Media Master Class Part 1: How To Skyrocket Your Media Attention, Viewership and Audience with Paula Rizzo and Joe Polish - Genius Network Episode #126

Producers. I mean, we all talk to each other. So if I have a really great expert and somebody will say in the newsroom, oh do you have somebody who can talk about financial this or this or that? Oh yeah, I have somebody. So having that network of people to be able to say that you're a great expert is really helpful.

Paula Rizzo is a bestselling author and Emmy Award winning producer. For nearly 20 years Paula has produced health, wellness and lifestyle segments with a range of top experts including jj, Virgin, Jillian Michaels and Deepak Chopra. She's even served as a senior Health Producer for Fox News in New York City for more than a decade. Paula is the founder of the productivity website List Producer and also is a co curator of Lights Camera Expert, an online course geared towards helping entrepreneurs, authors and experts get media attention. She's been featured on many media outlets including Fox News, Fox Business, Prevention, Business Insider, Entrepreneur Brides, and has made it onto Oprah's.com list of self help books that really help. In this episode, Paula shares exactly what makes a successful pitch, what common mistakes to avoid, and how to get booked consistently. She'll also have some pointers for best list making practices so you can do more and make more without overwhelm. Go to geniusnetwork.com 126 to access the show notes for this episode along with an exercise to help you take action on what Paula teaches. Make sure to tune back for part two with Paula and Joe on Genius Network episode 127.

Paula is a best selling author and Emmy award winning television producer. For nearly 20 years, Paula Rizzo has produced health, wellness and lifestyle segments with a range of top experts including JJ Virgin, Jillian Michaels and Deepak Chopra. Most recently she served as the Senior Health Producer for Fox News Channel in New York City for more than a decade. Paul is also the co creator of Lights Camera Expert, an online course geared towards helping entrepreneurs, authors and experts get media attention. Paul is the founder of the productivity site listproducer.com and bestselling author of Listful Thinking Using Lists to Be More Productive, Highly Successful and Less Stressful which has been translated into 12 languages and has been featured on many media outlets including Fox News, Fox Business, Prevention, Business Insider, Entrepreneur Brides, and made it onto Oprah.com's list of self help books that actually help. So give it up for Paula Rizzo.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

So what didn't I say about you that people should know?

Well, I'm a master list maker as you mentioned and I'm Just, I'm excited to be here. Yeah, I'm so glad to help because what I've been doing for so long is helping experts get the word out about what they do.

Yeah.

But I've been doing it for one outlet for over 10 years.

Yeah.

Which has been awesome. But now I'm excited to do it for more outlets to get people out there in a bigger way.

Well, there's a couple people here that I think shouldn't get any media attention, but for the most part, there's several that should. Okay, so how do you describe what you do? Like, actually, what is the. What is the process?

Okay, so I help experts get their message out there through traditional media and also non traditional media. So part of that is through media training. Right. So what you say and how you say it, can you do it in a more succinct way? So then in TV, when you get 15, 20 seconds, can you get your idea in there in that short amount of time? I work with a lot of speakers who are used to having 30 minutes or an hour to get their message across. The other way is through crafting pitches, coming up with pitch ideas that the media actually cares about. Because I have a pitch folder. You should see it. It's all bad pitches. Over the years, I've been pitched so many bad things.

I'm almost looking over there from Kevin Harrington, you know, having been on Shark.

Tank, bad pitches, totally. It's so funny. And actually I was just telling Kevin before I left Fox News about four months ago, but people still keep pitching me and I was pitched Kevin, like two weeks ago, and I was like, I'm not at Fox anymore, which is really funny. But coming up with great pitch ideas to pitch to the media, and then those pitch ideas can be used for any kind of content. So non traditional media people want to produce their own videos or produce their own podcasts. I help them to figure out, what would you say, how would you say it? And succinctly do it within two minutes or in a podcast interview. So really help them to produce their own content.

Because I have a tendency, as everyone here knows, where I can ramble. And I can just. Because coming from the world of direct response, writing long form sales letters and going into it, what are some rules of thumb of how to be succinct, how to actually think about it? Because it's very difficult for me at times. And definitely I know for a lot of people to just, how do you shorten something? How do you speak in sound bites?

So I always teach People to do what I call the accordion method. So if you could say whatever it is that you want to say in one sentence, and I could take something away. If you got cut off right after that, then you've done your job. And then the accordion, we open it up a little bit. Okay. Then you can expand a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. But in that first sentence, I should be able to totally understand what you just said, and I got value from it. So maybe it's something like you asked me, what are the best ways to market something? Let's say. And you could say the three best ways are xyz, and then you go into each one of them. So give me sort of a headline first and then take me through if there's more time, what I'm going to do.

I'm going to ask Paula some questions, and then I want to give everyone an opportunity. If you have a question that comes up, just jot it down. And when you're done hearing me ask questions, we'll take some Q and A from the audience. So what are some of the most useful lessons that you've learned as a TV producer that can help mostly entrepreneurs?

The worst thing in TV is dead air, having nothing to say. And for entrepreneurs, sometimes we get caught because we think, oh, it needs to be perfect. I need to get it just so before I put it out there. And so in tv, you don't have that luxury of time. You just have to do it, you have to deliver. It always has to be on time. And so for me, as an entrepreneur, I've really been able to take on that mindset of done is better than perfect. And so just get it out there, get it out there, get it out there. Deadlines. Being able to give yourself some deadlines, like in tv, I mean, it's going to come up. Your show is going to happen with or without you. So you need to really get on it and get on out. And then the other part is knowing your audience. So in tv, it's all about. All we do is care about what that audience cares about. Now, the audience, my demographic might not be me. And for a very long time it wasn't. So I was looking through the lens of my audience. Would they like this story? Is this interesting to them? Same thing for an entrepreneur. When you're thinking about your clients, is this helpful to them? Right. Not is this something I really like? But will this help them?

Let me ask you about that, because when I was learning marketing early on, I Think one of the most important distinctions and awarenesses in applications was realizing that you are not your own customer. And what I respond to has no bearing on what other people would respond to. Like coupons, as an example, I don't ever use coupons, but there's a lot of people that use coupons. And I'm saying this before the Internet existed. So when I was selling carpet cleaning services, when I was. There's a lot of people that would use coupons, and I never would. But I taught people how to make millions of dollars by framing offers inside coupons. Most of them weren't even discounts and more like free offers. But that's not me. But what I realized is I'm not my own customer. So whatever you respond to is what you respond to. But you have to, you know, only the hungriest fish will bite at the crappiest bait is something that Gary Halbert would say. And so how do you remove yourself from your own marriage of your own product, your services, your expertise, your content, your movement, so that you can actually be relatable and persuasive to a particular audience? I mean, how do you get into that? Like, how do you frame something for an audience that you may have zero interest in, what they're interested in?

Well, I always look at it as public service. So for so long in television, anything that I would do, I would always think, this is public service. This is to get this message out there so that people can change their lives. So I would look at it through the lens of our audience. So you have to put yourself in that position, right? And I would only think, hey, for the longest time, it was male audience, Fox News Channel, male audience, older, affluent. That's the lens that I look through, everything. Would they care about this? Do they care? And so it's the same thing here with marketing of any kind of product. Do they care? This is about them. It's not about me. So how can I really frame it? Any story that I would look at, any idea that I would have, I would put it up against the test of, okay, well, I care. I think it's good. But would they care? So really, having that idea, that person that I'm serving, that's a public service, this is for them. This is not for me. Having that mindset. I mean, it helps you to produce great tv, but it also helps you to market your stuff.

I mean, what you're saying applies not just to media. It's anywhere it reminds me, because I always think in quotes. But there's the if you want to sell what John Smith buys, you got to see through John Smith's eyes. And the other. The Robert Collier quote is you want to enter a conversation that's already existing in the prospect's mind. Not what's existing in your mind, but in the other person's mind. So what steps should entrepreneurs take to get attention, viewers and audiences from media? How do we actually use this?

Well, the biggest part is it sounds so obvious, but watch the outlet or read the magazine or read whatever that you want to be in, and it sounds super obvious. And I'm telling you, people do not do it.

They don't do it.

I can't tell you the amount of pitches that I got that were so off base, that had nothing to do with anything that we would ever cover. It's like, have you ever watched our show? No. They took their pitch and they pitched it to everyone, and it just went to every single person. It was not tailored in any way for my audience, for what I needed. So, number one is to really identify where you want to be and why you want to be there and watch. Get to know the anchors. Maybe there's something interesting about the anchors that they mention. They. That has something to do with what you sell or what you do that you can use that in your pitch. There was a woman I knew who her thing was relish. And so she was watching the Today show and noticed that one of the anchors said something about loving relish. So, of course, she freaked out, and she said, I have to send my relish. So she sent this whole gift bag of relish, and they used it in their fourth of July special, and they mentioned it and they saw it. If she were to just send that cold to some producer who didn't care about relish, she might not have got booked, might not have gotten featured. But just being able to really target and say, oh, I'm gonna give them exactly what they need. She loves relish. I'm gonna send her relish. So it's really knowing that and understanding the audience, again, that's like the biggest piece.

I'm just fixated on relish right now.

I know.

It's so delicious, all of the applications of relish. Yeah. No, but you're absolutely right. And I'll tell you, a lot of great marketers, copywriters, people that know how to effectively sell. They're researchers. I mean, they pay attention to what people are saying and what they're doing and what they're interested in. And there's clues all over the place. And all you need to do is just engage with that.

Exactly, yeah. And being able to connect with a producer or an editor or a reporter as a person. Because I have to tell you, we're not treated like people. We're really not. We're treated like, oh, you're the door to what I want. I just want to be on tv. And people don't even treat you, they don't treat you very nice. The ones who get booked again and again are the ones who are really nice to you and treat you like a person and making those connections with the person and not necessarily with the outlet that wins every single time.

Yeah. I've often thought, and I look at a lot of people that want to be a bestseller or they want to, you know, they want to be on stages. And as much as the ego denies it, a lot of people would rather be well known than well paid. And you take a guy like Kevin Harrington here, who's done a lot of tv, but he does TV not just to be on tv, he does TV because it's a mechanism to generate sales. Right. And so what I think is great about marketers is they have an outcome which is we're actually trying to get something in the hands of people. And I've talked to so many modern day people that they will go on podcasts now and they will get far more engagement, far more conversion, far more leads, far more sales than being on any national television program with the right people, right?

Absolutely.

But there's still a lot of people that will just jump on an opportunity to be on TV thinking just because they're going to be on tv. But I'll tell you, it's a huge motivator though for a lot of people, because I know a lot of famous people that are broke. They're famous, but they don't know how to actually turn that into money. I'm one of the highest paid speakers in the world and most people don't know who the hell I am outside of the marketing world and that sort of thing. So what is the motivation of most of the people that are pitching you? I mean, what do they really want?

Well, it is interesting, right? It's people who either want to be super famous, just get their name out there, or who are entrepreneurs who are looking to get clients. Right. And it's hard because traditional media television, you know, we don't want to give away your free ebook, we don't care about your this or your that. It's not the same game. Whereas on a podcast, everybody Wants a free something. So if you want to sell a book, you go on a podcast, you'll sell tons of books on podcasts, but you might be on the Today show and maybe you won't sell so many books. It's just the way it is. But it's about the credibility that that will give you and then the opportunities that that will open. You can take that media hit that you've done and go to all other places and say, hey, look what I've. And then you're credible, your visibility goes through the roof. And then for clients, they come to your website and they see that you have all of these media outlets calling you as a go to expert. That looks really great, which is a.

Huge benefit of media. I mean, it certainly is a credibility.

Absolutely. If you have two experts, two people you're looking to hire, and one has done tons of media, and the other one, not so much. It looks way better if you've done some media because you have that stamp of approval like, oh, they really are an expert. We're talking about thought leadership before, right? Oh, they are a thought leader because the media says so. Right.

So what are some of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make?

Well, they make their pitches all about themselves, all about their business, all about their book. The media doesn't care about your book. They don't care about your business. They care about what this can do for their audience, what information you have that my audience can take home and change their life tomorrow. What is that piece? So if you come at it from a place of public service, Michael had said, even being here, we all think of this as giving, a giving space, right? Same thing for media. You should be in that mindset of giving. What can you give? What can you give to that audience? And the answer should never be my book, and it should never be my online program or my business, or I can teach them this and do that and all this. No, no, no. What can you give them for free? Just give it all away. And a lot of people don't do that. It's a commercial. I got tons of pitches that are just commercials, and that's it. And it's like, we don't want to promote your stuff. We have advertisers for that. You know, they pay a lot of money to do that. The other issue for a lot of entrepreneurs or anybody who pitches is that they try to be everything. They say, hey, I can talk about whatever you need me to talk about when it comes to marketing or cardiology or whatever their specialty is, right? And then I don't know what to do with you as a producer, I'm not really sure.

Should you provide the person with questions, with everything done for them, or to.

What degree do you do the work for them? I always say, be your own producer. You know, it'll make it so much easier for the producer to see, oh, this is the direction that we could take.

Describe what a producer is. What does that even mean? I'm a producer. What does that mean?

So there's different kinds of producers, but for me, when I worked in local news, I was a line producer. And so local news, I was a live line producer. So when the show was on the air, I was the one who picked all of the stories. And I was in the control room during the live show. It's crazy town. Then when I was at Fox News Channel, I was a senior health producer, so I was working for Dot com. And there everything that I did was for our website. And then we would give that to the channel, to the Fox News Channel. And I would come up with the story ideas. I would do pre interviews with all of the experts that we booked, make sure that they could speak on camera and not freeze up, which happened to me very early in my career, and I never let it happen again. I had someone who I thought was so great, and then he got on camera and froze. And I remember being in the control room, and I was like, why? Why is this happening to me? Thankfully, it wasn't live, but afterwards, my anchor was like, what happened with that guy? I was like, I know, I know. I'll never let it happen again.

How do you keep it from not happening? What sort of drugs do you give these people?

Well, I do. And most producers do extensive pre interviews. So once you pitch me, then after that, I'm gonna get on the phone with you, I'm gonna talk to you and ask you questions that might not be the questions you were prepared to answer. Because I as a producer would come up with the questions, write the script, give it to my anchor. My anchor could feel like not asking one of those questions that day, asking whatever it is that he feels like asking. And I need to make sure that that expert will roll with it and still get some content that I was interested in for the segment across. And they're not like a deer in headlights. So I really would do media training. I would really make sure that they could answer those questions before they came in. I basically knew with the segment how it was going to go before they showed up.

So, for instance, there's quite a few people here that are in financial services, things related to money. There's a lot of people here that have things related to health. I mean, do you know, off the top of your head? Maybe it's not a fair question, like, what are the subject matters of the topics that you see always rise to the top.

Depends on the outlet, Right? But, you know, for health and wellness, it was a lot of weight loss. That was always a really, you know, really big thing. I loved doing alternative medicine. I loved it. People wouldn't have thought of Fox News as doing that kind of thing, but they allowed me to do it. So you should never go into anything thinking, oh, they'll never do that kind of segment. Maybe you find a producer who would be interested in that and. And then fight the fight to get that segment on the air. It does depend. But anything that's topical, right? It's about what's going on in the world today. How could you take what you know and make it relevant for something that's in the news or something that's happening right now?

So you take, say, trending articles on Facebook or on, like, the iPhone app or the news app, you know, and you see all these trending things. Almost everyone here could look in what's trending, find a correlation of something related to the president or something related to some law or something that ties into what it is they do. How do you take that and do something with it?

So it's to use your pitch, right? So this is how I would frame your pitch. There's three segments to a pitch. For me, it's the hook. The why now? So what is the news story? What's going on in the world? Or is it, you know, near the holidays or something like that? That's the hook. Then there's the twist. How is what you're gonna tell me different than everything else that I'm hearing about this, especially if it's saturated in the market? I've heard everything about it, right. If this is a big news story, how are you gonna tell me that? Oh, you know what? Actually, bacon is really great for you. Or what is it that you're gonna twist? So I wouldn't have heard that. Oh, stress is excellent for you, actually. Be more stressed out.

Yeah.

And then the takeaway. What is the part that for my audience that they'll be able to take away and they'll do tomorrow that will change their life? Maybe it's that they're gonna put kale in their smoothie tomorrow or do this or do that. So those are the three elements that I always tell people. That's what a producer is looking for. That makes a good segment.

Gotcha. Okay. Your book, Listful Thinking. Your book is about being more productive, less stressed, and more successful. And I tend to think of list as using it as making an offer. So how do you use list to.

Be more to do?

List to be more productive?

Yes. Yeah. So being in tv, I had so many deadlines, so many things going on, I couldn't keep track of it all. And so I was really big into list making at work, and then I wasn't making lists at home, and I was realizing that I was forgetting things. I wasn't on my game. I wasn't exactly the studious person that I was at work. Because you feel like, oh, I don't want to do the same thing that I do at home that I do at work, because that's not fun. But it also, it really helps. So for entrepreneurship, being able to keep track of everything that you're working on or the ideas that you have and capturing them in a place that then you can go back to. Oh, my gosh. It just, like, is a game changer for so many people, myself included.

So what would be some, like, the very best advice you can give of people here that would just instantly make them more productive as it relates to lists? Like, what's the very best stuff for them?

So I always make a list right at the end of the day. It's the very last thing that I do for the next day. So that when the next day comes and I run through everything that I need to do that I have the time and I have the energy to do the next day so that I know I can actually do this. You don't put things on that list that you won't get to, so you have to edit it as you go and know, hey, I can do this or I can outsource this or whatever it is, but do it at the end of the day. And then in the morning, when you get into your office or whatever it is that you're doing, you have a roadmap for what you should be doing for the day. Doesn't mean that necessarily you're gonna be doing that, but when you get sidetracked, you can look and say, oh, what was I supposed to do today? What was the intention? So I'm really big on intention and setting that intention beforehand.

Okay, well, let's talk about that for a minute. Because, like, for instance, you got everyone here who's paid money and time, and they got energy devoted to being here.

Right.

And so if someone is sitting in this room and they're thinking, here's all these things I could do versus here's an outcome that I want to get, or outcomes that I want in my business or my life, the people that are focused on the outcomes are going to get a hell of a lot more out of this meeting than someone that's just going to capture every idea and write it down. Right. So when you're saying intention, how do you get your. Because if you just simply are talking about lists, how many people have more things on their list than they physically have the bandwidth to do by a factor of 10 times? Right. Okay. It's. Most people in the room totally knows if someone's raising their hand. So the fact that they even participated like that shows that this is a pain.

Yes.

Because I could ask another question. No one will raise their hand even if you know. So the whole focus on outcomes has changed my life as it relates to making lists. And right when I start. Because if you're going to go into a meeting, what's the outcome? If you're going to go to an event, what's the outcome? If I'm reading this book, what's the outcome? Mike Aguilera, who's a genius network member, I was interviewing him on a podcast, and we were talking about, what do you do if you've got so many seminars, so many books to read, so much stuff to do, how do you decide what gets your attention? And he said this great line, which has been such a game changer. He says, when it comes to reading books, read something related to what needs to be solved. Ask yourself the question, what needs solved in your life? You don't need to read a book on how to catch catfish if that is not going to solve something. So I ask myself a lot, what needs solved? And to me, that's another way of outcome. What's the outcome that I actually want? How do you take an overwhelming amount? Like, if you're a tennis player and you're a really pro tennis player, and there's a lot of, metaphorically speaking, there's pros that are in this room, they're really good. And I know. I know nothing about tennis, but I'm just. And you have one of those tennis ball machines, and it's firing tennis balls at you at every. Like, what's a normal speed that you would set at every three seconds? You get maybe 45, 50, 45, 50. You're a really great returner in your 90. In what length of time?

Miles per hour.

Okay, okay, okay. So a normal would be what, for like a Pro Pro? 90 to 100. 90 to 100. Say you set it for 120. Doesn't matter how good that person is, they're hammered. So there's a lot of people in this room that are just. They're pros, but they're hammered. And of course I'm disguising this, that would include me. So not that anyone can pick up on that. Right. How do you deal with it? How do you take the whole list making thing and how do you simplify your life so that you're more productive? Because the title is more productive, less stressed and more successful. What do you do?

It is about setting the intention. So like here we're in this meeting for two days. So before I came, I thought, what are the things I'm hoping, the outcomes that I'm hoping to get out of this? And as we're here in the meeting and I do this for every conference I ever go to, I open the first page of that notebook or whatever it is that you have, and I have a follow up list and I capture and I filter as I go. Who are the people I want to follow up with? What are some ideas? You said something, I thought it was a good pitch. I wrote that down. All of these things that I want to follow up on when I get home so that I have a capture place. And then it's not only good enough to just write it down, you have to set some time to actually look at it. So I always try to set myself a little bit of extra time within that week of returning from whatever it is that I'm at to go over that list and to either make those connections or write that thing or whatever it is that I had so that I actually do the things that I wanted to do. So you implement some of those things. But having that list, it's great because then you can go back to it and you have it right there. And it's not like, oh yeah, I was supposed to do a million things and then life happens and you do none of it.

So you also have another program called Light Camera Expert. What does it teach in terms of getting booked on tv, radio, podcasts, magazines, et cetera, and becoming a well known expert, which is the whole goal of it.

Yes. Well, because so many people through the years have asked me, how do I get on tv? How do I get on tv? I teamed up with a woman who I Had actually booked years ago. She worked for Martha Stewart Radio and also for her magazine. She was an editor and I booked her as a guest. And so she knows the magazine world and I know the TV and radio world. And so we came together, we put this course together to really help experts understand what is the media looking for. How do you pitch them something that they really want? And then how do you get asked back again and again? Because a lot of people have the issue of, oh, I was picked once, I got asked once. So someone found me or they found my book, and then they asked me some questions. I was on local TV and I never got asked back. And I'm like, you know why you never got asked back? Because you never communicated with that person again. You never pitched, oh, well, I wouldn't know what to pitch. So those are the types of things that I teach to be able to show. How do you consistently get media and what will you do with it when you get it?

You know, I don't know. On all the different media channels, you would know. Maybe Kevin would know. And this sounds crazy. I taught thousands of service businesses how to use marketing and I would have press releases where they would like, send press releases on things that we. That I created for them.

Sure.

You know, for carpet cleaning, no one cares about how to hire a carpet cleaner. What they care about is the carpet cleaner who's going to come into the home and use bait and switch advertising is going to take advantage of your whole family and is going to kill it.

Right.

And so. And how to beware of these unscrupulous business owners. But I would use that as a hook to get the media to do a story and then teach them how to actually hire a professional cleaner. Right. Because they want the scandalous sort of story. And so people, a lot of my clients, they would get featured in like the newspaper or they would get a little blurb on a radio thing and then it would generate business for them. Sure. And they're like, how do I do it again? And I'm like, why don't you call the local paper and see if you can run the article as an ad? And they would run the same story as an ad and it would then continue to work for them. And so I think a lot of the value of media is not once you get it, it's what you do with it after you've gotten it. Just like when you said, if you look at a person who's gotten no media and someone who has, the person who has gotten a lot looks More credible, more of an expert. So where's the real value in going on tv?

Yeah, it is visibility, right? I mean that's part of it. But then it's also offering information being that go to source and media begets more media. So the second you're on one media outlet, then other people find you. You don't know how it's going to get picked up. I had a client that I was working with who could care less about doing media, doing tv. He only wanted to be in some blogs and some trade publications. And so he was interviewed for this blog about being a small business owner and something about insurance or something. Insurance for your employees. And so he gave a quote or whatever. Well, CNBC picked it up for their website from that small blog. CNN saw it, called him and said, hey, could you come on? We're doing a piece on small businesses and we really liked what you said. Would you come on? He said, sure. And so it's like this guy who could care less about being on TV got this media spot that was, I mean, unbelievable. That's how it happens. It goes from place to place to place.

I got a great example too, because you're so right. So back in 1999, Internet's relatively new. Google didn't exist. I had been getting these bait and switch stories on teaching people how to avoid getting ripped off by bait and switch carpet cleaners because I became the most well known person in the world in the carpet and upholstery cleaning industry specific.

That's perfect. I would know what to do with you.

Yeah, right now. It never got me dates or anything, but it was like. But it was really great for selling marketing. So I kept hitting up like media. We first do a filming for ABC's 2020 and we don't get the footage we want. We can't capture it in the right way. But I stay in touch with them and I get them to reshoot it. They only had a certain budget to do this, but I got them to agree. So we went to St. Louis for take number two. I mean I'm like all day I'm dressed up. You can watch this on YouTube, by the way. It was like in 1999. I'm on ABC's 2020 with Barbara Walters and at the time, the investigative reporter Arnold Diaz. And I'm dressed up like an old man. The guy that did my makeup did the makeup for the movie Boogie Nights. Remember that movie with About Marco? It's a crazy movie. And so I had a ponytail which we had to Hide inside of a hat. And the only hat that we could buy at 7am in the morning was at Kmart, which was open. So it said, pope John Paul ii comes to St. Louis. And I'm wearing this hat with my ponytail, makeup. And then, like, they didn't have technology like iPhones back then. So we're having a camera that's running through these glasses with a camera in the middle of it. So I'm trying to act like this old man with a flannel shirt and everything. We end up getting this story. It's viewed by over 20 million people. They get over 200,000 hits to the ABC 2020 website. So what happens is the IICRC, which is this organization called the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration certification, they had $175,000 a year PR budget that they had spent for 10 years. So if you do the math, they spent $1,750,000. That one segment that I did got them more phone calls than they had gotten in the entire decade of their $1,750,000 budget. And as soon as I do that, who wants to do a story then? Dateline, because they compete with them, and then it does that. So the thing is, if you watch these trends that are going on and you see someone get a story and you go to their competitor and say, this story was just done over here. I can do a better one. And all of a sudden you now have them pitting against each other.

It's great. Yes, it works. But when you do pitch it to another outlet, it's great to say, hey, look, CNN did it, or ABC or whatever. But the new outlet that you're pitching is gonna say, I don't wanna do the same story as them. They just did it. Why would I wanna do that? So you have to be ready with some sort of pitch to say, hey, we could do this. This would be really great if we could do this other thing. Or here's something else that would be really interesting. But media begets more media, so. Perfect.

Cool. So if an entrepreneur wants to become a high performer, what are the essential habits?

Well, list making, of course. As you know, God knows, you would.

Be a loser without.

I mean, you can't even. Right. I don't know how you would get through your day. But also I would say connection. Obviously, you guys are all here in a room of wonderful people who all have goals and supporting each other. But it's the same thing for getting media attention. Just having a group of people or anybody who knows how to do this, who has done it? Because a lot of times producers, I mean, we all talk to each other. So if I have a really great expert and somebody will say in a newsroom, oh, do you have somebody who can talk about financial this or this or that? Oh, yeah, I have somebody. So having that network of people to be able to say that you're a great expert is really helpful.

I think of as a marketer, as a business owner, you have to manufacture credibility, especially if someone doesn't know who you are. One of the reasons to go out and pursue media is just to establish expertise.

Absolutely.

And so once you've created some believability, people may take this out of context, but believability is more important than credibility because there's some very non credible people that make a lot of money and some very credible people that are broke. So part of it is not only having credibility, but being able to use it in a way that makes you money and that builds and grows your business. And the thing with creating credibility is it's one thing to have people say great things about you, but when you can get great people to say great things about you, it just elevates you to a whole other level.

Absolutely.

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