Welcome to our live show!

Everybody, welcome up to Drink Up Live Podcast with Steve Turner and Adam Smith. Steve, we are so excited to have you here today. I know we've been waiting to get this episode going, so thanks for the patience as we were— as we are rolling here live on LinkedIn. Hopefully we are. We've been having some issues, so, but it seems somehow we figure it out as we go. Before we get started, we just want to call out some of our sponsors of our podcast, if you don't mind. So we always start with Jay Williams. Jay Williams owns a product called Freebird Water. It's— I think he's getting ready to expand into some other type of beverages, possibly teas, but he's been doing very well in the Southeast and expanding. Expanding fairly rapidly. So thanks, Jay. I'm out of product. I can't, I can't show a free bird. I've drank— I drink it all. So this is my only way I can get a free, uh, free bird. It says free, by the way, Jay. So send that free bird over my way. So thanks, Jay. And then Adam from Alias Advising, which is Adam Smith, operator. All right. Works with beverage brands and helps bring them to market. Rocks Advising, which Adam's a part of as well as I am, with Ryan Hellerman. Thanks, Ryan, for your support of our show. And then Bev Assets with Alicia Vargo, my partner, that we actually help brands from a commercial side come to market, find distribution and customers in the marketplace. But with all that being said, Steve, you're finally here. And it's interesting, you're a PR person. You have your own firm as well as you're an author. And we were talking this morning a little bit about what you're working on currently going out there in the universities. And I know Adam went deep about— didn't I always forget, but Adam was a PR person. radio personality and everything else that always comes up. So I'm sure Adam's going to geek out with you today when we get into the PR. But welcome to Drink Up Podcast.

Thank you. Excited to be here and looking forward to having a really good conversation.

Fantastic. So tell us a little bit about, you know, how maybe you found us or how we came together and a little bit about your firm and, and what is PR? Is there a good PR or bad PR?

Because all PR is good. That's right. Well, P.T. Barnum, uh, is, is reportedly to have said, uh, all publicity is good publicity, just spell my name right. So, you know, and we found that that's not necessarily true because CEOs have resigned or gotten fired because of some bad PR. PR. So companies have gone, you know, down south from that. So not necessarily true. But public relations really is the art of creating mutual relationships that benefit your clients and your organization and your stakeholders, your employees. So it's mutually beneficial. So it's not just one-sided firing out press releases and trying to tell the world that you're a great company and you have all these things. It's how do you form a relationship for the long term with your targeted audience? And that's what public relations is. It's not lead gen, as some people think. It's not advertising, as some people think. It's a long-tail effort to build community impact and build credibility and trust with the people that you wish to serve. And if you do that correctly, The other things will happen as well. I believe you will get more customers and more excitement about the firm and more media coverage and things like that if you do the campaign correctly. So we're trying to build relationships with PR. We're building relationships with journalists. We're building relationships with stakeholders. We're building relationships with potential customers. So we're trying to do all these things with public relations and then figure out the best strategies and tactics to reach these people? And what is the program that's going to enable us to do that and do it efficiently with a good return on investment? So when I think of PR, that's what I think of.

It's amazing. We work with a gentleman that happens to own Entrepreneur Magazine, and he was kind enough to introduce Alicia and I Um, and Adam's part of it actually as well. Um, at least Adam and I to Entrepreneur Magazine, and we're— we are— have the ability to actually write articles, uh, with them. Adam, you were— you were copied on some of this. I'll bring you in. But— but he's like, what? What? But anyway, um, so I meet the editor, you know, and, uh, and go through that whole process. But they proceed to send me a note and they said, it can't— you cannot use AI to write your article. It's not allowed. Right? So, which is interesting because it seems like everybody's writing and communicating, utilizing AI to, you know, get their, their image out there, the whole bit. I mean, I use AI. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna deny that, to do a lot of things I do. But I mean, I had this incredible opportunity out of myself and Alicia. to write these articles, I'm thinking, man, I got to go back to college, got to get the blue book out and the number 2 pencil and basically come up with my, you know, my topic and, you know, the, you know, and what I'm going to talk about and the body and, and, and the conclusion and the close or whatever, right? So, uh, it's interesting, we were talking earlier about where you said there's some PR firms or agencies out there using avatars to communicate to potential clients?

Yeah. So this is a big story in the PR industry to some degree. One agency actually used AI bots to send press releases to all kinds of journalists and with phony avatars. So it looked like a picture of somebody that was real with a kind of a weird email address to respond to. But behind that was the actual account people from the PR firm. But anyway, all these thousands of press releases went out, and some of the journalists were actually thinking about writing about it. And then they started to investigate, and they found out that this was all AI-generated stuff, and these, uh, PR people didn't even exist. Yeah, they're like, what in the world's going on here?

Is that about scale?

Are they just trying to scale really quick, go wide and And just see who bites. Basically, it's almost casting a wider net. In order to cast a wider net, you basically use that, that technology to do it.

Yeah, um, to a degree, yes. What, what they were trying to do was reach as many people as they can at the least cost possible, but they didn't tell their clients this. And so when the journalists would call the client and say, hey, you know, I got this press release about you, Says, well, what? Who, who's that? You know, this is from Jane Smith. Well, who's Jane Smith? You know, I, I don't know her. Well, what agency is this? Are you sure it's my agency?

Yeah, Smith. Hold on a second, we got an Adam Smith here.

Yeah, well, it could be Jane Jones, but so, so all this stuff is going on, and then, uh, a couple of trade journals picked up on this in our industry and wrote articles about it, and that kind of blew the COVID off of it. So it's crazy. Then, um, there was something I read yesterday on LinkedIn that, uh, somebody was interviewing a college student and they didn't know the names of publications, but they said, well, in my work we have sent out hundreds of press releases to different magazines and publications, and I know how to just spread that out quickly with AI. Well, why, why, why are you doing that? You know, they couldn't explain the process of it. They just knew how to do it. And they said, we're not hiring anybody that can, you know, comfortably just send out stuff with an AI bot. We want somebody that thinks through the strategy, the creativity of why this is a good story for that journalist and that publication. And if you can't explain that, what good is it? And you're, you're never going to get top-tier coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or, you know, Fortune magazine by trying to dupe somebody with some kind of an AI-inspired press release. It's just not going to happen.

I have to jump in here and add to this because it's so— I don't even know what the word is. But for those of you listening who are, who are, God, service providers of any kind, but especially co-packers, right? It's so funny that you're seeing this in your realm too, Steve, is co-packers now, right? Especially in the last, I would say, couple months, it's really shot up. I will see brand owners set their AI to reach out like overnight to just spam the inboxes of hundreds of co-packers. Right? And you can tell when these emails— because the message— because the co-packers end up forwarding that shit to me because they know that I will deal with these small brand owners, like that I'll actually be interested in talking to them.

Is that your message you posted yesterday on LinkedIn? You posted something.

Literally. Literally. It's the— this is it, right? So they'll spam these inboxes, but these emails are like, hello, such and such co-packer. I am interested in running at your facility. Can you please answer these questions? And then it's, I shit you not, I got one the other day that was probably 50 different questions, right? And it's, I mean, everything from formulation to labeling to product, it's the whole business, right? Because these AI bots are just shotgun style emailing everybody. And to your point, it's true from a logistical angle and a PR angle and a relationship building angle, because that's what the whole fucking thing is regardless of which bucket you're in. Like, Every one of these co-packers, the minute they see that, they're like, no, I'm not responding to this. Like, I believe that there's a person on the other end of this somewhere, but that's not where this message came from, and I'm not going to bother.

Yeah, I mean, I think AI has its place. We'll get back to PR, but maybe this is PR. AI has its place. I use AI to aggregate data. I definitely use it to help me get my thoughts together. I'm very clear with my clients. I was on one of our clients, uh, Tequila Hermanos, which we're bringing in. They're a French company with a tequila, very luxury item. And we were both geeking out over AI. And I'm like, yeah, I love to use AI to kind of look at it. But if I took your data, which I'd aggregate and build into plan, but it gets it wrong every time. And he was laughing. He goes, I totally agree. But it gives you a starting point to have a conversation to get there. But if you lose the person and the people that can think critically, we lose our humanity and we lose our ability, you know, to, um, you know, really do the right thing. So it's a hot topic, and that's why I kind of went down that path purposely, because it's being talked— the 3 leading AI companies just came out recently and they said that we're at risk as humans A little bit. And if you think about the work you're doing at the university, Steve, and you went to go talk to a career in AI, I mean, and PR, I guess I'm saying out loud right now is AI cannot replace humans to do what we're doing right now, to do PR, to do accounting, to do, you know, selling, to talk to a co-packer. It can't replace us. Can it help us do tasks? Yes. But stop using it to replace people's positions. And by the way, plumbers out there, next time I call you, I'm hanging up if I get AI. I want a live human being. And when I call my medical company for my insurance coverage, I want a live human being, please.

Yeah.

Do you— so maybe that's a question to Douglas to kind of, you know, Now that we got super far off topic, I think it's very relevant. Like, that's how we roll here. No, I mean, I, it's an honest question. Like, Steve, is that the point that we're reaching as a, like, society or for businesses where, like, whether it's AI or just technology has gotten us so off the beaten path of developing relationships that something as simple as having a person answer the phone can be considered A solid PR plan.

Yeah, it seems like it, doesn't it? Right.

Well, we're talking about media, right? At the end of the day, I mean, the big thing is how do you earn the media attention? And they're doing it through AI, aren't they?

Well, they're trying to do it through AI. So the correct way to achieve the kind of response you want from a journalist to do a story on your client is, number one, to read the stuff that the journalist is writing about. So how do you know what, what to pitch them if you don't know what they're writing about? And a lot of times you'll hit the wrong person. You'll send all this information to somebody that covers business. Oh, well, yeah, I cover business, but I only cover insurance. I don't cover the finance industry. You need to talk to, you know, Ben Jones over here. He's the writer that covers it.

Yeah.

Well, you've wasted all this time and opportunity and, you know, and money. in essence, targeting the wrong person. But you don't know that if— you would know that if you did read the publication ahead of time and find out what they're covering and why, and then try to build a rapport with that reporter. Say, well, I saw your last 3 articles about Company X are great. I have something similar to that with a lot of background on this new company we're working with that I think would be a good fit for you. And then you want to accumulate the assets to make their job easier. So when we say assets, we mean bios of people you're trying to pitch them to, photographs. If it's TV, you know, maybe video, all these things together to make their job as easy as possible. And the reason you want to do that is because journalists are totally stressed. Newsrooms continue to shrink. Budgets keep shrinking from these big public companies and these mergers and acquisitions. So there's fewer journalists in the newsroom. And a lot of these people are doing more than writing articles. They may be doing a podcast, or they may be doing some video stuff, or they may be even being interviewed themselves somewhere else. So they have time constraints. So if you can help them manufacture a story with the limited time they have, the chances of coverage are a lot better than just sending out a news release and, you know, and spraying and praying. As we used to call it. So this is, this is a lot better methodology.

Your, your, what's your eye, your, your target, right? And what they're writing about, right?

Just like you would a, uh, a customer, you know, if you were targeting a customer to buy something, you want to target a journalist but do it, you know, creatively and strategically. Who are they? What's the public? First you have to decide what the publications are that are going to give you the, the best result. on behalf of your client or corporation and what it is you're trying to achieve. And then find those journalists that write about that kind of stuff and then find out what really turns them on. You can kind of tell what they like to write about by just reviewing 3 or 4 articles and maybe use AI to say, okay, uh, you know, June Jones covers finance for the New York Times, send me her last 4 articles, you know, whatever it is.

That's great use case example where you could use AI to help you go through data, aggregate it, and identify those that maybe you could go target, but pick up the phone and call them, right?

Right, exactly.

Have a conversation or DM them or whatever. Hey, I'm Sam. I represent a beverage brand and I'm new to market. So speaking of beverage brands and new to market, if I'm a beverage brand, And I want to build, like, get media attention on my brand. Like, what's the— what's— so how do you earn— how do you earn that as a new brand? Like, what would— if you were talking to our audience, what would they need to do? They're, you know, rolling out and they're saying, hey, I'm going to go into New York City. I'm a Levantine out of Beirut, Lebanon, Lebanese born and bred. Like, what would one do with PR?

Well, we have created a process I like to talk to businesses about called the 5 Ms, and it's a whole process to give you a better return on investment. So the first piece of that is the mission. What is your objective? And be as specific as possible. So if you're introducing a beverage in New York City, well, what are we trying to do? You know, are we looking for distribution? Are we talking about a sales number? Are we, you know, what's our penetration? What are we trying to accomplish from where we are today to where we should be in 6 months or a year, whatever it is? So that would be number one, and be as specific as possible instead of saying, well, we just need PR to help us get our brand out there. To me, that's not, that's not a great objective. I mean, a lot of people do it that way, but to me it's not great. The second M is the market, your audience. Who are they? Why should they buy your product? You know, can you identify them on a granular level? What products that are similar to your new beverage are being bought by other people? You know, kind of a similar beverage or something in that category that might make sense for them to switch over. So how could we get that product introduced? So that would be number 2. And can you identify their age group and psychographics and where they live and all that kind of stuff? Then the next one is the message. How are we different than everybody else that's out there? And if you can't explain that to yourself or the people that work for you in a sentence or two, then how are the customers supposed to know? So you have to be able to define that. And that's kind of an issue sometimes for a B2B company is they don't really understand, you know, how they're different. Well, I'm a business coach. Uh, okay. Well, who's your clientele? Well, I serve CEOs. Well, you want to narrow that down a little bit? Well, my strength is within the construction industry.

We work with a lot.

Oh, okay, now we've got a niche that we can focus on. All right, let's develop that. So let's figure out how you're different and what you can focus on. So that's the 3rd M. The 4th one is the media, which is, you know, where, where's the fit? Is it traditional media? Is it social? Is it niche like Substack or podcasts or different things like that? You know, where is your audience and how to best Fit in there, and maybe it's a combination of these things. So that would be the 4th M. And the 5th is measurement. How do we measure all this stuff to get a return on investment we're happy with? Because if we're just throwing things out and 3 months, 6 months later, well, you know, we tried it, it was okay, not great, I don't know, I threw $30,000, $50,000 out there, I'm not sure. Well, if you have the specific objective at the beginning, you know, when it comes time to measure it, what you can do, and you can adjust along the way. So after, let's say, 90 days, you're out there trying to do something. Oh, these 2 things are working great. I can see the response. This is really generating traffic. These other 3 things, eh, not so much, you know, not happening. So let's cut out the 3 things that aren't working and put more time, effort, and money into the 2 that are. But if you don't measure it, you'll never know. So that's the 5th piece. And I think if you state the objective correctly and have a clear, defined target in mind of what you want to accomplish, the 5th piece will fit right in and so will everything else. But you've got to get everybody on the same page.

Right.

And this is where leadership needs to talk to marketing, and, you know, the silos need to come down a little bit. People need to have conversations so they all get on the same page. Sales, marketing, and PR.

I mean, you're talking about driving results. So I was looking at Adam's post and it says, you know, PR that drives results and you talk about the 5 M's. So mission, media, message. I think it was market.

Market.

Yeah.

That's the audience and measurement.

I mean, you just gave a masterclass in how to build a brand. I mean, insert like our commercial strategy is We, we talk, we say, we don't say the 5 Ms, which we'll start using now, by the way. So thanks, Steve, for walking Adam and I through that. But—

Now the invoice is in the mail.

Yeah, yeah, he just, but I mean, people are going to see this, right? And they hear this, they're like, hey, I want to go talk to Steve because Steve knows what he's doing. And I always talk, we always talk about the mission and the map, you know, because The one thing I would just add to it is the destination. Where is it that you want to go? Or the vision with those 5 Ms. But those 5 Ms will absolutely get you there. And then you kind of do your whats and hows, which you described in your examples as you were sharing that. That was really brilliant. Speaking of results though, so you do the 5 Ms. Can you have some examples? I mean, I see that you've worked with people like Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy. I mean, these are, these are, um, icons. So maybe tell us some stories. I mean, I don't know if you're allowed to tell some stories about Tony Robbins and, and stuff, or Brian, but I'm really curious. Like, how do you—

Yeah, so this was kind of back in the day before they were like these huge icons that they are now. Yeah, this was kind of like personal development was just taking off and people were starting to go to these big seminars all over the country. And they were selling tickets. And so, uh, I was listening to Brian Tracy myself on, uh, audio cassette albums. And if you remember what those are—

Oh, you and I— well, hence, I mean, Adam probably doesn't. Adam, do you know what a cassette is?

I've got my— I've got a whole stack of them in the other room. I'm waiting for a car to have a cassette player.

8-track tapes. Were you listening to Brian on 8-track tapes?

8-tracks missed me, but, but cassettes I had. Yeah.

So no, that's great. No, I love it. So, um, I'm at this radio station with this client of mine doing an interview, and in pops this guy with this huge stack of Brian Tracy cassette albums. And I'm like, wait a minute, you know, uh, excuse me, uh, are you with Brian Tracy by any chance? He goes, uh, yeah, I am. I said, well, what are you doing? He goes, Is he, is he coming to St. Louis? Yes, he is. I said, oh my gosh, I love Brian. Let me help you promote it. Just give me a couple tickets and we'll make this thing work.

Yeah.

So we actually did. He played coy because they really didn't have a lot of budget or anything, but, you know, they really wanted to do this. So they hired us and we did this really nice campaign in St. Louis for them. And he said, hey, how much would you charge to do kind of like a roadshow thing? And, and go to Cincinnati, which is next, and then we've got all these other markets. And I said, yeah, let's put something together. So we did Cincinnati and that worked out well. And then we were doing Toronto and, you know, Orange County, California, and Fort Lauderdale and all these things.

You was driving down Route 66 to do all these promotions?

No, no, luckily most of it was in the air. But, uh, yeah, so that was started and, uh, one of the guys who worked with Tracy went over to work for Tony Robbins, and he said, oh Steve, you know, boy do we need you over at Robbins. You know, this— we need some PR, we need to get organized. So I was hired by Rob. I went over to San Diego and they hired me. And then, um, so we had all this stuff going on. We had all these— and then other seminar promoters, you know, kind of like came out of the woodwork, and we were doing work for all these people in all these different markets. It was kind of crazy. But in those—

Robbins to break out, by the way. Sorry, we'll finish your thought.

Oh, okay. Well, uh, Tony did some, uh, some things really interesting. A, he— they started by going market to market and doing these paid programs. So you would buy a ticket through a guy that would sell it at your business, and you'd buy a ticket and you'd actually attend the seminar with Tony Robbins for $100, whatever it was. And, you know, you get 500 to 1,000 people or maybe more depending. And then Tony started— he was one of the first guys to do those infomercials.

Yes.

I don't know if you remember back in the day, there weren't a lot of those available, but, you know, at 10 o'clock at night or midnight, whatever, uh, Tony would show up, he'd be interviewed by somebody, and he, and he did a great job with these infomercials. And he figured out how to— somehow he ended up being a consultant for people at a high level. And he, you know, wrote a book or two, which I don't— he didn't write, but somebody else wrote it for him. But his name was on it because if you read it and listen to him speak—

Those were ghostwriters back in the day, not AI. Today AI writes for you. That's your ghostwriter.

Yeah. So he was like ahead of his time for all this stuff. And then he, uh, he became successful and he had this, um, house on Fiji Island, and they would— and he flew a helicopter, I think. And so they would show him on video flying this helicopter to this Caribbean— you know, the— not Caribbean, but Fiji Island in the Pacific, you know, landing the helicopter. I mean, he had it beautifully produced. And then they interviewed him. How can you be successful today? Well, the first thing you got to do is this, and then you need a mission, you know. What is your— you know, and so you get the whole Tony Robbins thing.

Actually get yourself Right.

Yeah, we, we used to joke around about that all the time. Tony would say, you know, well, if you don't know what your goal in life is, I want you to pull— and if you're listening to this cassette in the car, Tony would say, if you're listening to this in the car, I want you to pull over to the side of the road now and write down your goal for life, or, you know, whatever it is. So it was really funny, and we laugh about it now, but he actually discovered something in marketing that nobody else had at the time. And he really exploited it beautifully. And those infomercials were terrific. And I think that's what elevated him above everybody else. And then he's, you know, this huge figure. So you've got this guy that's like 6'6 on the stage and, you know, he knows how to talk to people and he creates this warmth and this feeling. And then he started doing these massive things where people would walk on coals. At these weekend seminars that cost a fortune, but he would host those for like 2 or 3 days straight. And one of the things was, we're going to teach you, you know, to eliminate your fear so you can accomplish anything in your life. And one of the things was walking on coals. And so people would take their shoes and socks off and actually walk across this bed of coals that were lit without a problem. Well, there was some science technique to this whole thing with the coals, so your feet weren't going to get burned. But some guy later on, he was doing this and some guy loitered over the coals and actually burned his foot or something. So he sued Robbins and all these other people. I don't— it was a mess. And so they stopped doing it, I believe. But that was kind of—

That's bad PR, by the way. Yeah, I burned his foot.

Yeah, my bunion went on fire. What am I gonna do? Oh, why did you just stand on the coals? You're supposed to walk across it, you fool. But anyway, um, so all this stuff happened, and Tony got, you know, hugely famous from all this stuff. So he's got the infomercials, he's got these 3-day seminar workshops, he's got disciples everywhere. I mean, so he became huge, and then, you know, this morphed into him working with presidents and all kinds of people, and, you know, his Netflix movies and all this stuff. So yeah, it's big time. And Brian kind of did a different approach. He was more business-oriented, uh, where he would talk to leaders and salespeople. He, he would go around the country, but he wanted private gigs. So you would see Brian, who was phenomenal in person, one of the best speakers. I mean, just amazing. I don't even know how he remembered this information, but he'd get up there for like a full day and talk to salespeople at one half, leaders on the other half, the psychology of success. Amazing stuff. And then people would attend this and he'd give them a workbook, and then companies would come up to Brian afterwards and say, hey, we really need you at A to Z Tire to, you know, work with our sales team and all these kind of things. He became like this national guru, and then books followed and more stuff. But, you know, amazing. And they've kind of brought him out of retirement, so to speak. If you look on YouTube, you'll see Brian Tracy. I think his kids must have reformulated some of his stuff Uh, and, and this is probably AI to make it look like he's in color and they actually filmed some of this, which they didn't. But I'm pretty sure this was kind of like revamped. So if you go on YouTube, you'll see Brian Tracy talking like he's at a podium in color and doing all this stuff. And I'm like, well, you know, I don't think that's real, but you know, it's pretty close. So, you know, why not? But if you see Brian, then you'll see Brian himself. And I mean, he's You know, he's up there and he's just sitting around, but, um, he's still using his name and reputation and brand to build things.

Yeah, I mean, I'm a big— I'm a big fan of Brian Tracy. Uh, let me, let me, uh, switch gears and I'm gonna give the— some— Adam's been thinking here, being very patient. But so, you know, so Tony and Brian were small ones. They, they, they weren't, they weren't big names. No one knew who they were. When they started, you know, we work with brands, we call them foundation brands. You know, you're laying the foundation and then they want to obviously start to build, start to grow, eventually, you know, scale and sustain, right? Those are the 5 different types of brands. And that's, if you look at Tony Robbins, I would say that he's in a sustain mode, right? I mean, he's made it. So now he has to figure out how do I go to the next, you know, what's the next thing for me? How, or how do I maintain? And instantly I would— forgive me, but did you see the headline yesterday, Adam, about Red Bull being discontinued in Kroger, all of Kroger across the country?

No.

Removed from the shelves. So just because you're big and you feel like you have all the market share, they were removed from all Kroger shelves. So back to my question. 'Cause there's a double-loaded question. They were small ones. So how does a small beverage brand, like, I mean, I know the 5 Ms that you shared, but I'm a small beverage brand. What do I need to do to punch above my weight?

Well, figure out what the holes are in the market. So this is, and sometimes this is where AI can play a role in this, is see, you know, these, this is our competition. What are the holes that they're missing? And I mean, I don't know if, if AI can identify those specifically, but they may have some thoughts, or do your own research and figure out, you know, what, what's missing out there and how can we amplify this? Well, let's see, maybe there's not a lot of media coverage in our beverage sector, but maybe if we do an introduction and we can get something in like a New York Times or Fortune or get influencers, maybe we need to get influencers on board with with this and show some stuff. Uh, this could be really interesting. Uh, I know Poppy did a lot of phenomenal things and, you know, was eventually sold. I don't know the, the whole process behind that, but I think it's an interesting story, and they probably have a great case study of how they achieved all that stuff. But I think if you look for some holes, you know, find out what the other brands are doing and then figure out Well, they're missing this. Maybe they're not getting articles, maybe they're not doing special events, maybe they're not talking to the customers the way that we would, and figure out how to amplify that. And, you know, look, look for those holes.

We always talk about the push and the pull. So like, uh, Alicia and I, you know, we're, we're a lot of the push. Now Alicia does like, she'll do some like media help with Article writing. So Alicia, I don't know if you have any thoughts or questions to Steve, but so media plays a really important part, and you can punch above your weight if you can identify those writers or influencers you're saying to talk about your brand or do an event.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think that's how Red Bull made it at the beginning. I mean, they did events. They were everywhere. I mean, you know, hey, have a have a Red Bull. You know, and you go to a baseball game or, you know, a racetrack, something like that, and Red Bull would be very visible and they'd let you sample the product. So, you know, try that, you know, start small, figure out how your product's different. You see a lot of these, uh, taste tests at grocery stores. A lot, a lot of it's liquor-oriented, which, you know, could be—

What we call, Steve, we call it liquid to lips. Adam, you got to start chiming in here, man. Is he— is he— I mean, he might have lost Adam. I'm not sure.

You what? Sorry, you cut out for a second.

I said you got to chime in, but go ahead. So you see these grocery stores, you're seeing a lot of liquor being tasted with consumers, right?

Yeah, yeah. Uh, you really do see a lot of that, and they're trying to obviously get you to buy it. Uh, so if you're kind of a, you know, a wine person or different kind of liquor person, you have an opportunity to sample it and it's right there and the beverage is for sale. So I mean, that's kind of a good thing because you could buy it right there. Where if you're at it, let's say you're at an auto race and yeah, people are, you know, tasting, but it may not be available for sale at the auto race.

Right.

So you may still have to think, well, this tastes good. Well, you remember that when you get home to go to the grocery store and buy some.

Yeah, we do that tailgating. So at tailgates, so like if you think about a football game or a baseball game, and we have to get into some baseball a little bit about your, your career there, but, um, 50 mLs really go a long way getting into the, to the place. But it was interesting how to punch through. I think you're right, you don't have to boil the ocean, but pick those, those Those few things. I think about a, you know, a person I've been talking to. I even say a brew sake. I love Dr.

Rob.

If he happens to capture this, you mean we're trying to help him. But Dr. Rob is basically targeting against Asian, you know, restaurants and areas for his his brew and a sake. So I think about like a sake shooter, and he's develop some technology to do that, but he's trying to— he said, like, I want to pick an event, pick this particular person that is a DJ that's tied to all these Asian restaurants, and that may help punch me through. Is that like— is that a strategy?

Is that— yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean, I don't know the product, but yeah, that, that would be interesting. Or, uh, you know, have samples You know, some of these restaurants or something. They don't do it so much anymore, but they used to, you know, you'd have like a waitress with like a, a small portion of a beverage maybe come around on a tray and say, hey, would you like to try this? And, you know, there would be a cookie or something else, and everybody could sample something different and new. But, you know, they don't do that much anymore for obvious reasons. But But that could, that could be interesting because nobody else is doing it.

So yeah, that's great.

There's things that aren't being done, you know.

I mean, stuff, but especially on-premise. So we call like bars, restaurants, hotels, places where you dine on-premise, where your, your immediate consumption. And off-premise is where, you know, like liquor stores, packaged liquor stores, grocery stores, where you go buy something for future consumption, right? And so for a tasting and trial for a brand. You know, liquid elixir is everything in the beverage business. But for on-premise, I think there's an opportunity. We've been trying to do like more dinners and stuff like that. Meet the distiller or meet the founder and do like a 5-course meal. Like Earl Giles up here in Minneapolis, Matt knows this, often Kevin, or maybe it's Nick, or they both do it.

Mm-hmm.

But they'll put together like 5-course meals. That you can sign up for and you can experience their beverage across several meals and different cocktails, the whole bit. And I think that gets people behind the brand, but it seems to be a slow build. How do you build it fast? Or is it just basically, it's like it's a tortoise and the hare. Can I build it fast to take advantage of something?

Yeah, you need to get people, in today's market, you need to get people talking about you. So what is it that you can do that get people excited so they will go on social media and talk about you? So it's not just yourself saying you're great, but you need to have all these evangelists out there like Apple did, or Lululemon, or all these other people that say, hey, wow, this is great, I really enjoyed this, you know, you guys need to try this. And I mean, there's things as finite as like a neighbor's page Where people talk all the time, you know, I'm tired of the complaints. But you know, I look at it and people said, oh, I had a great meal at XYZ. Well, you know, okay, maybe you'll go there and try it out. Um, but you know, how do we do that? How do you get people talking about it on TikTok? How does it become a TikTok thing? How does it become an Instagrammable thing? You know, get pictures, have people, you know, oh look, You know, I've got this, I've got this beverage. Boy, is this good. Here's the bottle. You know, all these things. And get it out there with photos and short videos and, and the reels. Get it out there on YouTube and Instagram. That's how you're going to get the brand separation and differentiation from everything that's out there. You got to get people to talk about it. And if it's so, if only you were talking about it, it's going to be a slow build. If you can get customers to talk about it, it's going to ramp up because all of a sudden everybody wants to try it. Oh, here's my best buddy on Instagram. He says this is the best meal he's ever had. Wow, no idea. Well, let's go and try it out. Yeah, okay. You know how people talk. So you want that third-party endorsement from everybody. And if you can get people talking about it, that's the way to grow. And, uh, you know, I know, uh, You know who Seth Godin is, the marketing guru who writes books? So he, he says whatever it is you're trying to do, just do it better than anybody and, and hit a real finite audience and get people to talk about it. Because if you do it well—

Word of mouth, basically, right? So, right, PR. So you could do this event or talk to that influencer or get to that writer That could seed the word of mouth, right, to get things to grow, right?

So this is another thing that's out there, is a lot of the media now cover people with big, uh, Instagram followings and big TikTok followings, or they say, oh, this went viral on TikTok. Well, 10,000 people may have, you know, said, oh, this is the best beverage I've ever had. And, you know, all of a sudden the TV station, what's going going on? You know, this is a local-based company, so let's interview the CEO of that company, find out, you know, hey, Joe's, uh, Joe's Soda is real popular. What's going on here? You know, we've got all these hits on TikTok, people are talking about it, putting the can up. What's going on? Well, let's send a camera crew over to interview the CEO and talk to him about it and what's going on. So then it leads to other press opportunities, and then You know, you could show the manufacturing and, you know, the cans rolling off the, you know, conveyor belt or whatever it is. And then the backstory of why the soda was started in the first place and the CEO's background and, you know, the new hires and all these things. So you kind of morph it into a bigger thing. But if you can get people talking about it— Another trick that's been used in the past is they would deliver food products to TV stations and radio stations. And I did a lot of this in the past. Uh, we've marketed donuts and all kinds of things. So you bring those to the radio and TV stations and let them sample it and talk about it, and eventually they're going to do a story on you. And it may not be, you know, just about you. Maybe they're doing something about a beverage thing or something else, but eventually you get the hit because you've been supplying them with goodies for, you know, several weeks. And, oh wow, yeah, this is great. I know there's— in St. Louis here, there's restaurants that constantly deliver sandwiches to the TV news team. Well, and things happen. Who are they? And they've had great TPR coverage because I know they're delivering goodies to the the, to the journalists at the TV stations. So, uh, yeah, I mean, they're human and that stuff works.

Send my beverage to the, uh, radio station. They're probably going to talk about me eventually. Just getting in their good graces.

Yeah, yeah, if you could get in there and, and, uh, make sure it's good, because if they don't like it, you don't want that either. But, uh, normally, uh, if it's a good product, uh, they might, you know, They might talk about it and, and, you know, give you some good— give you some good cred. And, uh, TikTok, you know, get— just get out there, you know. For beverage, absolutely TikTok is the place.

Figure out Adam. Um, I can't figure out Adam. Is like a— he's great at TikTok. He does these talking heads and it moves around the screen and stuff. I do it like no one even— I'm like invisible. I know. Adam, what's your secret sauce and how you're building, um, uh, brands on your side.

Dude, your guess is as good as mine. I literally was just emailing my— I found a, uh, a St. Thomas, uh, soon-to-be graduate who's majoring in, uh, marketing, digital media, and something else who's helping me with my social media because your guess is as good as mine. Uh, yeah, I, I've just been throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Yeah, I would.

I do have to ask Steve before, uh, before we run out of time, I think 2 things. A, I mean, whether it's the 5 Ms or just everything you described, right? Like whether it's PR related or just business in general, you know, and you know this, I'm preaching to the choir, but telling an effective story Whether you know that that's the reason or not, I think for me and for a lot of the brands that I work with is the most effective way to get responses. Even if it's not like a media response or an advertising response, like when you reach out to someone telling them an effective story and whatever you're reaching out to them for is one of, if not the best ways to get them to go, okay, sure, and actually take the time to engage with you. Right.

A.

B, so many of the brands I talk to, I'm curious your perspective on this. So many of the brands I talk to, I don't wanna sound mean 'cause I'm not trying to, but they think they have a great idea and they have almost no ability to tell a story around it. Right. And so now don't get me wrong, there are a couple and I've shown a few of 'em on this show. There are a couple that buck that rule. They're the exception. Right. And they, they have a marketing background or they've just got a really good idea and, you know, it's not their background, but they're still doing good at it. They know the story, they know who they're going after. But for brands that, you know, have never done this before, 'cause that's most of who I work with, like, is there a, is there a resource? Is there a book? Is there a, you know, part of your website? Is there somewhere where you're like, hey, if you don't know, if you're willing to be honest with yourself and you don't know how to tell a story, These are ways, these are resources you can use to, to kind of build that skill. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Um, well, yeah, um, they might try this. This, I think this will help them.

I might have, I might have teed that up intentionally. Well done.

But, uh, well, here's the thing, and I've learned this over the years and watching different billionaires. Some of them didn't even go to college. They said you have to hire people that are smarter than you.

Sure.

And so the thing is, you might know product great, but you don't know how to market it. You may know marketing great, but you don't know anything about developing a product. So you have to hire people with that skill set in order to be successful. And he says, you know what, I'm a billionaire. I didn't complete college, and I didn't go to Harvard, but I've got a lot of Harvard graduates working for me. So, so, you know, it's— it— you can do it. You just have to be smart about it and hire the skill set. I mean, if you're— if you're good— I don't know, you know, these companies, I don't know what their budgets are or how big they are or what the resources are, but if, if, if you have $100,000 to launch a product or whatever, whatever that number is, hire somebody that knows TikTok or Instagram. I mean, you know, hire a freelancer. There's people out there, uh, go to Fiverr, or, you know, there's all kinds of resources out there that you could find these people that won't cost a fortune, but they know TikTok, they know Instagram. I mean, that's their bag. They know LinkedIn, so they can help you get this persona out there that you want to get out. And if you don't do it and you keep trying it yourself, trial and error, trial and error, trial and error, you're wasting a ton of your time and a ton of your resources and money with very mediocre to poor results. So I would definitely hire somebody that knows what they're doing. It doesn't have to be the best PR firm or marketing company in the world. Start small, find a freelancer, just somebody, you know, talk to people. Do you know anybody who's great at TikTok? Oh yeah, yeah. This one gets you know a million hits every so often because they do this or they do that, and they can do it for you. Great. Well, you know, form a relationship. Find out what they would charge. Put something together. You know, here's what's well, what's unique about your brand nobody else has? Well, it does all these things. Great. Well, let's put that into a TikTok somehow. You know, let's get creative and figure out visually and graphically how we're going to do this. And, you know, get, get all these pieces together. And if you do that, I think your chances of success are a lot better than just constantly thinking you know it all and doing the trial and error. Well, we tried TikTok, I don't know. We did Instagram, I don't know. I tried to get into the media, we got like one article, I don't know. That, that's what's going to happen, and you're going to blow through a lot of money and opportunities. Yeah, yeah, there you go.

Hey, this is how you find Steve.

Yeah, that's one way. Uh, you could email me at sterner@solomonturner.com, S-O-L-O-M-O-N-T-U-R-N-E-R dot com, and we can have a conversation if you like. I always like answering questions or talking about PR and marketing. There you go. And having fun with it and, uh, You know, people have issues or, you know, logjams, or they're trying to get something done and it doesn't seem like they're able to get it done. So I enjoy talking to them and just seeing if there's some chemistry there or a fit or whatever.

Oh, well, I'm, uh, I'm buying your book on Kindle right now.

Buy 2. Oh great, thank you.

I'm buying it on Kindle, Sam. I can't, uh, I can't send it to you on Kindle.

Gotcha. That's right, you're like— I, I have, I have like the library with the hardcover books again, hence my age.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's interesting about my book, uh, uh, so I was taking creative writing classes at Washington University here in St. Louis a couple years ago, and every week you would write a chapter and then read it to the group and everybody would give you constructive criticism or say, try this, or I don't get that, or whatever. Mine was about my background in PR. I was going to have a memoir, and there were a couple people that dabbled in PR that were in the group, and they said, Steve, you know, I think you're missing the boat here. And I said, what do you mean? You go, well, we dabble in PR, but there's nothing out there that I can find to teach me how to do a PR campaign. And I said, what do you mean? She goes, well, they have these textbooks that are $200. I'm not buying that full of theory. That's nonsense. And there's these other books that are like behavioral economics, which, you know, we don't understand. Isn't— can't you just write something about how to do a PR campaign and in simple terms? And I said, yeah, I think so. So I kind of morphed into that, and that's how this book came about. And you'll find there's 14 case studies in there. So people can model those case studies for different things that they're doing and find out what the strategy was. There's 28 strategies in the book and figure out, okay, this is what they did. Maybe this will work for me. Or, you know, if I extrapolate that idea from the book and put it to my use, I think maybe it'll work. I actually, uh, uh, the, uh, publisher of Small Business Monthly here in has a copy of my book, and he said, you know what, Steve, this is great. I'm going to keep it by my computer because we do a lot of the stuff that's in the book, and I just, from time to time, I'll refer back to the book. And I think that's, that's great. That's what it's for.

Uh, I have a copy of, uh, I have a copy of Propaganda that I've been reading, and don't get me wrong, fascinating read, doesn't really tell me the how-to of it all. Right.

Yeah.

So it's, you know, in terms of like the history of PR and, and, you know, what's an 85-year-old book or something like that, like in terms of where it all started and how it was used and how it's changed, fascinating, historically speaking. Awesome. But to your point, part of the reason I've not read a ton of other things is I'm like, cool, give me something I can put into use. Right. Yeah.

That's the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that was the question when I started in PR, I looked around and there was like nothing out there. I mean, this was a long time ago. ago. And I even met with the, uh, I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Fleischman Hilliard, uh, public relations. They're huge. Um, they, they, they did the Budweiser stuff, the PR for all the Budweiser, Anheuser-Busch stuff. That's how they got their claim to fame. But they're, they're, they're huge. And anyway, I met with Al Fleischman and he, he said, you know, there's really not much out there. I mean, this is It was terrible. So, you know, back when I started, over time there's been a lot of kind of different attempts and different books that people use. A lot of it are textbooks for classrooms, but nothing really that kind of, you know, like sets the table on how to actually put this stuff out there. And so that's why I kind of morphed into this. And I think it's having an impact and people are reading it and enjoying it and figuring out that In short digestible bites, they can get a lot of good information and use it, uh, in the future as they march ahead.

All right, so you got us— you got, you got your millionth customer. I'll be number 1 million. I just— I'm ordering the book.

Yeah, we were up to $9.99.

I just finished, uh, if Ella's watching, I just finished Ella's book. a couple nights ago. Oh yeah, High Tolerance. Yeah, yeah.

Well, I think she just did a post this recently. I guess, like, I mean, she's— I don't think she— Ella, forgive me for saying this, but I think you're more about, like, grow brands and, and scale brands versus foundation and build brands, um, in terms of who she works with. It's just because foundation and build are tough, and we love to work with all those founders. And Steve The stuff you've shared with us has been tremendous and our audience has been very good. Adam's going to ask the most important question of the day though, and then we'll go around and we'll, we'll finish up for sure. But before we do that, is there anything that we didn't discuss today that you would like to share with our audience before Adam asks the most important question?

No, I don't think so. You know, again, I, I think just think through what it is that you're trying to accomplish and get that objective down as specific as you can, because you may think you have something great, but if you can't figure out how it's different and how it fits into the market, you're going to have an issue, and it's going to take you a long, long time to figure this whole thing out. But think about it and work on it, and if you have to hire people Make sure you do that. You know, you can hire freelancers for almost anything these days. A lot of great people out there available in between jobs, so to speak. And, uh, you know, talk to them. Come up with a social media expert, come up with a PR expert, uh, whatever it is, a marketing expert, whatever it is that you need to, to get that dream into a reality. And if you do that and think through it all, I think you'll be fine. Adam.

Beautiful. So the most important question that we'll end with is, what's the difference, Steve, between success and failure?

Success and failure? Well, it depends on, on what it is you're trying to do. I would say, are you talking about business success or personal success?

Anything you want to talk about.

Well, because people can be very Very successful. You have a nice, uh, situation where you've accomplished financial goals. They don't have— you don't have to be a billionaire or even a millionaire, but you have a nice lifestyle, a good one. And you have kids and you have grandkids and you see them regularly, and you have a solid family life and support from a spouse. And if you have those things, you have a successful life. I mean, I don't know, uh, what else you could ask for. I mean, are you going to go to your grave that, you know, if I had only made 10 more sales calls? Yeah, if I had only made another $100,000, or if our company had only done this or that. No, I mean, you're fine. You're successful. You had a great life. And to me, that's success. Uh, failure, um, you know, it's hard to define because it Depends on the individual. If you have lofty goals but you just can't seem to accomplish them for whatever reason, and you just get really upset with yourself, then, you know, maybe you consider yourself a failure, although you probably didn't fail. But, you know, if you've been, uh, done things illegally and thrown in jail and, uh, you know, been divorced 6 times and all these other problems that you read about, yeah, I would say that that isn't positive. So, uh, you know, don't— I would say don't try to overthink it. Uh, have a good life, earn enough money to enjoy the finer things in life without being ostentatious or trying to get into this flex mode, and enjoy your family and your kids and your grandkids if you have them. That's what life's all about.

Beautiful.

All right, I love it. That's fantastic. Go ahead, Adam.

Sam, you want to start us on a roundtable of final comments before we go?

Yeah, I'll take my final comment and then you can take yours and close it up for the day, Adam. So for me, you said it a couple of times. I mean, you said some really great stuff, by the way. The 5 Ms, like, that is going to be embedded in our whole process. I'll send a check in the mail. So thank you, Sam. Steve, for that. I definitely want to get to St. Louis soon to have lunch with you or something, if you're open to that, by the way.

Sure, absolutely.

Get there. And if you get to Minneapolis, please look up Adam and I because we'd love— I mean, we love this conversation today. But for me, you said something really important. And Adam says this all the time, and he says it when he posts about it, is hire the expert. You know, I'm wordsmithing here, but you know, you know, if you're a founder, or even me for instance, I'm trying, you know, Alicia and I are trying to build a business, and at some point you got to step aside and like find that person that can do TikTok better than you can, you know. And I'm talking to an individual, matter of fact she reached out to me this morning. I've been following her for a while, and I'm taking a meeting with her. She has like 115,000 followers, named Samantha. And, and I'm like, you know what, I'll talk to her, see what she really has to offer. Because I don't— I mean, be full transparent, I don't know what I'm doing. I, you know, post stuff out there and, uh, and some people like it, some people don't. Um, but the reason I'm posting out there is to be visible, because if you're visible, they know who you are. And if they know who you are, they start to trust you. That's been my strategy. Like be visible, put some good content out there, and if they see you, they trust you, therefore they'll talk to you. So it's like a billboard, right? And we do it, the show, to give back to our community. So for me is I think I need to look back and go find that, those, those pros. And I would tell anybody watching this or listening to this today is don't try to do it all yourself. Be smart enough If you're really going to scale a business, you got to get the expert. Like Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins used Steve Turner to get them where they're at today. They hired the professional to get them past that tipping point. So that's for me.

Cool. Yeah. I mean, I think I'll echo that for sure. And then it's just the overall, right, of like, Like I said, I've had brand owners that I've worked with that have done it really well, and I've had brand owners that very much have not. Like, telling a better story sounds like such a simple and generic phrase until you realize that whether, again, you know, it's Steve's point in finding advertising and community relationships and building brand identity, or just getting people to respond to you.

Yeah.

Telling a better story will solve both of those problems and more. And so, yeah, I would— for as much as this wasn't an episode about beverage maybe as directly as we normally talk about, I think a lot of what was discussed is really applicable. And so for anybody who either was listening or who listens in the future, like, I don't know, I think there's a lot of nuggets of wisdom to take away from this and apply both to the forward-facing kind of customer capturing side of business, but also just the internal, like, how do we frame our business and our structure and decide to do things such that it gets us to an effective and a pointed story that makes sense for people? So that's what I'll leave us with.

Awesome.

Steve, your closing thoughts?

Well, I would just pay attention to all this stuff, the 5 Ms, and think through it. And you're right about hiring people that are smarter than you in certain categories if you're going to scale. Otherwise, you're never going to scale. You know, I mean, General Motors just didn't have 2 people selling cars. I mean, you couldn't have grown just by having 2 people selling cars and, you know, thought, oh, well, we're making a good living. You know, this is great. No, it doesn't work like that. So Think that through. The other thing is AI, and we didn't talk much about this. I would say that AI search is growing and is hot. And so for most people, they need to do a search on themselves on AI and see what's coming out. And the reason is, is because AI search may package you differently than what you see on Google. And you can't Today, you can't just Google ad yourself on AI like you did on Google, you know, with the maps and all that stuff. I mean, AI is starting to sell ads and that's fine, but AI keeps asking you questions, so you have to be prepared. So we did an interesting thing on ourselves. I want— I was scared to death. I would put Solomon, you know, I wanted to see, you know, how we rated. So I put, uh, St. Louis public relations firms, and I didn't even know if we were going to show up at all. And so it said, well, here's a whole list, but what is it you're trying to accomplish and what's your budget? So AI asked that. Google can't ask that. So I typed it in and then they sent another list and guess who was number 1 on the list? We were, which was pretty cool. I had no idea. And so it says, you know, trusted in the business community for 3 decades and awards and all this stuff, a little 2-liner underneath that. So the PR, the marketing work that you do will show up in AI, but it's not you saying you're great, it's what other people are saying you're great. So it kind of ties— Yeah, it ties back into what we've been talking about all day on social media. How do we create a product or a service that will get not just us talking about it, but other people talking about it? saying how great it is. And that's where these citations with the media, the articles, and the podcasts and all these things come into play. And if you do it right, you're going to rank very high, and it kind of puts you in a whole different scope than just those people that continually throw thousands of dollars into Google Ads and hope to get some kind of response. Yeah.

All right, you want to wrap this up, Adam?

I will.

Uh, thank you everybody for joining us. Um, again, I I really enjoyed this one. Like I said, I think there's a lot of, uh, a lot of insights that could be spread across a lot of different parts of the business or just personal life. So I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you, Steve, for joining us. It was great to meet you.

Um, thank you.

Really enjoyed your insights and your history. Uh, Sam, it's always good to see you, brother. And with that, we'll let everybody go get to their Saturday, and we'll see you guys next week.

Hey, Stephen, don't hang up. Really important.

That's the other part. We, we gotta wait for it to download. So Sam's gonna kill the feed, but don't hang up.

Yeah, I'm gonna kill the feed, but don't hang up. See everybody.

Thanks everyone.