IAM386- Head of Branding Helps Corporations With Product Naming

Grant Polachek is the Head of Branding at Inc 500 company Squadhelp.com, the world's #1 naming platform, with more than 20,000 customers from early-stage startups across the globe to the largest corporations including Nestle, Philips, Hilton, Pepsi, and AutoNation. Grant works with a lot of CEOs as well.

• CEO Hack: Incremental improvements quickly for a bigger impact
• CEO Nugget: How you approach customers and the teams you work with is very important
• CEO Defined: Ability to respect and put time into creativity

Website: http://www.squadhelp.com/

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Transcription

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Intro 00:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:29

Hello, hello, hello this is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I've Grant Polachek of Squadhelp.com. Grant, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Grant Polachek 00:4

It's wonderful to be here, Gresh. Thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 00:42

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And I wanted to read a little bit more about Grant so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Grant Polachek is the head of branding at Inc 500 company Squadhelp.com. The world's number one naming platform with more than 20,000 customers from early-stage, startups across the globe to the largest corporations including Nestle, Philips Hilton, Pepsi, and Auto Nation. Grant works with a lot of CEOs as well. So grant, super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Grant Polachek 01:12

I am ready. I'm excited. Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 01:15

Awesome. Let's do it. So they kick everything off, I want to hear a little bit more about your background and what led you to just kind of be in your current position.

Grant Polachek 01:22

Absolutely. So I've had a couple of different focuses throughout my life and my young career, I actually ran karate schools, which was a lot of entrepreneurship and management. But it was also really fun because we did a lot of life skills helping kids learn the same things that a lot of entrepreneurs and CEOs talk about the same things that if you hire a coach, a lot of them are going to be talking about. You know, the indomitable spirit grit. Sticking to things. Then I moved in and started a branding and marketing company. And did that for several years, We helped a lot of clients did a lot of local but some bigger projects. And after that, I came on board with Squadhelp to help with the branding project.

So what we're doing right now is we're doing a lot of naming projects with many different kinds of companies. As you're saying, I pull on my experience What's interesting about branding is I think there's there's a good mix between the copywriting and the creative, and also how you want to run your business. So I pull on a lot of my experience to help companies think through how I look at my business strategy, and pull that into a brand theory and brand strategy. And then connect those two dots, which I'm really, really passionate about.

Gresham Harkless 02:58

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm always thinking, I'm definitely sure, you know, you can definitely speak to this as well, that sometimes it's hard to get a full, I guess, your hands around exactly what a brand is. But it's great to see that you guys have like a site and a process and a platform that allows those brands to kind of get at least that naming aspect there, which starts if I understand correctly to direct that brand.

Grant Polachek 03:24

Yes, I call the name. And that's really where the wheels hit the road. You're all in theory, you're saying I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that I'm excited about this. Maybe you have some customers that you've thought about. But then you actually put something on a piece of paper, and you start thinking about, you know, how am I going to actually do that? How am I going to tell this story? And that brand name really starts to bring everything from theory into reality, which is a very, fun and exciting process.

Gresham Harkless 03:58

Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to hear a little bit more about that process. Can you tell us a little bit more on the go to Squadhelp.com?

Grant Polachek 04:05

Absolutely. The big thing that I've noticed about naming is there's a lot of information online. And most of it is well-meaning. But many of the tips and tricks are just they're very pigeonholed like I need a short name. So many people say that, and it's not true. It's just not in some situations. It can be a great thing to have a great name. But what about Mechanical Turk? That's a really awesome brand, a great brand name. It's not short. And I could go through a million examples. But that's one of my favorites. So what I like to do is just take a broader perspective perspective and think about the process. And here's just a simple and it gets a little more complex than this. But the simple breakdown is you start by thinking about who you are. And this is a little bit abstract. But you have to think back to your business plan and understand what am I trying to create here. What is the what is then then it, then you take down and think about your audience? What is my audience? How do I want them to perceive this?

Some of the things we talk a lot about in branding are just the simple tone. So how do I, what tone do I want to set? Is this a very preeminent brand? Or is this a silly brand? Or is this a really modern cutting-edge brand, There are a couple of other options, we can if we can define what is going to appeal to my business When I think about connecting a product or a service to a group of people, this tone is really, really important. And then I talk about what we call secondary branding elements. So what are the big ideas? This is a really, large concept that doesn't have a right answer. But first, some examples. Shopify is a wonderful company that loves them. They said something really simple. We're at the start of the digital marketing era, They came out really early in that whole process, and we want to be the modern shopping solution.

So they wanted to put shopping right there. And they went to Shopify, right? So I want to put shopping into the forefront of my brand is a tremendous branding statement is very clear. But you can go the absolute opposite very esoteric, Apple, there are many theories around here, about Apple, but what I think it's all about is I want to make what at that time in the 70s was very corporate and very sterile IBM, right, I want to make it human, I want to make it user-focused, and they went with an Apple, because an Apple is something that everybody's hold in their hands, everybody's baked in a pie so became very real, and very connected, very warm and inviting all those characteristics that they wanted to bring to the forefront of their brand, not descriptive like Shopify, but they still have a very strong, I want to bring this to the forefront of my brand. And that comes from, you know, the actual product, the vision of the CEO and leadership and the customers they're trying to meet to connect with.

Gresham Harkless 07:19

I wanted to ask you now about what I call your secret sauce, it could be you or it can be Squadhelp, but what do you think kind of sets you apart and makes you?

Grant Polachek 07:28

So Squadhelp's real uniqueness is, you know, there's kind of levels to it. We want to bring branding, to people who couldn't afford it. But for the best resources and the real viable resources in branding, were agencies prior to the digital era. And unfortunately, they're just very expensive, I've seen research that says the average cost of a branding agency is $20,000. That's a lot of money. You know, and there's some great agencies I don't I'm not here to knock any agencies, you know, but it just puts the price point out of reach of most people.

So the secret sauce in ours is harnessing, crowdsourcing, but not just that we also our CEO is a really, he's had some high, rules and big companies in technology, he really brings a lot of the forefront of technology into this brainstorming and crowdsourcing process. So we use gamification, we use machine learning, we use artificial intelligence in a really nice way to not only say, Okay, we're going to connect you we're going to support the process. So we have like a smart dashboard that says, Here's the four things that after doing this 20,000 times, we know are the most important aspects of having a successful process. And we're going to just put them right in front of you each time you log in. So you know how you're dealing with those four things with smart alerts were curating ideas and bringing them to the forefront for you.

So this was really the idea of high tech. And then when it comes to branding, the process of getting lots of ideas is very difficult. If you sit down and write names on a piece of paper, on a great day, you're gonna get 100 of them, right and we can just do that much faster. And, from a lot of different perspectives. A lot of times we hear about, you know, I hired an agency, and again, nothing wrong with agencies, but I'm working with one person and we're just not clicking. When you work with 100 people. It's fine.

You don't click with one it's fine. You don't click with 90, but it's very, seldom that you don't you don't find a few that are just really, doing what you need to. So just I think for everybody if I've learned anything from my time with Squad help, voted were voted one of the most innovative companies by Inc. Magazine. I just think it's the CEO and the leadership's ability to look at a problem. And what's the problem? Our problem is naming is really difficult and is becoming more difficult every day. And find not only one thing, you know, not only can we use technology or connect with more people, but let's do this in a bigger way, let's let's layer, let's put technology and crowdsourcing. Let's do it smart. Let's really dig deep and analyze our findings. And find something unique and special that you can do. I know is in a lot of people say that, but, you know, it's not, in a, you know, a whimsical way. Like, let's just do something that makes us passionate. But let's really, let's really use data and use smart thinking and study and get the right people on board to create a solution that's different. And it's helping people in a unique way.

One thing that we've found, and we're, I think a little bit surprised when this started happening a few years ago is big, companies are coming to us for their away from agencies, because of the way that we've structured a unique solution, I think the ability for just to disrupt is of course, of course, there like it was never before.

Gresham Harkless 11:27

Yeah, absolutely. And I love that aspect. Because a lot of times, you know, I always think the idea is that whenever you're able to create something, that's great, but if you're able to create something that reaches the masses, and is that mass appeal, where it's not too expensive, or it's not anything, you have that kind of medium ground, where you are able to take into account all those different things, it really is where it starts to reach so many people and have such a big impact. So it's great that you guys are able to do that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a hack. This might be something you already touched on or something you could tell us about squad help, what is something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Grant Polachek 12:05

I think that, you know what, one of the things that we really focus on is I call it agile, I think we've brought a lot of people talking about this, but just really looking at incremental improvements, quickly, you know, that will make a bigger impact over time. And some of the things that go along with that are our testing, you know, don't be afraid to, to try something that's not going to work.

Gresham Harkless 12:39

I think that's a great hack. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a nugget. So this is like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you could happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business? So

Grant Polachek 12:49

One of the things that I really, really think is important is how we approach the people in and from our customers to the people we work with.

Gresham Harkless 13:02

Now, I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question. I know you work with a ton of CEOs. So I wanted to ask you grant, what does being a CEO mean to you,

Grant Polachek 13:11

I'll just dig into this one. One of the biggest things that I see in the world today is we talk a lot about analytics, performance, direct response, all of those things, and they're wonderful, I think the idea of marketing moving more towards analytics, is great. But you know, there still needs to be that ability to respect and put time into creativity and vision. Vision, what I mean by that is the ability to see something in the future, the ability to say, here's where I am now. And here's where the industry is now, or here's where my product is now. And here's where I want it to be. And kind of imagine those things out. So that's a big one. Of course, there's no need to manage a team and you need to have a great product. So you need to have some expertise but that is the stepping the moving away from from too much analytics into vision.

Gresham Harkless14:16

I definitely appreciate that definition in that perspective, as well. And grant I appreciate your time even more. And what I wanted to do was pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and then of course how best they can get ahold of you and find out about squat help.

Grant Polachek 14:32

Absolutely. Just to wrap up the whole branding and naming concept. I would like to end with the clear statement that it's a process. It's a journey. Start with one place, start with your business. Trust yourself there. I've dealt with so many projects, and I can't over-stress. People come under the table, I say, I believe this is a great direction for my brand. There's, some testing that you want to do and you want to validate. But also you want to trust yourself and take that into account and, move that forward and bring that to fruition. So I think that ability to, trust yourself and that's in opposition to, I went and read five blog posts, and here's the tips that they told me. So I'm gonna go and do that. As opposed to I'm passionate about this, and I have this vision. Squadhelp.com is our website, We have all of the details about our services and 24/7 customer support, so we can answer any questions and get anybody started, who needs some help was the name, logo, tagline, various other tools, support, and offerings.

Gresham Harkless 16:02

Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate you again, Grant for all the awesome things you're doing and your time again today. And we'll have those links in the show notes as well. But I hope you have a great rest of the day,

Grant Polachek 16:12

Gresh thanks for having me. It was great talking to your community.

Outro 16:16

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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