How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine)

26:31It could just be continued growth, trying to reach into a new marketplace. That's fine. Anything that's tied to growth or reaching a new customer base would make sense. That makes sense. But it could also be that you're looking to position yourself in your own marketplace a little differently. So I see, for example, a lot of people, a lot of big companies keep knocking on my door because we don't just hear from startups. We hear from major companies as well who are pitching stories. And I know why they want to be an entrepreneur. They want to be an entrepreneur because they're trying to position their brand as also being relevant to small business owners.

27:14And so it's helpful to have that kind of context because coverage in entrepreneur can help them go out to the marketplace and say, look, we're also reaching XYZ people. So sometimes it's not even about a conversion, but rather it's about a positioning. And that's a good reason to also maybe put forward your executives. Sometimes it's just about establishing your CEO or your founder as an authority in a particular area because you want them to be more trustworthy, you want them to be invited to more conferences because all of that stuff draws more attention to the company. Also, it's a reason to do this stuff.

27:52And then, yeah, trying to get in front of investors, trying to get in front of partners, look, there's a million reasons why being visible can be useful. But you need to make sure you understand what you're actually trying to do. Okay. Awesome. That was really helpful. So think about what goal you have in mind for getting pressed. Pick a publication and understand their mission and what their goals are. And then think about some interesting stories that you can pitch them. Not just like we have any president, but something that you think they'd be excited to share that connects with their mission.

28:24That's right. Kind of on this topic, I know we want to talk about like who to contact and how to figure out who to actually talk to. A couple of questions that come to mind. This is all a lot of work. Founders are really busy. So the begs the question PR agencies, do you have a perspective on would you recommend working with PR agency? Is there time when it makes two and doesn't make sense to? Yeah, I mean It's a ton of work, right? Like everything that I'm describing is a ton of work and and let me be clear People succeed in getting press without doing any of the things that I'm describing because dumb luck happens in the world You know, you could very well just bang out an email to some random editor and they might like it.

29:03That is entirely possible or you could disregard everything that I've just said. What I'm really helping you do is try to optimize your approach. But yeah, hiring PR can cut out a lot of this. Now you're not doing this research yourself. You're not thinking through these challenges yourself. You're working with people who understand exactly how to identify the most interesting parts of your story and then turn them into good pitches. is, so why wouldn't everyone do that? The couple of reasons. Number one, cost. PR can be expensive. So you just have to factor that in. Number two, PR is and can be.

29:44I'll say can be a very frustrating journey because a lot of PR people are very bad at their job. They're very bad. And this isn't just me bashing PR people. I have literally been hired to give keynotes at PR industry conferences, and I get on stage, and I say most PR people are bad at their jobs, and everybody nods, and they all know it, right? Of course, none of them think that they're one of the bad ones, but they all know it. PR is full of people who are bad at their jobs. Why are they bad at their jobs? They're bad at their jobs because they're lazy because they're primarily relying upon email blasts, just sending things out because they have an older idea of what it means to get the word out, for example, if you go to a PR agency and one of the things that they recommend doing, that you should spend money on is a press release, like a traditional press release, run as fast as you can away from that.

30:48Like, I don't know if you know this, It's like the press release, there are some purposeful reasons to put out a press release, but the press release is really no longer the primary unit of press attraction. Yeah, I get that sense. Yeah, but here's what's fascinating. So a PR agency, a PR agency I wouldn't recommend might do this. they'll tell you, we're going to put together a press release about this new thing. So, you have to pay a little extra money for the production of this press release and then also the distribution of this press release because what we're going to do is we're going to put it out on the wire, right?

31:31Because there are a whole bunch of press release distribution wires. So, they'll do that, you'll pay the money, it'll go out on the wire. And then they'll send you a report about all the places that this press release ended up on. It ended up on Yahoo Finance. It ended up on Market Watch. And it technically did, like the press releases there, it was posted, and zero people are going to see it in the whole world because Yahoo Finance has a section where they just publish every damn press release that gets published by all these different distributors. Nobody saw that. So don't confuse posting press releases even on very big websites with actual success.

32:15What you want in an actual PR person is someone who traffic in one thing and that is relationships. The most important thing that a PR person can have is active relationships with people in media. Why? They cannot guarantee if a PR person is guaranteeing you press, that's another reason to run out the door as fast as possible because the PR people cannot control this. The writers and they do what they want is a completely subjective industry. Very frustrating, I completely understand that. I was totally subjective. So the best that a PR person can do is shape your story, understand who to pitch, and then get that writer or editor to look at it, to pay attention to it.

33:02There are some PR people in this world who I think very highly of. I think they're incredibly smart and readily good at what they do. And they only pitch me when they have something that they think I will genuinely be interested in. Instead of a lot of PR people, which just like send me some random thing every week or every day, I don't pay attention to those people. But when I don't know, just like shout out, when John Beer from Jack Taylor PR sends me, like, you know, John, I met him in a PR capacity like a decade ago when we've since become friends. Like when he emails me, I pay attention. I don't write about it all the time.

33:37I'm not gonna write about something just because I like John, but I will pay attention. And paying attention, honestly, is like half the battle because people in media are getting so much email. So you want someone who's going to understand you, understand your industry, understand and know the people who they should be reaching out to and who really respect you as an entrepreneur and are going to give you the hard feedback. because there are a lot of people who will go and hire PR and they'll say, I want you to email this and this and this and this and this publication. And if the PR person just does that, all they're doing is like annoying their contacts.

34:21If they don't really feel like this was meaningful, you should like when a PR person pushes back on you and says, you know what? I don't think that your story is right for that publication, here's why. That's someone you should hire. Is there any other PR people you wanna call out What is one's that you think are awesome. The challenge here is that I'm going to regret not including a whole bunch of people who don't pop to mind immediately, but - You can include them in the show notes, whoever else. Yeah, we'll clear it. They are. Sure. Okay, so let's see. Off to my head. So John, Jack Taylor, he does a lot of wellness stuff.

34:52So PR agencies tend to specialize. And so you want to make sure that you're going with people who really understand you and the media ecosystem that you're reaching out to. So, I think that John's really smart. Let's see, Hannah Lee at Hannah Lee Communications is great on hospitality stuff. So restaurants, hotels, booze, they're really smart. Jen Squilla, sorry, Jen, if I missed a pronounced her name, at Max Borges Agency, really good on sort of like consumer -focused products. Greg Delman, who is, he's based in San Francisco, he's got a really small shop called 3G Media, and he does a lot of tech start -up stuff.

35:34It just really knows that world. Greg, I'll find writers through Greg, because he just knows everybody. I just texted him recently. I was like, I need somebody who can write about this very specific AI thing and he happened to be at TechCrunch Disrupt and he found some freelancer and connected us. That's great. So those are four, I will have more that'll give you for the show notes. Amazing, okay, this is really useful. If any of you come to mine as we're chatting, feel free to shout them out again. Similar question, when people are thinking about publications to go after, say you're a startup founder, is there a list you could just share of just like here's probably the top five, 10 that you should be thinking about, like the obvious ones you talked about entrepreneur, fast company, tech, wrench, obviously comes to mind.

36:16There are others that are just like here's a good list to start with. You know, honestly, it really so much depends upon what it is that you're looking to do. You could be a startup founder and entrepreneur and ink and fast company are for maybe some good reason, not at the top of your list, because you're a startup founder, but your goal right now is to reach consumers. And those publications don't reach consumers. And they don't reach people who are in a buying mindset. They reach people who are in a creating mindset. So I would expect that if you have a startup and that startup is not like B2B in some way, that it would be possibly very reasonable that business publications might not be your target right now.

37:01Maybe men's health is, maybe, you know, I don't know anything could be. I think oftentimes people tend to think too close to them about where they belong. I get it right? Like here's Lenny, like here's a real kind of exchange that happens, which is if somebody will email me, I don't respond to every publicist. It's just literally not possible. I would not have enough time in the day. I do do my best to respond to every entrepreneur who reaches out because I feel like they deserve a response. And sometimes somebody will email me and they'll send me something and it's not it's just not relevant.

37:37And I'll reply and I'll just say, you know, hey, um, you know, thanks. Congratulations on what you've built but this isn't a fit for entrepreneur. And And maybe like once a month, somebody responds really in a like testy way. And they're like, but don't you write about entrepreneurs? I'm a great entrepreneur success story. And it's like that, that's no, that's not what we do. Like, yes, entrepreneurs are featured in our stories, but no, we're not just like a directory of entrepreneurs, right? Here's a good, here's a good way of thinking about it. If you have a startup and you're trying to figure out what publications to be in, go look at where your competitors have been featured.

38:21That's a great place to start. Like, what audiences are they reaching and how are they doing it? That should give you some direction about where you might want to go next. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. An advice on TechCrunch. Do you have a perspective on as a worth investing in getting featured in TechCrunch? I'll tell you, sort of like personal press journey moment and then I think that it will translate into the answer for TechCrunch. Amazing. Okay. Something we haven't talked about so far yet is, and this is sort of almost skipping all the steps that we've laid out, so like what happens after you get the press, but like the point of the press is sometimes to reach the people who are reading it, right?

39:02Like you get covered in entrepreneur and entrepreneurs are going to read it and maybe something good will come of it. But sometimes the point of it is not to reach the people who are reading it all. Possibly a very small number of people are going to read it, which by the way is a real, real possibility because although all of these publications that I have mentioned, entrepreneur Forbes, Fortune, Inc., Fast Company, whatever, whatever. These are reaching millions of people that their websites get many, many, many millions of unique visitors each month. That does not mean that your story is going to be read by millions of people.

39:40In fact, the largest possibility here is that your story will reach like five to 10 ,000 people, a small number of people. Because these publications are publishing tons of stuff. So you might get this story, it might look awesome, it might not reach that many people, that might also be okay. Because maybe the reason in your logic for why to get that kind of coverage is not to have reached that publication's audience at all anyway. Maybe what it really is is to tweet it and then put some money behind promoting that tweet. Because then you can target that you got coverage to the people who you want to notice you got coverage.

40:21And I see a lot of people do that. They'll take articles that we ran on entrepreneur and they'll basically turn them into advertisements. And that's really smart. Because what they got out of entrepreneur was the social cashier, it was the validation in the marketplace and then they're going to do something with that themselves. That's really something you also see it right so sometimes the reason to get coverage is just so you can put it on your website as seen in. As seen in is probably more valuable than anyone actually reading that story to begin with. They probably won't read the story. You might not even have to link it on the website, but you could just get to say as seen in because again it gives you that validation.

40:56me personally. I am building a small podcast company with my friend Nicole Lapin. Nicole Lapin is a special. I'm a money expert and we have a company. She's the founder and I'm an advisor and it's called Money News Network. We have a podcast on it called Help Wanted that we co -host together and we got coverage in variety. And that was the result of pounding on a lot of doors and finally getting someone at variety to take interest and they ran an article about us. Did we get anything from that story in variety? The answer is no, like nothing. But you better believe that every email we send out to every potential advertiser, every partner, includes the link, Right?

41:44Variety has covered us. And I guarantee that when someone receives that email, it makes them pay more attention. And I have used it many times too, when I reach out to people. It just gives you that it's validation. So sometimes what you're looking for is a prize to walk around with. And I would bet that the same is true for TechCrunch, which was your original question. Like why get the funding announcement in TechCrunch? Probably not because anyone's gonna care, because they read it on TechCrunch, but now you can use that to your own means. And sometimes that's more valuable than the press itself.

42:16That is an awesome insight. It also makes you realize you may not feel like it was a success after we're spending all this time getting in a story and entrepreneurs like, oh, nothing happened. But the benefits make them later, like weeks, months, years later, when you start to share that. A lot of this is what you make of it. Amazing. Okay. That was extremely interesting. Okay. Let's talk about step two. So initially, you prepped, we talked about how to think about who to go after and the mission and goals. then you get to step two, which is figure out who to reach out to at a publication. Okay.

42:48So a lot of people make the mistake of emailing me, right? If they want coverage and entrepreneur, they email me. And I understand why they're emailing me. It's really for two reasons. One, I'm the most visible editorial person at entrepreneur. And so it's easy to find me. It's easy to find my email address. And also they just assume, well, editor -in -chief if making all the decisions. But, you know, no, right? I mean, think about it. If you have a problem with a purchase that you made on Amazon, you don't email Bezos. He's too busy. And I'm not comparing myself to Bezos, but I am the busiest editorial guy in Oxford or whatever the hell that's worth.

43:29And I'm just not the guy to pitch, because my job actually isn't really to select stories that go in the magazine. My job is to work with editors who develop their own ideas and then I get to say, oh, that's a good one or like, oh, let's refine that. Or like, I'm not sourcing as much. And so you really should start by looking at who's writing about your subject area. And you can do that by going to the website and surfing around. You can do that by googling around. But you'll find the answer. Every publication is structured differently. Some people have specific beats. Some publications will be like, this is the person on the transportation beat.

44:12And some publications don't. Entrepreneur doesn't really have a beat system necessarily. But if you look, you'll figure it out. Oh, that editor is clearly interested in food, or that writer is clearly interested in food. They seem to write all the food stories. Oh, that person is writing about, and a good way again to do it is to start with the publication and then look at how they're covering your competitors. So a good example is I was once consulting with a guy who has a like a kind of fun peanut butter company. It's like, it's like, imagine peanut butter meets Ben and Jerry's. So I was like peanut butter with lots of stuff and fun names.

44:55And so he's trying to figure out how to get press. and originally his thinking, the reason why he reached out to me was because he's like, well, I'm an entrepreneur, I run a business, I should be an entrepreneur. I was like, no, no, no, you shouldn't because none of our readers are going to buy your peanut butter. So who is your target audience? Who's buying your stuff? And he says, Millennial moms. It's a great. Okay, so Cosmo is a good place to reach them. So let's look at how Cosmo covers snacks. I don't know how they cover snacks, I don't read Cosmo, but let's find out. It's not hard when to Cosmopolitan .com, search for snacks.

45:29What I found immediately was a lot of stories that are all basically round up and anchored to some time sensitive things. It's 10 snacks for Valentine's Day. It's our 10 favorite new fall snacks, whatever. It's all stuff like it. Now we know they are not going to run a thousand -word feature on your peanut butter company. Instead, the best that you could hope to do is get into one of these seasonal -ish roundups. So now next step, who's writing these things? Let's look. Let's open some of the articles. The byline is right there. You can click on the byline. You can see what this person does. And in many cases, this person will be...

46:10Maybe they'll... Maybe they're the food editor. Maybe they're the lifestyle editor, whatever. Like, you'll see what they cover. And you'll have a good understanding of now how to frame the thing that you're looking for. Now let me introduce one other possible option. They don't work for the publication at all. They're a freelancer. Publications use a lot of freelancers. Freelancers are basically independent contractors. They're writers who are working sometimes, sometimes they have kind of longer term deals with publications. Sometimes it's just one off. My wife is a freelancer. My wife is a freelancer who writes a lot for the New York Times and Washington Post and Guardian.

46:47And the interesting thing about my wife versus me is that my wife, whose name is Jen Miller, so I don't keep saying my wife. So Jen, so Jen on a day -to -day basis as a freelancer is hungrier for stories than me because Jen has to hustle for her food. Jen has to find stories and pitch those stories to editors at publications. And that's when she gets paid. So she actually is more incentivized to be looking for stories than I am because I am a salary employee of Entrepreneur Magazine. And my email address is very easily found and people just send me stuff all the time. And I should add here also, note that a good journalist, a good media, a good writer is not actually sitting around thinking that their job is to wait for people to pitch them so that they can just write about the best pitches.

47:47Their job, as they see it, is to go and find the most useful things for their audience and they like to do a lot of that themselves. So, they're not sitting around just waiting for your pitches and in fact, your pitches have to overcome their instinct to go find things themselves. So, Jen is constantly hustling. Jen is constantly talking to people. Jen is curious about the world and will spend a lot of time hunting things down. But if somebody reads a story that she wrote and says, I think I have an idea of what this person is interested in and then tracks her email address down and then emails her, Jen is getting a lot fewer pitches than me.

48:26The chances of her reading it are close to 100%, and the chances of her taking it seriously if it's relevant to any of the publication's that she writes for is much higher than me. So sometimes going to the staff person is not actually your best move. Finding the freelancer who's doing the work is sometimes the better move. So many interesting tactical insights that you're sharing, I love it. With this freelancer tip, how do you know there are freelancers? They're like something in the byline? If you find them on the publications website, so let's say that you go to Cosmo and you click on a author's bio.

48:59If they're staff, it'll say is staff. If they're not staff, it'll probably say something else. It might say writer, it might say contributor, it might say, you know, Jen Miller is a writer in Brooklyn, New York But also you can just go one extra step and just Google their name because any smart freelancer Has a portfolio website where they should be very easily found. So awesome Sometimes just just take their name plug it into Google. You'll very quickly figure out who they are Okay, so let me summarize things that you've taught us so far. Yeah, one is Think about publications that go to people that will buy your things.

49:36So in your example, Cosmo is a good example of someone who'd buy this peanut butter thing. Two is, don't think of it as like a broad thing. Think about the writer at the thing. So it's not like Cosmo would write about this. It's like who specifically at Cosmo would write about this? That's right. No way you find that as go to their site search for, you talk about search for your competitors, but I think it's even broader just like things related to your area. right? Yeah, that's the point. Mm -hmm. It's like even category. Even like adjacent things probably are close enough. Mm -hmm. And then this tip about freelancers is really great that they're hungrier and that they're more likely to respond to your pitch versus someone that's working there and just like, and then also this point that they're like, their assumption is this is not a good pitch and they don't want your pitch, but freelancers have a higher chance of being interested and will pay attention.

50:25Yeah. Freelancers got to eat. Amazing. Is there anything else along this step of finding somebody at a publication that you want to share. Well, the next step is going to be how to actually reach out to the pitch. So at this stage, I think that we've fairly well covered it. And I just, I love your summary and just to kind of double click on part of that. Yeah. Right. Like the reason why you're doing a lot of this is not just for the crazy busy work of it, but it's because you have to understand that the media, just sort of go back to translating the media, where the media, which is a phrase that is used in all sorts of different ways, is a pretty bad way of actually understanding the media because the media, quote unquote, makes it feel like it's a unified entity.

51:14Either in politics, the media will be criticized as a sort of multiple publications colluding together in some way, but the way that we're talking about it is just as organizations that you're trying to reach out to. But really and truly, these are just publishing companies made up of individuals. And those individuals are all making fairly subjective decisions about what it is that they're going to write about. And there are layers of approval that they have to pass through. So nothing makes it into the print magazine, for example, without me saying yes, right? but I'm also trusting my editors to be passionate about the ideas that they're finding and convince me of yes.

51:58And so the thing that you are really looking to do is to find the way in to a publication because nothing gets covered until a single individual at a publication takes interest in you enough that they go to somebody else and say, I think that this would be a good story and that other person says yes. So you have to find your way in because media is not a coordinated effort. It's a bunch of people showing up every day trying to figure out how to make the best thing for their audience. Amazing. Okay, so it's a great segue to final piece which is actually get someone excited and write about you. So how do we do that?

52:33How do we do that? This is where the real A the rubber hits the road. Okay, so things not to do. Don't call them if you track down their phone number, which is a real thing that happens. People call my personal cell phone number. It doesn't happen often, but it happens. And I don't even know where they get it from, but I don't like it. And media people are torn on whether or not like DMs by social or in okay way to reach out. I find them kind of annoying because number one, like the format doesn't blend itself very well, right? Like if you write anything long in a DM, which just looks like this endless thing that I got.

53:13But also, I don't know, my Instagram DMs, I just kind of don't think of as like the place to be pitched. And other people don't care. So I don't know, you can roll the dice on that. Email is just the most traditional way. If you know somebody's gonna be speaking at a conference, that's great, come up, you can talk to them. But the question of course is what are you sending them? And here's what you're sending them. You're really sending them the product of the work that you have done in the previous two steps. Because you have now spent some time thinking about your story and who you're pitching and the publication and how they're telling stories to their audience.

53:50And then the individual person who you're reaching out to, who you now have some sense of how they write about this. And you're taking all of that and you're trying to distill it down into a presentation that they're going to find appealing. Which again, to go back to the thing about how press is not that dissimilar or to going out and raising money, that's kind of what you're doing when you go and meet an investor too, right? Like you're not, if you have meetings with 10 investors, the way in which you talk about yourself and the company should not be exactly the same with those 10 investors, because they're all going to have somewhat different approaches and different theses and you're not trying to scam anybody, but you're just trying to be as customized as possible by building in your knowledge of what it is that they do and what they're firm does and the same is true for media.

54:35So all of this is really going to take the form in its most traditional sense of a short email, a short email pitch. And what does that look like? And look, there is literally no magic answer to that. But I wish that there was, but there is not, there's no format. People always ask me like, what should the subject line of the email be? This is a good question. There's not one answer to that. The closest that I can give you to an answer is that picture me, picture me at my computer, I have a lot going on and I'm glancing at my email and 40 new emails are sitting there. My instinct is to delete all of them as fast as possible.

55:21But I'm going to glance at each one. I'm not going to open each one, but I'm going to glance at it, which means that I see the line and I see like the preview text or just the first thing that somebody had written. What you want to do is write something that makes it pretty clear to me that this is targeted to me. That's step number one because most of those emails that I got in my inbox are not targeted to me. They're mass blasts and I'm delete delete delete delete delete delete. So which is the one that actually is reaching me? And sometimes you can do that by referencing something that I wrote in the past.

55:58I see people do that a lot. Don't fake it. People fake it all the time. People email me and they tell me they're fans of my work. They've never read my work. It's very obvious. I like, don't do that. But if you've read something or if you're familiar with something, if you're familiar with the publication in some way, any signals of that are good. Because again, what you're trying to do is just separate yourself from like noise to, this is customized to you because if you think about it, right, this is really like an efficiency This is this is an efficiency question. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to spend my time on the things that have the highest percentage chance of being relevant to me And I'm filtering out the things that seem not relevant to me who are wasting my time So if I see something that where somebody's writing me and they have a sense of the publication and they have a sense of me There's a higher percentage chance that the next things that they're gonna tell me are gonna be relevant to me Maybe even turn into a story which is great I like when that happens because it saves me time frankly, right?

56:57Then I it's one less story. I have to find myself so I'm happy for it, but it's got to be right so you want a structure and then the the email that you're writing is don't go on forever like three paragraphs max and You are telling the version you're not like writing an article, right? But you're telling me the thing that you are pretty sure I'm gonna be interested in. It's the difference between going back to the Butter Dish example, woman sending me a three paragraph email about the Butter Dish itself and opening up, telling me a little bit about the Butter Dish and then immediately moving into this very clever story about the product market testing, like a survey.

57:43That's the difference. She told me the story that was going to be relevant to my audience. She got there quickly and It felt like to me. This is a interesting human being with an interesting entrepreneurial story to tell and that's why I'm gonna engage and now So that story actually came through a cold email That was a cold email. Yep, just showed up one day amazing This episode is brought to you by Epo Epo is a next generation an A .B. testing platform built by Airbnb alums for modern growth teams. Companies like DraftKings, Zapier, ClickUp, Twitch, and Cameo rely on Epo to power their experiments.

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58:49Epo lets you go beyond basic click through metrics and instead use your north star metrics, like activation, retention, subscription, and payments. Epo supports tests on the front end, on the backend, email marketing, even machine learning claims. Check out Epo at getepio .com. That's getepo .com and 10X your experiment velocity. Is there any other examples that come to mind if someone doing this well for people to have more examples of like here's? Oh, sure. So well, here, let's see. We'll have to do this in real time here. But I keep in my inbox a folder called Bad PR pitches and a folder called Good PR pitches.

59:27We can go through both. Let's do it. All right, so this is, I'll just pull this up. So this is, and I haven't read this in a long time, I'm kind of like trying to read ahead as I'm talking just to see if this is appropriate to read by I think. So I don't know whatever, we're just going to read it and see what happens. All right, so the subject of this was idea for entrepreneur and problem solvers, how the border closures grew my business. So this was sent to me in September of 2020. And this is a good or a bad? This is good. This is good. This turned into an episode of a podcast that I do for entrepreneur and I might have also then converted it into an article.

1:00:05I can't remember. Awesome. And so here's what she did. So her name I'll shout her out. So this is Meg O 'Hara and Meg O 'Hara is a painter, a Canadian landscape painter. She has a small business and she writes, hi Jason, I have an idea for a story I think would be valuable and relevant to the EU Entrepreneur Magazine and the problem solvers podcast. That's the show I do for entrepreneur. And then she says, here's what's going on with my business. All entrepreneurs have, all entrepreneurs had to be flexible during COVID. This is a story about how one artist in Canada benefited from the border closure, this just sort of intrigues me.

1:00:41Oh, how? Okay, when COVID hit in March, all ski resorts across North America shut down early skiers are a high earning demographic in Canada. They fall in the top 5 % of income. And okay, well anyway, she goes on, But what she tells me, because I remember this now, what she tells me is that her business used to be being hired by ski resorts to come and paint landscapes for their facilities. And when the border shut down and people weren't going to these resorts anymore, she had to come up with a completely different way of doing her business. And so she started to think, well, I can't work for these resorts anymore.

1:01:19They're not hiring me. but all these skiers who used to work at the resort who have seen my work, or who used to ski at the resort, who were maybe familiar with my work, they're not skiing either. They probably are sitting around, wishing that they were skiing. They'd love something to see of their favorite ski location and they also have money sitting around because they're not spending it on the ski resorts. So then she lists off the problems and the solutions in bullet points, which I love because she has listened to the show, the problem solvers show, which is structured exactly that way. Tell me the problem, tell me the solution that you came to.

1:01:51So, and she listed off, here are the problems. You know, the skiers can't come, people are spending more time at home. The solution, I create artwork for their homes, that depicts their favorite views from skiing, as they were. So, she was on and on and on. I read this and I just think, you know, there is something here about what this person did to reinvent their business at a time in which one marketplace shut down, but it created a new one that I think people would like to hear because at that time everyone was thinking about how to reinvent themselves in their business. And you know, even though I reach people who have very complex and large businesses, sometimes it's really a beautiful thing to hear a single individual who does the simplest thing in the world, which is put pink to canvas, talk about how she did it for herself because you can extract these wonderful little lessons about how to reinvent yourself that I think are going to be relevant to a very broad audience.

1:02:44So Meg sent me that email. I replied and I said, I like it. And we did it. So that's a good example of someone who spent time understanding my work down to the structure of how I'm communicating and then sent me a pitch that very quickly and clearly seemed customized to me and told me her story in a way that I could imagine telling my audience. At that point, it's a pretty easy yes. That is an amazing example. I just took some notes on things that she did right based on things you've shared in the past. So even just from like the subject line or the first sentence, it was clear that she knew you.

1:03:23She knew you had this podcast, she knew the magazine, and she even expressed this like specifically, you're going to be interested in this. Yeah. She mentioned how this she has like a story. She starts like immediately with a story. There's not like the value prop of the company. Here's what we do and here's That's why we're awesome. And then the lessons, like the mission of entrepreneur, you talked about his like insights and lessons that people achieve and she just went straight to, here's what we've learned. So I could see, I could see what that resonated. Yeah, it was great. And she, the next thing that made it a real success by the way for her was that once I got her on the phone, she was, and I find this, This is a make or break thing for me, because I can talk to somebody and then kill the story or not run the podcast, right?

1:04:13She was willing to be open about challenges. I mean, she had reached out because of challenges, but not everyone is. I will get a pitch from someone who is presenting, like, oh, we had this challenge in the business, but then when I talk to them, they act as if there was no problem, or the problem was really small and their ingenuity immediately made this a very successful business. And that's not interesting to me. Because success stories are not interesting. They're not interesting to anybody, right? It's not useful for you to just hear that someone else succeeded. What's useful is for you to hear how someone else faced challenges that you faced and got through them so that you can see, aha, that's an interesting strategy to use for me.

1:05:01I hate success stories. I love problem solving stories. And that's why when I talk to an entrepreneur I expect them to be really open about that stuff and if they're not I basically lose interest But here is journey. I'd love to hear another example, but before that Hearing this obviously it takes a bunch of time to do this for a founder I guess two questions just like how many places should somebody probably try to reach out to to make Give them a chance of being successful and then if you have any thoughts on how much time They should put into something like this. I know it's a very broad question, but yeah, it's a really broad question So again, this is in some way why in a large way why a lot of people hire PR because PR can just Move this along they can reach a lot of people very fast whereas You as an individual cannot you know one way to think about it is you're gonna be on the hunt I mean, you're gonna try to make this work and you're gonna take a couple bets and hope that some of them pay off.

1:06:00Another way of thinking about it is, you know, this is a passive activity and I'll spend some time when I'm reading media, thinking about this, kind of developing an idea, another thing that you can do, follow, media, follow a bunch of writers and editors on social media. Meg, I can't remember the order of operations here because I know that Meg follows me on Instagram now because she's DM me many times and I respond to everybody. I can't remember if she followed me before, but she might have. And maybe she even DMed me a few times, right? Usually it's like somebody's responding to like a Instagram story or something.

1:06:38And I've seen a lot of people use this strategy with me and I think that it's a really smart one, which is basically, before you ever pitch, just get me to recognize your name. You know, like just engage in social media in a very casual way, such that when you email me, I think, do I know who that person is? Like, mego here, that, I think I know who that person is. It just makes it more likely that I'll open the email. And I see a lot of people do that. They'll spend a long time engaging with me on social media before ever pitching me. I know what they're doing. I understand that it's probably calculated.

1:07:18I still like it. It's smart because it means that by the time that they've reached out, I think you have a pretty good sense of my work, which means that what you're bringing to me is probably in pretty good faith. And for that, I like it. It's a good filter. So if you've been listening to this whole thing and you're thinking, this is just, yeah, this is a tremendous amount of work. I have a new product launch or I have a bunch of budget that I can spend on this, this individual kind of approach may not be for you. You might want to just spend a bunch of time instead interviewing different PR firms and find the one that seems most aligned with and understands your story and your vision and knows people in your space.

1:08:04Shortcuts a lot of this. But even then, even then, I think that having heard this is really useful because at some point, if the PR person is successful, you are going to get on the phone with the writer editor. And it's very useful to understand how they think that they're not there to serve you, right? That this isn't a service that they're providing you. So you better understand what they're entering into this with and what they have in mind. When they're asking you questions, they're asking questions, thinking, this is what my audience is going to be curious about. This is how I'm going to drive this person in this interview towards the kind of insights that my audience are going to find gratifying.

1:08:44So the more that you understand who you're dealing with, the better. And also just having done it yourself, you'll better understand what to ask your folks, how they're going to work, find opportunities to improve the way they're operating. On the question of quantity, say you're doing this, you're spending the time, I'm going to really invest in understanding Jason and whoever else. Is there like a rule thumb? I mean, recommend, like try to do this for three publications to get one, there's it five, I don't know, is there anything there that you could recommend? So it's really dependent upon how easy you are to write about.

1:09:22I mean, I just sort of like, right, like if you are a, if you are a, like some kind of B2B service, especially in some kind of very niche or wonky space, or just do it. It's going to be really hard for you to get pricked. Like so hard that it might actually not even be worth trying, because there are other things that you can do, where things that we haven't even talked about yet, like you could say, you know what, screw it, I'm not going to try to get coverage for my company. Why don't I just try to position myself as an expert? Right? It's totally different kind of approach, right? Where instead what you're maybe trying to do is just hook onto the news, try to get a quote or perspective to a reporter who might be writing about something.

1:10:04I get these all the time. Something breaks, something news breaks, and people start reaching out to me, and they'll say, this just happened in the news, and my client, or sometimes just the individual, I have this insight into this, and here's what I would say if you want to interview me. It's not going to be a feature about you, you're not going to be the subject, there's no photo of you, you might get a quote. You might got a quote in a story, which again is all you need to be able to say as featured in on your website. So that's the reason why people do that. So sometimes it's about that. Sometimes it's about you could just be a writer, right?

1:10:36You might try to just pitch the foreritative articles by you to different publications, get yourself out in that way. Sometimes again, it's just you're not going to be able to be easily written about it. And sometimes you are. Sometimes you made some insane technology that everyone's going to be talking about. And it's going to be super easy for you to get pressed. At what point your hit rate is going to be much higher. That's why going into this with really realistic expectations and if you're going to work with PR, having PR who can set and hold you to those realistic expectations, can just save you a lot of heartache.

1:11:11Along the same lines, there's always this idea of exclusivity and people want to write first about a thing. Say you haven't talked about like an awesome technology. You have advice on, do you just pitch the same thing to all of them and they hope they all right about it. Do you pitch them different stories? Do you give an offer one an exclusive and you'd vice there? Everyone has a different approach to this. The number one rule here is just don't do it in a way that the people in media feel like you're playing them. They won't have tolerance for it. I would rather walk away from something like this and like do some funny dance with somebody.

1:11:48So my favorite version of this goes like this. Actually, there's a founder who recently, I met him years ago, so when he reached out, I recognized him immediately and he reached out and he's like, hey, we just, we did this really interesting thing and we haven't told anybody about it yet. And I'd love to see if it's a fit for entrepreneurs. So I hop on the phone with him and he tells me, and I'm not going to tell you what it is yet because we have one in the story. But I, after 15, 20 minutes, I say, yeah, you know what? This is a really interesting story. And frankly, I know other media outlets are going to be interested in this too, particularly because there's a finance element to it.

1:12:27So I think the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and those kinds of places are going to be interested in this. He wants to go to entrepreneur for whatever reasons he wants. I mean, I think probably two because number one, he wants to position himself towards that audience. And then number two, there's a trust factor. He knows me in a way that he doesn't know the editors over there. And so he feels like I'll probably treat the story more carefully. So we worked out a deal, which he proposed and the deal is that we'll get the exclusive and there's gonna be like a three -hour window after our story runs and then they're gonna start responding to everyone else like and then they're gonna start talking to other people or maybe they'll even line it up and and you know and reach out to some other media and That's fine with me, right?

1:13:13Like I I understand and And we're going to create a little embargo window and we'll go first and then they're going to talk to everybody else. Sometimes you can offer an exclusive to someone in that you're going to release the news to everybody, but only one media outlet is going to get the interview, which works really well if you have a big personality. So for example, recently, recently a company that Mark Cuban has invested in offered us that, right? They're like, we have this news. We're going to reach out. We're going to send the news everywhere, but we're going to give you the exclusive interview with Mark Cuban He's going to do one interview and he'll do it with you You know like you can parse it out in any way You just want everyone to feel like you're being up front with them and that they're getting something special as much as possible That makes sense you touch on this relationship piece and that's something I wanted to ask Feels like in tech a lot of reporters end up writing a negative story because a lot of times That's what people want to read.

1:14:11Why is this destroying the world? I actually had a fast company do a thing on me and I talked to the reporter and I had no idea. Was he going to just completely tear me apart or is he going to be really friendly and positive for what I'm doing and I have no idea and it just comes out. It's not like I look at it before it comes out. So, do you have any just advice to give you a set help you know if this is going to turn into something positive or negative? I know you have no idea. What happened by the way? Was it positive or negative? Super positive. I'm just very happy with it. Okay, good. Good.

1:14:39I'm glad to hear that. So part of it is the publication itself, right? Like entrepreneur and I would say fast company are just sort of not in the business of running negative stories. And the reason is because it doesn't serve our audience. Like, you know, my audience is coming to me to learn things for their business. Like tearing somebody apart just doesn't help them in any way. So part of it is just like what ecosystem are you dealing with? You can also look at the past work of the writer. And if you work with a PR person, and it's funny because occasionally, somebody has accidentally forwarded this to me, and I'll see the dossier that a PR agency will put together on me.

1:15:17But a PR agency, if they set you up with an interview with someone, they'll usually do some digging and they'll find, what is this person usually right about? What kind of stories they do? What are they generally interested in? So you can have a sense, right? What kind of thing are they doing? And you know, past that, I think there's also a question of like, well, what are you doing in the world? Right? I mean, if there is something somewhat controversial about you, and especially if you're engaging with an outlet that is interested in that kind of stuff, there's a halfway decent chance they're at least going to explore it with you and ask you about it.

1:15:56And if you're like weird and cagey with them, they're going to think that there's more to it and they're going to start like digging more. But the ultimate answer here is that like every part of this and this has come through, I'm sure in our whole conversation, every part of this process is really out of your control. Like does somebody pay attention to you? What do they write about you? Like when do they write about? All of it is outside of your control, which again is the reason why it's not smart to think about press as a primary strategy for driving growth. It's a good add -on, but these people are gonna do what they're gonna do.

1:16:34The best you can do is read the tea leaves. Yeah, it was a very weird, like I don't get press softens, not like something I pursue, but it was just like, this is wild. I'm just gonna talk to this guy, and then something will come out. I've no idea what it might be. Like you might have things wrong because I even get a chance to review and my right It's like a strange experience to go through, but it all worked out great. Yeah, it is. It's very strange. It is. It's strange. And I find that people often don't, in business, people understand the structure of what's happening, right? Like they understand that we're a business magazine.

1:17:11We're going to write a story about a business. It's going to sort of like take a certain form. But, you know, I've done a lot of different writing. And I have had the experience many times over my career where I will, I'll spend a lot of time with people and they will have really no understanding of what it is that I'm doing at all. Like they can't conceptualize it. And then the story will come out and then they'll always reach out to me and they'll be like, oh, now I finally understand like what you were even trying to do. It's fascinating. You're really, you are, you is a vulnerable experience and you have to know that and the more Before you try to control it, the more the reporter is going to be annoyed at you.

1:17:53The more, in fact, the reporter might try to take a shot at you in the story as a result, because they just found you too controlling because they felt like you had something to hide. This is not a comfortable thing. You have to go into this being vulnerable and you have to know that there's a chance that it could blow up in your face. That's the price that you're paying for reaching their audience. Great advice. How about we do just one more example of an awesome email pitch that you got and then we get to our very exciting lightning round. I'll tell you about a pitch. I don't know that I have it in my inbox still.

1:18:29Do I? No, it's not there, sadly. I'll just tell you about it. But it leads to something that is another way of thinking about getting press, which is really important for people to remember. So far, Lenny, we've said the majority of our time talking about press in the form of some kind of feature on you, writing about you or including you in some kind of prominent way in a story that's basically highlighting the thing that you wanted to get out there. Your product or something about your business or something, right? And then we talked a little bit about another way of doing it, which is sort of putting you out as an expert in authority.

1:19:03There's another way of thinking about this, which is that you can either create or present context in which you just happen to be a part. So here's the story pitch that I got that leads into this. Okay, so this is years and years and years ago. I just started at Faskin or at Entrepreneur. And I hear from a guy named Fred Ruckle. And Fred Ruckle has got a cat toy. and it's called the ripple rug. And it's basically like, imagine a rug and then another rug kind of on top of it, but you'll, you'll suited so that the rug is lumpy. Like, there's a lot of lumps in this. And they're holes. And this is for a cat, right?

1:19:49To kind of crawl in and out of these spaces and bat and do whatever cats do. I don't know, I don't know the cat. And so he wanted to tell me about the sales of this ripple rug and about how the sales skyrocketing and you know all the things that he thought made it special. It's made out of recycled bottles and whatever the stuff right, made in the USA. Oh cool stuff but not relevant to me because you know we're not cat toy monthly and we're not reaching a whole bunch of cat owners. I don't know what I know. And so I replied and I said what I usually say, you know congratulations on what you've built this is not a fit for coverage.

1:20:22Now Fred stumbled his way into this but he did really a very smart thing because what he responded What I'm not interested in is that I'm not interested in learning about a gigantic scam that's happening on Amazon in eBay that we've been caught up in. Let me know. So, you know, I was like, oh, well, that, yeah, I guess I am interested in hearing about that. So I said, tell me more. And he sent me this long email. Fred loves long emails. And I got him on the phone and had him explain. And finally, I understood it. So this is, and maybe people are familiar with this, But this is a this is sort of known as like Amazon to eBay arbitrage so basically the idea here is that Fred is selling his ripple rug on Amazon or at least he was that I don't know if he's still as selling his ripple rug on Amazon But there are a lot of people who are copying the listing for his ripple rug and Making their own postings for it on eBay and they sell it for a slightly higher price So let's say that's and again I'm making these up but like let's say the front is selling his ripple rug for $30 on Amazon So somebody will sell it for $40 on eBay and Then somebody buys it on eBay.

1:21:32They find it they buy it on eBay. They pay $40 So that person gets $40 takes 30 of it goes to Amazon buys the ripple rug And then just has it shipped to the buyer and so it's our bar trust right and and and you might think well Why would Fred care about this? He still gets the sale the reason he cares about this is because The Ripple rug shows up at the customer's house and it shows up in a Amazon box even though they bought it on eBay and they think, why did that happen? And then the next thing they do is they go to Amazon and they discover that it's cheaper on Amazon. And now they feel ripped off and who do they feel like they are ripped off by Fred?

1:22:17Cause they don't know about the Arborcharger, they don't know that they exist. And so this person who has at this point opened the cat toy and probably had their cat roll around in it now Shove's the whole thing back at a box and returns it and Fred gets dinged and that's why he doesn't like this And he has tried and tried and tried to get Amazon and eBay to stop this But he said like they just nobody seems to care and all these small businesses are losing tons of money on returns Because of this and I had never heard of this and I thought it was fascinating It's like a problem the small business owners are dealing with and so I was like Fred Do you know other people who are dealing with this?

1:22:50He's like, yeah, because I talked to them online all the time. And so he sends me off. And so I reported this whole thing out. I wrote this like three, four thousand word story on this thing. And Fred was the main character because he was the way to understand this problem. And I did all the reporting and I contacted the platforms and I contacted the people who make the arbitrage software. I did a whole report. But Fred got his press because sometimes, and here's the lesson. Sometimes you are not the story, but you can be part of the story. And sometimes that means a Fred stumbled into it, but I get plenty of people who reach out, and maybe they have a real estate startup.

1:23:32And there's something really interesting happening in the real estate space. And they reach out and they tell me about this really interesting thing that's happening in the real estate space and the role that they happen to play in it. And now, I think, oh, well, that's interesting. Maybe there's a story about that. My wife, the freelancer, Jen Miller, she's done this many times where like she once did the story about there was a bunch of startups that were all related to helping people like prepare for death in some way or another. She's not going to write about one of them. But when somebody reached out and said, hey, here's a trend happening and we're one of them.

1:24:03Well, great. That's an interesting story. She wrote that and the company that reached out to her, you know, got kind of prominent billing because they were the ones who reached out. So, you know, Barbara Corcoran from Shark Tank? I think so. I think so. Yeah. She's just been a regular in Shark Tank since the very beginning. And she made her fortune by building a real estate company called Corcoran, a realtor, so you know, realtor, buy and sell property. And the way in which she built this company is fascinating. So Barbara, before she was Barbara Corcoran of Corcoran Realty, Barbara Corcoran was Randum, New York City Realtor, Barbara from New Jersey, and she was trying to figure out a way to distinguish herself from the NASA's.

1:24:50She came up with an idea, which was to take her own sales data. Right? The only window she has into the Manhattan Real Estate market at that time is what she is buying in sell or what her clients are buying in selling, which she is facilitating. She has that data. It's going up or down relative to last year. She puts all the status together in what she calls the Quarker and report. And she starts sending the Quarker and report out to the New York Times and the New York Post and where, and because nobody else at the time was putting together a report on the health of the Manhattan real estate market, everyone started reporting on the Quarker report as if it was an authoritative thing.

1:25:28And it's produced by Barbara Corcoran, which immediately put her in the position of being an authority in this space. And that was so smart, and I see it happen all the time. My inbox will also be filled with, for example, a company that specializes in remote work consulting. That's, you know, so especially as a remote work consulting, you can hire them to be to be served. It's hard to get pressed for that. Here's what they do. They pay a surveying firm to find all sorts of things. The top states for remote work. The top companies for remote work, the top whenever for remote work, and they produce all these surveys and they send the surveys out and the surveys get covered because now they're creating a piece of news.

1:26:14They're creating some context in which they just happen to live in. Hard to write about them, this random company, but write about the survey, that's interesting stuff. Oh, turns out that Utah is the topst, I don't know if that's true. Is the topstay for that's something that people will write about. You're giving people things to write about. And then once they do that, you are a part of the story. I get those pitches all the time. I occasionally bite on them and Fred from Ripper Rugg got himself a big feature as a result. That's an amazing other strategy. And I imagine if I was a founder, I'd be like, hmm, what trends can I think about that I can tap into?

1:26:44Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of you know, sometimes you have it in your own data. I mean, if you have a lot of data. You might a Zapier. Zapier is a great example. I get a pitch from Zapier every single year about the fastest growing business apps of the year based on Zapier data because they they see they see what people are using and they just compile that together into a top 10 list and people run it. It's very smart. Amazing. So we've gone through all three steps. Is there anything else that you wanted to touch on that we haven't touched on anything else that you think would be really valuable for founders or product leaders, trying to get pressed that we haven't already.

1:27:21Sure. This has come up in different ways, but I'll just put a point on it as a maybe final way of thinking about this. Be human. Be human, right? Press releases don't work because they are not human. And I don't like interviewing people who are on talking points because that's not human. You're ultimately engaging in a human business. A subjective decision is being made about how to serve an audience of humans. There's no right or wrong. There's no way to know. Media is a sort of barely data driven industry because every story is kind of different. It's like it's hard to optimize the product because the product changes every minute.

1:28:06And so you're dealing with humans. And the more that you can be human in every step of this process, when you pitch, write a human email. Don't write a thing that looks like it came off of some marketing copy, write a human email to another human. And then when that person engages with you, be very human with them. I mean, Lenny, the reason why that fast company reporter liked you, I am very sure was because when they got on the phone with you, you were just like a normal, nice guy. Like if you if you presented yourself differently Because you were you just wanted to You know frame yourself in some way or you felt protective or something or whatever it was like the reporter would have thought This guy is a dick and he would have written a totally different story Be as human as you can and you will be dealing with a human who will receive that amazing advice With that we've reached our very exciting lightning round.

1:29:04Yeah, are you ready? Let's do it Let's do it. What are two or three books they've recommended most to other people? Andrew Chenz, the cold start problem has come up over and over again for me because they're just really great lessons about network effects and I've been having a lot of conversations about like anxiety and perfectionism with entrepreneurs lately and a book by a Psychotherapist named Catherine Morgan Schaffler called the perfectionist's guide to losing control as I think are just a really great read super cool What is a favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed?

1:29:38Movie? I don't get to see a lot of movies these days because I have two little kids, but I took my eight -year -old to see the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was great! And a really nice way of like, I loved them as a kid, and so it was cool to see the modern version. And then my wife and I just finished Better Call Saul, like years late, but it was, wuh, like just perfect. I haven't watched that series yet. I loved breaking bad, but... Well, it's worth it. You got to... Okay, damn. Another series I gotta get started on. I know it's too much, too much television. So I usually ask this next question to like product leaders and growth people, but I'm curious.

1:30:09So what the answer for you would be is, you have a favorite interview question you like to ask people you're interviewing. Usually it's about, you put your high -rate job candidate. Yeah, that's the ideal. But I take it either way. I'll take it a little bit different because we've been talking about press. This is a really great strategy for interviewing people. And I'm going to tell it to you because I think that it's also good in any other context. And it might be a thing that somebody will do to you in an interview. My favorite strategy for interviewing people is to throw a theory at them. And I mean like a theory of the world, right?

1:30:40I mean that maybe 10 minutes in after they have told me a couple different things and answered some different questions. I'll make a connection in my head. And I'll say, you know, I want to run a theory by you. Do you think that the reason why you're really interested in this or you made that decision is actually because of this other thing that you told me a little bit about or it, right? Like, you know, you're listening. It's really active listening and you're combining things together into some theory. And the reason why the theory works so well is because it forces people to think in real time in front of you.

1:31:14And I like that because I often interview people who have been interviewed a million times before, right? Like, you know, I interview Jimmy Fallon in the rock and whatever, like they've been interviewed a million times before. So how do you get them to think in front of you? And the answer is to ask them the thing that they haven't been asked. And what I love about the theory is that it shows them that you're really listening and you're trying to understand them. And you know, it's so interesting that you did that. And I wonder if it's because of, you know, XYZ thing, like that gets them to react in a really earnest, honest way.

1:31:49And I would say for what it's worth that as a job candidate tactic, it's not that bad either. My favorite job interview that I ever did as a candidate that I didn't even get the job was years ago, I, years and years ago, I interviewed for a job at New York Magazine. I interviewed with Adam Moss, who is not there anymore, but he was like the legendary editor -in -chief. And he made me on the spot, drilled down specifically into an idea, right? He was like, he was like, what's your favorite section in strategist, which is one of the sections of magazine? I was like, I really like the real estate section.

1:32:24He's like, all right. What would be a good neighborhood that we should feature in the real estate section? And I was like, I don't know what I named a neighborhood. He's like, what would be like three good elements of that? Or would it be like, he just kind of kept pushing me, drill down, drill down, drill down. And there was no right or wrong answer. He just wanted to see how I thought. And I found that to be incredibly powerful and I do a version of that when I interview them. Awesome. I love that. What is a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really like? I use BigVu. I don't even know how to pronounce it.

1:32:56BigVu, B -I -G -V -U, all the time. It's a teleprompter app. I spent like $150 buying an actual teleprompter because I make a lot of video. And that teleprompter is, it's actually for people who are just listening to this. I'm pointing at another desk across my room where it's sitting there and I've never used it. And the reason is because then I discovered BigView, which is just a app that runs a teleprompter like very close to the camera, either in horizontal or vertical mode. And I've tested it out in a million different ways and it really works. Like you're reading it and it really looks like you're looking directly at the camera.

1:33:30I love it. It has saved me so much time. That is cool. So you basically put your phone on your screen next to the camera or wherever your camera is. No, no, no. This would be for if you're recording. If you're recording on the phone. Got it. So you're staring at the phone and telling you what to say. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. So you write a script, right? And then you just import the script. And then you choose the speed. You can talk to it. You know, how many words per minute. And then it'll run the text very close to where the camera lens is. Amazing. All right. I'm going to check that out. What is a favorite life motto that you like to repeat yourself, share with friends, something that comes up a lot?

1:34:10Something that I've been repeating a lot to people is something that I heard. So I recommended Catherine's book, The Perfection of Sky to Losing Control. I met Catherine because we've since become friends, but I just interviewed her for the podcast when her book came out. And we were talking about feeling overworked and stretched, being stretched too thin. And she gave me this question, which I think about almost daily, and I repeat to people all the time. And that is, what's the point of building something if you can't maintain it. And I love that question because I like probably everyone listening to this pushes themselves really hard.

1:34:47And at some point you have to step back and think, what, like am I building something where at some point there is sustainability for me here, or is this unsustainable? And what's the point of building something if you can't maintain it is just a, is like a great reminder for why you're building something and how you have to build it? I have a very similar quote that my sister's partner once said that a stuck with me forever, which is life is maintenance. Basically, everything that you buy or bring into your life, you have to maintain. Like, we got New York into sure. Now, we have a guy that comes every year to check it.

1:35:20Got a generator. Someone's got to check that thing all the time. We got a toy. Now, I got to think about where it is ago. Right. Do we throw it away? Do we keep it? Like, everything that you bring into your life, you have to maintain basically for the rest of it. That's really true. Yeah, so it's really, I think specifically for work, it's like you start a new project you're going to have to maintain it. You have to maintain it. Like this podcast, right? It's like, do you want to start a podcast and do it forever? Yeah, that's a part of it. Part of starting something is you have to maintain it.

1:35:49Yeah. You know, I know we're in the lightning round and we've defied the logic of lightning rounds, but I'll just add one other thing to that, which is that I had this interview. I interviewed Michelle Fyfer for the cover of the magazine. And one of the things that I thought was most fascinating was that she started this fragrance company and it's called Henry Rose and she said the major difference between making movies and building a company that she found was that when you make a movie all the work happens in the beginning Like you make the movie and then the movie is out and then you are done Like you don't have to work on the movie ever again and she was not really mentally prepared for a company being the exact opposite.

1:36:28That the launch of the company is actually the start of the work. And then it has a kind of, there's an endlessness to it. And she said that it took her like, like a solid year to adapt to that reality. And then it became fun. But I think it's a thing people forget. Well, that story and it's cool that you got to interview Michelle Fyford. Yeah, she's great. Final question. As reading your profile line, and you said that the only reason you were able to achieve which you've achieved in life and got to where you're today is something that you called the opportunity set B. Oh yeah. Can you just explain what that is and why that is so important to you?

1:37:01Oh yeah, sure. So in front of you, right now, like you, Lenny, you, everyone listening, watching, there are two sets of opportunities. Opportunity set A and opportunity set B. Opportunity set A is everything that's asked of you. So if you have a job, it's what your boss expects of you. if you have your own company, it's what everybody expects of you. And doing good at those things is really important. That's a measurement of success. That's opportunity to say, hey, everything that's asked of you. And then there's opportunity to set B. And opportunity to set B is what's available to you, even though nobody's asking you to do it.

1:37:45And that could be, again, if you have a job, that could be taking on new responsibilities or joining a new team or something, but personally, it could be, it could be pursuing a hobby. It could be starting a podcast because you like listening to podcasts, it could be anything. What I have found throughout my own career is that opportunity set B is always more important, infinitely more important. Because the thing is that if you only focus on opportunity set A, then you are only qualified to do the things that you're already doing. But opportunity set B is where growth happens and where you push yourself in different directions.

1:38:20And I found a long time ago that it was just really helpful to think about these two things. Oftentimes maybe we don't do opportunity set B because we don't know how it's going to pay off or we don't know where we're going to find the time. But I have always found, always, that engaging in these things of what is available to me, What's available to me right now around me? That, and there's nobody's asking me to do, leads to the next growth either because it turns into an actual opportunity or because it informs some future opportunity. I got to entrepreneur magazine, zero, zero people. When I became editor -in -chief, zero people said, you should hit the speaking circuit.

1:39:07You should get really good at being interviewed on podcasts. You should write a book. Nobody said any of that. My job was to make a good magazine and direct the editorial of the brand. But all those things were available to me. And once I recognize that, I realize that I can pursue them and in doing so also think differently about who I am. Am I a magazine editor? Not really anymore? That's one of the things that I do now. I think of myself as an entrepreneur as a person who is now in the business of helping others. I'm an entrepreneur who helps entrepreneurs. That's what I think of myself as.

1:39:39And I only got there because I was thinking, I am here and therefore I can get there. Nobody's ever gonna ask me to do it. I have to do it myself. It's the thing that I always think about. And it's the thing that keeps me up at night. What am I doing now that is leading me to something else? I'm the only one who can figure it out. Beautiful. It reminds me of a recent podcast guest, and vice, which is the best way to track your progress in your career in life, too, is just measuring how many oh shit moments you have because those are the moments where you're growing, you're doing something. I think it maybe it's an example of an opportunity said B where he wasn't a default path.

1:40:17It's like, oh, I think I should do this even that's really hard. Yeah. What a beautiful way to end it. Jason, not only do I want to start working on press, it feels like very achievable to get press now. Like that was really energizing. Like, holy shit, I could do this. I could just find some people, pitch them here's how I do it. So not only that, I'm gonna look for some opportunity said B routes for myself too. Thank you so much for being here to final questions working folks finding online if they want to reach out Maybe pitch you on their story and how can listeners be useful to you? Oh, so Lenny thanks for all the work you do which I just really love and and for creating the space for me to share all this Insight how can you find me?

1:40:55I'll offer two things so an opportunity set B is like a good launching point for both of them So I wrote a book. It's called Build for Tomorrow. It is meant for anybody who's going through any kind of change in their lives or their work. And there's an audiobook version that I read myself, but also hardcover and e -books. Just find it wherever you get books. And again, it's Build for Tomorrow. Opportunity is set B. That whole thing is actually a chapter in the book. So I go into a lot more detail there. And then if you want to get in touch and also get those kinds of things, I have a newsletter, which is called One Thing Better each week.

1:41:26one way to improve your work and build a career company that you love. Again, the kind of opportunity said be, is that the kind of thing that I put out? It's very much about the personal and emotional side of work. And so you can find that by going to the web address, one thing better, that's one like OME, one thing better. Email. Just plug that in, one thing better. Email. And I said, that's a good way to reach out to me because if you get the newsletter and you reply to it, It goes to my inbox, I guarantee I will write back to you. Inside Track. Jason, thank you again so much for being here.

1:42:01Oh, thanks, I know this is so fun. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or a leaving review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's podcast .com. See you in the next episode!