0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Business Made Simple. Today, we're pulling a timeless EOFire classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down free PR that's public relations to drop these value bombs. I brought Cameron Harold into the EOFire studios. Cameron is known around the world as the CEO Whisperer and he just published his 5th book Free PR to share with you the secrets he's been sharing with coaching clients for years. And today Fire Nation, we'll be talking about how you shouldn't be trying to land the biggest outlets, get covered first and small monthly magazines, and he shows you how the three things you need to know when approaching PR your angle, your targets, and pick up the phone and so much more.

0 (51s):
When we get back from thanking our sponsors. Volley is a hot new video messaging app that entrepreneurs are using for coaching community and collaboration. Sign up today at volleyapp.com/eofire, and get into their free forever plan. That's volleyapp.com/eofire. Business Made Simple hosted by Donald Miller takes the mystery out of growing your business. Check out recent episodes like how to escape a villain mindset and the framework that makes marketing easy. Listen to business made simple wherever you get your podcasts. Cameron say what's up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know.

1 (1m 39s):
Hey, what's up, everybody. Great to be on John. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Something most people don't know. I would say that considering I'm known to be a speaker is one of the kind of core things that I do. I've done speaking events in 28 countries. What most people don't know is I'm painfully shy. When I end up at these conferences, I usually highlight either before I come on stage or before I got to have to go meet people, I will often hyperventilate or just get extraordinarily nervous, sweaty palms. If you see me walking around outside, people will think I'm either stuck up or I don't know something, but I'm just really awkward and nervous about coming into the, into the room. And I always feel like it's me coming into a classroom in grade three, I moved a lot.

1 (2m 23s):
When I was in grade school, I was in six schools and nine years. And I, I feel like every time I show up at a conference, like I'm walking into a classroom for the first time.

0 (2m 30s):
Well, you definitely do a good job hiding it because we were just chatting pre-interview. We were hanging out a year ago at trafficking conversion, which is of course a great conference in San Diego. And you are just a social butterfly. We are walking around talk and having drinks, playing beanbags, having some fun. So Fire Nation, you honestly just never know who's the introvert, who's the extrovert or somewhere in between. And if you think camera's voice sounds familiar while he was on episode 337 of Entrepreneurs On Fire episode, 1,661 of Entrepreneurs On Fire. And now, well over episode 2,100, as we're talking right now.

0 (3m 13s):
So Cameron I've been putting in the work brother you've been putting in the work. I gave Fire Nation a great introduction of you right at the top of this episode, because we're gonna be talking about free PR, which of course is around the topic of your fifth book, which we were also chatting about. You deem that you're going to write one book. Now you have five books under your belt. So give Fire Nation a little bit of a teaser about some of the things we'll be talking about today.

1 (3m 39s):
Sure. So the, I guess the, the real starting point for this book free PR was around 10 years ago, I had the CEO of a company called grasshopper.com and the CEO David Hauser asked me if I would coach his company on PR. And I said, yes, and I would give them a little bit of work. And then he asked me if I would write their manual on free PR. I'm like, dude, I don't write manually. Maybe it can be a chapter for a book. So I, I kind of scribbled down all the notes and stuff that I could think about and sent it over to them. And that became the, the real starting point for what is now the book free PR.

0 (4m 14s):
Wow. Well, we're going to be talking a lot about PR free PR and Fire Nation. These are all things that entrepreneurs, small business owners and just human beings could learn a lot more about. So where did you learn all of this? Like take us back to those grass roots.

1 (4m 30s):
Yeah. If I go real, real grassroots on learning how to get free publicity or free PR, it was when I was in grade school, my father owned a company and both of my grandpa, parents were also entrepreneurs. And my one grandfather used to be covered in the media, back in the sixties and seventies about his hunting and fishing lodge. And then my dad used to be covered for his company and for stuff that we would do in the small city, we grew up in, in the newspaper. And my dad just told me, I said, cause I used to ask him like, how come, how did they find you? How did they find you? And he said, I just called them. And he kind of didn't think anything more about it, but he used to just phone the newspaper and tell them he had a story and they would write about it. I asked my grandfather and it was the same thing. He used to just phone the journalist and tell them about his lodge and they always wanted to write about it.

1 (5m 13s):
So that was really, really the initial Genesis. And then when I was 20 years old, I had my first business. I had 12 employees and I was running a house painting company. I was actually a franchisee of a group called college pro painters. And I started calling the media and I got covered on television stations and the newspapers when I was 20 years old and just realized how simple it was to actually get covered.

0 (5m 35s):
Now, one thing that I really want to dive into are different results you've had from the tools that we're about to be sharing with my audience today. So kind of go back, walk us through that point where you were to where you are today and then how you've used the tools by the way, both successfully and unsuccessfully. Because I want to maybe hear about a couple of times that you use some of these tools and they didn't work for you, but you learned why when you came back and use them, they're like, oh, okay, this is why these tools didn't work. And this is how to make sure they do. So kind of break down some of those stories, some of those topics and some of those results.

1 (6m 8s):
Sure. So I guess building four different companies, I was on the leadership team of college pro painters, which is the largest house painting company in the world. Built another group called Boyd auto body and Gerber auto collision, which is now the largest collision repair chain in the world. And that I was the chief operating officer for one 800, got junk where we, I actually built the in-house PR team. There is one of the six areas that I led. I was the chief operating officer. And when we built it, our in-house PR team of six people that had no experience whatsoever. We landed at 5,200 stories in the media. And this was without using any press releases, no news wires, just independently phoning stories. And this was before social media because I left the year that Facebook was launching and before Twitter.

1 (6m 49s):
So we had nowhere to even amplify all the cross getting. So those are some of the big successes. And then since then, you know, I personally have been covered in the print edition. So the magazine, not the online edition to the print edition of Forbes magazine, fortune magazine, Inc magazine, the entrepreneur magazine success magazine, the wall street journal, the New York times have all covered me personally in the print editions, you know, obviously online as well, but, and people are out there going, oh, I'm in Florida. So I'm like, no, you're not. You got a blogger to write an article with a million other bloggers on forms. So it's different when you're actually getting the real hardcore coverage. I mean, I had the publisher of Forbes magazine write a full page article about my vivid vision concept in Forbes magazine. So some of the success I've, you know, I've been in American airlines magazine covered by trade journals.

1 (7m 34s):
You know, I've been on Donny Deutsch. So-so lots of when it comes to got junk, you know, we were covered on Oprah. So we've pretty much been in every major newspaper magazine TV show. We were on Dr. Phil 17 times and then lots of great podcasters and bloggers. So lots of, lots of great coverage.

0 (7m 51s):
Talk to us about a time that maybe you struggled with PR or you did something you thought was going to work really well. And then it just kind of fell on its face. Be curious about that.

1 (8m 1s):
Yeah. One thing that didn't go well was we were trying to land, or I was trying to land a, a story with associated press and I was really pushing for the associated press to cover us because when one of their stories goes live, it ends up in multiple newspapers on the same day. And I remember having to phone the associated press probably 15 or 16 times over a three-month period before they finally agreed to cover us. So I wouldn't say it didn't go well, but it was really, really a struggle to get them to, to listen to us. And we were always calling the journalists. We didn't call the news desk. We didn't call the editor, but that was certainly a struggle that I think a marketing person or a communications person would have run away from.

1 (8m 42s):
But when I kept hearing no one busy, I just kept thinking of, well, that means at least I know that's your phone number, whereas everyone else is like, no, I'm busy, man. Geez. I know that's your desk. Whereas other people might've thought that no I'm busy means go away. So when did it not go well? So probably having times when, when the, we really pushed hard to get an article about us, and then they mentioned all of our competitors, we used to feel like that. Wasn't good. I think we're now over at the fact that, you know, anytime they mentioned a competitor, we also tended to be in the article as well. I don't think I've ever really ever had any negative coverage. I had a, a timeline one time about a year ago when I told a, a podcaster that I used to use drugs back in high school.

1 (9m 28s):
And he said, you know, maybe you shouldn't have been so specific what you're doing, that the, you know, the customers in the borders don't really like that talk. I'm like a good point. You gotta be careful. You gotta be careful with some of the stuff you say, right.

0 (9m 41s):
Nobody listens to podcasts and it's not a big deal. It's a camera. And let's come up with some new angles to staying fresh and relevant when it comes to PR. I mean, that's one thing that you've really been able to employ. As you know, you've continued to reinvent yourself over the years and you know, here we are in 2019 now, like you're still being able to figure out ways to get this fresh, new angled PR I mean, heck you wrote a book about it. So how do we, as entrepreneurs, as small business owners come up with new angles, how do you do it?

1 (10m 10s):
Well, one of the things is it's really less about coming up with new angles. And it's really more about understanding the target audience of the outlet that you want to speak to and taking your angle. And they used to call it, spinning it, but that has a negative connotation, but taking your angle and kind of positioning it or your story and positioning it. So it matters for that audience. So as an example, you know, you have a business listener that listens to you to, you know, fire well. So, you know, the wall street journal is a business audience, Forbes magazine as a business audience, entrepreneur magazine is a business audience. You know, CNN money is a business audience, but they have very different audiences. They have very different kind of personas of the people who are devouring that content.

1 (10m 53s):
So it's more about thinking of your story and positioning it for the reader or listener reviewer of that actual media, but,

0 (11m 0s):
Well, give us an example from like one 800 junk or from grass opera, from one of the past companies that you've done, where you've actually done that, and it's gotten the success that you were looking for.

1 (11m 10s):
Sure. So we had no coverage on Oprah was very much about the heartstrings, right? It was about the emotional tug of helping this woman cleaning up her house post and getting her life back. But the same story of, of this emerging brand of overcoming adversity of Brian, kind of building a story from, from trash to cash was covered on CNBC squawk box. And it was a six minute piece on squawk box. And we didn't do anything about the emotional heartstrings we did about the, you know, the roll-up and the consolidation and the building of this emerging brand. So it was the same kind of story, but it was just a very different audience.

0 (11m 45s):
No, your audience Fire Nation needs to really be focused in, on who you are speaking to the people that are listening. I mean, this is all going to be critical for you putting the right content in front of the right people at the right time. And Cameron, you have a lot of different angles that you know, how to approach or that you know, how to implement when it comes to different kinds of PR, but how many angles does any specific company need? And does it differ if you're a small company or a big company,

1 (12m 10s):
When you're a smaller, let's call it a small to medium sized company? I think three to five angles is sufficient to really push for as much press or free publicity than you want to get over the course of a couple of years.

0 (12m 20s):
Okay. Now on that point, let's pretend we're smaller, medium. What are example of three to five angles? Like what are a specific angle and in name, a few of them

1 (12m 28s):
Let's use your company for as an example. So we have, you know, the John story is to, to overcoming adversity and the struggles that you've had in building EOFire, right? The early days of, of podcasting. We also have the John story of what you used to do before you decided to do this. And you know, that making that transition story, that, that gives people hope that they can leave their careers and go off and do something or inspired by. We have John's story of how someone listened to your podcast interview and it changed their life. And it's really about, about how your content really helped inspire or change someone. We have the story of how a dad was looking to reconnect with his son and they decided to listen to one of your podcasts every day for a week, while they were out on a fishing trip together and how they built a better relationship as parents and started a company, I don't know.

1 (13m 15s):
Right. So, and you probably have one of those stories. So that the cool thing is, is that you can pitch, let's say it was that dad reconnecting the son story. You can pitch that to all the Chicago media for an entire week, and then you can go pitch it to everybody in Dallas. Then you can pitch it to everybody in Florida. Then you can pitch to everybody in San Francisco, you can go market by market pitching the same story to the entire same groups of outlets, but that only cover a regional or a city market. And that's what we, and then all of those stories linked back to your website, right? They all drive your SEO. They all go onto your webpage and they all help you ladder up the media.

0 (13m 50s):
Now, let me ask you this. When I would be reaching out to these different markets with these angles and these stories, would I be pitching them all of these angles, like these three or four angles at one time? Or would I just be trying to hammer one angle to them?

1 (14m 4s):
Yeah. You always stay focused. So the idea is to show up with two or three angles, right? And what I mean by an angle is that story headline that you might read in the newspaper, that's the angle. And then you might have three to five bullet points that support each story. So your, your idea is to phone up the journalist and say, Hey, do you have two minutes? I think I have a good story for you. You'll start to engage with them. And if they don't like the story, then you say, how about this? I have another story and you give them story number two, but you just pitch the one story. And hopefully they like it. And you ask questions and listen.

0 (14m 33s):
So Fire Nation focus, follow that one course till success. And I just liked the idea of, Hey, if this not, if it's not working in this market for any specific reason, shift to another market and then shift to another market and just keep hammering that home, like Cameron was sharing earlier, it took him 16, 17, 18 calls to the associated before he actually got through it just wasn't the right time up until it was the right time. So you just never know when it's going to be the right time. And Cameron's been dropping value bombs. We have more coming up after we thank our sponsor. As an entrepreneur, you know, the importance of connecting with your audience and when it comes to serving your clients, talking face to face is where it's at.

0 (15m 15s):
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0 (16m 4s):
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0 (16m 50s):
So you can keep your customer service top notch. In a nutshell, HubSpot's CRM platform helps you and your team put the customer experience first and keeps marketing sales, service, content management, and operations on the same page. Learn how your business can grow better at hubspot.com. So Cameron we're back and I want to go over the three easy steps when it comes to PR break these steps down for us one by one for Fire Nation.

1 (17m 17s):
Sure. So the first step in the three easy steps is to know your angle, right? We talked a little bit about that. That's coming up with three to five core angles that your business can rally a story around. So that's step one. Step two is to know your target. And that's really knowing the target audience for each of those media outlets. And then step three is to pick up the phone. And this is where most people actually won't follow the rule. Most people will decide to start doing emails, they'll start doing press release or they'll start just trying to bash the people over the head. And the reality is you're never going to actually make that connection with the journalist. So by picking up the phone, you're actually going to get their attention.

0 (17m 59s):
No, your angle, no, your target pick up the phone. Now foundation, it's going to be really easy if you do do those first two things, sit down after this interview, know your angle, get those three to five core angles that you're going to focus on. Know your targets, actually being able to figure out who you're going to target with this information, but it's that third part is picking up the phone that 99.9% of people are going to come up short in. So Cameron make it a little easier for us. Where do we get all the contact info for different journalists?

1 (18m 31s):
There's a couple of great databases online. If you're actually going to build this out as a core pillar inside of your company, I would subscribe decision or to media Alice, which is part of PR Newswire there's other, other news news outlet kind of databases like muck rack as well that are available online. So grabbing one of those, I think they tend to be around $1,200 a year. And then when you have a full-time person in house or a part-time person in house pitching, they have all of that journalist contact information, the low hanging fruit way, just to test it out is to go on Google. You know, you can actually, if you open up a magazine, it tells you the names of the writers, just Google that writer's name with the word cell phone or mobile. And it'll often actually give you their phone number and then pick up the phone and call them again, resisting the urge to email the person because every single journalist woke up this morning, thinking, what the heck am I going to write about today?

1 (19m 20s):
And they got dashed with three, they got bashed with 300 emails, but no one actually phones them. So if you're the person that picks up the phone and calls the journalist, chances are you're going to get through to them

0 (19m 29s):
Fire Nation and be that person, that one out of a hundred, that's going to pick up the phone and make that call use tools like PR Newswire muck rack, go to Google and just do a Cameron said, you might just get that number that way as well. Now, Cameron, let's really drill down on how we can amplify the PR that we get. So we've done all the work we've done. What we need to do. The PR has finally arrived as there. How do we amplify this?

1 (19m 56s):
Yeah, it's funny. I actually sent Brian the CEO of one 800, got junk a note a few days ago. I said, could you imagine how big our company would be? If we had social media back in the day, we landed those 5,000 stories. Like we landed 5,200 stories and we couldn't share it with anybody because there was nowhere to share it. So what you want to do, let's say that you go to this story in Forbes magazine, you either scan the PDF or you grab the online link of it. You share it three times on Facebook over the next three months, you share it five times on LinkedIn over the next three months, you share it five times on Twitter over the next three months. And you email it out to your list. When you email it to your list, you set up a quick little link on it that says, click here to share this on your Facebook for us.

1 (20m 37s):
You also send it out to all of your employees and you ask them to share it as well. And then lastly, you share it with any of your suppliers and your customers so that they can actually the media that you're getting. You also link it to your press page. So if you even go to my COO Alliance, press page or the Cameron harold.com press page, you'll see hundreds of PR articles about me. I just link them there. And those all drive SEO as well.

0 (21m 0s):
Fire Nation amplify that PR and it's kind of funny. I actually just had Brian on the show again, to talk about his new book WTF. And we were talking about how he was saying, it's insane. The opportunities that are out there today that are already people's fingertips and is going into some of the things that he and you had to do back in the day, just to get a little, love, a little press, a little amplification of what you were doing. So Cameron, let's close down our chat today by talking about your book free PR why should Fire Nation read this book? How is it going to benefit them in their life?

1 (21m 37s):
Yeah, I think for anyone listening right now and I would grab the hard copy of it and scribble notes in it, as you're reading it, like it's great to listen or it's great to read the Kindle versions, but when you grab a hard copy and you scribble your notes in it, it's going to become your Bible internally for PR anyone listening can use it to amplify either their personal brand or to help grow their business. If you're working inside of the company, when you bring these tools back to your company, it'll help them grow the business. Most people believe what they read in the media, but they don't believe our marketing or advertising. So when you're the person who's connecting with it, the media getting the media to talk about you, that helps amplify grow it. And it really doesn't cost any money to do it. And the other part is to remember that we're also doing the media favor, right?

1 (22m 18s):
You're not really asking them to cover you. You're calling them up and saying, Hey, do you have two minutes? I think I have a great story for you. And they're all looking for really good contacts there, all that content to write about. So you're actually trying to help them out.

0 (22m 29s):
You're doing the media a favor Fire Nation, follow the steps that Cameron breaks down and do the media favor. And by the way, do yourself a favor. Do your business a favor, get the message out. So Cameron break it down for us. One big takeaway. If we could just walk away with one thing that we're going to do in our business, when it comes to PR, tell us that and then share with us the best place for us to pick up a hard copy of free PR.

1 (22m 55s):
Yeah. So the big thing I would do right now is I would first off, I would not start with trying to land the biggest outlet you want. Like if you want to be covered in fortune magazine, that's great, but try to get covered first in a small monthly magazine, that's maybe regional, like a business in Vancouver that only a bunch of people read. When you practice with some of the smaller media, it's going to help you land the bigger media. But the big tip is literally pick up the phone. You just have to resist the urge to dive into email. Here's another big tip for you. Call a photographer. All of the photographer's names are right beside the photos in every magazine and newspaper, even, even online, they show the photo credit of who took the photo.

1 (23m 35s):
When you call the photographer and you say, Hey, I have a good photo up for you. Do you have two minutes? Every photographer is going to say yes because no one owns them except their mom. So they're all going to take your call. They're all going to want to cover that photo story. And that becomes the story that wraps around it. That's a huge tip.

0 (23m 53s):
Love that in where's the best place I was to pick up the hardcover of free PR

1 (23m 58s):
Amazon, for sure,

0 (23m 59s):
Amazon Fire Nation. And guess what? You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with? You've been hanging out with CH and JLD today, Fire Nation. So keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com, type Cameron in the search bar in the show notes page for this episode will pop up with everything that we talked about today. Not to mention the other two episodes, episode 3, 3, 7, and 1691. This is the trifecta for myself and Cameron. And I know he'll be back on in the future when number six, seven or 10 come out, whoever knows what that will be about, but it's going to be great content. So Cameron, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge with Fire Nation today for that brother, we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side.

1 (24m 47s):
I appreciate you having me.

0 (24m 48s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's value bombs were dropped by Cameron Harold. And if you're ready to discover your single one UNO big idea in just one hour, I have an amazing system for you. It's a free course that I've created and you'll get your big idea in less than an hour. And then the sky's the limit. And the best part is it's free. So visit your big idea.io today, and I will catch you there Fire Nation, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Volley is a hot new video messaging app that entrepreneurs are using for coaching community and collaboration. Sign up today at volleyapp.com/eofire and get grandfathered into their free forever plan.

0 (25m 34s):
That's volleyapp.com/eofire. Business Made Simple hosted by Donald Miller, takes the mystery out of growing your business. Check out recent episodes like how to escape a villain mindset and the framework that makes marketing easy. Listen to business made simple wherever you get your podcasts.