#68 How to Land Press With Zero Journalist Connections | Startup PR | Kathy Wang

Speaker A: Long story short, we basically decided to work together that day. We ended up getting we built the MVP in one hour. We won second place at the hackathon and then somebody paid us money on the spot that day to get access to what we had built and then

Speaker B: plot spoiler Hi, I'm your host Vishesh, a five time founder and a founding CTO for over a decade shipping product got easy. Scaling the roadmap tech strategy and engineering organization behind it didn't. That's where I help. More info Vishesh space My guest today gets founders into Forbes, TechCrunch and Axios without knowing a single journalist. Cathy Wang is the co founder of Press Club. An ex Dropbox designer who built a 10,000 person audience before she ever had a product, then turned cold outreach into a press engine that beats traditional PR agencies. In this episode she breaks down how her AI agent finds the 200 reporters most likely to say yes. Why an AI written pitch beats one a founder edits by hand and the build in public advice. Almost everyone gets backwards. If you want press but have zero media connections, this one's your playbook.

Speaker C: Hey. Hi Kathy. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.

Speaker A: Yeah, of course. Thanks so much for having me. I was looking through everything that you posted on LinkedIn so I'm super excited.

Speaker C: Something here. Um, so yeah, um, give us your elevator pitch to begin with. What does Press Club do and um, how did you get started?

Speaker A: Yeah, of course. So I'm Kathy. I run a company called Press Club. We help founders land press like on Forbes, TechCrunch, Axios, all of which we have gotten clients full features on. I always frame it like this. We function like a traditional PR agency in the sense that we land you press the that is the result. But we're different in the sense that we actually don't rely on warm connections at all. Actually we don't know a single journalist, so everything we do is purely through cold outreach through AI.

Speaker C: Oh wow, that's an interesting thread. We will definitely dive into it. Ah. How did your friends and family react? And what was the moment you decided you have to take the seat?

Speaker A: Yeah, so for context, I quit my job around a year ago, around this time. So this is a little bit of a full circle moment. I actually am a designer by training, so I worked at Dropbox IBM snorkel AI most recently and I actually went to a conference Deno Figma Config the design conference for that they host annually. So they actually hosted it in San Francisco last year around this time. I uh, met this guy, this speaker named Nolan Perkins and he's a designer by training. He's a content creator. So he builds in public post on LinkedIn, on TikTok, and one of his apps really took off. It's called Task Tree. So it's like a to do list, task management for people with adhd. And so that really took off. He became a founder of that. And I remember thinking, you know, sitting in the audience thinking, holy crap, this guy is a designer, a content creator, a founder, and that's everything I want to do. And obviously I know these paths to exist individually, but I had never seen somebody take all three and be very successful with it. So, uh, I kid you not, I was like, oh my gosh, this guy is doing everything I want to do. So I kid you not. A week later I quit my job.

Speaker C: So you didn't even have the idea of press Club and you just quit, Correct?

Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't even have the idea. I knew that I wanted to start a company at some point, but I didn't have the idea for press club. I didn't have a co founder founders just going solo. So yeah, I just quit with nothing lined up. Yeah, yeah, truly quit with nothing lined up.

Speaker C: How did you end up at Busaigia?

Speaker A: Um, yeah, so I, uh, basically, so I did content creation actually for a little bit after I quit because I was like, I don't want to rush into building a company, I want to take my time. I actually, for context, I had experienced a co founder breakup previously. And so I was like, I don't want to rush into this, I want to do this right. And so anyways, I put all my efforts into content creation. Posted on LinkedIn every day for six months straight. Posted on TikTok three times a day, every day for a hundred days straight. And so that was basically my whole time. And then I also, along with putting myself out there digitally, I also put myself out there physically. So taking advantage of the fact that I live in San Francisco, going to events, hackathons. And it was at, uh, this one hackathon at uh, AGI House in Hillsborough. I actually. So at the beginning of every hackathon you stand, go up and you pitch your idea, right? That's how you form teams. And so actually I remember this guy, he was pitching, he was like, he mentioned that he's a repeat founder and m his first company. He mentioned that he really wanted to get press for product launch, but he didn't want to pay. Traditionally if you're a founder and you Want to get press, you pay, you know, 10k a month for a PR agency. And he is like, I didn't want to do that. So he basically was like, fuck it, I'm just going to do it myself. Right. So he actually led a team of seven people. He had half of them drop everything and just send out cold emails to journalists. So at the end of the day, they ended up sending out 200 cold emails over the course of a week. And this was pre ChatGPT, pre GPT3, so you can imagine how manual it was. Um, but yeah, they sent out 200 cold emails. But it worked. He landed Forbes, Wall Street Journal and six other outlets. And so I remember sitting there thinking, oh gosh, I totally respect the hustle, the grit that it takes to crank out 200 cold emails to get yourself featured on press. So yeah, long story short, we basically decided to work together that day. We ended up getting, we built the MVP in one hour. We won second place at the hackathon. And then somebody paid us money on the spot that day to get access to what we had built. And then plot spoiler. He also became my co founder that everything basically happened that day. It was around September of last year.

Speaker C: You said you posted every day for 100 days and this was on LinkedIn as well?

Speaker A: Yes, correct. On LinkedIn every weekday at least.

Speaker C: Wow. And um, so one of the concerns that many have is if you post every day, you will turn off people because they'll see a lot of noise from you. Uh, mhm. How did you get over that? And is that a real, uh, thing even?

Speaker A: Yeah, honestly, I think, I think my true answer to that is I was doing it for myself at first and then it became very intentional. So I have two answers for it. If you're just starting out, I highly encourage you to keep a consistent schedule because I think most people are so scared of people judging them, so scared of, oh, who's gonna want to listen to or who's going to want me to be spamming their LinkedIn, LinkedIn, uh, algorithm or LinkedIn newsfeed. Right. But it's really important to establish that consistency as then you'll get into the swing of things, right? Then you'll have stuff that you can come up with every single day. And so I think posting every day, that's, that's really, really important when you're starting out. And then secondarily I started doing it for myself initially so I could hit that rhythm of being consistent. So I wasn't, I was no longer scared to post on LinkedIn, that's the biggest thing, getting over that fear. That's why I think it's important. And then I actually stopped posting for a little bit because press club got busy. But then I recently, a couple months back, started posting again every single day. And this time it was much more intentional. I actually don't think I will ever run out of ideas this time around. I think it's, it's partially because I'm uh, very intentional. So I do top of funnel and also bottom of funnel content. Top of funnel content is content that appeals to the wider audience, right. Not just your icp and it brings in new followers for you. And so I've noticed I actually one day just decided I'm going to do a weekly event recap because there's so many events in San Francisco. I go to a bunch of them, I get invited and so I'm just going to recap. And that got over 200 reactions. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is really popping off. So I decided to do that every single week. Right. So that's like one like core uh, recurring series for me. Um, and that brings, also brings in a lot of followers. Like out of all posts I think that is one of the post types that brings in the most followers. And then secondarily bottom of funnel content. So this is like proof, case studies, traction. Right. And so I posted um, about how we landed one of our customers. Which one was it about how we landed one of our customers on Forbes. Right. And this was a uh, really, really exciting and big deal for us. And this was actually in an industry in fintech that we hadn't worked in before. And it kind of proved our model that we are industry agnostic. So I added some core insights into it. But anyways, I posted it and it also got a lot of reactions. Right. So the different types of posts I have it recurring and it's, it's very strategic. It's very intentional. One is to get people into as my followers and the other is to get customers. And so I think honestly if you're intentional and strategic about it, like there's, there's no cost to posting every single day. I even posted on the weekend. So to make up for the fact that I didn't post two times last week. And so yeah, I think one, consistency is really important when, especially when you, when you're starting to post, um, to get over that fear. And then two, if you're intentional and strategic about it, like there's no issue with posting every Single day. If it's helping your business, if it's helping your. Top of funnel.

Speaker C: Yeah. Posting consistently, definitely. Uh, for me it's been the, the cadence has been three times a week. Uh. Mhm. Yeah. Ah, I also try and do, um, for the podcast, I try and do. YouTube is my first m. Test platform where I see what sticks and then from that data and some gutsy, I pick one of them and then post it.

Speaker A: Interesting. And so you kind of measure the metrics on YouTube.

Speaker C: Yeah. Just to get a feel of what's sticking and what will resonate with pros. Mhm.

Speaker A: Yeah, very cool.

Speaker C: And so what's the one. So you've been building public. Mhm. What's the one lesson most advice online gets exactly backwards? Or what did you think you read? Uh, and you did completely 180 of what was.

Speaker A: Yeah, I would say one of the biggest things, the classic, like what people think of build in public, I don't think you should actually do. And so what I mean by that is literally like stream of consciousness. Like, oh my gosh, this is not working or my production code is breaking. And I don't think you should actually post stuff like that on LinkedIn especially. And the reason is because I feel people, uh, uh, like go to LinkedIn for three reasons. They want to be inspired, educated, or entertained. Right. And when they just read that I did something bad or things aren't going the way that I thought they would, kind of, it's almost like, you know that quote, complaining without a solution is called whining. It's kind of like that a little bit. It's like, okay, and, and what? Right. Like people want to be inspired, they want to be educated. Unless you can make it funny. So I think honestly, like, I'll just give you a very specific example. There was a point at, uh, in time for the company when we were really struggling with getting journalists to respond to like now, like now we, we consistently. The agent consistently average that 10% response rates. So we're great. Right? But there was a time when we were like, man, is this even working? Like, I don't know what's going on. Do we need to fix our messaging? Do we, uh, fix which journalists we target? And I could have posted about that, but it's. I knew that it wouldn't do well because it doesn't bring value to anybody. Right. I'm basically asking for people and maybe, maybe somebody might have responded. That would have kind of changed the course of how we were approaching. Um, but it wouldn't have Made for a good LinkedIn post in terms of engagement. Compare that to when then we. The other day, right. We got a journalist to respond. We had our first meeting with a client, um, on, I think it was like, July 9th. And then we literally got a tier one reporter to respond a week later. Right. And so that was just, like the fastest campaign we've ever done. Uh, another example, as a post, we, I think got, uh, five or six, like, five or six journalists to respond. Yes. That they wanted to publish on this particular client. So those types of posts, like, I kind of talk about, okay, this is what happened, and here's how we did it. And I think people prefer those types as opposed to, uh, like, I don't know what I'm doing. Can, can somebody help? Right. So I think it's important distinguish between the types of, like, what people think are classic building public posts and what actually, um, and the types of posts where people are actually being educated or inspired, where you can then look back on things that didn't work out as well and kind of reflect on why they didn't work as well and what you did to make it better. I think people prefer those types of posts, especially on LinkedIn.

Speaker C: Makes sense. Um, I think I've heard Harry Stubbings say this post, something that is educating or entertaining, but inspired is a really good addition. Um, because I, I don't think, um, that works as well on LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah, good tip. You also host event. What kind of event are you hosting?

Speaker A: Yeah, I am hosting. So we, I would say, host three types of events. One is, and this is our main type of event is workshops. So how to get press without a PR agency. And I dive into all of our tips and tricks. I give all our secrets out because my personal philosophy is that, uh, there are only two outcomes. One, somebody walks in, they're highly competent, they take everything that we talked about and articulated, and they implement it themselves. That's amazing. At the end of the day, we build trust with them, right? And if they ever need something else or need help with something, they know that they can come to us. Secondarily, if somebody comes to the presentation, they know exactly how to do everything. But then they're like, holy crap, this is a lot of work, right? I might as well go with the experts and trust, trust that, like, they know what they're doing. And, like, I'm a founder, I don't have time to take care of press while dealing with hiring, customer acquisition, launch, right? So I'd rather just have them take care of it. Which is great. Right. Then they become a customer. So either they become somebody who really trusts us or they become a customer. Right. So there's, there's no. It's a win win bas. Right. Because I've had people ask me like, hey, is it bad to give away all your tips and tricks? I'm like no. Like I think it's a great example of. It's a great subset of build in public. So that's. Anyway, that's one type of event. Another type of event, uh, is like a type of event is larger scale events. We recently hosted a World cup watch party for the semifinals co hosted with Pilot Notion Persona. And so that was a really exciting event, people. It was. I remember when this was the semifinals when Argentina was playing. I remember when Argentina made their first goal. Everybody went crazy. I still have the video of it. So those have been fun events. And then finally smaller scale events. So like private dinners. We want to do one where it's like a founder spa, like a cold plunge with hot sauna. So like more curated, intimate types of events. Yeah. So we're, we're exploring, um, but I think eventually we will nail, we will know which types because we were big on metrics and data. We will know what type of events produces the most qualified leads. Um, and then we'll just double down.

Speaker C: And so the, the how to series that you're doing is a webinar or in person.

Speaker A: It's both. Like I said, we're exploring. So we. Right now actually I'm doing a webinar in three days on Thursday. And so we do virtual. We've had, because we've had a lot of customers that just aren't based in San Francisco. So I want to make it accessible to them. And then we also do in person events. Most of them are in person. And so we've done one at uh, Hanwha AI center, one at Silicon Valley bank or doing one at the pilot office. And so yeah, I found that those are really good in the sense that people will come up to me right after and then I have those really quick one on one conversations. But they're really, really useful because a lot of these people are really interested in becoming customers.

Speaker C: And so coming back to Press Club, um, you built it on cold outreach. Zero journalist connections or relationships. What does more cold outreach actually do? That I found the remaining journalist, uh, called.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I would say, I would break it down into two steps, basically finding the actual journalists and then um, what to actually say to them. Right. And so I'll just tell you the, the process for our AI agent. So our AI agent, we, well first we do a one on one interview with the founder, understand what's the best possible story to pitch. And it's kind of crazy. Most founders don't know what's cool about themselves. They, you know, my, my co founder, his first company, he thought, oh, product traction, that's what's cool. Right? But really what was cool was his background. He actually quit his PhD in computer science and he was doing research and counter, like counterterrorism research. Uh, and so he was hunting terrorists on Facebook and on Twitter. Right. Like that's interesting. He was doing data mining work. And so like I think people don't actually realize what's cool about them. So we kind of helped them craft their narrative, their story at that point. And then after that we feed into AI Agent. AI Agent crawls the web for tens of thousands of articles written in the past four to eight weeks about your specific vertical. And then after that it narrows it down to 200 of the best journalists to reach out to. And these are almost guaranteed the 200 people who are most likely to respond to you because they've already written about similar things in your space. And then we craft all of the hyper personalized code messages for each one of them and you're basically as a customer, you're basically hands off until you get a calendar invite from a journalist from Forbes or TechCrunch for instance. So that's what it does, end to end. And I'll say honestly, you could do it. As a founder, you could definitely do it. Um, it's just very time intensive. I think that's one of the biggest things. And then the other thing is our AI agent, it crawls tens of thousands of web articles. It's very unlikely that you would be able to find more articles than like more relevant articles than the AI agent would be able to. And then for the actual messaging part, we tend to find that uh, our, despite founders asking to make corrections, we find that the original AI agent message generally performs better than with any edits from anybody else.

Speaker C: Oh really?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think on average, um, I think cold outreach response rates on average are around 0.5%. So if you send out 200 cold emails, you can expect one response back. Our AI agent consistently averages at 10% response rates.

Speaker C: So a lot of content that gets posted on LinkedIn, especially LinkedIn recently there was a stat that close to 40% of somewhere in that vicinity, all content on index AI generated and people can tell. Uh, I'm surprised that you say you get more conversion than handcrafted. Aren't people on the other side able to tell that this is the AI generated message?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's only because you don't know the amount of work that went into it. Initially, when it first came out, it was very much AI slop. It's like EM M dashes all over the place. It's not this, it's this, you know, um, and so initially we were like, oh, we would love to just build a Claude wrapper or ChatGPT wrapper, but the quality of messaging just wasn't there. Uh, it was AI slob. And on a personal philosophy level, I mean, I write on LinkedIn. I love writing. And so it's. I'm very much against it as well. I'm sure you've received cold emails that are AI slob. You can tell immediately. Right. And journalists, of all people are anti AI slob. Right. The like, second they clock it that it's written by AI, they're. I mean, they're already getting 200 to a thousand emails a day. Like, they're not even to give you the time of day if they think it's written by AI. Um, so we had to be very careful with the quality of messaging. So when we first started, we had to build up. First of all, we had to build our own internal AI agent. Because of that, the messaging was just that important. Right. And then we, when we first came out with it, it was okay, but we were still going through manually vetting every single message. Right. And so it was very much a human in the loop, making sure that every method, adjusting every single thing like punctuation, sentence structure. Right. And so we had to basically like fine tune it until it got to a point where the quality bar that we were trying to hit was getting hit. And nowadays, thank goodness, we don't have to manually go through every single one. It's luckily gotten to a point where it's quite good. And the best way I would use to describe it is it's like Hemingway style. Short declarative sentences like straight, get to the point. Um, and then you're out. Right. Like trying to convey, hey, I respect your time as a journalist. Here's my story. If you want it, take it. Right, so that's kind of like the vibe or the voice and tone that we go for. And it's quite good with that.

Speaker C: Uh, and so can you walk me through a founder you recently got covered? Um, what did this end and how many days from pitch to published?

Speaker A: Yeah, a founder that recently got covered. We landed somebody on Axios which was really exciting. We actually had two Axios covers back to back last week. So that was really exciting. This one, this was possibly our fastest conversion ever. It was less than a week actually. So I, I remember it was, let me think, in July, um, and July 7th we had our first meeting with the client, right, sat down, met them, they were looking for press. And then, I kid you not, July 13, a journalist from a Tier 1 outlet response asking to publish the story that same week. So literally six day turnaround. That, that was like today our fastest, fastest one yet. So yeah, we were really excited about that. Generally we tell people to budget at least four weeks because it takes time for journalists to respond and then it takes time for them to actually write the story. But yeah, that was one of our fastest ones yet, so we're really excited about that one.

Speaker C: Um, that is fast. And so what kind of startups do you work with?

Speaker A: Yeah, we typically work with pre seed seed series A founders or heads of growth, heads of marketing. And we ask that they meet our three criteria. So fundraise announcements, ideally you just closed, but you haven't announced it yet. A product launch, ideally a category creating product and then strong traction. So for instance, one of our clients had hit a million dollars in ARR within four months.

Speaker C: You know, getting press obviously is important for many reasons. We have an example where press changed the trajectory of a deal or a raise. So yes, Hyundai's announcements are great.

Speaker A: But uh, yeah, I actually do. I have one professional story and then one more personal story. So professional. So there was this one founder I was talking to and she actually was talking to a family office, but this family office was really dragging their feet. They were not budging, they weren't closing even though they said that they were interested. But then flash forward, she gets featured on TechCrunch, Her, her and her company. And so the article is out and lo and behold, this family office gets FOMO and almost immediately closes after that article comes out. So that's the type of like star quality or kind of pool or FOMO that you give other people when you're able to land these types of outlets, right? Tier one outlets. So that's an investment example. I have another example of a friend. This is one, this one is kind of funny. A friend who was, was dating like on Hinge and she was talking to this, this guy. But I don't think she was super interested until she saw separately that he was featured in a TechCrunch article. And then she immediately was like, oh, my gosh, I need to talk to this guy. And so they actually talked and they started dating and they moved in together. So anyways, two different, very different types of examples were getting an article out there will change the trajectory of your life.

Speaker C: Um, you know, on the, Obviously, uh, your friend got, um, a partner. But are you seeing other use cases? Like, are people using this for customer acquisition as well and coming to you? Because for customer acquisition, I would assume the approach might be different, um, because you want to land, press or land on places where your customers go to. Uh, is that a use case you've seen? And, um, how do you guys approach that?

Speaker A: Yeah, so it's funny you ask, because people actually usually come to us for two reasons. One is credibility, which is kind of what I was hinting at with the TechCrunch feature story. The other is customer acquisition. And so outlets like Forbes, Wall street and all, TechCrunch, Business Insider, they're great for credibility, but they're actually not great for customer acquisition. The best ones for custom position are your vertical specific, your niche outlets. Right. So, for instance, if you work in consumer electronics, your go to outlets where your audience lives is 9 to 5 Mac, Apple Insider. Right. Because that's where your consumers, your customers are consuming. And so for instance, my co founder, actually his first company was in consumer electronics and he landed Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. He also landed 9 to 5 Mac and Apple Insider, landing 9 to 5 Mac and Apple Insider got him 10 times the amount of revenue than landing Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. Right. Um, and so that should give you an idea of like, it really depends on what your goals are. Right. If it's credibility, then go for the tier one. If it's customer acquisition, purely customer acquisition, you should go for your vertical specific outlets. Most, I mean, to give you some context, most customers usually come to us for both. Both. Most people benefit from both. We do a, uh, mix for, for almost all of our customers.

Speaker C: For someone who's, let's say, pre seed, is there a way to manufacture a, uh, newsworthy moment? How do you get pressed that early?

Speaker A: Yeah, if you're pre seed and you know, you haven't, maybe you haven't fundraised. Right. Is what you're referring to. Yeah, I would say. I mean, the other two you need to hit very strongly. So product launch, uh, I'll give an example. Manus, they launched their product in March of last year, 2025, and they didn't pair it with a fundraise or with particularly strong traction either, but it just went viral like the product itself was interesting and innovative enough that it didn't need anything else to carry it. Right. So that's one way where a ah, truly category creating or innovative enough product just carries itself and organically gets pressed. Right. Um, and then another is traction. I think you just, you need like really, really, really strong traction. So we always say the, the way that we kind of gauge it is if you hit 500k um in, in ARR. In less than one year, that's strong traction. If you're more consumer then hitting 20,000 signups in the span of a single month, if you're able to do that. And then back to enterprise if you have like a customer who is a leader in their own industry, in their own respective. Right. That could potentially also make you newsworthy.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Um, all right, we are almost on the final stretch.

Speaker A: Uh yeah.

Speaker C: One belief about founding or building in population like that you completely flipped in the last year.

Speaker A: Yeah, one belief I think is the traditional definition of build in public is not what you should actually be posting. You shouldn't be posting stream of consciousness and complaining about things. Uh, especially on a platform like LinkedIn. I think you need to get through that and then retrospect and reflect on it and then post the learnings. That's what's inspiring and educating people and that's where you'll get, get your actual engagement.

Speaker C: Do you journal as a founder?

Speaker A: Do I. Did you say do I journal as a founder? I actually don't. My. The closest I come to journaling is stream of consciousness to Claude or ChatGPT.

Speaker C: Yeah, you mentioned earlier that I'll never run out of ideas. What gives you that confidence? And uh, what's your secret in terms

Speaker A: of never running out of ideas?

Speaker C: Possible point idea.

Speaker A: Yeah, for content. Honestly I, I think it's a muscle. You have to, you have to train like anybody. Like at the beginning it's really, really tough. It's like oh my gosh, I don't think I can do it. Honestly, when I first started I went to the way that I actually started posting. I went to a conference called Human X in Las Vegas last year and we won a hackathon there. And so I milked the shit out of that. I wrote four straight posts about it. I posted about it for a whole week. I was like, hey, we won. Here's a picture of me and my team. We won. Here's a video recap. Of the entire conference. Here are my takeaways and learnings from winning and what it takes to win a hackathon. And then after that I was like, holy shit, what do I post about now? What else is there to post about? But what I realized as I would go to events and just live my life in San Francisco, I noticed if there's, there's certain things that I say or stories that I say to people that make them laugh or smile, I noticed those are moments that you should really pick up on because that's probably what makes a good LinkedIn post, right? If you're getting this type of engagement in real life with another human and you're getting it repeatedly, then it's probably a signal that it'll do well online to a mass of people as well. So every time then I would talk to somebody and I noticed I would say something that would make them smile or laugh or like elicit some sort of emotion. I would kind of internally clock it in my head, be like, that's a good LinkedIn post. And then after the conversation I would write it down. Now I have a list of, a never ending list of ideas. But I think that's something that has like really, really helped me in terms of coming up with LinkedIn post ideas. The other thing is just going to events like doing recap hosts, like organizers. Hosts. Speaking from a host, having been a host myself, they love it when you post about their event on, um, LinkedIn. So that's another way to also make a good connection. If I'm trying low key, if I'm trying to get somebody as a customer, I'll maybe make a LinkedIn post about their event because it's bound to stand out from a sea of people that, you know, there's, you know, 300 people who registered for the event, but maybe only a handful of people who made a LinkedIn post and mentioned you in that post. So that's another great way to, to make content.

Speaker C: Yeah, you're kind of giving away before even asking anything. So, um, if a founder does exactly one thing after this episode, um, to get pressed, of course, what is it?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is just start posting on LinkedIn. I feel like it's benefited me so much even, even when I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know I wanted to start a company, I was like, regardless what I, um, end up doing, whether it's becoming a content creator, whether it's starting a company and being a founder, posting on LinkedIn it's going to help me build that distribution which is all the rage these days. Right. And I knew I would not regret posting on LinkedIn and building that following and to day. Right. Those early day posts that have gotten me speaking opportunities have then allowed me to have a platform from which I can get a lot of qualified, consistently get a lot of qualified leads from.

Speaker C: I think even with a lot of AI push that's happening on there, it's still the case or you think things are changing a bit.

Speaker A: I think because there's a lot of AI slob, it's actually easier to stand out because if it's a human written post, then you will already stand out right amongst the sea of AI slop. I also, oh my gosh, I see AI slop comments as well. And I always have a whole internal conflict whether I should respond to them or not. Because technically they're still bringing engagement to my post. Get it? But I think if you're writing from the heart and if you're being vulnerable, I think you should, should post on LinkedIn. I still think it'll give you outsized benefits. And then actually I'll give you an example. I forced my whole team to do a 30 day post on LinkedIn challenge. They all did it and they all at the end. And uh, keep in mind this is like one of them was my co founder and he rarely posted on LinkedIn prior to this. After this 30 day challenge he was like, oh man, I want, this makes me want to post more.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And this is a lot coming from somebody who's in engineering who likes to just be heads down product development. So I was like, you know, if, if he can say that then there's clearly a benefit to posting on LinkedIn. To me. He told me, it just, it feels like there's such an outsized benefit. Most people are consuming and lurking and scrolling on LinkedIn. The minute you flip the switch, it's, it's a different dynamic. You are the person who is posting. People come to you because they see your post. Right. Um, and so you're flipping the script. But in order to get there, you have to be brave and be willing to stand on the other side.

Speaker C: And so I'm sure that during those 30 days, there were days when you know the day is about to end. I haven't posted anything. How do I meet that challenge?

Speaker A: Yeah, you're asking like how did we, how did they get over that? Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I knew it was going to be hard because I uh, my, my whole team. Like, I don't think they've really posted on LinkedIn really, uh, or ever made it a consist. So I knew it was going to be hard. Um, I just asked. I think it's just the muscle. Once you, once you build, like not build. Once you post for a week, it's easier and easier to get ideas in. And I think they all felt that shift around the halfway mark. I did a check in and they're like, yeah, like I, I feel like it's not as big of a struggle trying to come up with ideas. The other thing is just the mere presence of consistency. And I was that for them. I would literally call them out in Slack if they didn't post. So every single day I was on their ass about it. And I think that also helps to just have somebody chase you down and force you to have that discipline.

Speaker C: Um, where can people find you and follow Press Club?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I'm very active on LinkedIn, so I, I check it as much as I check my texts actually. So please come find me on LinkedIn. Yeah, that's the best place to find me. Kathy Wang at, ah, Press Club.

Speaker C: Well, Kathy, thanks for joining me on the podcast. It was a pleasure.

Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much. This is amazing.

Speaker B: If you found this useful, you can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. See you in the next episode.