5 Narratives Every COO Must Master

Every journalist woke up and thought, what the heck am I going to write about today? I go, hey, do you have two minutes? I think I have a good story for you. They go, yeah, I need a story. What do you got? I've personally been in the physical print edition, like actual Forbes, the actual Fortune entrepreneur success, American Airlines magazine, like the actual print editions, because I called the journalists and said, hey, I have a good story for you. I've coached, you know, William Mitar from Rochester in Buffalo, George Sink from South Carolina, John Berry, Jason Hennessey and Scott Shrum for Hennessy Digital, Chad Dudley. I've coached a number of law firms that are in the space. No one's going to cover you because, oh, here's a good law firm that does personal injury law that doesn't sell. Nobody cares. However, here's five stories that every firm can get the media to cover them on. The first one is what I call the Genesis story. It's how you started. It's why you started. It's why you started a law firm instead of going to work for a law firm. It's what kind of gave you the impetus to go after the kind of law that you're in to solve the problems that you have. You tell that story and it inspires and it educates and there's no time sensitivity on the story. So you can run it today or you can run it in three weeks. It's a good filler story that any business journalist will actually write in your market. Number two is the hero's journey, right? It's that lessons from the edge. It's the trials and tribulations. It's where you struggled and fell and almost went bankrupt. You almost lost your marriage, you almost screwed up whatever it was, but you overcame. You learn. So it's the lessons, it's the lessons from the edge. Those again inspire and they educate. And the fact that you're a personal injury law firm is in the story, but it's not about that. So the story becomes very powerful and educational and can be used in your sales and marketing later. Number three is to get stories about your customers. It's how your customer's life got changed because of the work that you did. And if you're a national firm, like let's say that you're a marketing agency that has clients in 50 states. You can get a story about how your agency changed Bob's life in Chicago. It's the same story about Kelly's life in Boston and Dave's story in Dallas. So it's the same story, different city or the same story, different media outlets. Right. When we were scaling 1, 800 got junk, we landed 5200 individual unique stories about our company and franchisees in six years prior to social media even existing. So we had, we didn't even have Facebook or LinkedIn to share them. But all those uniques was what propelled us. The four story angle that you have is around culture now. What's beautiful about law firms is everybody hates them. It's like, oh my God, you're a lawyer. Oh my God, you're an insurance company. Oh my God, you're an accountant. It's like, please me, I don't want to hear about your law firm. What about the law firm? That's cool. What about the law firm? That's fun. So I remember a really close friend of mine, a former college pro franchisee, a former fraternity brother of mine in Canada, decided to start a law firm in Toronto, Canada. Now, because he also had his MBA from Notre Dame and his LLB from Ottawa U. He went out and negotiated some killer incredible office space. He decided he didn't want to go work for a law firm, he just wanted to start one. And he was starting it around 1995, 1996, so he wanted it to be like an Internet company. So when you got off the elevator, there was this platinum gray felt pool table was the first thing that you saw. There was a bar. No one in the law firm wore ties. They were all like dressed like trendy certainly nice clothing, but first date dress code. Terry Delys law firm Wildebor Randapps in Toronto led the public offering for RIM Research in Motion, which was BlackBerry. They landed that because they were a tech cool law firm. That story would be interesting and unique for all business journals. Is how does somebody in a boring industry that no one wants to hear about create a culture that's kind of cool? That's story number four. And then story number five is around leveraging technology, right? How are you leveraging the tech stack? Utilizing AI, utilizing technology tools to help more or less people get more done faster. That's an interesting story that people will talk about those five story angles again. You can get multiple outlets multiple times and you can get the same story written year after year in different outlets. So it's not about having more stories. It's about reaching out to the media and remembering every day they need a new story to cover. You're helping them by giving them a story. If you haven't already come, check out the Second Command podcast on YouTube. It's at YouTube. SecondCommandpodcast. I actually wrote a book called Free PR to cover this. I give you the actual recipes to do it. We never call the news desk. We never call the city desk. We never call the editor, and we never send out press releases. Here's why. Today, every journalist woke up and thought, what the heck am I going to write about today? Every editor sat down their desk with 400 press releases. Nope. Nope. This sucks. Nope. Maybe, nope. Yes. Nope. Why do you want to deal with that person? I want to sit down with the writer who's sitting at their desk going, I have to do four stories today. What the am I going to write about this morning? I go, hey, do you have two minutes? I think I have a good story for you. They go, yeah, I need a story. What do you got? I've got this story about this worst industry in the world to work for. Law firms. Oh, I hate law firm. I know, right? Law firms suck. But I found a really good law firm that does this. We should talk about it. That's called Cool. Tell me more. And that's how we landed every story angle. I've personally been in the physical print edition, like, the actual magazine, not the online ezine, whatever, but I've been in actual Forbes, the actual fortune entrepreneur success, American Airlines magazine, like the actual print editions, because I called the journalists and said, hey, I have a good story for you. And I'm not asking them to write about me. I'm saying, I think I have a good story for you. Would you like that story?