Eat My Words - The Kitchen Sink

Please visit our NEW blog and website for the freshest tips on how to name your company - www.eatmywords.com

C'mon over to our new website and blog... we'll be waiting for you. All of the same posts are there so you won't miss any of the fun.

The Kitchen Sink blog has moved - www.eatmywords.com/blog

 

Please visit us at our new location:

http://eatmywords.com/blog/

Another toast for Eat My Words - Square One Vodka

Longtime Eat My Words client and Square One Organic Spirits Founder and CEO Allison Evanow is the rockstar Make Mine a Million $ Business winner who encouraged Alexandra to enter the competition. (See these posts for more on Alexandra's big win.) Here's what Allison had to say about working with Alexandra and the team at Eat My Words over the years...

"Alexandra is a top-notch naming consultant thanks to her creativity and innate abilities to find highly impactful naming solutions for her clients. She has named several of our cocktails and written taglines for us that we have used in our products and marketing materials. She is definitely our go-to person when we need a great name, tagline, copywriting, etc. for our products. She is very easy to work with and very quick on the turn-around. We will be certain to work with her again on future projects."

For more gushing testimonials, see our bragadocious Reviews page on the Eat My Words website.

Report from the Winner's Circle: Make Mine a Million $ Business

As reported on Friday from the finals in Albuquerque, I am now an official Winner of the Make Mine a Million $ Business Program sponsored by American Express. I could not have done this without the dozens of clients and friends who gave me their support, help and a big boost of confidence as I prepared for the competition over the last four months. The finals were exhausting... day one was hours of speech rehearsals and tiara fittings. This won't surprise any of you in my Toastmasters Club or National Speakers Association ProTrack group, but I was the only one of the 20 finalists who did not have my speech brutally critiqued by the Count Me In staff and professional speech coach. They were pretty harsh on the finalists, calling some of the speeches "boring," and even trashing some women's hairstyles and jewelry. Ouch! While I received lots of kudos on my speech and they didn't change a word, someone did point out that I had memorized my speech, but with 15 mandatory points to communicate in three minutes about myself and Eat My Words, I couldn't just wing it. I sailed through it on stage on Thursday morning and was announced as one of the 10 winners later that afternoon. 

My prizes include a $1000 Dell gift card (which I am using to buy a new camera and TV), professional coaching, mentoring, and most importantly, lots of visibility - the American Express PR Machine goes into overtime to promote the winners. Plus, I will be part of an exclusive Yahoo Group, just for M3 finalists and winners - this will be invaluable. 

All of the winners are dynamic women with interesting businesses. (Pictured here, left to right: Carla Falcone, Lana Hutchison, Alexandra Watkins, and Kimbra Orr)

Here are the 10 winners:

Alexandra Watkins

Eat My Words

www.eatmywords.com

San Francisco, CA

Eat My Words is a creative branding firm that creates unforgettable brand names and taglines that make emotional connections with consumers, build instant affinity for the brand, and have proven Return On Investment.  The firm consistently delivers powerful, unexpected names that lend themselves to wordplay, brand-extensions and merchandising opportunities. Eat My Words is the only naming firm that monetizes names for clients including Spoon Me frozen yogurt, Frigid gourmet ice cream, and Stuff a Sock In It laundromat. 

Carla Falcone & Romy Taormina 

Psi Health Solutions, Inc.

www.psibands.com

Pacific Grove, CA

Psi Health Solutions, Inc. sells Psi Bands (pronounced "Sigh Bands"): drug-free wrist bands for the relief of nausea due to morning sickness (pregnancy), motion sickness/ travel, chemotherapy, and anesthesia. FDA-cleared Psi Bands are unlike any other product on the market in that they are: fashionable, adjustable around the wrist and at the acupressure point for personalized comfort, waterproof (no more soggy wrist bands), reusable, and affordable.

 

Lana Hutchison

Hutchison Assisted Living Services, Inc.

Albuquerque, NM

Hutchison Assisted Living Services, Inc. operates a licensed Adult Residential Shelter Care Home called Andrew House providing assisted living services to individuals. Services include housekeeping, meal preparation, bathing, grooming, medication assistance and general supervision. Lana strives to offer assisted living to the elderly seeking a comfortable atmosphere at a reasonable expense.

Kimbra Orr

Kimbra Studios

www.kimbrastudios.com

Littleton, CO

Kimbra Studios produces solid sterling custom photo jewelry and accessory pieces.  Customers can upload, manipulate and view how their photos will look in pieces of jewelry at the website.  The jewelry is solid sterling silver and the photos are completely waterproof, making them heirloom pieces.

Tarin Wilson

plan A events, LLC

www.planAevents.com

Beverly Hills, CA

plan A events, LLC is an event production and management company organizing events of all sizes with an emphasis on detail and quality.  They specialize in corporate events and parties, fundraisers/auctions, awards shows, festivals, movie premieres, and receptions.  

Krista Branch

Peak Educational Services

www.peakteam.com 

Flagstaff, AZ

Peak Educational Services is a multidisciplinary organization that works with schools and agencies in Northern Arizona and on the Navajo Nation by serving the individual needs of the child and family through professional, caring relationships. Peak provides highly needed therapy services to schools including School Psychology, Speech-Language Therapy, Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Special Education Instruction and Counseling.

Carol Gaab

TPRS Publishing, Inc.

www.tprstorytelling.com

Chandler, AZ

TPRS Publishing, Inc. produces and publishes Foreign Language readers, textbooks and teacher training materials that are based on a specific method called Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling.   It is an input based methodology that focuses on activities and techniques that expose the learner to an abundance of authentic language in a condensed period of time.

Nadine Johnson

Sous Kitchen, Inc.

www.souskitchen.com

San Carlos, CA

Sous Kitchen, Inc. provides customers with chef-prepared, frozen dinner kits to cook at home.  Customers can prepare their own meals at Sous Kitchen or call ahead and have their meals prepared for them.  They also have the option of picking up their meals at the kitchen or having the meals delivered to their home or workplace.

Barbara Spohn-Lillo

Prosthetic Illusions Inc

www.prostheticillusions.com

Lakewood, CO

Prosthetic Illusions Inc specializes in creating custom artificial eyes, facial prosthetics, partial digits, and custom breast prostheses.  Creating prosthetics requires a graceful combination of technique, artisanship and attention to detail, to which Barbara and her company are dedicated. 

 

Theresa Stelter

Hillcreek Designs

www.hillcreekdesigns.com

Santee, CA

Hillcreek Designs sells buttons with a folk art finish.  Each button is hand dyed and packaged for retail and wholesale clients worldwide.  Catering to quilt and craft stores, Hillcreek Designs also sells linen thread, wire quilt hangers, patterns and simple stitch templates.   Hillcreek Designs also works with designers for their specific projects or books.  The buttons have a matte surface, rich in color, and are washable.

Alexandra Watkins Wins Make Mine a Million Contest!

We previously announced that our own Alexandra Watkins was a finalist for The Make Mine a Program from Count Me In for Women's Economic Independence.

We can NOW announce that as of a few minutes ago, she was picked as a winner!  While none of us here at Eat My Words ever had any doubt, we were nonetheless on the proverbial pins and needles until the announcement.  Alexandra worked very hard to come this far this fast, and this win validates it all. 

We will fill you in with more details on what all this means next week when Alexandra gets back from a well deserved weekend in New Mexico. 

Congratulations Alexandra!

San Francisco's Eat My Words Makes Million Dollar Business Finals

Founder Competes for Financing, Mentoring, and Other Prizes to Help Catapult Her Businesses' Revenue to a Million Dollars

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Sep 09, 2008 -- Business growth program, Make Mine A Million $ Business(TM), selected Alexandra Watkins of Nationally Acclaimed Naming Firm, Eat My Words, as one of twenty finalists to compete for an awards package at the New Mexico event on September 18, 2008. The event will feature female entrepreneurs from New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and California who competed for business development packages including money, marketing, mentoring and technology assistance to help their businesses grow into million-dollar enterprises.

The upcoming competition provides the twenty finalists the opportunity to present their business in a three-minute "elevator pitch" to a panel of business experts and a live audience. Ten winners will be chosen by the audience and judges.

Watkins founded Eat My Words in 2005, a distinctively different naming firm whose primary passion is generating conceptual, unforgettable names and taglines, after a successful 15-year career as an advertising copywriter where she discovered she had a passion for naming things. Without a college education or any formal business training, the 44-year-old entrepreneur has turned her passion into a company with clients like Frito Lay, Del Monte, Plantronics, InterContinental Hotels and infomercial giant Guthy-Renker.

Finalists will receive several of the key components of the Make Mine a Million $ Business awards package that will help their businesses break the million-dollar barrier, which includes inspiration, community, business coaching and mentoring from a "dream" team of coaches and business experts from Count Me In, and select discounts from national sponsors.

Launched in 2005 by Count Me In for Women's Economic Independence and founding partner American Express OPEN, the Make Mine a Million $ Business program was created to help post-start up, women-owned businesses grow to one million dollars in annual revenue. Since its inception, the program has hosted 18 competitions in cities around the country and grown into a nationwide movement. For this year's event, more than 400 applications were submitted in hopes of securing one of the finalist spots.

For more information about how women can grow their businesses please visit www.makemineamillion.org. 

Who wants to be a millionaire? Alexandra selected as a finalist in Make Mine a Million $ Business Program sponsored by American Express.

Out of 400+ women entrepreneurs who went through an arduous application process, I was chosen as one of 20 finalists for The Make Mine a Million $ Business Program from Count Me In for Women's Economic Independence. Their goal is to inspire one million women entrepreneurs to scale their businesses to annual revenues of $1MM by 2010. I plan to be one of them.

 

On September 18, I will join the finalists in Albuquerque to compete for business development packages that include money, marketing, and mentoring. Described as a cross between "The Apprentice" and "American Idol," each of us will have 3 minutes to pitch our company to a live audience and panel of business experts. Ten winners will be chosen. Based on what I've heard from previous winners, including our client Allison Evanow of Square One Vodka (who encouraged me to enter), I have an excellent chance of winning. My playful personality, polished public speaking skills, interesting business, amusing anecdotes, and potential to scale are all things that will give me an edge. Plus, considering I bootstrapped the business in two and a half years without a college education or any formal business training, I am living proof that if you follow your passion you can do anything. Please cross your fingers for me.