Sam Horn – Does your business POP?
After reading Sam Horn’s book “POP”, I just had to have her on to talk about how you can make your business stand out from the crowd. We talked about how the first 60 seconds can make or break your business. Sam also shared how to use AIR – Alliteration, Iambic and Rhyme when choosing a name for a business, product or service. She’s a great story-teller.
Listen to this new episode and hear how you can use POP – Purposeful, Original, Pithy – to help your business stand out.
About Sam Horn
Sam Horn is the Founder/CEO of the Intrigue Agency. Her 3 TEDx talks and 10 books – including POP!, Tongue Fu! and Talking on Eggshells – have been featured in New York Times, on NPR, and presented to hundreds of organizations including Intel, Accenture, Oracle and ASAE. Perhaps, most importantly, Sam is known for her ability to help people “connect dots forward” to produce one-of-a-kind brands, books, businesses and presentations that scale their impact – for good.
https://www.facebook.com/SamHornPOP/
https://www.instagram.com/samhornintrigue/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samhorn/
https://twitter.com/SamHornIntrigue
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Do you have pop in your marketing? Find out what I’m talking about in this episode. Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I am so happy to have another national speakers association friend on Sam Horn to talk about pop and other things. Sam, welcome.
Thanks, Alan. I’ve been looking forward to sharing some stories and insights with your listeners and viewers.
Oh, thank you. And stories is something that you do so well. When I was listening to Pop, I just love the stories that you’re telling from a kid in New Orleans mowing the lawn of the park across the street to people just going through the Alphabet to find their names. But now I’m getting ahead of myself here because they haven’t necessarily heard your book yet. I say heard because I do audiobooks or read your book there. So Sam is the founder and CEO of the intrigue agency. But you also have books, including Pop and Tong Fu, right. What is tongue fu?
Kung fu is how to deal with difficult people without becoming one ourselves.
Oh, I love that. And titles. This is when I was listening to pop. This is a lot of what this was is how we tell other people what we do. How we describe what we do can either make them go, ah, yawn, yawn, yawn. I know a lot of people are listening, not watching here. And then other, other times, they’re like, whoa, whoa, what’s that like? Like, tell me more about that. So, since pop is the one that kind of got me to invite you on here, what is pop? Pop is an acronym for?
It stands for purposeful, original, and pithy. And as you just said, there’s a 62nd backstory to that. Alan, want to hear how I came up with Pop?
Please.
You may know that I helped start and run the Maui writers conference for 17 years. We were to the publishing industry, what can is to the film industry. And we gave people an opportunity to jump the chain of command. I mean, imagine you could pitch your screenplay to Ron Howard. You could pitch your novel to the head of Simon and Schuster. And at the first round of pitches, I was watching, and a woman came out with tears in her eyes. And I went over, I said, are you okay? And she said, I just saw my dream go down the drain. I said, what happened? She said, I put my 300 page manuscript on the table.
The agent took one look at it, said, I don’t have time to read all that. Tell me in 60 seconds what it’s about and why someone would want to read it. And, Alan, the next day, I talked with Bob Loomis, who is senior VP of Random House. I said, what’s going on? He said, sam, we’ve seen thousands of proposals. We make up our mind in the first 60 seconds whether something is commercially viable. And the end of that story is that next day, I stood in the back of the room and I watched the pitches, and I could predict who is getting interest in their project without hearing a word being said based on one thing. Guess what it was?
What’s that?
The decision maker’s eyebrows.
Because did they go up?
You know, we have. I know we have wedding planners, event planners. We have dj’s, we have florists, you know, we have dress designers, et cetera. And if we’re trying to explain what we do and the decision makers eyebrows are crunched up, it means they’re confused. And confused people don’t say yes now, if their eyebrows don’t move, it means they’re unmoved or they’ve had botox. If their eyebrows are up, I mean, right now, everyone watching, just lift your eyebrows. Don’t you feel intrigued, engaged? That means we just got what we care about in your mental door, and they’re going to say, tell me more.
And that was something that in pop, I was listening to, and I related to my very first book. I reached out to my speaker friends and I said, okay, I’m writing a book. What do I need to know? And people have given me all these things, and they said, keep your title short. You got to keep your title short for the bookstores and whatever. So I had this short title, and just like you say, I showed it to people, get their reaction. Watch their faces. Wasn’t getting much of a reaction. But there was another line on the book, on the, on the COVID art.
And I don’t remember exactly where or how we put this on there. And the line was, if your website was an employee, would you fire it?
Wow.
And that got the eyebrows up. The title that we had, I think it was called Insight insite. And I thought about this whole series of site books, you know, insight and all these other site things. Nothing. No reaction from people. And as soon as they saw that line, they’d go, oh, yeah, I would do it. And that’s the title of the book, which I was told was too long. And all these things.
And you know what? That one. And then I have another one called, shut up and sell more weddings and events. And the same thing. It gets that those eyebrows go up.
You know, Alan, let’s unpack that, right? Because we have busy people. And they want to know. I agree with that. That sounds wonderful. How do I do it? Right. So there was a process to what you did. Number one, if you put it in a beat, you make it easy to repeat. If you put it in a beat, you make it easy to repeat.
So what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, you know? Right. If you see something, say something. So even though that was long, it had iambic meter to it, which makes it a musical and makes it lyrical and we like it. Another thing is, like, you asked a question. So, see, it was two way communication instead of a lecture, instead of telling people something which just sits on the page you asked, which engaged. So kudos to you.
Thank you. And again, listening to it, some other things, I’d say some of my titles are better than others I have, from what I heard from my audience, my third book or fourth book was called why don’t they call me? And it was the frustrations of my audience that they just don’t pick up the phone anymore. They used to pick up the phone. Now they’re emailing and texting and whatsapping. And then during COVID I was writing a follow up to the website book. It was going to be called five signs. It’s time to fire your website follow up to the other. And I kept hearing from people, you know, I’m getting ghosted.
Why are they ghosting me? Just like. Right. And that’s another book title. Why are they ghosting me?
Okay. Okay. I hope everyone has. Has notes because these are replicable ideas. I mean, really, the people who listen and watch you are wondering, how can my business break out instead of blend in? There’s a lot of floors, there’s a lot of wedding planners, there’s a lot of event professionals. Right? So how can I break out instead of blend in? Because blending in is for cuisinarts, not for consultants and companies. Right?
Absolutely.
What you just talked about is called a conversational catchphrase. Now, once again, I hope people are inking it when they think it. Just start writing down what you did, Alan. What do I hear all the time from my customers? What do they say? Because if we make that the title of a blog or a YouTube video or on our website, people say, that’s exactly what I think. Do we have time for a quick success story about that?
Please, please.
Well, Julie Jansen is a career coach, and she came to me years ago and she said, sam, you know, I want to write and speak about this. There’s a lot of career coaches. So I’m one of many. And I said, all right, I’m going to ask you one question. What do your clients say when they come to see you? She thought about it for a moment, and she kind of laughed. And I knew we had some gold. And she said, you know what? They all say, I don’t know what I want, but I know it’s not this. Boom.
That is an evergreen book that is still selling 20 years later. Because people have thought that, felt that, said that. That means they relate to it.
Right, right. And you were talking about in the book the chiropractor. Right. Was it my aching back or something like that? Right. What do people say? Why did they come to you? Oh, my aching back. Right. There’s your headline in the ad.
And honestly, this is. People say, oh, I wish I had your mind, Sam, or, I wish I could do this. And that’s what I tried to do with pop, is you can do this. Here are the frameworks, and once again, the framework for this is just ask your customer service team, what do people say on the phone all the time? What do my clients say at the wedding or at the event? And write those down. And each of those could be, have you ever felt this, this, this? Have you ever said, this, this, this? And that is a lot better opening to your website than explaining what it is you do. Cause explanations are in phobicity.
I love that. Love that. So I’m thinking about the books on my bookshelf. I was telling you, I have a lot of speaker friends. Jay Bear, one of the things you talked about is if you’re trying to come up with a catchy phrase, go through the Alphabet, replace the first letter, and Jay’s got a book, utility. Y o u, utility, which is making it about the audience making that thing, but it’s that same thing. So even though utility and utility sound the same, it looks different on that cover over there. So what are some other examples? There were some famous examples, you said, of just doing that.
Good. Well, let’s talk about alphabetizing so that you can come up with a new word, because if you have a new word, you can actually trademark that word. Then you can merchandise it and monetize it in perpetuity. So I’ll give you an example of how I’ve done that, and then we’ll unpack it for your listeners and viewers again. So the very first time I spoke on conflict resolution, I called it dealing with difficult people without becoming one yourself. Now, that’s a pretty good title, right? It’s got alliteration. It’s got a beat. However, if you google or put in SEO difficult people, up come many people.
So see, once again, I would have gotten lost in the crowd.
Right?
I was so fortunate at our first break, there was a gentleman didn’t get up to get a cup of coffee. Just kind of sat there gazing off into space. I was curious, and I went over, I said, what are you thinking? He said, sam. He said, I’m an event planner. He said, I deal with some very demanding people. Some of them seem to think they can treat me any way they want to, and I’m tired of it. He said, I thought you were going to teach us some zingers to fire back at people and put them in their place. So that’s not what this is about.
I said, you’re right. It’s not about putting people in their place. It’s about putting ourselves in their place. And he was the one who said, I’m a student of martial arts. He said, I. I studied karate, taekwondo, judo. He said, what you’re talking about is like a verbal form of kung fu, isn’t it? Ha ha. Eureka.
Run that through the Alphabet. Kung fu, you eventually get to kung fu is still selling around the world in 17 languages.
Wow. Okay. Bueno. So another one was gogurt, right? Yogurt becomes Gogurt. Right?
Yeah.
Just thinking about things like that. Yeah.
Now, here’s how people can do it. So right now, you can go to your website, you can go to your marketing copy. You can just do this off the top of your head. What are ten or 20 words that you use to describe your services, to describe your programs, your products, you know, what your business does, just write down, those are called your core words. That’s your word bank. Now take those words and run them through the Alphabet, because often you can come up with a fresh phrase of a familiar term. Now, once again, you and I love stories. So here’s a wonderful story, is that there was a restaurant outside of Washington, DC that wasn’t getting any people for their happy hour.
Why? Well, there’s 50 restaurants within a 1 mile radius, so a lot of competition. Now, the manager kept his antenna up for how they could differentiate themselves, and he happened to notice that a lot of people brought their dog and tied their dog outside while they came in for a cold one after work. And so he thought, wow. So it’s not a happy hour. It’s a happy hour. Bappy hour, happy hour, dappy hour. Eventually you get to yappy hour. Boom.
Now, if people are thinking, okay, it’s clever. It’s wordplay. No, it’s word prophets. That is the Holiday Inn in Alexandria, Virginia. They were written up at that time in USA Today and Washington Post. It went viral. That has become a destination. People who come to Washington, DC go to the Yap yower, the pet working opportunity.
There you go.
They could have paid millions of dollars for that free press they got because of a clever name.
Yeah, I go with people that look at their packages and I look at the package names, and they’re just so generic. Silver, gold, platinum, and diamond and Ruby and whatever. And then you occasionally run into one like, okay, maybe it relates to something local. That could have names of local areas or things like that, but most of them are just blah. And if you want to look blah, name your things blah, and they’re going to be blah. So the same idea again, if you have your packages, come up with some creative things. So when you talked about the core words are also the keywords, that’s your SEO. If you’re doing search engine optimization, you should know what those words are because you’re trying to use them everywhere anyway.
You’re trying to do those. Trying to do those things. So let. So again, being original on that, and then pithy. And I remember the first time somebody used that word towards me was in a testimonial, and they talked about my pithy humor. And I remember having to go look it up because it had been so long since I was like, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, I could think it was a pith helmet. You know, the old safari helmets there. And so what is pithy?
Well, Pithy is based on something that I learned from Gary Marshall, the director of Pretty Woman. And he said something at Maui writers conference. It’s so profound. I remember it as if he said it this morning. He said, Hollywood directors can predict when their movies will make money based on one thing. Do people walk out of the theater repeating something they heard word for word? Because, see, if they walk out saying, make my day, show me the money, I’ll be back. When someone says, seen any good movies? They’re talking about your movie. They become a brand ambassador.
So I have a whole process of how to come up with a repeatable. Repeatable. A tweetable phrase that pays. So you want to hear just three of these steps to come up with a phrase that stays top of mind, insight in mind over time.
Oh, yeah, I want to hear. I’m sure everybody else does, too.
Okay, here’s how to do an airtight sound bite. A. It’s for alliteration. Now, just listen to these words. Bed, toilet and shower, dunkin croissants. Best purchase, clunky, right? No, alliteration is when words start with the same sound. Bed, bath and beyond. Dunkin donuts, Rolls Royce, best buy.
Now, once again, Alan, we’re not talking about something that’s cutesy because Jay Sorensen saw an opportunity. Have you ever put one of those cardboard insulating sleeves around a cup of coffee or tea so you don’t burn your fingers?
Sure.
Well, you can’t build a business around an unpronounceable name. That’s a commodity. Right, right. So he calls them Java jackets. He cornered the market in two words. He said people who meant to get in touch with his competitor contact him because they can’t remember the competitor’s name. That’s the power of a alliteration. So, shall we talk about.
I am big meter.
Let’s do it.
Okay. I is iambic meter. And now just fill in the blank. Takes all licking and keeps on ticking. Okay. I can’t believe I ate the whole thing. Alan, those slogans are 50 years old, and yet they were still top of tongue, top of mind. So I’m asking everyone, go back to those core words and even go to the cliche dictionary online and start playing with those words to come up with a one liner.
And then it’s word music, as you put it, in a beat, so it’s easy to repeat. And Las Vegas said that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. The convention bureau said it has driven $1 billion of revenue because of that catchphrase.
Yeah. So alliteration, iambic, two parts, or is there any more?
Oh, yeah. Airtight. R is for rhyme. Rhyme is sublime because it’s remembered over time. Now, let’s make a point about. Once again, this is not petty, this is profound and powerful and profitable is that the US government was concerned about injuries and fatalities in car accidents, so they mounted a multi million dollar public service campaign. They called it buckle up for safety. Nothing happened.
Because, as Duke Ellington said, it don’t mean a thing. It ain’t got that swing.
Got that swing.
So they went back to the drawing board. This time they came up with clicket or ticket. Clicket or ticket. Now, Ellen, here is where it gets profound and powerful. Compliance went up. Injuries and fatalities went down. They actually saved lives by coming up with a repeatable slogan that prompted action. So I hope everyone watching, if you’re looking for competitive edge, you know, Jack Welch said, if you don’t have a competitive edge, don’t compete.
If we don’t have a competitive edge, we can’t compete. So the word play that we’re talking about can be the difference between whether people are still repeating your name, your slogan, ten years from now.
Right? So, again, going back to the package idea, coming up with alliteration for your packages or rhyming for your packages, things like that would just make them more. I think it makes them more aspirational. Um, I. One of my clients, they do custom, uh, antique cars for weddings and events. And every car has a name, and every car has a personality.
Wow.
So you don’t want the 1946 Buick. You want Eleanor. Right. And by doing that, people are actually asking for the car. I’m doing air quotes because most people are listening, not watching air quotes, because they’re asking for the car by name instead of the 46 Buick, which somebody else could have, but they don’t have Eleanor, or they don’t have Julie, or they don’t have Sam or whatever it is, that different car there. And years ago, when I first started working with, I was like, that’s brilliant. Now we need to bring that out. And we did that with the social proof where in their testimonials, they were talking about having Eleanor as part of their wedding, you know, again, brilliant.
Just giving it, giving it something different, giving it a personality, making it stand out. So what are some other tips that people can do to think again, whether it’s their company name, might be too late to change their company name, but the tagline. Right? That could be your tagline underneath. Right? What should they do?
Talk about thought leadership, because I know that many of your viewers and listeners, your community, they don’t just run a business. You know, they speak at their local chamber of commerce, or maybe they give a TEDx talk, or they’re right in their industry journal, and so they’re coming up with headlines, or they’re even coming up with a name for what it is they do. That’s first of its kind. And so I’m going to suggest maybe you come up with a half and half word. And here’s the example of it. Doctor Francine Kaufman was really concerned about the rise, dramatic rise in type two diabetes. And so, you know, she wasn’t the only one, though, is that there were also nutritionists and physicians and doctors about upset about this. So what you would do is you get a fresh piece of paper, you put a vertical line down the center.
Now you start putting some of your core words on the left and some on the right. You can even ask yourself, okay, what are the contributing factors to this situation? Or what are the problems that people fit my eyes, audience faces? Or what are the challenges that my customers are dealing with? So you would put that on the left and over on the right. All right, what are the answers to those issues? What are the solutions to those problems? What are my programs and products that meet those needs? So that you have a list of words on the left, words on the right. Now you just start taking the first half of word on the left, and you start matching it with the second half of the word on the right. You could perhaps coin a whole new word that once again, you can go to Godaddy, you can get the domain, you can register, trade, market, merchandise, it doctor Francine Kaufman put on the left. All right, so what is causing, you know, this increase in diabetes? Well, certainly, you know, insulin and sugar and obesity, etcetera. And over here is, ah, guess what? Diabesity. Boom.
Okay, Alan, who was asked to be on the Today show? Who got a book deal? Who was the opening keynote for Ama that year? Well, the woman in the industry who came up with the name for a cultural phenomenon. So ask yourself, what is a phenomenon in your industry? What’s in the zeitgeist in your profession? Just start putting words on the left and on the right. What your customer wants, what you hear, etcetera, and then start mishmashing the first part of a word. With the second part. You may be able to come up with a brand new word that you can name. And if you name it, you own it.
That’s right. And then they’re asking for you, just like you said for the other person there. Or how we don’t ask for a tissue, we ask for Kleenex.
Right?
You know, and everybody wants a kleenex. But you’re going to go to the store, you may or may not buy Kleenex brand. There you go. So we’re running short on time, but I want you to talk about why you should not explain what you do, and you should explain what to do instead. Is that it?
No explanations are infobesity. Wa wa wa wa wan phobicity.
There it is, infobesity. Mashing up words there. Okay, so talk about that.
So we’re gonna turn infobesity into intrigue, and we’re gonna ask instead of tell. Now, here’s the story, and I’ll unpack it. So that I was speaking for YpO in Dublin, Ireland, and a gentleman came up to me before my session and he said, I’m going to confess something to you. He says, I’m an introvert. He said, I fly across an ocean and a continent to get here, and then I hang out my hotel room. He said, plus, I run a tech company in Silicon Valley. It’s so complex. When I try and tell people what it does, explain it, they don’t get it.
It’s awkward. I’d just rather not do it. I said, can we play? And he said, sure. I said, what do you do that we can see or smell or taste or touch? And he said something about credit cards and computers and financial software and, Alan, my light bulb went off. I said, do you make the software that makes it safe for us to buy things online? He said, yes. I said, don’t tell that to people because if you tell them that, they’ll go, oh, that’s the end of the conversation. You don’t want to end the conversation. You want to open the conversation.
So I said, ask a three part question. Do you know anyone? Could be yourself, could be a friend, could be a family member. Because if you just say, do you buy stuff online that they’re backpedaling as fast as they can, that’s an interrogation, right? This gives them options and it increases the likelihood they’ll know someone. I said, now, do you want to stack the deck that every single person you meet is going to be familiar with what you do? He said, is that a rhetorical question? I said, what are the three top online retailers? And at that point, it was eBay, Travelocity and Amazon. So you can say, do you know anyone could be yourself, a friend or family member who buys stuff online, like on eBay, Travelocity? And he may say, oh, I hate that stuff, but my wife’s on Amazon all the time. She loves the free shipping. Now, all we do is we link what we do to what they just said. Oh, I make the software that makes it safe for your wife to buy stuff online, like on Amazon.
Oh, look at the eyebrows, Alan. I get it. I relate. And we’re off on a mutually meaningful conversation.
Yeah, it’s the asking questions, which is, again, the core of sales. One of the examples I use with that is, let’s say there’s an entertainment company and they provide ceremony music, and they also provide microphones for the couple when they’re getting married, saying their vows. And some couples say, we don’t need that because what they’re selling is discreet wireless microphones, which is the how you’re going to do this, but they don’t care. And I say, well, just say to a couple, have you ever been to another wedding? And you couldn’t hear the couple with saying their vows, and they’re probably going to say yes. And they say, well, we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen at your wedding. And if they go, well, how well, we have the right technology. They’re very discreet microphones. You won’t see them in the pictures, all that.
The how comes later they don’t really care how, but they care is that Aunt Sally in the 8th row is going to hear you when your voice gets soft and it’s cracking because you’re getting emotional. That’s what they want is the results of what you do. They don’t want what you do. And it’s the same thing, just asking questions like that. All right, last thoughts, just last ideas. You have these solopreneurs and entrepreneurs that are listening in here and they’re thinking about their next idea, their next product, or just revamping what they do to make it pop. Where’s a good place to start? Where’s an easy place for them to start?
Start with your 1st 60 seconds. So, quick story, and then we’ll unpack it, is that I was a pitch coach for springboard enterprises, so we’ve helped entrepreneurs generate 27 billion in funding. So one of my clients came to me. She said, sam, you know, good news. I’m going to be in front of a room full of investors at the Paley center in New York. She said, but there’s bad news. I said, what’s that? She said, I only have ten minutes and I’m going at 230. She said, sam, you can’t say anything in ten minutes.
I said, you don’t have ten minutes, you have 60 seconds. Here is the 62nd opening she came up with. She won millions in funding and she was business weeks most promising social entrepreneur of that year. So, 60 seconds, ready to go.
Go.
Did you know there are 1.8 billion vaccinations given every year? Did you know up to a third of those are given with reused needles? Did you know we’re spreading and perpetuating the very diseases we’re trying to prevent? Imagine if there were painless one. Use needle for a fraction of the current cost. You don’t have to imagine it. We’re doing it. And she’s off and running now. Ellen, guess how Kathleen Callender, a pharmajet, used to introduce herself by explaining that pharmajet was a medical delivery device for subcutaneous inoculations. It’s a what? So everyone there, one or three. Did you know? Questions with startling statistics that would get.
I didn’t know it was that bad. I didn’t know it cost that much. I didn’t know it took that long. Imagine this. Imagine this. Imagine if it didn’t have to cost that much. Imagine if you could do it in a fraction of the time. Imagine if you could trust someone who has a ten year track record.
Third line. You don’t have to imagine it. We’ve been doing it. You’re off and running, right?
Identified the problem, identified the solution without saying that it was them, and then brought themselves back around to it. Great. My most nerve wracking speech I ever gave was at an NSA national Speakers association. We’re the ones that speak, not the ones that listen at conference. And I had two minutes on main stage with a clock counting down to explain an idea that’s made me $25,000 or more. And when the clock hits zero, your mic and your light went off. Most nerve wracking speech ever because I had two minutes again. That was the 1500 people that wasn’t one on one.
Brian Walter, another mutual friend of ours, he calls it the eyebrows. He calls it the Scooby Doo moment, when you say something and they go, what? And now you have permission to tell them more. So, Sam, I know it’s going to be in the show notes. We’re going to have all different ways to contact you if people want to find out more about you, where would they go? What’s the best place to go?
Real easy, just go to samhorn.com. So samhorn.com. And I hope people connect with me on LinkedIn because I love to write. In my life, as my lab, I’m writing all the time about new ways to stand out from the crowd instead of get lost in the crowd. So see on LinkedIn, too.
Terrific. Well, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your wisdom. I can’t wait to dive into the next book.
Thanks so much, Alan. Best wishes to.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
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