, how do I, you know, get clients without paid advertising market?

Marc Mawhinney (04:42): Well, we just touched on it. You gotta roll up your sleeves and do some work. Yeah. Uh, so when I got started in 2014 coming off of bad business closure where I lost everything, you know, went belly up. I didn’t have the benefit of having a big war chest. Like I had back in my real estate days, cuz I used to do a ton of now we’re talking about the stone ages, you know, the early 2000, but I did a lot of postcard mailouts and radio advertising and print advertising and so on and all. And then when I start coaching, I’m like, oh man, I don’t have that. I can’t be spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on marketing. Uh, at the time I thought of negative looking back now there was a silver lining there cuz it forced me to really hone my message.

Marc Mawhinney (05:20): I had to do it all or, and put that work into it. And so I do find a lot of times people try to shortcut the process of this coaching. Let’s say they’re coming from corporate America, they got their golden parachute or they’re sitting on a bunch of money and they think I’ll just hire some, uh, funnel expert or guru and spend 30 or 50 grand and that’ll handle it. But yeah, that, that’s how coaches can do it is just by rolling up your sleeves. I know it sounds like common sense and just doing it.

John Jantsch (05:48): So, you know, I talk about that as, as well. And I talk about, you know, the various channels and you know, ways that we can reach our clients and inevitably somebody, you know, comes up like I’ll, I’ll, I’ll do a talk to seven steps to, you know, marketing, small business marketing success or something. And at the end I’ll always, somebody will come up and say, that’s great. There’s all these things we gotta do. But like what’s the one thing, right? So, so if I’m, if I, if I’m just getting started, say as a coach and I really, you know, I do need to get clients. Is there a channel, is there a place, is there an activity that you would tell people? Well, as you’re just getting started, here’s, you know, here’s something you should at least do to maybe kind of jumpstart.

Marc Mawhinney (06:28): I mean there’s more than one way to skin a cat, right? So there’s certain ma uh, platforms that I prefer you and I chatted about this. When you came on my show, a good example, you with blogging. I mean, that was a great way that got your name out there, put you on the map and everything for me podcast really have three pillars, podcasting. That’s my show. But also going out on shows, I like this. There’s a Facebook group, really community building. Uh, so I have the coaching jungle group and then the third ways with daily email marketing. So what I would say is, um, the, your three pillars or a couple things may be different than mine, but find, uh, one or a couple things that you enjoy doing and that you can get results from and then consistently do it instead of trying to spread out and do every single thing that’s out there. Cause you don’t have the time to do that. So it’s like trying to start a fire with a magnifying glass. If you’re moving it around, it’s not gonna catch on fire. Uh, you gotta keep in one place. Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (07:19): Great. Uh, point, I remember doing that as a kid all the time, um, laying

Marc Mawhinney (07:23): You with the little army figures, it goes Bart Simpson, one of the episodes of the Simpsons, he was melting the little green army guy.

John Jantsch (07:30): Um, I, I think you kind of answered this already, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna pose it to you directly and you could say, well, yeah, that’s what I meant by that. But when you are working with coaches, what do you see that they tip? What, what’s the thing they get wrong most often?

Marc Mawhinney (07:43): Well, especially with new coaches, uh, they assume that they’re gonna spend, uh, roughly 80% of their time coaching. And then, oh, the other 20% maybe finding clients doing a little bit of backend paperwork and stuff, but the majority of their time will be spent coaching. Yeah. Anyone who spend any time the business and is that it’s a flip side of it. And actually it wouldn’t even be 20% of your time. Coaching is probably even less, but the, the vast majority of your time spent, uh, doing the things to, to find clients, which some people don’t like because they do the coaching, right. That’s why they’re getting into it. And they, they think, oh gee, I don’t wanna be selling it. I don’t wanna be posting content marketing or whatever, but that’s what you have to do. You’re gonna be a, uh, well kept secret. If you’re not willing to get out there. I’ve often said if I had to put my money on one of two coaches, if there’s a mediocre coach that has amazing advertiser marketing and, and skills, but then there’s this incredible coach best in the world, but sucks at marketing. I’d put my money in the mediocre coach. Unfortunately. Uh, that’s just the way the world is.

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John Jantsch (09:38): You know, you’ve been doing this for a while. You’ve put lots of time and energy into building a bit of a reputation. There’s no question that has value, right? I mean, people, uh, see you, they begin to like you and trust you and they’re willing to pay a premium perhaps to work with you because of a reputation. How does somebody who doesn’t have that go about building, uh, a reputation of influence or in expertise without, you know, without having that kind of long term, uh, success?

Marc Mawhinney (10:09): Well, I mean, I think, uh, one great way to do it’s podcasting and you’re a fan of podcasting too. I started my show in November of 2014. So I was still within that first year of being in business. The podcast got me in touch with some really, uh, great people. You know, some were big names, uh, some weren’t so big names with their interesting people. Well, connected got my foot in the door with others. And then when people went to check, they’re like, oh, gee, he’s, you know, host a podcast. He’s had these people on, like for example, I rich Lipton and Steve Chandler on my show fairly early in the run, they wrote the prosperous coach and they’re well known in, in coaching circles. So people say, oh, Jay mark knows rich. And Steve, you know, now we’re not best buddies or anything like that, but we talk from time to time with both those guys. And they’re great. So I think podcasting, especially where there’s little to expense to do it, or it’s peanuts, that’s probably your best bang for your buck. As long as you’re patient with it, you don’t expect to make the million dollars in the first week or anything like that.

John Jantsch (11:08): You mentioned the real estate industry and you know, it’s most people, I don’t know if most people know this or not, but probably about 20% of residential real estate, eight agents make any real money. Uh, the other, you know, run around it’s part-time job. They get in it, get out of it. There’s some similarity. I think in coaching, you know, it’s very easy to get into coaching, you know, call yourself a coach. I think the, the top 20% are probably people that treat it as a real business that are very successful. Now I’m not disparaging the industry. I’m just that, you know, you can go industry by industry and that’s probably the case. So, so having said that, what are some of the things practices not necessarily marketing, but what are some of the practices that you see that, that top tier, uh, coach coaching business do?

Marc Mawhinney (11:51): Well, I’m glad you mentioned about the similarities, cuz I’ve said that often before too, I catch myself, instead of saying coach, I might say agent or something. Yeah. First you think, well, there’s not no similarities between the two, but actually there is, I just actually wrote an email the other day about this. And I said, one of the things I noticed that successful, uh, coaches don’t do versus unsuccessful is complain. You know? And what I mean by that, I, everybody complains, you know, human or whatever, but they, they, they’re not spending their time griping about, well, well, here’s an example which I noticed in real estate, and this is why I love coaching in real estate. I was in a, a small, I say small market in Atlantic. Canada’s 300 agents in my marketplace and everybody talked crap about everyone because they would, if I got a listing or John gets a listing, then O GE John took food off my, uh, table.

Marc Mawhinney (12:38): Right. He got that commission. I just talked to that homeowner two weeks ago. I should add it. Yeah. You know, or stuff like that. So in real estate, uh, the agents are all 364 days of the year, stabbing each other in the back. And then at the Christmas party for the real estate board, they’re hugging it at each other, like their best friends. Then it’s back to normal with the coaching world. What I like about it is it’s not like that because, uh, it you’re in, uh, Colorado. Right? I am, I am. So if, if you’re in Colorado, you get a client I’m not grumbling up. You’re like, oh geez, John, that bugger, he got that, you know, whatever, it’s billions dollars a year industry. And it’s just not saying everybody loves each other all the time. There’s of course feuding and things, but, but yeah, I’ve find the successful coaches. They’re not looking at the complaining or, or bringing other people down. And I see some coaches on social media, especially that some of the stuff they’re posting, uh, about is, uh, it’s kind of depressing. I’m like, I don’t think I’d want to work with that person. They’re just complaining that much. So there, there would be one thing that would differentiate to,

John Jantsch (13:34): So

John Jantsch (13:36): Coaching is one of those businesses, like a lot of professional services where a high level of trust really needs to be established with clients. So I’m guessing Nile, I know this, that referrals are a really big part of, you know, how a lot of coaches probably acquire new business. So what do you see success coaches doing to actually stimulate that? Obviously doing good work, being trustworthy. You know, those are things that are gonna make referrals happen, but I see a lot of businesses that get a lot of referrals, but they don’t do anything to try to actually stimulate them. In fact, I, I, I sure one statistic and then I’ll show up that, that their firstly, a Texas tech, the university did a study in, they found they interviewed 2000 consumers and, and 86 or so percent of them said there was a business they loved so much, they would refer. And then the flip side of that was only 27% of them actually did. And so, you know, I often say there’s gotta be some real money in that gap. You know, it’s not enough to just have happy customers. You’ve gotta do something to stimulate that, that referability I think,

Marc Mawhinney (14:38): Yeah. I mean, one thing, it sounds kind of funny to say it, uh, you have to ask for referrals, which I don’t think that’s being done nearly enough. I’m probably guilty of that too. Yeah. You know, full disclosure. One of the things I do in this might sound a little, uh, craft, but I, I think it does help if somebody refers business to me, whether it be a client or good joint venture partner or something, I sounds bad. I’ll pay them. Yeah. I’ll pay for the referral. Yeah. I know some people say, well, you shouldn’t do that cuz it, you know, or whatever, it’s my way saying, Hey, um, I appreciate you keeping me in mind. And I would pay all day long if someone’s handing me a good client on a silver platter. I given referrals to people. It’s not that I’m doing it just for, you know, money or monetary gain, but sometimes I’m not even getting thanks, uh, from people, uh, before, which is, I’m like, wow, that’s kind of silly if somebody’s referring you business and a really good client, one person I know, you know, not to, not to complain cuz I just talked to complaining, but uh, I gave them a five figure client, a really good client or whatever.

Marc Mawhinney (15:33): And I got a little, uh, nut basket or something in the mail, you know, like a $20 basket, which is fine. Like, you know, I’m not a big nut fan or whatever, but yeah, if somebody’s given me a client worth 10,000, $50,000, I’m gonna give them a nice gift.

John Jantsch (15:49): So let’s go back to, uh, delivery on coaching. So, you know, a lot of coaches, a lot of consultants, a lot of businesses in general, understand the value of having kind of this maybe starter offer and then a core offer and then, you know, group offers and, you know, big, you know, scale program. Do you, you know, is there a delivery mechanism that is, um, you know, is probably the best for coaching now or should every coaching practice have a variety of maybe price points even as well as, uh, delivery mechanisms?

Marc Mawhinney (16:21): Uh, well it’s tough because there’s different ways to do it. Yeah. You know, uh, some people or a lot of people like the latter approach, uh, where you start with the low price or low ticket thing and then work your way up. I know some coaches at that don’t want to get into that. They swear by the no, you start with the big ticket thing. And that’s what you’re focusing on. The one thing I will say with mine is with my ladder. So to speak, my offers go anywhere from a, a base. I have a print newsletter that’s $97 a month, 9 97 a year. That’s my, uh, most affordable offering. That’s how people can get into my, they they’re allowed to pick my brain by email subscribers there. Then it goes all the way up 10,000 to not, but I don’t play in the world where, um, a lot of people are like, Hey, let’s have a $7 e-book to get people in there and stuff.

Marc Mawhinney (17:05): And I, I just prefer to, uh, have that as a base $97 a month. And if you’re not able to do that or not willing to, then that’s fine, but you gotta pay to play or have some skin in the game, uh, that way too. So you could do it any number of ways. My suggestion though is not to have too many. So a true story. I had a client, uh, years ago, this was probably five or six years ago. And when we started working together before our first call, I’d want to get as much information as possible, get a feel for his business. And he said, oh, I I’ll send over a spreadsheet with my offers to show you what I’m doing. And oh my God, there’s like 36 different offers of different, uh, lengths of time frequency for sessions. And I said, how do you keep track of this? Like, you know, he was even confused with it. So you shouldn’t need a spreadsheet to track your offers, keep it, you know, keep it simple. Nice and

John Jantsch (17:54): Easy. Plus how do, how do you ever explain all those offers to somebody, as you said, without them coming, just going, I don’t know what to depend.

Marc Mawhinney (17:59): They’re caught like a, the cot headlights. There’s been different studies too showing, uh, one that comes to mind, uh, Joe showman. But yeah, he was doing some work with the Swiss army people. They had a Swiss army with that they’re selling and he went in to meet with them. And I guess there were three different types of that Watchers. Uh men’s women’s and the children’s models. And there were three different colors for each. I think it was camouflage black and a different color. And uh, he, they wanted him to have all nine of those models, three times three on the full page ad we, which he did not want do, but they said, no, you know, no, we want do it. He want to run with just the men’s black model with it and he couldn’t talk them out of it. So he agreed, okay, we’ll do a AB split test. We’ll put my ad simple one choice versus your ad and see which one does better. And um, pretty sure that his simple one watch ad pulled like four times better or something like that. Yeah. And, uh, so a lot of people think, oh, well there’s more selection. You’ll get more sales. It’s actually the other way, it’s more selection confuses the buyer and then they end up not opening their

John Jantsch (18:58): Wallets. Yeah. You certainly see a lot of good, better, best, you know, where people’s like, you know, and it’s really almost more way of helping somebody make a decision cuz it, you know, always the middle choice says most popular, you know, kinda psychologically sells them the one thing, but also says, oh, it’s not the most expensive, you know? So it’s, there’s a lot of psych psychology and pricing isn’t there. So, so let’s close up on, are there any trends that you see in coaching right now or trends in delivery models or trends you knows like membership programs where big, you know, for a while, I mean, are there any things that you see coming, uh, in the future that you think people ought be paying attention to?

Marc Mawhinney (19:36): Well, I think a trend that we’re and I already saw this the last few years, but I think it’s gonna be even more pronounced going forward is coaches are gonna have to deliver on what they’re promising. So, you know, gone are the days when you could, you know, put up a fancy sales page or what make all these big promises but not deliver and then still expect to stay in business. I, I think the customer clients are becoming more sophisticated, maybe more jaded too. Yeah. They’ve been Burt by one or two of these bad apples. Uh, so you’re gonna have to do better there and that’s good for people like us at weeds at the bad actors and keep doing, you know, the good people will profit. So that’s what, what I would see that coaches are gonna have to, you’re not gonna have to, uh, not just give the sizzle, but the steak as well, I guess. Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:18): All right. Mark, tell people where they can find out more about your natural born coaches program, the coaching jungle, all the things wherever you wanna send people. Yeah.

Marc Mawhinney (20:24): Well the central hub has the podcast, the access to my daily emails, all that that’s at natural born coaches.com and uh, you are a guests on my show. So hopefully your show will be up by time. They go over and check it out. But natural born coaches.com the Facebook group, like you mentioned, the coaching jungle, there’s 22,000 coaches in there. Lots of great discussion. That’s at dot coaching jungle.com.

John Jantsch (20:45): Awesome. Well, mark, it was great. Uh, having you come by the duct tape marketing podcast and hopefully we’ll, uh, run into you, uh, one of these days when I’m up in, uh, Canada again.

Marc Mawhinney (20:54): Yeah, come on over and double go skiing or something. Wintery sounds Awesome.

John Jantsch (20:59): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I wanna thank you so much for tuning in. Feel free to share the show, feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also. Did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you’ve got employees, if you’ve got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it out. It’s called the certified marketing manager program from duct tape. You can find it at ducttapemarketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by the Salesman Podcast, hosted by Will Barron brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Look, if you work in sales, wanna learn how to sell or just peek at the latest sales news. Check out the sales podcast where host will Barron helps sales professionals learn how to find buyers and win big business in effective and ethical ways. One of my favorite episodes lately, how to personalize your sales outreach at massive scale, who doesn’t want to do that? Listen to the Salesman Podcast, wherever you get your podcast.

John Jantsch (00:47): Hello, welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Rob Meyerson. He’s a name brand consultant and principal and founder of heirloom an independent brand strategy and identity firm. He’s also the author of brand naming the complete guide to creating a name for your company, product or service. So welcome to show

Rob Meyerson (01:10): Rob. Thanks so much happy to

John Jantsch (01:12): Be here. Okay. So when you’re in the naming business, you put a target on your back for the name of your company. So I wonder if you’d, uh, kind of go through, was there, was there a special process for coming up with heirloom?

Rob Meyerson (01:26): Yeah, of course. I went through, um, my recommended naming process and took a little bit of my own medicine. And I’ll tell you, it was a really good learning experience because after doing that, I felt like I was that much more in touch with what my clients feel, the, the pain that they feel, frankly, in making that decision. So I, I knew early on, I didn’t want to just call it Myerson consulting or Rob Myerson branding. That is something that makes sense for a lot of people yeah. That go out on their own. But I, I liked the, the sort of sense of scale that a brand name could imply. And, and I had aspirations at the time at least of kind of growing into that. Yeah. Um, and I also just felt like as a namer, I should probably go through the process. So yeah.

Rob Meyerson (02:07): I developed hundreds of ideas. I put them through legal pre-screening hundreds of them were not available. there were a ton of agencies out there and almost every word or phrase, right. Or combination of words that you can imagine is some agency somewhere and so wanting to do it. Right. I, I, I killed a lot of great ideas, but I really liked heirloom because, uh, it, it speaks to how I think of brands, you know, an heirloom is something that has value for, for intangible reasons, right? It’s your father’s watch or something like that. So even though the watch might only be worth a hundred bucks, it’s priceless to you because of the story behind it. And I think that it’s a nice analogy for, for brands. It, it sort of adds intangible value to a product or a company.

John Jantsch (02:50): So the original name of my company I started 30 years ago was to your point, Jan communications, you know, very, uh, sexy sounding people thought I sold, uh, phones or long distance service or, and so in 2002 back when you could actually still get URLs, I came up with duct tape marketing, and I will tell you that the brand name has served me extremely well. I gave it about 10 minutes of thought. So I’m not going to be very good subject for you. I, I say that, but kiddingly, but I , it just struck me as the perfect metaphor for the clients I was serving and I’d served them for 10 years. So in a lot of ways, I’d probably been thinking about that idea, you know, for 10 years, which is probably, probably not giving myself credit for .

Rob Meyerson (03:31): Well, no, I mean, so many of the best creative ideas, not just names come from that sort of in the back of your mind population. That’s a lot in the book when I talk about how to, how to do this, how to have creative ideas, how to do that generation phase. So much of it is about how to stop focusing on this specific challenge and let it pop into your mind while you’re doing something

John Jantsch (03:52): Else. So you have in your career, worked with some pretty big names and certainly in consulting have worked with some pretty big names. What would you say that? So, so, so I, most of my listeners, many of my listeners are small business owners. Would you say that this idea is equally as important for a small business as it might be for, you know, a division of a fortune 500 company?

Rob Meyerson (04:13): Yes, I think so. The name is really your, your first and I think best opportunity to, to harness the power of language, which if you think about it for a few minutes is quite powerful. It impacts us in our person lives on a daily basis. It impacts our perceptions judge books by their covers, so to speak. And so, uh, if you want people to have certain impressions of your business or your product from the very get code, the first time they hear about it, then you should put a lot of thought into the name. There are aspects of the process that are more applicable to those big fortune 500 or big, you know, whether it’s B2B or B2C. I think there are things that maybe are weighted a little bit differently, but the overall importance and process is very

John Jantsch (04:54): Similar. Yeah. They may have a family of brands or they may have some, you know, some standards that they need to kind of adhere to. So yeah, the obviously, but it is amazing how often I will run across companies and they they’ve just kind of picked it maybe because they saw other people doing it or using it in their industry. And, and when you really start trying to do some positioning around their marketing and things, it’s like, people don’t even know what you do, you know, based on the name. So let me ask you that. I mean, are there attributes that, that while every case is unique, are there attributes that you say, well, generally speaking, it should have, you know, this or, or should feel like this.

Rob Meyerson (05:32): Yes. Uh, although I really like the way you phrased the question, because I think one of the, the big mistakes people make, uh, is thinking that there is some checklist that they need in order to have a perfect, the brand name. And there really is no such thing because it’s so context dependent, the way I like to frame it is to think about names through three different lenses, creative, which is pretty clear, you know, you want a name that’s memorable or distinctive catchy in some way, but also strategic. And this is where I think a lot of small businesses miss the mark. So think about what your competitors are named, think about what kind of meaning you’re trying to convey through the names. So it’s not just about being funky and creative. It’s also about yeah. What it means or doesn’t mean. And then lastly, technical, which is sort of the logistics, another place that people often make a mistake, is it gonna be legally available? Is it gonna cause you linguistic problems in other, you know, not just other countries, but even locally, if you have a Spanish speaking community in your, uh, city yeah.

John Jantsch (06:31): In your name means goat, dun some other language,

Rob Meyerson (06:35): Right? Yeah. Yeah. So checking and doing all, you know, checking all of those things is, is critical. So in the book I do list nine different things, three in each of those three categories, but I think it’s, it’s more important to sort of think just about those three areas, creative, strategic, and technical, and, and make sure that you’re doing your homework and considering all three, how important

John Jantsch (06:56): Do you feel it is for a name to evoke some sort of emotion?

Rob Meyerson (07:02): I think again, it depends. I know it’s a boring answer, but it can be extremely powerful. I mean, what, one of the most important things I think about for, for any name and almost any scenario is memorability. That’s a pretty universal trait of a good brand name. There, there are occasions where it matter as much, but generally if you’re naming a company or product, you just want it to stick in people’s mind minds like duct tape marketing. And, and one of the, I mean, one of the most powerful ways to make something memorable is to have people attach an emotion to it and it makes them laugh. It makes them smile. And it’s nostalgic. Those things really creates sort of hooks in into your memory, that, to do it another, you know, there are more superficial ways to do it, make it rhyme, right. Um, you know, use alliteration and any of those things could, could be a big help

John Jantsch (07:49): As you do this. You have, you know, you, you help a brand maybe re rename or refocus. Um, how do you measure if it was successful? You know, obviously there be the gut feeling like, oh, that sounds good. Or people seem to like it, you know, all our stakeholders are in, but, but ultimately what may successful.

Rob Meyerson (08:07): Well, yeah, that’s one of the hardest things about, about it, a naming project and about so many creative services. Yeah. I think one of the reasons it’s hard is because you have to give it time. And so I often go back to clients, you know, they, they may be ecstatic when it launches or frankly, sometimes they’ll have real doubts in reservations and they’ll push ahead, um, bravely, but either way, I like to go back six months or a year later and ask what the experience has been. And if it’s been successful and nine times outta 10, or even more than that, especially in those cases where people have the, those doubts, they’ll say, you know what? The doubts were unfounded a year later, we can’t imagine this having been called anything else. And that’s a pretty that that’s not necessarily me touting my, my brilliance. It’s, it’s sort of human nature. Yeah. That as you use a name for something day after day for a year, it just starts to feel so natural. And sometimes it’s really, really hard to see that on day one.

John Jantsch (09:01): Yeah. Sometimes maybe if the immediate reaction is like, I love it. It can be bad. It can fade. Right. as opposed to becoming

Rob Meyerson (09:10): Stronger. Yes. And often the, that reaction can be the result of it sounding like something else that’s already out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it sounds like apple. And so I like it, but you know, really, should you sound like apple or should you, should you be something, uh, else

John Jantsch (09:26): I, I always, this is a silly analogy, but I was, I always used to love, you know, I’d get an album from an artist that I really liked and it was like that first song and I just loved it. I loved it of it, you know, like first play and then like, I couldn’t stand it a couple months later. And it was like the deep tracks that lasted with me, you know? And I think this a little bit of that. Do you have any, I know you have lots of, uh, stories in the book about brands and, and the process. Do you have any kind of favorite success stories? That’s, that’s part a of the question. And then of course these won’t be any of your clients, but do you have any bombs too?

Rob Meyerson (09:56): Yes. Uh, yes. And yes. Well, I’ll, I’ll go sort of historical, I guess. Cause, cause I have favorite brand names from, uh, literally centuries ago and, and some, um, more recent Kodak I think is just a great brand name. It’s one of these strange things where, and I’m, this is not necessarily the way to do it these days, but George Eastman liked the sound of K. He liked that strong K sound and he just wanted to make up a word that contained that and came up with Kodak and it’s, it works so well because it it’s lack of meaning is partly its strength in that it could work for just about anything. And adaptability is, is one of those factors that I mentioned in the book of a strong brand and, and, you know, it’s, it’s survived as much as that brand has addeds up and downs.

Rob Meyerson (10:40): That’s a name that is, is still very much a household name and they’ve done a good job protecting it as well. You know, a lot of names that old have become what’s called genericized, you know, zipper and escalator used to be brand names, but they became just everyday words. People lost couple Kool-Aid. Yes. Kleenex is, is at risk of that and bandaid. So that’s a great one. Uh, you know, more recently there’s a carbonated CBD beverage called recess. Mm-hmm and I just love that band. So that’s the opposite of Kodak and that it’s a real English word and I love the associations talk about out an emotional, uh, trigger there. You know, it just makes me think of the playground in third and fourth grade and the sort of fun of that. And I think the beverage is positioning itself as fun and, and relaxing and things like that.

John Jantsch (11:30): I actually kinda like those words that have, um, multiple meanings, you know, it’s like, they it’s like, okay, yeah, this is re recess, but it also, this might not be what they were after, but it’s, it’s kinda like the recesses of your mind or something, you know? I mean, so that may not have been what they’re after, but you know, I love, well,

Rob Meyerson (11:48): Well, it’s also, it’s, it’s also the break, whether it’s a break from school or a break, like court court goes to recess as well. Right. Yeah. And so that idea of just taking a little break is, is nice. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the horror stories out there, the one that I pick on the most honestly is, uh, trunk, which was a somewhat short-lived abbreviation, although it was the official name for Tribune online content. So the T R O N C . And I think the worst thing about it, and this is subjective, but it just sounds like something gross or best silly, you know, it’s unlike Kodak, it’s meaninglessness. I think it, it doesn’t work well for it. They took something that did have meaning Tribu online content a bit boring and, and just erase them meaning by coming up with this esoteric abbreviation. So I just think the combination of ugliness and, and lack of meaning is, is a real failure. A lot of the, the naming kind of failures, you may not even see because the issue with them is the legal aspect. Oh yeah. Occasionally you do see this where companies have to change their name because of a legal problem. And that’s, that’s one of the worst case scenarios and, and it’s, you know, the names may be great. Otherwise you may think, oh, that’s a, that’s a really cool creative name, but if they end up having to change it, that’s probably a lot worse than if they just had a sort of board.

John Jantsch (13:11): Yeah. That’s I know that’s happened to a few franchises, you know, where they, they were just a local mom and pop thing that wanted to go nationwide and all of a sudden it’s like, oops.

Rob Meyerson (13:19): yes, yes, yes. Back to your question about whether it’s important for local businesses.

John Jantsch (13:24): I think so.

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John Jantsch (14:21): So it seems like one of the riskiest plays is the made up word, you know, because it doesn’t mean anything. You have to invest a lot of energy in making it mean something, but it seems like the rewards sometimes is really big too. I, I mean, even if you use apple, I mean, apple means so as a word, but it certainly doesn’t mean anything to do with computers necessarily other than the bite that they tried to, uh, put into the logo. But, but talk to me a little bit about, you know, is the risk versus reward, you know, worth it there or should, is it really a lot, uh, simpler to just kind of say, everybody knows what we do now because the word marketing is in our name,

Rob Meyerson (14:57): Right? Yeah. Well, a couple of things to address there. One is you’ve pinpointed this distinction between what I call the naming approach, which is mostly like, how much does it have to do with the business or the brand or the, or the pro. So apple and Kodak as words have nothing to do with the underlying, uh, product. Right. But then there’s also the construct. And so apple is a real word. Kodak is a Madoff word. I think that there are risks and rewards either way. I, I think that tying it too closely to exactly what you do in the, in most cases at the company and a level has more risks

John Jantsch (15:34): Than rewards international business machines, for example,

Rob Meyerson (15:38): Yes. Or international house of pancakes. And they ran this big ad, flipping the P to B for burgers. And as much as that campaign may have worked for them, I still think that name has kind of trapped them into people thinking it’s just for breakfast.

John Jantsch (15:50): Yeah. Yeah. So, so let’s talk about we’ve started. Oh, oh, first I had to share my horse, not horror story, but one that I don’t like a lot of the utilities have renamed because they were true monopolistic utilities. And so they could call themselves Kansas city power and light. But now that they’ve joined forces and they’re no longer sort of the monopolistic utility, Kansas city power and light now ever G a V E R G Y. And I think it’s the worst name in the world.

Rob Meyerson (16:17): and, and it’s because of how it feels in your mouth when you say it. Right. It just, those sounds, yeah, it’s, it’s hard to quantify, but those, that combination sounds kind of like trunk. Yeah. Just doesn’t feel quite right. And, and I

John Jantsch (16:31): Feel like there’s one sort of naming practice that people do is they try to squish words together and make up a word rather than like a Kodak, which is totally meaningless, ever energy probably had something to do with like evergreen energy or something like that, that they stuck together’s

Rob Meyerson (16:44): Right. And what we talk about a lot in meaning is linguistic naturalness, which is a fancy way of saying, does it, does it feel like a real word? And I think Kodak it’s similar to Kodiak and, and you know, if you said it to a kid, they’d say, what does it mean? Because it sounds like a real word, whereas, right. Yeah. AGY it feels concocted. Yeah. And there was a lot of that also in, you know, well, it’s, it’s been around forever with things like jello and Windex, these different suffixes that were popular, but it really was at its heyday in kind of the nineties and early two thousands around, you know, dot com boom. 1.0 with Alta Vista and things like this. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:22): All right. Let’s, let’s talk a little bit about, because you have a process for how you go about doing this, right. So let’s talk a little bit about the steps in kind of how brand naming works.

Rob Meyerson (17:31): Sure. So the first thing that we recommend doing is coming up with naming brief and anyone who’s done any kind of creative work will be familiar with the concept of a creative brief, but getting down on paper, exactly what you want this name to do, what kinds of names are inbounds and out of bounds. And then critically making sure that everyone involved has seen that brief and agreed on it. And in some cases signed off, once that’s done, then you, you get into kind of the quote fun part of just generating names and you come up with it may surprise people to hear that on a typical naming project will come up with hundreds or sometimes over a thousand ideas. Do you, do you use

John Jantsch (18:06): Any of these tools that are these AI generators that are there now to kind of start that process?

Rob Meyerson (18:10): I, I don’t, I know other neighbors do. I have used there, there are crowdsourcing tools as well, which I, I have used once or twice, but generally I’ll use a, a small team of professional neighbors who have a lot of experience and they’ll put hours and hours into this. And the reason we come up with so many is, is so that we still have some left at, to the next few steps, which are shortlisting. So pulling the, the best out of that long, long list and putting those through preliminary trademark screening and linguistic screening, which is to avoid some of the pitfalls that we’ve already talked about. Like finding out somebody else is using the name or finding out it means something gross. And another language once we get that, that shorter them, that’s gone through that. We present names. So this is in a consultant to client format, obviously, but even if you’re doing this inside your company or for your own company, you might wanna present to your colleagues or, you know, to your friends or family, that’s helping you make this decision. If that’s the case. And that act of presenting names is something that’s often really over the looked the, the gut way that people do. This is they’ll just say, Hey, what do you think of this name? Or they’ll email 10 ideas to their friend and say, pick the best one. Yeah. And that never works. right. You, you really have to put a lot of thought into providing the right context, priming your audience for this, the kind of decision that they’re about to make and how they should evaluate these different options.

John Jantsch (19:31): Maybe even like what’s the brand promise. I mean, just a lot of like context that that is gonna make it relevant or not. Yeah.

Rob Meyerson (19:38): And if you, you may, may have experienced this, but if you just say like, what do you think of these three ideas? Right. Usually it’ll be, uh, they’ll suck. I could come up with something better. Or, or even if they like one of ’em, they may not like it for the rightly. And then after that, you still have to do a deeper legal search, usually that you’ve done in that preliminary stage. And once you have that, those deeper legal, that, that sort of official legal opinion from a trademark attorney, that’s when you can make your final decision. And so that’s the last step, uh, is just narrowing it down to one.

John Jantsch (20:11): So given the fact that that you’ve sort of admitted that time will tell whether or not it was a good name, you know, do you, is there a lot of, kind of gut-wrenching about like, okay, we’re all in on this.

Rob Meyerson (20:22): Yeah. I mean, it depends on who’s making the decision. I do feel that it’s generally helpful to have one person who’s has ultimate responsibility for making the,

John Jantsch (20:32): Or nobody decides,

Rob Meyerson (20:33): Right. Or at least have an odd number. So there’s a tie breaker because what’ll kill, this is the, you know, trying to get unanimity. Everybody loves it. That that just doesn’t happen to your earlier

John Jantsch (20:43): Point. You get, you get energy out that

Rob Meyerson (20:45): Yeah, exactly. To your yes, exactly. Or you just get the most boring option on the list that doesn’t offend anybody, but nobody really likes that much. And yeah, I do think you can then look at these factors that generally speaking, make some names better than others that we started the conversation with. I just would reiterate that it’s not about checking every box and it’s not even necessarily that the best name will check the most boxes. It’s just a hand Andy way to compare names that otherwise seem good or like they could be great.

John Jantsch (21:17): Okay. Here’s a check box that used to be on the list. And maybe it’s not as important. I wanna ask you how, how important is it that the.com name is available? It used to be when we were all getting started in these URLs, it was really, really important, but now there’s all these.info dot, you know, all these other variations. Plus we don’t use the web. Like we used to. I mean, you know, it’s like we don’t need phone numbers. We Google it. Yeah. So, you know, how important is, is a match to the URL?

Rob Meyerson (21:44): Well, you said it it’s less and less important and you know, I’ll acknowledge that for some businesses. It it’s maybe more important than others. The, the best example I can think of is I help name a streaming service. And I think if you’re naming a streaming service, you want to be able to say it’s maybe more important, you know, go to hulu.com or something like that. Yeah. But for most business, the easy answer is to add it a Scriptor after the name, so such and such consulting or the name plus, you know, just whatever it is, restaurant, but yeah, for the reasons you mentioned, there are so many more top level domains. Now you can get.marketing.agency.coffee.motorcycles. You people don’t generally type in the exact domain they’ll search for it. And so I would say take the money that you might spend on getting the exact domain and put that towards and content that’s gonna drive people to your site. Yeah, yeah. For those reasons I would rather have people have a great name and a quote, unquote, imperfect domain than force the perfect domain and come up with a name that nobody can pronounce or something like. Right. Right.

John Jantsch (22:44): Well, Rob, thanks so much for stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast to talk about naming you and tell people where they can find a, up more about you and, and pick up a copy of brand naming.

Rob Meyerson (22:52): Sure. Well, brand naming is for sale on Amazon and elsewhere that books are sold. Um, if you just wanna learn more about it, you can go to brand naming book.com and, and you’ll see reviews and testimonials, and you can also buy it from there. And just to learn more about me, it’s Robmeyerson.com and EY E R. And so, and from there, you can find my agency heirloom. You can find out more about the book and some articles I’ve written about naming. If you wanna read those. So either of those sites will work well.

John Jantsch (23:20): Heirloom is the name of, uh, my favorite little tiny bakery in, in Kansas city, Missouri, a actually by the way. So I get a warm feeling every time I hear that. Yeah.

Rob Meyerson (23:28): An emotional, an emotional connection.

John Jantsch (23:30): That’s right. Well, Rob, thanks again for stopping by. And hopefully we’ll see you one of these days out there on the road.

Rob Meyerson (23:34): Thanks. I appreciate it.

John Jantsch (23:39): All right. That wraps up another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. I wanna thank you so much for tuning in, feel free to share this show. Feel free to give us reviews. You know, we love those things. Also, did you know that we had created training, marketing training for your team? If you’ve got employees, if you’ve got a staff member that wants to learn a marketing system, how to install that marketing system in your business, check it out. It’s called the certified marketing manager program from duct tape marketing. You can find it at ducttapemarketing.com and just scroll down a little and find that tab that says training for your team.