Search Interviews:

John Corcoran 3:30

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it’s different databases is a good place. iTunes is a good place to look, you can look on YouTube, you know, different typical search engines, they might search, don’t,

Jeremy Weisz 3:40

don’t name your book, like the E-Myth, because there’s a book out, don’t name your book, The Four Hour Workweek, because Tim Ferriss had a book on it. So just stop and people do there’s obviously obscure titles that someone actually wrote a book on that you’d be surprised. I’ve done these searches, you know, john, you have to with clients, or we look up, blah, you know, you know, whatever the name is in podcasts, and oh, there’s already a podcast or you look on Amazon, like, actually, there’s a book called that. So you just have to be careful. Um,

John Corcoran 4:08

yeah. And then the other point we want to make is that there are also phrases that certain companies or individuals are associated with that maybe the phrase isn’t trademarked, but it’s definitely associated with that person. So an example might be like, Michael Gerber, author of E Myth. You know, real seminal business book is kind of known for the phrase work on your business, not in your business. You wouldn’t want to try and compete with a phrase like that. Or when you think of the phrase start with why immediately people think of Simon Sinek he’s known for that. That might have been the title of his book as well, but it’s kind of a phrase that he’s known for. So you want to avoid those sorts of mistakes.

Jeremy Weisz 4:50

Yeah. And then also, if your name is too specific, the name your business is too specific. Don’t use it. Like let’s say name, your business is Smith’s roof. thing in contracting like, well, maybe that’s also boring, but, but it’s to No, no take, and not to take anything away from roofing contracting. But, you know, you just want something general enough because if the person wants to shift the people they have on the show, then it kind of paints you into a corner. And you you brought up a good point, John also about names that if it’s, you know, too specific is bad. But, you know, you don’t want to paint yourself into a corner with

John Corcoran 5:33

Yeah, and you want the person to you want people to feel honored to be a part of it. You know, so I give me an example. Actually, just earlier today, I was a guest on a show called PowerTips Unscripted. Sounds pretty cool, right? It’s unscripted in the sense that it’s just like a roving conversation and you’re giving power tips who I want to feel like someone’s my tips are viewed as very powerful, right? It was actually the, the name of the company was Remodelers Advantage, and it was a community and a company that helped residential remodeling companies throughout the United States. Now, if they approached me, and they said, We want you to be on the remodelers podcast, I might be thinking, why I’m not a remodeler. Why would I be on there, but by giving it a broader name like that, which has some cachet to it, people are honored to be a part of it. The other thing is, you mentioned the roofing example, Smith’s roofing and contracting Well, you know, roofing company, maybe they get all their leads in their business and their referrals from realtors, interior decorators, architects, if they name it something using roofing or roofers in the title, then every person who’s not a roofer, who gets asked if they’d like to be a guest on the show, it throws up another barrier that might be less likely to say, yes, you don’t want more barriers, you want to make it easier for people to say yes, yeah,

Jeremy Weisz 6:53

there’s lots of resources on this. So we’ll try and boil down some simple ones. But you know, on that, that goes into the first, you know, one of the first criteria we look at when we’re thinking and brainstorming with someone with a name, which is, what is the result your company or product produces? So like in the roofing example, john, what you just mentioned is like, Well, what do you do? Well, you cover people’s house you cover I know, you could do something, you cover their butt, you cover their family, I mean, something that what do you actually do? What is the actual result you produce? So the example also be like, let’s see do lead generation. Like all you, what do you do? Well, we create a traffic engine for people. So sometimes it’s in the bylaws, the actual subtitle of the company of what you actually do.

John Corcoran 7:44

More Yeah, and we have, we have another client that is a furniture company, they don’t name furniture in the title, they call it home. Because it’s about creating a place that you feel comfortable in making your home, your nest, your place of respite, you know, that sort of thing. And yeah, there’s a good good tips. What else? What about naming? When is it a good idea to name a podcast after a business? Jeremy? Yeah, I give an example that you gave once you were talking to someone. And you know, they said, You know, I just don’t know what the name of my podcast. And you said, Well, how long did it take you to come up with your business name? And they said, four years? And you said, use that? What do you say that it’s a good idea to use.

Jeremy Weisz 8:33

Case in point. That’s why some people, like you said, Don’t start the show for two or three years, I can’t think of a name. So they’ve probably put a lot of blood sweat into naming their company. So there’s cases where we don’t recommend naming your company. Like we mentioned, if it’s too too specific, but there are cases in the if it’s general enough, and it also some of the people name their company, which is the result that they do. So for instance, Buy Box Experts who help e-commerce, right? They help people capture the buybacks. So that’s a great name for a show. It’s, it’s the name of their company, but also is the result they produce. Right. Another one that we help is Next Level, right, then even companies next level, well, great, that’s how they help people get to the next level. So that’s also result they produce so it was General enough, it doesn’t paint you into a corner with Well, I’m not a remodeler like he’s just mentioned, john, then why would I go on the remodels remodel is progress, but power tips? That’s, you know, that’s great. So I think of it the name of your company is not too specific. And it’s part of it as a result you produce? Go for it. Yeah, you know, there’s no right or wrong here. Right. And,

John Corcoran 9:49

you know, there’s also our friend Andrea Heuston has The Lead Like a Woman Show. You know, she wanted to feature women business owners, and it’s been a great night. Working tool for her now that’s not the name of her business Artitudes Design is the name of her business. But who doesn’t? You know what, what female leader business leader? Wouldn’t we want want want to be on The Lead Like a Woman show? Right? It’d be an honor. And then another example is our client McCarthy Painting. They didn’t name it McCarthy Painting, they actually did a little bit tongue in cheek, they call it The Watching Paint Dry podcast. You know, watching paint dry, obviously considered kind of synonymous with doing something boring. You wouldn’t want to call a podcast, the boring podcast, but it’s kind of tongue in cheek for that reason.

Jeremy Weisz 10:36

Elon Musk would call it that.

John Corcoran 10:38

Maybe he would. But you know it, also broaden it so that he could interview others who are not not commercial painters or not in the painting, you know, field so to speak.

Jeremy Weisz 10:48

And also the bottom line, too, is guests aren’t going to say yes or no. Typically, based on the name your show, unless you make one of those mistakes and making it too specific. Sometimes you could just say, here’s the type of guests I’m featuring. And you don’t even need to name your show, you can send them here’s the URL where my show is. So it’s not I mean, it’s important, but it’s not, you know, it’s not going to just totally flush your podcast on the toilet, and you bought away you can always change your name, if you really wanted to those people who revamp brand, the name of their podcast, and they keep the same show, but they just name it something else. So you could always name I think, john, for the first five months of my podcast, I had no name. I had no name on my podcast. I just bought my name as a URL, JeremyWeisz.com. And I’m like, hey, do you want to come on my podcast? I’m having top business leaders and I zero name because I didn’t want it to hold me back. And I came up with a name months later,

John Corcoran 11:53

which is a good thing, because you ended up changing your focus.

Jeremy Weisz 11:56

Yeah, and I mean that mine is generally you know, it’s a general name Inspired Insider. But I just was like, I just want to get started. And I’ll change the name when I get to it, you know?

John Corcoran 12:07

So Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember we send an email to someone, this is on behalf of a client, where we send an email to someone else who was going to be a potential guest on their show. And in that email, I didn’t even mention the name of the show. But what I did say is that I wanted to introduce you to a client of ours who has a podcast. And he’s interviewed executives and leaders from Salesforce and Facebook and a few other shows. And there’s a lot more copy in the actual email. But when he responded back, he said, not only is it a heck yes, I’d like to be a guest on the show. But also it sounds like I’d like to do business together. It was that positive response. Again, not mentioning the name of the show, because oftentimes, it’s really about positioning it and making it something exclusive, where you want to be included in that club. And we previously recorded a episode where we talked about the season vs series dynamic why we’re advocates of doing series rather than seasons. So I’ll point all of our listeners here and viewers to go check out that previous episode, because that’ll talk about how you position it in a way that gets people get people to say yes to be a guest on the show, regardless of the name of the show,

Jeremy Weisz 13:19

whether it’s a results based word or a word you like. The other thing we recommend is if there is a word you latch on to and you like a simple word, then all you have to do is add, then I always tell people, it’s going to take 10 minutes to name your show. Okay? Like someone let’s say they like the word, traction. Like I like the attraction, well, that can be synonymous with Gino Wickman. And EOS, you don’t really want to name your show traction. And it’s also the name of a book. But you know, for example, if you go super attraction or extra traction, and we just did this right before, john, we hit record, and you said, Oh, like super tracks or extra tracks, and you just through a few examples, you can list like 10 examples of something to add on traction that no longer has a connotation or traffic, you could do more traffic, extra traffic, just put a word if you’d like to word a certain word, just brainstorm a bunch of words that would go on it. And then, you know, in 1015 minutes, just to make sure no one else has it, you can come up with the name. So I guess the next thing is, you know, you don’t have to do this in a vacuum. Right. And we’re big proponents of involving other people in this right, john. So one thing you can do is ask people ask your network, you can call people you can text people get posts on social media, you can email people and ask them, you know, with when we go through this with our clients, we have like our kind of a whole email template that is that you can customize but essentially You reach out and you ask them, What do you think I should name my show, and it’s good. You’ve done this before, John a number of times is if you have a few choices for them. So you’re not just making them think of something if you have a few choices, multiple choice, and you can leave a space for other and have them, you know, give you a suggestion, but just ask people.

John Corcoran 15:23

Yeah, you know, it’s funny, because you’ve probably seen this before you ever see like a zoo that has a contest for kids, like named the baby panda. You know, you see that sort of thing happened? Well, why did they do that? Is it because they really need a name? No, it’s because it’s a great community building activity. And it gets, you know, supporters of the zoo involved, it gets donors involved. Yeah, then realizes by a longshot that you’re actually going to be the one to name it. But it’s a great excuse to build a larger community. And you can do the same with the name of podcasts is by reaching out to your, your extended network, they’re going to feel a little bit invested in it, and you’re going to be more inclined to share it with family and friends and more likely to listen to it and all of that stuff.

Jeremy Weisz 16:12

Yeah, and they’re gonna want to know when it comes out, they name it what I suggested that they take mine, so they will be invested in it. So I don’t know if there’s any more I could just do we could do a quick recap, you know, mistakes. Look it up on Amazon on Google, make sure it’s not trademark, make sure there’s not a book title, make sure it’s not synonymous with someone else’s IP, there’s their sayings, make sure it’s not too specific. And then on the actual front, it could be results based, it could be general enough, that gives you flexibility, it could be the name of your company, if it’s not too specific. You know, and if you’d like a word, then you can play around and add another word to it. Any, any others, John, that we missed.

John Corcoran 17:00

Yeah, and just remember that ultimately, it’s oftentimes the bigger factor is how you position it once you get some good previous guests on there, positioning those in order to get future guests using series instead of seasons in order to get other guests. And all of those are more important factors. Don’t go and spend dozens and dozens of hours on this that’s not the most critical factor. There are other more important things that you should be spending your time but I think that’s about it. So where can people go to learn more?

Jeremy Weisz 17:33

We did an episode on how to reach out to any VIP or didn’t we do an episode on that? Which goes into what you just said which is it’s the positioning around the message not the name of the show. And I think we went into great detail on that.

John Corcoran 17:51

Absolutely Yeah, so check that out check out that other episode as well. We can put it in the show notes as well. Where can people go to learn more about us Jeremy

Jeremy Weisz 17:58

go to Rise25 checkout we have a couple videos there you can go to Rise25.com/about and you know, John has a very impressive background. Who you know, some people know most people don’t but learn more about you know, worked at the White House, DreamWorks and many more so check out our background there and we give some tips and sign up for our newsletter where we actually will give you even more tips.

John Corcoran 18:26

Exactly. Power tips. Alright. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Jeremy