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00:00:01
Why Your Best Ideas Still Aren’t Landing (& How AI Can Help)
0 Playsin 12 hours
In this AI marketing podcast episode, Dan Sanchez and Ken Freire break down the five essential elements every idea needs to actually get shared. They emphasize how having a great idea isn't enough—it needs proper packaging. Whether you're working in marketing, thought leadership, or content creation, this episode gives you a framework for making your ideas more shareable, memorable, and impactful.
My Favorite AI Tools
- Tella (AI screen recording app I record all my solo episodes with) - https://danchez.com/tella
- High Level (My all in one marketing platform) - https://danchez.com/highlevel
- Zencastr (Best AI podcast tool) - https://danchez.com/podtools
- n8n (my favorite AI automation tool) - https://danchez.com/n8n
Resources Mentioned
- "Hello, My Name is Awesome" by Alexandra Watkins - https://www.eatmywords.com/hello-my-name-is-awesome/
- "Wealthy and Well-Known" by Rory and AJ Vaden - https://brandbuildersgroup.com/book/
Timestamps
- 00:00 – The best ideas don’t win, the best-marketed ones do
- 01:12 – Element #1: Give your idea a proper name
- 03:06 – The balance between clarity and memorability in naming
- 04:16 – Dan’s favorite naming book: "Hello, My Name is Awesome"
- 05:31 – Can AI help with naming? Why it still falls short
- 06:30 – Dan’s rhyme-based naming hack (e.g., Mike Club)
- 07:51 – Why names are critical for sharing and scalability
- 08:47 – Element #2: Write a short description
- 09:19 – Use ChatGPT to craft your elevator pitch
- 10:35 – Element #3: Develop a long-form description (like a blog post)
- 11:23 – Element #4: Include a story or metaphor to make it stick
- 12:31 – The power of metaphor: how AI became a mainstream idea
- 13:58 – Element #5: Create a simple visual (diagram, sketch, graphic)
- 15:34 – Tips for non-designers: how to use AI to generate visuals
- 18:13 – Why doing the extra work is the most considerate thing you can do
- 19:03 – Document your ideas so AI tools can use them better
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
00:00:05
Dan Sanchez
The best ideas rarely win. No, the ideas with the best marketing win. And you've probably heard this. It's tried. It's true because we see examples of it all the time.
00:00:16
Dan Sanchez
You see average ideas kind of masquerading, but getting all the limelight out on social and on email lists and even on traditional like TV and stuff. You're getting these ideas people are like, you're like,
00:00:28
Dan Sanchez
I got some great ideas, but they're rotting away in your Google Docs and your Evernote or your Notion doc, wherever you put them, you're working through it. You're like, how come everybody else's ideas are getting out there? Mine are just sitting around, not getting passed around. They are much better.
00:00:42
Dan Sanchez
And I believe you. We both believe you. It happens all the time. So in this episode, I want to walk you through the five different elements that all ideas need in order to actually get shared.
00:00:54
Dan Sanchez
So welcome back to the AI Driven Marketer, where we're continuing our series around Own the Show, our podcast to book series, where we are documenting what it takes to succeed and what it takes to become an authority in the age of AI. I'm Dan Sanchez, and this is my co-host, Ken Frere.
00:01:13
Ken Freire
What's up, what's up, what's up?
00:01:15
Dan Sanchez
And let's just dive right into it. Starting with the first element, all ideas need in order to get shared more. And that is a proper name, dude. This is like, if, if you could only have one thing, like forget everything else, this is the most critical.
00:01:31
Dan Sanchez
And it's the most frustrating to me. I'm reminded every time I go to my son's soccer practice and the coach is like, oh we're going to do that one such and such drill. I'm like the what drill? Like what? what's the name for that one? He's like, you know, the one where they pass it around, you know, the, the, the pole and stuff. I'm like, dude, there's, there's fricking poles in the ground on all the drills. Like, which one are you talking about?
00:01:51
Dan Sanchez
But on some, it's easy. He's like, oh yeah, do the rib, do the bow tie drill. Oh, do the chicken head drill. We're all like, okay, well, I know what that one is. It's got a name. It's like, names are such helpful things.
00:02:02
Dan Sanchez
It's like, if we don't give something a name, we don't but like, how do you even share it? Like to be like, oh, do the, do the, so this, the, the, Barn door protocol, Jarvis, you know, it's like oh, Jarvis understood the name so that Tony Stark could call it out in Avengers, right?
00:02:17
Dan Sanchez
It needs a name in order for it to be activated. And I just find it's one of those things that I'm like, why don't people name their stuff? Everything needs a name.
00:02:25
Ken Freire
Well, and and I think part of it is that naming is difficult. I mean, i do a lot of like public speaking, communication, sermons, podcasting, and man, the thing that's always been the hardest for like an idea or especially like coming up with a name for a podcast. Oh my gosh. I cannot tell you how many times I've gone back and forth on podcasting naming.
00:02:48
Ken Freire
Dan has helped me a ton of times.
00:02:50
Dan Sanchez
It is hard. Yeah.
00:02:52
Ken Freire
It is one of the most difficult things, but it needs to be simple. It needs to be memorable, right? So that people could be like, oh,
00:02:57
Dan Sanchez
yeah
00:02:58
Ken Freire
Yes. And you want to be excited. it It expresses the idea in the name, but it is difficult to do.
00:03:06
Dan Sanchez
And maybe that's why we don't see more of it.
00:03:09
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:03:09
Dan Sanchez
So I will give you a few tips if you're listening to this. First, there's kind of two major levers. There's multiple aspects to good names, multiple. But if I could simplify it down to just two, it's clarity and memorability.
00:03:24
Dan Sanchez
And they fight against each other because people try to go for more memorable and we lose clarity. But just know if you're getting started, clarity trumps memorability every time don't try to do it now as you get better at naming then generally you can hold clarity while raising memorability right which is the whole goal but it can it can be a challenge uh I remember one time I rolled up my sleeves. I'm like, I'm going to get this naming thing. So I had to name a bunch of podcasts when I was working at Sweetfish. We'd be launching quite a few shows a month. And for every show we launched, have to come up with three to five great names.
00:03:59
Dan Sanchez
That was like one of my big contributions to a podcast was coming up with good names. So I read three different books on naming and two of them were absolute garbage. I could have known based on the name of their books and only one of them actually had a good book title name, which should be a clear indicator that they actually know what they're doing. Let me get it.
00:04:17
Dan Sanchez
highly recommend 10 out of 10 books. Hello, My Name is Awesome by andrew Alexandra Watkins. Best book on naming. It's not a big book. So if you want to become an expert namer, which if you're in the game of thought leadership, if you want to become an authority,
00:04:33
Dan Sanchez
This one is probably a skill set you should develop because you're coming up with a lot of ideas all the time. So being able to name things well and building a skill around this is probably worth doing.
00:04:45
Dan Sanchez
There's a lot of things that you're going to have to be good at to become a leader of people's thoughts, but naming one is like, there's so many things to learn, but like, I don't know if you can drop this one, but maybe you can have someone that works with you or for you that helps you with this.
00:04:58
Dan Sanchez
I don't know. What do you think, Ken? Is it worth at least reading one book for?
00:05:00
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:05:02
Ken Freire
Oh, for sure. I mean, I think the other book that I was thinking about was, we both just recently read it, Wealthy and Well-Knowed Build Your Personal Brand by Rory Raiden, Rory and AJ Raiden.
00:05:12
Dan Sanchez
Rory Vaden, very good.
00:05:14
Ken Freire
it like brought so much clarity to me. Even as you were talking, I was like, I got to read both of these books again. This one and Hello, My Name is Awesome. Because it really is something that you are constantly doing. And I know this is an AI show. You could just be like, I could just ask AI.
00:05:31
Ken Freire
But man, sometimes AI, if I'm honest, just kind of gives you some weak names. And it's like, it's good directional, but there's like a human element that it's missing that doesn't,
00:05:42
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. You know, we just got some new models too, and I haven't tested them. Like we have chat GPT 5.1 at the time of this recording.
00:05:49
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:05:50
Dan Sanchez
Gemini three just dropped today, like a few hours ago. And I'm like, Oh, I don't know.
00:05:54
Ken Freire
woo
00:05:57
Dan Sanchez
It's been a while since I've been like, come up with some names and then just give it like a short description of what you're trying to name and see if it can come up with some zingers. I'll have to test it But as far as I know right now, the names AI comes up with not very good.
00:06:10
Dan Sanchez
Naming is tarred. As good as the models are, they're still not coming up with good names.
00:06:12
Ken Freire
yeah
00:06:14
Dan Sanchez
so
00:06:15
Ken Freire
Yeah, there's there's an intuition that you need, that human element that both isla you know brings clarity and it's memorable.
00:06:23
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:06:24
Ken Freire
It's great with like alliterations and stuff like that, but it doesn't have that oomph like, ooh, I like that.
00:06:30
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. The one, the best hack in this book, Hello, My Name is Awesome, that I use over and over again, it's not the end all be all. And I've found many names outside this one hack, but I find that it's it's reliable and it's it's logical and repeatable.
00:06:43
Dan Sanchez
It's not like it takes less intuition to find it than normal. And that is coming up with the general words that you use to describe a thing.
00:06:54
Dan Sanchez
And then finding rhymes for those words. So if you're coming up with a podcast about podcasting, you know, mic would be one of those words. So you look for words that rhyme with mic, you know, Ike, like, you know, you so you're like, okay, like, like rhymes with mic.
00:07:14
Dan Sanchez
And then you just look for movie titles with the word, with the word like in it. And then you, so and then you take those movie titles and you swap like for mic and just to see if it works. Yeah.
00:07:23
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:07:24
Dan Sanchez
You just do that over and over again with all the rhymes, with all the words. you end up it takes It does take me like two hours to do this, but you end up finding some really good ones. That's actually how I came up with the name Mike Club originally.
00:07:35
Dan Sanchez
It came from Fight Club, and I had Mike Club, and I'm like, ooh, that rings.
00:07:39
Ken Freire
yeah For all the older millennials, they're like exactly oh, it rings a bell for other people who've never seen the movie.
00:07:41
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:07:45
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:07:46
Ken Freire
They're like, no idea.
00:07:48
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. And it still works.
00:07:50
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:07:50
Dan Sanchez
So you got to have a good name. Without a good name, it can't be passed off. Your colleagues can't share it with each other. i'll be like, oh, run that play, run that, whatever that thing is. It needs to have a name for it to be passed around. It's the most important one out of all these things.
00:08:04
Dan Sanchez
Everything else is actually much easier, especially with the help of AI now. But the name, that one just takes hard work and some skill.
00:08:12
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:08:12
Dan Sanchez
or you can hire someone like Alexandra who does this professionally or read her book and figure it out yourself. Next one.
00:08:17
Ken Freire
yeah I was going to say, the one thing I would add is that like a name, the part of the reason why it's so hard but it's so important is that it synthesizes your values. like we talked about earlier. And it also synthesizes your pillars of what your content is going to be about.
00:08:32
Ken Freire
And if you don't have that, it's always going to be like, well, what are we talking about? That's why when you listen to the AI driven marketer, you kind of have an idea of what the topics are always going to be about because it's in the name.
00:08:44
Dan Sanchez
The next one is you need to have a short description.
00:08:47
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:08:47
Dan Sanchez
I know it sounds like, of course, but like how many people can't describe their idea in just a few sentences? all the time. That's why we like emphasize often, even with businesses, like, do you have an elevator pitch? Can you explain your business simply about why it's valuable and why somebody would want to invest or buy the thing in just a few sentences?
00:09:06
Dan Sanchez
It's usually struggle. Luckily, like AI can really help you. You can literally just like word vomit everything you know about the idea and be like, chat GPT, come up with an elevator pitch for you. done
00:09:17
Ken Freire
Yeah. Oh,
00:09:17
Dan Sanchez
It's just that easy. It doesn't even, you don't even need, a I don't have to give you a prompt. I don't have to build a custom GPT for you. Be like, chat GPT, give me a three sentence elevator pitch based on all this word vomit I just dictated into this app.
00:09:30
Dan Sanchez
Done. So there's no excuse for this one. The naming part's hard, short description, you should be able to have it done. And then you probably need to memorize that short description and then use it often.
00:09:40
Ken Freire
Yeah. and And it's okay at the first version to play around with it. Like I'm always testing new ones like, oh, how does it look?
00:09:44
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, yeah.
00:09:46
Ken Freire
How does it feel? You know, does it make sense to people? And I actually typically have like two or three descriptions depending on who I'm talking to. Like if it's an expert in my field, I can use a little bit more jargon.
00:09:59
Ken Freire
If it's someone who's like my daughter who's eight, right?
00:09:59
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:03
Ken Freire
I'm always thinking about the person who has no concept of what we do. How do we explain explain it? It happened with when we started doing all of our AI-driven podcast stuff.
00:10:14
Ken Freire
I remember talking to some people who were like, wait, what do you do with AI? AI-driven? How does that work? I'm like, oh, they have no concept about AI.
00:10:19
Dan Sanchez
yeah
00:10:21
Ken Freire
So had to just kind of like cut that part out for a second and and explain it later on our methodology, not necessarily like what we do.
00:10:21
Dan Sanchez
yeah
00:10:30
Dan Sanchez
So the next one is the long description. And this needs some explanation because it doesn't need to be exhaustive. Like some people can write a whole book on their thing.
00:10:41
Dan Sanchez
And I'm like, no, no, no, not a book. Just in my mind, it's about the length of a blog post. And not necessarily long, but maybe 1,200 words to 2,000 words, somewhere in there that break bras that breaks it down.
00:10:53
Dan Sanchez
What is it? Why is it? Covers essentially the five W's and how in about 1,200 to 2,000 words.
00:10:58
Ken Freire
Yeah,
00:11:00
Dan Sanchez
That's the long description. When people are interested and they're leaning in, they're like, tell me more, then you could start unpacking it. Again, just walking through the five W's and how on the who, what, when, where, why, and how this idea works.
00:11:13
Dan Sanchez
is generally all people need in order to get a good sense of it.
00:11:18
Ken Freire
yeah which leads to then our fourth one, which is a story or a metaphor. Now, I love this one because logic makes things really clear, right? Like the who, what, where, when, why, really clear.
00:11:32
Ken Freire
But stories make it stick. How many of us have listened to so many TED Talks, so many lectures, so many podcasts, but the things you remember about it is a story that grips you, that you're like, oh my gosh, it it hits the emotional a part of your life, the soul, right?
00:11:39
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:11:44
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Yep.
00:11:51
Ken Freire
And you're like, I'm gonna remember that. And even for for guys, man, there's sometimes I listen to a story and I start tearing when I'm thinking about it. i I cry so much when I start to see, like, for example, little kids die in a movie because I'm like, oh, it grips me for a dad who has four kids and a fifth one on the way suit.
00:12:06
Dan Sanchez
yeah yeah
00:12:10
Ken Freire
Right. It's crazy. Those are the things that you need to make sure it works. Now, when it comes to business, you can use a metaphor. You can use a case study. You can use a mini story. Anything that paints the picture of your main idea.
00:12:25
Dan Sanchez
And the metaphor one I think is really powerful. In fact, this one kind of blends in with naming, but what we're calling AI, artificial intelligence, it was not always called that. In fact, the whole field of artificial intelligence didn't it it didn't catch on.
00:12:35
Ken Freire
Ooh.
00:12:39
Dan Sanchez
People were trying to push it. A specific dude was like trying to like make this a topic, and he didn't get it because he didn't have the packaging right specifically with the metaphor. In fact, before it was called artificial intelligence, it was called automation or cybernetics. We called it thinking machines.
00:12:55
Dan Sanchez
And then he started throwing out the term artificial intelligence, which if you think about it, is bit of a metaphor.
00:13:02
Ken Freire
Yes.
00:13:02
Dan Sanchez
People were like, oh, leaning in, tell me more. And it started catching on. And it was, this was like way back in the fifties too. So like, this is how early and how long people have been studying artificial intelligence. It's crazy.
00:13:13
Dan Sanchez
But it wasn't until they had the right metaphor for it to hook people, hook people's minds and give them a, almost like a visual on their head of this thing. Like, oh my gosh, like, like a machine that's like us. Like it started blending into their minds of like what it could be. And they started leaning in it became a field.
00:13:30
Dan Sanchez
And a lot of fun with science fiction movies and books for a long time before we finally it got to AI today.
00:13:34
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:13:36
Dan Sanchez
So story or and or metaphor or both could be great. And then the last one, think is the one people probably skip the most often, but is really, really helpful is visual, the simple visual.
00:13:51
Dan Sanchez
There's a lot of us out here that just, we just need a picture, man. Just give me the picture. Yeah.
00:13:55
Ken Freire
yeah
00:13:56
Dan Sanchez
Make it simple. Less words. ChatGPT. Yeah.
00:14:01
Ken Freire
Yeah. And so, and this could be like a diagram, right? It could be an icon.
00:14:06
Dan Sanchez
yeah
00:14:06
Ken Freire
It could be a sketch. It could be a simple graphic. Draw it on a napkin, right? Like someone gets it enough. I remember i was talking to a mentor of mine. And he's since passed.
00:14:17
Ken Freire
We're talking about admissions directors actually. And he's like, Ken, what what are the skills you need for an admissions director? He was kind of mentoring me in out and I'm like, think you need this, this, this.
00:14:29
Ken Freire
He's like, would you write a job description? I'm like, yeah. He's like, how long do you think that job description is gonna be? I'm like, don't know, three pages. Two pages. I don't know. He's like, I'm go do it in a napkin for you. And he literally like wrote a graph.
00:14:42
Ken Freire
And he's like, I want you to see all these little main responsibilities. And then this was the like, aha moment. He's like, what's your gap in each one of these? What's your level one to 10?
00:14:51
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:14:53
Ken Freire
And he did that and I'm like, oh my gosh, that was ingenious. Ever since that, I've been using that whenever I like hire hire people like and and make them go through that exercise for them to see, o this is the gap that they have and this is what you actually need.
00:15:08
Ken Freire
But that visual, even now, this was nine years ago, I still remember it. That's why visuals are so important. Now, Dan, for you, there are some people who are like, I wish I could be visual. I wish I could sketch stuff out, but they might feel like they're not a designer. They're not someone who who's good artistically.
00:15:26
Ken Freire
What are some good tips for them to make things visual?
00:15:29
Dan Sanchez
Man, this is another one where you could just lean on AI to do it. And I highly recommend, there's so many different visual tools. I recommend using ChatGPT's image generator. It is much better at dealing with abstract images than the rest right now.
00:15:44
Dan Sanchez
I'm hoping Google like launches their next visual builder. It's rumored that they will this week. We'll see if they do. Fingers crossed.
00:15:51
Dan Sanchez
because they just launched che chat Gemini 3. They're supposed to do Nano Banana 2, even though they just released Nano Banana like just a month or two ago. It's like, okay, I'm up for it.
00:16:02
Ken Freire
They're hustling, man.
00:16:02
Dan Sanchez
But right now, chet jeo and know, ChatGPT, you better catch up.
00:16:03
Ken Freire
They're hustling.
00:16:07
Dan Sanchez
But ChatGPT is much better at dealing with abstract things and then making them concrete and visual in nature. It's a much better designer, even though Nano Banano is better with like photo manipulation, I'd say. But this is not what we need. We just we literally need to make things that are abstract to the visual concepts. so Brainstorm with AI about what some visual concepts can be.
00:16:25
Dan Sanchez
usually like to have a give me three different visual ways of representing an idea. And then i take each and then say, write me three prompts for these three visual ideas. And then I take each prompt and I turn it into the idea. And then I just pick the winner and maybe go a couple other rounds with it.
00:16:39
Dan Sanchez
Now, if you have a bunch of different ideas, you might have to bring some uniformity across all these different visuals. And that's a more challenging design task. And you might need to hire a graphic designer for that. But for just coming up with your first pass on the visual or even an idea for a visual, AI can be a really helpful partner on that.
00:16:57
Dan Sanchez
And as a visual learner, please, please do this for me. As much as I like listening to the podcasts, sometimes the visual just hooks better.
00:17:05
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:17:06
Dan Sanchez
have I have to do it for every single one of these episodes. i have to go through a visual creation process of creating the YouTube thumbnail for every single one of these episodes. And that's always fun. I'm always really excited to put that out there.
00:17:16
Ken Freire
Yeah.
00:17:16
Dan Sanchez
But I'll probably have to come up with a totally different system even for the book. So we'll see what I do there.
00:17:21
Ken Freire
Now, I will say one thing when you create a visual, Dan and I are both visual individuals like highly. Some of you are gonna go more into the academic world and think i should create visuals like in an academic textbook.
00:17:37
Ken Freire
Please, for the love of God, don't do that. Keep it simple. but like
00:17:41
Dan Sanchez
Symbol.
00:17:42
Ken Freire
i always open my my like certain textbooks, right and I'm like, why is this thing so complex? I don't understand it. like You need a whole chapter just to read the diagram. right that That defeats the whole purpose.
00:17:55
Ken Freire
The diagram should be able to easily explain one idea. And if you're trying to explain multiple things, you probably need multiple visuals.
00:18:03
Dan Sanchez
So why do we do all this stuff? Yes, it's good marketing. It makes it easier for the idea to spread. But ultimately, it's the most considerate thing you can do. If your ideas are actually that useful, you have to remember, like, your idea is only as good as it's able to be understood.
00:18:23
Dan Sanchez
Yes, intentional rhyme. Remember that. Idea is only as good as it's able to be understood. So we package it, we market it, and we try to come up with all these different elements for it so that people can so people can actually grab it, understand it, and then share it with other people.
00:18:39
Dan Sanchez
It takes extra work. You've already put so much work into creating the idea. You might as well put in the extra work of packaging it so that it can actually be properly shared, received, and carried and shared with other people.
00:18:53
Dan Sanchez
You want to take every single idea you have and actually make a Google Doc for it or maybe a Notion Doc for it somewhere. It's also good to document all this stuff so you can feed it into AI. It's maybe like a custom GPT or in a project so that your AI co-pilot can actually have access to these ideas as you've defined them.
00:19:10
Dan Sanchez
So as it's helping you repurposing them, like maybe into a book like we you are, we you can actually like have AI better grasp exactly what you mean with your idea.
00:19:21
Dan Sanchez
And you could just use the name and not have to explain the idea every single time because it knows, oh, this name means this idea. And then ai becomes AI becomes an excellent partner for you coming up with content because it has access to a little library of ideas.
00:19:38
Dan Sanchez
Now in the next episode, we're going to talk about how to actually not just take all these little packages, but how to arrange them all into something I call an idea portfolio. But we'll save that for tomorrow.