The ultimate guide to PR | Emilie Gerber (founder of Six Eastern)

22:54And like you're not going to get a feature with one of their main reporters until you're a bit further along, but they do have that really strong contributor network, which is much kind of a lower bar and what they'll accept in a way. Like they're more open to covering earlier stage companies, so that's worth checking out too. So those are my top ones. I'll stop there. That's amazing. And those are the most commonly requested and the ones you mostly go after. Yeah, they're the most realistic for most startups. There are ones like the Verge and they're a little more, they're a little more like gadget focused in just areas that we don't necessarily touch, but could be good for some companies as well.

23:33Got it. And then I was going to say this for later, but there's obviously New York Times and the Wall Street Journal thoughts on going after those. Yeah, we do get those questions all the time. I would say it comes up on calls with founders. I went one out of every five. And really when you look at, I kind of make a joke sometimes like, oh, if you want those, just have like a crisis and they'll write about it. Like fire your CEO or do like really intense layoffs and yeah, have some regulatory issue. And you'll get this. Stories there. Yeah, yeah, I can show, I can show some examples there. When you look at earlier stage companies that are getting coverage in those publications, that's what's happening.

24:13Now, let's say you're a tiny bit further along and you're serious be serious, see, you know, maybe you can seriously and you're looking for coverage in those publications. There's a couple criteria that they're always going to want to fit right a feature on your company. One is your valuation. So that needs to be something that you're sharing on the record. Two is your like hard business metrics. Like usually revenue, sometimes something else. And so oftentimes they'll tell founders that and immediately they're like, oh, well, we're not sharing that. So I'm like, okay, well, that's kind of the end of the conversation.

24:43Sometimes it can be shared on background, but as a general rule, you're expected to share that sort of thing. So that's kind of a non -starter a lot of times. I totally think it makes sense to build relationships with the relevant beat reporters and ideally like shoot for, when I say build relationships, I just mean shoot for an intro meeting on behalf of the clients. Or they can reach out directly with those kinds of reporters. But they're just not going to write a feature on your company. If anything, you're going to be one or two sentences in a larger story of something that they're writing about.

25:15And yeah, that's just the nature of their coverage. And then when you look at something like CMBC, they're targeting people that want to learn about public markets. And so if you're not a public company, they have their CMBC disruptor 50 list, which is focused on companies that will soon be at that stage. But it's not going to be a place for early stage companies. When I have these pieces in past company and CMBC, it was such a weird experience where I chat with them for half an hour. And then it just comes out. And I have no idea what they're going to write about. Could be a complete tear down of everything I'm doing.

25:45And you have no idea. How do you help try to avoid that sort of story? I know you have no control. Obviously reporters can write what they want to write about. Do you have any advice for how to avoid them writing something really negative about you? Generally, if it's something where that you're being briefed in advance, unless it is around something negative that's going on, that's not, it's just not their intention. It's just not going to happen. But what is a bigger issue is it not being the angle or the messaging that the company wants. And so part of that, there's absolutely nothing that we can do.

26:17They, reporters are not our employees, but we're not paying them to write these pieces. They have to maintain their editorial integrity. And so I consider it my job to educate the founders and spokespeople that we work with that we cannot change anything. The story says what we can do is correct any factual inaccuracies. And so when we do that all the time, if something is actually wrong, we can get it replaced. But if they don't like that they were called, you know, put in a category of software that they don't identify with, that's, you know, not something that we can fix. Another thing that you can do, though, to prevent that from happening is just really ensuring that the spokesperson before talking to the reporter is, you know, going to nail the messages that they want.

27:00The more that you can reiterate over and over again, how you want the article to be, I think, the more likely that it'll land in the reporter's head and make sure that the reporter really understands what you're building and what your goals are. And all you can do is really use the briefing and the materials that you provide to kind of sway and influence. But there's not much to be out in that. You mentioned, so we've talked about all these publications. These are ones to consider going after. You also mentioned podcasts and awards or something people will go after. Is there a tip you could share of how to find a lined podcast or awards?

27:32Like how you find a list of here, we should go after these. When we use Google, we just use search engines, basically for finding everything and the way that we go about it is first figuring out who their customers are and what vertical they're in. And then just two searches for a podcast that are within that vertical. But not, it's not as easy as just reaching out to the ones that pop up first. The next step is like a qualitative analysis. First of all, do they have vendor CEOs or vendor executives on their show? Let's say your product is sold to product managers. Maybe they only have product managers on the show.

28:07So instead, you don't put the CEO forward and you put the right spokesperson. For a podcast might be referring to. But this could be for CFOs. So let's say you sell it into CFOs. Don't pitch your CEO for that podcast. Get a CFO for that podcast. I'm very four companies hiring for the roles that they sell into. It helps us a lot. So if your audience is a CFO, it really helps if you have a CFO. If your audience is a CMO, it really helps if you have a CMO. And that actually, when you're earlier sage, isn't always the case. And so it's a lot harder to pitch. So I think that's the second part of the qualitative analysis.

28:48The third is like, podcast really come and go. Make sure, it sounds obvious, but make sure it's one that's actively producing. When you Google ones, you're going to half of them are not going to be active podcasts. And then the third is listening to at least part of one episode, making sure the quality is high, making sure it's the kind of thing you even want to associate yourself with. And then just looking at who the past guests are, is that the peers that you want to associate yourself with. And then one other thing that you can do is just, in conversations with customers, find out what they're listening to, find out what they're watching, find out like their media diet.

29:21And it doesn't have to be a big, crazy survey that you send to your entire customer base. It can be casual. Like we do have, if you're farther along, it's great if you can make that a more formal sort of process, but it doesn't necessarily need to be. And then when in terms of reaching out, I highly recommend figuring out who the host is. Like just doing the research, figuring out who the host is. And then just sending them like a casual note, like I'm a big fan of just reaching out on LinkedIn and saying, hey, love the show. Are you up into guest ideas? I don't even mention, wow, like the client or anything, just like kind of opening the door.

29:54I just feel like that's so much more approachable and friendly than starting with a big pitch. And I think, you know, some people start with this very long email and reducing themselves are going really deep. And you don't have to do that. And especially because, you know, maybe only one out of every 10 replies will also save you a lot of time if you just start with something really lightweight. I think that actually works really well. That's what I find is, if it's like a simple little message, I'm like, yeah, let me know what you got in mind. Even though most like 99 % of the time, it doesn't work out sometimes or exactly.

30:23And so I find, sure, let's just see who you got. And then usually I'm just like, nope, sorry, not a fit. And you get the reply that way. If you send the initial pitch and the reporter or podcast host isn't interested, chances are they won't reply. But if you just start with something friendly and they reply, they'll feel like a little more, I guess, like a little more of a connection there. And so at least still get an answer. Whereas otherwise you might not get an answer at all. Yeah, on the survey piece, I think that's a great idea. And I've seen a few of my sponsors do this where they ask their customers, what podcast you listen to with newsletters, do you read?

30:57Which is such a simple idea, but I think people don't do that. And just from that, you could figure out, okay, here's the podcast we gotta get on. Here's the newsletters we wanna run, Anthony. I wanna talk about how to actually pitch well, but before that, we've been talking a bit about who to reach out to and how to do that. So there's a few questions here. It's just like how important is to have warm connection to your reporter? If you don't have that, what's the best way to reach out to them? Is it LinkedIn? Is it Twitter DMs? Something else? What advice do you have about just, before we get into the structure of the pitch?

31:31Figure out who to pitch and then how to get to that advice? Who are your relationships question comes up on a lot of our calls with founders as well? I'd like to pose the question to you. Did we have a relationship before this? No. Exactly. I am with the belief that it does not matter as much as many people think it does. And I explained this on calls where they ask, oh, tell me about your roller decks or I could wish your relationships with. First of all, media is changing so fast. So sure, maybe there is a reporter that we worked with recently. They might have a completely different beat in six months.

32:09They might be at a very different publication. So it's not sustainable to build an entire career on having relationships with certain public publications and media is changing too. Like now podcasts and substack and newsletters, like it's just changing too fast. And so I think cold outreach done well is just as effective. The only thing that a relationship will get you is an open and an answer. And so any good reporter is not going to be making their editorial decisions based on who their friends are. That's just not the nature. It shouldn't be the nature of the industry. And it's not. Maybe it'll get you an intro coffee.

32:46But that's about it. It's not going to get you coverage. They're not going to cover your news because there's a relationship there. I think the much harder and more important part is being good at writing really thoughtful notes to the right people. And in a way, now we do have a relationship. And so it can come from a cold email. But now it's easier for me to pitch you because you know my name. And we've spoken and we've worked together. And so for me, I'm a big fan of being helpful to reporters. And I tend to just keep it professional and pitch them on stories. I don't necessarily feel like going to drains or having coffee all the time is crucial to building those relationships.

33:24A lot of the reporters that I work with regularly have never met in person. And that's OK. But it can be great for getting answers, I would say. That's where the relationships can be helpful. And then once you have worked with a reporter out of story, it's true that maybe there'll be more likely to come back when they're working on something related. Use you as a source. Use you quote you in articles that are relevant. So once there's something there, that's great. And you should totally nurture it. But it's not all about calling in favors. Awesome. OK. And then in terms of how to reach reporters, what do you find most effective?

33:59Yeah. I'm a pro like all platforms approach. So sometimes reporters will tweet that they're working on a story about something. And rather than sending them an email with my pitch, I'll say, hey, 10 words on why this person's the first thing you should talk to and then send a link to an article on them. And that's my entire pitch. And honestly, it's sometimes more effective than when I write 30 minutes writing a really thoughtful email. So I'm a fan of that. I'm a fan of DMs short, concise direct DMs. Sometimes LinkedIn, although for whatever reason, I feel like that works better with the podcast side with hosts.

34:38And then of course email. We totally email. When I email a reporter, I love to make the subject line just as clear as possible, like as what the goal is and why I'm emailing them. And so let's say it's for a recurring column that they have. I'll put the name of that column and the person that I think should be included in the subject line. And even that her reporter is like, oh, they actually know. They actually know I write this column and they're suggesting a guess for this column. It's so direct, it's so clear. I think just saying what your intentions are right away, like are you trying to get a Q &A?

35:10Are you trying to get a story? Like are you trying to get a funding story? Like I mentioned before, is very crucial. And keeping it short, I would say my most successful pitches are three sentences at any time. It needs, sometimes it needs to be longer than that. And generally I feel like my pitch is weaker for that reason. Attention fans are short. And so the more concise you can make it the better. And then just, if one clap, sometimes I'll start with one platform, like I'll start with an email and that doesn't work. So I'll go somewhere else. But I try to make it very human and respectful. So using language like, hey, I know your inbox is polyslam.

35:46Sorry to annoy, I'm trying you one more time here. Another thing that actually can work really well is pointing out gaps in their coverage too and talking about things that they should be talking about. Hey, my client's noticing this trend. I know you've covered it from this point of view, but no one's talking about it from this point of view. That can be really helpful because it shows that you are actually paying attention to what they are writing. But in a way that you're like kind of demonstrating that you have some critical thinking going on, not just, I liked your article on X, which is a common practice that PR people kind of use.

36:18I like this and then jump to your pitch. So yeah, giving it a little more thoughtful pointing out gaps in coverage. And then the last piece is, especially if you don't have hard news that you're pitching, having something like pretty controversial to say. So we work with a lot of AI companies. If nine of them have one stance on something happening in the field and one has the other stance, chances are that one is going to be the one that a reporter wants to talk to because they are getting so many pitches on this topic, but they want to write a balanced article. They need that opposing view. And so we really push our clients to have something unique and different and bold to say.

36:58And it obviously has to be a strategic decision for the business. You don't want to go commenting on regulatory things. If that's not, it sounds like you don't want to necessarily be a part of that conversation. But there are, I think, instances where it can make a lot of sense to say something that's a little bit bold and controversial. That last piece is really interesting. Is there an example that comes to mind and where you had a controversial contrarian pitch? Yeah. So we work with a company called Clockwise, which essentially manages your calendar and allows time for a focus time within your workday.

37:31They move things around for you. And a couple of months ago, Shopify got tons of positive press for essentially like canceling all their recurring meetings. And everyone was very intrigued by this strategy. Press was generally quite positive towards it. And so we knew that if we just wrote another piece saying, oh, this is great. No one would want to publish that. It just isn't, you know, it had been set in a million different ways. So we looked at the topic a little more critically and we're like, OK, is this actually enough to change meeting culture within a business? And we kind of identified all these other things that we think need to happen in order to really like change the culture in a way that's going to be sustainable in long term versus just like blanket, like deleting of calendar meetings.

38:14And so we ended up turning this into an op -ed. So something that together we wrote and then pitched up publication. And yeah, the title was Shopify's meeting cost calculator does not address the issue of wasted time. And so, you know, it's not, it wasn't necessarily saying it was a horrible idea, but it was putting, you know, a little more critical, a little bit more of a critical eye towards it. And fast company was interested in the idea. And they hosted the piece by the CEO, Matt Martin. And it was like a great thing for us to comment on. And so, yeah, I think it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily need to be something where you're coming against it, but just like, you know, proposing something that's a little more thoughtful on the topic.

38:53Like just hearing that, it sounds like such an obvious thing to do. Basically, reporters looking for an interesting story to write about. If you tell them something interesting that they could put out, that's a win -win for everybody. So makes Tennyson's, let me try to summarize the advice you've shared so far when you're, say, DMing reporter, you're by so far as basically, be very direct, just tell them, hey, I'm looking for, what's like an example of being direct? Is it like I'm looking for a story on this fundraising announcement? I wouldn't say I'm looking for, I don't know, just, I would say, if it was a DM, I would say reaching out from X company would love to offer you the first, the launch story alongside their funding if you're open to it.

39:35And usually I'd either say the amount in the investors or the company name, as you give them both, you're kind of just giving them the story and they could run with it right away. That's actually an important distinction. And so you could either say reaching out with this, you know, Maritag company that's raised eight million from X investors, really interesting approach they're taking on X incumbent, do you want the exclusive? That's kind of how I would phrase it. Okay, awesome. Then try to keep it to three sentences, and you're saying sometimes when you go longer, you actually end up backfiring each time.

40:07Sometimes include a link to a story they've written or some other story about the company that might give them some context, is that right? Yeah. And a caveat on that is if a competing publication just wrote us some like a bigger, some more feature on that they're not gonna wanna see that. And so I would use that like strategically like if it's like an old, if it's a piece from a while ago on a different topic that does share a lot of info, I'll include it, but I'm not necessarily gonna include something that might seem like why would I cover this when this was just written about? Good point. You also talked about how, try to like acknowledge their inboxes probably slammed and this is, you know, taking some time, maybe in follow -ups especially like, hey, realize your inbox slam just that it, come back to this.

40:51Then you talk about this idea of identifying gaps in their writing like, hey, it seems like you cover Gen AI, there's this trend that we've been noticing that maybe it would be interesting to cover. And then something controversial or something a little contrarian that would get them, oh yeah, this could be a really interesting story. Awesome. Is there anything else broadly in terms of pitch advice to get the attention of a reporter that comes to mind? And I know this is like a lifetime of experience and it's hard to summarize all of it, but anything else. Well, one topic, maybe this would be covered also, but one topic I think is talking about in comments that this company is taking on.

41:34So a lot of companies want to position themselves as category creators and I actually hate that. It doesn't work. It doesn't land with us and most of the time it's not totally true. And so instead it's actually really great when you can talk about how you are doing what X household name does, but better for X reasons. And that works so well. I'll put that in subject lines. I'll put company taking on whatever Salesforce with X approach. It's so successful because instantly it gives the reporter a frame of reference. And so it gives the reporter, oh, I know what Salesforce does. So I can understand how this solution would be better.

42:14And a lot of companies really want to position themselves as the first to do anything in a certain space. They love the idea of category creating, creating these little marketing phrases that they use for the new category. And that's fine. If perhaps that works on the sales side, but on the PR side I would never put that in a pitch. There's this gonna be a meta comment, but there's two, like the two topics that are most controversial in this podcast that I have both sides of opinions on is the power of category creation and jobs to be done. Those are the, oh really. There's a lot of passion on those sides.

42:51I mean, sure. You can point to examples of the two companies that have done category creation well, but are you gonna like, that it's two out of what? Like thousands? I love it. I'm gonna. I'm gonna keep Pokemon hornets first. I love it. Okay, but you're saying in your experience doesn't work when pitching reporters. For PR. Yeah, simply for PR. I mean, in other areas of the business, I can't comment on, but for PR, it's just not a useful tactic. Okay, awesome. This episode is brought to you by Vanta. When it comes to ensuring your company has top notch security practices, things get complicated fast.

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44:12So I asked you to bring some examples of pitches that are great and also examples of pitches that could be better. And I know, yeah, okay, cool. So you, thank you for doing the homework. Let's pull them up. And then I'd love to just show people what you find has been really effective and works great about these examples. And then what somebody could have been better, whatever you want to share about that example. Sure, sure, sounds good. I guess since we're on the topic of category creating versus not category creating, I'll start with an example that's very relevant to that. So we worked with Ramp in their very early days and one of their first product announcements that we did together was the launch of their built -A offering.

44:52And so at the time, I think there were like a $3 billion companies and thing along those lines. So big, but not as big as they are today. Product news rarely gets big feature coverage, especially for something along the lines of a built -A offering for B2B companies. And so essentially the way that we framed the story was how Ramp was now able to take on Bill .com, which at the time I'm not sure if it still is, was one of the best performing Fintech IPOs, public company that really had still only captured 2 % of this market overall. And so by positioning it as allowing them to take on this massive incumbent that was getting a lot of press, we actually were able to get a CNBC story on the launch of this product.

45:38Generally, they won't even consider product stories, but they really liked the angle of this underdog. Doing something that could take on a piece of market share from them. And the next day, there was actually another story about how Bill .com stock had come on down when they did make mention of Ramp's news in that story. So it ended up really just like, it was a very powerful way of telling the narrative there. And another way, if we hadn't pitched it like that, would have just been like, Ramp bring simple seamless streamlined ability to do vendor payments and new finance offering. First of its kind, like all these things, that might be like how you would talk in your customer emails.

46:18But if I had pitched it that way, probably wouldn't have been a story. So if we had pitched it as them creating a new category of this all -in -one software, which I mean, yeah, it could be argued that's another way to tell the story. I don't think CNBC would have been interested. Awesome. So another example. We work with a company called Column Tax, which is embedded tax filing software. So essentially they work with other Fintechs to allow people to file their taxes within the tools that they already use. And last year, they partnered with a company called the Pell that offers SNAP benefits.

46:55So essentially for low -income families to receive government benefits to offer tax filing directly within the app that they created. And that was kind of one thing that they were doing. And many other customers that they had, lots of different threads we could pull on with them. But we decided to really just focus our press strategy on that one initiative because it allowed us to tell kind of like Macra's story about Turbo Tax had to pay all these fines for like practices that many considered unsavory around calling themselves free. But not really being free. The IRS is building a free filing system, but it's in its very early days.

47:35So the fact that they were having this offering that was like supporting a lot of low -income families. And I believe 40 % of the people that filed their taxes with column hadn't filed taxes in the previous years or hadn't gotten a return. It's like identifying the piece of the story that's most interesting and then like doubling down on that. So we were able to get like a great fast company piece instead of pitching this like Macro. Like here are column taxes latest growth metrics. And they're announcing a partnership with propeller. And so it's like figuring out how to tie it to these like things that people actually care about and like not just like the company's messaging, I think is our job.

48:12Amazing. Is there any other examples? Otherwise I'll share your pitch of someone coming on my podcast and what worked about that. I do want to share one more because it's my favorite. I want to share my favorite funding story that I worked on. And so I'm actually going to pull it up because this one is very graphic in terms of how we went about showing the products. So we worked with a company called Gamma, which is essentially like bringing PowerPoint into something that's much more modern and interactive and usable. So when we did their launch, they were seed stage company. We were trying to get really creative with how we could display or talk about the company.

48:53And so instead of doing your standard kind of company blog post, we actually made a Gamma presentation. And we kind of included all these fun elements that made it really interesting to reporters. So firstly, it's a visual platform. So we created, or actually I don't want to take credit for this, the Gamma scene created this great visual. And we kept it very to the point. Every year, half a billion people create presentations and Google size and PowerPoint. We're not using marketing language here. We're talking in a very direct way. We're including fun visuals. We talk about, again, this mission, pretty short.

49:26This is not the long essay on why the company exists. And then we include some customer love. So they're early stage. So we didn't really have necessarily gross metrics that we wanted to share. So we tried to make it a little bit more personal and focus on actual users and what they're saying, while also showing the product capability here. And then instead of doing a long thing on each investor, we just bulleted who the investors are, which is very to the point, easy for a reporter to repurpose. And then the fun part that I really loved is we did a video from the lead investor talking about why she invested instead of including an investor quote.

50:03So it's a little bit different than what you kind of expected. Their videos are fun. They have all these interactive elements. And yeah, Team Photo, make it a little more personal. And that was about it. But anyways, it was a very successful story. And I believe the title of the TechCrunch article that we got as a result was Gamma brain's PowerPoint into the 21st century. Exactly. That's exactly what we're talking. If maybe they are creating a category, we weren't talking about it then, we're talking about how it's better than the existing solutions. And so yeah, I guess the piece of advice there is feel free to get kind of fun and creative with it.

50:38And don't just follow this typical issuing press release format. And is that something we could link to for people to check out? Is that just on their site? OK, amazing. I actually had a person reason to do some digging to get it. But I can be, I have it now, so I can give it to you. OK, great. And the way that you use that is when you sent emails or DMs to reporters, you included this link. After they had agreed that they're potentially interested, because again, if I had shared it right off the bat, it would be their prerogative to just publish it essentially or share it publicly. And I guess one important note is everything you say to a reporter in an email is on the record.

51:14And so that's why I make the point on not sharing the entire story right off the bat. Got it. So many companies won't have, they're not like a deck product. So they can't do something like this. But the takeaways for other folks here is be just like very human in the language. Keep it like the investors or just bullet points, make it fun, add some visuals. Don't just like have blurbs and paragraphs and things like that. Yeah, yeah. I think it's reporters are used to getting the same thing all the time. And so this one obviously worked well for the format. But I think we try to always think of like, what can we do?

51:52That's like slightly different for this one or like, how can we make this a little more fun? I guess the one exception. If the product is very technical and you have a very technical audience and you're probably going to work with a very technical reporter, it's totally fine to talk to your audience in those cases. And you don't need to necessarily dumb it down so everyone can understand. But that doesn't mean I mean you can do that while still using clear and concise language. Okay, so let me share the element of the pitch that you sent me that convinced me to bring this guest on. So this is going to be the chief product officer at NewBank.

52:26I had no, like I barely know anything about NewBank. And so in your email to me, you basically had just two bullet points. And the way you put it is, two other two fun facts about NewBank. Growth has been 80 to 90 % organic because of the way they try to make customers fanatical about the product. And to me, it's like, wow, that's very rare. It is 80 to 90 % of your growth thing organic. So that to me is like, that's an interesting story. And then the other tidbit is NewBank is bigger than Coinbase, Robinhood affirmed so -fied and lemonade combined. Seriously, so much bigger than people in the US realize, which I 100 % didn't I realize.

53:01So to me, both were just like, okay, this is an interesting story to tell. I think people would be very curious to hear our company like this operates. So now I'm going to start getting all these emails from people, all these couple bullet points. But they're going to combine a bunch of companies and see which they're bigger than. Yeah. Just or use AI to help them figure this out. Yeah. But I think what you identified here is just like what I get excited about. Is there any advice there of just like, how to, what you do there that other people can learn from? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think with pitching you, like speaking to the audience and, you know, it's not just about having, you don't want like the most well -known CEOs all the time.

53:42You're not looking just for the biggest companies and like the most well -known people. You're looking for like the things that they can talk about and how the things that they can talk about are relevant to your audience. And so I try to index on like with the first bullet, it was indexing on that. The second bullet was more so like, hey, you might not know about this company. And there's a little bit of a unique one. I wouldn't necessarily always include that. But yeah, to me, the first bullet was really what mattered because it wasn't just about the fact that they were a huge company. It's that they grew in a unique way.

54:10And I knew that was like the kind of thing that you'd be interested in. And how did you figure that out? Is it from emails we were exchanging ahead of that? Is it listening to some podcasts? How did you get to those conclusions? Yeah, listening certainly helps. But I do think like just figuring out, even if you even just rolled like the names of all the episodes that you've done, it would be pretty easy to spot a trend there. And so, you know, you're not talking about product launches. You are not talking about entrepreneurial journeys. You're talking about tactical lessons. And so, pitching people based on those sort of things, like I don't even think you necessarily need to listen to a whole bunch of episodes most of the time.

54:46Maybe occasionally you want to check something before you reach out. But yeah, you can tell a lot just by doing like a little bit of research. And then we did have a little back and forth because I will take responsibility. I did try pitching you on a CEO at one point, which I know you don't have on as guests. Once in a while. I had no idea. Yeah, and I had known, yeah, actually, there's obviously some exceptions. But I had known the subject matter you were looking for, but I did not spot the trend that you've never had CEOs on. So I think my pitch was actually okay, but the spokesperson was not the kind of person that you would want on.

55:19So, you know, maybe you won't get a right 100 % of the time, but you can tell a lot just by doing some searches. And oftentimes I just reply, here's my policy, and then, okay, it gets enough. Kind of along these lines, something I wanted to ask earlier. You mentioned a few publications to go after and then had to pitch people. Obviously, the way that you're describing takes a bunch of time. How many people are you often emailing DMing per attempt to get a story? Because it sounds like it's not a ton, and so you have time to do these sorts of custom pitches, or is it lower than it sounds? I would say for hard news, like funding, startup launch, those sort of things less, and I try to really stagger it, because we're offering exclusives, and I highly recommend offering exclusives.

56:03So the worst thing that can happen is two reporters reply and are both interested, and you have to go back to what and say, never mind. And sometimes that's okay if they left you, if it's been a week or something, they hadn't gotten back, and they'll be able to understand. So, it's fine to move on without getting an answer. So I would say, yeah, with the funding story, it could be anywhere from one to six reporters on average, sometimes more. With stuff like general, just like outreach, relationship building, trying to get on podcasts, it kind of is a numbers game, and you really have to balance quality and quantity.

56:38And that's when I love starting with the first note, and not saying much, and just saying, hey, you open to guest ideas, because it allows you to come and do more. I'd rather do that than send a bad pitch, and like not have it be targeted to the right, sort of like audience. And so that's kind of a way to play the numbers game, while still being respectful. But yeah, I mean, with some clients, maybe we get one opportunity for every 20 or 30 things that we send, and so, yeah, we try not to do, we don't do blasting media, as it is, not about sending the same person, or the same pitch to a single list of people.

57:14It's figuring out, which ones do I want to really double down on, because they're the perfect target, and you'll keep trying, you'll be really custom, which deserve maybe a slightly higher level note, which deserve like a DM, and just kind of like figuring out your strategy from that. Awesome. Okay. Do you have examples of pitches, announcements, that were not as effective as they could have been, and advice for how they could have been better? Yeah, I have some excerpts that I pulled from press releases, where I think there's room for improvement. So Lenny, I want to read one to you, and then I want to see if you can tell me what this company does.

57:49Thank you. Okay. Today, X announced their workflow automation product, which combines AI assistance, human in the loop collaboration, and a robust multiplayer experience to help team save time. Absolutely no idea what's going on. It's like you kind of gained something from workflow automation, and then after that, it's like, wait, what? It's just a bunch of things. Now let me read to you the TechCrunch title, an excerpt from the TechCrunch article, and this is how TechCrunch positioned it. A new automation startup is setting out to eat Zapier's lunch. It helps people tackle mundane repetitive tasks and goes beyond the triggers and actions popularized by similar platforms like Zapier.

58:29So like to me, yeah, it's like a better version of Zapier, where they aren't just doing triggers and actions, and there's like a little more substance in depth to it. If you know what Zapier is, you can kind of start to figure out what they do based on that. Yeah, comes back to your point about referencing an incumbent to help you understand what the heck you're talking about. And you wouldn't necessarily need to do that in your press release, but I think they could have been a lot clearer and not used. Cause I mean, terms like robust multiplayer experience, that makes it sound like a game. Are we talking about just collaborative multiple users?

59:04Human in the loop collaboration, isn't all collaboration between humans and work all in the loop. Like AI assistants, that just means they use AI. So yeah, it's like, sometimes I push my clients to like, okay, let's talk through what each of these phrases actually means. Cause if you can't like articulate it, and if you can't articulate it, then let's change it to the way that you just articulated it, and it might be more successful. So yeah, that's a good way to do it. And just like read it out loud, read it out loud and see if someone understands it. Someone hearing this is like, how could possibly anybody think that was great?

59:38How did these come about? These really bad descriptions. Like I know it's hard to come up with something really short, Pithy, but where do these come from? I just think there's, it's just like a culture within marketing and comms of this is how we're supposed to write. And I just think that's a majority of how people do it. And they think it sounds smart where they think it sounds like more professional. Or like I just think it's just how people are trained. And so even when like, I don't know, like when we bring on someone new, like part of my job is stripping away at a lot of that and getting people, like you know, everyone's capable of talking like a human being we do it every day.

1:00:18But it's like stripping away that like thing that goes off in your head that you're supposed to be writing in a very marketing -y way. So I would say at least 50 % of releases are like that. It's not a small problem. I love the advice you shared of just trying to say it out loud, hearing yourself. What does it sound like? Do you have any other tips for trying to make it something people get and connect to? I know that again, this is like what they takes a lot of time to really do well and it's very context specific, but is there any other tricks that you find help you communicate what you're actually offering?

1:00:48It's talking through like the basic questions. Like what does this product do? Who is it for? Who are your customers? Like if you can answer each of those in one sentence, like what product launch are we talking about here? Like if you can just answer each of those, like verbally chances are you're not gonna be far away from what you're looking for. Because when I talk to marketers and founders and teams generally like in the conversations, I have no trouble understanding what they're talking about. They can articulate it just fine. It's only in the writing that it gets that way. So I actually don't, I think it's like kind of easier to solve than many might realize.

1:01:26And then also I think there is some skill involved in like removing where it's not overexplaining. Like you can make things more concise, but at the bare minimum, just like strip out of all the jargon. That's like the first step. Love it. So like one way to think about is just think about who's this, what does it do? Who's it for? Who are the customers? Is there something else along those lines that you shared there? There's a bull coin. Well, I mean, if you're talking about like what goes into like, you know, what's, what makes this business interesting? Like why, why should people care? And not overindexing on that, I think that's just one part of the overall story is why people should care about this business.

1:02:00Yeah, and then you know, like what's new? Is it growth metrics? Is it the customer piece? Is it product? What's what makes this timely and relevant right now? Okay, awesome. There's actually this awesome Twitter thread from a couple days ago where the CEO of Product Hunt did this thread where he asked people share your tagline and I will give you a much better version of the tagline. And he's really good at this. So I'm gonna link to it in the show notes where you can give you an example of what it looks like from bad to good. I love that. That's exactly the kind of thing I would love to do too.

1:02:30So it's so fun and so easy. It's easy if you're good at it, right? Most people not great at it. You mentioned press release in this example. You shared thoughts on value of press release, traditional press release versus not. Press releases came about because reporters would be checking news wires for ideas of what stories they want to write. No reporters do that anymore or a very small percentage. I don't know any reporters that do that anymore. So now it's this thing where you go to one of the peer distribution services. You pay them anywhere between $300 to $2 ,000. That's literally what it costs.

1:03:09And they put it on the wire. And for the more expensive services, it does get syndicated to this press release section of some business websites. No one in my opinion goes there for their news. I personally never read an article like a Yahoo Finance article that was a press release indication. So in that sense, they are not helpful for getting eyeballs. They also require like going back to that like more marketing form of writing, they require that you write like that. That's the standard press release format. It's so formulaic. And I think it actually like encourages that more marketing speak.

1:03:47The benefit is that you're getting all the news details in one place. So it's relevant for a reporter. However, you can do the exact same thing in a blog post. And the blog post can be this first person piece of content that's written by either the founder or the product lead or whatever executive that has a lot more flexibility in the style. You can kind of write it however you want. It can still include all the same news elements. And it's much more shareable on social. Like you're not going to share a link to a press release on your Twitter or on your LinkedIn, but a blog for sure. You know, on your own graphics, it's great.

1:04:21And you're also encouraging people to go to something that lives on your website versus like this black hole of a newsletter. I should be fair. So I think that the reason that people say that they still do them is that it helps with SEO. However, I've read a few articles that have said that Google no longer does prioritize this press release in SEO. So I don't know how much that holds up. And that it signals to the market that the company is more serious. So that's a perception thing. I personally think that blogs actually signal on more modern kind of cool company than a press release. But at a certain stage in your growth, like public companies, they do press releases for earnings.

1:04:59It makes 100 % sense. There are certain rules around when companies do need to issue press releases. So there's still a use case for them. I just think your average early to mid stage start up doesn't need them. This mention of blogs is where I wanted to go next, actually. So it's a good segue. But before we do that, is there any other examples that you wanted to share of less than ideal ways of pitching a product? One sentence I found in a press release that a lot of companies want to include that I always try to remove is, well, here, I'll give you the sentence. Since exiting stealth in May, we've witnessed a 700 % increase in organizations using our product.

1:05:36You're saying that since you were in stealth to now, you saw a 700 % increase. So you could have had one customer now. You have seven. And it's like every company wants to do these percentage growth stats when they just launched. And I've never seen reporters include that in their stories. And so there are ways to give signals of how fast you're growing without being that kind of disingenuous. Like one way that you could put something similar is our revenue hit six figures at the end of last year and has been growing about 30 % each quarter with 40 % of adoption coming from the enterprise sector.

1:06:09So you're giving color to the growth. And there's like, you can kind of play with that. It doesn't need to be exactly something like that. But if you can make it a little more specific, I'm not against doing percentages. But I think there's a way to balance that with something that seems a little more realistic. Or like we went from zero to 100 to six figures in X months. Yeah, totally. And it doesn't need to be huge, especially if you're doing your first story. They're not expecting that you're necessarily going to have massive revenue. And so I think founders might sometimes be concerned that it's not going to seem big enough or significant enough, whereas from working with a lot of companies, it's kind of the case across the board.

1:06:49You mentioned a bunch of amazing companies you've worked with Ram, perplexity, a few others. And people may feel like, of course, you're getting pressed. Those are amazing. They Ram, grew to 100 million AR in like two years. Perplexity is this killer AI product. Everyone's talking about AI. Most products are not that. They don't have as interesting of a story to tell. Is there either an example you could share of a company that didn't have an amazing story tell that you created an interesting story out of or just any advice for like, how do you help find something that is a nugget that gets people excited?

1:07:23So some of the examples I gave, so clockwise and column tax aren't big as, aren't as big as some of the other brands I mentioned. So that's certainly actually the bulk of our business. I would say 80 % of the companies we work with are out of stage where they haven't reached that kind of mass awareness yet. Another really great company that we work with is Entropy. And so essentially they work with like transaction data there in API. It's a very technical tool. It's not something that necessarily every reporter is going to instantly understand. But for them, we've actually really lead into the founder story.

1:07:58She's this incredible woman who moved to the US and actually struggled with getting her first apartment here because of the way that our credit system is a credit scoring system is set up. And one of the use cases for what she's building actually directly relates to how our credit system could change in the future. And so we've been really leaning into that angle and she's just like for personal stories really powerful. And so maybe sometimes the product isn't going to be something that you can easily pitch, but you can kind of find those other personal angles in our poll on certain threads. And there it connects back to find the publication that cares about these sorts of personal stories because TechCrunch missed probably more.

1:08:40Yeah, and we've also been, we got her, she spoke at Money 2020. So it's like useful for speaking abstracts too. Actually, it was on a panel with Colin Tatz. We got them on together at Money 2020. What a win. No, and we love doing that. It's so fun when you do have multiple companies that you can connect. Actually, that's kind of a good macro point as well. It doesn't always need to just be about you. If you have an idea for a conference session, put it reaching out to colleagues that you've worked with in other companies, peers, people that are building other things that maybe don't compete better in a similar space and packaging that up as like, hey, this could be a really strong panel.

1:09:20It's actually way more successful than just pitching yourself. Awesome. Okay. So you've mentioned a couple times the rise of newsletters and podcasts. So if there's kind of two buckets of questions here, one is going after these kind of non -traditional media. Platforms. And then the other is building your own following and building a following on Twitter, for example. I know you work closely with the CEO of Box, who's really good at this. And basically doesn't need press. Elon is amazing at this. Maybe that's why he bought Twitter. He has this huge platform to talk about all this stuff. So kind of maybe in the first bucket, talking about when you're trying to decide, should I go after traditional media, Vox and Venture Beat and Axios and all these guys versus I'm going to go for newsletters.

1:10:06Like as an example, Ram got a lot of benefit from not boring that newsletter with Paki, who wrote about them constantly and loved it. And they're sponsored posts and organic posts. So I guess the question there is just how do you think about going after podcast newsletters, Twitter, New LinkedIn, you know, influencer -y platforming people versus traditional press? I think of newsletters and podcasts actually in the camp of if we're pitching traditional press, we're 100 % pitching those. Social is its own ballgame, but I would not leave out newsletters and podcasts from any core PR strategy. Like to me, it's now just a part of any PR program that we're going to run because that's just where it's just part of media now.

1:10:52And to me, it's just like a very important part of media. In terms of social, I think doing social well is very hard. So you know, you gave Aaron from Box as an example. That was all 100 % him. I think I helped with one tweet once about a Microsoft partnership that we did. And it was like my, I was so excited. I actually really good. A publication ended up writing a story on the tweet about Microsoft and Box Partnership because of it. So yeah, so that was fun. But generally, it's not always something that you can just turn on by hiring an agency. And I've seen like many companies try doing that and not necessarily see as much success as they'd hoped for.

1:11:35So it's like this like, you know, as a founder is naturally good at that stuff, lean into it as much as humanly possible. Go for it. If they're not and you're trying to outsource it, it can be done to some success, but I don't necessarily think it's as easy as, you know, just posting three times a week on, you know, relevant topics. There has to be like more going on there. I think that if the, if the spokesperson or the executives that you're trying to build the presence of is willing to going back to what I said earlier, kind of push the limit on opinions that they have, be bold, be controversial, then it could be worse, potentially investing in.

1:12:10And I have seen it play out where reporters have seen those posts and used and quoted things in their articles as a result. So it can tie to your traditional media strategy a little bit. They're not necessarily fully siloed. But I would say if you're considering investing in social to just do corporate channels and not think about executives, you're really leaving like a lot on the table, like corporate channels, it's very hard to build a, it's very hard to build a following to get someone to follow a brand and care about a brand. You have to be like bringing something new to the table because they don't want to read your latest blog post.

1:12:47Like they don't want to read like a relevant article that you're like social person just decided to put out there. When you have an executive, you're following a personality, you're following a person, ideally there's more flexibility with tone, all of that sort of stuff. And so I think, yeah, I think it's important to think about it from the people perspective and not just the brand perspective. So just to make it clear, the CEO or some execs should be the people tweeting and linking not like the company as a brand. Yeah, and I don't know. I mean, yeah, I think that it can be like a little industry specific as well for where it makes sense to be investing in the corporate channels.

1:13:24And you certainly can do that sort of thing. But I also think if you're going to do that, like have an exact that you're also trying a social strategy with, like don't just do the playing corporate channels. Yeah, when I think of a brand doing this really well, it's doing a lingo. They're just like so hilarious and so ridiculous in there. And I don't know if the key is just funny is the way to go and that's how you get an intention, but they're so funny and creative and their videos, especially TikTok. It's interesting though, it's we're getting to the point where even brands having a personality on socials becoming its own mean, like people are kind of making fun of how all the fast food brands all are like these gems you like ticked.

1:14:00Right, and they're all replying to each other on Twitter through it. Yeah, yeah, it's just like this. Yeah, and so it's like things change quickly. So like yes, that was a good strategy, but like, yeah, you just have to have to stay on top of it. So you talked about how if this isn't, comes naturally to you as a founder, obviously do it. I'm guessing for most people, it doesn't. Do you find that it can work if you're just like, I know this is important, I need to tweet often and share things. Have you seen that work? Or is it just like, it's just probably not gonna be something that works great for you?

1:14:30Yeah, I think it can work to some extent. Like maybe you're not going to necessarily be, you know, going viral or getting hundreds or tens of thousands of followers, but I mean, like for me personally, I push myself to post on LinkedIn at least once a month because every time I post, we get at least one client and pound and maybe you can't even pound it. And so if you test it and you start to see value, like yeah, push yourself to do it, even if it doesn't come naturally. And that's I guess the nice thing about social is it's easy to test out. You can try doing it. You can post for a while, even for a month or two, see how it's going and then adjust your scotgy accordingly.

1:15:06But yes, I think for a lot of execs that we work where the does feel like it's something that's really hard. Like there's a lot of overthinking, making sure it's right. Like you can get really in your head about it and I totally understand that because I feel the same way. And so yeah, if it's taking up so much of your time and bandwidths, just thinking about your social strategy then I guess you can weigh if it makes sense to do that. But yeah, I think pushing yourself to try is a great idea. Okay, and then Aaron specifically is very good at this. Is there anything that you learned from his approach to tweeting specifically?

1:15:38I don't know if he uses other platforms that works really well for him? I mean, I actually think like I just learned so much. So it was kind of, it was my first in -house job. So I had worked in agency. I hadn't worked internally at a company before. And I think I just learned so much about like Combs wrecked best practices from him in general, just even beyond social. He was so good at figuring out how to comment on things happening in the news, having just the right kind of like stance that was both like interesting to the reporter but like not necessarily threatening to the business and just like capitalizing on all those moments.

1:16:12And I just like watched how that worked. And I was like, this is how good Pearson. And it's like the company that they're, the space that they're in is not necessarily one that reporters are all like writing about. But he was able to insert themselves in those conversations really well. And I think also like at the time that I was there at least, like just like really valued press and like was willing to put the time in and do the briefings. And so just like getting to hear his, like how he speaks like over and over again was like really helpful. And then on like Twitter, I think it's just, I mean it clearly just like comes like naturally to him.

1:16:46And so it wasn't necessarily something that needed to, you know, like I mentioned, have some exact same stuff all the time like thinking through it, thinking through to the point where it could get in the way of other things, like I think that's not the case there. And if anything, like it just, you know, helped the business and actually with his Twitter presence, I would say it's a good example too of stuff getting included in articles. Like I mentioned in that Microsoft article, you know, so it helps the PR strategy as well. Amazing, and we'll link to his Twitter account. This is Aaron, CEO of Box, by the way.

1:17:13I think I mentioned at the beginning and then we just started talking about Aaron. Also, I realized, Aerie tweets about this sometimes, he actually makes money from Twitter and now the Twitter pays you for views and things and they share ads, he makes like thousands of dollars also from X now, by the way, not Twitter. That's so funny. Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. I think I've gone through every question that I had for you. I'm curious if there's anything else that you think might be helpful to share or cover or leave listeners with. I can leave with one very tactical media opportunity that I love.

1:17:51And okay, so here it is. It's a way to get a Morning Brew feature pretty somewhat easily. So they have this series called Morning Brew Co -working Series and they have it for Emerging Tech Brew, they have it for HR Brew, all their verticals. I think there's like a CFO one, marketing one. And essentially, if you go to the series, the Co -working Series, either at the top or the bottom or something where it's like, if you want to be featured, click on this link and fill out this form. And it's about 10 questions. If you keep your answers interesting and fun and not too self -promotional, we've had, I would say, 50 % success rate with getting the exact feature that way.

1:18:27And so all you have to do is submit through a Google form. And it's just like one of my favorite media opportunities right now. Doesn't need to be CEO, actually, Polish shouldn't be a CEO in a lot of instances. But it's basically intended to help readers understand like what the day -to -day looks and certain jobs and just get a little insight into the people that are in these jobs. And so I guess I just wanted to share that as something that you could do today for over 10 minutes and potentially get a story. Although maybe not after you post this, we'll see a big at like an end -sluts. We're going to take down, malebrue.

1:19:04Funny enough, they have an interview with Zach today that they published on Morning Brew, so you could be you alongside Zach. There you go. Yeah. Maybe before we get to our very exciting lightning round, it might be fun to chat about how to pick a PR agency. Obviously you run one. When people are trying to decide who to work with and also when to decide to pick and work with a PR agency versus doing themselves, what advice can you share when they're trying to make that big decision? I think there's an assumption that bigger, more well -known agencies are going to do a better job. I think a lot of those bigger well -known agencies are used to working with a lot of household brands.

1:19:44And so their strategies tend to be very reactive, you know, focus in the messaging, you know, maybe you have to turn down a bunch of opportunities, control what people say. That is like the polar opposite in my opinion of doing startup PR. Startup PR, you got to experiment, you got to try new things, you got to be scopy, you got to be fast. Like we actually personally love like, you know, diving into pitching right away rather than spending several months on messaging, just kind of testing and market right away. And so don't assume just because they have the huge logos to your point, you're like, oh, well, you work with Ramben for Flexi, does that mean you know how to work with all these tiny companies?

1:20:19That's not necessarily a good thing. So don't just go by like the big logos. I would say that's my first piece of advice. My second piece of advice is find out what they start doing. Like find out what month one looks like with them. If month one is them just doing intake calls and learning about the company and your startup, you know, that's still like, you know, really paying close attention to how much money you're spending. You're not going to necessarily want to partner with an agency that needs like a three month ramp up cycle. And so really like tactically understand what those first few months look like.

1:20:51I think that's something that I've noticed is a lot of agencies take a while before they get their hands dirty and like start doing things. My third piece of advice would be writing recent writing samples. Like to the point of like all those press release excerpts I shared, like, is that how they write? If it is, maybe they're not the right agency. So as in that's so easy, it's so easy to do. Just like ask them for a couple recent blogs or releases, whatever they tend to go for and read those. And of course, like wins too. Like you want to see like what kind of stories they're getting. But that's a little more obvious.

1:21:25A lot of people have already talked about this. So I'll just mention briefly, it's important to like meet with the actual team you're working on, not just the founder of the agency. So asking like, who's our day to day, gonna be, can we chat with them really quick? One thing I would say don't do is like an extensive RFP process. Like we actually as an agency, don't participate in RFPs. A lot of it, the two times I've done it, I kind of had regret it just because of the amount of work going in versus the value that's there. And it's like, it's just, you're asking a team to do a lot of free work for you.

1:21:55And generally I think the best players are not gonna do that. So you're not gonna get the, you're gonna weed out some of the best players if you're asking them to do a lot of free up front work. So yeah, those are a few considerations. Perfect. And then just two more questions, because I imagine this is what people are thinking about when they're trying to decide. Should we find somebody is how long ahead of time they should find someone before something big is happening. And then just what's a budget they should have in mind for something like this, like what's like a minimum or a range, whatever you think would be helpful for people to understand.

1:22:24Here's how much you're probably gonna be investing here. It can really start times can vary from agency to agency. I think we can get started like the week that a client needs as to maybe I'm not best equipped to answer this. But I would say before an announcement happens, you probably wanna kick off six weeks in advance. So when we start with the company, it's like we're working on the blog, we're doing a media training, we're doing the media outreach, we're getting quotes from investors or they're coordinating with all the parties, making sure images are being created. So it's not just pitching and securing the articles.

1:22:54So I would say buffer with time to pitch, make sure that the reporters actually able to cover it. Six weeks is ideal. I would also note that it's really, I highly recommend not having a firm date that you think you need to announce something and going instead with when a reporter's able to cover your story. We get so many clients that come to us and they have this set date in their head. But there's not usually a real reason for it. It's like they're planning around it. It's like they have other comms they want to go out that day. But as you can optimize for the reporter over the timing, you're gonna see such a better outcome because getting the first choice reporter is going to drive way more for your business than announcing it four days sooner.

1:23:35So leaving a little bit of flexibility for that agency is key and I've even seen companies like issue a press release for big news with no coverage because they had stuck to a certain day and were very rigid about it and they didn't get any stories for that reason. And so I think a good agency would counsel to offer that flexibility. So six weeks I think is the ideal amount of time. And then budget, I would say the lowest and would probably be about 10 K a month for an agency. You can find consultants. I think the best ones would be at least eight K a month. But for a small boutique agency, start at start at 10, our rates actually start.

1:24:15I'll just be transparent. I'm very open about I'm pricing. Our rates start at 15 K a month for our retainers. And actually that's like for like a series a company is generally with their app. And then I mean, I would say unless you are a global business that needs like basically different teams for different like product lines, like which happens when you're like, you know, a Microsoft of the world. That's another story. But if you're just, you know, like a series C startup that's getting a lot of attention, I wouldn't go beyond 30 K probably. There are plenty of agencies that go into the 50s and 60s a month, but that's just like a whole other world.

1:24:52And I'm not like an expert on that part. Amazing. Thank you for sharing all that. What if you're going for just like a one off, just help me get one story, what's like a range there for a budget you should expect? Yeah, I would say between 10 and 20. And you might be able to find a consultant that'll do it for like eight. Amazing. So helpful. Yeah. Emily, is there anything else you want to share before we get to our very exciting Lightning round? No, I'm ready. Well, welcome to our very exciting Lightning round. I've got six questions. Are you ready? I am. First question, what are two or three books you recommend in most to other people?

1:25:31Yeah, so I have one that's very top of mind right now. So it's how to change your mind by Michael Pollan. I'm actually, I leave tonight for a week long Solace, I've been retreating. Oh, she. I didn't say. We should have done this after. No, we've turned that over. I know, I wouldn't have had a, I would want to be getting much more philosophical maybe. Wow. Yeah, so very excited. I'm going to Jamaica. Amazing. And I just, I ever sense kind of like researching that field. Like there's the whole concept of like changing your neural pathways. It's just like very fascinating to me. And like just like opening up and like shifting perspectives is something that I think will actually help me a lot.

1:26:12Just like even like running a company and like being a better leader, you know, I think we're at a stage at our growth right now where we're hiring a lot and there's like a lot of pressure. And I just want to make sure I'm like bringing my best self forward every day. And so yeah, I'm just, I'm really excited about it. What an amazing answer. This is going to be part of your set in setting, this interview. So but hopefully you can get it out of your mind. No, totally. I was actually, you know, I was like, I was like, nervous and like it's actually really great that this is happening. And then I can completely unplug after it.

1:26:41And so yeah, I think it's actually a good timing. I'm excited to hear what goes. I'm not a big book recommender. I have like ADHD and reading full books is like very hard for me. And so yeah, so I'm just going to leave you with with that one. I do like, I can do like the occasional beat treat or like really focus, but it's not my main format of content. Amazing. All right. Great answer. One someone's plenty. You have a favorite movie or TV show you really enjoy? Okay. So my favorite genre is like post apocalyptic sort of end of the world. Survival. So I need to mention my all time favorite show because I just, it would be bad not to so walking dead is like my comfort TV show.

1:27:21Like I can watch it when I'm going to sleep at night. But my most recent favorite was yellow jackets. Are you familiar? I've seen the poster on my on my TV, but I've not watched it. Nice. Yeah, I discovered it a little late. I think the second season finished and they're working on the third. But yeah, it has like plane crash. It has like just like shocking moment after shocking moment, like cannibalism, very weird stuff. And it's like one of the shows that like sticks in your mind, which I like kind of like where you're like thinking about it afterwards. It's like kind of creepy. So yeah, I thought you were going for last of us, but I now have to watch the show.

1:28:03No, I'm I'm I watched last of us. Okay. And I didn't feel like it had enough survival elements to it. It was like it was like storytelling in that environment, but it wasn't actually like a survival post apocalyptic show in the way that I was looking for hardcore. Do you have a favorite interview question you like to ask? And you could take this in any direction you want? Yeah. So I have like a new one. And we actually just revamped our interview process. I wanted to make it harder. So my my new favorite question is if a client comes to you and they're convinced they have something that's pressworthy, like an announcement that they think should be, I don't know, in the Wall Street Journal or something.

1:28:41And you know, for a fact that isn't like what steps do you take? What do you do next? And I like that question because they can handle it one from like the client relations standpoint. Like how do you communicate with the client when they say something like that? But it's also like a critical thinking and like creativity question of like, how do you take a no and turn it into a yes? How do you how do you take what they're giving you and make it into something interesting? And so yeah, I like to kind of dig into that and they can use like a real example if they want. But I also think like a lot of our job is pushing back in a way.

1:29:12And so that's like also shows like if they're able and willing to push back. That's I am so curious to hear people's answer to that. Do you have a favorite product that you recently discovered that you love? I was very skeptical of Apple Vision Pro and I was like kind of making fun of it at the beginning and the first time I tried it, I like completely changed my tune. I am so into it. I'm like ordering one and very excited for like actually using it for work. I think I think it could be a really good use case for just like my day to day at work. After I had tried it the next day, like message a bunch of clients that I thought had, like could have relevant applications for it.

1:29:49I'm like, do we have an Apple Vision Pro strategy? And she are we're building a talk about it publicly yet. So yeah, because sometimes I mean, it's like tying back to the PR conversation. I love if you're willing to like push the envelope on stuff that you are building or are going to do and getting ahead of those conversations. So that's like a lot of conversations I'm having right now is trying to convince clients to talk about that. Do you have an Apple Vision Pro strategy? Amazing. And then my other one, which is very self -serving because they are client, but I do use them every day is perplexity.

1:30:19I find it so helpful even just for like, you know, I'm working on an award submission. I forgot how much, how much funding a client has raised asking them that instead of, you know, opening five different Google links and trying to find the answer. It's just like, it's just huge for quick information or like writing a bio for an executive, like getting just like the TLDR of like what they've done in their past, like it's so good for PR use cases. And I actually think marketing and PR is gonna be one of the like core sort of like work applications for them. I've also already shared how much I love perplexity.

1:30:54I have the Chrome extension installed. I probably use it at least once a day for podcast interview, perhaps along with a bunch of other stuff. So good, good fine for customer. I think they're gonna do great. Wish I was an investor. I'm the happy investor. I'm really, really angel invest and I was. Drink some Emily. Yeah. There we go. That's awesome. Good job. Thank you. Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to you? Share with friends or family, either in worker and life? Strong opinions loosely held. I'm a very opinionated trust my gut kind of person, but that doesn't mean I'm not willing to change my mind on things and be wrong.

1:31:35I first heard it from an influencer of things and then I googled it and apparently what was it? Like Jeff Bezos also said it at one point. So I have no idea the origin of the club, but I think that's a good one. Like you can still be really opinionated in life, but that doesn't mean you always are going to be right. Emily, this was everything I hoped it would be. I feel like this is gonna help so many people get awesome breasts. Thank you again so much for being here. Two final questions. Working folks find you and reach out if they wanna learn more or work with you. And how can listeners be useful to you?

1:32:06Our website is 60Stream .com and our email is helloat60Stream .com. So you can find us there. And I actually I have a newsletter called on background. It's on substack. And really like what it's intended to be is a place for like people to find these tactical opportunities. So it has medium moves, it has reporters that are working on stories, it has awards that are open, like all of this stuff that basically an intern on agency would spend their days researching. We put into a newsletter. And so it's main audience is PR people, but I actually think it could be a great resource for people within companies that don't have PR teams to stay on top of stuff.

1:32:43So I guess yeah, to be helpful, you know, feel free to subscribe and then other than that, we're hiring. So if you happen to be a PR person that got this far at the start, yeah, always looking for great people that bring on. Amazing. Is there anything specific you're looking for and people are hiring for people that may wanna reach out other than they've been in PR? Ideally, some B2B experience. I think doing B2B PR is very different from doing consumer PR. If you work with startups, that's a huge plus. You know how to be kind of scrappy and fast. And also people that just love to be like really hands on and doing the actual work.

1:33:14It's we're not a place, we're very flat. So we're not a place for those much managing of teams. So yeah, it's really much more like a consultancy than anything else. Amazing. Emily, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, it was so fun. Thank you so much. Hi 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'spodcast .com.

1:33:50See you in the next episode.