How to Pitch Yourself to Media for Book Marketing Success

Okay. All right, I'm gonna let people start filing in now and just one second. All right, there we go. Hello, everybody. Welcome. Thank you for joining us today. I'm just going to ask that you put yourselves on mute as you arrive. We've got a great deep dive for you today, so we're going to let everybody kind of file in if you have the opportunity. Yeah, go ahead and mute yourself and then go ahead and say hello in the chat. We would love to hear where you're from. And yes, Marna. Yeah, we're really excited about today's topic, too, and we are super excited because we have some awesome guests, special guests today. So thank you for everybody. Yeah, please just enter, you know, say hello, and we're just going to give it a minute or two. All right. So as you can see, I am not Julie Broad, despite what my name says. And I'm sorry for those that are expecting to see Julie. Julie's actually off today at her son's preschool graduation or pre K graduation. And then there's a pizza party at the park afterwards. So pizza is always perfect at 10am so that is where she is. She's going to try and join later if she can. But in the meantime, my name is Sarah Stevens Bean. I am Book Launchers Marketing manager. And we are joined today by some awesome guests. Not only do we have Angela Jones, who is from our operations team, but today we have Eric Rittmeyer and we have Bruce Sermon, who are going to Servin. Excuse me. That are going to be doing a fantastic presentation on how to pitch yourself to media. So I'm just going to go ahead and let go for a couple minutes. Let people file in. And yes, as you come in, please go ahead and mute yourself and then go ahead and put in the chat. Say hello, say where you're from. Got people. Let's see, we've got Ohio. Let me go. St. Louis. Rainy St. Louis. Yes, it is rainy here in Michigan as well. We have got Florida. Atlanta, Louisiana. My home. Houston. Oh, Johannesburg, South Africa. Amazing. Thank you for joining us today. Bc, Canada, New Hampshire. More from la. Oh, that's great. Bordeaux, France. Welcome, Paul. All right, wonderful. Well, I'm going to go ahead and get us started and I'm going to introduce our guests and then we're going to go into a little bit of a prize giveaway. As you know, Julie's deep dives are always filled with giveaways for you. So thank you for being here on time. It's going to be for those of you that are Here first. So first I'm going to introduce Eric. Eric, if you want to go ahead and wave, there. There he is. Okay, so Eric is a former U.S. marine and an expert in the field of mental toughness and emotional intelligence. He's been a professional speaker for the past 15 years and as a regular guest on major television outlets. He's also the book of the emotional Marine 68, mental toughness and Emotional Intelligence Secrets to make anyone instantly like you. He speaks to audiences all over the country, teaching executives and sales professionals how to overcome the limits brought on by fear and emotion and replace them with clear, concise, critical thinking that gets results. And we really hope he tells you about how he landed a role in the new HBO series We Own this City, which launched on April 25th. So we're really excited to have him here today. And then we also have with us Bruce Serbin from Serbin Media. Bruce is, for more than 20 years he has been an eight time national award winning publicist and author. He's a media powerhouse booking clients on national and local television radio shows, in daily, local national newspapers, magazines and online news outlets. He's the recipient of eight national awards and his work has been recognized by Public Relations Society of America, Gold Coast Public Relations League of American Communications and more. He founded Servin Media in 2009, a national publicity firm that serves clients in a whole array of fields and everything from financial services, travel industry, book authors, consultants, medical professionals, you name it. And he's done national media campaigns with celebrities like Nick Cannon, Kevin Harrington, Dr. Buck Parker and Samantha Davanci.

So.

And he is also an author, the author of 30 Reasons the Media is Ignoring Deathbed Confessions of Award Winning publicist. So big thank you to both Bruce and Eric for being here today. We're so excited about what they're going to present, but we do like to kick off with a little bit of a giveaway. So Angela, what do we have that we're giving away right now?

So we have our noboringbooks mug which if you've heard Julie say it before, coffee and tea and any beverage that you put in there do taste better. We have our, our oh so soft journal and we also have a copy of self published and Succeed Julie's latest book. So those are three prizes for today.

Awesome. Well, I think we need to give our early birds a little bit of an advantage here. That's what you get for being on time. And I think we're going to give the mug away to the fifth person that said hello in the chat today. So if you said hello in the chat, Angela, do you want to let me know who that is?

Yeah, it looks like.

Let's see. Marna, Andrew, Arun.

So for people who are actually saying hello, it looks like if you don't count my comment, then it would be Anthony Asquith, if that's how you pronounce from Florida.

Anthony. All right, Anthony, congratulations. So go ahead and send an email to teamoklaunchers.com with your name and your mailing address and what it is that you won, and Angela will get that out to you. And actually, I just saw Arun on camera sipping from our Book Launchers mug. Awesome. Thank you. I love that. That's great. All right, well, be sure to participate in the chat. Put any questions that you have there, and we will be sure to get those answered. And we'll be doing more giveaways as we go on. So to get us started today, we are talking about how to pitch yourself to media, which is a vital tool if you are launching a book. Being able to talk to media and publicity, you know, and gathering publicity for your book not only is going to get your book in front of the right people, but it's going to help set you up as an expert in your field. So, so some of the things that we do here at Book Launchers is during your pre sale and during after your book launches, we are constantly looking for media opportunities for your book. And that's going to exist through podcasts, broadcast TV and radio, blogs, print articles, speaking engagements, I mean, you name it. We're always looking at how we're going to get you in front of your right buying audience. But many authors do their own pitching and they need to understand how it works and why it's such a valuable skill to master. So for today, we've got Bruce and Eric to give us a little bit of insight into that. So, Bruce, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you. He's got this great presentation for us. Go ahead, take it away.

All right, thank you so much. We're up on the screen. You can see the PowerPoint. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, we can see it.

Perfect. Okay. Yeah, just like you were talking about. You're going to absolutely love this because we're going to show you, you know, how to pitch the media and how to do it the right way so you actually get booked. You know, a lot of authors I know, they struggle, unfortunately, because it's not easy. You know, it's not easy, it's not hard. It's a learned skill like anything else. And it does take some time to acquire the skill set. So let me tell you about something happened to me a couple months ago. I was out in Houston, Texas, and I was visiting a friend of mine. I hadn't seen him in many, many years. He's an old friend from college. He picks me up at the airport. We go back to his place, and we walk in the door, and his grandmother, she's sitting there at the computer, and she's probably, I don't know, 95, 96 years old. So I go up to her and I say, hi, my name's Bruce. It's nice to meet you. I'm a friend of Scott's. And she looks up at me and she says, I left my reading glasses in the other room. Can you look at the screen and help me see where I'm at? And I looked down, and she was on Facebook. No lie. So I look at my friend. I'm like, your grandmother's on Facebook, right? And he kind of shrugs it off like, yeah, that's just what she does. And I didn't believe it. So I said, you know, you're on Facebook. Where do you mean to be? I'll help you get there.

And.

And she says, no, no, no, that's where I want to be. I'm trying to stay young, trying to do what all the kids are doing these days, you know. And at that moment, it kind of hit me that, well, everybody's on Facebook, right? Anyone can do it. And I guess the same could be said, you know, about any type of social media, whether that's LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. Same thing with a lot of platforms out there, like traditional advertising, for instance, you know, you can go to your local newspaper, local TV station, give them your money, and they'll gladly run your ad. And so I started thinking, you know, that's what I've always loved about media, is that not everyone is doing it. And it's not that not everyone is doing it. People don't know how to do it. I would say 99.9999% of authors, they just don't know how to do it. They think they know how to do it, but they really don't know how to do it. And that's what we're going to show you today, is how to do that. But going back to my point, so the fact that not everyone is doing it is what happens is when you're featured, whether that's television, radio, a print publication, an online site, whatever it is, you know, A lot of things happen. You build trust, you build your reputation. You're seen as believable. Most importantly, I think you're featured as an expert, you're seen as smart, and you build credibility. Because, remember, not everybody is there. Again, I think everybody can be there. They just don't know how to be there. So for those very, very few people who are there, again, the credibility that speaks is. It's immense. Right? It's sort of a silent endorsement, if you will, that's passed on from a media outlet to a guest that says, hey, there's a reason this person is here. There's a reason we called on this person. And again, because of that, that credibility factor is absolutely huge. And don't take my word for it. How about this woman's word for it? I think everybody probably knows who this is. This is Barbara Corcora, and arguably one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. And what you might not know is, back in 1981, Barbara was actually, like, this close to going out of business. And I don't know about you, but I just struggle with that. I can't wrap my head around saying Barbara Corcoran and going out of business in the same sentence just because she's been so successful. But anyway, a couple months back, I was sitting in the doctor's office, and I'm just scrolling through the magazines there, and I come across this article where Barbara's talking about public publicity. And she tells this fascinating story how, again, back in 1981, didn't know what to do, she was ready to close up shop. And she says, you know, I noticed the trend in the New York City housing market. I noticed that over the last six months or so, New York City apartment prices had just been skyrocketing. In fact, so much, they had just quintupled in price. And she goes on to say in the article, so I put together this little report, and I sent it out to every media outlet, every journalist I could find in the city. And she goes on to say, sure enough, two weeks later, on the front page of the real estate section of the New York Times, this article appears. And it says, the headline reads, new York City condo prices nearly quintuple, according to the Corcoran Group. And she goes on to say, we had credibility overnight. And for her, publicity was the big kahuna. And it's one of the things that she credits with saving her business and sort of setting the wheels in motion and getting her down the right path to start rebuilding. And it's what Saved her business and of course, as you know, the rest is history. And we all know the things she's accomplished since then, obviously. So anyway, today we're going to talk about how publicity can be your big kahuna. And I'm telling you as an author you have so many advantages, so many ways to open that media door because you have a book compared to non authors. But before we tell you how to do that, let me just tell you a little bit more about me. My name is Bruce Serbin. As we already know, I'm an eight time national award winning publicist. I'm a former TV news journalist and I myself am an author as well. Got my start in local TV news. There I am at about, I don't know, 20, 20, 21 years old. I look like a little kid. I definitely miss the full head of ha. It was like 10 or 15 pounds lighter. But after, I don't know, number of years, kind of got tired of covering murders and car accidents and the like of local TV news. And like a lot of journalists kind of crossed over into the PR world, did a lot of different types of PR for some reason always came back to the media end of it. And I've done campaigns since, since then with companies like Panasonic, Office Depot, Office Max, Bed Bath and Beyond. Number of celebrities that you see there on the screen. And other people love, absolutely love working with authors. What I really love is working with just, you know, what you call ordinary everyday people and really bringing them to prominence as the go to experts in their field for the media. And again, that's what we're going to show you how to do today. But before I do that, let me introduce you to my good friend, my colleague, US Marine Eric Rittmeyer. Take it away, Eric.

Bruce, you're the man. Thank you. And that picture you put up, you always say you're 21 or 22, there's no way you're older than like nine in that picture. I'm just not behind it, dude. There's no way. So great. Yeah, guys, so look, hey, I'm pumped to be here, right? So you know, Bruce and I, we speak a lot of events, we, we talk to a lot of different people and a lot of different lines of work. And like Bruce said, you know, the author thing to me is very near and dear to my heart. It's funny because I know you guys hear it. You're like, oh, Eric's a Marine, right? He can probably hardly read or write. And you guys are right. My book's Actually written in crayon with pop up pictures in it. So, you know, it's funny because when I went to write my book, I was, you know, I think I do things a little bit differently. And I think an important thing to point out here, like Bruce said, a little bit, you know, I think everybody's goals with media are a little bit different. For me personally, I had a different philosophy when I wrote my book. You know, a lot of people who come to us, they say, hey, I wrote my book so I can sell it on tv. And me personally, I take the stance of I wrote my book so I could get on tv. And it sounds like, you know, it doesn't sound like a big difference there, but for me and what we're going to talk about here today, and I think the most critical piece of what we're going to discuss is, is the credibility piece. I wrote my book, I'm an author, but primarily I'm a speaker. I speak on mental toughness and emotional intelligence. So I have a program that I deliver to sales teams, and it's not an inexpensive program. So when I'm talking to sales executives, they're looking for credibility. They're looking for something. They want to see my resume. So for me personally, I can have them Google me when they're sitting in front of their computer and my name shows up on show after show after show after show. So it's an implied endorsement. These channels don't endorse me. I've done probably 500 television interviews over the last couple years. These shows don't endorse me, but I show up on their website, I show up on their page, I have videos on my website. It's an implied endorsement. So from an author standpoint, it's twofold. When you go on television, are you gonna be in front of lots and lots of people who could potentially purchase your book? 100%, yes, you can. But I take it a layer deeper. There's nothing else you can do. I've marketed, I've done everything. I've done Internet, I've done mailing, I've done radio. There's nothing that got the response to telev got for me. So personally speaking, I wrote my book because I wanted to build credibility. And I got to tell you, since I've done that, what it's done for my business, and it's not just for me personally, it's not just from writing my book. You can see up here on the screen, it was funny because when Covid first hit, I remember calling Bruce And I, you know, we were like, kind of like, oh, my goodness, what's going to happen? Covid came, right, like, oh, we're going to. You know what's going to happen? No more in studio. How are we going to do this? So I went out, like, that day and bought an earpiece of ring light and a backdrop, and I started pitching all these channels, and I was like, wait a second. This is great. Like, this is awesome. Like, people started saying, like, oh, yeah, like, Spokane, Washington, and Little Rock, Arkansas. I was in Canada. I was overseas. Like, all these places that were never open. So the era of Zoom really did open up the doors for lots and lots of people that you would have never been able to get on television before. Me, personally, I would go into. I go into cities, wherever I was delivering a program, and I would reach out to the local channels there and be like, hey, I'm here. I'm going to be on town. I'd love to come in studio. So I was kind of limited geographically to wherever I was. In the age of Zoom. It opened wide up to the point where the whole. The whole world, not even the whole nation, the whole world, was now an opportunity for us. Now, I will say this, and Bruce and I have been seeing this here lately, too. We have seen a lot of studios go. A lot of the TV channels go back in studio, which is great, which is wonderful, too. But it does make it a little more challenging because, again, you know, the world of Zoom, you get anywhere you want to go. It does make a little bit more challenging. But the takeaway here, what I'm trying to say is, regardless of what your book is about, regardless of what your specialty is, regardless of what your objectives are, whether it be to sell books, sell programs, some people just self, you know, I want to be on tv. I want to be on television. It's what I want to do. It's when I first reached out to Bruce, right? I got to tell him the story. Bruce, too, by the way. So, obviously, I started working with Bruce, and he wanted to get me. I was like, you know, Bruce, I want you to get me on tv. I need you to get me booked, right? So he has an online program. So I purchased the online program. I went through the whole thing. I started doing everything he told me to do, and I started pitching shows. So I think I booked, like, maybe like three or four shows, right? Like, local channels. No big deal. I'm in Baltimore, Maryland, did some local channels. No big deal. So I'm, like, driving to work one day And I get a phone call and it's from New York. And I'm like, okay. I answer, I'm like, hey, this is Eric. How can I help you? And they're like, this is Jane calling from Fox in New York. How are you? I'm like, pretty good. What's going on? She's like, we'd love to have you come up to be on fox, Fox and Friends. Like, would you, would you like to come up? We'll send you a car, whatever. I'm like, absolutely. So I hang up the phone, I call Bruce. I'm like, hey, Bruce, I just got a call from Fox. Fox invited me to come up to their studios. They're come pick me up. So the first thing Bruce says is, don't do it. You can't do that. I'm like, why can't I do that? He said, dude, you've been on television like three times. He's like, that's national television. If you go on television and you botch it, you're done. So I was like, oh. Anyway, I called back. Guess what? I ended up doing it. I did do it. And the whole way he was like, you know, Bruce is all nervous with me. Anyway, it's a funny story. He's always like, you can't tell people that. I didn't tell you not to go on tv. You kind of did, Bruce. That's okay. The thing too, right? As it relates to television. Here's the thing, like, once you get that platform, this person talks to that person, talks to this person, talks to that person. So before you know it, you're now getting booked. You get all these spin offs from these shows that you do. Part of the way I got into the We Own the City, that HBO series. We'll talk about that a little bit later. Oh, here we're talking about now. Okay, so if you look all the way to the right there, that's my cranium, right? That's my head. So I got, I got to tell the funny story. I'll drop it back to you, Bruce. One more story, guys, I'm sorry. So this is, this is a prime example of why you never turn down shows. Okay, bit of advice. Number number one, when you start to pitch your book, when you start to pitch whatever it is you're pitching, my advice to you is never ever turn down an opportunity, okay? I can't tell you how many people we work with and they come to us. Number one, the very first thing, I want to work with you. I want to be a good Morning America. And we're like, yep, you're the first person who told me, you want to be a Good Morning America, right? Nobody ever wants to be a good morning. Of course, you know. Right, of course. You know. Here's my advice to you. Never, ever, ever turn down an opportunity to be on any outlet, okay? I'm huge on this. I don't care if it's Patuxentawney, Phil. I'm saying yes. I don't care. Like, I've literally been on these shows. Here's the point I'm making. That whole We Own the City thing stemmed from a show that had a viewership of like, five, and they were, like, all related. It was a show somebody was listening to. I think it was a radio show. Ends up, somebody reaches out to me locally in Baltimore. Before you know it, he gets this opportunity. He's a police officer, gets this opportunity for We Own the City and HBO back in September. He's like, eric, come be on the show. So I'm like, okay. I go there. I'm a background police officer. I never acted a day in my life. So I'm in a group of about probably 200 people, right? All police officers, all dressed up in uniform, background stunt people. Sag, non sag, all that. I'm staying in this crowd. Producer comes out to me, hair's all disheveled, all messed up. She was walking through the crowd, deadlocks eyes with me. She's like, you come with me. I'm like, okay. We go walking down set. She's like, you're a stunt guy, right? I'm like, yeah, I'm a stunt guy. So here they go. They put me down, they sit me down. Here comes the lady. She starts putting all the makeup, the blood on my head. Here comes George Pellicano, David Simon. They're like, hey, you just got hit in the head with a brick. These are the riots happening right now. John's going to come scoop you up. Here comes John Bernthal, the Punisher, right? Here comes John Bernthal. He's like, hey, I'm John. I'm like, nice to meet you, John. Like, good job, Wolf. Wall Street. Nice to meet you. He's like, my name's Eric. He's like, can I call you E? I'm like, yeah, call me. He's fine. So anyway, here's my spot. It just aired, actually, last Monday. My scene in this. This scene is. I'm holding my head like this. He comes, right? He comes flying up the road in a police van, jumps out, runs Over. He's like, oh, my God, E. And he says some bad words, but, oh, my God, E. I got you. I'm gonna get you home. There's like, three cameras right in my face. He picks my arm up. Another police officer picks my arm up. They drag me in the back of the van. I'm on set that day for 14 hours. Nobody knows who I am. Like once an hour, like, what's your name? Brit Meyer. You're not a stunt guy. I'm like, I'm a stunt guy. I don't know what you're talking about. I got five scenes out of this movie all because of this, right? Here's the point I'm making. I tell stories for a living, guys.

I'm sorry.

Here's the point I'm making. Had I turned down that show in East Patunkatunk, whatever it was, I might have never been on this HBO series. So takeaway number one is never turn stuff down. Number two, if you don't turn that down, you might just have an opportunity. But most importantly, I think, is the practice piece. Because this is an acquired skill, right? This is something pretty much. I think Bruce will maybe agree with me. I mean, some people are more natural than others. Anybody can get good on television. But the key is you do need practice. So I don't want to say I made a mistake by going on Fox after I had a whole six minutes in airtime. I don't say I made a mistake doing that, but it was definitely very risky.

Right?

But you know what they say. Pressure is what turns coal into diamonds. So the practice piece is very, very important. You can work through it. You can. You're good. You know, anybody can learn how to do it. Don't pass up opportunities, guys. That's my takeaway with that, Bruce. I think I talked longer than I was supposed to. You picking up the next slide, or am I still going?

I'll take. For the record, I would say you did a great job on Fox, actually. I guess it was good because they invited you back a second time. So there you go. And we just want to show you guys a couple of what? What? Being an author, I said it opens doors. I said earlier, these are just a couple of screenshots. Some of these people are our clients. Some of them are not. But just notice in every graphic that you see here, it says author, author, author, author, author. And if it doesn't say author, they're showing the picture of your book. I mean, again, that's absolutely huge. So when I say it opens Doors, Trust me, it opens doors because remember, media outlets, they're looking for experts to feature. They're looking for people with great stories to feature. And when you've written a book, it tells that journalist that, hey, you're somebody important. You know what you're talking about. And I'm telling you, we'll talk about this more in a minute. But it makes a huge, huge difference. Let me show you what it really looks like. I want to try to paint a visual picture. I know I'm certainly visual. And I think this will, this will help really serve the purpose of the point that Eric and I are trying to make about media. These are four guys you see here on the screen. These are all authors, all clients of ours over the years. And these four guys, all very smart, well accomplished, successful people in their fields even before they wrote a book. But they all wrote a book and then they all came to work with us. And this is sort of what their marketing looked like before they did a media campaign. This guy right here, he's a psychiatrist. He wrote this book all about post traumatic stress disorder and veterans. This is another guy we'll talk more about in a minute who's all about thinking and the different types of thinking and how people think differently. And he wrote a book about money and how people think differently about money and why some people are poor, some people are wealthy based on the thinking that they have about money. This person right here, he's a former senior officer with Carnival Cruise Lines, and he wrote this book, the Truth About Cruise Ships. And finally, next to him, he is a clinical hypnotherapist and a stage hypnosis performer. And he wrote this book, Success Through Manipulation. Again, all very successful. It's great. They've got their headshots, they've got their books. After doing a media campaign. Let me show you the after picture. And this is just huge right here. I mean, this just speaks. They don't have to say a word. This just speaks. So if you go to their website or you're looking at their marketing material, again, here's our psychiatrist is featured on msnbc, ABC News, Newsweek, Time magazine. Here's our, you know, the guy who wrote the money book, featured on the Today show, he's sitting there with, with Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford. I mean, that, that's huge. Imagine going to somebody's website and you see a clip of them on the Today show. I mean, that's immediately in the mind of somebody going to a website and you see that the person that you're researching or thinking about, you know, hiring them for a speech, for coaching, for whatever it is, it sets a certain picture in your mind. Wow, this person, again, is important, smart, expert. I need to consider, you know, doing business or whatever the case. Again, here's our cruise ship guy in all of his outlets, our clinical hypnotherapist. So again, you look at the before and the after. Just huge. I'll show you a quick case study and I promise you we're going to get into some how to's and really make this educational so you can go out there with your book and try to just drive tons and tons of press. But I really want to share this because this particular case study I did really drives home the point of what the potential is with the media. And I'm going to be flat out honest with you. Does this happen to every single author? Of course not. But it does show you what can happen because it happened to one of my clients. Again, this is the same author. He's all about, you know, thinking. And you know, he's written a number of probably nine or 10 books over the years all about thinking as it relates to different things, you know, weight loss, money, politics, all these different, you know, areas. We got him on the Today show not once but twice. Huge, huge credibility right there. One of his books called How Rich People Think climbed to number 31 of all books on Amazon.com not just number one in its category, number 31 of all books. And that happened as a result of, I mean, this isn't even television. This is print and online publicity. And I think the one that put us over the top was this Business Insider one and this MSN one that just got millions upon millions of views. And what I did is we were getting so much, so much press for this guy. I put together a case study because I wanted to see how the money played out, you know, and this is what it looked like. We did a two year case study because he's been a client for many, many years and this is what he paid us over a two year period. So 60,000. Now, his travel, this was pre Covid when he was traveling around the country, you know, flying in and out of different cities, staying at different airports, going out for meals. Obviously that's dropped considerably now that we're doing a lot of things. Remot he spent $32,000 and shipping. What I mean by shipping is if a producer says, hey, you know, we're interested in booking you, can you send us a copy of the book. And you send us three copies of the book and you have to, you know, ups it or overnight it so it can add up 3,600. Then we said, okay, what did he make in that two year period as a result of the media? And here you go, you can see it. Speeches. He got booked for $105,000 in speeches. Licensing deals. Because he licenses number of programs. Almost half a million dollars licensing deals. The next year was a little less. 125,000 coaching fees, 150,000 public seminars. He does tons and tons of public seminars. 76,000 book sales, 172,800. So his total income from publicity was well over a million dollars. And that's a return of 1,133%. And again, I'm just showing this to you because again, does not happen for everybody, but it does show you what's possible. So now the question is, how can you do this? You're all authors or you're about to be authors. So the question is, how can you take your book and your message and get out there in the press? And that's what I want to focus on the rest of the way. This is another one of our clients, Vernice. She goes by Fly Girl. Vernice, Fly Girl Armor. She was America's first African American female combat pilot. Extremely, extremely successful woman. Amazing speaker, if you ever get a chance to hear her speak. Just phenomenal. And we actually represented her book Zero to Breakthrough. There you see it. We got all this press, as you can see, and she's been booked all over the world. So now the question is, just like Bernice and everybody else we've talked about today to this point, and Eric, for instance, how can you do this? So at this point I want to get like a really educational, if you will. We're kind of going back, back to school here. So take notes now because I want to talk. We're going to give you four tips as an author, things that you can start doing today right now to get yourself booked in the media. And I'm going to have Eric kick this one off.

Guys, I saw some questions coming over, I think popping up. Julie and, or I should say Sarah, did you want to address some of those real quick?

I saw them, sure, yeah, absolutely. That's great.

Thank you.

Andrew hall had asked, how does this correlate to podcasts? Just curious. Do you take every opportunity? I definitely have answers for this, but I would love to hear both of your takes.

Yeah, okay.

I'm sorry, Bruce. I was going to Say, like, like I said before, I literally don't care, like, if my. A kid from my daughter's school, like, literally. I have teenagers, right. My oldest daughters. My youngest daughter's a singer. One of the kids in her grade is doing some sort of a project or something because she wants to get into radio and television, all that. So she has a podcast, and she invited me to come on the podcast, and I was like, 100%, yes. So you will never hear me say no to an opportunity. So how. How it correlates or how it transfers over in the podcast. Again, anytime there's a microphone, a camera, a telephone, I am all for, by all means. Now, within. Within reason, Right? You can't say, oh, well, there's a podcast for five hours, and I'm gonna be on that podcast. I never, ever turn down opportunity, regardless of what type of show you're doing. Absolutely do not pass that up, because you never know what's going to branch off from it.

Yeah. And I would add to that, you know, we have a number of clients. I'd say most of them are pretty good. They understand the power of podcasts and just how they've taken off in recent years, and so many people are listening to them. And I'll be honest with you, we have a couple of clients as well. And you say the word podcast on podcast, nobody listens to those, and they want absolutely nothing to do with it. And, hey, I don't agree with you, but that's fine. I just won't concentrate on it for you. I won't try to book them for you. But personally, I believe in them. I think they're absolutely huge and they can lead to so many things. So I would encourage you. Absolutely. Go full force on the. On the podcast if you can.

Absolutely. I would say, you know, at book launchers, podcasts are a major part of what we go after, especially when we're launching a book. You have to imagine that podcasts have such specific niche audiences that are listening to that content that hopefully it's your buying audience. But I'm also going to tie this back to what you were talking about earlier, where even if this podcast has a small audience, maybe you're not expecting it to do a whole lot for you. Practice, practice, practice, practice. It's the perfect opportunity for every podcast, every opportunity that comes your way to practice. Get really good on how you're presenting yourself to the public. Get really good at trying out new material and listening to what the hosts and any of that audience are bringing back to you. In case you need to change your message in the future. So yeah, I would definitely say practice, practice, practice. And then also keep in mind, even if that opportunity isn't going to make books fly off the shelf, what it is is a great opportunity to list, build and direct people back to your website and any of the services and things you offer. So yeah, I agree with Bruce and Eric completely.

Sarah, what do you got? You got some kind of background on this? Because you know way too much. You definitely.

I've been in publishing and publicity marketing for a long time. So yeah, I started in traditional publishing and then I've worked with New York Times best selling authors. I, I work with all of our authors on all of our launches. So publicity and media is a big part of what we do.

Awesome. Any other questions? I know there were a few that looked, they popped out. Any other ones?

Yeah, a couple. Yeah. Jonathan G. Had asked for a friend. Where to start if you're camera shy.

Yeah, go ahead.

And if you're going to dive into this, we can answer it when we get to it. But unless you have some insight right.

Now, this is part of what I train on Sarah. So part of my program is it's called systematic desensitization. In the world of psychology, it's known as graduate exposure therapy. And the concept behind this as it relates to sales teams that I train is I try to take situations that make them nervous, upset, anxious, whatever and we consistently put them in those situations. Same thing with the Marine Corps. You know, we, we, we sweat and train so we don't bleed more. We constantly put ourselves in situations to be as real as we possibly can. So when the real thing does happen, we've already been there, done that so long. Answer already. The answer is put yourself in situations you have got to. If you're camera side, it's very normal. Everyone is. We'll talk about this a little bit. But one of the most important things to think about with television, they want you to do well. So when you're going on camera, that interviewer is going to look, is going to want very, very, very, very much. Nothing more they're going to want than for you to look good. Because if you look good, they look good. So I think the most important thing is to recognize that when you go on these shows. Now don't get me wrong, this is important to point out too. With my topic of mental tops and emotional intelligence, I do get into some confrontational topics sometimes where I have strong stances about things you're normally going to know These shows, when you're going on, when they're bringing somebody opposing point of view or if they're going to want to go down that road. But when you're doing like bubble, I call it the bubble gum and rainbow stuff, the morning television, which is 95% of what I do and what you all would probably be doing when you're on those shows, these, these people on there want you to do well. So they're going to try so insanely hard to make sure it goes smoothly, to make sure that everything goes well. We have some tips here. There's some things that I've done that I've learned over the years. You know, our clients that we bring on, I do coach them through to help them with stuff. I'm not saying I'm like the best thing ever on television, but there are some little things to do. So the answer is, the only way to get over it is to put yourself in those situations. Go in the smaller shows, maybe first, maybe do some podcasts, get in front of a camera and record yourself and just listen to it back, just to get used to hearing your own voice. Very, very simple things. But you got to do it. You've got to jump in and start doing it.

And I would make it on a, on a smaller level, like you could just do a mock interview, have a, have a friend, have a family member, just sit down with them and have them interview you talking about the topic around your book and record it like Eric said, and see how you do. Or just sit in front of the camera and even just practice looking at your. And, you know, how do you speak? What are your mannerisms? What's your body language like, you know, take it really, really down on a smaller level.

And if I can point out one thing because I want to move on. So I do want to point this out because I remember when I, when I first started getting myself sending all the pitches I was doing on my own. And I remember the first one I got booked on, it was right after New Year's. It was a local channel, Fox 45 in Baltimore. And I'm pitching and I'm pitching and I got everything drafted. I'm sending out, doing everything Bruce taught me, sending it out, and I get the first one back. That's like, like, we want you on air. Show up Monday morning at 7am it's like a Friday. And I was like, do I really want to do this? I'm like, I was like, I was so ensconced and getting booked, and I walked in that day. And I was literally. I mean, I was like. And I'm used to being on a stage, right? I might get in front of thousands of people. I talk for three hours, so I'm used to being on stage. But the camera was just so. It was intense. And after the first one, I walked out and literally took a nap in my car for like 20 minutes. That's, like how high energy it was. But you have got to put yourself in situations. The nerves are going to be okay. You're going to be a little fearful. Initially, they want to help you, they want you to do well. And all you're doing is just conveying a message. It's something you probably know very well. So it's your expertise. And the people watching and hearing you and listening to you, they don't know your topic as well as you do. So there's really nothing you're going to do wrong. And the people are there to guide you through. Sorry, there's another question there. Sarah, do you want me to move on?

No, no, I thought you answered that perfectly. I don't think we have another question at the moment. I just had one little thing to add. And this is going to sound kind of weird, but honestly, when you're going to those situations where you are incredibly nervous when you are, you're like, oh, my gosh, I haven't done this. I'm gonna.

Oh, I don't know.

I'm so shy about it. We had an author who, we booked her on KTLA in LA, which is the LA's main morning show. It's a big opportunity and we had booked her on it. And she kind of knew. She knew we were pitching her there, but I don't know if she maybe didn't think it was actually gonna go through. And then it did. They called her, they said, okay, we want you to. Wednesday morning, you got to be here at the studio, 7:30. We're going to give you nine minutes. You know, it was this whole thing and she was terrified. And so what she did, I still remember this, she went and she got someone to come to her hotel and do her hair and makeup that morning. So that when she went into it, she felt her best, she felt confident walking in there. And it's not always as easy as getting your hair and makeup done, but it is something where you feel good going into that situation. They were booked, booked that person, because they're an expert. So you have to trust in yourself and in your material to know that you are the right person to Talk about this issue and talk about that. So, you know, and for her to be able to walk in there feeling confident, okay, I look good. I know my stuff. It helped calm her nerves a lot. Now afterwards, she did tell me that she had a little bit of a freak out afterwards, but that's okay because for those nine minutes, she did awesome.

And by the way, nine minutes, that's like eternity. Sarah. Yeah, we book people up. We actually, we book clients on there quite often. That's a big nine minutes. Is like, oh, my goodness. If you wanted to, if you wanted to break. And this looks so crazy too, about the whole advertising aspect of it. If you wanted to break that down and figure out cost per minute to get in front of those millions of people, you couldn't write a check for it. So it's so insane to me when people don't recognize the significance of, you know, when they come to us saying, like, oh, what about this? About that? I'm like, you're going to be in front of all these people. Like, the cameras come on and then it goes on your website. Then it gets pushed out to your people. Anyway, I could go on and on.

Sorry, we'll move on there. I see a couple more questions, but I'm going to hold them for now and let you guys dive into these takeaways. And I'll make sure we have these questions. We circle back to them.

Perfect.

Got it. Just me, Bruce, right?

That's you.

Okay. So being an expert. So this is what, so this is the key, right? So this is where everybody has their own topic. And this is, this is something where, when we bring new clients on, this is an important part of it. So you do have to be an expert in your field. All right? So when you're put. When people are putting you on television, when we book clients on television, it's our name that goes on there, say, hey, this person's talking on behalf of this topic. So when you go on camera, you personally need to make sure that you know what you're talking about. I know this sounds silly to say. I know it sounds crazy, but you need to know. You need to, you need to have that feel hammered down. Because if questions do come up, you could be instantly marginalized in one question if you don't know the answer to it. Now, almost equally important to this, because a lot of times people come to us saying, hey, well, this is my area of expertise. I only want to book shows on this topic. And that's a mistake. Okay, so here's what I'VE done. I'll give you an example with me, with mental toughness and emotional intelligence, I can apply that towards anything. So I've done media on kids and emotions going back to school. I've done media on mass shootings. I've done media on airline shutdown. I've done media on all this stuff. Because here's the thing. When you're. When you're television clips go on the Internet, when they go through Google and people are searching you and they see you on show after show after show, it really doesn't matter the topic you're talking about, okay? So it's not really a big deal that you're talking about A or B or C or D or whatever. The key is, it's show after show after show. And guess what? As authors, guess what they're doing. Okay, me on my set, if you're looking at one of my sets, I made a big copy of my book. It's a huge, ginormous copy of my book. It's like eight by. I don't know how big. It's big. I really did it to take all the pressure off my head because my head's so ginormous. I'm like, I should buy a big copy of a book. I have my book right in the background, right? So I use it that way. Some channels tell me, you know, like, hey, Eric, you take that down. We don't really want that there. But again, you being that person, you want to be the go to, and this is what media does for you. I'm at the point now where I backed off a lot of my media. I'm busy with getting people booked on tv. I personally don't do a whole bunch of it. I now have channels. Call me saying, eric, this happened. What do you think about this? Or can you come on, that's where you guys want to be. And guess how you do it? You do it by being a good guest. You do it by having quality information. And you do it by being on time and just putting quality, getting your camera set right, knowing what you're talking about. And then when something happens, you want to be the one they reach out to. You want to be the expert. So when something goes down, they're like, who should we call? I want to call Joe. That's what we want, our channel. So you need to research, you need to understand. You need to know your product inside and out. This is actually one of the. This is our etiquette lady, right? My glass, my glasses are. This is the etiquette the etiquette lady. So we got. I got to tell a funny story about this, too. So we work with the etiquette. Bruce actually knew her initially, and she's. She's an etiquette person, right? So I'm a Marine. I have no etiquette, right. I can hardly read or write. I have no etiquette. So I'm down. I was visiting him, this is a couple years ago, I guess, and he's like, hey, this is, you know, let's go out. We're meet her for lunch with everyone. This is the etiquette lady, right? So we walk in, we sit down for lunch, like within 30 seconds, like, Eric, why are you holding the fork like that? I'm like, are you being. She starts butchering me, how I was like, eating like this, right? So she's an expert. She's been with the Bruce. What shows? I mean, it's like, anytime. How have you wrapped that around? I know. With her piece, it's literally for dinner, for events, everything.

Holidays, the workplace, Valentine's Day, everything. Airline travel. It's nonstop.

Yeah. The key with her, she takes her expertise of etiquette and then applies it towards other things. And this is another thing we're going to talk about, too. But the first takeaway here is to be an expert. Know your topic. Google alerts. I'd recommend you guys set up Google alerts. If you don't have that on mental toughness and emotional intelligence, you log into Google, just like, do Google alerts, whatever. If you guys. I'm sure you guys already know this. And then what you do is put your topic in underwater basket weaving, neuroscience, whatever it is. And then Google, anytime there's any article, anything that posts on Google at all on the Internet, you get notified of it. So now you get notified once or twice a day. Here's a story that just posted about your topic. Guess what? You now craft a pitch. You now send it out to that person, that producer now brings you on air, because it's a very relevant topic. Television is all about timing, right? Television is all about. The shelf life in television is very short. Right? Bruce and I will talk with our clients. They'll call them like, this happened. That happened. This happened. We're like, it happened like, two days ago. And like, well, I'm like, dude, that's like, old news, bro. Like, you got to get onto something else. Everybody's hard, you know, it's hard for them to recognize that.

But.

But key takeaway number one, be an expert. I know it sounds silly to say, I know it sounds crazy. Everybody already knows it. Know your craft inside and out, upside down, forwards and backwards.

Yeah. And one thing I was just going to add is that that particular Sharon, the etiquette expert, she's an author. She wrote a book. Now, granted, she wrote a book about etiquette and culture in Asia. And it really had nothing to do when we're talking about etiquette around the holidays or the workplace or dating or anything like that. But. But taking the fact that she's an author and being able to say that in a pitch to a television producer, it opens up to, oh, oh, she wrote a book on etiquette.

Wow.

Yeah, she must really be a true etiquette expert if she wrote a whole entire book about it. So, again, as an author, makes a huge, huge difference.

Yeah. You know what, Bruce? I want to real quick on that too, because the whole. That's one of the main reasons why we love working with authors. Because I tell you what, from our job, as far as PR people getting you booked on television, our job is a whole lot easier. When we say author of. It's crazy. I know not anybody can write a book. We know this. You could. Literally, anybody can write a book. I'm proof of that. Anybody could write a book. Anybody could. But here's the key. When we're pitching this and when you're pitching this to these people, you need to be that one. And the minute you put author in there, it just makes everything better because that tells the person, you are the one that we want because you've authored a book. So all day long, I'd say, I mean, Bruce, do we have. I don't know if we have any clients we work with that aren't authors. I think pretty much everyone has written a book. But for those of you that. Here's another thing. For those of you that have not written a book yet or haven't finished with your book or, you know, you just want to do some television, don't think you have to wait to publish a book. Okay, we get that a lot too. People be like, oh, I don't. I don't want to do any television until I finish my book. It's gonna be done in two and a half years. You don't have to wait for your book to be done. Okay? So it's. If you're. If you're currently writing whatever, you don't have to reference it. It. Start building up that resume. Start building up to start. Start getting that practice. So when you go on air to announce your book. You've already been practiced, you're already polished, you're already good to go. They already know you, the audience already sees you. You're already comfortable with them. So that's an important thing. You do not have to be an author to get on television. It helps out significantly though, if you are. Sorry, Bruce.

No, you're good.

So the writing the pitch part, did you want to cover this? You want me to cover this one?

I could take it, sure. So writing a pitch, you know, it's funny, you go out on the street and you ask, I don't know, a hundred people, how do you get in the press? What do you do? I think a majority of them would say, oh, you write a press release. You write a press release and you send it off to the newsroom. I'll tell you this, if you walk away with nothing else today, I would tell you stop writing press releases. Because newsrooms are inundated with press releases. And a press release is really a very self serving thing. You see companies issuing it to announce something. Oh, we're announcing a new CEO, we're announcing our quarterly earnings, we're announcing a merger. It's usually focused on the company itself or the person itself. It's extremely self serving. So as an author, what you want to do is you want to write a pitch around a real story. And a pitch is simply just, it's a form of outreach. It's like a letter, if you will, to a journalist. And it's personalized. These are some tips around how to write a great pitch. It's personalized. You use that person's name, you reference the name of their show or the name of their media outlet. It it's focused on a real story. And what I mean by that is an author, you don't want to send a pitch to a journalist. Hey, I'm an author. I just wrote this new book. You should do a story about my book because they're going to tell you to get lost. They don't care that you wrote a new book. You've got to remember that journalists are in the business to help their viewers. They're there to report the news. They're there to again, go to experts who can comment and offer advice, tips. What action should I take? What should I do? I'm a consumer, I'm a viewer, I'm a reader. What do I do? Help me. So they want experts. So it's not focused on your book. The book is your way of breaking in to focus on a real story. So you're pitching them on a real story. Again, offers an expert, that's, hang on. Offers an expert, that's what we want to put in the pitch. Who are you? Why are you a good source? And something that grabs them, you know, you want to really grab their attention. Whether it's statistics, whether it's, you know, the way, you know your writing style. There's a style to a pitch that Eric will tell you. I know once he figured it out and you know, started implementing it a lot more, it made a huge difference. But if you can follow some of these tips, obviously in a short hour program like this, we don't have time to go into this is how you write a pitch, but these are certainly key elements that your pitch should have. But I would tell you, if you're doing press releases or, or anything like that, stay away from the press releases because again, newsrooms are slammed with them. They get them, they throw them out. They're very self serving. Focus on a real story, focus on a pitch and personalize it because that makes a huge, huge difference.

Can I jump in on this, Bruce?

Because this is where I'm going to jump in.

Go ahead, Sarah, you go. I'm racing with you girl. Come on, let's go for a second.

I was just going to say, when you're writing these pitches, there's a couple things to think about. And the number one thing you want to think about is, is who is reading them. You want to get into the mindset of that producer. What's that producer looking for? They're not necessarily waiting, sitting around, waiting, oh, I hope this author reaches out to me because I really want to feature them. They're thinking about the news story and what they're going to present to their audience. So in those pitches as you're writing them, you want to keep them brief, concise, because they don't have time to read through a lot of stuff. And you want to also address for them what it is you have to offer their audience. Audience. Why are you the best author that is going to present something on a, on a timely news thing making focused on the story that they're going to be able to present and how you can bring something new, interesting, different than they've presented before that the audience needs to learn. So just keep that in mind that you're always looking at how you can help them do better at their job.

Bruce, don't lie to me. Is she even taking my job or what? Is this an easy way?

Ktla, I mean, come on Right.

I can't say I can't anymore. Like, I'm afraid this is not gonna work out anymore. Okay? So here's, here's the.

Just give him backup. Just give them backup. You guys are the best.

I love you, backup. I love your backup. It's amazing. Here's, here's. I'll summarize what Sarah just said. We send the right message to the right person at the right time. That's ultimately what it boils down to with the right message of the right person at the right time. A producer's job, Keep this in the back of your mind, okay? A producer's job is to put somebody on camera that can provide benefit to their viewers. That is what they get paid to do. They get paid to search, to find people or to have people find them. They get paid to put people on television that they know their audience is going to like. So don't take any offense to this, guys, okay? But they don't care that you just wrote a new book. As a matter of fact, I'd be very cautious to even. You can reference it in the pitch. Author of recently released book, whatever. Absolutely. But if you draft a pitch that revolves around have me on so I can discuss my book, it's going in the junk mail, okay? Just not going to happen. The fact you're an author, that's what gives you the credibility for them to read the next line that says they know what they're talking about. Don't worry. When you're on camera, they're normally going to plug your book. Generally speaking, they will plug your book, but you can't be on there. I'm like, go here, go there. Great point. I'm glad you asked that question, Sarah. You should buy my book. And it'll answer all the questions you got. You can't do that stuff on air. Right? Here's the other important thing, and I'll stop and I'll move forward. The other important thing about the pitch, this is, I believe, personally, I think Bruce would agree with me on this. I believe the pitch is the most. The most hands down important part of this whole process. Okay? You can be amazing on tv. You can have the most insane, incredible, awesome, wonderful message all day long. You could be great at everything. Your book could be a New York Times bestseller if you don't craft that message to that person the correct way. It's going into the clutter funnel, okay? They're getting bombarded with this stuff. This is an art. This is what I call Bruce. I call him the Artist, right? So we start working with new clients. I'll be like, I'm going to schedule a call with the artist. So I talk to him first. And they go to the artist and Bruce sits with them and talks with them. And it's funny. I always joke with Bruce about this. We'll be out somewhere eating, and a waitress will walk by and put a spoon on the table and he'll be like, do you know what this spoon makes me think about? This is a pitch. And he'll start writing down pitches. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? That's literally what you do. Don't lie. So the pitch is a really, really, really difficult part because it is an art, right? This is very hard for me to learn to do. When I first started doing it, I fell flat on a lot of stuff. But even with the best message, even with the best on air entertainment ability, you're gonna get nothing if the pitch is not crafted correctly. So I'll stop with that.

That's great. Is it okay if we have one question? Because I actually think that it's really relevant to what we're talking about. Robet. Robette. I apologize if I say your name wrong. Rovette asked, when you say personalized, what do you mean? Does that mean to put your advice without talking about yourself, but talking about your topic in the shadows?

When I say personalized, I mean you want. When that producer, or any journalist for that matter, opens up that email and is reading your pitch, you want to give them the impression that that pitch was drafted specifically for them and that it wasn't just, you know, mass blasted to, you know, thousands and thousands of of people. So in other words, you can personalize it by saying, hey, I'd love to be a guest on, you know, Good Day Atlanta if that's the show they produce, you know, and if you reference them, you know, hi, Sally, or whatever the name of the producer, show producer is, you know, just little things. Or you could even say something like, hey, you know, I've been watching your show and I noticed you cover a lot of stories about X and I'd like to, you know, pitch you on something very similar along those lines, because I think you covered so just, just little things like that. So that producer's thinking, wow, you know, this author just, just reached out to me and it makes me feel extra special. It doesn't give them the impression that you're reaching out to everybody else, even though you are. Because we want to. You want to make as many opportunities as possible. But whenever you can personalize it and put in those little touches, it definitely does make a difference.

Another important thing to point out too that Bruce brings up like there are different types of pitches too, right? So I probably have five, seven, maybe 10 different formats of pitches I'll send, you know, depending on whether I'm proactively going to them, it's going to actually lead into the next slide here. Or if it's something that's happened in like a storm chaser type pitch where it's like this is what happened, have me on to talk about it. So there's different types of pitches, but yeah, it's got to be very, very direct to the point. Another important thing, before I forget, please don't do this, guys. If you craft a pitch, do not send it as an attachment. Please don't do that. You will never ever get looked at if you don't want to be on tv. If you're afraid of being on tv, craft awesome pitches and put them as attachments and you're never going to get booked on television. That's one way to knock on tv. Do not put it as an attachment. It goes in the body of the email. Hey, good morning, how are you? Whatever it is, it goes in the body of the email. Sorry about that. Bruce, you want to move on to the next one? I know we're probably running a little short.

Another very important, another very important thing that'll help you tremendously is what we say, time your message with the news. And obviously, you know, there's, there's two types of, really two types of ways we generate publicity. Number one is this key right here, timing someone's message with the news. The other way is where there's nothing going on in the news and we have to create our own story angles which, which absolutely works and is a great way of going about it. But let me give you an example. This is one of our clients, guy by the name of Seth Kaplan. He's an airline analyst. So any time that there is a story involving the airlines, which Eric, I think it's like every single day lately, it' just non stop, you see him in the news. Because the second we catch wind of that story, we're out there pitching Seth, hey, you know, God forbid there's a plane crash. Oh, let's put Seth on to talk about it. Airline prices are rising. Why is that? What's going to happen? What do consumers need to know? We're pushing Seth on it. So if you can time your expertise around a news story that's going to make a huge difference because we know that media outlets are already covering the state story. They simply need somebody, an expert like you to speak about that story. So that's just something really important. Whenever you see your topic in the news, you want to jump on it right away. You don't want to wait one day, two days a week when it's old news and nobody cares. It's literally that minute that you see it, you want to run and jump on that story. And similarly here with Seth, he's also an author. He's the author of this book, Glory Lost and Found it. And it's all about Delta and how they climbed out of bankruptcy and became this successful airline. And again, it doesn't matter that he wrote a book all about Delta Airlines. We're still pitching him around all of these different stories. But the fact that we can say, oh, by the way, Seth is also an author and he wrote this book speaks volumes and it positions him better as an expert in the airline.

Bruce, can I add that real quick? And then we're going to pause on this one. I saw it message, because this is critically important as well. We don't only have to wait for news to happen in order to pitch your expertise to an outlet. Right? So what I do is, and Bruce and I, we do this together for myself, for our clients. We look for like times of the year and things that are happening and we make that producer aware of something they might not be aware of. So give an example again, right message, right person, right time. Valentine's Day, my topic is mental, tough and emotional intelligence. I'm about connecting with people. How we perceive, express and respond to emotion, self awareness, self regulation, motivation, empathy, social skill. It can relate to anything. Valentine's Day, this past Valentine's Day. I do Valentine's Day pitches every year. So beginning of February, I'm pitching out the news producers. Hey, it's that time of year again. You're looking for a date. You really want to hit it home. You really want to sell on your, you know, sell your Valentine. I did 21 interviews over like a seven day timeframe because I crafted a message around something that was going on like Valentine's Day. I do Veterans Day stuff. I do Memorial Day stuff. We have Thanksgiving. Handling difficult family members around Thanksgiving. If you do that national calendar thing, another recommendation I would make, sign up for that national calendar. It's gold. So like once a day, once a week, once a month, you get, hey, this month is national X, national Y. Then what we do Is we take that topic and we mold it around it. So what we see, a lot of people make mistakes is they have their topic and they stay just laser, laser, laser. I'm not deviating from it at all. What you want to get good at is taking your topic and making it to the masses. So no matter what happens, if you're talking about skydiving, that can relate to learning sign language, right? You just. You want to find a way to just mix all this stuff together and produce it in a way. And that's where Bruce the artist comes. He helps me with this stuff. But you draft that message and you tell the producer, hey, you probably don't say this directly, but what you want it to be is you haven't thought about this idea, but I have a really good idea about my topic and how your viewers are going to love it.

It.

We don't say that, but we put it on their desk and they're like, I should have thought of that myself. We'd love to book that person. Good. Sarah, you had some questions. I'm sorry?

Oh, no, I didn't have any questions. I was. I'm 100% in agreement with everything. You say that national calendar, national awareness days, especially as it relates to your topic and your expertise. I mean, May is National Mental Health Awareness Month. You know how I know that? Because we are pitching our authors to producers, to podcasters, to everyone that. On what they might want to cover for mental health awareness and what. And we are pitching our wellness authors, we are pitching our emotional intelligence authors, we are pitching our health authors about how that can. How. What they can present to the audience. That would be a different take. So those national awareness days, major holidays, times of year, June's coming up. What's going to be happening in June? Graduates, people getting ready for summer, you know, all of those things. So there's always a way to tie into what. What's happening in the current calendar, for lack of a better term. So I even suggest for authors that are starting out, start making those lists. Start making the list of the things that are really going to be relevant to you so you can have those pitches ready.

And I'll tell you this, too. It's not even the obvious ones like mental health and summer, like today. I don't know if you know this, but today happens to be National Whiskey Day. And we have a client, she's a baker. So we're doing. We did a segment this morning. Good morning, Arizona. She was live cooking with whiskey. How are. How can you prepare different Dishes with whiskey around National Whiskey Day. Even something as goofy as that. There you go. So it's not always even the obvious ones.

Let me real quick. Then Sarah goes, we brought on a client last year, I think it was. She was an expert in Elvis. She was like an Elvis and star in. And she reached out to us, right? And she's like, we want to hire you to get your own tele. Get some television. So Bruce and I had a conversation, right? We don't take anybody's money. If we don't think we get you booked, we don't want to. So we had a deep conversation with her. We're like, hey, like, look, we will work with you, absolutely. But let's give it a shot for a month. Let's see. We're talking about Elvis here. So I'm not sure what kind of play we're gonna get, how many shows she actually had. She backed off. She backed off. We got her books so many times. She literally backed off. She's like, eric, I ran out of books. She sold all kinds of books. It was insane. So anyway, the point is, there's any topic. We can make it relevant. You can learn how to make it relevant. That's what's so, so important. Don't stick with just tunnel vision. Branch out and find ways to make it apply to anything you possibly can. Because again, it's all about the television time.

Absolutely. And actually, Virgie pointed out that May is Military Appreciation Month. So thank you for your service, Eric.

Hoorah.

Thank you very much. Hoorah.

We love it. Hoorah.

And so we're going to take a little pause here.

I think.

I think it's time. Good time for a giveaway. Angela.

What.

What is on deck?

So as far as prizes go, we do still have all three of those prize options, which is a copy of Self publish and Succeed, a hashtag, no boring books mug, or an oh so soft journal. So those three, even though the first giveaway was a mug, we do still have plenty of all three of those, so don't worry.

Is it this journal?

It sure is. Yeah.

It's a different color, but I use it all the time. I love this journal.

Yes. Yeah. It's a little different because the camel color is apparently very popular or just low in stock.

Yes.

But it does look very similar to that. So, yeah, you can use it from this presentation or just notes about your book. You know, whatever you want. So it is a blank. A blank journal. So is there any particulars for a prize that you want Right now, Sarah, we can do.

Well. I mean, we've been talking so much about the journal. Why don't we do that?

Yeah, sure. Okay. So.

So I think we should. Whoever is the first person to put into the chat the name of Eric's book, he put it up there on the slides. We mentioned it in the bio, and we mentioned it when we were talking, when we were introducing him. So who can remember the name? Oh, there we go.

Oh, somebody. I would have never guessed. Sarah. I was like, sarah, that's too tough. Nobody's gonna get it.

No, we know our group. They pay attention.

Love you guys.

They pay attention. Yes.

Very good. Wow.

Dan, out of the gate with it.

I love it.

All right, so, Dan, we are gonna make sure we get that journal out to you. So thank you so much. And I think we're gonna have more prizes. Obviously, you heard, we've still got a copy of Julie's book. We've got a mug. So. So stick around, because we're going to do this later on towards the end of our session here. So in the meantime, keep coming up with those questions. We've got some great questions have been put in the chat. Love to welcome. I still have a couple written down that we haven't addressed yet. We'll make sure we get to those before the end. But in the meantime, Eric and Bruce, why don't you take it away and keep with these great keys.

All right. I want to give you one more really, really important one, because I think some people overlook this, you know, these days. And I think, Eric, you'd agree. Most of our clients are all about television. I want to get on tv. Tv, tv, tv. And that's great. I'm all for tv. I get it. I started my career in television. But I don't want you to overlook print. I definitely don't want you to overlook online media, because it's huge. I mean, if I had to choose between online media and tv, I would take online all day long simply because the numbers, the number of people in the audience, the reach that online media has is absolutely huge. And it just knocks tv, you know, way off. So one of the great ways that you can get into a print or an online outlet, I mean, sure, you can absolutely still try to go for the interview, still try to be the expert. That still works. But one strategy that can really work, and it can really work well for authors, is if you write an article, and this is not an article about your book or your business or anything like that. Again, it falls along the Same lines as the pitch where you've got to come across as an expert and you have to offer advice and tips and takeaways for a reader. But if you sit down and write anywhere, I'd say on the low side, 500 words, on the high side, maybe a thousand words. And sometimes the sweet spots, that middle, you know, 750 words. Again, an article around a topic that you've written about in your book or your industry. And you just focus that article on round tips that can help a reader. It is another fantastic way to break into online media because what a lot of people don't know is, you know, they have the mindset that, well, doesn't, don't, don't. All these media outlets have staff reporters that they paid to write articles. And of course, yes, they do. But in the online world, they're desperate for content, they need content. And one of the ways that they fill content is they turn to outside contributors who are experts and authors just like you, and they will gladly welcome an article. Again, it can't be a self promotional about you or your book, but if you write an article that's relevant to that audience around your expertise and you can fill it with great tips and advice, advice, it's another great way to break in. And we've hit some really big outlets from, you know, here's the Huffington Post. This was another etiquette expert talking about, you know, how to make your mom feel extra special on Mother's Day motto, which is a spin off of Time magazine. 7 Meaningful Ways to give back this Thanksgiving. Here's one I wrote down here all about Justin Bieber. This was more of an opinion piece, which is a different type of article in Forbes magazine. So if you can write an article, it's another fantastic way to really break in and get tons and tons of media coverage. And your book will get mentioned, you know, at the very bottom you'll get, you know, a couple of sentences, you know, that short bio and you can put in that bio and you know, he or she is the author of the book. You can give your website link back to it. So it's a great, great thing that I wouldn't want you to, to, to overlook. And what I love about authors, right? If you're an author, here's a little trick for you. When it comes to writing articles, you don't necessarily have to start over from scratch and sit down and write that article. Sure, you might have to, to write an introduction or a conclusion that fits whatever it is you're writing. But you've written a book, let's say, what does a typical book have? Anywhere from 20, 30, 40,000 words. Whatever it is, that's irrelevant. You can pull excerpts from your book, things that you've already written, and put them into the article. So you've kind of already done the work once, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And it's just, it can help you bang out these articles a lot quicker. Like if you're someone who can't write really fast, like Eric. He's not a. He's a. He's a really good writer, but he's not a fast writer. So sometimes I'll say to him, why don't you pull an excerpt from your book and use that to fill some of the tips in the article? And he'll do that. And he comes up with these great articles and, and he's not doing double the work because he already did the work when he was writing his book. So that's just another great tip for you as an author.

Can I chime in for a few? I'm like, I'm like waiting to talk. I'm like, are you all number one? I know you really well, Bruce. I don't think I knew you wrote an article on Justin Bieber. I like Justin Bieber. I like his old school stuff. I don't think I knew that. I do like him, but it's the old school, the new school I'm not really down with. Although anyone's a good song anyway. I didn't know about that. The second thing about online articles, here's another really awesome thing, guys, because again, we all get in this mindset, right? TV's sexy, TV's great, TV's awesome. The cameras come on. Look at me, I'm on this channel. Everybody calls you message like, oh, you're on tv. It's wonderful. Here's another awesome thing about when you do online print articles, I do op eds. I like to write op eds. I love that kind of stuff. A lot of times when those ads, when those articles get run on whatever outlet it is, a lot of times there will be a link to your book in the article. So I can't tell you how many times I've written something. Whatever. I don't even. I mean, I give them all my information, obviously. But my book is not part of my, my article, right? It's in my. It's in a. Here, this is me. This is what I've done. I leave that to them. But you know what happens when you get run on some outlets, a link to your book on there. I mean, there's nothing better than that. The other thing, the other bit of advice I'd recommend to you, this is what I do. Personally, I think this makes it a lot easier when I write my articles, when I spend time writing, because it does take me a few hours. I'm not a real fast writer or whatever. But once I write them and once I blast them and once I get them out there, I'll take that article and I'll turn it into a pitch. So once I spend all that time writing that article, I get it out there, then what I'll do is I'll go through and take 1, 2, 3 and 4 out of that article, I'll extract it, and instead of being a 750 word article, it turns into a 100 word pitch with the same. So I've done all the work, all I do is just clip it basically and put the things right into it. So pretty much, if you were to go, look, you wouldn't do this because you don't care about me. But if you were to go, look, a lot of the stuff I've written, a lot of my papers I've written, you'll see TV shows that are about what I've written about because you're sending to two totally different outlets at that point. Okay, so this is all, these are all things, these are all ways to maximize, to take advantage of it. The print stuff for me, Bruce really helped me realize this because Bruce is like, man, you gotta do print, you gotta do print. I'm like, bruce, I want tv. I want tv. Everybody wants tv. But the print stuff, guys, it is gold. And it lives on the Internet forever. It's out there forever. It's a link, it's an SEO thing. It goes back to your website. So that, that piece of it from the article again. A lot of our clients come to us and they're like, like tv, tv, tv. And we kind of have to. And Bruce and I'll even do sometimes where we won't even let them know. We'll take a pitch and we'll actually draft it and send it out and it'll get run somewhere and they'll be cool, how'd that get run? And they'll see success with it and be like, I'll write the next one. Like, please do so Dead chime in there, Bruce.

Sorry about that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I'm going to take a slightly different perspective on this, but I'm so glad you brought this key up because I do think it's a really vital part of getting within the media. But also as an author, your book is not your only product. And as you're gathering fans, as you're doing these appearances, you're going to have people hopefully signing up for your email list. You're going to hopefully have be building a following online. And how do you keep that following content? You have to keep the content up. If the book is your only content, they're very easily going to switch to someone else who has more content. So writing articles is a great way to not only expand your follower base and the people who are potentially, potentially going to buy your books and products in the future, but it's a great way to continue to practice talking about what you, what you know and your expertise. So writing guest articles is I think a key piece of any author's marketing campaign and, and the overall lifetime of their brand. So really important piece. I'm, I'm really glad you brought that one up.

Can I bring up one of the things, Sarah, there's one other thing that I did and for you guys, like, my book's kind of like a listicle type thing. So it's 68 mental toughs. Emotional intelligence secrets make anyone instantly like you a mouthful. I know, but what I did, if anybody has it doesn't have to be a listicle book that you've written, but what I did was I took all those 68 tips and I made one minute videos. So I basically recorded videos. I use Camtasia to edit them, do whatever. Nothing crazy did it from my house. But what I did was I made 62 of them and then I blasted it out. The concept, I blasted out the news channels all across the United States said, hey, hey, I'm just finishing up with mental toughness minutes. It'll range over a one year timeframe. I can send them to you once a week ready to go. I think I had like five, I think it was five channels actually that agreed. So once a week I would just send the piece to them. It was airing five different places, five different around. They were all done, so they were all finished. So once a week on different channels, we're getting alerts. Bruce Assembly. Here's the clip from this show. I'm like, what show was that? I'm like, oh, that's what that was, right? So just taking these little, little things that you're consistently putting yourself out there so they see you so many times. So when the time comes up, and here's the other thing we see with authors, when that second and third book drops off, if you decide to do that, that's where you start. Because now it's, oh, he's been on before and now he's going to announce his new thing, whatever. So these are just all little, little things that I. And again, it doesn't apply to everybody. These are just things I found that have worked really well because it's all about working smarter, not harder. That's what U.S. marines do. We work smarter, not harder. Right, Bruce? I keep stealing your thunder. Bruce, can you move on, please?

No, I'm good. I'm near the end. I was going to let you recap it if you want, so go first it.

Yeah. So I think this is a good way to do it then. So just to recap, guys, I would say the main takeaways here, if you remember nothing else today, please. And I don't say this in the mean way when I say this, I'm not trying to be mean when I say this, but the fact you've written the book, the fact that you're an author, they don't, the producers don't care. So please don't craft your pitch with that at the core of it. Right? It's there. Make sure they know it because again, it gets your foot in the front door. But do not craft a pitch, pitch that says, I wrote this book, I should be on air to talk about it. I'm good with this, I'm good with that. You can't do that. So the book should not be the center point. The center point of it. Does it help you get in? Absolutely, positively does. The second thing to point out, and again, not everybody wants to hear this, but this is me being brutally upfront with you guys. When you go on TV and you do your TV shows, do not expect to become a New York Times best selling author because you do television interviews. Okay? I'm real. I'm very, very upfront. Bruce and I are both upfront with our clients when they call in, Eric, we want you to get us on television. We want as many shows we can possibly get. Can you book us? Yeah, you got an awesome topic. You got this, you got that. And the first question will be, how many books am I going to sell? And I'm like, timeout, let's back up here. Because if your primary goal to hire us to get you booked on tv, if that's your primary goal is to sell books, I can tell you right now there's probably going to be more cost Effective ways. Because are you going to sell books?

Books?

100%. You will sell books on television. Are you going to, Are you going to, are people going to know about you? 100%. But you're not going to go on TV and sell 10,000 copies. I think you guys, you guys probably know better than Sarah. You probably know better. I've read something, I'm not sure this is true and I've used this number quite a bit and I might be. I don't know where I heard this. Whatever. Is it true they say the average author sells 250 copies of their book. Is that true? Or have you.

Do you know that lifetime? Yeah, and I don't, I'm not sure if that's all published, including traditional and self published authors, or if it's just self published authors, but I have heard that figure quite often that the average author will only sell 250 copies of their book over a lifetime. Our authors have sold quite a bit more. How do you know that?

Yeah, that's an awesome. And that's an awesome thing because they have. They're doing it the right way. Right. Like I wish I would know something like this.

I don't know what the qualifications are, like what those offer. Authors employed. I don't know any of that. But I can guarantee you, you do the right marketing, you'll sell more than 250 bucks.

Absolutely. And that's your. Exactly right. That's. And a lot of people don't do it correctly. Right. A lot of people are very short sighted. Because the misconception is I write a book, I put on Amazon, I sit back and the money starts coming in. Doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. So number one, guys, don't make the, don't make the book the center of your pitch. Number two, don't turn anything down. Any show you can possibly get, start small if you want to. That's wonderful. Start small. And number three, set expectations accordingly. The purpose of, the purpose of television for me, for Bruce, for our clients, we tell everybody the purpose is to get you the visibility. It's an implied endorsement. As soon as somebody sees you on whatever show it is, the assumption is that show endorses you. Okay, they don't endorse you. They don't endorse you. It just so happens you sent a message to them at the right time and they said, hey, please come on in there. They didn't endorse you. But when people see it on the outside, like, I get this all the Time from my people, my friends, my people, whatever to see. They're like, eric, oh my God. These channels, like, they have you on all the time and they're constantly reaching out to you. I'm like, yep, they're reaching out to me. Yep. They don't need it. I was like, what's the big deal, Right? Like, it's okay, we're sending the pitch out there, but. And the other important thing too. And I think. I don't. I think we're gonna finish up with this. The other important thing too is the list who you send the pitch out to. This is another really difficult thing because a lot of people come to us and they're like, like, I've been sending out this pitch to 10 people and I'm not getting anything. And it's like, 10 people. Like, okay, 10 people, right? So, I mean, the lists are pretty tough too, because you do have to. I mean, that is something. If you're not. Your message could be wonderful, good, great, grand, awesome. But if you're sending it to places, if you're sending to a cooking magazine and you're talking about hand to hand combat, if that's your specialty, sorry, you're not getting horrible success, right? Just not going to happen there. But get rid of the nerves. Do it. Just get on there and do it. Remember, keep in the back your mind. Every show you do, keep in the back of your mind they want you to do well. And those people that are on air are going to try hard to do it. That being said, also, Bruce will agree with this. I think too. You know, I bet on shows where the people who are interviewing me are just not good. And I hate to say that it's a horrible thing. But do not get demotivated. If you go on a show and you have a bad interview. I mean, I've had that many times. You know, it's like, eric, thank you for being here. Here you are, the emotional Marine. Step number one. What is it? It's like, oh, my God, are you serious? And I know my jokes are funny. I tell them all the time. I'm a joke person. I tell them all the time and always be like, crickets. I'm like, okay, so you can't get discouraged by that. You're going to bomb some of them. I go back to my original TV interviews I bought. I look like an idiot. Some I just say, I look like a total idiot. And I kept them on my website deliberately because I'm like, you know what? I'm keeping it on my Website. So you're going to flop, you're going to fall. There's gonna be audio issues, there's gonna be problems. The key with anything, just like with writing your book, just do it. That's the key, right? Just do it. Bruce, what do you got to add to that?

I was gonna add, luckily you didn't flop on FOX on your third time on tv. But no, you know, again, just to kind of, you know, end with what you said. For me, it's. It kind of comes back to that credibility and the fact that not everyone is doing it right, you know, and taking your book, you know, not everyone's an author. And then if you take the book and add that to television, not everyone's on tv, not everyone's in the newspaper or online. So it's huge. The perception, huge. The credibility is huge. That silent endorsement's huge. Being an expert, all of that stuff. I mean, again, I just always ask the question, why wouldn't you do this? Whether you're working with a publicist like us, whether you're doing this yourself, I would absolutely encourage you all as authors to go for it and give this a shot.

Sarah, do you think. I think she asked some questions there we can. Another, probably. You're muted, Sarah, by the way.

Of course I am.

There you are.

Okay, so we definitely have some questions. There's a couple that we're going to get to. One of them ties to submitting yourself, especially submitting those articles. Robert asked, how can you submit your article? Is there an easier way, or should it be done through email?

We do them through email. If someone's got an easier way, I'd love to know it. We're always looking for easy ways or ways that work. Not easy ways, but better ways. But I'd say everything to this point is more or less email. Sure, you can pick up the phone and you can pitch a producer. You can try to talk to them, although most of them are very short on time and it won't give you all the time in the world. I know people who reach out to journalists on social media, send them a tweet, message them on Facebook. I'm a big believer just because it works for me on email. And I would say with articles, I can't think of a better way to do it than email, because. Especially if you're putting the art. If you want to give them that article, putting it in the body of the email, to me is the way to go.

Yeah.

And do you want to talk for a second? Because I think this Is is important to keep in mind besides just the pitch, you know, very often we'll send things like media kits. We'll send, you know, maybe a one sheet on the author. Like what kind of content do you, when you're sending that pitch, are you sending just the pitch or do you send other materials as well?

So what I'm doing is initially the, on the first go around before that journalist knows, you know, who we are. It's just the pitch. It's an email and it is the pitch. And then once we establish, okay, this person's going to be booked, then we can go ahead and send them, you know, things like a bio. We can send them a JPEG of the book cover. We can send them, you know, specific talking points, things like that. But initially it's just that pitch in the email that, you know, hey, we want to try to, you know, book a segment on your show. This is, this is the person, this is the topic. And yeah, it's pretty much that. That simple.

Can I add that? Too serious. I would say maybe this would be a little bit of help too. Like the way, the way we draft a lot of our pitches and me personally, so to break it down, you know, like when you're writing a paper, it's like the intro body than the closing, right? So with pitches, personally, what I do, it's like the very first part, very brief. But the very first part is that time relevance piece. Like, hey, it's that time of year again. The snow's coming down, it's Valentine's Day, it's this day, whatever. So that gets them perked up. Oh, what are they talking about? The next part builds the credibility for me or whoever it is that we're representing. This is the person, this is what they wrote, this is what they do. This is the. So we place them as the expert. And then the last part, not the last part, but then the next part is A, B, C and D. This is how we can, this is what we can talk about. So this is what's happening right now. This is the person who's qualified to talk about it. This is what they'd like to talk about. And this is how you can contact us to schedule an interview with this person. That's generally how we craft them. So it's kind of all those things in one. But again, the time you have is very minimal. So if you don't catch them, the subject line is another real important thing. Email, subject line. Okay. A lot of these producers are not going to get past that. Subject line you're not going to want to put in the subject line. Author this, author that new book coming out. Sorry, guys. Again, they don't care. That subject line has to be catchy. Again, is where the artist comes, right? Bruce has taught me a lot of tricks with this. There's wordy little catchy things you can put in there. If you've been on a show before and you want to get back on. Former guest on show talking, mental toughness, whatever. As seen on. There's all these little things you can put in there again, very quickly to catch the attention of that person, to make them feel like. Like, I have to book this person, I have to work with this person. The other thing we get quite often, which I partially agree with, too, I personally believe it's funny because sometimes I'll craft pitches and I'll send them out myself, and I don't get much on it, and then I'll say, hey, Bruce, would you mind sending this out? And Bruce's pr. You know, his email is PR person, right? Bruce will send out the same pitch, but because he's PR person, I get pitched and I'll call them, be like, how dare you book me because of him and not because of me. But there is that form of credibility there, right? So from a producer standpoint, and I've made friends with a lot of producers, okay? I have a ton of producers right now that I can call and be like, I got somebody that's talking about shoveling mulch into the snow and running around in snow boots, and they'd be like, great. Bring them on if they're good. If you say they're good, whatever. I have tons of producers we've made friends with. And they all say the same stuff, right? They're all saying the same stuff. Like, Eric, it's got to be something beat. Like, if we're not just gonna. We're not gonna waste our time, and we're not spending a whole significant amount of time reading it. And if it's coming from somebody who is credible, is professional, whatever, it does hold more weight. Not to discourage you guys, because you absolutely can pitch yourself. I pitch myself all the time, too. Sorry, Sarah.

That actually goes right into a question that we had from Linda, who asked, do television producers give more weight or deference to publicists versus an individual?

I believe. I mean, me again, I guess I'm a little bit. I've done it both ways, so I kind of feel like I have front end and I see this. And again, it just gets my Goat right when I see this. So I personally believe, yes, when it's coming. Because here's the key. Me sending a pitch, say, I did this, I did that. I'm going to talk about this. I'm going to talk about that. That's one thing coming firsthand. Coming from someone else, I think it has a different appeal. Do you have to have a publicly get booked on television? 100%. No. You absolutely can learn how to do it yourself, right? I mean, I learned how to do it when I did Bruce program. I learned how to do it. But does it pull more weight? Do I personally believe it pulls more weight when the email is coming from publicists? I personally do, because that tells that producer that you basically hired somebody to represent you. But again, I can't emphasize this enough. You absolutely can get booked on your own.

I think the most important thing, and I do agree with what Eric's saying, but I think the most important thing is, again, it's all about what you're pitching and how you're pitching it. That is, at the end of the day, the most important. What is this story? Is this story going to be a good fit for our show and our viewing audience? That, to me, is the guts of it. The most important thing.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm probably driving Angela crazy right now because I'm jumping around on the questions, but I'm picking the ones that are relevant to where the conversation is going. But I'm glad Angela's keeping track. You know, just kind of going more into the pitching yourself and then going back to specifically pitching articles. Ali Bird had asked, should you write the article first or pitch the idea first?

So I have seen this done both ways, and I have tried to do it both ways myself. And I can tell you I have had more so success actually writing the article first and then pitching the article. Because I think it's one thing to say, here's an idea, and, you know, I hope you'll consider an article for me. And then if, you know, the thinking is, well, what if she sends the article and we don't like the article or it's not up to our standards, I would encourage you to write the article first. Now, somebody else might tell you to do it a different way, but personally, that's just how I prefer to do it. And here's the other thing with that, too. Even if you write the article first, because somebody might say, well, I don't want to spend, you know, a couple hours writing an article, and then I can't place it in the worst case scenario, it's not a waste of time because you can use that for so many other things. You know, you can post it on your own personal blog. You know, you can pull bits and pieces out of it for social media posts, you can post it to LinkedIn. So it's not a waste of time. But if I had to go one way or the other, I would say write the article first. But that's just me personally.

Yeah. I would also add on to that that a lot of online blogs or, you know, outlets and things do have submission guidelines right. On their website. So very often if you are looking and you go to like the. About us or contact us or, or any of the interior pages that are, you know, what do they call it? The. Not the flagstaff. What do they call it when it. When there's like the credits and stuff for a magazine or a blog? You know what I'm talking about? The main. I can't remember anyway, sorry. It's maybe generally more of a print thing. But if you go on online blogs, very often they'll have like submission guidelines, what they want. Some say send me a pitch with three takeaways. Some say submit your whole article. Some say just send me your idea. So it is important to be familiar with the outlet and do your research into. And if they don't have any guidelines, then just assume to write the article first and then, you know, potentially send that to an editor. If you're going to send an article, a pitch to an editor anyway, you're going to need to know, hey, this is the article I'm proposing. Here are the three takeaways that are going to be within it. So you're going to need to know what you're writing about anyway so that you can send that to an editor and they can look at it and go, okay, this looks good. Go ahead and send the article over.

I do want to bring up a point there too, Sarah, because one thing you do have to be cautious of as well, because a lot of times, like when I write op eds for instance, a lot of people believe and think and a lot of the people who I'm sending these to feel as though I'm only sending it to them and not sending it to anyone else. Because what a lot of these online outlets will. And I've had people get upset with me about this where New York Times, right? Like I've sent out. I blasted out my. I blasted out an op ed and the New York Times might have five different divisions that I was Kind of unaware it went to. And then they're like, well, how many people you pitching? It's like, who'd you send this to? Because what they want is they don't want to run a story that's being run on other outlets. So there's. There's a fine. You do have to be really. Me personally, I take the stance of, I'm writing it, I'm blasting it out. Now somebody else does take it and pick it up. I'm cautious. And if there's another online somebody else who runs it, I'll be cautious. You know, both of them are from Baltimore, Maryland. If one picks it up and then a day later, another one picks it up, I'm cautious. Be like, hey, just so you. FYI, this one already ran. This one ran a couple days ago. You might still want to run it. The other important thing to not get discouraged about when you write these articles, Op eds, whatever. I can't tell you how many op EDS I've written. Get maybe two hits back, no big deal, whatever. Like, six months later, it runs somewhere. And Bruce, be like, hey, when did you write this one about in the Thrive magazine. I'm like, not a clue. And I'll read it. I'm like, I kind of remember this. So sometimes they won't even tell you. And another. Another bit of advice on Google Alerts. Google your own names, too, guys. Make sure you have Google Alerts for your name. So anytime you pop up anywhere, your name shows up anywhere. I cannot tell you how many times I've written stuff. And then all of a sudden, nowhere, just out of the blue, they didn't tell me, they didn't respond to me, they didn't do anything other than just run it on their page. My Google alerts would alert me to it.

So that has happened to us where we'll send out pitches, we'll send out an article. You know, you'll be in touch with the editor, and then all of a sudden, they'll ghost you. And you just think that that was dead in the water. Dead in the water. And then six weeks later, you get a Google alert that, oh, this brand on so and so outlet. And you're like, would it have been so hard to tell me? But the editors are so busy, they don't, you know, they don't have time to go back and cater absolutely every single content creator, you know. So, yeah, the Google alerts thing is something we set for all of our authors just for us internally. But I recommend everybody go ahead and do that as you're sending stuff out?

Yep.

So the next question we have here is from Jonathan G. And I feel like we've touched on this and we maybe have already answered it. And Jonathan, if you want to unmute yourself, you can let me know. But his question was, in practical terms, how would you submit and pitch your article to, say, a Huffington Post? I mean, we've talked a lot about this. Jonathan, did we pretty much answer your question already? He's on mute currently. Let me see. Yes.

He said yes. Thanks.

Okay, well, here's.

Here's another poor thing. I should bring about that, too. Sarah, regardless of the outlet we're sending it to, whether it's a huge one like, like Huffington Post or New York Times, we don't change. I mean, the pitch is basically the article we're writing is the same. So it's not like we do anything differently with it or, you know, say something differently in that one as opposed to this one or whatever. The pitch is kind of the pitch at that point as it relates to the article. So it's going out to everybody. And then when they, when they read it, it's pretty much the same. But again, you do have to be cautious because some of them will definitely get upset if they know you're pitching it to multiple people. But we can't. And here's what you'll find too. With a lot of years, when I started writing off eds, it's funny to me because everybody started replying back. I'm like, bruce, these people replying, they're all saying no, but they're replying back to me. So I'm not used to that. In tv, you send out pitches as crickets, you get nothing. But what I started to learn with OP EDS was I was getting lots of hits back, saying, thank you, appreciate the look, good to go, we're gonna pass, whatever. And then I started to recognize and realize the reason they were doing that was because they assumed I was only sending it to them by them saying they didn't want me. That released me to be able to go out and send it to other people. Meanwhile, I was already sending it, like, I'm sorry, guys, I'm not gonna drive write an op ed. Now. What I did start to do, once I started getting some stuff hit and some bigger ones, I would only send it to the. I call them the big boys. Bruce laughs about that. I would only send to the big boys initially. And then if I didn't get hits, whatever, that blast off everybody else.

So, yeah, and I'll add One thing, since he mentioned the Huffington Post. Up until a couple years ago, the Huffington Post had this amazing network of contributors. And so many people were able to, it was phenomenal because it's such a big outlet and they would take so many people and then they cut down on that tremendously a few years ago, and it's gotten a lot more difficult to get on the Huffington Post. I mean, you can still do it. But one thing I would tell you, the Huffington Post covers every topic under the sun. So rather than just, you know, I assume you can go online and find a way to just submit it, you know, generically, I would tell you, if you can try to, to narrow down on the specific section editor for the particular section that you want it to run in, that's something that'll help you with, with the HuffPost as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's say another question from Jonathan G. Was presumably the big outlets are inundated with articles. How can you stand out?

That's, yeah, that's, there's, I mean, yeah, it's your topic, right? At that point, it's your topic. It's the subject line. And then it's also the credibility part. You know, that's where again, as author, that's credit, you're, you're an author. So if you're just Joe Blow writing an article, hey, you know, back of the line, whatever. So I mean, that, that's difficult because you're right. I mean, they're just getting pummeled with those things. So it is very, I mean, I, I don't know of any secrets of that, Bruce, on a few, other than the subject line, because that's really the main thing they're going to see first. But I don't know of any other.

I mean, I would just say, I would say this. Yes, they are getting inundated with articles, but it doesn't mean that all the articles are necessarily good articles or what they're looking for. I'll just give you a real quick tip. Again, I can't show it now, but I can just tell you this is how I personally structure my articles. When I'm trying, especially with bigger outlets, it's usually okay. It's got the title, it's got my name by my name. I usually do an introductory paragraph. Then I usually do about four or five subheadings, which is usually around a tip, tip number one, tip number two, number three, number four, and then just a quick conclusion, short bio and boom. That's the format I like to follow. It's simple it's clear, and that's what's worked best for me.

Yeah. And honestly, I'm going to also chime in here that this goes back to establishing yourself as an expert. You know, you're right. They're going to be inundated with pitches, but no one else is. Ideally, if you have done the work on your expertise and your brand and your topic, no one else is presenting it the way that you present can. So it is a matter of believing in what you're presenting and that it has true value, because that's the most important. One of the most important factors is whatever you're pitching has value for that outlet. And so you want to make sure all of those other pitches could be, you know, garbage and you could be standing out. So I wouldn't let a lot of competition deter you if you have something that you're delivering that is really going to be valuable. Valuable for that outlet.

Yeah. And, you know, speaking of competition, I'll be honest with everybody. This business and whether I'm doing it, whether Eric's doing it, whether you're doing it for yourself, it is filled with rejection. You're going to get told no over and over again. And don't take it personally. It's not a reflection on you. It's not to say, well, my stuff's not good enough or my book's not good. It's nothing along those lines. It's like we've been saying, they're so inundated and there's so much competition. It is. Is hard to break through. So, again, don't take it personally. Just keep going and keep pitching, because that's how you get in.

I have a friend who's a pretty active journalist. She. She's a freelance writer for a lot of different outlets, and she told me at one point that she gets anywhere from 150 to 400 emails a day with different pitches. She just gets so, so many pitches, and she only has. She goes, I do read each one. I don't have time to respond to each one, but I do read each one, and I'll file them away for something that I might use in the future, but only if it's going to be, like, good. I have. I look at the headline, and if it stands out, I'm going to hold on to it for the future. So making sure that you're, yeah, putting yourself out there is, like the only way. It's like, what. The only chance to win is if you try. So, yeah, yeah, we get called. I didn't Say that adage, right?

But yeah, we get calls. Sometimes a journalist will call and say, hey, I've got this pitch you sent last year. I think I saw last year. I don't remember what I did yesterday. I don't know. For breakfast. Yeah. But they do hold them and especially if they're good, you know.

And an offshoot of that which is specific to the book world is, you know, we pitch a lot for book reviews. We pitch a lot for book reviews. We want to get that book reviewed. And that's a different type of media than trying to get on tv, different than articles. But very often, often we'll send a pitch to get a book reviewed and it'll be six, eight months, 12 months. Sometimes I'll get a notification, hey, your review just ran. I look back, I'm like 20, 21. Oh, my goodness. You know, so that actually happened just last month. So, you know, things do take a little bit of time and, you know, you have to be patient with it. But again, it's that the numbers game is the important thing.

Definitely.

You know, I'm going to shift gears a little bit here. I know we have some more questions that we're definitely going to get to, but Aubry, who is in the chat, had mentioned Jasper AI is also super helpful. And I wasn't familiar with Jasper AI. Have either of you heard of it?

I'm assuming that's artificial intelligence. Jasper, Artificial intelligence, yeah.

I'm not sure. Aubrey, are you still on? If you are, feel free to unmute yourself. I don't know if, if she's still on or not, but in any case, still here. I'll let her. I'll let her unmute. Yeah, I mean, what it did bring up for me was there are certain tools that can be used when an author wants to pitch themselves to media or to be, you know, featured by a journalist or something. I have a couple that, you know, we use. I wondered if you guys have any that you can suggest.

I can tell you some of the tools that we use in terms of pitching. I mean, for me it's just straight emails. I mean, it's just my Microsoft Outlook and sending emails. I'll tell you some of the tools that I have that probably most publicists in the business have, if that would help you. I'm not saying you have to run out and get all of these, but one of the biggest would be, is it's called Scission. It's basically a media database where you can find contact information for journalists. It's extremely pricey Is it something just the average person needs?

Needs?

Probably not. Again, it's. If you want to drop the money, go for it, but I don't know that you need it. Another one that we have is, it's called, it's a clipping service. The one I use and there's a number of them. The one I use is called Critical Mention. It's sort of a much better version of Google Alerts where I can find your name, your book name or any parameter that I set for, you know, any media. And anytime you're mentioned your book is mentioned, I'm going to get an alert, alert that tells me, hey, you know, Eric and his book just were talked about on this show and I can go in and actually download that clip and share it with him and pull together all these fancy reports and things that again, the average person isn't going to need to know. Another great tool that I'll give all of you, I'm sure you're probably using this too for your authors, is called Harrow. Help a reporter out. Free service. Free service. It's, I think the website's helperreporter.com you get a couple of emails throughout the day and it's filled with leads from journalists and they say, hey, I'm working on this type of a story. I'm in need of speaking with this type of an expert. If you're that expert, you send them a pitch. And we've gotten some tremendous stories through that service. That's another great one you can check out as well. But yeah, in terms of the pitching, it's just straight email for us.

Yeah. For finding those opportunities. HARO is probably one that we use most often. They say send three newsletters a day and you can, you can divvy it up by. If you want to know what all reporters are asking for. If you want just your. So you can do just business or just technology or just home or whatever. HARO is really helpful. I will say when you use Haro, and that is when you're looking for those opportunities where a journalist is doing a specific story and they're looking for experts that can back up what they're writing. So they vary on. Often will come in with, I am looking for experts that can talk about this and that's specific and they get, you know, a couple hundred responses. So making sure that you respond on those quickly and that you're delivering exactly what they're asking for is an important thing that's going to help you get selected. There's another one called Quoted. And I think it's Q U O T E D that I know a lot of journalists use as well. That one is very similar to Haro, where journalists put out what they're looking for and you have the opportunity to respond. But that is a really good. Using either Hara or Quoted or some of those tools are a great opportunity to practice writing your pitch. Practice writing what you would present. Practice writing out your sound bites. And you're not going to lose anything by putting it out there. You can. You can start that tomorrow and start putting together those responses so that you can hopefully get featured in a couple of places and then you can start putting that on your website. We got people in Good Housekeeping, and we got them in Reader's Digest and Weight Watchers Canada. I remember that one because it was a huge. Because for this fitness author who had not broken through, to be featured on a massive corporate website like Weight Watchers was huge. So those little things can start to build that credibility. Then when you're doing your TV pitch, she can say, oh, I was featured in Good Housekeeping. I was featured by Weight Watchers, and that brings extra credibility to you. So I would definitely start with some of those. Okay, getting back to our questions. And once I. I'll find Quoted's website and put that in the chat as well. Angela, I have lost a little bit of where I was. Could you give me maybe. I think there was one from Andrew that was from way back. Yeah, the.

There are a couple from further back. So potentially the one that you're referring to, Sarah, is from Andrew. It says, how does money work in interviews, news, slash TV and podcasts.

Yeah. Can I. I'll chime in on that one. Right, Because I think that's another misconception. Like, I've done, I don't know, 500 TV interviews. I think it was like most recent tally. I don't believe. Yeah, I've never been paid for a single one. So assuming that. We're assuming this is the question. You don't get paid to be. Now, there are some. There are some, right? There are some where you can get paid very, very, very few and far between. And they're not ones that you would pitch. That's the absolute last thing you would ever want to put into a pitch is to get paid, because I can guarantee you will have 0.0% success if you say you want to get paid to go on tv. Now, on the opposite side of the coin, there are ways to pay to get on television. So these are paid sponsorships So a lot of the clients that Bruce and I bring on, a lot of our new clients come from that. Come from that world. They've done TV segments. They're paying to be on television, which is not inexpensive, by the way. And they reek. You see them on tv, they wreak. You know, it's just like. It's.

It's like the.

You know, you come over for dinner and they're breaking out. Oh, and who wants to buy some new steak knives? Just. It just reeks to me personally. But you. You pay them to get on television, so you're not gonna get. You're not gonna get paid to be on tv and nothing. You guys have to be cautious of. Of. We've had this, too. We've had some people that we represented where they were getting paid by. So, like, for instance, we had somebody who was a gym person. I'm just making this up because I don't want to cover our clients we're currently representing. But let's say you have a gym client who's on there talking about exercising and losing weight, getting shape, whatever, and she might have Nike that's paying her to wear her shoes on air, and it might be a big Nike thing in the background, and she's sitting on TV like this and putting her foot up in the air, you know, like, deliberately. You do not want to do that. We've actually had shows who have reached out to us and have said, hey, is Joe getting paid by A, B, and C? And we've been like, absolutely not. To the best of our knowledge, we're not. And Bruce and I, we bring new clients on. We do ask that question, because if they're being paid by somebody else to go on air and inadvertently represent that, that can create a problem. So that's a long answer to your question. You do not get paid to go on tv. Generally speaking, you can pay to get on television, but it's totally different. And lastly, be careful not trying to sell any kind of product or go in there to market another product, because they'll. They'll smell it. Once the producer smells it, you'll never be invited back again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We. We do encounter this a lot. Not so much opportunities. Not. Not opportunities at all to have our clients be paid in order to be featured, because that just generally doesn't happen for TV or podcasts or anything like that.

It was.

There's. There's this term, it's earned media, and that's used a lot in the PR world. And it basically means you're earning that, that media opportunity based on who you are and what you can present. Earned media. And there's probably a better definition. That's just what I've picked up on over the years.

Well, it's, it's equivalent to like, it's like pay per click on Google, right? So if you Google Umbrella right now on Google, the first three or four that pop up are going to be paid ads. They're pay per click. They've been placed there because they're paying to be there there. Not the topic, not the search specifically was what. It didn't really bring that back. But that person's paying to say anybody who searches Umbrella, I want to show up there. They might really be selling socks, who knows? Whatever. The first three or four are going to be paid ads. Underneath that it's your organic search. That's the websites that naturally matched whatever the term was you're typing you typed in. So like Sarah saying, this is earned media. These people are reaching out to you because they want you. You have something thing that can provide benefit to their people. That's another layer that just adds so much again compared to doing a paid advertisement where you pay to go on and that's not horrible to do. I mean it's not, it's not the end of the world. But it's a different feel than when it's, hey, we're so, you know. And the other great thing too when you go back for additional shows, like I love that now they'll introduce me like, oh, it's Eric, a guest of the show or we love having you back, Eric. Whatever. You're instantly connected to every single person who's sitting on the couch watching that show. If they ever saw you before, the fact that that person that's on TV that they see every day that they know, the fact that they refer to me as a friend or you as a friend, putty in hand. I don't care what it is. That automatically builds connection with the crowd.

Yeah, yeah, we. Whenever I get a producer or an editor, anyone that's like, well, in order for your client to be featured, here's our sponsorship packages. I say no, I say no 100% of the time. I mean what I will do take to my client is, hey, if this is a goal of yours and it is a massive goal for you to have a this kind of film, here's a way you can do it. But we don't recommend it because there are so many opportunities that you can do without having to pay for the opportunity. So, yeah. Okay, Angela, what is our next question? And then we'll roll into a couple of our final giveaways as well.

Yeah. So another one from earlier before. I don't think we touched on this. Anthony had asked, does plugging keywords by news anchors help. Help book promotions?

I didn't fully get. That was a little bit muffled. I'm sorry. Can you say it one more time?

Plugging keywords by news anchors help book promotion.

Plugging keywords.

Yeah, I'm not sure what you mean. You mean like using certain terms in the pitch? Okay, Anthony. Yeah, go ahead. I see you right there. If you want to go ahead and unmute yourself and ask. Oh, I don't know if you. Let's see if I can ask you to unmute.

No, I think I know. I think I know what his question is. I believe Sarah. So I was, I was. I thought the question was more. When you're on air, if you say things. So I think we talked about is in the pitch, putting the. Putting certain keywords in there. So the answer, I mean, technically it's kind of yes, but it's not really keywords. It's just the fact that the messaging you're getting across is relevant to something that's happening, happening. So it's kind of like you're using a keyword, but the keyword is really keywords. So you're just taking that again. Send the right message to the right person at the right time. You're taking whatever that relevant topic is, and the keywords you're using is whatever it is that's going on Mother's Day, Father's Day, summertime, wintertime. That would be the keywords you're using. So the answer is yes, those, if you want to call them keywords, whatever it is, those. The way you word that, the subject line probably be the closest to it. The subject line would be like your keywords. That has got to hit. Hit the nail on the head as far as what are you doing? What do you want me for? Why are you sending me this email? So, yes, I misunderstood. I thought it was when you're on air to use keywords and you don't want to do that, obviously.

Yeah, I think you interpreted that correctly. I think it is like in the pitch or anything like that, having those words there.

Anthony, feel free to put in the chat if we didn't fully answer that question for you.

I saw his head nodding. I'd like a yes. I think he's actually center screen for me. Like your shirt Too. Anthony, I've been watching him, so. And his haircut. He's got cool haircuts. So we stick together. And we stick together.

Okay, I bet. Let's do one more. Angela.

Oh, another question. Yeah, yeah. So let's see. We have a few others unanswered, so I'll just go to the next one line. Christopher had asked. So what about YouTube and social media? Do you guys, Eric and Bruce have channels?

Oh, yes, please, if you could put your channels in the chat so that everybody can. Can go and follow you as well.

Actually, I have on my YouTube channel. It's nothing special. Nothing like, you know, millions and millions of followers or anything like that. But what I do is it's sort of a portfolio for me. So anytime I have a client on television, I put it on that YouTube channel. And the reason I do this is so that when I'm working with other people, they can kind of see what. What TV interviews look like. They can see what, you know, when you. When I have like a couple hundred on there. So you can see who does things. Well, who does things that maybe you shouldn't copy and stay away from. So I like to. To. I built. I built this channel so I can share it with clients, especially new clients who haven't done a whole lot of television. Maybe they're newbies. So I can give them this link and they can say, oh, wow, yeah, you know, here's some good people I should. I should, you know, copy what they do on camera. Here's some people I should stay away from some of the things. So there's good, there's bad. I obviously will not say which is good and which is bad, but it is there just for that purpose. And I'll. I'll gladly share that.

And I add on that too. And I think this is another part. So what I do personally. So like Bruce said, like, for our. For our clients, when they go on a TV show, we get them booked, they go on the show after it's done, we go into our clipping service at critical mention. We pay, we get that clip, we give them that clip. So it comes to our clients an MP4 file. So they get it. It's now theirs to use ever they want to use it. What I do personally for me and what we recommend to our clients. When you get that MP. Excuse me, when you get that MP4 file, take the MP4 file and upload it to YouTube. So now you have a link. So when you go on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever, what you do is you take the YouTube link and put it there. You don't try to upload your MP4 into Facebook. You have everything on the YouTube channel. Once it's on there, you copy the link, put it on your page, on your Facebook page. As soon as you copy it on there, the thumbnail shows up on Facebook. So YouTube is where all your videos are housed. And I do have mine. It's under just Eric Rittmire. I think I don't have all my video. I think I have a couple hundred of my TV interviews. I haven't uploaded all of them, but that's a great place. So anytime you want to refer somebody to a clip, you can just copy and put the link right there. Here it is. Here's my last interview on so and so Show. Or if I have a really good interview somewhere and I do, I think I do really well on it, I'll actually take that clip and I'll pitch that out to everybody and be like, hey, I was on the show last week talking about this. Here's an example example. Let me know if you want to come on. But the YouTube stuff, the social media stuff, 100%, absolutely, positively, yes. I'll send it out to my email list. Hey, I was on Great Day Atlanta last week. Here's the clip. Check it out. Let me know if there's any questions. The YouTube link goes on there. It's so much easier. And you don't bog down all your computer space by having 8 trillion gigs of video. So upload it on there. I also recommend an external drive. I have an external hard drive, so all my videos, all my MP4 videos, when I upload them, I put them on YouTube. Then I put it over to my external hard drive so that way it's not burning up. My. I've taught all my videos, all my.

MP4 files on there, and I just put in the chat box the, the YouTube link. You can see all those videos. And I put a link to Eric's website because he's got all his TV ones on there and he's a really good person to. To follow.

Could you also put a link to your website serving media so that, you know, in case people want to follow up or they have other questions, please feel free to put that in the chat. You know, and I, you know, just on the topic of social media, I think we could do an entire other presentation on just securing media opportunities within social media. YouTube shows, you know, social media lives, those are also really good opportunities where it does not. It's not lending the same as featured in credibility, but it is a great way to to reach target audiences. So, you know, I think think we'll probably have to do an entire other day just on social media meeting opportunities. Okay, we're going to pause real quick. We have a couple more prizes and then we'll get to the last of our questions hopefully before we wrap up here. And I think for this prize, we should have people put their favorite takeaway from today's presentation in the chat. And we're going to have Eric and Bruce pick our winner here based on who was paying attention. Go ahead and put in the chat your favorite takeaway and maybe even how you're going to use it. And then we'll have Eric and Bruce choose our winner there. And Angela, can you remind us our final prizes to give away? Yeah.

So the three prizes are a hashtag nobornebooks mug, an oh so soft journal or a copy of self published.

And we gave away the journal already, right? We gave away the journal a little bit earlier.

True, but I have enough of all three of them.

So with your favorite takeaway and after Bruce and Eric choose, you'll get to pick one of those three. Which one you like?

A lot of pressure, Sarah. I'm not good with pressure on me, girl.

How are you not good at pressure, Mr. Marine? You just told us you trained for it.

I'm trying to get get out of this. Bruce, you pick. You got a better. You're better.

Oh, man. Thanks.

Oh, there's some.

These are all good. Come on.

Yeah, right. Right person, right time. Write an article.

I think I just saw one. I saw one of them that I think it might be for me, but I, I. Somebody's put up there. Make it all about the audience. Yeah, that's a clutch.

That's clutch. That is good. Oh, my goodness.

That's a good one.

These are all great, though.

Send me a message to media. All right, we'll give you another second. Anybody? Yep. Good job, Aubrey.

Yes to small potatoes. Yup. And big potatoes. That's right.

Your message should be viewer centric and how I can help people versus a blatant plug for the book.

Boom. Absolutely. Yeah.

Winter chicken dinner. See, you picked it after all. Sarah, I told you that was good. That was good. Unless there's other ones, I don't set that. Are we settled on those?

Are we good? That works for me.

I like that.

Linda, congratulations. You can email over to teamoklaunchers.com with your name, your, your mailing address, and which of those Three, you would like a mug, a copy of Self publish and succeed or an oh so soft journal. Go ahead and send that note over to team at Book Launchers and we'll get that out to you. All right, and we've got time for one more giveaway. I'm very sorry if we did not answer your question. This actually, we actually went through the questions. I thought we were gonna have time to do them all. So I do apologize if we didn't get. Get you to your question. But. All right, so for our last prize, we are going to have Angela choose who was the most active in the comments. Most active in the chat today. Who do we think that was? She's been keeping track.

Have been keeping track. And just from the very beginning. Let's see. Andrew hall, you have been very active in the chat. So you also are fourth and final winner for today.

Congrats, Andrew. Yes, I really appreciate it. Andrew, you had some great questions that you put out there. I saw more of them come in that I know we didn't get to. So I apologize for that, but great job. Go ahead and send that email to teamoklaunchers.com with which of those you would like. A mug, a book, or an oh so soft journal, which I think should be the actual name of that product from now on. Oh so Soft Journal. Because you can't say it without it. And yes, please send that up team at Book Launchers and we'll get that out to you. All right, Any closing thoughts? Bruce, Eric, you guys were fantastic. Thank you so much for everything. Please do put the links down in the chat so people could find you anything that you want to leave us with today.

I would just say, hey, get out there again, your authors, you can open media doors with your books and just get out there and start, start pitching away. Go for the opportunities. They're not going to come to you just, you know, on their own. So go and make it happen.

Yeah, I would agree with that. You know, again, it's just, it's. It's one foot in front of the other, right? Just get out if something. Again, nobody's going to bite your head off or anything. Get out there and give it a shot and try it. There's no right, right or wrong. It's no good or bad. Whatever it is what it is. If you guys need help in it, Bruce, I think you put. Because I'm on my phone, I can't put that in there. But if you guys do need help or assistance, Bruce, put the website in there. So urbanmedia.com obviously, if you're looking to hire someone like us, we could. We'd love to work with you. We do offer some discounts for you guys, too. We could. I could send it out to you guys so you can see that. But, yeah, I would just say go out there and do it. You guys have gotten over the hard part. The hardest part was writing the book, and that was the most difficult part by far. Now's the easy part, just to get yourself plastered out there and let the world know who you are. So the book was the most difficult part, at least for me. So at least now you can just go out there and look pretty on television and sell copies and build credibility and place yourself as an expert, Right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. I do want to thank everyone for joining us today. Really great presentation. I hope we gave you some tools that you can walk away and start using today on how to pitch yourself to media. And I do encourage you to check out book launchers.com if you have any questions about more things around surrounding your book. Don't Forget, obviously, Julie's YouTube channel, Book Launchers TV. And I just want to say thank you to you all for letting me guest in here for. For Julie today, her bright, shiny, and happy face. We'll be back for the next one and Obviously catch your YouTube videos every Tuesday and Friday at Book Launchers TV. So thank you, everyone. Angela, am I forgetting anything? I mean, Julie does this so effortlessly.

Thanks for Bruce and Eric.

It's been a while. Huge. Thank you, guys.

This was just so valuable. And I know I could see people taking notes. So thank you so much for taking time out of your Saturday.

I didn't see a lot of heads down. Right. Which is an encouraging sign.

Hey, just so. Just so you know how much. Just so you know how much we love you guys and how I'm gonna tell you right now. I'm in Vegas right now, so I can hear slot machines going ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And I'm so. This is how much I love you guys. I'm just kidding. I'm not running slot machines. But I'm in Vegas, which is why.

You step out the door and there's the slot machines.

Like, I can't stand up. I can't have you guys see the bottom half of me. Like, literally, it's, like, so bad. It was such a late night last night. So I'm just glad. I'm just happy to have. I'm so glad. Thank you, guys. Everybody's been awesome, too.

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Thank you, everyone. Have a great. Bye, everyone.

Thank you.

Bye. Bye. Thank you.