The 6-Step PR Process to Use to Get Major Media Coverage for Your Business on a Predictable Ongoing Basis! – with Conrad Egusa

OWEN: My guest today, his name is Conrad Egusa and he is the founder of Publicize. Conrad, welcome to the show.

CONRAD: Thank you so much for having me Owen.

OWEN: So before we get started one of the things I want to do is let the listeners know what exactly they will be expecting to discover in this interview. So let’s talk about give them some kind of a preview into the 6 steps they’ll be discovering during this interview.

CONRAD: Yeah. I think the biggest thing is that there’s so many entrepreneurs that I know who are trying to feature on these top public publications. So it could be Time Magazine, or Wall Street Journal, or TechCrunch if they’re tech-related. And I felt that there are all these misconceptions. For example, that they need to be friends with the journalist to get feature, that they need to hire this really expensive firm. And I’ve tested this over and over again and found that if you follow the right process, even if you’re a 21-year old based on Australia who doesn’t know anyone, or if you’re a 65-year old in Chicago that has no connection to the press you can get the media coverage you’re looking for if you follow the right method. So, that’s really what I try to talk about that I hope it’s of help.

OWEN: So, basically, I guess I can lay it out for the listeners. So you’re going to teach them how to decide the right, specific story to pitch to the media.

CONRAD: Absolutely.

OWEN: You’re going to show them how to format the press release in a way that actually gets the attention of the people they reach out to the journalist. And how to create the email, and how to use the strategy of sharing an exclusive. And how to promote the exclusive after it’s been featured on a big site, and how to repeat the process over again.

CONRAD: Absolutely.

OWEN: Now that we’ve given them kind of like the preview of what they’re going to learn let’s talk about some mind-blowing results that you and your clients might have gotten from using the process that you’re going to talk about.

CONRAD: Yeah. So we’ve had clients, for example a recent one [Unintelligible 00:01:51] business insider of VentureBeat, they’re essentially on every of the largest Wall Street Journal– if you probably named the top 12 largest technology publications I think we’d be on every one, except the New York Times.

OWEN: What company was that? Is that the Safely file–

CONRAD: No, it was called bop.fm

OWEN: Okay.

CONRAD: But I actually think the most successful stories we’ve had were the companies that you would never expect to get any result whatsoever. So one could Safely [Unintelligible 00:02:23] as an example. It was founded by a retired insurance executive. And if you visit [Unintelligible 00:02:27].com you’d say there’s no way that this would be featured on these top publications. I think we got them on the [Unintelligible 00:02:33] VentureBeat, the Pandora Daily, it was kind of across the board, some really good coverage. So it’s always those that I think I’d take the most satisfaction from like the people, the companies that are like this– They think there’s no chance and you’re able to get that.

OWEN: Yeah. And so why is the old way of trying to get press coverage for your business not working?

CONRAD: Well, I would say that historically there really hasn’t been an old way. And to best explain it. So, most pure advice comes from New York Times best-selling authors, very successful entrepreneurs. So, it kind of goes like, “Hey, if you want to get on the Wall Street Journal it’s easy. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call your friend who’s a journalist there and they’ll come for you. But when you think about it, for most entrepreneurs just starting out. And let’s say that I [Unintelligible 00:03:21] 25,000 from family friends and I just graduated from university, I don’t know anyone. My last name isn’t Rockefeller or Kennedy. I don’t have these media connections. But there historically hasn’t been any information there. So a lot of these tragedies that we’re introducing is like– The advice I give isn’t advice for like a best-selling author like Tim Ferriss, because he’s going to get the media access he wants regardless. But it’s rather for the 19-year old who’s developing an app in his basement and wants to get on TechCrunch but doesn’t know anyone there. That’s really what the advice is for.

OWEN: And just so I think in pre-interview also you mentioned some of the things that people always do in the past is they just go and hire expensive PR agencies bringing them a retainer like 10,000 or whatever a month. But what you’re saying in terms of your advice, they wouldn’t even have to do anything like that.

CONRAD: Absolutely. That’s the goal. Every person has to build it themselves to get this media coverage.

OWEN: Okay. So let’s jump right into talking about each of the steps. And just before we even get started I want to make sure that you understand for the listeners, most likely our listeners they’re not necessarily owners of startup per se, they most likely own established businesses. And they come in to SweetProcess to learn how to systematize their business. But one of the things we do is find out processes that already work in other fields. And bring it to them so that they can use it in their business. In this case now is how to get PR for their established businesses.

CONRAD: I was going to say, I think the great thing about media is that everything that I recommend now is just as applicable to technology startups as it is across any industry. And I think the interesting thing about media is that– for example, I think all companies would benefit, or the high majority from social media or SEO. But I think the thing about PR and the media is that people inherently understand that the media is important. From the time you’re a few years old, you’re reading a newspaper. If you’re not reading a physical newspaper you’re doing it on your iPad. And so, I think people regardless of the industry can use this advice and it would be really applicable for them.

OWEN: Okay, so jumping right in we say, step 1, deciding one what specific story to pitch to the media. So let’s talk about that.

CONRAD: Yeah. I learned this when I wrote for a publication called VentureBeat in New York. And a lot of my friends would come to me and say, “Conrad, can you please write about my company?” And I would say, “I’d love to. What do you have to announce?” And he would say, “We don’t have anything to announce,” And I would say, “Well, if you don’t have anything to announce I can’t write about it even if you’re my friend, because there’s no news, right?” So a lot of people they say like, “I don’t understand, what is there to announce?” And most companies across the board usually go the following way. Their first announcement is they’re launching their company for the first time. Usually several months later they might hit a milestone. So could be something like 100,000 revenue, it could be something like 10,000 new users, it’s an application, it could be many different things. Many times, let’s say 3 to 6 months later, they might raise some type of funding. This is more for technology startups but it could be across the board. Someone raised 50,000 or 100,000 in funding. Let’s say 6 months later they released some type of mobile app for their company, some type of new product, a new feature. Each of these are specific announcements. So when you go for example to Time or even a local news publication, your goal it’s really important when you email them not to say, “Would you be interested in covering my company?” rather than “Would you be interested in covering my specific announcement, because the announcement is what makes the news.

OWEN: Okay. So I get how it seems easier on the side of being a startup company to say– a startup technology firm, they want to make a story about the launch of the startup or a story about the fundraising or a story about product launches. But I’m also trying to figure out, from the standpoint of maybe already established small to medium-sized business, what kind of things are they–

CONRAD: So startups in general they tend to be very tech-focused, there’s a lot of software, it’s product-oriented. So a company I founded called Publicize. So that at its heart is a services company, right? It’s very similar, many other services come from. But if you Google search Publicize, I think this within that past 2 weeks we got featured on TechCrunch, we got featured on Inc. Magazine, The Next Web, and this will show up if you search my name. And the reason why I mentioned it is that Publicize in that regard isn’t like this startup. So, even people with more traditional businesses, I think if you position it the right way, which kind of leads into the second segment of how you should, I think you can get the results you’re looking for and you shouldn’t kind of limit yourself like that. Because it would’ve been very easy for me to be like, “Hey, Publicize isn’t a startup, I’m not going to get it on TechCrunch.” But there’s some many examples of the counterpoint to that.

OWEN: And you also mentioned, like when you were pitching the story, not only does it have to be news, but you have to piggyback it on something more on a larger trend, because journalists want to cover businesses that change the world.

CONRAD: Yeah. So, what I was mentioning is most people, I think the biggest mistake they make is they take their company and they say like, they talk about what it is today. And I can visit a website and what it is today, and that’s not particularly interesting. But what is really interesting is, do you know when you’re about to, like you’re in the gym or you’re about to go to bed and you’re like daydreaming about how big your company’s going to become right? You’re like, this is going to become a hundred plus person company in 2 years, and what an impact it’s going to make. So that’s what you should focus on in your announcement and your press release and everything. Because they really want to see about where is Owen, or whatever entrepreneur are going to take the company. And I’ll give you another example of a company that is a more traditional company. So, I founded another company called Espacio. It’s a co-working space located in South America. I’m actually here right now. So, if you think about a co-working space, those open like every week throughout the world, right? It doesn’t matter if it’s in Maryland or California, and that’s not that interesting. But we go this co-working space which is really real estate essentially, on BBC, the Financial Times, TechCrunch again. A kind of countless others. And the reason why was that if I email a journalist and just said, “I’m opening this co-working space. It has 35 spaces. This is the price.” They’d be like, “Well, that’s nice but that isn’t interesting.” But what I did say was, “People aren’t going to care about that.” But the story that if this we’re opening this co-working space to turn this city into the Silicon Valley of Latin America. So that was kind of the bigger vision of the company. And that is the bigger vision of the company. But I mentioned that because primarily, just like you mentioned, a lot of the people listening are like, “Hey, I don’t have a startup.” Or like, “I own a co-working space that’s real estate. That’s not a startup either.” If I can get that on BBC that means there’s no reason why other people can’t get their publications– I don’t think that their company’s on these same sites.

OWEN: So the big take away from step number 1 is getting the story, it has to be real news. But also tying it to a bigger trend that the gets the attention of the press. So the next step you said, format the announcement into a press release. Let’s talk about that.

CONRAD: Yeah. So the press release, people look at it as this really intimidating document. It’s information format in a specific way that journalists are used to reading. And the reason why is they’re basically going to take this information and turn it into an article basically. And it’s format in a really specific way. And the reason why that’s important is a lot of times when people– the most important thing about the press release is that the most interesting information is all put in the very top. Because people kind of get to the very bottom of the page, by the time they read the first 2 lines they’re going to know whether they want to write about the story or not. So, a lot of the times I know a lot of people who they put the most interesting information at the very bottom. So as an example there’s this company we’re helping. And i remember at the very end of their call they said, “I don’t know if it really matters but the 2 founders were both Stanford PhD’s.” And they were thinking about adding that at the very bottom. And I was like, “No, you actually have to lead with that because that’s the most interesting–”

OWEN: Yeah.

CONRAD: So, the biggest thing with the press release is that there’s usually 1 or 2 points– it’s really important that every founder have 1 to 2 points of social proof to differentiate themselves. And it’s really only important 1 or 2 points. And this is why things like– maybe some of them work for an earlier company, Goldman Sachs, Facebook, whatever it may be. They went through a certain university or they received an award. Or something that stands out about them. So the company is [Unintelligible 00:12:46] the reason why they did so well was that we led with, “Hey, this is a 65-year old entrepreneur.” That made the story really interesting. So, a lot of the people in the email journalist, they say something like, “Hi, my name is John. I’m a bootstrap entrepreneur.” The problem with it, if you’re reading this as a journalist, because I was a journalist before I could kind of give my opinion. It’s like, “Well, there are 50 million other bootstrap entrepreneurs in the U.S.” That’s not interesting as oppose to someone said, “I’m an ex-Googler.” Someone we’re helping right now, they were Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. If they said, “Hi, my name is John. I’m a former Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and I’m about to launch a venture.” It’s like I’m going to re-address the email because they led with that social proof. And a lot of people, they take the most interesting things about them and at the very bottom it says something like, “Oh, and by the way, I’m an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.” But most of the people don’t let me get the chance to read it because it’s so far to the bottom.

OWEN: So what they take away from that is they can always find online how to write in terms of the actual syntax or structure of the press release. But the main take away is the most important thing is the social proof the most interesting items that will get people’s attention should be at the very beginning of the press release itself. And so the next thing you also mentioned is syndicating the press release once it’s been created. Can you talk about some ways that syndicate them?

CONRAD: Yeah. So the syndicate press release, there are a number of syndication sites. So probably the most well-known, something like a PR web or business wire usually would pay anywhere from $100 to probably $500 to $1,000. And it just syndicates through your press release online. And the idea traditionally is that a lot of journalists would see it and they’d pick up on the story. So the reality of it is that I don’t know of any journalist from a leading publication that’s ever said something like, “Oh, I saw this press release on Business news wire today, I want to write a story about it.” But today I think news wires are used more as only for SEO, with things like search to make sure. And I would say people should kind of try to calculate a return on investment. So it might make sense to pay $100 to PR Web to kind of syndicate a press release. But just know that you’re not going to get a lot of views for it but the primary purpose would be for something like search or SEO. And as an example, the only problem I have with syndication sites is that a lot of people– if they use PR web let’s say they get their press release on Yahoo Finance, they would say something like, “Oh, we got on Yahoo Finance.” So, there’s kind of the assumption that that’s at the front page of Yahoo Finance and it’s getting thousands of views every few hours. But the reality is that, that press release is usually something like 20 links down. It probably has like 3 or 4 views. So, I think as long as people know what they’re getting from the start, it’s kind of up to them to choose whether to use it or not.

OWEN: So what I get from that is after creating the press release using that format you mentioned where the most interesting stuff goes on the very top to get the attention of the journalist to read the entire press release, they should also realize that the services out there that sell this whole PR press release syndication that those don’t really get that much traction. You should just look at it more of it’s going to help you on an SEO standpoint and blasting news on all these different sites. But the next thing which is the next one, which is create the email to send to a specific journalist, this is where you now take that press release and put it in front of targeted journalists, right?

CONRAD: Exactly. Because the big thing– I think you nailed it exactly that people promise, people create this press release, they syndicate and they’re like, why don’t anyone pick up on it, the process is broken. So the thing is if you want to get written up by a journalist, there’s almost no way around it, you have to email the journalist almost 100% of the time. So, I think back in the day you could probably call but today it’s really all through email. VentureBeat as an example, about 50% of our stories covered every week, or email to tips@venturebeat.com. So a lot of people say, “No one ever reads tips@timemagazine.com”, whatever it is. But those are right every single day. And it’s even better if you find the specific emails to journalists and you email them. And the idea with the email is you basically going to take this press release and you–

OWEN: Before you even talk about the email, I’m wondering, because the person who’s listening to this is following us in a logical order. So how do they find some of these journalists? Can you give some tips on how they can find the right targeted people to go after?

CONRAD: A couple of things. My company actually spent– we created a free resource. I can send you the link. We spend 100 hours collecting a lot of the emails from different journalists. So we actually have that. It tends to focus more on technology. But probably the best things is, let’s say there’s a local newspaper. Let’s say you’re based in San Francisco and you want to contact S.F. Times. You really visited S.F. Times and many cases next to the journalists they’re both they’re going to have their email or you can just Google search the name and in most cases you can find their email online somewhere.

OWEN: Okay.

CONRAD: So that’s the primary way you’d find their emails. Other resource we’ve created should be of help particularly for tech as oppose to that takes a long time. That could easily take hours to do, but we just created that for everyone and just put into like an easy read format.

OWEN: So, I’m thinking the take away with finding the journalist is depending on the type of business the listener has. Figure out the type of journalist and type of publication that would cover stories like yours. Put them together in a list and now you have very targeted, very precise people to go after.

CONRAD: Yeah, absolutely.

OWEN: And the next thing now is to talk about how to write that personal email that goes out to the journalists.

CONRAD: Yeah. The biggest things is in the subject line, you would want to personalize as much as possible. And that’s as easy to do as just saying hi, the name of the journalist. My name is X in regards to an announcement. So, I was joking about this with another journalist and three words that journalist’s hate the most is “For immediate release”. I still get a lot of emails today because I guess people just find my email from back in the day [Unintelligible 00:19:17] and you see capital letters, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. It doesn’t matter if Apple is releasing the next advanced iPhone. If you’re getting hundreds of emails every day and you don’t even have time to respond to your current ones, and you just see “For immediate release” that’s I guess not personalized in any way possible, you’re just going to ignore, you’re not going to read it.

OWEN: Can you give us an example of something that maybe from your past when you were a journalist at Venture, something that caught your attention on the subject line? I’m just curious.

CONRAD: I think the biggest thing is that as long as you write the “Hi” in the person’s name, they’re going to click and read it. The other thing is adding the social proof into it. So, let’s say you’re a Harvard MBA, let’s say something like– and you’re contacting XCR press for example journalist. Say like, “Hey Sarah, this is John, a graduate of Harvard Business School in regards to see if you wanted an exclusive” something like that. And I could talk about the exclusive later. But– Another way in terms of social proof is if you do have some type of connection. So maybe you’re an alumni at the same university. To contact a journalist is the same way you contact any busy person. So the same strategies I use to try to contact a BBC journalist is the same ones I used to get like Mark Cuban to respond to my emails.

OWEN: The thing I get from that is whatever the subject line is, it should be something that just literally gets them to open the email. That’s what the goal of the subject line is get them to open the email. It could be mysterious. Whatever it needs to be to get them to open the email, that’s what you need it to be, right?

CONRAD: Exactly.

OWEN: Okay. So now they’ve opened the email. Let’s talk about how you structured the message itself.

CONRAD: Yeah. The biggest thing is to– it’s somewhat of going off with the press release is to lead with social proof. And basically, you’re going to want to take a press release and condense it into essentially, ideally about 200 words. And as I was saying, personalize again, like, “Hi John, my name is Tin, I’m an XYZ. I’m a graduate of Harvard Business School.” Or “I’m a 18-year old founder who’s working on this startup” whatever it is. Then you’re going to talk about the big vision of the company, what makes it interesting. I’m launching this company because I want to make this big impact in some way. And usually that kind of leads into offering the exclusive that I recommend. You’d say something like, “I’m wondering if you would be interested in exclusive for this very specific announcement that I’m making, on a specific date. So next one as an example. I’ve attached a press release to see if you want to see more information. And I’d love to follow-up with more information over the phone or email, whatever you prefer. Best, whatever the person’s name is.” I’m happy to send you examples of emails that I’ve used to get on TechCrunch BBC on these sites.

OWEN: And let’s talk about that because you mentioned something about how the exclusive is what gets them really excited. And so, step number 4, it says, “Secure an exclusive with a top media outlet.” So, the listener now, maybe as they created a list of media outlets and journalists that they want to go out to. And then they realize, “Okay, this is the most popular one within all the list of journalists I have, I should go after this one first.” So, in this case now they want to give that person the top exclusive. So let’s talk about that.

CONRAD: Yeah. So the reason the exclusive is important is let’s say there’s a founder of this business but he is based around the world. And they decide they want to make an announcement on August 10th. And they collect 50 different journalists’ emails and they email all the journalist the press release. So, if you’re a journalist you know that the press release you’re getting. Like it’s being sent out to dozens of others. And in today’s new media, the strongest publications are the ones that break new stories. That’s really important. That might be one of the most important things. Because in general a journalist who break new stories, those are the ones that are linked to and all these different things.

OWEN: It’s a high ball business, they’re always about how fast they can bring out new news and new cycle and all that. So the exclusive stuff, then they’re more likely to listen to you.

CONRAD: Yeah. So the exclusive basically means that they have first right to publish the article. And that means a lot because especially if let’s say you’re a first time entrepreneur that doesn’t know this journalist to be able to say, “Hey.” It’s a good way to break yourself out of the crowd of these hundreds of other people emails. And I have this announcement and I just want to give you the exclusive. And maybe my announcement isn’t as strong as Apple’s new announcement. But Apple’s not giving you the exclusive, and I am. And you’re going to share the Apple Store with 50 other publications as oppose to this one.

OWEN: I like that whole idea of the exclusive thing. Because now you’re basically saying that you don’t really need prior relationship with the journalist. You don’t need to even hire a big firm that has prior relationship with the journalist. Because you’ve given the journalist what they’re looking for, giving them the food they’re looking for.

CONRAD: Absolutely.

OWEN: And you also mentioned during the pre-interview something about trading down the chain. Can you explain that?

CONRAD: Well, so the idea is let’s say whatever specific industry you’re in, you have this big announcement, you’re launching a new product. And if you’re in technology– usually TechCrunch might be the largest publication you want to get feature there. Let’s say they published the exclusive. When you think about it, every company is involved with many different verticals. So, a company that is getting on– like tech publication might also want to get on BusinessWeek, or Huffington Post, or many of these others. And the idea is once the article is online you’re going to want to email all these publications to try them for their coverage.  Basically, any publication that could be interested in the announcement you want to cover it. And it actually could be something like university. Let’s say you’re picked up by the New York Times for announcement, for launching a new company. You could email the university alumni center and just say, “Hey, I know that you have a magazine. Would you be interested in covering this that was just recently featured on this big publication?” And there are many cases they’re going to say yes. So the idea is more to maximize coverage as much as possible.

OWEN: So, would that be step 5 where you said after the exclusive have been secured with a bigger, larger media outlet, now you’re going out to look at other places that you can get that story featured in other places?

CONRAD: Absolutely. And the deal with PR is it’s actually kind of different in other marketing methods I found. So, if I look at like content marketing or social media, to me one of the keys is consistency. [Unintelligible 00:26:10] as oppose to people who try social media and they post a thousand times in one month and they stop for 3 months, it’s probably not as effective to go with PR. Ideally, every 3 or 4 months you’re going to have this big announcement. And for a period of like a week you’re just going to be kind of non-stop, try to spread the coverage as much as possible. Because the reason why is like a week later the news cycle moves on and your story’s old. So you have a finite amount of time to kind of further coverage as much as possible.

OWEN: And I have a question to because you mention how the need for exclusive is what gets the attention of the big media outlets and the listeners needs now that they’re trying to appeal to. But now, after they’ve secured the exclusive with the big one, you say, “Okay, step 5, go ahead and spread it, and promote it as much as possible to other media outlets.” But then I’m thinking about the other media outlets, the journalist there’ll be like, isn’t this old story? So how do you position it in a way?

CONRAD: So, the idea behind it is that certain publications are more time-sensitive than others. So, as an example, in general you have these– and technology as an example this group of very early adopter publications. So things like [Unintelligible 00:27:23] TechCrunch, etc. If announcement is made and this story has to be published from that date probably within the next 24 to 48 hours, and then it becomes old news. But however, if you think about let’s say 2 days later. If you content more mainstream. Let’s say a state news publication, those publications aren’t as time sensitive. So, as a good example it’s very likely for the L.A. Times to cover a story a week later than an early adopter site has covered it. It’s normal actually. So they’re just less time sensitive. And then going even a step further. So let’s say for example you have a health mobile app and you get that launched on tech publication. Then you move to more mainstream publications. And then if you look at industry verticals, like how about health publications. You could contact them two weeks after and they wouldn’t mind that it’s already been featured on a tech publication because it’s just less time sensitive– it actually would help to be able to day, “Hey, we’re featured on this leading tech publications” because it offers this kind of validation.

OWEN: So I get that fact that they have different deadlines. So they don’t even mind probably taking it over and trying to take the story. I’m trying to figure out how best to work the angle of the story that would make it even more exciting for them. Even though they know that they’re not the first to get it. Is there any tips on how one can do that?

CONRAD: Yeah. I would say the biggest thing is crafting the email and making it probably as personalized as possible. At a very basic level you could say you’re a New York startup and you get featured on these tech publications, then you want to get on the New York Post as an example, or some kind of state level, more mainstream publications. At a very base level you can say something like, I’m emailing the journalist that covers technology and in the email you say something like, “I saw that you covered a company in a similar market, which is why I’m contacting because I thought this would also be of interest.” So the journalist knows like, “Hey, this person isn’t just sending out this for immediate release to hundreds of publications, they actually followed my writing and know that this story could be of interest. And I think if you approach it that way, in many cases they won’t write the story but they’ll send a friendly email to say, “Hey, I’m swamped this week but thanks for sending me the email. And maybe we can get you in touch down the road.” And then down in the future, here’s someone who I can follow-up with future announcements too.

OWEN: Yeah. And step number 6 you say repeat the process over again. And I’m curious, is there something when it comes to repeating the process that maybe you want to share with the listener?

CONRAD: Yeah. I think the biggest thing is just to strategize– right now if your company, or people listening all of their companies, you can almost map out the next 18 months to day, “What big announcements are we going to be making?” So maybe in 3 months we announce a milestone maybe in months 7 we launch a new product. Maybe something with an android app, whatever it may be. That could be for traditional business or a new one. Maybe 3 or 4 months they announce something else. And the idea is that to really utilize and take advantage of each of these announcements because I see a lot of people, this is specific to tech but I think applies to all industries. They say something like, “In 2011, we raised a million dollars in funding when we got on TechCrunch. And now in 2014 or 2015 we raised another million in funding we want to get in TechCrunch again.” Which is great, they’re doing a good job. But the problem is that throughout these 3 or 4 year period they had all these other announcements that they could’ve gotten press coverage on and they just didn’t take advantage of it. So, the biggest ideas that kind of take-away is identify the big announcements they’re going to be making, and really try to get media coverage for those and take advantage of them.

OWEN: Yeah, and so, I’m curious, how will you say your company has been transformed as a result of implementing this process for getting press?

CONRAD: I can’t explain the benefits. Early this year I split my time within South America. I live in Medellin, Columbia and New York. And I got to meet the president of Colombia at the end of last year which I wouldn’t have been able to if I didn’t– there’s a certain social proof that gets added when you are featured on these top publications. And even when I was emailing you, I could do something like, “I’m the founder of Publicize. If you want to see we got some TechCrunch coverage here.” As oppose to you thinking like, “Who’s this [Unintelligible 00:32:03]? You’re like, hey, this guy must be doing something right. It must be kind of a serious business.

OWEN: And that’s true too because from a standpoint of the listener listening to this who has maybe established business now and they’ve been featured on small well-to-do, the popular media outlets like say Forbes or whatever based on following this tactic. It now becomes easier to sell potential customers based on saying, “Hey, we also have been featured on that. Because the social proof thing.”

CONRAD: Oh, absolutely. I don’t know of any other marketing that provides that level of credibility that PR can do.

OWEN: Yeah. And so, what would you say is the very next step that someone who is listening to this entire interview all the way to this point should take in order to get started with implementing the process for getting the press coverage?

CONRAD: I think the biggest thing is just to think is there an announcement that we’re planning on making it the next 10 weeks that we could reach out to the press for. And really just take the step. And I think about the biggest mistake I’ve raised from funding in California. I was just starting out and this is way back in the day. And I think the biggest mistake I made is I was just so intimidated to contact someone like Forbes or Huffington Post. I just never did it. I always like to say that these guys get so many bad pitches and this is going to be much better than anything– nothing bad is going to happen if I think you’re respectful of someone’s time and if you approach it the right way.

OWEN: Definitely. And also the thing is we also want to share if you have any books that feel that you have influenced this way of thinking when it comes to reaching out to the press. If so, share the books to the listener.

CONRAD: Yeah. It’s a little bit hard because I think traditionally PR especially for earlier, I mean for entrepreneurs in general is somewhat limited. I think general business book, I think about marketing in general. Seth Godin is fantastic. Marketing in general, the blog by Sean Ellis, I think it’s incredible. It’s called startup-marketing.com. I think–

OWEN: What book from Seth Godin were you talking particularly?

CONRAD: I especially loved all of his books. I think permission marketing is the one that sticks out but all of them are great. Probably the book that gotten me started more on entrepreneurship was Rich Dad, Poor Dad which I think is great. I have so many. I read a little too much. So there’s so many great business books out there. But specifically regards to PR I think there isn’t a lot of information unfortunately.

OWEN: Maybe not so much books because maybe the books are given the old way of doing things, But is there like maybe a blog that right now you feel on top of– it’s on top of sharing the right information when it comes to PR? Maybe the listeners can also checkout?

CONRAD: I don’t want to be kind of arrogant when I say this but I found that most of the information about PR is actually being produced primarily on myself and my company. So doing just blogs and some leading sites. There hasn’t been a great deal of the best resources. I would say another author who’s been pretty good is the founder of– I just lost the name.

OWEN: No problem if you lost the name. You have a blog, what is the blog so that people can check out what you’re doing.

CONRAD: Yeah. So, our site’s www.publicize.co, although actually a lot of our best work have been for example on Sean Ellis’ site–

OWEN: Oh, you’re guest post, like post articles on other site?

CONRAD: Yeah. On any of our guest articles.

OWEN: So I guess the listener, what you could do if you really want to get more information on this just take his name Conrad Egusa and just online and Google and try to find which other sites has been featured on articles. And then you can check out some of the articles as well. And what’s the best way for the listener to reach out to you and thank you for doing this interview?

CONRAD: Yeah, it’s in LinkedIn I probably use the most, just Conrad Egusa there. And I think publicize.co, just the company site.

OWEN: And is there a question that you were wishing that I asked during this interview that I didn’t ask. If so, post the question and the answer.

CONRAD: No, I think we covered everything.

OWEN: That’s good to know. Thanks for doing the interview man, I appreciate it.

CONRAD: Oh, thanks so much for the time.

OWEN: And we’re done.