Do you dream of being on TV, and not just watching it? Then listen to the CEO of LifeFlip Media coa

All TV wants is you to have a story that reaches somebody other than yourself. So pitching yourself and your product doesn't provide value to their audience.

Welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Show. I'm delighted to have with me Eric Mitchell, who is joining us from LifeFlip Media. Eric, hi, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks. It's great to be here.

Now, Eric lives in the town Beaverton, which is obviously the home of Nike. And it's a beautiful place. And he's kind of come on the show because he has on his website a great statement that says, don't watch TV, be on it. Now, Eric, how can you help the unnoticed get on TV? And why is it important?

Well, first of all, I love helping people get on TV because you watch a lot of your competition, especially if you're a small business owner. And you're like, how do I do that? And you get this wonderful bad habit of FOMO, right? Fear of missing out. You want to be— everybody wants to be everywhere. And there's so many easy ways to learn how to do it, just the basics, like a good subject line or a good pitch and who to do it. There's a lot of bad information out there, and that's why we built our system. Number one, we're traditional like any other media firm. We put people on TV, but then we also have consulting where we coach people on how to do it. Because let's face it, 2020 brought us a new thing but working from home, but it also opened remote studios where we're all basically— we've watched the great Trevor Noah do all of his shows and his hair grow from his studio at his house, right? He's stuck in the corner in his home in beautiful New York and he's doing his show. So same concept, you could go on TV now too. So teaching people how to do it and the power of social media to help you achieve it without having to spend thousands and thousands of dollars. Like traditionally, it was like, I gotta go hire a publicist, But I don't have that kind of publicist money. How do I do it? So that's what we do. We help people get through those excuses and teach them the most powerful tool you have, again, is your wonderful phone that you probably can't stop touching. So that's what we teach people.

Eric, there's a couple of elements in there, aren't there? One is the idea of setting up the studio, and the other is about getting on the TV itself. Which one do you want to deal with first? Do you want to deal with how to get on the TV first? Not everyone can do that, right? You don't just ring up the studio and say, hi, I've got an idea. Can I be on? Right? You've got to pitch.

I wish it was that easy. And then I wouldn't have a job if it was that easy. But, you know, getting on TV, I always tell people it's a lot like having, you know, you talk about successful sports teams. The successful sports teams or even a military will have a successful game plan. And a lot of people don't know how to start with that. So starting that, it comes like a plan. And I preach this everywhere you'll ever hear me. I always tell people, start local. It's amazing how across the globe we all have local television stations that cover news in our own backyard. Yet people, everybody wants to swing for the fences and go on the biggest shows they could possibly go on across the globe. And you're like, so you want to get— I'll use an example here in the States. You want to go on Good Morning America, the probably most trademarked show in our country? Oh yeah, you should try that. If you've never been on TV before, go ahead. Most likely gonna be told no. So I teach people, put up a game plan and learn how to get on TV by themselves. And it's simple. You want to know how to— oh, how do I connect with a journalist? Use Twitter. It's not just something that former presidents here in America used and got kicked off of. It actually is a great media platform that nearly— I'll say about 99% of journalists across the planet use. And most of them have how to contact me right there in their profile. And you actually get unique things off of that. So I'll preach just for a second. But you learn a few things. One, you see what they report about, so you kind of get to know that. And some of them share their personal life. I have a good friend of mine, he's a— sits at a national— he's a national anchor on a big national show here. I happen to know he's a diehard Arkansas Razorback sports fan. So I make sure March Madness has started, I just send him a package so he could have like a cool little gift box because I know he's a fan of that. And you learn about him, so when you're talking to them and you're giving it, You lead in with something that they've talked about so you know you're paying attention to them, and then you start this open dialogue. And most of them have their DMs or direct messages open on these different platforms. I always— to me, my favorite 2 are Instagram and Twitter. You can literally reach out to them and talk to them, and most of them will engage with you. So I tell people, it's really— don't you— it's more mental than it is anything else with getting yourself on TV. Now, Are you newsworthy? That's a whole different topic altogether. How to connect, I can point you in that. Making you newsworthy, that's storytelling and separating yourself from the bunch. Everybody's a digital marketer nowadays. The word entrepreneur is a beautiful word. I think a lot more people are entrepreneurs now globally thanks to 2020. But, you know, Jim, you and I both know there's wannapreneurs and then there's entrepreneurs. And I think there's a fine line there as to making people newsworthy.

And so how do you do that? You say telling a story. Are there certain kind of stories that lend themselves really well to TV, some to radio, some to print, for example, Eric? Because, you know, not all stories are easy to tell. I mean, if you talk about cookery shows, for example, visually very appealing, kind of hard for radio, right?

You know, it's true. And I'll say this, and radio and podcasters will love me for this. I tell people radio and podcasting is the best place to ever pitch media and get it. Never turn down podcasts. I literally say yes to every podcast if it's talking about a topic I know a lot about and can provide value for. But that's the same thing with TV and radio, and I think people forget that. All TV wants is you to have a story that reaches somebody other than yourself. So pitching yourself and your product doesn't provide value to their audience. They want to know If Eric Mitchell comes on TV, what is he going to talk about that's going to provide value to their millions, or if it's local, maybe hundreds of thousands of people? But lots of states now, their biggest carriers, most national affiliates— and I know this isn't a case in the UK, I know it's the case here in America, I know it's the case in Australia— you're reaching a couple million people when you're talking. That's an amazing audience. So you literally need to give something that a lot of people get biteable chunks of information and go, Eric really provided some amazing insight. I never thought of it that way. That's great. And it drives that engagement that the networks want. Same thing with radio. If you're going on radio, advantage to radio and podcasts, longer time, longer talk time. TV, 5, 7 minutes, some shorter, some longer. But podcasting and radio, it's a sweet spot, 15, 20, 30. Or if you go on Joe Rogan's show, you get 3 hours. Uh, it's, it's, it goes kind of back and forth. If you can get on there, that's the— everybody wants Joe Rogan. But I, I think again, going back, if you look at it, people are consuming digital data, digital audio now more than ever. You see podcasts are huge. You see the money Spotify spent in 2020 on the very guy we're talking about, Joe Rogan, right? $286 million or some ridiculous number like that and growing. You see all these platforms that have podcasts on just like yours. Your amazing audience reach, and then you think of radio. Radio still we ride in our cars. Not everybody sinks into their Apple Play or whatever in their car. I mean, we have Apple Play, but we still listen to radio because we like our satellite radio because we can listen to whatever we want. And I think people need to remember that. Don't just put I want to be on TV. Hit podcasters up. You can get on there, and there's advantages. If you don't mind me sharing, Jim, the advantages to radio and podcasting over. National TV is breaking news rarely affects you. Breaking news rarely affects you, so you don't have to worry about anything crazy. There's natural disasters and those kind of things that obviously take it, but you're still going to go on if you know somebody say gets interviewed by Oprah and causes a big scene. That doesn't bump people from news stories. You know, if you're orange and you say controversial things on Twitter. You still won't get bumped from radio and podcasts. Now, national TV, said people, will cause that because you could see, oh, people getting bumped. I mean, that happened this morning because of an event that happened last night here in the States. So it's all— I always tell people, go for radio and podcasts because you're guaranteed to get your media. And you could do a radio tour, and literally it's 3 hours of your time, and you literally can talk to 7 people. So figure out how to do a radio tour. And you're in the money. Just radio is fun. I love it. And I always tell people, practice there because you can mess up on radio and you can have a bad hair day and nobody knows.

So Eric, we did touch on earlier before we started recording about Clubhouse and a few people have mentioned it. What's your view? Because if podcasting is one of the great mediums, Clubhouse seems to be growing as this kind of chat area, this live chat. Do you think it's good for the unnoticed or is it kind of almost too random for it to be valuable?

You know, I love that question and I'll answer it this way. From what I've seen in my experience, I've had it since the beginning of December, since I started getting into Clubhouse. It's hit or miss. I prefer the unknowns. I do rooms every Tuesday night and I'm going to do a plug, shameless plug, just because I will because we're talking about it and because we provide value. And I think that's, I believe in service and giving back. and providing value to the unknown and the people who have the voices that don't get heard. Our room, that's our mission, is to— folks will come in, they get Q&A with leaders of industry. We always have myself, and I bring in my peers, fellow publicists, PR folks. We'd love to have you on, Jim, if you ever have time.

Yeah.

We also bring in producers, on-air hosts, and literally you get to have Q&A with these people that you would never get to sit down with and have this conversation. So, answer your question, yes, in our rooms that we go to that are very media related, yes, they're so helpful because people who are learning, like last night, I'll give a for instance, we had a 4-hour room. I mean, how many conferences do you go to? It's 4 hours of people willingly, 1,100 people willingly sat through that with us.

Wow.

I don't know, apparently they really liked my voice, but they sat through and we helped people answer questions. How do I pitch? Where do I start? How do I start? How long of a pitch should I have? And it was fun to bring people up who are like, I started a brand, but we don't know what we're supposed to do.

From a branding point of view, it sounds like it's a really good way to have dialogue, right? Now, I think you've raised a couple of really cool things there about the need to be incremental and about creating opportunities to kind of try out your message because that's one of the key things that we work with clients, you know, is the repetition, right? To get better. Now, you did also mention though, at the beginning of the interview about preparing your home for becoming a studio. So Eric, can we just talk about that? Because we still see even on the BBC people dialing in and they're staring down at a computer and they've got a bookshelf running through their head. I'm kind of amazed in this day and age. Can you give us some tips for those people listening and me too?

Hey, the UK takes the cake so far for what was seen in the background on somebody's bookshelf. So let's just say that a winning moment that we use as a screenshot of things to make sure when you do a backdrop, you check what you have on your shelves.

Yeah.

Mine are strategically placed. If you're looking over my shoulder, you see my good friend Baby Yoda. I'm a Star Wars fan. And you see sports and my kids and my family and my favorite books. For a set, it doesn't cost you a lot of money. Don't fool yourself. Start small, but don't use your laptop. And if you do, please clean it. Clean this little dot that's on there because your smudges and talking and you're not wearing a mask at your desk, so everything you say flies up on your screen. Clean it off, make it level. So even where we're at now, you see I'm still perfect. It's— we're not doing what you're talking about. Put things behind you. I have fancy lights, but literally— and I say this to anybody and I generally mean this— DM me, I'll send you my simple gear list, or I'll hand it to Jim and he could share it with the notes for this show.

Yeah.

Because for $50, you literally can light things up. For $100, you can have what I have right now. This is a $100 kit that I'm using. You can go more expensive or less, but it's simple. Don't oversimplify what you're doing. Just please put stuff behind you. I ask because you don't want to look like you're starring in an ISIS video. And I, and I say that with a little snark, but you know the people I'm talking about. They got the white wall behind them and they look like they're being held hostage. You don't want to look that way and just— yeah, you want to just don't overthink it and go on YouTube. I preach this: YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. You can learn how to light. YouTubers, they may not go on TV, but those folks are experts and they love talking. So find a YouTuber and they literally have how to light your everything properly, and then you ask them and they'll communicate with you because they love engagement.

Yeah.

And they'll just be like, sure, and they'll help you. YouTubers are how I have all of this. My friends are YouTubers. I'm like, how do you do it? That's why I got the fancy colored lights and stuff, because if not, I'd probably look like I was starring in a prison video.

So, you know, I was going to say, because with the, with the red hat and the lights, it looks like you're in some kind of Santa's grotto over there. It's looking very nice in Beaverton compared to my slightly more— I love it, uh, sort of Scandinavian look with my Beijing poster. Now here's a question for you. Should you use a virtual background, a green screen, or should you just go authentic?

That question, that has, that has some caveats there. If you're going to do a green screen, do it right. Sync it in so you don't have the motion glare when you move. Your hands look like they're cut out. And there are ways, there's amazing things you can even strap over the back of your chair where it's nice, snug, and tight that you have a beautiful backdrop. Don't hang a sheet and don't use— no, sorry, Zoom, but your backdrop, just zooming it without the green sheet, that doesn't look good. Do not do that on TV. You just look ridiculous because you move and everything goes with you and it becomes a visual distraction. Use a backdrop. People ask me about my backdrop. So if you're watching this interview and then you go look and look me up, my backdrop on anything that I've done on national TV is a 75-inch TV that sits behind me. And I framed it just right. That is not a green screen. We've thought about green screens, but I have this beautiful TV. I love it. And it sits in my office and it's perfect for the studio. And honestly, it's what you use when you go remote. That's what's behind folks is not a green screen. You're not a weather forecaster. You don't need a green screen. But if you're gonna do green screen for Zoom calls or anything, literally, I've seen it on everywhere. It secures to your seat. And it's perfect.

I bought one of those web arounds. The, uh, the only problem is that, that you have to get one that's such a large diameter that it's like something out of Star Wars, you know, every time you move, right? Uh, it kind of knocked on my walls. So I decided in the end to go for just the, the natural. So that's great, Eric. So in terms of people sort of managing their own content, Eric, how can you help people, uh, to Take what is their authentic message then and, and keep it going over time? Because one of the challenges for people is the consistency, isn't it, of PR? I work with many clients who say, I've said this once, I want to move on to my next message. And often the audience has not yet caught up. How do you help your clients to kind of remain focused on the central message and not get distracted?

I think one of the main things that folks need to do is freshen up their talking points We require it weekly because you're talking about news that's different and you have to literally, it starts, the first step process is paying attention. If you're wherever you're pitching, know what they're talking about and keep your pitch relevant. So go to the Associated Press is a great one. I'm gonna give 'em a mad shout out just because I love 'em. It's something I encourage everybody I work with, if it was a client or not, and a friend, it's called Morning Brew. It's an amazing newsletter that comes out. It's got the news of the day in it. It goes out, I believe, 5 days a week, 6 days a week. It goes out. I read it every morning. It's where you get it. And you literally can see what fits you. So maybe on Monday, a story doesn't fit what I need, but maybe Tuesday does. And then I can grab that story. It's got the article with the link. You grab it, you're like, and you send it out to a producer who you know is looking for that story. And you're like, here you go. This is how my story fits with something that's national. Again, affecting more, even in your own hometown. It's how does this story compel me here in Portland, Oregon compared to somewhere else? I can do that and I can make a name for myself here, and then national's like, hey, we really want Eric on national to talk about it. So if you go do that, go find news that's breaking and somehow learn how to tie what you do into it, and you'll have great success because that's what they want to see. They want to be like, oh, Recent article in the Wall Street Journal or on the BBC or wherever you get your, you know, there's so many different places, the Daily Mail, there's just amazing places you could go tie in your news and people will be like, ah, it's awesome. And then it becomes relevant because, you know, if it's a story and it's on a big outlet, that means people are paying attention to it compared to like, I wrote a blog on Medium. Love Medium, no knock, but you want to affect the masses. Again, we're talking about a catchy story.

And I think that's a great point really, that rather than trying to sort of create momentum on your own and sort of move, move the water, you kind of dive into the running stream, right? And let the flow carry you. There's another one called scoop.it that also allows you to consolidate different kinds of content from around the world and delivers it to your box. That's a really great tip because many clients are so focused on what they do and communicating that and not starting from what's being written, shown, or listened to and contributing to that narrative, right, Eric? So that's a really great insight, Eric. So if people want to find out more about Eric Mitchell and the Life Flip Media all the way in Beaverton, Oregon, with your fantastic glowing background there, how can they do that?

Simply reach out to me. I'm Eric L. Mitchell on all social. That's Eric, E-R-I-C-L, As in L, and Mitchell, M-I-T-C-H-E-L-L. That's 2 L's, so there's a total of 3 L's you're looking for. Find me all over. Instagram's where I'm at. My DMs are open everywhere, and you can connect to our company LifeFlip from going to all of mine because I have links there. So that's where you find me, and I'd love to hear from anybody who's out there. And if you have a question about media that I didn't answer here, you can join me there, and I'll refer you to our Clubhouse. And then you'll probably see Jim's face on there because I'm going to make him come join us one, one time.

I am I'm going to be flattered to be invited. I should look forward to it. So thank you, Eric, so much for joining us all the way from Oregon. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

So you've been listening to the, uh, Unnoticed Show with Eric Mitchell from LifeLit Media, all the way in Beaverton, Oregon, the home of Nike and Intel as well, I believe now. So if you've got any questions, do please write to us. In the meantime, I wish you the best of health, of course, a sustainable business, and that if you're going to try and get yourself into the media, start small, And start relevant. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Unnoticed.