“Understanding the purpose of a pivot is key to becoming a visible force in the marketplace.” Kristin Marquet
About Our Guest:
Kristin Marquet has been a publicist and business owner for more than 14 years. As the owner and creative director of Marquet Media, LLC, Kristin oversees the daily operations of the business while executing client campaigns. Throughout her career as a publicist, Kristin has developed partnerships with leading brands and entrepreneurs such as well-known divorce coach, Jen Lawrence; celebrity chef, Melissa Eboli; psychotherapist and entrepreneur, Angela Ficken; and many more. She and her clients have been featured in Inc.com, Forbes.com, Fortune.com, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur.com, and so many more. With an academic background and advanced studies in data science, business, and public relations, Kristin has attended Boston University, New York University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kristin is also a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council.
Episode Summary:
This episode is powered by Move to Millions Live
You’ve heard me share before that what got you to six figures won’t get you to seven. One of the things that becomes essential when you’re on the Move to Millions® is visibility through leveraging the media and PR. I will go so far as to say that as you approach the million dollar mark, your strategic plan must include a visibility plan. Getting your business to the million-dollar mark is absolutely about being seen so you can be found by clients and team members to continue to expand your reach. In this episode, I sit down with Kristin Marquet, Million Dollar PR Strategist who shares so much about her own journey to and beyond the million-dollar mark. Kristin shows us how a foundation in understanding not only the fundamentals of a good PR strategy can propel any business and drive more revenue in the long run while also highlighting some of her most powerful life and business lessons. She shares how entrepreneurs should approach the goal of making a million and more, plus the right mindsets in reaching that goal so that you sustain and continue to surpass it. Grab your pen and paper and listen in to discover:
- Five prerequisites to seeking media coverage
- The #1 mistake business owners make that cost them an effective PR strategy
- The two questions you must ask yourself at the onset of developing a visibility plan
- And so much more
Powerful Kristin Quotes from The Episode:
- “You don’t need a revolutionary story it just has to be unique and newsworthy.”
- “If you aren’t going to become a doctor or lawyer become a business owner.”
- “Make sure you have something to contribute.”
- “Hunker down and focus on one thing.”
“Last Book Kristin Read: She Means Business: Turn Your Ideas Into Reality and Become a Wildly Successful Entrepreneur by Carrie Green
Favorite Quote: “You Can’t please everybody.” Adapted from John Lydgate
Tool Kristin Swears By: Focusing and getting ish done
How to Connect with Kristin:
- Website: www.femfounder.co
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/femfounder
- Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/kristinmarquet
- Facebook: facebook.com/femfounder
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/kristenmarquet
Incredible One Enterprises, LLC is not responsible for the content and information delivered during the podcast interview by any guest. As always, we suggest that you conduct your own due diligence regarding any proclamations by podcast guests. Incredible One Enterprises, LLC is providing the podcast for informational purposes only.
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Kristin Marquet: Million Dollar Visibility
I have an amazing treat for you. Our guest, you all are not ready. I don’t even think you’re ready, but I wanted to make sure that I brought you a conversation that will make the difference in you getting to the move to the million-dollar mark. We talk all the time about tactical strategy. We spend a lot of time talking about the mindset that’ll make the difference on your move to millions. In this episode, I am going to introduce you to what I think is the secret or the magic. The thing that you’re going to need to add to your business’ infrastructure if you have millions on your mind.
I am talking about PR, visibility, and the media. I have the best guest ever to introduce you to. Kristin Marquet has been a publicist and business owner for more than fourteen years. As the owner and Creative Director of Marquet Media, she oversees the business’s daily operations while executing client campaigns. Throughout her career as a publicist, she’s developed partnerships with leading brands and entrepreneurs.
She and her clients have been featured in Inc. Forbes, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, and many more. With an academic background and advanced data science, business, and public relations studies, Kristin has attended Boston University, New York University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is also a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council.
I need you to grab a pen and paper. Take the hand you write with and shake it profusely because Kristin drops some major media nuggets. You thought the only way to get the attention that you want in the media was to hire a publicist. While that may be true, there are some things that you can begin doing right now to move the needle on you making the move to millions and leveraging the power of media. Let’s jump into my conversation with Kristin.
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Kristin Marquet, I’m so excited to welcome you to the show. How are you?
I’m doing well. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
I’m excited too. As we were discussing before we started recording, this conversation has been in the making for a very long time, but I also think it’s a perfect time. Before we jump right in, take a quick moment and tell everybody who you are in your own words.
I have been in the PR industry now for many years. I started my first company in 2006, but prior to that, I had worked for one of the Big 4 management consulting firms. During the financial crisis, my entire office got downsized. At that point, I had to decide whether I was going to get a job or start a business. I started a business and the early days were crazy in terms of growth and not having minimal experience growing a team and then managing clients.
However, over the years, I’ve learned how to scale through controlled growth, work with the clients we love, and provide real results that will help the objective of why they hired us, whether it’s getting brand awareness, launching a new company, a product or a service or book, Software as a Service, or just trying to build an email list. I’ve learned a lot about how to position clients to get media coverage and then leverage that for larger opportunities. That’s where we are now. I have other peripheral businesses that support my agency, but I say 80% of my time is spent on marketing media.
You said a couple of things that I want to dig into a little bit. First is a crisis, downsize, start a business, or get a job. I think many of us have been there. I’ve had similar instances where I’m like, “What am I going to do?” You always bet on yourself. It sounds like you bet on yourself. How did you choose PR? Where did that come from?
When I was working in consulting, I had a couple of freelance digital marketing clients. One of my larger freelance clients had asked if I would be interested in doing some publicity for them. I didn’t have a strong understanding of what publicity entailed because of my background. I went to an engineering college and at that point, I had received my first master’s degree in finance. I was approaching digital marketing more from an analytics, and data science approach, not so much from the creative, strategic side.
When this client asked me if I wanted to embark upon this publicity campaign as a test for myself and a test for them, I thought, “This is a good way for me to gauge whether this is something that I could do long-term if I wanted to pivot from consulting to PR.” From that first campaign, I learned that this was what I was good at and I could deliver true value to clients. Before I had gotten laid off or during the stages, I should say, I weighed what I should do. “Should I look for a job or should I try and take this freelance work that I had and scale it up to an agency?”
I did the latter and I’ve been extremely successful doing so. I’m very grateful for that. There were a lot of growing pains in learning the nuances of the way that the media worked. I didn’t have a journalism or a PR background. I dove into this head first and learned in the trenches. It was tough. I learned a lot of valuable lessons and I’m happy to share all of those with you.
I love all of that because, similarly, our business is a few years old. Our first years were terrible. Our OG readers have read these stories a million times. Ramen noodles, peanut butter and jelly, bankruptcy, and having to go back to work because I didn’t know what I was doing when it came to business. What it sounds like you did that, I did that is important for our readers before we get into the crux of what we’re talking about now for them to understand is you made a decision.
This is because there’s so much power in deciding. In the trenches, the decision itself creates an environment for the things you need to learn and process to come into your life experience because you’ve decided. What a perfect time for us to have this conversation at the top of the new year when people decide. They’re deciding that this is the year their business is going to make a move to millions.
They’re deciding to consider the feasibility of figuring out how to raise their voice and amplify their message so that they get in front of more people, which will ultimately lead to scaling and scaling with controlled growth, which I can 100% get around. I don’t like the quick and fast because it’s seldom sustainable, but creating an environment where that is what people get to experience.
I’m excited because I think we will get to talk about what we want to talk about. However, I want to hear some of your success clues over the years of coming into an industry because I think that there are a lot of people that are like you were back in ’06 and ’07 that had an opportunity to do something they’ve never done.
Their education and background didn’t support the facilitation and the feasibility of doing that work, but they made that decision and they went all in. Some years later, here you are, this massive success having an agency over the seven-figure mark ancillary businesses all feeding into the work that it is that you do. I’m going to ask you a question that might be tough for you. If you had to summarize the last many years into two to three success clues that you would share with someone who wants to embark on a journey to get their own business to the million-dollar mark this year, what would you say to them?
Hunker down. It’s one thing. Forget about all the noise. Forget about all the BS. Focus on one thing. Pick 2 or 3 niches that are not completely dominated and want your offering. Figure it out. Don’t try to compete on price, which is a subset of success clue number two. Number three, you need to surround yourself with the right people. You need to learn from others who have done it. I didn’t do that. I learned everything on my own. I had the support of my then-boyfriend and now husband. I had the support of my parents.
Focus on one thing. Pick two or three niches that are not completely dominated and actually want what you have to offer.
They were all in on me starting this business even though I had student loan debt. I was moving into the apartment with my boyfriend. I didn’t have a lot of savings, but you have to have people that you can learn. That’s one of the things that I wish I would’ve had. I learned day-to-day on my own and to be frank, it sucked because I had nobody to go to. I had no sounding boards. Over the course of time, I made friends with other agency owners and I learned we were all facing the same battles and challenges. It was nice to have a group of people that I can bounce ideas off of but that wasn’t until year five. For the first four years, I was on my own.
It is so important and I want to underscore it because I think that inside this coaching, development, and mentoring space, there’s a lot of good, but there’s also a lot of smoke and mirrors. There are a lot of people who have burned or tainted the experience for entrepreneurs who, like us back then, just want to learn how to navigate because it’s one thing to have even been in an entrepreneurial family and I don’t know if that’s your story, but Kristin, it is not mine.
My dad worked a job every day. When I told him I was going to quit my good vice president job and sell Mary Kay cosmetics at that time, he thought I was smoking crack. He’s like, “Why in the world would you do such a thing?” I leave Mary Kay to start the business. I struggle in the business. I have to go back to work. I got a lot of “I told you so’s” and then when I finally figured this thing out, I also got a lot of “You did it.” All that time in between because, similar to you in my early years, I thought I could research my way to seven figures.
It doesn’t happen. No. You have to have an infrastructure of people that have done it to help you get to that point. There were a lot of growing pains throughout the years. I did great. Both my parents were business owners. My mom is in the restaurant business. My father was in the jewelry business, retail, and design. I was lucky to grow up with encouragement. If you aren’t going to become a doctor or a lawyer, then you should become a business owner.
In my first job out of college, when I worked in consulting, my father was the opposite of yours. He was, “I don’t understand why you’re going to take this six-figure job when you have all the opportunity in the world to start any type of business or I could have taken over his,” which I didn’t want to do. Even though I did go to jewelry school here in New York, it wasn’t what I loved. Even though I had grown up in the industry and pretty much had access to whatever I wanted to do. If I wanted to pursue design and retail and manufacturing, it wasn’t mine.
I wrote that quote down. “If you aren’t going to be a doctor or a lawyer, become a business owner.” That’s a total t-shirt. It was so good. I love that you even had the experience of watching your parents running their respective businesses to draw from as you made this decision after being laid off to come into the world of PR. Let’s talk about that. When we first started our conversation, I said to you that I want to explore how entrepreneurs can leverage the visibility that the media will give them in order to scale their businesses. I know for me and I even say this all the time, Kristin, you can oops your way to six figures. You can do almost everything wrong.
You still had $100,000.
You got to do more things right to hit seven and one of those things is understanding the role that the media and PR play in getting your business to the next level. Many years in a prestigious agency and in a lot of ways, working with some amazing clients in lots of different sectors. Let’s overview it first. The people reading who are on the path to getting their business to the million-dollar mark, why do they need to start paying attention to what the media can do and how it can help them now?
First, it’s getting that third-party endorsement. Think about if you read a review about a new fashion designer or a restaurant in the New York Times written by the editorial team. That is going to hold much more credibility and weight overseeing an advertisement. That’s one thing. You’re getting that third-party endorsement, which builds instant credibility with potential customers and existing customers.
The other thing is when you get media coverage, you can pretty much have the pick of the litter in terms of recruiting talent. If you get featured in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, Inc., or Entrepreneur, you are going to attract some of the best talents. In terms of hiring and compensation and structuring all that, it’s a whole other conversation. As I said, getting featured in one of those business media could be a game changer in terms of team and talent.
The other thing is getting quoted or your product featured in a roundup or even on local television in your market or even on a podcast, which can open a realm of possibilities and doors for your SEO strategy. Those backlinks are going to help make your website more credible therefore ranking higher on Google. Publicity, even though it shouldn’t be a conduit to drive sales, could be an ancillary strategy that can help support a larger sales strategy, but there are so many benefits in terms of thought leadership and building your visibility in targeted trade media or television media. I can talk ad nauseam about the benefits that publicity can have on even the smallest business owner’s bottom line.
Publicity should not be a conduit to drive sales, but it could be an ancillary strategy that can support a larger sales strategy.
I love that you said that specifically about media not being a direct conduit to a sale but complementing and supplementing the sales cycle and the sales journey. This is because I think a lot of people also misconstrue, and I always talk about this all the time as it pertains to marketing as a whole, Kristin. Marketing is not a guarantee for sales. It helps to make sales possible, but it is not an apples-to-apples comparison or, “I put $1 here, I should get $20 to pop out. It doesn’t work that way.
PR and visibility are the same things, but the right PR, message, and story positioned well will create that credibility that you spoke about, which makes me aware that you even exist with nearly 8 billion people in the world. There are a lot of people we’ve never heard of that could probably solve the problems that we have day in and day out.
Being featured and, if you want, we can get into the tiers of media because there are tiers, but being featured in media at every tier creates some additional credibility so that now I have an awareness of you. Once I have an awareness of you, you have an opportunity to get me to engage with you. Once I’ve engaged with you, we can deepen that connection to the point where I could then end up converting with you. It’s part of the journey and the important thing that I want to make sure that we drive home to the readers before we get into some of the tactical things we should be doing in order to get media attention is if you’re making the decision that PR as part of your strategy, think of it as a long-term strategy and not an absolutely short-term.
The best way to say that, and I say this to my client’s potential clients. You have to be in this for the long haul and publicity is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. If you’re looking to get short-term coverage, that’s fine, but you have to have something on the backend and you also have to have your funnel in place so that you can convert whatever it is your objective is. That’s what it comes down to. Years ago, when I first started in the industry, I worked with a fashion designer and we got her shirt on Oprah and Ward in one of the December issues of the print magazine. She sold ten because she didn’t have her backend in place.
I want to pause there for a second because I think so many people are getting media attention, but as you said, they don’t have the opt-in page set up. When you get that lower third from the media, you got to be strategic in where you send people. You don’t have to use your website. You can send them to a landing page that starts their journey with you. If you’re going to have media exposure, what are some of the other things you need to have in place on the backend besides the funnel? What are some of the other things you should have?
Before you even embark upon any PR campaign or journey, you need to have your objective. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to get awareness because you’re making a new hire? Are you launching a new product? Are you trying to get on local television because you wrote a book? Are you trying to become an Amazon bestseller? You need to have a very clear and finite idea of what it is that you want to achieve. Once you have your objective set up, you can create your PR strategy based on whatever you’re trying to achieve.
From there, once you have outlined all the different types of media that you want to target with the messaging and that you have the right contacts and you have the timeline and your measurement and monitoring measurement tools set up, from there you can have your backend. You can have your landing page and lead magnet, whether you have an email, webinar, or masterclass funnel. From there, ultimately, move them to the bottom that they buy from you, but again, the publicity point is only one point of contact in a larger sales funnel.
I think that’s so important. You mentioned monitoring and measuring tools. Can you explore that a little?
In this day and age, there are so many of them that are free or low-cost. Something as simple as Google alerts when something runs or whenever you’re mentioned in the media. Also, Google News. From there, you can use something like Mention.net to gauge the sentiment, the positioning, and where you rank in terms of your competitors. I think that’s $20 a month or something. Those are only two examples of two tools that you can use to monitor and measure for pretty much nothing.
I’ve decided I want to seek out media coverage. My business is growing. We’re solving real problems. We’re getting major success with our clients. I get clear about what I want my objective to be. I start to work on my PR strategy. As a part of that, I identify the media outlet sources that I think are going to be best for me to position myself in front of. I started working on my messaging and getting clear about the story from a few different angles based on the media outlet in order to seek out their attention.
I then put everything in place so that if I am selected to participate and get featured in any of those sources. Everything is set up to start the customer’s journey toward potentially becoming a client. I’m not talking about me, Darnyelle, I’m talking about me, the six figures, service-based entrepreneurs out in the world that all want to make the move to millions.
When I think about my story and who I am, there’s nothing special about it. I didn’t grow up in poverty. I wasn’t a teenage mom. My parents didn’t go to jail when I was little. I didn’t know Bernie Madoff personally. When I don’t think I have a story that is going to be resonant and relevant to the media, what in the devil do I do that my voice becomes one that gets amplified through the use of media and PR? I know this is part of the conversation you’ve been waiting for. I see you’re getting yourself ready to jump right in there.
This is something that I hear time and again. One of my side businesses is FemFounder. We have a PR course. This is something that first-time entrepreneurs or newbies always ask. You don’t have to have something innovative or revolutionary. You only have to have something a little unique. It could be a framework. It could be something as simple as launching a new mascara, but there needs to be a newsworthy component. Generally, newsworthy, anything that falls under that topic can be opening a new office, making a new hire, launching a new product, writing a book, or launching a podcast or a video cast. It’s something that you want to make an announcement about. That’s one piece.
The other piece is defining your credibility markers. It could be anything from your education, your work experience, or a personal transformation that would make an editor or television producer want to talk to you over everybody else out there. If you were somebody that lost 150 pounds, that’s enough as a credibility marker.
If you’re an MD that does cosmetic surgery that does reality stars cosmetic procedures, you have the academic and actual professional experience to talk about weight loss. They’re two very different approaches to the same subject. What it comes down to are those two things. What makes you credible and what makes you newsworthy?
What makes you credible? I hope you guys are taking notes and what makes you newsworthy. That’s so good because I feel like so many people with our clients, we introduce the need for starting to think about visibility and PR strategies as they’re trying to get the business to the seven-finger mark. I think so many people don’t realize that, in a lot of ways, they make them newsworthy. They haven’t figured out how to position the story such that it’s suspended.
What would you say is the role that current events play in you becoming newsworthy? Should we be seeking out spark events? Should we be seeking out those events that are happening in the world that spark a reason for you to be mentioned in the media? Should we just be looking for the things about ourselves that are constantly incredible and constantly presenting that? Should we be doing both?
You should be doing both. Particularly, if somebody is an expert on the royal family, then they should leverage what’s happening with Harry and Megan now in his new book. If somebody’s a service provider and they’re going to be launching a seasonal product, then they should tap into the seasonality of whatever it is when they’re going to be launching. I do think that piggybacking off current events can open up doors, especially for stuff that’s breaking news or something seasonal but you shouldn’t rely on that year-round.
I remember when the government was shut down. I was taking my dad to dialysis and they took him back. I’m sitting in the waiting room. There was me and one other gentleman in there and Anderson Cooper says, “It’s day nine of the government shut down.” Kristin, I had no idea that the government was shut down. I had no clue. I’m the most embarrassed to even tell you this, but I had no clue. Immediately after that, I was like, “I missed something major.”
At that particular point in time, I was still working with people that were at startups and I’m like, “I could have been everywhere talking about five things to consider now if you’re a government worker to start your own business. I totally missed it. Ever since then, now I still don’t watch the news because the media in a lot of ways is designed to wreak fear and havoc in your life.
At least I have the apps, so I get the highlights so I know what’s going on so that I never miss a moment but I’m with you. I’m always looking for different places to present my story instead of having to wait for something to happen. It’s the same as if you’re a speaker and you want to get booked to be the keynote speaker at every event that you possibly can. I think that’s every keynote speaker’s strength. While you’re waiting for people to put you on their stage, you can create your own stage.
Always look for different places to present your story. Don’t just wait for something to happen.
That’s always been my approach. How can I highlight the things that we’re doing? For instance, something that we did create a spark that we’re now still riding. When the American Express’ annual report on women-owned businesses came out, it was noted in there that Black women-owned businesses, on average, generate $28,000 a year. Here’s the thing. I’ve got a mastermind with 50 women in it who all do $28,000 in a month, a week, a day, or an hour.
We’re defying the statistic and being able to leverage that story and that positioning. I got a lot of media coverage around that report coming out. I feel like what I’m hearing you say between it and I want to clarify if you have anything that you want to add to it. As business owners, we have to always be looking for those things about us that are common to us.
This is because you get to the point where that’s a thing. If you’re helping people to get to seven figures like we are, $28,000 in a day is completely possible. It’s not a deal. Also, because it’s so commonplace, we sometimes negate how much of a deal that makes to other people. Some of the common things that you are doing are newsworthy. At least that’s what I feel like I’m hearing you say. When I look at the words that you’re saying, it extrapolates it. Would you agree?
I do. In 2022, little old me was in top-tier media over 200 times, from Today.com, Forbes, Inc., and Entrepreneur. You name it, I’ve been in it. It’s because I always have something else to contribute. I talk about my journey of infertility and now embarking upon surrogacy, which doesn’t have anything to do with my business. I’ve talked to the Business Insider and the New York Times and all those about it. I also talk about women’s interest in media. I talk about how I’m a runner at 43. I am in better shape now than I was in high school. I was an athlete in high school and a cheerleader.
I was a cheerleader too.
As long as you constantly have a bank of ideas you can talk about, you can pitch different media about it. It doesn’t have to be business media. It could be women’s interest. It could be luxury living. It could be travel, food, wine, family, or parenting. I have a client of mine who is based in Boston. She is in the mental health realm, also. She sees patients one to one, but I got her in Architectural Digest talking about her new house and all of the design that she did and all this. As long as you’re creative and you feel comfortable talking about these different things, passions, hobbies, and life experiences like me with surrogacy, IVF, and all this.
We could have a whole conversation about that because I’ve had my own IVF journey and I’m still sitting. I’m 47. We’ve been trying for four years. I got married late, so I was a late bloomer. I got married five days before my 42nd birthday. We made a decision to wait a year. If I had it to do all over again, we would not have waited, but we made a decision to wait a year. I didn’t know it was going to be hard. I learned in this journey that you could get pregnant only 5 or 6 days a month.
Let me tell you, Kristin, I thought we would just do it and it would happen. I had no idea until we went through this process. I had five rounds up of IVF and still not having a baby. I’m at that critical junction. I need to make a decision and I’m not decided. Do we want to do an egg donor? Do we want to do surrogacy? Both of them are on the table. I have time to decide because I can do surrogacy until whatever. I can do egg donor until I’m 50.
I can’t believe we’re talking about this now, but at the same time, I’m excited too. I remember when we first started and I wasn’t getting pregnant. I had never been as regular as I am in my life. I called the first fertility clinic and because I was 42, they wouldn’t even take us unless we wanted to do donor eggs. I remember crying profusely like someone had kicked me in the gut with spiked stilettos on. My husband came in and he was, “What is going on?”
In between the tears, I’m telling him. We ended up calling another fertility clinic and they were like, “No. We’re not going to make that decision before we take you through all the tests.” When I started going through all of the tests, my numbers were like I was 37. We went through the process. We tried. Egg quality was always the challenge. Even though we had embryos that were rated A or B, they didn’t end up entering into a child or whatever.
I did a docuseries where I talked about our journey of infertility. I realized this was the whole point that I was trying to make by telling that little background story. I 100% agree with you that we don’t have to only be in the media for the business and the work that it is that we do. This is because the more we can appear human, I think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Every single person is looking for a place where they belong.
When I did that docuseries, even though it was a little intrusive and my own hand, it was intrusive. The number of women who slid into my DMs or sent me emails to tell me that they had been experiencing infertility as well warmed my heart. It gave me a new community and I wasn’t even thinking about what it would do for my business, but I can also tell you that I’ve gained clients from it. That is because I was a human being, having a human experience that also happens to be this expert and thought leader that could help some of these other people that have been experiencing the same thing.
I wanted to co-sign on that. Anything goes or any story that’s relevant. You said, “Keep a bank of ideas about the things that are happening in your life. It will put you in a position to pitch yourself to different media outlets.” That, right there, if you ask me, was worth the price of taking the time to read this episode because I feel like it will liberate so many people who think that they have to focus on their business and their unique mechanism and that they can’t talk about their life.
I think it just creates a way to make you human. At the end of the day, everybody who’s making an investment decision as an individual is making an investment decision as an individual. Even if you’re some big brand name, it still boils down to the story of the founder who started that particular company and how it resonates in all of that.
I think that is so powerful and I’m excited for our readers who now have an opportunity to create a plethora of new ideas that they could potentially pitch themselves to the media. Also, open themselves up to so many other outlets that aren’t Forbes and Entrepreneur. It will still yield the same result if they do what you said earlier, get all of their stuff in place, and have that backend funnel.
I love that because I feel like so many of us don’t realize that every area of our life has the potential to be newsworthy. I think that’s amazing because you’re shifting paradigms and creating an environment for people to look at themselves and what’s happening inside of their story differently, which I think is pretty powerful.
Every moment of our lives is changed and as long as you keep a record of what’s happening. You end up leveraging it for a story or podcast like I did here.
I think this conversation is so important because I think the media is such an anomaly to so many people.
They don’t understand how it works. They think that they have to spend $10,000 or $15,000 a month hiring a firm when that’s not the case. They could do it themselves, but it does take time. It does take time commitment and it takes to follow up and persistence, like doing anything else that’s worthwhile.
I think a lot of people are going to realize that they can. Before we round out the interview, you’ve already given so many amazing tips about what business owners can begin to do now to get things in place and to create an opportunity to pitch themselves to media outlets. Is there anything else you can think of that would be important for our readers to know as they embark on a journey to leverage the media more to get some additional visibility for their companies?
Yeah. Never blanket pitch or mass pitch. Individual pitches and one-to-one quality matter. Quantity doesn’t. I tell my clients this from the inception of any campaign. I’d rather you have fifteen amazing stories that move the needle for your business over the course of six months instead of having 30 crappy ones that don’t do anything. Focus on quality. Make sure that your pitches are short and to the point, 150 words or fewer. That’s generally what I strive for. Don’t give up.
You pitch one person and you don’t hear back. You follow up two weeks later you still don’t hear back. Follow up two weeks later. If you still don’t hear back, then leave that person alone and move on to the next person in the newsroom who might be interested in covering your story. You can find the right people on Twitter. That’s the great thing about Twitter. A lot of journalists are on there and it’s easy to find their contact information.
That’s a good little tip. With these last few tips, I had to pull out my iPad and start writing again, 250 words or less for your pitches. Lined or bulk pitch and leverage Twitter to meet the journalist. That’s what I love about social media. It removes me and every barrier. Everybody is accessible now because of social media. If you want to leverage PR to move your business forward, there’s no excuse for you not to do.
Before I let you go, I always like to ask my three questions at the end just to round out the conversation. Sometimes we don’t ever talk about business. We had a nice little conversation that was holistic. We got to talk about a little bit of everything, which I love, but I always like to ground the interview in these closing questions. My first question is always, what is either the last book or one book that you’ve read that has made a difference in your own journey that you would refer to someone else if they asked?
She Means Business by Carrie Green. She is the founder of the Female Entrepreneur Association. That book gave a lot of very insightful information about Carrie’s journey, but also shared a lot of actionable tips that people in our space can follow. That’s one book I enjoyed reading and go back to every now and again.
What’s one quote that keeps you motivated as you go through the ebbs and flows and highs and lows that go along with businesses at the million and multimillion-dollar mark?
You can’t please everybody and who cares what other people think? At the end of the day, you got to do what’s right for you. Those two go hand-in-hand.
I always say what you think of me is none of my business. I don’t need to be concerned about what you think of me. Last but certainly not least, what is one tool that has been instrumental in your own move to and beyond the million-dollar mark?
I wouldn’t say it’s a tool. I would say it’s more of a mindset and it’s hunkering down, focusing, and getting things done. That’s what it comes down to. For me, it is concentration, focus, and tuning out all the noise.
To move beyond the million-dollar mark, just hunker down, focus, and get things done.
I would say that’s a tool. A tool, by definition, is anything that helps you to accomplish something. Focus helps you. I agree with that too. Especially to get to the million-dollar mark, people think that you got to be doing all the things. What you need to do is drill down on one thing, refine it, and amplify it. If you keep refining and amplifying, you’ll find yourself on the move to millions so much faster.
Forget about all the other stuff and try not to get too caught up in the shiny object syndrome because that’s a detriment.
Kristin, this has been awesome. This has been so amazing. I love your energy. I love everything about what we’ve had an opportunity to talk about. I’m so excited about your journey, all of the companies you run, and how you’re supporting those underrepresented voices and women, especially to get out there, do amazing work, and love every minute of it. Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I would say, all of my clients right now except for one, are female-based, which is quite amazing working with female founders because I get them. It’s a different approach than working with a male founder.
It is. I’m going to leave it right there because that’ll send us into a conversation that’ll take us into a whole other episode.
Thank you so much for having me. This was a lot of fun. I enjoyed our time together.
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Are you feeling me? Wasn’t it good? There were many amazing nuggets that were dropped. We also had that little sidebar talking about infertility. That was a bonus for you, but I loved so many things about this conversation with Kristin, specifically around how to leverage your story and how all of your stories are relevant. Getting your business media attention could move the needle.
We talked about so many things. There were so many nuggets towards the end that I want to pull on for you. Two questions to ask yourself. What makes me credible and what makes me newsworthy? Always make sure that you are writing down the things happening in your life that will give you something to contribute to the media. I love when she said to keep a bank of ideas so that you can pitch yourself to different media outlets instead of only focusing on business outlets.
If you build a new house, you might get into Architecture Digest. All of that can get us back to your business. She said, “Once you create an environment where you start with an objective, create a strategy for your PR based on that and what you’re trying to achieve, craft your message, and then set up the backend funnel.” All of these things will get you more media attention. The media can be an important part of your overarching marketing strategy to make the move to millions. I’m excited for you. I know you’ll come back to this episode several times to write down all of these nuggets and leverage them in order to use the media. I can’t wait to hear how the media makes a difference in your move to millions. I’ll see you guys next time. Take care.
