Story Precision: The New PR Advantage | 695 | KJ Blattenbauer

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is JJ— KJ— I screwed up the easy part— KJ Blindenbauer. And I want to give you a little bit about her because I'm really excited about today's piece. She specializes in turning founders, creatives, and experts into recognized authorities by building thought leadership that's rooted in story precision and media strategy, not fluff. After nearly 30 years shaping narratives for brands and leaders, she's developed a clear framework for how modern authority is really built, and she's helped generate 50+ speaking invitations for herself. So you're sort of crossing over to the dark side of not just being the behind-the-scenes person, but being front of stage as well, right?

I am, you know, one of my chal— one of my clients challenged me earlier this year that if I was gonna make her go be in front of the camera and a podcast and all the things, she's like, well, why don't you do it? And I said, I'm busy behind the scenes. I'm making you the star. I'm making you shine. And she said, yeah, but I see all this bad PR advice out there. If you were doing it, then we know what the right advice was. And it really kind of hit me like, oh, well, she's right. If I'm gonna make them do it, I should go through the things. And so I've just applied the same principles I use for clients on myself, and it's been It's been a success.

Yeah. So walk me through, I wanna understand, 'cause you and I work with similar folks, right? So this, let, let's start with the models and the framework because I think that in my experience, a lot of PR is, is sort of magic in a bottle mystery. Don't look behind the curtain, you know, all this fluffery. And, and I think what happens is you have intelligent yet uneducated clients, meaning uneducated relative to They haven't bought PR services before, and then you talk to them on the other end of it and they're frustrated, disappointed, et cetera. But tell me about the, the models and the methods and the framework, 'cause I'm a, I'm kind of a model junkie.

Well, you know, I think the, I think the models and the methods and the framework of PR have not changed in however long PR has been since Barnum and Bailey decided they were gonna lead the circus outta town. Right? I think it's been the same. All PR does is help shine the spotlight on the story behind the business or brand or person that's expertise. I am basically an expert at looking at your business, figuring out what is interesting to people, why it's interesting now, how you make it happen, and then packaging that in a way that people's short attention spans wanna pay attention to. It is rocket—

stay there for a minute though, because I think that today more so than ever, it's probably always been true, but today more so than ever, we're all being commoditized, right? No matter what you do or who you are or where you are, there's somebody that does it probably just as good for a similar price. And I'm not talking about PR, but just the clients, right? So how do you help them find that story? If I'm in professional services or technology or things that, you know, we, we've seen a million times before, how do you, how do you pull that out of them?

Well, I think it's, look, if I have to have brain surgery tomorrow, am I going to the cheapest brain surgeon? No, I'm going to the brain surgeon that knows what he's talking about, right?

Right.

So I think it, I think that applies across the gamut. Yes, you're always going to have bargain shoppers when it comes to certain things. However, if you know your stuff, if you let people know that you know your stuff, and then you have the extra benefit of someone like me helping amplify that, so you're on every single channel and they can't get away from you, people are going to go your route. Whether you're the most expensive person on the block or the least expensive person on the block, it doesn't really matter. People want to trust experts, especially now in the time of AI, and the— your work can no longer speak for itself. Do good work, but you need to amplify that work, and that PR helps push that message out there.

And a lot, you know, and I love that because I hear that often of, well, my work, you know, especially from the more analytical or the more academically inclined, well, my work speaks for itself. And it's like, no, it doesn't, right? Like, your job is to shepherd your work. Your job is to amplify your work. Your job is to make sure that to get it to speak for itself, you actually have to get in front of the right eyeballs at the right moment. And I think it's a very, very different skillset for thought leaders, right? So thought leaders are really good at creating the ideas, writing, speaking, et cetera. Many of them, not all, but, but in general, many of them feel uncomfortable promoting what they have because it's an extension of promoting themselves, which feels for some sort of the anti-P.T. Barnum, if you will.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the hardest thing to do is promote yourself, which is why public relations exist, right? Because if everyone could promote themselves and we were all out there boasting and bragging about what we're good at, you wouldn't need to hire someone to do it. But I think it's kind of like if you're inside the bottle and you're trying to read the label on the outside, you're so close to your own business. You're so close to your own brand, your products and services. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. And I think that's why it's good to hire someone else to hone in on what makes you special to see what's great. I talk to so many business owners every single day and they're like, there's nothing special about my business. I do the same thing as the guy next to me. But what's special about every single business and brand is the reason why you started the business, the reason why you started the brand, the reason why you show up every single day. Like, there are a million podcasts out there. Your podcast focuses on very specific things and people tune into your podcast for those very specific things. No one else can replicate that.

Right. No, I, I, I love that. So give me a, a, maybe an example or a composite of who comes to you and what working with you looks like and what sort of success might look like. 'Cause I think defining success from a PR standpoint is also a weird thing. Is it one placement in one notable brand? Mm, I don't think so.

Yeah, I don't think so either. The glory of PR, which is also the curse of PR, is that it's an art, not a science. So like you could go on social media and post and immediately see your stats, right? We can, we can immediately see how many people have downloaded your podcast episodes. And while we know if you're in Forbes, how many people technically read Forbes, we don't know how many specific eyeballs have seen your article. But I have authors, artists, interior designers, I have coaches I have podcast hosts, I have celebrity athletes, Fortune 50 companies, and sometimes just executives in Fortune 50 companies that want to separate their brand from the company all come to me for either one-on-one intensives, messaging help, or ongoing public relations where I just promote them constantly and get them media placements. Or if they have, heaven forbid, a crisis situation, I help on that side too. Come to me because they want more attention, more visibility. They want to stand out and become the known person in whatever their industry or their niche is, and you know, there's sometimes you can measure that. I have a beauty brand. We just got them in a huge beauty publication. It was an immediate 200 to 400 sales the second that article went live and it started to get shared. Like sometimes you can see that. I know if my client is going to be in Forbes tomorrow, it's going to be at least a 34% increase in traffic for them, just straight from that article, just from being in Forbes. But what the key to public relations is, it's like going to the gym. I don't go to the gym one time to look like Elle Macpherson. I have to go a couple times, you know, maybe two, maybe three, and then I look like Elle Macpherson. But it's repetition. Public relation is you go on one podcast, it leads to a guest spot on another podcast, it leads to a guest spot on another podcast. That starts to snowball. You're building the recognition, you're leveling up your visibility, people are starting to see your name everywhere, and it's helping accomplish the marketing touchpoints where people need to see or hear you multiple times.

That's a little bit of a step backwards because I think there's two levels that PR plays for a lot of organizations. There's the branding level, which to me is, is sort of lazy man or woman's PR. Like, oh, it's good exposure, it's branding. And, you know, like if you can't measure anything, then you say it's branding and, you know, whatever. And it's not a bad thing. And, you know, just the question is Is it a good thing? And I think it depends by what standard, what's the ROI, what's the impact, whatever. The case you gave before of, you know, led to 400 sales. I think what happens is you have to have the tracking mechanisms in place, right? So you could do 30 podcasts in a year, right? And then you say, you know what, at the end of that year, 6, 8 months, I got nothing, right? I didn't get any new business. But then a year and a half later, 'cause podcasts, you know, they live forever unlike other media. You know, people don't realize that it's like, yeah, the release date and all this and that. But like people get into a podcast and then they go backwards to the back stuff and all that. But you have to have the tracking mechanisms in place to be able to ask people, where did you hear about me? Now, sometimes it's, it's not a fair question because people just don't remember. They've heard about you in 4 or 5 places, but they can say, you know, there was this interview you did with so-and-so and you're like, geez, that was 4 years ago.

Right?

Those are, I think you have, you have an obligation as a business owner, you know, to be tracking those sort of things? Or how do you encourage your clients to do that?

Well, the first thing that all of my clients do is they go through an audit, right? Like you have to have the systems in place. You can't be an Oprah's Favorite Things tomorrow and not have your website set up correctly, your links set up correctly. Like everything's, if you don't have enough product, like you're not going in there. So, but you also have to have the same messaging across the board, like what you would have on your website. You have to have on your social media bios, LinkedIn has to match, everything has to be working, but you also have to have the tracking mechanisms, right? So for most of my clients, if they're going to appear somewhere, I bet people won't remember where they've seen them before, but they're going to click the link. And we go for specific links. Like if, if you're going to be, if I'm going to be on this podcast, I'm going to use a specific link to direct the people so I know when they're clicking that link exactly what podcast it came from.

Right.

Because I want to, I want to track those mechanisms. But you, it, it's just uniformity. PR is telling people what you do in the way you want them to say it back to you so many times that they are talking about you exactly how you want in rooms you're not even in.

And I think there's a, a, um, call it flooding phenomena, but maybe there's a better term where sometimes if PR is doing their job well, that target market that's very well defined, cuz that's, that's critical, right? It's not.

Yeah.

Every woman over 40 with a college degree, like it, it's really, really defined. Those people should feel like everywhere they go, they hear you and see you, their trade association, their conference, like in their microcosm of a world where they're getting their information from and in the format they're getting it from, they should feel like I've heard that voice before. How do you deal with clients that are reluctant to try new mediums? So like I have a client, a lot of clients, and you do as well. That are authors. Guess what? Authors like to write. Guess what? Authors might not be comfortable on video, but if you're an author trying to reach the TikTok crowd, the Insta crowd, whatever, you can't just make— you could, but it's not wise to make the decision, well, I'm just not going to do that because it's, it's not my thing, right? So how do you push them to get out of their comfort zone a little?

I think it's— I don't always push them to get out of their comfort zone. There's certain things I won't ever make people do. I'm never going to make a client dance on TikTok. I might not even make a client join TikTok. It's identifying exactly where their true audience is and then honing in on that. And there's a million ways, I think, to position that, push things out that won't make— like, you're gonna have to do video. That's just the way it is. Yep. You have to, you know, podcasts have video, but we're gonna work around the ways that Shelter do things. I have a lot of introvert clients, and so I schedule their media pushes and then I schedule them a couple days off so they can retreat to their holes.

Like, oh, so stay there a minute though, because it's almost by definition, PR is an extroverted activity. You're getting on a thing to talk about you or the work that you do.

Yeah.

That's hell for an introvert. Like you tell them like what's gonna cause them to break out in hives. But many authors, many thought leaders, even, you know, I've got a ton of clients that are keynoters and people think, well, they make their living getting in front of 1,000 people. And I'm like, yes they do. But take them off stage and put them in a cocktail party or social environment. They're literally physically exhausted and need to go and like curl up in bed for a little bit.

It's a mindset thing for me. So I'm a, I'm an extroverted introvert. I am, if you put me in a cocktail party, I am in the corner. I'm by the snacks.

Yep.

I'm hiding underneath the bar. Like I, that is just not where I shine. But I come from a place of service. I'm excited about what I do. I'm passionate about what I do. I think it can help a lot of people. And so what I try and help my clients see is public relations and putting yourself out there in the media. It's not about fame. It's not about the spotlight. It's not about the attention. It's coming from a place of service. If I'm good at what I do and I think that I am and I keep my gifts to myself, I don't share them with you or other people or people that could benefit from it. I'm not helping anyone. That's just selfish of me. If you are an author and you have a book and you want people to read it and you're proud of what you've written and it's amazing and you want to share it with people. All you gotta do is talk to people for 20 minutes on a podcast. Yeah. And honestly, I don't, we don't need to talk again for 2 weeks till I make you go on another podcast. And so I feel like it's that trade-off. It's not about you, the person. It's not about you being famous like a Kardashian. It's sharing your work, your gift, your business, your brand, the thing you're passionate about with the world, with the world. And it's, yeah, you know, 2 nerds nerding out talking about whatever you think is cool.

I love that. So tell me a little bit about what you're seeing now with respect to nonfiction authors. What's the same and what's different? Because everybody's talking about everything's changing in AI and whatever, and I think there's some truth to that, but I also think there's some truth to there are evergreen principles that work. So how do, how do you, how are you seeing that?

I don't buy into AI as changing anything. I, I drew it. I think, I think it's making it easier for people to think that they're authors and write things. I think it's making it easier for people to use the excuse they don't have to hire a copywriter or they don't have to hire a marketer, or they, you know, might be able to tackle or answer, answer questions easier. But what AI takes out of the equation is the human aspect. And I feel like now more than ever, all of us post-COVID are starved for human interaction. We're starved for the storytelling, and I don't think that AI can create that. I think it's great for systems. I think it's gonna be great for technology. I do think it's great for honing in on how to reuse content multiple ways. I don't think it's great for creating the content itself, and I don't see it replacing you. I don't see it replacing me. I don't see it replacing authors because human beings like you and I are never going to be like, you know what I want today? A robot to read me a story.

Well, but there's, I think there's a difference between replacing. So what I've seen is when you can tell something was produced by AI, that's a total failure. Like whether it's an article or a piece of marketing content, you're like, oh my God, this is awful. Like, or even if it's not awful, it's, it's soulless. It's just, you know, whatever. But where you can't tell that AI was used in the process, that's where the beauty comes in. The depth of the research that can be done and the speed and, and, and, and the number crunching and the. You know, find me another case study or tell me how to tell this story to a group of engineers versus a group of social workers or whatever. I think that's really the beauty when it's a behind the scenes thing.

Yeah.

Where nobody knows that. Not that nobody knows because you're lying about it, but it's just yet another tool in your toolbox.

Yeah. I think that wonderful for that. Do I see the rise in authors now on Amazon where it's just a completely AI-generated book 'cause they had a one-sentence idea? That just makes me sad. Yeah.

And I, and I, I, that's been happening for a while, whether it's book in a box or 24 hours, or, you know, you, you could leave me 6 voicemails and I'll, I'll make a book out of that. Well, you know, guess what? You know, you could say, is it worthy of reading? And more importantly, is it worthy of putting your name on? Right? Like, yeah, that's really the, the, the issue because quality still matters. Quality matters more than ever, right? Like, 'cause yes, I don't really care if I buy a book and spend $25 and the book's terrible. I'll, You know, I, I can make another $25. If you waste my time, now I'm pissed off, right? Like if I start to read that book and it's going nowhere quick, I'm like, done. I'm, I'm not gonna invest 6, 7 hours in this thing.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with you. I agree with you. And I'm also bitter about, you know, AI has killed the em dash and I'm gonna be forever bitter about that.

I, there was just a bunch of stuff I was reading with a group of ghostwriters on that, that, that, you know, the death of the em dash, but, uh, Maybe if enough people feed ChatGPT that, you know, bring back the em dash. Yeah. You could, I think you could overcome the algorithm, but that, yeah.

Sometimes it's the only punctuation that matters and now we can't use it.

Yeah, that's interesting. Well, but you could say texting destroyed, you know, punctuation altogether, right?

So, but true, true. It was a deep downhill before this.

Exactly. Any other thoughts that you have or observations around nonfiction authors and, and thought leaders? In terms of bad ideas when it comes to PR versus things they should start thinking about and when?

Well, I think the biggest thing is they should start thinking about it. They should be thinking about PR. I think too many people are worried about, oh, you have to be famous, you have to have money, I have to wait till I get to X, I have to wait till I'm 6 books, right? That sort of thing. And it's not about going viral or having a huge following or having an agent. It's costing them money and time and book sales. And recognition to stay invisible, to not be putting themselves out there, to not be promoting themselves. And so I guess my, my big stance is authority is built by consistency. Start now, put yourself out there now, be promoting yourself now. Now is the time to get started.

Not, and, and I think, you know, words like promoting might be the word that irks some, right? So I love that authority's built by consistency. So I would say, be consistent in sharing your ideas on LinkedIn, be consistent in your blogging, be consistent in whatever it is. 'Cause I think too many authors and thought leaders, they, they, they do the Groundhog's Day thing. You don't hear from 'em and then they pop up when they've got a book or something and then they go back in the cave for 3 years and they pop up. It's like, we want to hear, but the, but then you look at the great ones that do it, the Daniel Pink's, the Malcolm Gladwell's, they're always flooding them. No, I shouldn't say flooding. They're always putting out amazing ideas in multiple formats. And it's not around when they have something to promote. And then when they drop in there, oh yeah, I got a book coming out in October. Of course I'm like, oh, go to the buy now button and make sure it lands in my, like, how would I not? I built a rapport. I built trust. Anything they say is interesting to me. So I don't even get to the point where they're telling me the idea of the book. I know they will put something in front of me that's a good product. Like I know when I go to my favorite restaurant, it's a good meal.

Right, right, right. And it's not even, it's not even genius what they're doing because Malcolm Gladwell's not creating more content for himself. He's not burning himself to the ground. It's not cuz, I mean, he has a team, but it's not cuz he has a giant team. He literally takes the book he just wrote or the draft of a book he's writing.

Yeah.

And he's just breadcrumbing across different platforms and you're seeing it multiple times and that's why it keeps registering with you. So he is not even giving himself more work to do. He's just putting it where people can see it. Yeah.

And in different formats for different people, right? It might be on a podcast or it might be on an, an, an, a short form article or might, yeah. My Penis Keynotes, whatever. Interesting. This has been awesome. I hope it's been fun for you and helpful for those listening, because PR, like, hey, you know, it's a tool. Know when to use it, know how to use it, and don't be afraid to use it would be my, my thoughts.

No, perfect summary. Loved it. Thank you.

Great. Good stuff. Thank you. To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at Peter at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.