Much of the knowledge I acquired when I first started blogging is still with me to this day. I have my early inspirations to thank for that — shout out to Darren Rowse, Yaro Starak, and Seth Godin!
In fact, a lot of what Seth Godin said back then still applies to growing your brand online today. One concept that I keep coming back to over and over is the power of naming it. But what is it?
It can be anything you teach, create — or even something your audience struggles with. When you label something, you make it real. The name helps you talk about it and helps others remember it.
The messy middle, the part of the entrepreneurial journey between early excitement for an idea and when you finally reach your goals, comes to mind. My 1-1-1 framework of finding one person with one problem and helping them get one result is another example. The same goes for Eric Partaker’s 3 Alarms strategy, discussed in Wednesday’s episode — if you haven’t already, listen in on that session to learn more!
So, how do you coin relevant terms in your business? Join this session to hear me brainstorm new ideas and come up with Fake Flynn-ing. Tune in to find out what that’s all about and how to start naming things for your audience!
SPI 726: Name It.
Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he secretly listens to K-Pop when driving in the car around town. Pat Flynn.
Pat Flynn: When I first started blogging and started my business in 2008, there were three people who I really looked up to that I could get inspiration from.
I mean, there were, there were several more, right? And sort of honorable mentions are people like Tim Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuk and those types of people at the time who were way at the top, right? But sort of in a circle closer to me, if you will, because those people were in the stratosphere, it seemed. But there were people in the blogosphere who were a little bit closer to the same kind of work that I was doing, who I really looked up to.
And those three people were Darren Rowse from ProBlogger. There was also a gentleman named Yaro Starak, who was an entrepreneur, and he would often talk about what he was doing and offer really clean, minimal tips that would help me in my blogging journey. And then there was a person that you might have heard of before who I had a little bit less access to.
I was able to meet Darren and Yaro a few years after I started conferences and whatnot, but I still have yet to meet this person, although this person still continues to be an inspiration to me in several. And by several, I mean millions of others. And that is Seth Godin. Seth Godin was a blogger, and of course a writer, a marketing genius, who would very often on his blog just write really short, punchy thoughts.
And these punchy thoughts were really helpful to me because my thoughts were kind of all over the place. And I was used to reading entire books to try to get one or two points from to then implement. Like Moonlighting on the Internet from Yanik Silver was, was one of them, right? I read that entire book and I probably implemented two things.
But those two things were absolutely life changing. How to write a sales page and other things like that. That book’s a little out of date at this point, though. But Seth Godin, his material never goes out of date. It is marketing. It is, I mean, quotable. It’s memorable. And I wanted to share one of the most memorable things that I remember hearing Seth say on his blog and I actually found an audio clip of it of him talking about this. He’s doing an interview with a gentleman over at Franklin Covey on YouTube. And I’m just gonna play a eight second or so clip about the idea of naming it and the power in naming it. Whatever it might be. Now we’re speaking more generally here, but to preface this before I hit play and why this is important, I want you to think about it in the context of what it is that you’re trying to teach your audience, right?
As a creator, as a teacher, as an educator, naming something to give people a grasp on it, to have people reference it is really important. And the reason I’m bringing this up in this particular episode was because on Wednesday, this past Wednesday, couple days ago in episode 725, we interviewed Mr. Eric Partaker and he is a coach and he talked about his three alarm strategy.
Right, and it’s like, what is that? Well, it’s a thing that he created and it’s something that he coined and he put structure to, and now it’s something that other people can learn from and grasp and share. When you name something like this and create a label on the thing that makes this different or unique or contained in and of itself, it just becomes so much easier to mention, to remember, and it feels more real, right?
A lot of us are trying to educate and help our audience, yet we’re just talking all these words, and we’re helping people through the thing. But when you can name certain components of it, like, there was another phrase that I remember that was very popular for us, the messy middle, right? Great phrase, because it’s… alliteration, the messy middle, but it’s something that I think a lot of us can understand when, once you know what it is. When you start a business, it’s exciting, and it’s thrilling, and you’re putting things together, you’re seeing small results here and there, and all of a sudden it starts to become hard, starts to feel like a chore now, the results aren’t like what they were in the beginning, and neither is the excitement, and that’s the messy middle, or the gap, right, as I think Seth Godin also has called this like the gap, or the valley, I mean, whatever, like, the name is, you could name it something yourself.
You gotta brainstorm these things first, don’t just like, blurt them out, like me. Create a name for these things, like my 1-1-1 strategy, right? And this isn’t any sort of new strategy, it’s just something that I’ve coined in that way, and then I speak about it in the way that I feel like it should be done, the 1-1-1 strategy being you find that one person in a target market, find the one problem that they have that you can solve, and then give them one result. And that’s a teaching that I offer, a framework, the 1-1-1 strategy, that allows for people who are just starting out to see how simple this is.
Not easy, but simple. Just find one person, find their one problem, and get them one result. And that unlocks so many teachings and… experiential, educational moments that can help an entrepreneur grow a lot faster right from the start. So anyway, I’m just going to play this for you. I know you’ve been waiting for it, but I’m kind of explaining it at the same time, but I’m going to play this quote for you from Seth Godin on Franklin Covey’s, I think it was just a video interview on his channel, but I want to make sure he gets credit for this. So the here’s Seth on naming it. The naming it permits us to store it. It permits us to work on it. And most of all, it permits us to talk to other people about it. It permisses us the ability to talk about it, to deal with it, to understand it, to reference it, to share it, all those things.
And I think it’s really important that we, you know, when I talk to other entrepreneurs who’ve been doing this for a couple of years, right? If you’re just starting out, I mean, you can even utilize this information, but there’s so many amazing people who have larger audiences who don’t feel like they… I feel like it’s like, who am I to coin a term or create something like that, right?
Well, this is what scientists and other people do all the time. Because if we can’t name it, then it’s going to be hard to talk about it, but once you name it, not only can you talk about it, but other people can take it in, consume it, understand it, talk about it further, and it just enhances that conversation all around.
So I want to encourage you, by the time this podcast ends in just a few minutes here, I want you to think of, either a process that you teach or something that you know, your audience is going through like the messy middle, for example, and I want you to create a name for it. I want you to name it, name it and see what that feels like and then share it as such.
And it’s going to become yours, right? Jeff Walker’s PLF, product launch formula. Oh my gosh, that has been over a decade being used and people talk about it. And now there’s even a acronym that people say to talk about it, PLF. Oh yeah, I’m going to do PLF on my next launch. It’s so cool. And if Jeff, Mr. Jeff Walker, who has been on the show before, just was like, okay, this is what you need to do for your launch.
Just follow that process. I don’t have a name for it, but just follow that process. Then how, how are people going to talk about it and understand it? How can he improve it from one year to the next? He’s on PLF, I don’t know, 10.0 at this point, because he keeps changing it, right? And I’m not just talking about naming courses or naming your book. Name the struggle give the struggle that your audience has a name, right? And it might already have a name but give it a new name. Like let’s just do some brainstorming right here, right right on the spot. So let’s talk about impostor syndrome. That’s something that has a name.
It already had a name impostor syndrome, where you feel like you’re not qualified to talk about something to share something to be the expert on something, right. So we can come up with a similar name to or a name that means the same thing basically, but in the context of your own community in the context of the language that you use.
So, I might be like, um, you know, don’t be a fake Flynn. Don’t be a fake Flynn. Right? Don’t be a fake Flynn. And that’s kind of putting it on me, because that’s obviously my name, and of course, you need to spend some time brainstorming these things, but if I, what if I said that? All the time. I was like, hey, you know what?
You’re an imposter. Don’t be a fake Flynn. Why do I say that? Because I was that way too. I thought I wasn’t qualified. I thought I wasn’t good enough. I was a fake Flynn. Don’t be a fake Flynn. Fake Flynn. Don’t be a fake Flynn. I’m fake Flynn-ing. You can’t win if you’re a fake Flynn. Now I’m just getting creative.
You can come up with phrases like that, too. Anyway, hope this inspires you. That wasn’t perfect, and it doesn’t have to be. But over time, your audience begins to learn this language that you create, the names of the things, of the its that you have in your brand, and it’s something that then people can talk about, understand, make progress through, and overcome, or reach if it is a goal. You got it, name it, name it, just, just name it.
Thank you, I appreciate you, and I look forward to serving you in the next episode. Hit subscribe so you don’t miss out because we got a lot of great stuff coming your way, and we’ll chat soon.
Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media, and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!
