June 14, 2024 - Eating Her Baconator Alexandra Watkins and E&Y Winner Larry Gaynor

School for Startups Radio

Alexandra Watkins – Famous Brand Name Creator – Named the Baconator for Wendy’s and Author of Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick

I named the Wendy’s Baconator. It is so famous that it has its own Wikipedia page,
it was recently an answer on Jeopardy and it was an answer in a New York Times
crossword puzzle.

Alexandra Watkins is the leading and outspoken authority on brand names with buzz. If you have ever eaten a Wendy’s Baconator, you have literally eaten her words. For nearly 20 years, she and her naming firm, Eat My Words, have created love-at-first sight brand names for countless startups and companies including Amazon, Coca-Cola, Disney, Twitter, and Google. Her own “Name Hall of Fame” includes frozen yogurt franchise Spoon Me, the robotic vacuum Neato, and education startup Headrush. The vertical farming company she named Plenty was recently named one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential Companies. Alexandra is a former Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center Author in Residence. Her breakthrough creativity book, Hello, My Name is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick, was named a Top 10 Marketing Book by Inc. Magazine and Branding Journal.
Larry Gaynor – Founder & CEO @ TNG Worldwide, Amazon Top200 Beauty Reseller, Best-Selling Author of Take a Chance!: 101 Entrepreneurial Lessons for Making It Big – Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner

Unless you have the most phenomenal product, you will go broke selling through a
traditional retailer. Everybody is allowed to sell on Amazon, no requirements, no
application. Just put your product on the platform and see what happens. Do they
have fees? Yes. Do they have policies? Yes. It is the most democratic retailer to do
business with. They are going to overtake Walmart as the biggest retailer next year.

Larry Gaynor is author of Take a Chance!: 101 Entrepreneurial Lessons for Making It Big. He is the founder and CEO of TNG Worldwide, the beauty-product supplier whose best-selling signature brands include ForPro Professional Collection and Ginger Lily Farms. TNG manufactures more than 1,000 products in several countries and launches between 50 and 100 new products annually. Since establishing TNG Worldwide in 1985 as a distributor of beauty products, he has shifted the company to a manufacturing role, and it is now recognized as among the top-selling names in the beauty industry. TNG manufactures in over 75 factories. Gaynor has won numerous awards, including the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. His business was named a Detroit Free Press Top Workplace five years in a row, from 2013 to 2017.