Sound BITES Podcast: E53 - Mickie Kennedy | Founder of eReleases

Speaker A: Hey everyone. Today on the Sound Bites podcast, we have Mickey Kennedy. Mickey is the founder and CEO of E Releases, a leading press release distribution service that helps small businesses, startups and authors gain national media exposure. Mickey has spent more than 25 years helping small businesses land media coverage that actually matters. Mickey, thank you so much for joining Sound Bites. Appreciate the time.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Awesome. The way that we like to start these is really past, present, future, right? So tell us a little bit about your past and what got you to where you are today.

Speaker B: So, uh, I graduated, I guess close to 30 years ago, uh, with an MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry. So I had a different career trajectory in line. But, uh, I found out, having migrated from part time waiting tables to full time after graduating, that I didn't want that to be my lifelong career. Uh, it's hard on the knees and back. And uh, I just, I felt physically, emotionally, psychologically damaged at the end of each day and wasn't reading or writing. So I transitioned to a safe office job. I got hired by a telecom research startup as employee number three. And because I had writing in my background, I inherited a $5,000 fax machine that held 100 numbers and a Rolodex of 150 numbers. So there was a disconnect there. So I would spend about a day and a half programming and deleting phone numbers, uh, and sending press releases every month and nothing happened. And the owner's like, oh yeah, it never does anything. And I'm like, well this wasting a day and a half of my time. I think we should try to figure it out. And he said, okay, try to figure it out. So, um, we were publishing data which, you know, as you, as you may know, in the media, data's hot, but we weren't putting it in context. And so we were just getting ready to publish Caribbean telecom traffic. And there was one country that was a big outlier of inbound and outbound traffic to the US and exploring it further, uh, discovered that all 1900 numbers are routed through that country. And this was a phenomenon in the 90s, uh, where you could call one 900 number and get a recorded horoscope for 75 cents a minute or speak to a live psychic for $6aminute. And it was all tier landline. So, uh, that that press release got picked up by the Wall Street Journal, the economists, Financial Times, Red Herring, and a bunch of Telecon trade publications. And so I continue to do these, um, data, uh, with stories and realizing that the story ARC is probably the most important element and we were missing that and getting picked up. And so I really wanted to do this for others. And at the same time, every time I faxed I would get these phone calls saying, hey, could you start emailing these to us? And I remember when the Rolodex was under a hundred fax numbers, so I could keep the numbers in the fax machine. And unfortunately if you asked to be removed after that, I wasn't going in and deleting them because I just wanted to preserve the fax machine. But I did start collecting email addresses. And when I launched ereleases, um, in 1998, it was largely just a Rolodex decks of email addresses and I was sending out press releases on behalf of clients to these journalists. And um, fortunately I, I pivoted over time. Uh, I was approached by PR Newswire and they liked what we were doing and they wanted to offer like a local distribution for a price. And I, I really pushed for a national distribution, which today they charge almost $2,000 for a national press release of 600 words. And uh, um, you know, we, we get that. Uh, then uh, all of our releases go out nationally through pure Newswire goes to the appropriate industries. You can also do local saturation for journalists who are only interested in local news. So if you're from like the Chicago metro, you can saturate the local market on top of national news. And so, uh, yeah, it's, it's a really great value because you can basically do a release with us for under $500 that would cost you in excess of $2,000 directly with the Newswire. The caveat is you can't be a big bucks company that the sales, uh, team at PR Newswire would want to work with directly. And those are generally people who have budgets of uh, 20, $30,000 or more. Uh, my client base of startups and small businesses and midsize businesses generally have a budget of under $3,000 a year.

Speaker A: What was it like starting a business and kind of going out on your own? I think you said 1998, right? So what was that process like?

Speaker B: It was very scary. Um, I did, uh, not quit my full, ah, time job at a startup until I had a lot of money in the bank. You know, I felt like I could handle six months of no, you know, no real revenue coming in. And then I did the same thing with my first hire. I really needed someone and I waited probably two years too late to hire my first hire because now I'd have To be responsible for someone else's pay. And what if we have a really bad month? And I had to bank a lot of money for that. So I was just very cautious. Um, I also was very lean. Um, I didn't waste a lot of money. I didn't bother to incorporate, uh, the first few years of my business because guess what, I had nothing. If something bad happened, you could just bankrupt me and the company. Uh, it was only years later that I incorporated as llc because as I started to accumulate a little bit of money and assets that I wanted to protect. Um, but you know, it was basically, you know, web hosting $10 a month. Uh, it was just very lean during those early days, you know, and today, you know, use, uh, AWS. And my bill's like over $2,000 a month. And I'm like, things have changed. You know,

Speaker C: it's definitely, definitely interesting when you think about that time period too. It was, you know, email was really just starting. I remember there was this, um, there's this famous clip from. Was it Good Morning America where they're trying to. Oh, is it the Today show? Yeah. And they were like, really trying to understand what Internet was and like what the AT symbol was. Like they had no idea. And like that's about that time frame. And so you have, you know, like super nerds that were message board people that knew about the Internet. And then you had like, I guess the America Online dial up situation was happening, but people were, were using email to just send, you know, send this to five people or you're gonna have bad luck emails. Like that was kind of, uh, that was like the cutting edge of email communication at the time. And I think Gary Vaynerchuk talks about that. Like even in the early 2000s he was collecting email addresses because people like, well, why, why do you want my email address for a wine store? Right? Like, like people would, could see the potential that just hadn't blossomed yet. And it's interesting that even way back then you're like, I think there's, there's something here and you were able to capture it and touch it really, really early.

Speaker B: Yeah, when I started there was no paid search advertising. It was message boards and bulletin boards is basically how you connected with people. And I remember, uh, Overture, go to dot com, I think was the first player out there before Google, uh, did, uh, you know, bidding on search and stuff like that. And um, it started to become a game changer as far as like being able to control, um, who you put yourself, uh, in front of and Capture people like that.

Speaker C: One of the interesting things that we were chatting about and we have this conversation all the time about press releases are, uh, like, for small companies, is it even worth it? And then for some small companies, they behave as if they're Phillips in their press release, right? They'll talk about a feature or a product or, or a new service with very limited context and be like, you know, there it is, now give me business. And it doesn't seem to really work. So what has you seen being really effective as a strategy for press releases for small businesses, medium sized businesses and smart startups.

Speaker B: So the thing I say is be strategic. Um, 97% of press releases that get issued, they'd even pay the $2,000 to go through PR Newswire or business Wire. And it's largely a duopoly in the United States for getting in front of journalists. Businesswire, uh, and PR newswire being the two largest. Um, and uh, um, outside of that 97%, it's only the 3% that are getting the earned media. And that's what we call it. When you get these articles written about you or you get covered by the Today show or TV or radio or something like that. And um, I think that a lot of people believe you just send a release, you get a little syndication where the press release shows up on like Yahoo. Finance and things like that, and they think that's all there is to it. But, uh, there you can get articles written about you. And what I try to get people to do and see the bigger picture is let's focus on the 3% of press releases that are getting picked up because there's patterns there and there's the types of releases that um, are meaningful and more likely to get picked up. The largest, um, hindrance, I think to press releases not getting picked up is there's no story there. Uh, you know, the same problem I had when I started, um, journalists like to write in a story arc. And you know, we all know what a story is because, you know, kids, we read them to kids, we, we heard them as children. A good joke sort of has a story arc. Uh, it's just innate. And yet when we write a press release we just say feature, feature, feature, feature. And you know, don't really give um, the building blocks of a story there. So if you take like a product launch or a service launch press release, which is like one of the most common ones that we receive, um, one of the things that you can do to punch it up and sort of create that story arc is um, you know, take the spotlight off you and the product and put it on a client and someone who beta tested it and say, hey, um, you know, this is a logistics software solution. Um, here's a company that's two years old, um, reported a loss every year. The casualty rate in our industry is 67% for new businesses. And this could have been ah, another such uh, company. But you know, after using our solution for six months, they're now projected to have their first net profit. And then you have a quote by them saying, we always thought if we just won more bids we would become profitable. And what this software showed us is there's a point at which we need to stop the bidding process and move on to uh, something. Because if you win more bids that you're not making money on, you're never going to achieve profitability. A quote like that, but a little sexier and more succinct of course. And all of a sudden that will uh, creates more drama and an arc that a journalist realizes that their audience is going to want to pay attention to. So at the end of the day the journalist is a gatekeeper for their audience. You know, that's their asset. And you know, what are the stories that are either going to entertain or educate them. And they know that, you know, hearing this um, company that was going to be a casualty, what the um, you know, the publicly available uh, failure rate in that industry is, having that there, uh, creates more tension and then uh, having them uh, have a change, an outcome that demonstrates it. And that's what's missing from a lot of press releases, is taking in m, uh into account that journalists want to have a story arc. And sometimes you have to put the pill in the cheese in order for the media to consume it. And I uh, think that that's where a lot of people mess up. Now being a small business is actually an advantage when it comes to getting media attention. Everybody assumes that it's the large companies that get uh, uh, the media pickup. And they do, uh, but journalists also know that they can pay for it. And journalists uh, often measure their successes by uh, articles that have the most views and the most shares. And when you highlight a unknown company in your industry, um, that no one knows about, uh, you get a lot of shares, you get a lot of people's eyeballs on it, um, you get a lot of accolades. And it makes the journalists seem more like a curator saying, oh, I've discovered this cool tool a new startup is doing and I'm sharing it with the community. And so they are actively looking for those types of companies and those types of services because they want m more of that, uh, limelight of being seen as a curator. And you know, for that reason, uh, if you're a mom and pop or you have a side business, none of that prevents you from getting pr. It actually can actually help you that not a lot of people know about you. Um, so I wouldn't discount that. Now, that being said, I Talked about the 97% failure rate that's out there. Um, most people look at the press releases that their competitors do and they sort of copy those. And most of Those are the 97% that don't succeed. So all of a sudden you're issuing a press release about Joan as the new associate HR director and nobody really cares about that. And uh, uh, you know, there are solutions for that. Just reaching out to your local business paper and sending them, ah, a headshot of Joan. And the same thing with the trade publication. You'll probably have a better success rate doing that. Um, but you know, if you're going to spe spend money to go out over a wire, you want to have more strategic content and more engaging content. And uh, you can take the least sexy company out there and the most non newsworthy company out there and create your own news and content. I've done that with a lot of people. Um, the one fire method that has never failed is do an industry survey. Um, you know, ask, uh, meaningful questions that people would want to know the answer to right now. It's, you know, is it AI? Is it like, you know, are there concerns in your industry around AI that you could ask about? Is it, you know, um, the culture change of coming out of the pandemic and people still not wanting to work in the office or, you know, there's a lot of questions and there's some that are very specific to your industry. And uh, you know, you then build a survey of, I like 12 to 16 questions. I use SurveyMonkey, four questions per page. So if they stop midway, you've still got, um, the most meaningful questions answered. And you just take that link and then approach a smaller independent trade association in your industry and they're out there. Every industry has all these hidden trade associations that, uh, we don't know about. Uh, you're going to avoid the big ones, the ones that put on the big conferences because they don't need you. But if you approach one and you know, ideally a thousand members or more, uh, and say, hey, I, I have this survey, I'm looking to get at least 100 responses for it to be statistically relevant. Uh, would you be willing to send this to your members in exchange for that? I will ment you in a press release I'll be issuing nationally over PR Newswire in the coming weeks. About two thirds of the time these trade associations will say yes. So all of a sudden you don't need a Rolodex of people to send the survey to. You can just utilize their service and if it falls short, you can just circle back with them and say, could we do a social media push or another email push? Because I'd hate for you to lose this opportunity because we've only got like 60 responses. And again, they want this to win. They want to get a little bit of PR for themselves as well. And every time we've done that with a client, it's usually six to 14 articles, uh, that result from that. And they're all unique. Individual articles written by the journalist in those industries never has failed, uh, ever. And so, you know, that's the type of things that, where I say being strategic, that you want to deploy your money well and make sure that you're issuing stuff that's really good. Other things that work really well is sometimes, um, pointing out blind spots in your industry. Carpet company, New Jersey. It's just a commodity. Uh, they had been in business for 20 years, but you know, they wanted to get media coverage and they didn't care whether it was in front of their, uh, customers or not because, uh, I pointed out that we could probably do something with the uh, industry trade publications. But you know, consumers don't read those and they love that idea. So, um, we had sent a few releases that did nothing and we were doing a brainstorm of who their biggest enemy was. And rather than Carl's Rug Emporium across the, uh, street, it turned out that they said big box home improvement stores are bad for the carpet industry and they do an inferior service. And this is why. And so we put that in a press release and sent it out. Ten plus trade publications picked it up. And it was a, uh, blind spot that the trade publications hadn't really talked about, but everybody was so interested. We continue to do press releases about that. And they say lightning doesn't strike twice. But at the end of the year, I think we had over 20 articles that they had, uh, received. They also got picked up in their local newspaper in New Jersey and New Jersey Magazine, which was, um, both of those were in front of their consumers. But what they did was that is, they put together a big brag book is what they called it, and gave it to everybody who goes out and gives, uh, quotes. And when they go in people's homes, they just open it and say, hey, we may not come in the cheapest, but we've been picked up in floor trade weekly. We've been picked up here. Local newspaper news. Nobody reads these. They just look at it, they browse. It might be an extra minute or two to the consultation. And they started to close over 17% more of those consultations by taking that, um, authority and credibility that comes from being in print and putting it in front of the consumers. And so, uh, they were smarter about this because I was confused. How does this help you, all of these trade publications? But they were smart. They knew that they wanted to deploy it as an asset for their salespeople.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think you bring up a good point there, where it's like everyone kind of focuses on the tactic and maybe they don't think about all of the benefits that kind of trickle down from what you're doing. Um, like, a lot of it sounds like with this client, it's the third party risk reversal. Right. Where it's like someone else is saying this, an authority is saying that it does all of these things. It empowers a sales team to say, like, well, I'm not the only one saying it. These people are saying it, you know, and so it adds a lot of credibility there. I'm assuming it also helped a lot from an SEO perspective, from an awareness perspective. I mean, it's. There's such a benefit beyond just kind of landing that coverage that can help drive real revenue, measurable revenue for. For the business.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker C: Yeah. A few things, like, a few things you mentioned there were really interesting. I said Lauren and I were sidebarring. I was like, oh, that's really clever. No, I was like, oh, man, I wouldn't have thought about it that way. I mean, I think, um, the thing that some people would grab is like, oh, tell it in a story arc. That's interesting. Right. Versus the engineer saying, well, this is my feature. This is why you should care. And then pushing it out there and then waiting. Um, there's a scene from Arrested Development where one of the characters is throwing an envelope into the ocean, symbolically, but the wind keeps blowing it right back to his feet, and he can't even throw it into the ocean. Right. And I think a lot of people end up doing that with their messaging. They just. They don't make it land, don't get it delivering because they're copying that 97% right, and they're getting the same result that no one else cares about. And y' all have found a way to really use data to optimize what works. How can we make it work? How can we make it interesting? How can we stand out with, without doing something crazy, but actually deliver value? Um, it's got me thinking a lot. And related to that, when we think about small businesses and creating awareness, you know, right off the rip, we're like, fix your messaging, fix your landing pages, get an ad campaign going. And I, when I was reading up on you, one of the things you had mentioned someplace was, you know, some people will look at spending $10,000 on an ad campaign, but you could probably put a PR campaign together that's more cost effective. And you don't need to go to New York and Boston ad agencies that are going to cost you $30,000 a month to make it happen. There are effective ways to do that. So with small businesses, how are you seeing the PR strategy that I think some people are starting to ignore? Compare versus running Google Ads, Running, um, uh, ads on meta or Facebook.

Speaker B: So I find that marketing, uh, people hate PR because it's unreliable and it's, ah, feast or famine kind of thing. You, um, can't just cut it on and have, uh, you know, ROIs that are easily trackable because you don't get to put a tracking URL out there in most of the cases. Um, and in a lot of cases there's no URL at all. Uh, you know, you get picked up in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, they almost never include, uh, a link. The, uh, New York Times says they don't at all, but we've had them link to a resource page once, uh, online. Uh, so I feel like that's like a feather in my cabin. Yeah, and that's another thing. When you do a surve build out a page where you put all the responses and questions and all the data and all the quotes and everything, but the press release is going to focus on basically just one or two big aha moments from the survey. But include the link there because what you'll find is a lot of trade publications will include the link to that entire page if it's a really good resource page and it has a lot of data about these other questions that you asked. Also journalists, uh, will go there and pull out another article that they feel like, oh, this is a really cool result that you got when you asked this question. And uh, we've actually had sometimes uh, we go back and do a press release on that. We noticed that that intrigued uh, a uh, journalist, uh, and we didn't focus on that as uh, in the initial press release because you try to pick what do we believe is going to be the biggest aha moment out of that survey. Um, but these are the types of things that uh, you get out there and it's meaningful and the media responds with and pays attention to. Um, but you know, there's other ways to do it. Um, one of the things that people do is whenever there's uh, something that's trending, uh, they sort of run along with it. I think that uh, people know it as newsjacking where, oh, this is big. And newsjacking maybe worked for 10 minutes 15, uh, years ago. Um, but today it's like everybody competing for the same story. It's the same thing that caused help a reporter out sort of to fail because you have 1500 people responding to one article opportunity, and it's just too competitive. But if you come into uh, a topic that's a hot button topic and you are contrarian to everybody else in the industry and you can thoughtfully and rationally, uh, talk about that contrarian viewpoint and you don't alienate your customer base, that's important because I've had one customer, uh, one client of mine, really good at this to the point he's like, but I'm losing so many customers that hate me. I'm like, you got to pick your battles here. But uh, so if you find like, everybody's talking about how great electric cars are and you're coming in and saying, hey, I, I, I believe that it probably is the future, but I also believe we're probably 10 years away from it because today we're mining these minerals out of the earth in a way that's not environmentally friendly. There's labor concerns. What are we going to do with these, uh, batteries at the end of their life? Plus, have you seen, uh, a car that catches on fire with one of these batteries? You know, sometimes it takes four or five fire trucks to show up and tens of thousands of gallons to put it out. I think we should definitely embrace electric cars, but I don't think that we should mandate it yet because I think that some of this is going to be solved over the next five to 10 years and we should slow down a little bit. It's like, well that's reasonable. Now why is that better? Because if uh, they're looking for quotes and experts to agree with everybody. There's thousands of people that are willing to do that. But if you're the one contrarian raising your hand and giving the negative, you have the likelihood of being put in every article on that subject. Because, believe it or not, journalists like to be fair and balanced and have both sides perhaps out of politics covered. And so for that reason, you can be plugged in as a contrarian in dozens or maybe even hundreds of these articles by having sound bites and quotes ready for them and being accessible to the media to talk about that subject.

Speaker C: I think that's. Yeah, that's a really good point. And the electrical car one is, is really, it's topical today because, uh, Ferrari released theirs recently and, um, that's been interesting. But to your point, when you're looking on LinkedIn or you're looking at people's opinions, you've got the people who have, you know, good design sense that dislike it. And then you have someone who will be like, oh, maybe I can grab that contrarian approach. And some, sometimes they can land effectively, like, okay, that's meaningful. That's interesting. And other people are like, oh, no, this person's deliberately just trying to take the opposite approach to try and either rage bait or, um, get grabbed by, ah, a channel that can be like, oh, well, this is another hot take and something interesting, but to the point. But if you do it well, you can be like, m. All right, that's eye open. I didn't consider that. Despite the fact that that vehicle is, um, not particularly attractive to have a prancing horse on the hood. You can take elements of it and make a good story to grab the counterpiece of. Actually, it's not trash. And this is why. And I think that's. That's interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah, you said, you actually said something that was really interesting to me that I hadn't thought of before and that smaller companies may have a competitive advantage when it comes to getting coverage. I, I don't know if a lot of, like, companies think that they do. Um, but also there's some delusion with smaller companies where they're like, I want to get on the front page or like, you know, main headline on like, New York Times, like all of these tier, tier one pubs. Um, but I guess my question is, like, how do you have conversations with clients to say, like, that sounds really exciting, but like, these trade publications may actually result in, like, more meaningful outcomes for your business. Like, how do you navigate maybe like, their expectations of what they're going to get with PR Are versus reality and what's actually going to serve them better.

Speaker B: So I just level with them that you really can't pick and choose. Uh, you know, we all have these dream publications but you just, you know, it rarely happens, you know, that kind of hyper targeting, uh, outside of someone who is a PR firm or a publicist in that area that has a relationship with that person. And the first thing I'll say is, you know, PR firms do do a really good job in industries that they know well and have connections with. But you know, for a lot of small businesses it's just outside their price range. And also a lot of small businesses tend to gravitate to PR firms that are local and they're generally generalist and they don't have those relationships with those key publications. So if you're like in uh, you know, a, ah, technology world, you want to find a PR firm who's in that world and their clients are only in that world because it's hard to have relationships with hundreds of people. And so for that reason you, you know, you want to go to someone that has a track record in your industry. Um, but I do think that this is something where you can get a lot of mileage out of it yourself if you play intelligently and you're creative and you're really trying to come up with ideas that are um, sort of outside the box or among the 3% that are getting picked up. And you know, uh, there's types of things that you'll notice are patterns. Um, you know, when ebay, uh, launched, I remember every article for the first year or so talked about how uh, the person who created it did it because I think their partner or girlfriend was uh, trying to sell a PEZ collection. And as an engineer they're like, oh, I'll solve this by creating a platform form to sell it with. And, and it did come out later that that was manufactured by a PR person. So I don't recommend that you manufacture your story, but Astroturfing is having your story and your why is really, really important and is ah, a unique advantage. There's a reason that everybody that appears on Shark Tank doesn't open with here's my numbers as the first thing they say. They say, hey, uh, I lost my, my job and I uh, decided I wanted to give this business ah, a shot with my best friend. Or my dad died and we used to build this stupid little thing and sell to flea market and I just wondered, gosh, could this be a viable product? And it gets us to Immediately care. It gives us that human interest element. And that is a secret sauce that really attracts the media. And a journalist knows if it tugs a little or is something that people can identify with that. Again, they're going to want to share that story, um, with their audience. Um, I had a customer who had matured, but, you know, they were sharing a story of when they first launched that, uh, they had to basically, uh, get everybody at Thanksgiving to go to the garage and do fulfillment because they had to get packages out, uh, uh, once the, uh, uh, shipping opened back up because they were really concerned that they weren't going to get these products in time to people who then had to turn them around and use them for fulfillment on their end for the holidays. And I said, we should incorporate that into a press release. And they were like, really hesitant. Um, but it turned out that was the opening story that INC Magazine used, uh, to talk about them and their journey as a, um, growth company. And, um, they were like, shocked. Why were people interested in that? I said, well, you know, entrepreneurs can identify with this. You know, dealing with an obstacle and leaning on your family. You know, family is one of those things that, you know, as an entrepreneur we do. We lean on them. And it shows, um, something that I think that is, uh, representative of what a lot of entrepreneurs go through. And I think that's what attracted them to it. And so, you know, for those reasons, you know, what is your. Why. What is the story behind that? Is there something you could flesh out a little bit more? I had someone who told me, uh, we were just talking and she said, you know, my mom told me she was so proud of me, um, for building my business and that she never amounted to anything. And I was like, oh, what a gut punch. And I was just like, uh, maybe there's a way to sort of talk about that and talk about how, um. You know, there's a lot of ways to be a meaningful person. And you were able to navigate that while also building a business. But you also want to, um, you know, elevate your mother and talk about how great she was and how nurturing she was for you. And yet she even feels like she never fulfilled anything because she only was a mother, she was only a parent, she was only a wife. And, um, you know, that did really well. It got picked up in a lot of women, uh, centered, um, uh, publications, as well as a few, uh, business magazines that wanted to sort of COVID the. The female journey. And it was something that, um, you know, she was 20 some years into her business. And she had never mind that or thought of that as a possible, possible um, sort of lead into her story and uh, her experiences.

Speaker C: There's a lot of interesting things here. Go ahead.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say I'm curious because these are really interesting takes for like PR that I think a lot of companies wouldn't think to, to go that way. Do you think because of like the way that your business is modeled, like these companies feel empowered to like put out stories like these? I think a lot of companies try to stuff their press releases with anything and everything and like, and, or only focus on like one big product launch or something. And so I think taking this approach, like, do you see that your model kind of helps them like take these, I don't want to say chances, but like maybe these non traditional angles.

Speaker B: I think some of my clients are willing to do that. There's still probably 80% of my clients who are just sitting the same types of releases that their competitors are doing. And um, you know, I think it does take ah, a bit of A, education and B, a little comfort being able to be out there. Some of sometimes it's being vulnerable and some business owners and people aren't, you know, interested in that or don't feel comfortable with that. But um, it is something that uh, is uniquely you and it is something that I think that it taps into what a lot of audiences want to experience. And uh, m. That's just something to keep in mind. And you know, uh, it's a tool whether you choose to use it or not. It is one that can be very effective.

Speaker C: And I think it's hard to replicate. Right. And I think in an age of AI where creating content is easier and faster and more prolific than ever, an AI tool is not going to replicate the human element of your story, at least not yet. And so being able to do that will really carve through the beautiful M M dash laden prose of an AI tool that will be grammatically correct, feature rich and deliver that messaging. But we'll probably miss those nuanced stories that probably, as you know, humans today we crave, like the Shark Tank story. Like we connect. We want that person to win. Right? We want that person to win. And I don't, I think, how do you navigate PR in this, you know, evolving AI content creation era?

Speaker B: So I actually feel um, like AI can help small businesses to write a press release. Um, I feel like it can effectively put together a good press release. It's been trained on the 97% of press releases that fail. So never let AI decide what to write on. I feel like if you go to AI and say, hey, here's my company. And most of the time it's familiar with your company if you've been using it for a while. And uh, here's what I want to focus a press release on and then say, now don't write a press release for me, but give me the structure of that press Release. I find 80% of the time it still tries to write a press release. I just ignore it and say, okay, give me the structure of that press release. And then I take that structure and then I feed it back to it. It's like, okay, now give me 10 headlines for that press release. Give me three opening paragraphs and I pick and choose through it. And I say, okay, maybe I like the second paragraph, but I really want to incorporate this element in there. So I get it to do that. Now let's write the second, um, um, paragraph in the story. It takes six minutes as opposed to like 60 seconds or 30 seconds with AI but if you take it piecemeal like that, you'll end up with a better product. Now that being said, I always go back and suggest that you spend a little time with the headline and the quote. Uh, that quote's probably the most important part of the press release. Um, most of my clients are issuing mid level newsworthiness press releases. So there's a lot competing. And what makes a journalist decide to pick you up? There's different factors, one of which is you get to include two images. So make sure you include two photos. Logo's not important. They can pull it from your website if they want. But you know, what are two images that could fit this? The press release story that you're doing. You do not need the stock photo quality photos, uh, that were popular 10 years ago, candid photos, things you take with your phone today, uh, are going to engage with people online more. And that's where most of these articles will go and where the photos will go. So you know, a shot with your product on a messy desk is going to be just fine, uh, for these type of things. And the journalists are going to feel like, wow, this is another asset that we have that will create more engagement if I decide to go with this article. Now, the quote, quote, um, is they know that if they have two press releases of similar newsworthiness and one has a quote like the 97 of quotes that are out there look like they've been written by committee. They don't say anything that's provocative. They're not, you know, it's just a safe quote. And the other one says something strong active verbs, uh, it's very succinct and has a lot of conviction uh, to it. It can be contrarian but doesn't have to be. But if they were to paraphrase what you said in that quote in their own words, uh, the person who had read the previous release would say, oh, it was written so much better there. I sort of miss that. What was the way they said it? And so that's the real test of a great quote. And so journalist knows if they take two same quality uh, press releases they're considering for article, they know that the one with the amazing quote is going to be like a smack, it's going to be a punch and it's going to perform so much better as an article. So, so they will always gravitate towards that release if they're considering two of equal newsworthiness. And so those are the two areas where I feel like spend a little bit more time and maybe you have to guide the AI back and forth with a lot of quote options or maybe you get in there and you put the conviction in and you put the active verbs in and you make it just really have a very strong um, uh, sentence. And it uh, doesn't need to be multiple sentences. One strong sentence is all it. All it needs to be a great quote.

Speaker C: I think that's really good advice. I think a lot of people will, you know, give me a 1200 word blog post or a PR post and like they'll smash enter, go wash their hands, come back, copy paste and then, then send it. But we're using it as a collaboration partner versus the complete author is probably, it's the right move, right? And you get a better result from it and it'll help you get starting points and ideas and concepts you wouldn't have thought of to allow you to inject your story into it, which is um, going to give you more reach. Yeah, that's interesting. And it's, it's interesting how fast the game is changed. Right? But to your point, small businesses can still have an advantage even when it's not super obvious. And like until this conversation, I'm an engineer by background and so by this conversation when we think about pr, I'm like, ah, uh, I need a New York agency that's going to cost me $30,000 a month that can go sit at Forbes once a week. Uh, I don't know if we can do that. Right. But yeah, go ahead.

Speaker A: No, I have a question because, um, you've been doing this for almost 30 years now. Coming up on it. What? And I can tell you're so, like, passionate about it still. And still, like, really, like a practitioner. You like doing the work. Like, what keeps you going? What keeps you doing this almost 30 years later?

Speaker B: I think it's the changes and the pivots. It's like I saw email as, like, wow, that's the way to, to, to, to grow this business and start it. And, you know, and then I saw email being very ineffective, of open rates falling, and, uh, I pivoted to work with the newswire. And, you know, what happened over the past 20 some years is media databases have become commonplace where you license them, and then people just start spamming journalists. And I see how it happens. It's like you're a golf club company and you just spent $20,000 or $15,000 for a license for one year for this database. You, you've sent a press release to the 2400, uh, um, journalists in the golf industry, and now you're saying, well, what else could we do? And you're like, you know who likes to play golf? Bankers and business people. So let's send this to financial analysts, um, you know, people who report on banking news. None of those people will ever write an article on golf clubs, but that's what's happening across every industry. And for that reason, and oft targeted press releases are just inundating the inboxes of all national media. Um, I think that the problem is probably not as pronounced with local media, um, but I'm sure they're still dealing with it. But for a lot of national media, it's PR firms that do email pitching are having to pick up the phone and call their contact and say, hey, I emailed you a pitch. And they're like, oh, you did? Um, let me try and find it. And so, um, it really is a very difficult, uh, place. But I think just being, uh, open to pivots and changes, you know, being an entrepreneur and being smaller rather than larger makes it easier to do those types of things. And I find that the one thing that hasn't changed about this is just being creative and seeing what's working. And my mind is always about, you know, figuring out what, what are the things that are working. Um, the, the survey thing. You know, I would love to take credit for it, but it was a client of ours who, at the time, when they launched, I considered them a link farm. They just did a lot of top 10 list of different products and services, mostly software. So it'd be like the top, you know, uh, CRM for architects, the top, you know, graphics CAD software for another industry. And they started doing these, uh, surveys annually for each of these little industries. And every time they did it, they got eight to 14 articles, lots of links to them. And, you know, uh, after doing that several years, um, they had the media contact them if there's a consolidation in a particular industry. They're like, what do you feel about this? And, you know, they're. They're seen as experts and because, uh, they, they were the thought leaders who put these surveys out year after year. And, uh, that's, you know, one of the cool things that I've got to witness. But I incorporate it and say, could this work for others? And then test it and try it it and be delighted when it does work.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's clever. And it's, uh, similar to that we've, um. Years and years ago, over lunch one day, Lauren and I were grabbing lunch and I got an email from Mack Weldon. And it was plain text, right? There was not an image in it. It wasn't like pseudo designed. It was literally like two lines of text. Hey, we've got a new product release. It's this. And it had a link and it was blue and it said, here, here. It's like, I'm clicking that. So I got, you know, I clicked through it and it worked. And so we were just brainstorming about it. Like, I wonder if that would work for, uh, a company we were working at. Then she's like, ah, we'll try it. And it worked. And then so. Because it was different, right? And so it's so funny to think like, little things like that. If you're, if your lenses are open, you can be like, oh, what. What might work in my space that's in a different space. Like, how can I grab something someone else is doing in the seat? Like, just test it. Because, like, the consequences are pretty low. And I think that's another thing that people struggle with. They think the consequences are a lot higher than they are. Right? But like, well, I don't want to do that. And they lead at my audience. And it's like, well, unless you're doing something really off, off the wall, you probably won't. And it's worth testing. That's super clever. That's a. It's got a. Got, uh, my ideas going. But related to that, what do you. What are you looking at right now? Like, that's really close. And in the future, like, what is moving, what direction are things moving in that you're trying to chase or get in front of of?

Speaker B: I keep waiting to see what's going to happen with video. I, I do follow people, uh, influencers and stuff that are using press releases. I follow A guy on TikTok called the Snack and, and he does a weekly roundup of new, uh, snacks hitting grocery store shelves and he pulls the images from press releases and stuff like that. But at a certain point I feel like, is the press release going to no longer be written and perhaps be like some kind of video or something like that? I know there's been the ability to include B roll and link to things like that and assets like that, but I do feel like maybe not now, but maybe in five to 10 years we might see more of a movement towards video. And I think that's going to be really intriguing because I think that a lot of people are consuming by video now as opposed to the, uh, written word. But it varies for industries and, and different types of, um, audiences. I think that, uh, some stuff like fashion is very Instagram ready and there's a lot of video around that. But I think that some of the other trade, uh, publications, like maybe waste management and stuff like that might stick to print for a bit longer.

Speaker A: Less visual.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: But to your point where you started, like, maybe that is actually an advantage. Right. Um, because it's like, it's unexpected and it's frame breaking. But yeah, I wouldn't want to see the inner workings of a lot of waste management things. I don't think.

Speaker A: Dirty Jobs.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's right.

Speaker A: You know what I mean? Yeah.

Speaker C: There's a whole television show, things we

Speaker A: didn't ever expect to see and didn't want to see, but we all tuned in, so I think there might be something there. Um, well, we like to, to close out these podcasts with a few fun questions. So first question is, I'm curious, like, what podcasts are you listening to? What books are you reading? Um, what music are you listening to? Like, what do you do maybe when you're not brainstorming kind of innovative ways to get people noticed.

Speaker B: So, uh, the business podcast that I keep coming back to is my first million. Um, I love the way certain people, uh, get on there and the way they think. I, I get so much out of that and sort of putting people in a different mindset of what would you do if you had $10,000? You had to create an empire from scratch and Sometimes people will answer with stuff that's in their industry, and sometimes they just go in a different direction. I love that. Um, and, uh, the. A book that I go to again and again and I sort of of live by is the 8020 sales and marketing. I, um, think it's by Perry Marshall. And it, it basically, you got to remember I was a poet, so I don't have a business degree. And so, uh, I, I really liked it because it, it gave me permission to see the 8020s in my business. Um, you know, I've, I've let customers go in the past and, uh, they've been shocked. And I'm like, like, you've created more drama and time suck with my employees than probably the 50 previous customers combined. And so, because they were like, why would you let me go? I'm a good customer. And I'm like, well, you've done four releases over two years. Uh, and so I put it in perspective. I'm like, you know, um, you just create lots of problems for my staff. You're. You're not pleasant to deal with. And so I just think we should just go in separate directions. No hard feelings. And so, um, you know, getting rid of the 80% of your problems is often getting rid of like the 20% or 5% of your customer base. And, um, you know, looking at where you're getting leads and then taking the ones that are most effective and spending more energy and time on those and giving you permission to like, maybe take the social media away that you've never been able to crack, but you feel you have to do it because everyone's saying you have to do it, um, and things like that. So I, I found that, uh, really good and it allows me to measure a lot of things and figure out the, uh, 8020 of. Of different things like that. And I, I've done everything from split testing, uh, how I onboard people, because someone once said, uh, I used to send a shock and awe package. And I learned that in a marketing group. And it was, uh, you know, so Dan Kennedy recommended you send a. This crazy welcome package that just overwhelms them. And I was like, I'm gonna put Baltimore in a box and send it to him. So there was like crab season flavored chips and uh, an Edgar Allan Poe action figure and all kinds of fun stuff. And a lot of people did love it. I mean, you know, a lot of people shared it. It was great for social media and stuff. But one person came and said, I thought it was kind of unprofessional And I was like, like, you know, I'm not a business guy, so I'm like, well, let's split test it. So we took six months of new customers and half got the shock and awe package. The other half just got a book and a welcome letter, which is what she had recommended. She said in there was a book and welcome letter, that's what I would want. I didn't really care about the rest. And what we found is the lifetime value of these two people. These two populations diverted. You could see it at year one. At year two, it was like, like the people who received just a book and a letter was triple lifetime value of the people who received the box. So what I learned was people who do press releases and PR don't want, uh, someone that comes across as silly and a little too fun and irreverent. And so I backed away. I saved $60 for each new customer not having to send that shock and awe package. But, um, you know, I think because I didn't come from a business background, I like to, I like to measure stuff and I like to approach it in a way that there's not a lot of ego there because, uh, I've done some things in the past where I found I'm the problem. I'm a big micromanager. And uh, I, I stepped away from my day to day interactions with the staff in April of 2015 because I couldn't help myself. Every time someone got off the phone, I would be behind them saying, hey, next time they ask that question, I would prefer if you answer it this way. And I realized I was making their lives miserable and creating, you know, a lot of turnover. And even more importantly, I was spending my time on something that wasn't really growing the business. And so getting it back into home and focusing on the bigger picture and education and marketing was really a game changer for me.

Speaker C: And that rolls back into the 8020 rule again. There was something that I read that kind of changed the way I thought about things related to Credo principle. And it was like, if somebody can do a job 80% as well as you let them do it and let them, oh, uh, just own it. Right? And to your point, like they probably were 80% of the way there on that call and you're like, oh, I would do it this way. And what you, you walk away from that interaction is like, oh, I help them out and they got a good nugget of information and they're going to grow. They walked away from that interaction Feeling like smacked down. And when they see you in the hallway they get the pinge of anxiety grabbing them now.

Speaker B: Right. Which yeah, they felt like they could never do anything right. And I, I just felt I was sculpting them and making them better, but they were just feeling like uh, uh, you know, like micromanaged to death. You have to trust that you hire the right people. They're never going to say anything. The exact words that you would. As long as they're not saying things incorrectly. And you know, the, the employee, uh, the customers are having a good experience with the employees ways. You gotta have trust them and move on. But I found it easiest for me to remove myself from the situation.

Speaker C: That's an effective way too. So related to that, I guess the last question we generally wrap on is if you could go back and have dinner with yourself at 1825, pick a time period, a meaningful time period, what advice do you give that version of you? How does that conversation go? What do you say?

Speaker B: Say um, I think for me it would be to tell uh, me to embrace um, play more and creativity. I've always felt like play like, like writing poetry is something I can do as a reward for doing my day job well and getting to a point in the business where I can fit some time in. But what I found is by incorporating play and creativity on a regular basis, I can brainstorm more with my clients. I can think of more out of the box things. And so I think that the thing I would do is I basically cut myself off from play for like 10 plus years and only later realize that it's one of my secret powers. And being able to use play and keep my creative juices flowing allows me to latch on to what other people are doing and notice um, trends and other little things to potentially exploit and use for pr.

Speaker C: That's interesting.

Speaker A: That's one of my favorite responses that yeah, I think we've gotten for this question. We ask every single guest this question and we haven't gotten a repeat. I think very rare. Yeah, I can't think of one where we've got a repeat.

Speaker C: But I love couple that were similar theme but not the same.

Speaker A: Yeah, but I love this one because I think a lot of people don't think they can have fun at their job or embrace play in their job. And so you said that you were devoid of that in your, in your job for about 10 years until you realized it was a superpower. What was there like a moment that you remember where you were like, oh yeah, this is Actually something I need to. This is my, this is my like, unique advantage.

Speaker B: I think when I started to get outside of the day to day operations, I had a lot more free time. And one of the things I did was I started writing poetry again. And then I said to myself, gosh, you have a lot of education. You can share with people on podcasts, you can, you know, build education for your customers. And so, um, I really started focusing on that and I found that it was like using that creative stuff that I have. And that's the thing that, uh, it makes me unique and it's something that I can give to the business that, that's a bit more unique. Uh, whereas, you know, trying to polish what customers, what employees are saying to customers, is it really important or unique in the grand scheme of things? It doesn't move the needle.

Speaker C: It's. Yeah, it's so fascinating. And this resonates with me a lot because like Lauren and I, behind the scenes have this conversation, related conversation a lot. Like, we don't celebrate wins very much. And so we don't take time to even feel happiness to where it's like we execute, execute, execute. And it's like, okay, okay, there's, there's oxygen in the room again. It's not like a, uh, celebration. It's like we can breathe now and we need to do a better job of that. And it's funny, we have a mutual mentor who would try to inject play into almost everything, even down to his lunch order. When he would email the whole department's lunch order in, he would do it in like pentameter or he would write it in haikus, like just little things like that. Little things like that that would make mundane pain more, more important. Back in the day, I would kind of roll my eyes to it, like, uh, all right, like we got, we have serious stuff we're dealing with here. But like now looking back at it, like, I think, you know, he has the, he has the right approach. And it's interesting that you kind of arrived at that same conclusion that that's more of a superpower that. And you were denying yourself that because you were trying to do very serious stuff. And you know, it didn't feel like it was worth the reward. But yeah, it's um, As I get older, that becomes more and more important to me. And I'm trying to embrace that more too. We've never had the same answer twice. And that's one of the probably the more meaningful answers we've had recently, for sure. Well, on that note, want to be respectful of your time and we really appreciate you joining us today. Uh, really opened my eyes to a lot of things, like changed my perspective towards PR in general when I was like, I don't know, is it effective? But you really changed my thought process. And we'll probably talk offline because there's two people I probably want you to talk to after this. I think it'd be interesting.

Speaker A: Where can people find you?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, um, our website's ereleases.com all of our social media is on the lower right. And uh, feel free to hit the chat button or call or email anybody. You'll only talk with editors. We don't have any salespeople or anything like that. Um, I do have a free masterclass where I talk about the strategic 3% type of press releases. Um, it's a hour long video with some accompanying materials. Uh, I really did try to condense it as, as much as I could and it's@ereleases.com Plan P L-A N and again, it's completely free. But it's a great place to start if you're considering pr because I think you'll walk away with a brainstorm of probably half a dozen to a dozen ideas that you can, could, uh, immediately use to build meaningful press releases and a PR campaign.

Speaker C: And your LinkedIn cracked me up because it's slash publicity. And I was like, oh, you were on it like as soon as they released the vanity. The vanity URLs.

Speaker B: I'm also a big domain name guy. Uh, I got E releases. I was thinking email and email press releases and stuff like that. And I have gotten like press releases.com over the years and things like that. But, uh, I love, I love words, I love names.

Speaker A: Well, you come by it honestly with your poetry for sure.

Speaker C: Mickey, thanks so much for joining. Really appreciate it. This has been a lot of fun and we can't wait to talk to you soon.

Speaker B: Sounds good.