How To Get Your Product In Celebrity Hands And Reap Powerful Publicity with Sarah Shaw

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo. There you are. Welcome back to the show. I am excited to bring another episode to you and today is probably going to be more exciting for me than you. Honestly, if you get half as much out of this as I intend to, well then consider that a bonus because today I have got. There's really an interesting coincidence around the guest that I got on today. So her name is Sarah Shaw and I got an email from Sarah, oh maybe about a month ago and we started talking about what she's done in business and potentially having her on my show, I was like, you know, this seems really interesting and I think this will, I think I can definitely pull a lot of value for you, my listeners, out of this, out of this episode. Well, it just so happened in the meantime, between the time where I agreed to interview Sarah for the show and right now, there is a very specific thing that I'm going to be asking Sarah about. See, I was just given equity in a brand new business directly marketed to women and it is a product that it is going to be a mass consumable product and we are going to have a lot of fun in launching this. So, so I'm helping to spearhead the marketing for a female entrepreneur and it is one of the areas that I've got a lot of experience in marketing, but this is not the area where I excel. And it just so happens that my guest today, Sarah Shaw, does. So this was a happy coincidence. So you are going to sit in while I hopefully pick her brain clean. But in the meantime, you're going to hear about what can be done when you have an idea, when you have a product, when you've got a drive or a passion to put yourself out there. If you are one of my fabulous women listeners to this, pay super close attention because in just some of the offline talks I've had with Sarah, she's going to blow you away. A little bit of background. She's a fashion entrepreneur right there, ladies, your ears should be perking up. She's a product designer and she's a business Coach. She's got 20 years of experience and six companies under her belt. She has built a treasure trove of secrets for launching your line, getting your products into stores, boutiques and getting your products, which I love to, to a list celebrities, these influencers and getting massive publicity to grow your company quickly. So her products have been in over 1200 stores and boutiques around the country including Anthropologie, Nordstrom, Barneys, Henri Bendel, Fred Siegel, Neiman Marcus, Saks and Bloomingdale's. She's been in the pages of almost every major fashion magazine including InStyle, People, Us Weekly, Lucky, Elle, WWD, Marie Claire and the O List. And she's been on TV shows like Access Hollywood, Extra, E Network. She's been interviewed on Entrepreneur.com, forbes and American Express's Open Forum. She's also the founder and CEO of Entreprenet. That's E N T R E P R E N E T T E which you can go to the dot com version which is her website. But here's where she teaches product designers and fashion entrepreneurs how to launch, market and sell their products. In the meantime, she's got seven and a half year old identical twin girls who I'm sure keep her very, very busy living in Durango. Colorad massively successful career in Los Angeles. Without any further ado, Sarah Shaw. Welcome to bacon wrap business.

Oh, so happy to be here, Brad.

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, I was really excited about this because of the project that I'm working on and I'm very passionate about this. I think it's going to be amazing. I'm working with a female entrepreneur which I think we need more of in this world. And interestingly, I just read an article, I think it was, it was either maybe Kevin o' Leary or one of the sharks from Shark Tank. Literally just read this where he said the one big thing he banks on are the female entrepreneurs. I don't know if you came across this.

I haven't. But you know, women in. Well, the 2012 was the last kind of census done on women business owners and women launched over 400,000 businesses in between 2010 and 2012. And that was twice the rate of men.

Yeah, yeah. It's amazing the trends that we're seeing. One of my former guests and a good friend of mine named Kelly, Fidel, who is.

I know Kelly.

Cool.

Yeah.

So you know, Kelly's a good friend. We've talked a lot about this. I went and supported her at her no Glass ceiling event where it is, you know, just talking all about the, the power of female entrepreneurs and also the power of female consumers.

Yes.

I mean Honestly, I'm stepping into a world of marketing to women.

Yeah.

And I'm a little bit out of.

My element, but they control 80% of the household spending.

Right. It's kind of like slapping myself in the forehead going, why am I not. Why am I not marketing to women? So, yeah, it was Kevin o' Leary here. It was. He said, whoops, okay, there's. It actually turned on the volume. I'll send you this link. I'll actually put it in the show notes. But it said right here he says, the keys to getting. You know, I hate when you go to a website and it's like they automatically play these videos that.

Oh, yeah. So annoying.

Okay.

Nobody ever do that. Listen.

Right, exactly. But he starts talking about, here's what he said. 100% of my returns in the last six years have come from companies run by women. There's an old adage that says, if you want to get something done, give it to a busy mother. Yep. He says.

He goes, that's me.

Yeah, exactly. He's less interested in how it's happening. He speculates that women are more mindful of risk and better at time management, both crucial for companies in the Shark Tank pool. I don't care why. I care about financial results. So this year on Shark Tank, I'm investing in a lot of women. So this just came out September 25th is. It'll be in the show notes. I'll send it to you as well. But so that being said, give me a little bit of your backstory and why, you know, your kind of journey. And then I want to get into some very specific strategies on launching a new brand, a new unknown brand of a product into the marketplace when you are a complete unknown.

Sure. Okay. My story's really long, so I'm going to give you the five minute condensed version.

Perfect.

Yeah.

This just builds up that. Okay, I really need to pay attention to what she says afterwards.

Exactly. Yeah. Five minutes, folks. Okay. So I come from a long line of entrepreneurs. I'm fourth generation that we know of. But I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I did not have an entrepreneurial bone in my body. I babysat as a kid, but that was it. Like, I, you know, my brothers were like building cars and bikes and selling them and all. And I was, was like, whatever. I'm just going to babysit kids and I have zero desire. It just didn't, was. It didn't seem like it was. The gene had been passed on to me. So. Both my grandmothers were in the fashion industry. One of them had a really big bathrobe company in New York on 7th Avenue from, like the 20s through the 60s when she died. And Katharine Hepburn wore one of her bathrobes in the Philadelphia Story. So that was one, One, one big celebrity, you know, that wore one of my grandmother's outfits. And then my maternal grandmother had a clothing store on Madison Avenue in New York. That's where I'm originally from. And. And she. I'm sure you've all seen, and you could probably stick this picture in the. On the podcast, but the little blue coat that JFK Jr. Wore when he saluted his dad's casket. Yeah, of course my grandmother made that. And.

Really?

Yeah. And we have the. One of my brothers has the only other jacket like that. They made two and they only needed one. So my grandmother gave my second brother the coat. So we have. So both of my grandmothers designed something that celebrities wore. Right. You know, and so I went on to college and still had never really had any other job but babysitting. And so I go to college and I am a French lit major. And I wanted to be a simultaneous Translator the UN and travel the world. And that was my plan. And somehow I fell into costume design because it was a class I wasn't going to have to write any papers for. So I decided to take this costume design class. I ended up loving it. So I double majored in costume design and French lit and I moved. So I'd given up on the whole translator thing and I decided I wanted to be a costume designer on Broadway. So I needed to go to get my master's degree. So I thought, well, my sister lived in LA already, and she's like, why don't you come out here? These costume designers I know from this TV movie I was working on said they can help you get going and blah, blah, blah. And you've got nine months to wait till you can get into graduate school anyway, so what are you going to do? And I was working in a clothing store and wasn't really going anywhere with that. I was like, okay, I'm going to move to la. So I packed up my stuff, moved to LA and got this job working in the costume business. And you started out in these big costume houses and that's how you get in the union and everything. So of course I got in the union in 30 days. And it was kind of this whole charmed scenario. It doesn't happen to everybody that easily. It was just good timing, right? So I start working in the movie business and I'M making money. And I applied to NYU and I got a full scholarship, and I delayed a whole year and I was like, nobody in Hollywood even cares that I went to high school, let alone college or a master's degree.

Exactly.

So I was like, why am I going to waste two more years of my life even though it's free? So anyway, I ended up. I never went to graduate school, and I think my mom is still crying about that. But so I stayed in LA and I did costumes for movies for about 11 years. And I thought, this is my career. Right. I'm going to live and die in the costume business, and I'm going to get my pension and my lifetime medical insurance and all these, you know, great perks that you get.

Halloween had to be easy for you, though.

Yeah.

Either that or you hated Halloween.

I hate Halloween. And of course, I have my kids, and I'm in the middle of making costumes for them right now.

Do they have the best costumes in school?

They usually are pretty good ones.

I was gonna say they better. It's almost like being Michael Jordan's kid. You better be good at basketball.

Exactly. Or some sport, Right? Exactly. So the pressure's on a little bit right now. And about to get the sewing machine out. And I have to say, just for anyone listening, you really don't even need to be able to sew if that's what your product line is. And so anyway, I worked in the film business, and then towards the end of my career in the film business, after about 11 years, I came up with this idea for a handbag. And I kind of sat on the idea for a year because I was like, why am I going to quit my cushy job and all the money and the perks and all these fancy people I get to be around and famous celebrities and stuff. And why am I going to go start handbag company when I know zero about the fashion industry? So anyway, I was getting kind of discouraged with my job, so I decided that I was going to start this business at night and on the weekends. And I did. And somehow it just magically took off. I created this little bag that had never been seen before, and it was cut with pinking sheer edges, you know, the zigzag scissors. And it was just this funky little tote bag, and it just took off like wildfire.

Okay, but when you say that, you skipped it, like, what's the first thing you did? Okay, I got my bag. It's cool.

Well, I went. I called.

Who was the first? Yeah, buyer. Besides, like, A relative.

The. I first did this in secret, right? And I had been working for this costume designer for the same one for about six years. And she was like, we were really good friends and used to hang out and go to dinner and stuff, but I never had time for her anymore. And she's like, what are you doing? And I was like, I'm doing something I can't tell you about. And so finally one night, I was like, let's go out tomorrow night. I'm going to show you this thing I've been working on. My secret. So we go to a restaurant, and we sit at the bar and have dinner at the bar. I have my purse on the counter right next to me. And meanwhile, she's just freaking out and thought it was so cute, which I was completely flattered about. And this woman comes up to us at the restaurant and says, where did you get that bag?

Isn't that fun?

I just sat there staring at her like she was a monster. And I'm sure I was like, every shade of purple. And my friend's like, she. She made it. She's the designer. And then, of course, I wanted to just hide under my stool. And so this woman just went on to say how amazing this bag was and that she was a buyer at a store at this big mall down the street, but that they only imported stuff from Europe, so she couldn't actually buy my bag, even though she wished she could. But she's like, go with this. You have a really hot item. So that was kind of my impetus to feel like other than my friend, you know, this pretty famous costume designer, other than her, nobody else had seen it. And I was just, you know, it's one of those things where you're like, is anyone other than my mother gonna like this? And so that sort of gave me my impetus to start the brand and kind of gave me the courage to feel like it actually had legs, you know, that this buyer was interested in it. So because I shopped for a living working in the film business, I did costumes for movies, right? I knew every store owner in town in la, and so I went to see a couple of really swanky boutiques that I knew the owner, and they're on trendy streets there, and the stores, you know, are in. Are in magazines all the time, and celebrities shop there and, you know, stuff like that. So I just begged them. I said, take it on consignment. You don't even have to buy it. Just take them on consignment. I just want to be I mean, thinking to myself, all that matters is that I can say that these stores have my product. Right, right. Because it's nobody's business that it's on consignment.

Nope. And that's such a cool strategy, by the way. So few people actually think about that. Like you were playing the long game, you were thinking, okay, well, it's much more important to get that. The branding there, the recognition, the ability to say that. Yeah. So that's awesome.

Then when you can send stores, because back this was 1998, so really no stores were on email at this point point. And you know, like this Google didn't exist and there was no social media and it was, it was like the olden days, but we didn't know any different, you know, and so to be able to call other stores and say, oh, you know, these specific stores in LA have my products. And you know, I thought they'd be good for your store too. They're like, oh, well, Fancy's Dancy, you know, I'll take it too. You know, I don't want to be left in the dust. And so that was how I started to build my business in the beginning. And then I, you know, because I had worked in the film business for so long, I had a lot of friends that worked on other TV shows and movies and stuff. And so I went to. I just thought that the way to build a brand is to get as many people wearing your product or using it. Right. Because then especially women. Just so you know, with your new female oriented product. Women love to share information.

Yeah.

They cannot wait to, to tell each other. It's like if somebody walked up to you and said, oh, hey, gosh, wow, I love your. That's such a nice tie. You'd probably just say thanks. Whereas women would say, oh, really? You like it? Oh my God, I got it at Nordstrom's. It was on sale. And you've got to go talk to my girl over there and she's gonna hook you up. And they go on and on because they want to tell you the full story.

Exactly.

So there's a very different way that men and women communicate. And I knew that when launching this new brand that, and I didn't even think of it as a brand. This was all instinctual. I had zero idea what I was doing, just to be clear. And so I thought, well, the more people I can get wearing my product, the more people are going to know about it and women are going to talk about it, because it wasn't like they could Go post it on Facebook or anything. So. And you know, Zuckerberg was like in junior high at the this point. And so anyway, I started to go to TV sets and I wasn't looking for celebrities or anything. I just wanted. I knew there'd be a lot of women working on these shows. And so I would go at lunchtime and when I could get a day off or in between jobs I had and stuff, and I would just go to these movie sets and, you know, put my stuff out on a table and I'd sell like 10 bags or something and I'd be really happy and I'd leave. And then I did it again the next day, week. And I started to call offices and people I knew that worked in big companies in la. You know, most of the people I knew worked in the film business. They were, you know, agents or secretaries or something at a talent agency. And I'd go and set up in a conference room there. And I kind of did all that sort of guerrilla marketing in the beginning just to get people walking around town carrying my stuff. Yeah, you know, and it really worked. And you know, in a way it kind of hurt my sales in LA in the long run. But I didn't care ultimately in the end because I sold all over the country.

Why did it hurt your sales in the long run?

Well, I think a lot of stores got hip to the fact after a couple years that I like, I used to do these huge sample sales. I mean, I would do sample sales and in like three hours I'd make eight to twelve thousand dollars.

Explain what a sample sale is for people who do not know.

Sample sales are end of season sales. And it really started in New York. And you know, most designers, I'm not talking like Balenciaga and those kind of haute couture designers, but from Kate Spade and Theory and all these contemporary designers, they usually do once a year they'll do a big blowout or twice a year at the end of the season and they'll just sell everything off that they have left at cost or somewhere between cost and wholesale. And it's really just to recoup as much money as you can, get rid of the merchandise and spread the wealth and get more people wearing your products. And I had seen this in New York and I had been to sample sale companies in New York and nobody in LA was doing it. And I was like, I'm gonna do this in la. This is such a great idea. You know, and Kate Spade's brand was pretty new at the time and she started about a year before I did. And so I was kind of watching her, you know, what she was doing and trying to, you know, emulate anything that she did. I was like, well, she's starting to make tons of money. Then all of a sudden, her bag came out in Clueless, Right. So they. And that. That. Having her bag in Clueless, is that what launched her? Yes.

Nice.

And so her business went from like, 500,000 to, like, 1.5 or 2 million within a year.

Wow.

And that's actually, believe it or not, what gave me the idea to start getting products to celebrities. Even though I had worked with all these celebrities for all these years, it never actually occurred to me. And then another. Then the same costume designer I'd been working with, the one who I showed the bag to first, she was complaining to me after I had quit that she was being forced to use all these Donna Karan clothes in a movie and that she was just told by the studio that Donna Karan was giving all these clothes to the film and that she had to find a way to use them on the main actors in the show. And she was kind of angry about it because she didn't really feel it was the right choice, but she didn't. She's got to do what your boss tells you. And so I thought, wow, if these big designers are doing the same thing, right? Kate Spade had already come out with Clueless, and then all these big designers are now stepping up and wanting to dress celebrities. I was like, this is a really good idea. You need to get on this, sister. And so that's kind of what gave me the second impetus. I mean, I thought that Kate Spade was a good idea, but I didn't really do anything about it. But as soon as. As I heard about Donna Karan, I was like, this is gonna be big money. And so I concentrated a lot of my effort on getting products to celebrities. And I just decided that I was gonna be bold about it. And I'm a lot bolder than some people may feel comfortable being. But I just. As soon as I would get something to someone and I would get an email or a phone call or some kind of confirmation saying that they had the product, I just went all out. I printed up flyers and sent them to all my stores that I was to. And by this point, we had a website, and we were doing some email, some beginning email marketing with constant contact, which was the only company at that time. And we were paying for Yahoo. AdWords, and we had this guy managing this for us. And so our website was starting to build traction pretty quickly. And we were spending about $1,200 a month on Yahoo. AdWords at the time. But I mean, within three months he got us from like 3,000 to 20,000 in sales. So who cared about the 1200 in advertising money? And so we were, you know, and then every time we got a different celebrity, we would put the picture on the home page of our website and then also put it on the page of whatever item it was that we had given them. So the sales page for that particular item. And we still, you know, there's still no social media. And then we would put flyers in every box that would go out to stores, you know, so we would do big mailers to stores just with just the flyer. Hey, we just got our stuff to these three celebrities. And we'd put pictures of the celebrity with the product. We didn't have necessarily a photo of them with our product, but we could put a photo of the product and then just a picture of their face and that stores just started eating it up with a spoon.

You started putting those pictures where we.

Started doing just like a. We did like a Photoshop document and we would mail it to them. And then every time we would ship an order to them, we would put it in the box. So the ones that went in the boxes were changing all the time. Like, we would do a flyer that would have like mini pieces of our press that we had because I got tons of press, as you mentioned before, you know, so it might be a new placement in L or People or, you know, being on the O list or something, which was huge for us. And we did these sort of mini versions where on a piece of paper we could do four different pieces of press, right? Divide the paper into quarters and do four pieces of press on one side and then celebrities on the other. And then one little box would. There'd be a little contact us box with some information to get in touch with us to place an order just in case they didn't have it handy. You want to give it to them all the time. And those, like little. They're kind of like a blow in. In a magazine, right? We call them our blow ins. We would just, they go in every single box. And we had one for our online shoppers and then one for our stores.

Okay, So I just, and I want to just dial in on that a little more. So you take the, on the blow ins, there would be, you know, the products, etc. But then you would put celebrities on there. Now these are celebrities. You said they. They weren't pictures of the celebrities with the bags, but there were celebrities on.

There who we got product to.

Yeah. Who got product to. So it's kind of that inferred.

Yes.

Endorsement. Right. I love that.

Yeah. And you never want to say. Unless a celebrity gives you a quote, you'd never want to make something up. Right. But to say that, you know, or you would never even want to say, oh, you know, Jennifer Aniston loves our bag. Well, you don't. Unless she said that to you, you'd never say it. But you can say she has our bag. You know what I mean? So it's a very. It's a slight differentiation.

You didn't say she bought our bag.

Right, exactly. And if she did, then you could say that, you know, but I would always. We just kind of deferred to the word has.

Yep.

You know, unless we got a note from somebody and if you ever get a thank you note that you scan that thing and put that up on your website, post it everywhere, you know, and fix it up with a picture of the celebrity and.

But so you would. You would mail the bags to.

We would mail the bags to the celebrities.

Would you do that via, like their agent or would you do that through.

Their manager or publicist? Okay, yeah. Agents are really just money people and contracts.

Okay.

And so they don't really care about the social aspect so much of the celebrity, whereas the manager and the publicist are more interested in their lifestyle and how they're perceived received by the public.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Okay. So. So yeah, I love using the blow ins then. Did that get. Did that help you get. You guys gain traction or did you notice?

Oh, God. We would all. I mean, every time we would put stuff in people's, you know, for our online shoppers, what we often did was the blow in would have either some press on it and celebrities, like whatever was the latest thing we had going, you know, and then it would also have a coupon code for them to use on their next purchase so that we could always track. Right. Because we changed those coupon codes with every blow in so we could track how the sales were going. And we tried to change those, you know, every month or two, depending on when we got to it. But then we could track those and we would always get tons. You know, we offered people, you know, 20%, 30%, 40% off retail. I mean, what did we care about? Right. We were still making buckets of money on it. So we would track all of that Stuff and see what was working best and on which styles and all that kind of stuff. We had a whole metric sheet going on those things. And then with. Same thing with the stores. And sometimes with the stores, we would experiment because we had sales reps in showrooms all over the country in Louisiana, Dallas, Atlanta and New York. And so we would sometimes on the store, blow in, we would put all of our sales reps information, especially like during show times and things where I'd be traveling a lot, and we would want to just refer them to our showrooms and not to our office. And, you know, and I would say it was probably 50, 50, you know, I would say if we. When we did those, we would get orders from our showrooms, but when we put our own contact on there, we would get probably just as many orders. And it didn't really. I think that in the end, store owners, they don't really care who's taking the order when they want to place it. They're just gonna call whatever phone number's on there.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, they just want to get it done and get it over with.

Okay, so then what now? You mentioned Jennifer Aniston, and in another email you had said something about Jennifer an. Now, was that the situation that you had sent these to her, or did you actually. Do you have another story about her? Because I know you brought her up in the past.

Yeah, I have a few stories about her. So, yes, with my handbag company, I happened. An old family friend actually worked on the TV show Friends. And so he ended up buying my bags and giving it to all the girls on the show for Christmas one year. So that was really cool of him. I mean, this was probably like year four or five of my company. It wasn't like he did it the first year. I was like, you could have done this five years ago. Really would have helped me.

Yeah.

But, you know, he was like, I just didn't even think of it until you, you know, until you suggested it, you know, so, you know, and you don't really often want to always take advantage of family, friends, and people who, you know, are in high places. I would now. I was too afraid to then, but. But then I've, as you mentioned, I've had six companies. And after I closed my handbag company, which is a whole other story about losing my investors after 9, 11, when I. When I launched my second company, my first company after. After that was called Style Council, and I got a couple more products to Jennifer Aniston. Her people were very generous in Delivering product to her. And I was making some pajamas with this company and carrying some other people's products. It was basically kind of like an Etsy that I created myself. And I was carrying people's products who didn't have their own website. So I was selling their products for them. And so the way we did that was by getting press attention and driving traffic to our site. And then we would sell, you know, maybe four or five items, whatever we thought their best sellers were. So we didn't carry people's whole lines. It was just select items. And we got our pajamas to Jennifer Aniston, and they put it in People magazine in the November issue, sometime in November. And we sold 2,000 pair and made about $130,000.

Nice.

In about six weeks. And in sales. And I've never packed and shipped so much stuff in my entire life. We did. This was like, total ghetto Sal style out of my garage. And we'd invite people over like, we're serving pizza and beer. Can you help us pack?

That's awesome.

And we'd be shipping, like, 250 boxes a day type of thing. And then another time with that same company, the next year, another year later, we got a necklace that somebody else was making, and we got that to Jennifer Aniston. And that was in People again in November. I mean, we somehow just lucked out with these two November issues. And again, we sold around 2,000 or so items of this as well. And so it was. You know, and then when I. The next product I made was a closet organizer for handbags that I have a patent on. And we got. We made some custom. This was when she was still married to Brad Pitt. And we made custom his and hers versions of it in leather for their closet. And so obviously, nobody had a photo of it, but it did get into us weekly in the buzz o meter. And we didn't sell 2,000 of them. Maybe four or five hundred. But it's the power of the press with celebrities that can really change the face of a business. I mean, if you like Hailey, Bob is a really big women's kind of tunic top brand. And as soon as they started getting their products to celebrities, I knew the guys that started that, and they used to have this real junky line that they imported from China that they didn't design. It was just like, you know, kind of a knockoff of some, like, fancy sweatsuit lines. And. And then they somehow got onto this. These tunic tops. And, like, Halle Berry would show up in People magazine, like, every week, you know, for weeks on end. Like, new Hailey Bob shirt. New Hailey Bob shirt. You know, and this. Look at the seven days of, you know, Halle Berry. And she'd have a different shirt on every single day.

So she was wearing their stuff.

Totally. They, of course, they were probably delivering, you know, suitcases full to her house. But. But who cares? Like, the, you know what I mean? The people who live in Iowa have no idea that that's happening in la. You know, people who are, you know, the average, you know, weekly rag reader, right? Meaning the People magazines and US weeklies and in Touch. And those people, they're just. They just want whatever any celebrity has. They don't think about the fact of how they got it. You know, they're not kind of in. They're not in that fashion world or celebrity world. And they're not thinking, oh, well, that company just either paid them to wear it or gave it to them. Or, you know, they, oh, maybe they bought it in a store. You know, that's what they think, right? They know. They. The people don't know any better. I'm not saying that they're idiots or anything. I'm just saying that's what the commonality of the way people think in the world is. It has nothing to do with America or anything specific country. That's just how people think.

Right? Yeah, you're absolutely right. Now, you just mentioned something, and I really want to dive into this. The power of. Because it sounds like the real. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the real octane behind your success has been understanding how to play the power of the press with celebrity, whether it's endorsements or implied endorsements, which I love. I want to dive a little more into that. So what is it about a handbag that gets in the press? How do you get something just like a regular product? Because a lot of people might be thinking, well, okay, I've got this cool idea, this design of this product, and even myself, with my client, it's like, okay, so what, you know, what is the key to using the power of the press, especially when it comes to products like this and interplaying them with celebrity. Can you go into that a little bit deeper?

Sure. So, you know, like, like I mentioned a few minutes ago, everybody want. Most people. I should say, when I say everyone, I'm talking about the general people, the general public, Right. Most people want to emulate the people they admire.

Right?

So, you know, if you're into cars, then you're gonna be wanting to be just like all the fancy car People, Right? And if you're into whatever, if you're into space rocket ships, then you want to be friends with Richard Branson and look like him and be like him and have an island like he does or whatever. Right. It's the same thing with clothes and accessories and home decor and food and all that kind of stuff, right?

Yeah. The power of celebrity endorsements. Totally get that. Like, that's huge. The question is the how on the building, getting the publicity in people and the press, and how do you really leverage that? How do you get in to make them want to cover your story?

Well, so by getting stuff, you know, you have to just know the right celebrities. Like if you read People magazine and all those other kinds and you see the celebrities that are trending in there or the types of things that are trending, it could be, I don't know, people who are supporting drinking wells in Africa. So if that's what those magazines are writing about and that's what the hot trends are, then you want to find the celebrities that your target market would relate to that are funding wells in Africa. So you have to read the news and you want to be part of. You want to try to get to celebrities that are part of the news that's happening right now. And news moves really quickly and so do celebrities, right? Somebody's in today and their history tomorrow. So you have to be willing to sort of dedicate this time and make it and really know that you're going to have to bust a move because, you know, if you're going after celebrities, for example, right, the Oscars or we're not too far off Oscar season now, for example. So if you start looking at all the movies that are coming out, you can get lists of the movies that are coming out now for the rest of the year. And you know, you're thinking, you know, I don't know, Angelina Jolie is coming out in a movie, let's say, I don't know if this is true, and you think, oh my God, my target market loves her and it would be awesome. So you can capitalize on a period in time, for example, like this, right? You can, you can say, okay, I'm going to get her some product right now, or maybe you make like a tiny little evening bag or some fancy jewelry or beautiful shoes, or you make gowns or something she could actually even wear to the Oscars, right. Or to one of her pre parties or after parties or something. And it doesn't necessarily have to be related to that. It could be anything but if you know that somebody is going to be in the limelight for a certain period of time, like award shows are really long period, especially the Oscars. Right. With all the awards ceremonies and the pre things and after parties and all that. If you can think ahead and say, okay, here's the five or six actresses, you know, or actors, whatever your target market is, who are going to be nominated most likely. Right. And you can even find list now that will tell you online if you Google like most likely nominated for an Oscar. There's people who are predicting all this stuff now.

Yeah, totally.

And so you can go ahead and actually sort of get on the, you know, get on the bandwagon kind of like, you know, the precogs in Minority Report. Right. And you can say, all right, these five women have a really good chance of getting nominated. So I'm going to get them products right now.

Yeah. Before they become the most popular.

Exactly.

Yeah. You're on the, you're on the cutting edge of the trend.

Cutting edge, right. And you're getting in before it's popular. So that's one way that you could, that's just like sort of a current example of how you could do something like that. And then if you can get them the product right now, then at least you've got that in and you can say, you know, you can sit on it. I wouldn't sit on it for too long because again, you know, stuff with celebrities, it's here today, gone tomorrow. So you'd want to be able to say that this person has your product and then hopefully you could time it with. If you do it now and let's say their movie's coming out next month, you've got a little bit of time because it could be two or three weeks before their handler gets it to them or can get you an answer saying, just because they get it on Tuesday doesn't mean they're going to give it to the person on Tuesday. It might not be be for three weeks. You know, like a client of mine who I helped get stuff to, Sandra Bullock, they only give her stuff on the first of the month. They send her like some huge box every month. So, you know, she's got a fun.

I'm sure she looks forward to the first of month.

Yeah, exactly. Woohoo. And it's like Christmas every month. And so you just don't know what the situation is from celebrity to celebrity, you know, and so. But being able to try to time it as closely as you can to whatever the big news is that's happening, right? It's like, you know, if you're reading, if you're. If, you know, if you're in the baby business and you know that these 40 celebrities are pregnant and are all gonna, you know, you can pretty much find out when their due dates are. You can start sending them stuff, you know, like a couple weeks before the baby's born, because most likely they know what the sex is, because they usually talk about it, you know, everywhere. And so you can get stuff to them prior to that, you know, so that before everybody else is sending them presents, after the baby is born. And so, you know, again, because by the time, you know, if you send it a couple weeks before, by the time you actually get acknowledgement that they received it, the baby's probably been born. And then you can say, here's a picture of the mommy and the baby, and here's what I gave them, you know, so you can use those kinds of things to your advantage.

So in order to get that into the press, do you just simply use a press release for that, or do you go directly to editors?

Yeah, I go directly to editors. I'm not that big on press releases.

Right.

Yeah, they get lost. And also, the more that you know about an editor, right, if you know that this editor always does this specific column, you want to try to make friends with them because they get probably, like 1,000 emails a day, and your stuff can get lost. You know, I don't advise sending packages unsolicited to editors. A lot of times they just will, you know, somebody will open it up, they'll look at it for a second, and if it doesn't relate or have anything to do with what they're currently writing about or looking for, it kind of gets thrown in this closet where people can just, like, take stuff for free and, you know, whatever people want to do with it. And it just gets lost in the shuffle. So if they're expecting something from you and you've made an agreement to ship it to them, that's a better way to do it. And also, editors want to know that they want you to pitch on target. So if you're just like, oh, hey, I make baby clothes. And they're like, why are you sending me this? I don't even write about baby stuff. They're gonna be like, blacklist this person and just never look at your emails again. So the more you can. They want to be complimented, too. They're just people just like we are, right? And they're always looking for their next bread slicer. Right. Everyone's always looking. Store buyers are, you know, and celebrities are, and editors and all kind of journalists and anybody who has to write about something is looking for their bread slicer because that's going to put them on the map. So, you know, they're not necessarily going to disregard things that you send. But if you can even just send them an email, not pitching your own own stuff, but trying to recreate a relationship with them by, hey, you know, I saw your. I just caught up on my magazines and I saw these three articles that you did on xyz and I just thought they were great. And, you know, just wanted to tell you that I really enjoy reading your column.

Yeah. A little bit of flattery will get you everywhere.

Totally. Yeah. And even if you mail them a letter, like hand write a letter and send it to them, just purely telling them how awesome you think they are, it goes a long way.

It really does. And offering insight if they, you know, something they can add to, like, hey, I noticed you covered xyz. I've done this more in the business area. I know some decent business editors, etc. So I'll do exactly what you said. My process is, you know, start off just a little bit of flattery and then maybe on the next one, offer a little insight. Hey, I loved what you wrote about. You know, maybe we'll use an example for. Let's just say the Steve Schaefer Forbes staff who wrote about why Shark Tank's Kevin o' Leary is betting on women. So, for instance, if I had already reached out to Steve and said something that was flattering, hey, man, I really like your article on this and that one as well. I'm a big fan of your work. Keep it up. And then the next time I write one saying, hey, regarding that thing that you talked about with women, maybe here's a statistic you didn't know, or here's something that you're bringing extra stuff, stuff to their attention and it just shows that, A, yes, you are paying attention to what they're writing. And the B, you're offering them value even if they never use it, it goes a long way. So I love what you're saying. I've kind of done that in another area. But let me ask you this. So aside from those pesky ethics. Yeah. What keeps people maybe nothing, but from just saying at any point, okay, I've just sent this to Jennifer Aniston's or Sandra Bullock's agent, and I could care less when the agent gives it to him or Whatever. What keeps me from just telling the editors, hey, Jennifer Aniston has my product.

Well, first of all, she doesn't if her agent has it.

Right.

So it's really a question of personal integrity.

Yeah, that's what I was saying. Aside from those ethics, I mean, people can do this. It's not. I always recommend that you, you know, adhere to ethics. And, you know.

Yeah. I mean, the other thing, too, is if magazine editors get wind or figure out that you've done that, they will never write about you.

Or if they do write about you, you're not gonna like what they write.

Exactly.

You know, there is a chance or.

You can get a letter from the actors people saying, you know, you're. You're giving this information. We never gave that to her. And now you're saying she has it and you're a liar.

Right. Do you ever really know if. If and when that person received it?

Well, if you. If you have a rapport with their gatekeeper, then. Then, you know, they'll say to you, we just gave it to her, or, she's coming into the office tomorrow and we're going to give it to her then. Or, you know, and then even if they say, we're going to give it to her, I would always call back or email and say, hey, you know, did she come in for her meeting? Did you happen to give her my stuff?

Yeah.

And as soon as they say, yep, we gave it to her, I'm like, okay, she has it.

So how do you gain rapport with the gatekeeper if you don't come from a career in Hollywood?

Oh, gosh, you don't like my. My client who got her stuff to Sandra Bullock lives in Massachusetts.

Okay.

And it's really how you handle yourself with them, you know, like, if you can afford with, you know, financially to offer them something from your line as well, that build you a lot of free goodwill and, you know, or you don't have to offer them the most expensive thing, you know, hey, we'd love to give you a pair of earrings. You know, would you like to choose something not, you know, it's not like you have to offer them the diamond necklace.

How do you even find their handler? I mean, is it relatively public?

Yeah, there's a website called contact anycelebrity.com.

Yeah, I think I've seen that one.

Yeah. And actually on my blog, too, I have an interview with the owner.

Oh, nice. I have to listen to that.

Check that out. And so, yeah, Jordan. His name's Jordan Macaulay, and he's a really cool guy and he's built this huge site and they have like, I don't know, 60 or 70,000 celebrities in there. And the reason I particularly like that one over other ones is that if you should send something to someone and it gets returned to you for like a bad address, you just email them, they'll get you the new address and then they'll send you a new shipping label or they'll refund you for whatever your label cost was.

Nice. So you interview Jordan and that's on your website, entreprenet.com. cool.

It's on my blog.

Oh, cool. By the way, one of the things I'm going to ask if it's possible to do an introduction to Jordan, I would love to have him on my show as well.

Sure.

Cool. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, that's kind of. That's kind of. Yeah, that'd be a lot of, of fun. Okay, excellent. So see, I love the fact that this is the kind of stuff that I don't often cover in the show, which is like the kind of the real world relation. I do cover this stuff, but it's how to build those really high leverage relationships and other people look past. You're not just buying ads and media and all this other stuff. You're getting into those big influencers and those big leverage points. Question about just kind of sidetrack because my brain went there. But how do you feel about like the whole world of sponsored tweets and sponsored shout outs and mentions? Have you used that a lot? Have you seen results?

I've done like Facebook ads, but other than that I haven't really.

Well, when I mean that. Not ads. So you may not even know that you could do this or not. And I don't know how effective it is, but I know that there's a lot of celebrities who put, you know, will do sports sponsored tweets, for instance. So you can spend X amount of money. I don't even know what it is. It might be like 5,000, 10,000 depending on who they are. And get like Kim Kardashian or somebody to do a little shout out ad about. Oh, I love these.

The reason that I don't believe in those is, well a, you can get your stuff to celebrity for free.

Right.

If you follow all of my rules.

Probably a lot cheaper than paying five grand just to get somebody to do it. Little tweet.

And the thing is, is that if it's one tweet, how many people do you think are gonna Find it. Yeah. So that. That's my big problem with stuff like that. Like, if, if. If you could pay someone to put something on their website homepage, that's a different story. That's a different story. But again, you know, like, nobody I know who likes a celebrity ever goes to their homepage. They're just looking for, like, random things on Popsugar or whatever website they subscribe to that's going to send them some celebrity updates on things that they want to read and hear, or they look at the COVID of People magazine at the grocery store chain, you know, So I think that those kind of sponsored tweets and all that stuff can just get lost too easily.

Yeah, I do, too. And I've never done them. I've never used them, but. Yeah. I mean, unless you've got a really, really deep budget, one of those big corporate marketing budgets, and you're just. You've got to spend it. Yeah, maybe.

The other thing I was going to say based along those lines, too, is what it also can be compared to is when people do, like, celebrity gift baskets or gifting sweets. And I don't believe in those either, because those are also five and 10,000 and more. Some are 50, $50,000. And the thing is.

Wait, is that when you include your product in.

Yes. Or you. Or like, people, like, especially now, because the Oscars coming up, people will be saying, hey, get in the Oscars celebrity gifting suite, meaning that you go to this hotel room and you get a table and you set your stuff up, and then people shuffle certain celebrities through and then they stop, and maybe there's one of those photo booths where there's the logo backdrop that'll say such and such celebrity or Oscar celebrity gifting suite or something like that. And you get a photo of the celebrity in front of that marquee, showing and proving that this celebrity attended this particular thing. And here's a picture of them holding up your candle or whatever. But then the magazines are the only people that care about that. I mean, you could use it to maybe market online if your people weren't that savvy. But the problem is everybody knows that you paid to be in those places.

Yeah. It doesn't carry nearly as much weight.

No. And it just kind of loses the whole cache of it and just the.

Kind of rabbit trail over here, like on the exact same thing. There's a lot of people in the world of, like, I guess, in the world of Internet marketing, for instance, and just really in other folks who try to build up their Social credibility, you know, having their pictures taken with, you know, other leaders in their niche or their market. And it always cracks me up when I see people, like, they'll post this all over the website. It's like they're standing next to another celebrity, and they're both guru, whatever, and they're both wearing their name badges from a conference. And maybe they're standing in front of the conference like that, you know, the little. The background or whatever. Yeah. And like that carries no weight. You met somebody at a conference. You said, can we snap a quick picture? You're not having. You're not sitting down, having coffee with the person. It's not like a random Snapchat, so. So I said, snapchat. I don't even use that. But random snapshot.

How millennial of you.

Yes, exactly. And I'm an Xer. I'm not a millennial. That being said, that's always kind of made me laugh. And I. On purpose, by the way, if I do meet somebody at an event and I'm shaking their hand, hey, let's get a quick picture. Especially if they don't have their name tag on. I take my name tag off, off, and I just kind of make it look somewhat random or whatever. It makes a world of difference, in my opinion, because otherwise I'm like, yeah, you met that guy at a conference. Big deal. Anyway, that being said, so give me an example of one of the angles that. Okay, you've sent the product to Sandra Bullock or Jennifer Aniston's agent. Pretty sure that they've gotten it. Now, are you pitching this to the. To the editor or publicity person in order to get the coverage online or in the magazine? And what kind of coverage can you typically expect? Like, what's the best coverage you've had? Will they. I mean, they won't write an entire article about.

No, but they could. Like, for instance, when I was in People magazine, we were in the Style Watch section, which is sort of the coveted, you know, what celebrities are wearing or doing now. And then in Us Weekly, you know, getting in the buzz O meter is kind of. That's their version of Style Watch. And, you know, and it could, you know, sometimes they're just doing those pictures, like celebrities out and about, you know, so maybe they catch a picture of even of a celebrity. You know, another client of mine, she sent a T shirt to Angelina Jolie's daughter, Shy. And it took about nine months. She never heard from them. Like, she just was like, this little girl dresses like boys. I make these boys T shirts. And she just sent them, you know, sent them two or three shirts, never heard another word, and was like, oh, well, you know, nobody ever got back to her. It was, you know, kind of. It wasn't like any kind of picture perfect scenario. And then nine months later, they were out on a family outing in London somewhere and got photographed and she was wearing the shirt, and it was in every single. Every week it was in another magazine. And she probably did about 50,000 in sales on her site.

Really? From that. So people are. Yeah. So I guess the site's mentioning it. Are they. Are they usually giving a shout out to where they bought it or.

No, that usually they'll say, like, I think it said Shiloh wearing a fat T shirt, fat tie, T shirt or something.

Okay.

You know, so they mentioned the name of her company, but they don't necessarily mention the website.

Yeah. So people will go. Yeah, but people love it. They'll go, look, so what if it. Can I ask you a selfish question?

Sure.

Cool. So, you know, as I say anything. Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, one of the. One of the big product launches I'm working on is a consumable. So it's a little bit different than fashion. It's marketed towards women, it's fashionable. But do you see any. The first thing that comes to my mind is if we send a consumable product to get celebrity endorsement, like, I can't imagine many consumers like celebrities going, oh, yeah, let me just ingest this into my body. Because who knows who it's from? Do you see complications arising when it's a consumable product, whether it's a drink or a food or something of that nature versus fashion, you know, I think.

It would depend on. On the person. You know, I mean, if you were gonna send it to Gwyneth Paltrow and it didn't have, like, you know, the guru certification that it was edible.

Yeah.

You know, something like. Or whatever her rules are. Do you know what I mean?

Oh, yeah. Well, then again, they don't have to consume it in order to get the benefit of the press. Right?

No, they don't. For you. But you also, you know, like their people, like, if it. I don't know. Right. Yours is some kind of food, consumable food item. Right. So let's just pretend it's chocolate.

Okay.

So let's say, you know, you're like, oh, my God, I've got to get it to this, you know, to this celebrity and. But they don't like chocolate.

Yeah.

Right.

They're not even. Yeah.

And maybe it's gonna be hard to find that out. You know what I mean? Like, you can Google celebrities who like chocolate and there's gonna be articles and little dibbles and dabbles around the Internet of celebrities that like chocolate. But you also. This is the most important thing which we haven't really emphasized is it has to be a celebrity that your target market is going to fall apart over. So if you say to me, I love Angelina Jolie and she's my favorite actress, but your target market doesn't like her, then you don't like her anymore either.

Yep.

So it's. So that's a really important factor. So if people are googling celebrities who are pregnant or celebrities who like chocolate, or celebrities who eat sushi or wear handbags or big bold jewelry or whatever it is, you have to then look at the list of the people who show up on this Internet search and you may only be able to choose four people who you can readily find available in a Google search that are going to be attractive to. To your target market.

That's a very good point. Yeah. And going after the right, like if you're marketing something to an older demographic and you go after Kylie Jenner, it might not work.

Exactly. Yeah. So it's looking at all of those things that are going to speak because like I was saying, if you like Angelina Jolie and your customer doesn't, if she shows up in a magazine with your product or eating your food or whatever, no one's gonna care.

Yeah.

You know, very few people are. You know, there'll be some people obviously who do, but you're. The majority of your target market's gonna just be like, whatever next.

Yeah. Now is the press and using celebrities, is it one of the most leverageable or, you know, effective strategies you and your clients have used, or is there something else you're holding out on me with?

No, they. This is the most effective. And one other thing I wanted to say too, about what you were just asking is sometimes, especially with a food item or some kind of consumable, even if it's a candle, because sometimes there's going to be people who only want to burn soy based candles and maybe they're not going to 100% believe that yours is soy based if somebody hasn't endorsed it already. And when I say endorse, I don't mean paid endorsement, but like, let's say you've tried to get some prep, you could get some actual physical media press for yourself first. Then you can go kind of go back to that whole blow in idea. Right. And you can put a couple pieces of press on a piece of paper and. And then write. Put that in a note to the celebrity saying, you know, just so you can see. Basically you're saying, we've been accepted by the public socially and here's some social proof that we, you know, here's some blog reviews or here's some, you know, I mentioned in whatever magazine or we were part of a roundup for holiday gift guide or something.

Yeah, that's that third party endorsement. Like, okay, this isn't just some nut.

Bag sending me and you're gonna die of a poison apple.

Yeah, it's like, oh, okay, well, people covered this. Or somebody else covered this.

Exactly.

By the way, just to go down this rabbit trail. So you mentioned candles. One of my close friends, former guest on the show, Adam Lyons, just yesterday showed me a business. He's like, this is amazing. He's like, my girlfriend is going nuts over this. He's like. And I think it's some brilliant marketing, but it's these. Have you heard of these jewel, like candles with jewelry inside them?

I think I just saw something about that magazine.

Okay, so there's one that I googled. Well, there's two of them. One has a really website. I think it's like jewelrycandles.com but the one I just found, which I love, their site is called jewelsent.com and give them a free little plug just because I like their marketing. And you know, this is kind of your area of expertise as well. But they have these candles, all these different scented candles. And the whole promise is there is a, like a ring worth anywhere between $10 to $7500 hidden in each candle and it's wrapped in foil. So once it.

There you are.

Yep.

Oh, I couldn't hear you.

Oh, you couldn't hear me?

No.

Oh, what's the last thing you heard?

To go to the jewelsent site.

Okay. And let me also. I'm just gonna double check where I am in the recording because I may want to kind of come back here and edit this out. But let me see. That is. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So the jewel site, jewelsent.com. there may be. I know there's other companies, but in general. Yeah, what they're. What they're doing is they've got a. The promise is, well, we've got like a ring that is anywhere valued from $10 up to $7,500. Maybe like a diamond ring hidden in these candles or These aroma beads or soaps or whatever. But, like, in the candles, you have to burn it.

And.

And once it gets down to, I don't know, maybe halfway through or all the way through, the little foil package reveals itself. You pull it out, and there's a. It may be costume jewelry, or it may be, like, a real gem worth $7,500. Wow. So Adam was telling me last night, he's like, we've gone through, like, 30 of these candles. She's addicted to them. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. I'm like, that really is genius, because you actually are. What I love about this is you are encouraging people to consume your product and as fast as possible.

Well, it's like the golden ticket.

Yes, it's exactly. Willy Wonka, the cracker Jack box, all of that other stuff. So I just. I found this last night, and I just started laughing. I was like, that is brilliant.

Yeah, I love it. Check it out.

Yeah, I gotta just start throwing prizes in everything we sell, right?

Like one of these.

And here's what else I love. Juuls valued 10 to $7,500. Now, that's like, retail value. So the real value comes. Could be a dollar, like the cost.

Totally.

I love that, though. It's absolutely brilliant marketing. He says, by the way, every ring she's gotten has been $10, the cheap ones.

And little does she know that the $7,500 one is over in Dubai.

Exactly. Bingo. So changing gears here a little bit, entreprenet.com, looks like you have a ton of cool resources for women, specifically who are trying to launch and, you know, whether they've just got an idea or grow their business. I want to kind of come back to this and how you. How you work with them, how you coach them and the services. But I also stumbled across a little linky poo on your website called Instantly Famous Products. And I was like, that looks interesting. So explain me more about this one.

So what it is, it's a totally free service that we offer, so anybody can just go sign up. So we offer a service to connect you to editors or subscription boxes or TV shows or movies, costume designers, and even retail stores that are looking for new product lines. And so we get requests from people usually a few times a month. Sometimes it could be more, and we just send out an email to everybody who's on that mailing list with whatever the required product is. And some will be right for you and some won't, and you just apply for what is. And we have some special proprietary software that allows you to upload four images plus all your contact information, and then it generates a special page for the request, whoever the requester is, and we send it to them and then they take a look at all the photos and the descriptions and they just contact whoever they want directly.

Cool. So this would be a good idea for the product that I'm working with. Right?

Exactly. And if you have a consumable. I know a few subscription box people who are interested in it.

That is definitely on the launch plan. That is really cool. Yeah. So that is. Is it. I've already opted in, so I might not be on the main one. That's. Is it instantlyfamousproducts.com or.

Yep, exactly.

So I signed up for that. That looks really interesting. I love kind of that. That stuff. I mean, we. Right now we live in a. By the way, how do you make money on that?

I don't.

Okay.

It's just a freebie that I offer.

This helps build your brand and your. And gives value. That's huge. You know, we are more than like, we've never seen a time. Like. I'm gonna do another podcast episode on this. The connection Economy. How fortunes are being made and just connecting people just like this. Like, it's kind of interesting that the biggest cab company in the world owns no cars and employs no drivers. You know that the biggest hotel company. You could call it a hotel company. The biggest hospitality room company owns no hotels. Airbnb. Yeah, stuff like that. You know, the biggest retailer has no shelf space.

Exactly. So they got a bunch of warehouses, but other than that.

Yeah, but no. Yeah, no retail shelf space. Be interesting if we start to see Amazon stores, but I doubt we will.

Yeah, I doubt it.

Okay, so now back to. Back to Entreprenet. Tell me about. So obviously your key demographic is women, though just from talking to us, you can help a guy as well.

Oh, totally. As long as they're not intimidated by the name of my company.

Exactly.

I can help anybody.

I'm an entrepreneur girl.

Yeah, that's right.

So tell me about the. Either some successful clients that represent the kind of people you really love to work. Yeah, that's. Instead of who are you looking to work with? Tell me about a couple of ideas clients that you love working with and you just wish you could duplicate that kind of person.

Yeah, I am really into super ambitious people because I'm a really ambitious person. And so I find that I work best with people who are really serious about growing their Company and who, you know, who really want to do what it takes to get there, you know, and having your own business is really tough. And I think a lot of people, you know, get stuck in that misconception of. And I know I did. When I first started to be an entrepreneur, I was like, I'm gonna be my own boss. I'm gonna have leisurely lunches, and I do things at my own schedule, my own pace. And I was like, could I have been wrong? More wrong.

It's all glamour and fun and yachts and private airplanes.

Right, Right. In your vivid imagination.

The nice part is there's no stress to be an entrepreneur.

Oh, totally. Yeah. Never.

Zero.

Zero. You know, the money just falls off trees in my backyard all day long. And that's kind of literally what I thought it was sort of like, not that the money would fall off a tree, but that I would really be sort of the master of my own time and universe. And you are. But it really depends on how hard you're willing to work for how much money you can make.

Yeah. You realize when you become an entrepreneur that you've got the hardest driving box in the business.

Exactly. Yeah. And you worked eight or you don't have a business, Right? Exactly. Right. If you worked eight hours a day and you were tired, now you're going to be working 16 or 20. So I find that the people who are most super motivated get the most out of working with me because I'm so highly motivated and I am an idea machine. And I will come up with, like you do. And what you and I have talked about in the past is when that you can see for people in their business what they can't see for themselves. And it's like, blatantly obvious to you the next 10 steps that somebody should do. And they're just, you know, they're sucking on their thumb. And you've already graduated high school, you know, and so, you know, and you're like, here's your list of 20 things. And you got to do these things if you want to make this kind of money, this, you know, in the next six months or three, whatever the goal is, you know, and they're like, glaze over. Okay. You know, and you're like, if you can't do that, let's find the people who can, you know, I can do part of it for you as our part of my contract, you know, let's hire all these jobs out. Let's get all these people doing these little things that either you can't do or don't want to do or hate to do or are bad at. You know, it's like when you're in, when you're selling products, you have to be, you have to be able to sell and because if you don't make sales, you make no money. And a lot of people are really afraid to sell and they don't know what to say and they get flustered and frustrated and they get a couple of nos and then they give up for a couple weeks and it's like, okay, you got a no, let's keep going until you get a yes today and then you get a yes and celebrate it. And then I often say to people, when you do get a yes, think about what that felt like and what you felt like in that conversation that got you to the yes. And just try to keep emulating that and repeat it. Rinse and repeat over and over again. Because if you're you, you clearly come from a place of power. When you get the yes, you know, you're talking, however you're speaking about your product or describing it or whatever you're telling them, got them to yes. And so if you can just keep rinse and repeating that, you're going to get way more yeses than no's when you're coming from that kind of scared, you know, I don't know how to do this. You know, I'm afraid they're going to say no kind of attitude is going to usually get you the no. So I try to help people get to that point and I give them a lot of different ideas of, you know, how to approach stores and how to talk to them and what to say. And you know, we do tons of like temp, I have bilions of templates and this is what you're going to say to people. And you know, that didn't work. Okay, let's try this tactic and let's let me hear your elevator pitch. It's got to be more about why your product is going to help the customer. Rather they're not really interested in why you developed it or how it came to be. They're not interested in your backstory, they're.

Not interested in you. What can you do for them and their customers? And if you can do something for their customers, that does a hell of a lot for them.

Exactly. And that kind of goes back to the blow ins too. When you can say if you're in a store and even if your sales aren't as great as you know or as good as you want them to be by sending them, you know, laminated pieces of press you got or some picture of a celebrity with your, you know, with your product or whatever you can do to help enhance the shopper's experience is going to help the store sell more of your products too, Right?

Exactly. You know, and it's. What's cool is it sounds like you work with people, people who've already got the product, they're making money, they're an existing business and they just want to get a lot more. Or am I right? Like people who have an idea.

I'd say it's 50. 50.

That's great.

Yeah. I mean it waxes and wanes. You know, sometimes I'll have a whole slew of people who are like, hey, I want to invent my, my bread slicer. And then the other people are, hey, I've invented it, but I, it's sitting in my garage and I have no idea how to market or sell it.

Yeah. Or marketing and selling it. I want more.

Yeah, exactly.

That's perfect.

Yeah.

Well, this is great. So if, if any of my lovely lady bacon ladies out there.

Yeah.

Have. Are listening to this and like, you know, Sarah is my type of woman and I want to work with her, find out more information, etc. Is the best place to go is entreprenet.com or is there.

Yeah.

Once they're there, what's the first thing they should do Once they're on Entrepreneurs.

Burnett, probably in the lower left hand corner, they can sign up for my. It's. I have a free, free document that'll be emailed to you on how to get your products to buyers and that'll get you on my mailing list. And, and then you can.

I'm gonna sign up for that.

That looks good. Yeah, it's good. And, and then we just, you know, and then if you want, get on the instantly famous list as well. That's a separate list that you have to sign up for.

I'm on that one too.

Yeah, I know you are.

Did you see it come through?

No, I'm not looking at my.

I told you though.

You told me you registered. And, and, and then, you know, and then you can peruse the services tab and see if there's anything up there, you know, and feel free to email me or you know.

Absolutely.

DM me on Facebook or whatever.

Cool.

And, and I also wanted to let your listeners know that if there is anybody who actually has a product based company already established. I actually have a private Facebook group that's invite only. And so if they're interested in that, they can send me a message through Facebook or something and I'll check out their website and. And maybe invite them to join the group. And it's a free group. I'm just being pretty selective on who's in it because we really help each other in there a lot. And everybody's very forthcoming with information and really wants to build their business. They're all super motivated people.

That's great. I'd love an invite.

Okay, I'm gonna invite you.

Boom. I don't even know if we're Facebook friends yet. We gotta be.

I know. We have to be.

And we have to. Okay, two last questions. I like to ask these of everybody but one, who do you turn to? Is there anybody you turn to? Not just family or whatever, but when you're stuck, Are there any mentors, people that you really is your go to person, group, Whether. Maybe it's just a friend, maybe it's a mentor, maybe it's a coach. Because one of the things I've found is that all the best business people, we all have coaches, coaches, mentors, and people like that.

Oh, heck, yeah. I actually have. My oldest and dearest friend is actually an author, a mentor to me, and she's a coach, so I kind of get the benefit of all of that. Yeah. Her name's Jen Sincero, and she wrote a book called you are a badass.

I like it.

And you should have her on your show.

Yeah. Make the intro.

But anyway, she's my go to. We kind of are each other's go to people. But she's actually the person who encouraged me to start Entreprenet in the beginning, told me that I should up my game and that people would actually pay me to teach them how to do all this stuff, which I thought sounded so ridiculous at the time, but then she's like, all these other people are being life coaches, and I think I'm gonna be one too. And I was like, oh, fine, then I'm gonna be a coach too.

There you go.

And so. And we both worked with the same mentor at the time to help us launch our coaching companies. But then she's gone on to write this amazing, gigantic bestseller. She's on the New York Times bestseller list now. And so she's the person that I go to when I need some advice.

Beautiful. I love it. Yeah, I love the intro. That would be fantastic. Also that intro to. What's his name? Jordan. The person from Jordan. Yeah. I would love that. He'd be. I Think he'd be a really fun interview. And I'll listen to the one on yours. I will absolutely be back in contact with you, and I think there may be some work we can do together in one way or another, especially with some of the new ventures that I'm working with. And I think some. Some of your expertise would be invaluable. So look forward to kind of catching back up with you on that once that's ready. But is there anybody else I can introduce you to?

I don't know. I'll think about it. I'll send you an email.

Yeah, for sure. Like, if there's anybody you're. Whoops. Whether it's anybody else who's been on my show, whether it's people in different fields that you're trying to break into or whatnot, I'm happy to make any introductions. I take pride in my little Rolodex and I take real good care of it. This has been great. It's been a real pleasure. What's funny is usually most of the guests, I'd say 90% of the guests who've been on my show have been people that I've reached out directly to. And quite often I get emails from people who either, a, want to be on the show. Sometimes I accept, and sometimes I'm like, meh, if I don't want to sit down and have coffee with you, I probably don't want you on my show because I'll be bored. I don't need the content just to have content. But, a, I've really enjoyed this. I'm so happy that you reached out to me and this has been so worthwhile. Really, really enjoyed it, and I think you really brought the heat. Second of all, I want to, because I was actually having this conversation with somebody else who has got a podcast earlier today when I was having breakfast, and he's hired somebody to find himself, like, to, you know, to go do show bookings for him. He's like, yeah, he's not doing that good. I was like, you know, the best ones are the ones who reach out for themselves to be on the show. Because, a, this is, you know, it's way easier to ignore your assistant who's like, or the person you've hired to get you booked. If I got an email saying, hey, this is Sally Johnson with podcast connections, I think that might be a company. I don't know, but whatever. Sometimes they bring some good ones, but sometimes not. The thing is, it's way easier to ignore that person and say no than it is if you reach out to me directly and say, hey, look, listen, I think I'd be a good fit for your show. Now, granted, there are some people, if you're listening to this, if you email me, like, hey, I think I'd be a good fit for your show. A, you better know, why try not to be a, you know, a jerk. But I don't have time to talk to everybody. But you did a great job of, A, making that introduction, B, doing it in person, and then C, bringing the heat. So thank you very much. You thank Sarah.

Sure. This was fun.

Yeah, I agree. So, ladies and gentlemen, listening to the show, do yourself a big favor and go check out entreprenet.com and as you can hear, it's not just for women. I mean, celebrity endorsements and using the power of the press and publicity are huge. And I've not. I don't think I've talked to anybody who seems to have it as, you know, concisely figured out as you do, Sarah, so. So whether you're a man or a woman, I think there's a lot you can learn both from this podcast and from some of the work that Sarah's doing over@entreprenet.com so do yourself a favor. Go check it out. While you're checking it out, go to baconritbusiness.com iTunes and leave a review for the show. If you like it, climb in. The reviews always climb in. Listeners we've got every single episode gets more and more listeners every time, and that's thanks to you guys. Also, if you're listening to this, whether it's on the website or something else and you're not a subscriber, especially if you're on itunes or iPhone, click that subscribe button so that you don't miss any. And if you have any questions about your business strategies, other guests that you want to see, email me directly@askbradakenwrappedbusiness.com I. I'd love to hear from you. I get emails all the time, but quite frankly, not enough. I love listening to the people who listen to me. That said, look forward to the next episode, and I look forward to connecting with you again. Sarah, thank you very much. Awesome. Have a great day.

You too.