Turning your 'weaknesses' to 'strengths' with Cahill Camden of Digital Vision

The Unnoticed Entrepreneur podcast is sponsored by Prowly, the all in one tool for PR experts.

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, Jim James from the uk. Today we're going to Toronto, Canada to meet with Cahill Camden, who is part time fractional cmo. He's the founder of a company called Digital Vision. He's just launched a new product called Press Jockey, which sounds very interesting. Cahill, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me on, Jim. I appreciate it.

Well, I'm really excited because we're going to talk about some AI tools that you're building which will help the Unnoticed Entrepreneur to gather up all the journalists requests and filter them. So we're going to talk about that. We're talking about how to build a brand with non scalable marketing activities, some of those things. And I think we're also going to touch about pricing strategy when you're launching a product. So Cahill, tell us just briefly about yourself and Digital Vision so people can understand who you are and what we're going to talk about.

Absolutely. I look forward to talking about all those topics and giving a lot of value here. So Digital Vision is a company I created about six years ago. We do digital marketing for Web3 companies and technology companies specifically. And I do fractional CMO work as part of that. So when we say digital marketing, we've decided to focus on only the things we're really good at. So that is PR and storytelling, that is content creation. So think newsletters, blogs, and that is also paid media. Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, you name it. We're good at the paid media side. That's all we do. And then as a fractional cmo, I helped create marketing strategies for growth for a number of companies in the space who have actually gone on to get acquired as recently as last year.

One of those, I think, was Coinberry, I think you mentioned before.

Yes, yes, Coinberry got acquired. Another client of mine, Blockchain Foundry, got acquired. So it's exciting times to see the growth from a company that had near zero users when they started working with my team and myself to getting acquired with, you know, close to a quarter million users.

So perhaps you could tell us, Cahill, what would be some of the strategies that you use to get those two companies noticed before we then move on to your own new product. I'd love to hear what you did for these clients of yours.

So one of the things that I that we always start with is really trying to understand how are you going to differentiate yourself from the rest of the market. You know, everyone is always going to say, hey, we're faster, we're cheaper, we're better. And what a lot of people don't talk about, I think, is the why. So why are you doing what you're doing? That is something that Simon Sinek, as some of your listeners might have heard. I think he's gotten the number one or number two TED Talk in the world. He's talking about this for close to, I guess, around a decade. So we look at that in terms of the story, and we also look at how any brand can own their quote, unquote, weakness in the market. So as a quick example, one of our clients, they were slower than everyone else, and they had said that they were faster, and it was just clearly not true when you looked at the reviews. And so I helped, I spun that around to say, well, you're slower because you're doing more security checks. So really it's not speed that you're competing on, it's security. And no one else does the security checks that you've got.

So.

So let's focus on how we're more secure than the competitors, and that's why we're slower. And if you're looking for something that's fast but less secure, we're not the right brand for you. But if you want security, then we're definitely the right brand. And that shift in position, that shift in story, really helped amplify the amount of exposure they would get.

I love that idea of taking, if you like, what may be a strength in the company, but in the market as being perceived as a weakness and having some confidence in why you're doing it that way. Caleb, that's a great thing that sometimes, maybe only an external consultant can help a company to, to face, right?

And, you know, we all want to think that our brands and our companies are perfect and we hit all the right marks, but we have all focused on slightly different aspects of the market that we're in. And I think it's important to own those aspects. Now. You may have better security than another company. You might take more time with your initial assessment of a client. You might have more capacity, you know, and we've got to own these differences and highlight that, because if everyone's your customer, no one's your customer. You know, there's that old kind of cliche saying, that's wonderful.

I love the way that you've had the confidence to help the client across that. Now, one of the problems that many entrepreneurs have in terms of getting Noticed is on the media relations side, you mentioned you're doing PR and helping them with their stories. And one of the big bottlenecks for all of us is filtering out all of the journalist requests that are out there on Twitter and various other places. Kale, can you tell us about your solution for that problem that entrepreneurs are facing? Just the volume, and they're kind of littered all over the Internet, aren't they? Like little jewels that need to be found and structured and brought in.

You're exactly right, Jim. I think it's important for anyone listening or watching to know that there's really two types of public relations or PR that you can do. There's outbound pr. So outbound PR is what I call it. And that's the typical media or communications room in a large company. That's the typical PR agency. That agency will understand your brand, understand your story, and then cold outreach to the media, pitching you and your story and your brand or their work through their network, pitching you and your story and your brand. And then they're shopping around your expertise and your ability to speak on something or a story that you might have. Okay, so that's outbound prior. That is typically quite expensive. It can be very powerful. We do this as an agency. We've got people on bnn, national newspapers, top blogs, et cetera. But it is costly. And so I think a lot of companies typically can't afford the, you know, the price points that go along with it. Then we've got inbound pr. And so this, Jim, is like you were saying, there are literally thousands of press requests or media requests from top blogs, top publications, podcasts, you know, TV stations, radio news that are published every day around the web, around the world. That's inbound. So people are asking for your help. They're asking for your expertise. The challenge is, like you said, those jewels are littered all around the world and all around the Internet. And you've got to go out and find them, filter them and find out, okay, does this really make sense for my brand and my company and my store? So the product, the software that we've just launched is a tool that does that automatically for you. We find and filter thousands of requests a day for you so that you just get the relevant ones delivered to your inbox and you can respond with a couple of clicks using a template that you've pre written or one of our templates, and that will soon be enhanced dramatically by our AI integrations and our AI magic.

Yeah. Now, Kayo, the one thing you didn't mention was the product name. Go on, you better dig that in there. I gotta help you with your own pmi. But go on.

I'm excited. I'm excited to see people get a lot of value for it. But the product name is Press Jockey. So you can go to pressjockey.com this is how we handle inbound press. And we use this like, I built this for our agency. Like, I am a customer of my own software. Because, you know, we've had staff who have literally just been paid to and has spent dozens and dozens of hours every month just searching around the web for the right press requests for our clients, responding to them, et cetera. And I thought, there's gotta be a better way to do this.

Cahill. I absolutely. Cause otherwise, we subscribe to platforms like Haro, for example, help a reporter out or go on Twitt, but they're unstructured is one problem, and then they come kind of in waves. So tell us then, Fresh Jockey, you've mentioned a little bit about the functionality. What I'd love to do is to hear from you as an entrepreneur that's building a product within an agency and spinning that out as a separate brand, how are you going around building that brand? Because there's a challenge, isn't there, when you've got an agency, digital vision, and you're building a product within a service company and building as a separate brand. I've been on that journey myself. I'm fascinated to hear how you are building that out and how you're getting Press Jockey noticed.

Good question. We're doing things that don't scale, so I am a big believer in that for a number of reasons. One, I think you get fantastic feedback from your early customers. You know, they'll tell you things directly to your face that maybe you don't want to hear. They'll give you great feedback. They'll provide suggestions. They'll also share with their friends and with other communities if it's a great product. So that is one of the things that we're doing. So. So how are we doing that? Well, I am and a couple people on our team, we're in communities. So I'm part of a number of great communities on Facebook. I'm part of a number of great communities on Discord, other locations. And when we answer questions about PR in those communities, we give people the opportunity to join, you know, small group calls where I explain insights about pr. Someone on my team will do that as well and demo the product at the same time so that if Someone doesn't want to use Press Jockey, okay, that's fine. You still get a ton of value from the insights we're providing. And so in doing that I'm able to see, okay, where are people really understanding what's going on with how to build their story? Where are people kind of maybe getting a little bit lost? How can I adjust the presentation or how can I adjust the demo or is there a specific location when I'm showing the software that people just don't understand or they want to see it repeated? And that gives me fantastic insights for anything related to advertising copy improvements, onboarding flow and even the design of the product itself. You know, one of the things we are doing is we're rapidly iterating on this product, releasing updates almost every single day. And this is something that helps us do that. When we see people are having a challenge. When I'm presenting it, they're saying, hey, can you please repeat that? Can you do that again? Why is this, why is that button here? What does that link mean? Then that gives us insight to say, oh, maybe we need to redesign this so that people really understand it. Does that make sense?

It does wonderfully. And you mentioned you're doing, you know, marketing doesn't scale by doing this, you know, outreach and really education. Is that because you're finding potential clients who are not actually PR people? Because the audience that you've got for Press Jockey, are they not aware of doing pr? It's interesting if you're opening up a new category than of user.

Yeah, it's a great question. We will be targeting the PR world but right now we're targeting more of the business owner or the medium sized business, small sized business that has maybe thought about pr, has maybe been bruned by a PR agency and said, hey, we didn't get great results or who is maybe using one of the free platforms, pulling their hair out with how much time they're spending on that platform. And so we are approaching them first because we know that they're not going to understand the product the same way a PR pro or PR agency might. You know, a PR agency is going to get it and they're going to probably work around a lot of the early challenges that any company has. Whereas a small business who doesn't get it the same way, they're going to get stuck, they're going to complain, they're going to want to see changes and updates. And so in doing that I think we can make the product better so that when we do really start to approach the PR world. It's just brilliant.

So why would you, if you like, focus on the, if you like, the harder audience first, Cahill, rather than the agency? Any reason for the strategy of going for the, if you like, the non priority savvy?

Yeah, I want to make sure that this product creates a ton of value for anyone who's using it. And if we can tackle the hard things first, I know that the easier clients or customers who really understand the PR world are going to get it and it's going to be an even better experience for them. And so this enables us to have that ability to really make the product far more valuable for everybody.

Okay, interesting. I thought you might be going to go down the path of disintermediation of the agencies because Press Jockey actually is going to give some companies the opportunity to engage with, as you say, inbound PR without actually referring to an agency. And they'll save a lot of money and time, won't they, for doing that? So it's really wonderful what Press Jockey could offer up.

Yeah, they will. And you know, we're in the process of integrating, you know, the hot subject of the day, which is AI technology. So chat, GPT. And so. You're absolutely right, Jim. Like there will be this ability for any business, any person, any coach, podcast, you name it, e commerce company, direct to consumer, anyone will be able to leverage Press Jockey, create fantastic pitches with AI to have fantastic relevant matches based on AI, to get great keyword options with our AI technology. The Press Jockey will enable you to do that for any inbound press. But I still think there is a lot of value with outbound press. It is a very powerful tool. And I'm not saying that just because we do that. That's not why I mention it. I really do think that there's a ton of value in working with an agency when you can afford it and when the time is right. That does help.

Yeah, I think you're right. And I think what I love about Press Jockey is that you're helping those companies that are on their path to having an agency. And it creates a stepping stone, doesn't it? Cahill, you've mentioned beta users. I know you sort of let in sort of a hundred beta users to start with. Tell us, how did you get those beta users in?

Great question. So I focused almost exclusively on content and the type of webinar or educational session to explain to people and share insights on what we do as an agency for clients. Like this is information that only paying clients would typically get so I've been sharing that with early users, I've been educating people in communities and I've also been having our team jump in and help people choose their keywords, write their pitches. We're really trying to hold people's hand to guide them on that path to success. And so this is what we've been doing for early users and we'll continue doing until we hit a point where it just becomes too much.

Now, I would like to just ask you about pricing because I've noticed on your website you've got to sign up for free, which obviously we'll put the link in the show notes, but just tell us about your pricing strategy because under getting noticed, how we position a company is partly told by the pricing strategy. So what's been your approach and thinking to that?

So it's interesting that you mentioned that I said constantly upgrading the app. We just added the free pricing tier three days ago, paid demo. It was $7 for seven days. I know that Press Jockey provides a ton of value. You know, I'm an agency, I built it for our agency. I know that there's a ton of inbound press and a lot of time savings that anyone can get with Press Shop. And so what we were contemplating was how do we get more people to understand the value of this product and see it so that they can potentially take their business to the next level with press using Press Shop. And we decided that the $7 for 7 day demo at this point in time wasn't going to help us get there. So we decided to open up a free tier which allows you to put in up to four keywords so you can see if you get matches. Because again, Jim, this is one of the things that a lot of people had said to me on those calls. They said, well, how do I know you're going to be able to find requests for my keyword? I'm special. I've got a very specific keyword that I want. I've got a very specific industry or a very specific client. How do I know? And that was a consistent thing that, you know, 30% of the people that I talked to mentioned. So we went back and said, you know what, everyone's asking this. We've got an admin account, Obviously we're punching in the keywords for people. And then I'm reaching back out to them days later saying, hey, Jim, did find your keyword, here's the results. And I was just like, why don't we just give people that ability to do that for free? You cannot respond, you cannot see all the details, but you can test it out, you can see what the platform looks like and you can get an understanding that, hey, this is really going to help me save a lot of time and get more price exposure at the same time. And so that's why we added the free tier. And then, you know, again, because we're constantly doing these updates every day. We know we're rapidly growing and putting more value into press jockey. That's being said. There are times when we will break something and so that's why we've discounted the price by 50% for early adopters. You come in, we thank you, we're going to give you 50% discount, but understand that we're constantly making upgrades and this is not a mature product yet. It is something that is getting there and we're rapidly advancing. But, you know, there may be a time when a link is broken and, you know, you got to figure that out.

It's okay. Thanks for explaining. And you're plainly considering this extremely carefully, which comes across. Now, as you know, I always ask my guests if there's one piece of advice for me and my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs that you'd give on getting noticed. You've been a fractional cmo, you've helped companies get sold. You're building out your own product, which no doubt one day will get acquired with the success you're already having. What would be the one piece of advice you'd give the fellow unnoticed entrepreneur?

Oh, there's a couple I can think of. I think one of the most important things is to get started. Like, get started, get out there. And so I have a saying that all of my clients are very familiar with. I say start small and scale up from there. And I also say, let's just get version 1.0 out and then we'll get version 2 and version 3 and we'll start to get better as we go along. But if you don't get started, then there's no way for you to know if your story is going to resonate with your customers. There's no way for you to know if you're even targeting the right customers. There's no way to know if the media wants to hear what you have to say. There's just no way to know. You will likely not be very good in the beginning. You're likely going to mess up. But if you take that feedback and you start to adjust, then once you get to version seven or eight, in six months, you're going to have a polished story, you're going to get a lot of media attention. People are going to say, wow, you're such a fantastic speaker. Your story's so interesting. How did you get here? And it was because you got started. And so that's what I'd say. Let's get started.

Cahill Camden, joining me from Toronto. And you've got started and you finished and shared a great deal of value. Thank you so much for joining me and my fellow Unnoticed entrepreneurs today.

Yeah, I appreciate it, Jim. Thanks for having me on.

You've been listening to Cahill Camden over there in Toronto and of course I'll put his details in the show notes and press. Jockey.com is the website and I hope that you've enjoyed this as much as I have. And if you have, please do share it with a fellow entrepreneur. And if you've got time, leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It really, really helps. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating. The Unnoticed Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by a company called Prowly. Prowly is an all in one software for leveraging your public relations activities. You can boost the media relations game for your business, find media contacts, send out press releases and get more coverage while saving time and money on everyday tasks. Check it out. Prowley.com.