Getting Eyes on Your Small Business without a Publicist

Speaker A: In just a couple of years, Dear Founder has grown into something far bigger than I ever expected. What started as a podcast has become a movement for women business owners over the age of 40. These women are looking for support, partnerships, advice, mentorship, and even new clients. All of which can be very hard to find. But that's what Dear Found her is all about. It's about community. It's about building together and never alone. To help support our rapidly growing community and to give you everything you're looking for as you build your business, we created a private space, the Dear Found her forum. If Dear Founder has been meaningful to you and you want to be a part of what we're building as you build your own business, I hope that you'll consider joining us inside. And if you're among the hundreds of women already there, thank you. We love having you there and we couldn't do it without you. I didn't hire a publicist for the first two years in business, I landed my very first press placement completely on my own. No pitch deck, no ad spend, just an email and the willingness to ask. Two years later, I hired a team, two freelance publicists that helped me. And by the end of our time together, I had done nearly 300 TV segments and landed press in places like Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal. But here's what I want you to know before you hear any of that. Even with a publicist on retainer, some of my best press I still got myself. Today, I'm teaching you exactly how to do that. The four part framework for a pitch that actually gets a yes. And the thing that almost nobody tells you to do once you get one. The part that actually turns a single press appearance into months of visibility instead of one day of it. You don't need a publicist to start. You just need this episode. Welcome to Dear Found Her. I'm Lindsay Pinchuk, founder, acquired entrepreneur and part of the less than 1% of female founders who have led a company through acquisition. I built my first business from just $500 to seven figures without a marketing budget, simply using community, smart publicity, partnerships and clear messaging. Now I host this show for women over 40 stepping into their next chapter, whether that's launching, pivoting or scaling. Each week you'll hear real founder stories about growing an audience, getting press, leading teams, navigating, scaling challenges, and becoming more visible in the right ways. No fluff, no gatekeeping, just what works. Around here. We build businesses that actually work with strategy, visibility, and each other. Welcome back to another episode of Dear Found her. I'm Lindsay Pinchuk, your host and I want to start today with some honesty about my own story with publicist because I think it actually teaches the lesson better than a clean, simple story would. I didn't start with a publicist immediately when I started my first business. Most people don't because when you're first first getting started as an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you don't necessarily have the budget. My first real press placement was about four or five months into me founding my company, Bump Club and Beyond and it was with Daily Candy Kids Chicago back in 2010. And I landed that placement completely on my own. I didn't have a pitch deck, I wasn't running ads and of course, like I said, I didn't have a publicist. I just had a service based business, an email and, and someone who noticed it. That someone was Lindsay Gladstone, who is a friend today and who took a chance on me to share my business when she was the editor. That one placement is how a lot of women in Bum Club and Beyond my company found me for the first time. About two years in, I did hire a freelance PR team and I want to be clear about why. I actually didn't even consider hiring a press team. And it wasn't because what I was doing wasn't working. That's not why I hired them. It was, it ended up being because it was working and I had run out of bandwidth to keep up with it myself. I was landing small press opportunities and I knew there was more out there if someone could dedicate some real time to it. 2Moms Media was getting their business started and they approached me and they asked me if I wanted to be their first client. They gave me a great deal. I was their first client and they told me that they would help me get some TV segments. I wanted more reach and more bandwidth and of course I wanted the credibility. That team did an incredible job with with my business and by the end of Bum Club and Beyond, like I said earlier, I had done around 300 TV segments. Plus I had received national press in places like Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Here's the part I really want you to hear though. Even with a publicist on retainer, some of my best press, the calls for quotes, the placements that mattered most, I got myself. Not because the PR team wasn't good, but because relationships I had built were mine and they cut pain off no matter who was managing the rest of it. Also, we were everywhere and when you are everywhere, people do start coming to you. And so there were press placements that came my way without my PR team involved. For Dear Found Her. I've never hired a publicist at all. Everything that you've seen from me, from this brand, I have built the same way that I got that very first Daily Candy placement. So today's lesson isn't never hire a publicist. It's this. The foundation has to be yours first. Whether you ever hire help or not, you need to know how to do this yourself, because that skill never stops paying you back. So I want to first talk about what visibility actually means. Here's the assumption I want to dismantle right away. Because most business owners think that press means national television or even local television or a major magazine or newspaper. And because that feels completely out of reach, they never try for anything, and they assume that they need to pay someone before they can even start. I want you to let go of that right now. Publicity doesn't have to mean a TV segment. It can mean something as simple as your local paper or a blog in your niche or a community podcast or even an alumni newsletter. It's about sharing your story with whatever audience is already in front of you and wants to hear it. It's about getting people to talk about your business. The more that you show up and talk about your business and share your story, and the more places you show up, the more people will end up talking about you and your business. And sometimes local or small or niche is not the consolation prize. It's where almost every bigger opportunity starts. One placement becomes the credential that makes the next outlet say, yes, that's exactly what happened to me. Daily Candy wasn't a national feature. It was a local newsletter that reached exactly the women I needed to reach. And it's a big part of what eventually made the case for hiring a publicist worth it in the first place. You can't leverage what you haven't built yet. Let's talk about the two lanes to visibility. There really are two lanes here. And I think that it's really important to point out both, and you should be working both, whether or not you ever bring in outside help. The first lane is earned visibility. That's press in the traditional form, like tv, print, radio, et cetera. And it's also podcast guesting, which today is a very big part of the PR equation. Someone else's platform, someone else's audience or community, and you show up as the expert or the story. The second lane is owned visibility. That's your own content, your own newsletter. Your own social channels. Nobody has to say yes to you here. You control it completely. And then most people think about the first lane and then they wonder why it feels so hard or why it feels like something only a publicist can unlock. But the truth is the two lanes feed each other. Every appearance on someone else's platform becomes content for your own. And a strong owned presence is exactly what makes a host, an editor, or eventually a PR team take you seriously. But today I'm going to focus mostly on that first lane that I talked about. Because it's the one that intimidates people the most, it's the one that you sometimes can't control because it's not your own content and it's the one with the clearest playbook. So let's talk about how to actually get that. Yes. Whether you're pitching a local outlet or a, ah, podcast or a blog in your niche, the pitch that works does the same four things every single time. This is true whether you're doing it yourself or handing it to someone else to do for you. Because if you can't do this, you can't manage someone who's doing it on your behalf either. So number one, the pitch has to show that you actually know the audience. It can't be a mass email or a generic blast. If a producer or a host can tell in one sentence that you did a copy and paste on this, they will delete it. Number two, the pitch leads with one specific angle. Not I'd love to talk about my business that means nothing to anyone. It's here's the exact story or trend that I can speak to. Here is why it matters to your audience right now. Number three, your pitch includes one proof point, a number, a client result, a previous placement, something concrete that tells them that you're not guessing but you've actually done this before. And number four, whatever you pitch has to make it easy for the person receiving it to say yes. So you need to provide a link that can help whoever is receiving it to find you in 10 seconds, provide your availability, a sample question or two, whatever removes the friction of booking you. That's it. Four things you want to know, the audience, one angle, one proof point, and one easy next step. Now, I want to prove to you that this works with or without help. I want to share two examples with you from actual clients of mine. I think it's easy to hear a framework and think, sure, but does it actually work without paying someone? So one of my clients, Heather reddish, runs adulting 101 masterclass. And from day one, she pitched local outlets directly and partnered with complimentary brands with no publicist involved. She landed a couple local TV segments early on, and that visibility has turned into corporate workshops and client referrals once it started come once it started compounding. Now, this didn't happen overnight. It was a marathon, not a sprint, as I like to say. But the visibility and the buzz aided in the credibility and building buzz for her brand. The that ended up earning her clients. Another client of mine, Rachel Fritz, who runs Parenting on Mars, she reached out to a local news anchor over a direct message. That's it. It was a dm. He loved what she had to say and connected her with a producer who invited her on the show. And she's done dozens of TV appearances on that network. And in fact, they asked her to become a recurring expert on that news network. Now, neither of these women had a publicist when these examples occurred. They just had a clear sense of who they were talking to and they were willing to ask. Same as I was back before Daily Candy. So here's the part, though, that nobody tells you, and that is what to do after you get the S and after the placement either is printed or errors or is shown to its audience. And I think that this piece matters more than the pitch itself. It's the piece that almost nobody teaches. Publicist or not. Getting the press is only half the work. I have watched so many business owners land an incredible opportunity, a great segment, a strong podcast episode, and then do nothing with it beyond the day that it airs. They treat the appearance like it's the finish line, but it's not the finish line. It's actually the starting line. So here's what I want you to do in the 24 hours after any appearance. Whether it's a podcast, a local segment, or a feature, first and foremost, you want to request the actual file. Don't rely on linking back to someone else's website, where it can disappear or it can move. You want to get the real audio, video or article for yourself. And if they can't give it to you, there are clipping services that you can actually get a clip, especially if it's a TV segment for anywhere from, you know, 60 to 100. If it's a local segment, so you want to get the file or the actual article for yourself. The first thing you want to do is share it to your stories immediately. And if anyone else is involved, whether it's a business partner or a stakeholder, you want to ask them to share it Too. If the host or outlet shares it or tags you, you always want to reshare that as well. So you want to make sure that you're sharing it. And I always say share it in your stories. That's a great place to start. You also want to post the article or the video or the real audio natively. So not just as a link, but you want to share it on every platform where your audience actually lives and where you have a presence. So you want to share it on LinkedIn and Facebook, Instagram, et cetera. You want to, you want to make sure that you share the press placement yourself. The other thing I would have you do is pull three to five short moments out of it, especially anywhere where you're speaking directly to the value you provide. And I want you to turn those short pieces into content on their own, schedule them now and schedule the same clips to go out again in three or six months. Good content is not a one time use asset. I still use clips of me on TV from five years ago, even 10 years ago. Use the TV segments and schedule them and reschedule them and use them again. You also want to send whatever the press is directly to your current and past clients. Not as a brag, but as a thank you and as a reminder of what you stand for. This is one of the most underused moves I know, and it's one of the strongest for keeping the clients that you already have. You want to add it to your website, so add it as a scene in line if you don't already have one, and then keep sharing it. There's no expiration date on a real credential, a feature from years ago. Like I said, it works today if it's still true. The only content that you should retire is anything tied to a single news cycle that's not going to come back around. Almost nothing else needs to disappear. One placement handled this way is not one piece of content, it's months of it. And this is exactly what a good prp, what a good PR team does for you once you hire one, and exactly what you can start doing for yourself before you ever need to. This month here on the show, you're going to hear this lesson. Show up in three completely different businesses. Irene Chen built Parker Thatch on relationships with editors years before she ever needed a publicist. Amy and Laura at Thatch Jewelry have never paid an influencer. They just ask, the same way I asked back in the day with Daily Candy. And Aaron Rothstein built her audience by being honest about a Hard Season and not by hiring anyone to manage her image. None of them are waiting for permission and none of them needed a team to start. I think you'll hear yourself in at least one of these stories we share here this month. So here's what I want you to do this week. I want you to build a list of three targets. It could be a local outlet, uh, a podcast, a blog, anywhere. Your exact audience already is. Find the actual person, the producer, the host, the editor. Not a general inbox. Find the person, then write one pitch using that four part framework we just went through. Know the audience, one angle, one proof point, one easy next step and send it at least to one of them before next week. And if you land something this month, big or small, come back to this episode and walk through the list after and use it. Because that's where the real leverage lives. And it's the thing that will eventually make hiring help worth it if and when you decide to. If you want to go even deeper on this, especially how to use LinkedIn specifically for visibility, we've got a live workshop inside the forum this week for our members and it's open to non members as well. I'm going to drop the link in the show notes. You don't need a publicist to start. You need to know exactly who you're talking to. You need one good pitch and the willingness to do something with the yes. Once you get it, I will see you next week with a brand new episode of Dear Found Her. And if you like what you're hearing in the meantime, I please make sure to go on to Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen and drop a rating and review to let us know that's how other people find us. See you next week.