From Unknown to Unstoppable: PR Mastery & Authority Building with Renée Warren

I'm Kinsey Machos, your host and founder of the category Queen. Welcome to the podcast for coaches, consultants, and course creators who don't just want to dominate their niche, but they desire to play in their own league. My mission is to help you unlock the power of your unique brilliance and use it as a vehicle to gain recognition, reach more people, and make more money. Not too long ago, I took a bold leap, leaving behind a six figure corporate salary with nothing more than a used MacBook and a burning desire for more freedom. Today, our brand has become globally recognized, helping thousands of female founders to become industry leading experts. Join us each week as we go on a journey together to discuss mindset, marketing and money, and more importantly, the real life discussions about balancing success with motherhood and marriage.

Because we're a community of women who build and scale impact driven businesses, but do it without sacrificing the things that matter most to us. Welcome to the category queen show. Do you dream of getting more of the right eyeballs on your business and brand? Maybe even getting featured in mainstream media hubs, podcasts, more stage speaking and presence? Maybe you just really want to accelerate your authority in your industry, but perhaps the word prime strategy feels too corporate.

Y or even maybe too expensive.

But I want you to hold tight and totally buckle up, sister, because this conversation is exactly what you need. In this episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with my dear friend and powerhouse entrepreneur, Renee Warren. Renee is a seasoned PRofessional and entrepreneur with a wealth of experience and wisdom, and throughout our conversation, Renee dives deep into the world of building and rebuilding businesses, offering key lessons on focusing on your passion, delegating tasks, honing in your target market and your services, and so much more. As we explore the evolving landscape of PR and thought leadership, Renee shares her insights on crafting effective strategies, building authority online and creating personalized pitches that will resonate with your target audience.

She also is going to emphasize the importance of cultivating meaningful relationships, consistently showing up and leveraging opportunities all around you, even if you cannot see them for yourself. I really love this conversation because Renee so beautifully takes this big, ambiguous concept to so many and breaks it out into bite size, digestible, tactical level strategies that you will be able to walk away and implement immediately. So whether you're a solopreneur, growing your authority online, or you have a team, you're going to find insights here that are going to completely accelerate your authority and command attention in your niche. So my friend, I hope you enjoy.

Hello my friends. Welcome back to the category queen show. I'm so happy to be here alongside one of my favorite people ever, Renee. Renee Warren. Renee, why don't you say hi to our listeners?

Oh, thanks for having me. I. You are also one of my favorite people ever.

I am so excited to have you here. We were just talking before we pressed record, and if this is a long time coming, I shared, you know, that I stopped doing guest interviews on the podcast, but finally got our butt in gear. And I'm like, there is so much genius that I like that I have access to one of them. Being, like, just your leadership and your brain and our friendship has been such a gift to, you know, my life, my business. And I'm like, we can't not share you with my audience. So thank you for being here. I would love for you to just share who you are, what you do, and let's take it from there.

So I'm Renee Warren. I am the founder of a company called we Wild Women. We're a pr, coaching and training company located in the mountains of British Columbia, Canada, of which Kinsey got a chance to come hang out here in the wintertime.

So beautiful.

Yeah. I published a book called Get Covered back in 2018. It's all about pr. I have my own podcast called into the wild, and it's for female entrepreneurs. I'm the mother to irish twin boys. They are eleven months apart, and I'm married to a man who is balls to the walls. Outgoing, doesn't slow down.

I love it. So good. I actually also just learned what irish twins were after, like, through you. So, gosh, that you. Just. The gifts they keep on giving.

Yeah.

Keep on sharing. So tell us about your. One of your. Your expertise is obviously thought leadership. Really gaining that recognition online as an authority and, you know, what that looks like through the lens of public relations. I want to be able to unpack that in a way that's actually tactical. I think public relations is like public relations, and this idea of thought leadership is thrown around on the, you know, on the webs a lot. And I think it's just so conceptual. But I want to. I know that you're going to do such a good job at breaking that down and making it super tactical for us to understand whether, you know, we have people that are just getting started or even women that are really established what that looks like to take their thought leadership and public relations strategy to that next level.

But I would love for you to share your story. I think you have a really unique story and how you got where you are and all the little, what do you call them? I don't know, road bumps or along the way, lips.

Massive, massive failures. Okay, so my story. And then I'm going to come back to this understanding pierre and thought leadership because things have changed in the last few years. I actually started, oh gosh, what point is this going to be relevant? So we'll say in like 2009 I was living in Toronto and I won one of the social media influencers of Toronto list. And my gift was it ticket anywhere, Virgin America. Fly. So naturally, who my husband now was my boyfriend at the time, lived in San Francisco. So it's like, well, I'm going to go to and from San Francisco. But it kind of like gave me that one little like notch in the belt that I know what I'm doing online. I didn't.

This was like, I jumped on Twitter that when it was like becoming of age, I was like one of the first million or 2 million users. And it was kind of cool back then, kind of how like clubhouse had its two month, like Blitz and it did really well. That was Twitter for a while because there was hardly any other social platforms. Facebook was still kind of closed down, but not. And then MySpace was dissolving. So companies were coming to me to ask how to leverage Twitter. Like, I actually don't know how to do this. So we started playing around with it. Content marketing became a thing too. So I did end up living in San Francisco for a bit and I was doing some consulting work.

I'd literally take my laptop and plunk down at some startups in their offices and just like consulting on social media and content marketing. And I was working with the team who was like the originals, like the ogs of the infographic days. Do you remember when like if you had a really cool design infographic, it would get all the media coverage? And so they're out of Newport beach, they're called column five. So we did a lot of work together and then, well, then canva came around. Like, anybody who's anybody can get an infographic. So this then led to me understanding Facebook ads and Google Ads and content marketing and webinars and I was doing social and content and then I met this woman named Heather who would eventually become my business partner who did pr for startups.

And there was so much overlap and synergy in the work that we just started doing projects together. One thing led to another and we started an agency together and that grew really fast. But in the first 1st year we started it. That's the year I had both my babies, and we had clients from South Africa to San Diego, employees, babies, businesses, like, moved across the country. Like, it was just crazy. So then that business grew really fast, and towards the end of it, went through due diligence to get acquired. And it's like that 2 million or $20 million litmus test. It's like the earn out was, I think, like $2 million plus a salary that I had to stick around for two plus years, and I didn't even have enough left in me to actually do that.

So I just threw in the towel, closed the door. As I said, I'm done never taking a mat leave, never taking any time off. And then being an entrepreneur, I can't just sit around and do nothing. And being a stay at home mom worked for a month, and then I was like, get me out of here. So I just started doing business coaching, and then started doing, like, the offhanded, like, press release and pr for some friends and startups and companies I was invested in. Then it evolved to becoming another pr agency. And were talking about this earlier, how I said, water flows to the place of least resistance. We tend to do some of the work that we know we're good at. It's familiar to us that we're known for, but it doesn't fill up our cup anymore.

And that's why we've transitioned away from being an agency to being a coaching and training company. So now I teach people how to do world class pr without having to hire expensive agency.

Amazing.

And that's where we are today.

Amazing. Just in a tiny nutshell, right?

Tiny.

Just tiny nutshell. So you have, Rey, you've built a couple times over, and I want to circle back, obviously, to building a world class pr strategy without hiring an expensive agency, because I know that everybody wants to know more about that. But also, I think, what's so, I think so helpful to know. And anytime I'm even studying, like, mentors or leaders, understanding what they were focused on in the building of the things, because I think if you do it more than once, you start to really find out, like, what actually works. And if you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently? And so in the times that you built and rebuilt, what were some key lessons learned? And when you started to even think about the idea of starting over, where do you go first?

Like, what do you think about doing as far as, like, where you're going to invest your time, money, and energy?

Ooh, yeah. Well, start by making a list of all the things you don't like doing, and then don't do those things.

This is good.

Delegate those things. We avoid that as a possibility because we think that it's our responsibility. No, do it once. Do. Do the task once. Record a loom, create an SOP, and then delegate it to somebody else. I trained my va to pitch me. She's now pitching my clients, so there's less of me doing the work. It's a brilliant thing, but it's as simple as just focus on the things that you're really good at. Like, we are in a society where we've developed these. These expectations and requirements of people to clock in at 09:00 a.m. Clock out at 05:00 p.m. And expect knowledge workers to be creative and productive for 8 hours a day. It's stupid.

Al Newport even says that the average human can't be creative more than 57 minutes intervals, and they can only do two to three intervals a day maximum, and that's a good day. So knowledge workers on a creativity productivity perspective have maybe two to 3 hours banked a day.

Yeah.

So starting over again, I think, first of all, what a beautiful place to be, to have that experience and knowledge and wisdom, then to be able to start over again, to do that all over. What I did was, I was very specific on who I was going to work with. Target marketing was one thing. I was very specific on the services we would and would not do. So back in the day, we, our biggest clients were paying us 25,000 a month, and were doing, we would always have, like, five to six clients at a time. And for the big clients, we're doing all their pr, all their positioning, messaging, content marketing, writing like a LinkedIn and a blog post a week for their stuff, and contributing content, doing all their social media. Like, it was just everything. We were their marketing department. Wow.

And so they always say, like, especially when it comes to agency work, you typically have, like, one or two clients that pay the bills and everyone else's profit. That was them. So we did. We did it all for them just so that we could pay the bills. So going back to starting over, I'm like, I don't like to do social media. The creativity, the cognitive function to create the content for social is a different work than the PR.

Yeah.

So it's like wearing two hats at the same time.

Yeah.

I think that social media, definitely, especially the people that do the work, require a little bit more respect. A lot of people are like, well, you have ten posts, and I only got 20 more followers. Like, what are you doing wrong? It's like, right? Yes, same with pr. But in the starting over, if I go back to, like, old renee, what I would say is, oh, here's something that's pretty outstanding. I pay myself more now than I did when I ran an agency with twelve employees.

So good.

Like, so people like, what do you mean you don't want to run a million dollar agency? I go, why? I get the, like, the opportunity to create an impact, to create jobs. Guess what? I pay people a lot of money now, and they're all freelancers and contractors, and they love that. They don't want to be an employee.

Yeah.

So I still create jobs. I still, I still pay people's rents and put food on their table because that's just the nature of what I do. But I would not have employees. And there was a point in this business when it could have happened, and I'm like, you know what? I didn't, it didn't feel good because the moment you have an employee, I'm not saying employees aren't great. We had an amazing time, and if it wasn't for people like that, I wouldn't have been able to grow my business. However, there is a much greater responsibility when you have those people. And so it depends on the type of business you want to build. Like, do you want more fluidity then, you know, have less tasks, have less offerings and less people?

And if you want to really blow the business up, then you got to really get, go deep on leadership and on recruiting the right people.

Yeah, really good. So what I'm hearing, Renee, is obviously, like, get clear on what you don't want to do and also really stepping into, like, what do I want? Right. I think we have to, like, constantly ask that question because it can be muddied. I've been through this so many times, like, am I actually building something I want, or am I building something that somebody else wants? Like, you know, somebody else's vision. And it's so easy to get caught up into that. And I don't think sometimes people even know that they're doing that until they know. And so it's just allowing yourself to pause. But also, something that you said was really important is like, well, I can do these things. I can run people's social media.

I can, you know, do content marketing or whatever, but that is not where I, like, really want to put a stake in the ground, or that's not where I feel like my brilliance is best being utilized. And I think we can all get caught in that trap also, where it's like, well, I could help them do this or I could help this type of person, but then what does that look like as far as, like, how you're spreading yourself and how that impacts, you know, the growth and the margin of the business.

Yeah. Possibility of greatness because you're just doing a bunch of things at a mediocre level.

Yes, yes.

And the busyness makes us feel like we are innately productive.

Absolutely.

Pumping out a lot of stuff. But there's also, there's so much importance in the pause. Like, if you look at your calendar and you're not working 40 hours a week, do you freak out thinking you're making a mistake or letting somebody down? Or are you embracing the fact that maybe it's a 20 hours work week, but you have so much time in between those chunks of creative work productivity, whatever it is, it allows you to fuel up your tank.

Yeah, I love that. And I'm rereading, ten x is easier than two x. And it's just such a good reminder. Again, every next level of growth is actually going to require less of us. Like, less doing, less of the thoughts, less of the habits, like, less of what we used to be or who we are, and more of this next version of us that is going to double down. You know, we think of, like, ten x in anything in your life, it's going to require you to become someone different. And I think it's a such, I'm reading it in this season of summer where I, like, cut my schedule in half. I'm working, you know, a couple hours a day, and it really forces you to look at, like, how you spend your time.

And is this actually double, like, is this actually contributing to the result that I desire or is it waste? And I think that when we have all the time, like you said, when we have more time, we just fill it. We just fill it with busyness and we start to lose control out of, like, the visibility into what is actually going to bring us the results that we want. And also, you know, that ten x vision, like, is this really going to get me to where I want, or is it going to just give me a little bit more of what I'm already doing?

Well, that's it. And a business will cannibalize and consume every resource and thing and time that is available to it. And I remember this one time had an employee, Chanel. I asked her to write a blog post for a client, and she had 2 hours to turn it around and she kind of panicked as opposed to the normal week to turn it around, and she still crushed it. And I go, the quality of the work was just as good, but she was forced to get it done. And then we submitted. It was great. Think about that for anything too is like, we expect that, like, even working out, we think that the only way to get fit is to work out for an hour. No, 30 minutes workouts work just fine, too, sometimes 20.

So think about, like, expectations, but also think about just because something was done a certain way doesn't mean it's always the right way.

Yeah.

And we can come back to PR right here on this, because when were hitting home runs after home runs with clients back in like, 2015 to 2018 was a good year for PR. We had a 20% to 30% win rate, meaning that 20% to 30% of our pitches would get a. Yes. Some sort of media coverage or podcast or a guest on a podcast. Do you know what our win rate is now? Even though we work harder, smarter, better angles, it's 5%.

Dang.

So I'm slightly burnt out.

Yeah.

And when I'm thinking I did something wrong, I go to my communities. I've talked to all my journalists and PR friends. They're all feeling that same level of burnout. So there's this huge, like, shuffle in the industry. It's still working for people, but also know that things have changed so much. And so how you do prayer has changed. Back in the day, you used to get PR to grow your following. Now you need to grow your following to get PR. Yeah, kind of like publishing a book. Back in the day, you used to publish a book to spread the word about your genius. Now it's the opposite. Same with concerts and cd sales or whatever. Album sales is used to have a concert to sell your album, and now it's the other way around.

So be mindful of the trends and how industries are shifting when it comes to PR. Right now, what's working so in 2024 is growing your authority. And that means what are you doing online that you have full control over? Your email list, your YouTube channel, Instagram, TikTok, whatever social account targets your ideal customer. How are you growing that? How are you engaging with people? How are you getting in front of the decision makers, the influencers, the users, and growing that? Because that ends up being the ultimate leverage when you go and pitch the media. So I've been in scenarios before, and I've asked this. We used to have a journalist on retainer who would review all of our pitches and parcellises before it went out.

And I asked her, I was like, listen, if you're asking for a professional comment from, say, a dermatologist, and you have two equally qualified dermatologists with great comments, but one has a larger, more engaged account on Instagram, say, are you still going to choose them over the other? And they said, well, of course, because part of their job as a journalist is to get eyeballs to their articles. Sometimes that's how they get paid. That's also, that's how they keep their relationship with that publication. Because if you're a journalist or writer and you're writing content that no one's reading, though, you're probably not going to continue writing for that publication. So the point of their work is to consistently get eyeballs and shares and downloads, and they know that they will get more of that if there's somebody who is notable or famous.

So the way I see it is like, we are all our own media company. We have the opportunity to grow our own media company by YouTube, by hosting podcasts, by being guests and other shows. All these things plug and play into each other.

Okay, I want to. Let's talk about that and real quick, though, because I already know what people are thinking is like, well, I'm not famous. I'm notable, and I don't have a large following. And so I want to unpack a little bit of that. But also just to even, like, set the stage. I think there's a misunderstanding of even, like, what public relations is. I think, like, I even think of PR. In my corporate days, we would hire PR people to, like, write the statements that would go out to public facing press releases. Yeah. So it's really. Yeah, press releases. Thank you. So, like, that's what my brain, even today, even after spending so much time with you and your brilliance, I still, it still wants to go there.

And I think everybody has a different interpretation of what PR is, and probably even with. Because of that, the need to have more of everything or hire an expensive agency or whatever. So can you share some sort of, like, you know, just an easy to understand way of how you describe public relations?

So I believe public relations prior is the mother of all marketing because it is all about relationship building. And that's what we're trying to do with our customers, with journalists, with contacts, with connections. And then why it's important to build authority. And I'm like, authority isn't necessarily the person who sits at the top, right? So we look at, like, Gabby Bernstein is like the ultimate awakened entrepreneur. And then you go down the wrong. There are still people that have just as powerful of a message and programs that aren't as notable as she is. They have authority in their niche. Authority are the people that set the standard for their industry. They're the experts. There's the people that, they're like the go to people for a certain part of their industry. They set the rules.

They create new ways of thinking, create new ways of doing, because they're inventors. They look at the landscape and they see there's a little void here that needs to be filled. And I'm good at this. I'm going to do it. And then they do it so good. Those are the people that are authority in the space. You don't have to have a million followers on social media.

Well, and I think even in that context, when we think of, like, relationship building, so pr as relationship building, anybody can do that. Anybody can build relationships. Whether you have an audience of one or an audience of 10,000, we can focus on the things that are going to build relationships. But I think what you're saying also in tandem to that, really claiming yourself, like, where are you going to put a stake in the ground as you and your, like, what your authority is? Because those two, if, as we're building relationships and people are coming to know us as this thing of what we're good at, right? That's how we start to grow that. But I think there's also, I see common mistakes being made around this, of people not putting a stake in the ground.

Can you talk a little bit then about authority building and how people can start to really get known for something?

So first of all, you need to know what you're doing and who you're serving. I can't tell you enough how many times I've started with a client and they had like, 18 different avatars, and I'm like, dude, you're not. I'm sorry. Your ideal customer isn't ages ten to 100 men and women. It doesn't work like that. There's a thing called the halo effect, where you're going to attract people outside of your target, but you need to know specifically who you're serving and why. And as a reminder, these are the people you're waking up to every morning to create an impact for. So on those days where you're, like, dragging your heels, you don't want to do this anymore, or there was crap happening in the economy or in your business, you're reminded of these people. They need you.

I used to have a printout of a woman named entrepreneur Emily on my desk. I didn't know who she was. She was the only framed picture on my desk because she was a gentle reminder that she needs me every day. And I got to create something and serve and show up so that she can grow her business, she can be a better mom. So it's really that. But also, you have to love what you do with conviction in order for it to be authentic.

So good, Renee. So speak more about that if you.

Are not, because, I mean, we talked about this earlier, how there are certain things that we do in our life because we think it's expected of us. It's familiar, so we do it right. A son that becomes a lawyer because mom and dad are lawyers, but that's not their calling. They're going to lead a life that seems like a failure because they're not going to be enough. The enoughness is going to be crazy for them, and they're not going to be happy. And so all that person had to do is just not become a lawyer. That's simple. So with conviction, if you're doing the work you know, you're called to do, the process of getting pr and growing your authority is easy. However, it takes time. It takes a lot of time. And that's the thing, too.

Like, when you love what you do, the time doesn't matter because you'll do the work and you know you will eventually get there. But also, when you love what you do, the more you're going to show up to do the thing, and it's going to become very clear to your audience what it is that you do. Now, that doesn't mean that you're running a business where there's stuff in it you don't like to do any business. Like, I hate the financing, but like we said, the beginning of the episode, make a list. The crap you don't like to do, create the Sop and delegate. And you can literally do that like that. There are so many wonderful vas out there that can take little pieces of that work and get it done for you. So there's no excuses.

Like, think of those scenarios where someone holds a gun to your head and they're going to pull the trigger if you don't make the move, are you going to do it? Make the decision. And that's the thing is, people don't make the decision to do put a date on the calendar or whatever. It is like, when I launched my podcast, I kept talking about it. Finally, one day, my husband's like, what day are you launching this damn thing? I'm like, April 27. This was, like, 2020. And I finally did, by the way.

I got to be with you when you learned that your podcast was top 1%.

I know, it's so cool.

But like you just said, you put in this, like, this wet equity in that podcast. It was that consistency. It was doubling down on your brilliance, sharing that with others. And, like, week in, week out, you're just, like, building this authority and bringing consistent eyeballs to you. So that's a perfect representation of that.

Yeah. And I know that the people who believe in their work so much will be okay with all of the rejection they get when they go to pitch themselves. And I'll tell you, rejection these days typically comes in the form of nobody responding to your emails. And when they actually respond, even if it's something terrible, like, I love it. Yesterday, I pitched a guy, and his reply was, no, thanks. And I was excited. I'm like, he replied to me, yeah, this is great. But the more you get the rejection, the more you see that people aren't reading your emails. It's okay. It means that you have to course correct, and it just means you need to put in the numbers, put in the reps. Yeah.

So, good. So let's talk about, then, the tactics of that, of a pr strategy. So, what does that look and feel like for women that don't want to go out and hire an agency? And what is a realistic expectation, if you will, of, like, the time and the things that they should be doing each week to continue to build their authority and starting to get known with these other layers of this pr strategy that you're so brilliant at.

Okay, well, first of all, we'll knock the time question off. Once you get set up and get going. So strategy built, and you have a process, you shouldn't be needing to do this more than two to 3 hours a week. So this is like pitch and follow up, and there's kind of a strategy on that, too. So in terms of building out a basic strategy, it's really going to understand your target audience. So you want to get in front of these people, you got to figure out what podcasts are they listening to, what publications are they reading, what events are they going to. People ask me, renee, how do you build your network? I'm like, I show up to stuff all the time, and this is, like, 30 years of networking.

So don't say, it's just like I put a dime in the jukebox, and then all of a sudden now I'm like, freaking connection queen. No, it doesn't work like that. So it's about, the strategy is about that. Where people fail is in creating the pitch. And I actually have free resources on my website. If you go to wewildthewomen.com, there's freebies. I give away actual pitches that I've used that got people in the media. Email pitches, for example. You write them, they shouldn't be more than 180 words, 150 words, no attachments, a couple links, and your subject line needs to be the thing. It's the most important part of your pitch.

And just to, so just to be clear, when you're saying pitching, if anybody's, just make sure everybody's following us. When you're saying pitching, we're pitching the people that we want to get in front of, say a podcast host or a blog or a publication, like you said. So this is us again, pitching ourselves to get in front of their audience, correct? Yep.

Exactly.

Awesome.

Yeah. So we'll use podcasting as an example. And why? Because I believe it's a much easier platform to be a guest on. But also, what other marketing channel can you sit in front of your ideal customer for, on average, 37 minutes and talk about how great you are?

That's so good.

Right. And then you build the relationship with the host.

Yes.

So I've done over 200 interviews on my podcast, and most of which those people are friends and acquaintances.

Yes. And I think that's what I missed so much when I decided to stop doing interviews. It wasn't, it was the relationship piece. I realized that, like, those people, because I did interviews for a while and then I stopped. I was like, I just want it to be a solo thing. But I realized the relationships that I built from my previous podcast guests had actually turned into really incredible opportunities. And so I think that it's important to note here that it's not just about the, like, quick hit. Like, oh, what is this going to get me in return? It truly is the long game of building relationships. I think a lot of people don't necessarily look at or consider as like, but to me, that's like the foundation of everything.

The quick hits are. And don't get me wrong, these work. But advertising on social media, like online advertising, period, you know, within 24 hours, if your ads are converting and you can, like, tweak them, like, turn them on, turn them off, whatever with pr you could pitch for weeks and not get any replies and not know. But here's what happens, too, is like, there's so much that happens behind the scenes. So say you see that an email has been read as you pitch somebody, you don't hear back, but then all of a sudden, this random person reaches out and says, hey, so and so told me about you. And so the more you can tastefully put yourself out there, the more you're going to expose yourself to new people, new opportunities. And that goes with pitching as well.

So, like, when I say pitching, we typically use email.

Yeah, great.

There are, like, for podcasting, there's pitching programs like Pod Booker and stuff like that. But the reality is that most hosts are just so overwhelmed and inundated with pitches that they just don't use those at all. Yeah, I use social media to connect. I actually find really killer guests to be on my show because of social. And then what I do is I look at their stories, how are they online? Are they articulate? Are they sharing content with regards to their niche? Are they fun? Will their energy jive with me and my community? So majority of our guests are people that I've been introduced to, I know personally or I found on social randomly, no agency, because I liked them and I wanted them to be on my show.

Yeah.

So that is proof that if you're showing up and you're just putting yourself out there and you're just being who you are at your fullest potential, people will find you. It's like a magnet.

Yes. I love that. I think we have to really lean into, we forget when we're doing the doing the doing, you forget about the just divine ness of just, like, there's just miracles happening all the time. And, like, sometimes if we just allow ourselves to be in that miracle magnetism, if you will, and allow opportunities to come again, you can't just sit back and, you know, manifest your way through, you know, the best life ever if you're putting in the work. But then also allowing those opportunities to come just through, you know, unexpected, these unexpected ways. Like, it just opens you up to so much. And I think you've been such a beautiful reminder of that for all of us in that.

Okay, let's put the action plan, the action plan in place and then also, like, just allow things to unfold and how they're supposed to.

It's like a good chili needs to sit on the stove for a while, too, for it to taste good.

Yes. Oh, my gosh, that is so good. I love it. That's such a good analogy also. So when you were talking, I think that where it would be helpful is for people that are just getting started with this, would you say, even if they didn't have their own podcast, do you feel like pitching themselves on other podcasts is like the best place to start?

Oh, yeah. I mean, if I had to stop my show, for whatever reason, I would still pitch to be in other people's shows.

Kinsey Machos

Yeah.

Yeah. I think if there's no capacity for you to create your own show, then you should be pitching yourself to be on others. Arguably, that's a great place to start, too. And I was going to say something else, but. Okay, so time and tasks were the ultimate question that you were asking. So tasks. So, in writing your pitch, the question you really need to answer isn't what's in it for you, it's what's in it for me. So you're answering the question to the journalist or the host, like, how are you going to contribute to their community? Every single pitch needs to be individualized. There's no cut, paste to whole media list, BCC, everyone, and send it. You won't get anything. It'll do you a disservice. That's why it takes time.

So that's why we pitch, on average, for our clients, ten contacts a week per client. It doesn't seem like a lot. There's a lot of work that goes into each one of those pitches. Then the question that comes from that is, well, how do you find these people? And there are expensive tools out there, like muckrack incision, that are like $15,000 a year. You don't need those. What we do, and what I've used for twelve years now is Google sheets. We create our media list in Google Sheets. We put all of our contacts in there. We have it all beautifully set up, and we find people on social Twitter. Journalists are still active on Twitter. There's substack where you can find journalists, too, the way that I would do it.

So say this is actually what I was going to want to say is, if I create the list of all of the publications, the tv shows, radio and podcasts that my ideal customer listens to, start with a list of 20.

Okay.

And these are like, for sure thing. So we're going to use Forbes as an example. So you go to Forbes and you can actually search the site for keywords related to your company. So maybe you're in, maybe you're a female entrepreneur mother or something. You can search Forbes for those keywords, and what's going to happen is you're going to pull up articles that has little keywords. So then you go and look at who wrote those articles and make sure it was something that was published within the last year. So now all of a sudden, you have a contact forbes who writes about that content. And we use a tool. So far, it's been the most affordable tool. It's called signal hire, okay? And it's a LinkedIn extension, so I think it's like 20 or $30 a month.

And what you do is you go, and when you pull up someone's LinkedIn profile, there's a little button that kind of shows up and hovers on the right. You click it and it reveals the email addresses, and it's pretty accurate. So manually finding these things, you can go get all the media lists you want and you can probably buy them still. And there's notion things you can get. But this is what we do to keep active and finding active contacts. And the other thing too is, subscribing to Google alerts for your top three competitors names and the three most common ways that it's misspelt. And make sure you put that in a bracket. So what it does is you'll get a Google alert of when your competitor's been mentioned.

You want to know what's going on in their world, but the reason why you do this is you want to know who's writing about them. So all of a sudden, you see John Smith just talked about your competitor. Well, now you're going to slide his name into your media list, because now, you know, this is the stuff he talks about.

Wow.

Now you're not going to pitch him today. You'll put him as a placeholder for a couple months from now or a month from now. But you can be like, hey, John, you wrote about XYZ. This is what we do and make it connect somehow. But that's how you find contacts.

That's incredible. It just blew my own, just blew my mind. And again, I just learned something new from you all the time. And for context, one of the things. So how we met was we, like, cold. Like Callan, Steph and I reached out to you. Cold reach out. We're like, hey, we just want, we don't want to hire your agency. We don't go through courses. We just want to pay you to come for a couple of vip days. Just teach us what you know and we'll install it on our own businesses. And you more than over delivered in that. But then through that, we gained, you know, a new friend, which has been so incredible. And we've been doing some fun things ever since. But I just remember going into that experience thinking like, oh, I need all these things.

I need to get featured in Forbes. Right. I need to write a book. Right. Like, again, as overachievers, we always go there. But I walked away with this super simple strategy, and it was just like, so obvious. And yet I know that so many women are in this space of, like, go, like, their minds go to these, again, ambiguous conceptual things or, you know, I need to go big or go home. But there's these little simple things you can do every week to continue to build relationships and continue to, you know, increase your authority, which will then obviously contribute to your bottom line. And you do it in such a way that is so simple. And it's just like in and out. Just in and out.

Yeah. Well, we've complicated business.

Yes.

And we don't need to do that. And honestly, I don't think I would do pr if it was so complicated. It's like, what's complicated is building up that, the grit to keep going.

Yes.

And you know what? And that's just part of the process. And one of the things we do is we'll pitch angle and a subject line for a week, and if we don't get anything from it, then we change it because we're like, obviously this ain't working.

Yes.

Right. So we're always trying something new. Every single one of my pitches is trying something new. It's built off the foundation of a templated pitch, and then we customize it to the person that we're reaching out to.

It's just like a b testing marketing, right? Headlines. Like, we'll have, we'll sell the same offer, but, like, if you have a headline, one headline completely, you know, falls flat, twist it around, throw an extra word in there, right. The next day, and it's like, oh, my gosh, it's a, you know, the take rate is.

That's it is. You can't be married to it because it's all a process of iteration and tweaking any, like, landing page and even things like, one of my clients, he has these really cool, like, business tools, and he's been in the business for, since 2007 that he, people use, they buy these tools, these auditing tools, these whatever tools for business. And what he wants us to do is to reach out to a bunch of the business schools to offer the business schools students free access to these tools. And I said, you know, your website doesn't really explain that this is for business students. So why don't you shoot a little two minute video, minute and a half video that explains why you're offering this to business school students, and that becomes the landing page.

So instead of linking to their actual company domain, it's the subdomain. So now podcast hosts and journalists get, or, sorry, the business school professors get a customized video that we're pitching and linking to.

Oh, that's so good. That's so good.

So you could even do the same thing for podcasting. You don't have to record a custom video for every single person, but you can record something and place on your website that people get a sense of who you are. So when I'm looking at people that are cold pitching, the first place they go to is their social. I don't know how they're showing up for the world. I know that our values aligned, because if you're, like, super huge pro gun person, and I'm not, like, that's a misalignment, and it might be a weird conversation.

Yeah.

But that's, like, in the building, authority is like, your content has to match who you are.

Yes. And I want to. I really hope that, like, our listeners will walk away from that point also, because I think that there's. There's this fear around being braggadocious or whatever when it comes to authority. But authority is really just, you know, content that helps people solve a problem. And if you're consistently sharing content that gives value, then there's no bragginess in that. And that's what people like you are looking for. That's what I'm looking for. When I think of somebody being on my podcast, I want to know that they actually are showing up as an expert. Not that they're just sharing family photos and pictures of their dog, that they're actually. They have an audience. Right. Of. And they're building an audience around their expertise, that they're serious, that they're, quote unquote, open for business.

And I think that so many people overlook that really simple, yet so important aspect of building online.

Yeah. And it's. It's a grind. Like, it's a grind to keep up with the algorithms. Like, I look at content that I shared a year and a half ago, which is crap compared to stuff I share now. And it had twice the engagement.

Yeah.

And I'm like, what's going on?

But then just, like, ignore all of that. Right. You just have to keep pushing. Like, putting content out there that you know is meant for somebody that it can serve and ignore the vanity of it, because it is. It can get in your head, for sure.

Oh, yeah.

And it's frustrating.

It did for me pretty big when all that stuff started to happen. But the reality is, if you keep pushing through, you'll start attracting the right people. Like, I remember Amy Porterfield saying when she first got into this business, she was doing Facebook lives, and she would show up sometimes despite all of her promotions, and there'd be nobody or there'd be one person or there'd be two people. And she said every time, she still went through the whole thing as though it was a room of 50 or 100.

Yeah.

Eventually the numbers kept coming in.

Yeah. But so many. I think that so many people are so afraid to start small. Right. It's like. But that's how we get to big. That's. You've got to start small to grow big.

Yeah. There's. There's also. They feel ashamed.

Yeah.

Right. And people, it doesn't matter if you're starting over or, you know, launching a new product line, it flops. Like, no one's going to remember. No one cares. No, no one cares. What people care about is they want to see how you're going to dust yourself off. That's it.

It's so big, so good. So you gave us a little bit of everything. How to build authority. Like a little.

A little bit of us.

Simple pr plan.

Yeah.

I think ultimately is like, get on more podcasts, build relationships, show up as the expert. Rinse and repeat. Like, rinse and repeat. And what you've showed us, too, is that it can be done in two to 3 hours a week.

Yeah.

Or less. If you create a process and you delegate it.

Yeah. If you create the sop for pr, which could take a while, and then you train your va, she or he could do all the pitching for you.

Yeah. So simple. I love. That's why I love you. You just break it down. So simply. So simply. Renee, this was such a. So valuable, such a valuable conversation. We could go on for days. I know, I know. We could keep chatting. We actually had the gift of being able to catch up before this, so I'll take it. But any parting words for women that are maybe just feeling a little bit discouraged? I think there's a theme right now around feeling like the best kept secret. Right. So I know what that feels like. Like I am the best at what I do. And yet why does it feel like I'm getting overlooked for, you know, my quote unquote, competitors? What do you have to say to those women?

Well, you're getting overlooked because you're not doing anything to draw attention to yourself. So I always say in order to get news, you need to create news. So how you are different is really about how you're rare, how you're unique. So, sure, there's a million dermatologists or a million people that are like business coaches, but how you're different is what's going to draw the right people in. Because you don't need a billion customers if you do the math. Most people only need a handful. And we fail to recognize that there's how many people that live in the United States? Like 365 million or whatever, right?

Yeah. I don't know, but a lot.

Yeah. I mean, there's more in the state of California than there is in Canada. So I'm not even going to use my country as an example.

No, no.

But the point being is that we get discouraged by looking at how our competitors are succeeding, and we're like, oh, well, I don't deserve that. Like, hell, yeah, you do. If you believe you deserve it, you can get it, you can go after it and then just ask. Like, people are so afraid to ask for help or for ask for, you know, a nudge in some posts if you're, like, promoting a new product. Hey, kids, can you just give us a nudge? Can you engage, comment, or share this with somebody? Like, that's how it works. My husband Dan, who launched a book in January of 2023, became a Wall Street Journal bestseller on the back end of that book. He only launched a coaching program in April, so January.

So from January to April, people kept asking him for business advice, and he arbitrarily threw a coaching program together. Mind you, he's already created the foundation. Guys, he wasn't a stranger. He created the foundation, but he used to be, like, a SaaS coach and then became a general business coach. And I think it was April of this year, he had a million dollar month, incredible landing page, no fancy funnels, nothing. So when we look at what it takes to gain that authority, to build that significance, don't overthink it. Come up with one strategy that works and do it over and over and over again.

Yeah. Ignore the shiny objects. Such a blessing. Renee, thank you again for sharing your brilliance. It's so beautiful. And you're such a beautiful soul. I love you so much. And I'm so grateful for our friendship. And I'm so grateful that you are able to open your brilliance to my audience. Thank you again.

Well, thanks for having me.

Yes. All right, my friends, we'll talk soon. Have a great week.

Hey, if you're ready to stand out online and get pain clients consistently without having to fumble your way through tech, run ads or create complicated funnels, I want to invite you to join us in the category queen school, where you're going to learn my simple, proven formula for getting clients online. It's risk free. You either make your money back or we'll give you a refund. Just head over to kinseymacus.com thecq school and join today to get instant access. We'll see you inside.