How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine)

1. 0:00 – 4:09

   Jason’s background

   1. JFJason Feifer0:00

      ... the editor, the writer, they, like I'll- I'll just say it as plainly as possible, they don't care about you. They don't care about you. They care about their reader, or their listener, or their viewer. That's who they care about. That's who they're serving. And if you can be of use to them in sharing the kinds of information that they are looking to serve their audience, then you can get what you want. But you can't treat them like a service provider, because they're not. (laughs) And so you have to approach them with an understanding of what they're trying to do for their audience and how you can fit into that. Because if you don't, they are not interested in you.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:46

      (Instrumental music) Today my guest is Jason Feifer. Jason is editor in chief at Entrepreneur Magazine, previously an editor at Fast Company and a number of other magazines. He's also an author, podcast host, keynote speaker, and startup advisor. In our conversation, we get incredibly tactical about how to get press for your product. Jason shares how to pitch a journalist, how to find the right journalist to pitch, what publications to consider, why freelance writers are more likely to write about your story, why the mission of the publication is so important in how you pitch them, plus what channels to use to reach out to journalists, how to think about your goals, and what success looks like from getting press, so much more. I learned a ton from this conversation. And if you're looking to get press for your stuff, you will find so much value here. With that, I bring you Jason Feifer after a short word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Sidebar. Are you looking to land your next big career move or start your own thing? One of the most effective ways to create a big leap in your career, and something that worked really well for me a few years ago, is to create a personal board of directors, a trusted peer group where you can discuss challenges you're having, get career advice, and just kind of gut check how you're thinking about your work, your career, and your life. This has been a big trajectory changer for me, but it's hard to build this trusted group. With Sidebar, senior readers are matched with highly vetted, private, supportive peer groups to lean on for unbiased opinions, diverse perspectives, and raw feedback. Everyone has their own zone of genius, so together, we're better prepared to navigate professional pitfalls, leading to more responsibility, faster promotions, and bigger impact. Guided by world-class programming and facilitation, Sidebar enables you to get focused, tactical feedback at every step of your journey. If you're a listener of this podcast, you're likely already driven and committed to growth. A Sidebar personal board of directors is the missing piece to catalyze that journey. Why spend a decade finding your people when you can meet them at Sidebar today? Jump the growing wait list of thousands of readers from top tech companies by visiting sidebar.com/lenny to learn more. That's sidebar.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Maui Nui Venison, a mission-based food company bringing the healthiest red meat on the planet directly to your door. I actually joined Maui Nui Venison earlier this year after hearing their ad on the Tim Ferriss podcast and am excited to be spreading the message further. Not only does this company provide the most nutrient dense and protein dense red meat available, their operation produces the only stress-free 100% wild harvested red meat on the market, that is the only one of its kind in the world, actively managing Maui's invasive axis deer populations, helping to restore balance to vulnerable ecosystems, food systems, and communities in Hawaii. Also, it is seriously delicious, not at all gamey, and easy to cook. My wife and I made stew and steaks and all kinds of grilled goodies with the meat. We also feel great about it as a protein from an ethical standpoint. I highly recommend trying their all natural venison jerky sticks for an optimal protein snack, as well as a wide variety of fresh cuts, all available in their online butcher shop. There are limited memberships available, but you can sign up and get 20% off your first order at mauinuivenison.com/lenny. That's mauinuivenison.com/lenny.

2. 4:09 – 7:41

   Jason’s inbox volume

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky4:09

      Jason, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

   2. JFJason Feifer4:13

      Lenny, thanks for having me.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky4:14

      It's absolutely my pleasure. We've actually collaborated on a couple things recently, and as we were chatting about some stuff, I was asking for advice on how to help a startup I'm working with get press and you shared a bunch of killer advice, and so I asked if you could just come on this podcast and share similar advice for how to help startups get press and here we are.

   4. JFJason Feifer4:36

      Yeah. Uh, I'm really happy that you asked me to do that. This is something people ask me about a lot. I've been in media for decades. I've worked at a lot of different magazines. Obviously I run Entrepreneur Magazine now, but I was at Fast Company, I was at Men's Health, so I've seen a lot of different sides of media and it is a very misunderstood tool, uh, particularly for people in business. And so I love demystifying it.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky4:59

      Amazing. I'm excited to learn all this too, and so thanks for doing this.

   6. JFJason Feifer5:04

      Yeah.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky5:04

      First question is just, as someone in press, how much volume is there coming at you from startup founders and PR people trying to get you to write about them, and you and also just reporters that you work with?

   8. JFJason Feifer5:15

      Yeah. Uh, it- it's tremendous. It's- it's like ridiculous. Uh, I would say that by the time we're done recording this podcast, I'll have, I don't know, I mean it could be anywhere from like 30 to 50 pitches in my inbox. Uh, it comes all day. Now, to be clear, most of that is garbage in the real garbage-y sense, right? It's a lot of completely unrelevant press releases that were sent to me and a bazillion other people. But within there are definitely some people who have spent the time to reach out very specifically to me, and everybody in media gets some kind of volume like that. To reach out to somebody in media is to be shouting over a lot of noise.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky6:00

      Wow.I imagine we'll get to this later, but I'm curious just what percentage of those are PR people and press release versus, like, a founder or someone that is, like, you know, doing it themselves?

   10. JFJason Feifer6:11

       The, the percentage of direct messages from founders that I'm getting is, is low. I would say probably 20, 25%. And then the 75% is PR in some capacity, either targeted PR where somebody's intentionally reaching out to me, or mass blast press releases.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky6:30

       You know what's crazy is, I've been getting a lot of these now. Like, people think I'm some kind of journalist, and they're just like, "Embargoed announcement, product launch."

   12. JFJason Feifer6:37

       It doesn't take much, because you just end up on some list. And what's really interesting, and w- we'll talk about PR later, I, I know, but one of the great insights that you can get (laughs) into the challenges of that industry is how completely automated a lot of it is. Where a lot of people in PR are not thinking specifically about how to tell the right story to the right potential media outlet. And instead what they're doing is, they're just playing a numbers game, and they're just blasting it out to everybody. And that means that you could end up, uh ... Like, p- I write, I write this newsletter, right? I have, I, like, Entrepreneur Magazine is the thing that people obviously would pitch, but then I have this, like, newsletter where I don't interview anybody. There's no opportunity to be featured in my newsletter, and I still get pitches to the newsletter because somebody saw it and dropped it in some spreadsheet, and it just all ... Now I get it. And I think that's a real disservice to entrepreneurs who are paying for people to do that.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky7:40

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JFJason Feifer7:40

       And I really hate

3. 7:41 – 8:47

   The impact of press coverage on startups

   1. JFJason Feifer7:41

      that.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky7:41

      Yeah. Okay, so we're gonna get into the meat of just, like, how to actually do this well, but a couple more questions just to set a little context. One is, in terms of impact, what kind of impact have you seen from getting press for a startup, in terms of growth for their product specifically?

   3. JFJason Feifer7:57

      So it's a really wide range. I have had entrepreneurs tell me that a single story in Entrepreneur Magazine, like, the print magazine, or just online will drive more, you know, whatever, more app downloads, more sales that month than any of their paid marketing efforts. But then I also heard entrepreneurs tell me that it didn't do anything for them, or that it did one very specific thing for them, which is to say maybe some potential partner read it and reached out, and it started an interesting conversation. It's all over the gamut. And, uh, it's a really important thing for people to remember, is that this is not something that I think that you should bank on a- as a, as a strategy for growth. It's a great add-on, but if you think that press by itself is gonna solve your problems, you're, you're wrong. 'Cause it- it- it might, but it's way too

4. 8:47 – 10:37

   Navigating the timing and outlets for press exposure

   1. JFJason Feifer8:47

      unpredictable.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky8:48

      Is there anything else along those lines of just when it's worth somebody investing time into getting press, either stage of startup, type of startup, any just general broad advice of, like, you should not be spending the time on trying to get press versus, like, this is a really good opportunity for you?

   3. JFJason Feifer9:02

      Think about press the same way that you think about raising money, which is to say, you do it when you know what the money is for. And you should do it when you know what the press is for. A lot of people reach out to me at such an early stage that if we wrote about them, it wouldn't get them anything. (laughs) They're not at a stage where they could use that press in any meaningful way. And so there's really no purpose in chasing it now. Eh, like, you- you should step back and think, really, as a starting point, like, "What do I need press for?" And if you have a good tactical answer to that, that could be because I need to drive awareness to a new product. That be- could be because I'm going out to raise money and I need articles to show that the marketplace takes me seriously. These are good reasons. But I get a lot of emails, and it's funny because people are ... (laughs) Like, entrepreneurs in particular, uh, like, you know, uh, they're often, they're just so vulnerable, and it's, you- you know, i- it kind of a wonderful way sometimes, and sometimes people will just email me and they'll just say, "You know, I've worked really hard and I just feel like I deserve this." I respect that, and I relate to it in some ways with my own trying to get attention for my own work. But, "I deserve this," is a, i- that's not a good tactical decision for your business. Th- that, that doesn't do anything for you. And so I would put that to the side and only think of press as, like, you don't go out and raise money if you don't know what the money is for. You shouldn't go out and try to get press if you don't know what the press is

5. 10:37 – 12:38

   When not to pursue press coverage

   1. JFJason Feifer10:37

      for.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky10:37

      I'm curious to hear other examples when it's not, when it's a bad idea. Because as a, like an outside observer, I would always love to get more attention for my product and more people to be aware of it, more people to check it out. Is there an example or anything that comes to mind of, like, there's no need for you to do that in this moment or for this product?

   3. JFJason Feifer10:55

      Oftentimes, it's not even about the moment, but it's about the publication.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky11:00

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JFJason Feifer11:00

      So I- I'll give you an example. I spoke at an event once, and afterwards this guy comes up to me and he has, like, a small hot dog, uh, food, uh, truck business in Washington, DC, you know?

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky11:15

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JFJason Feifer11:15

      So he's selling, you know, he's got, like, a couple trucks and he's doing good business selling hot dogs. And he wants coverage in Entrepreneur Magazine, right? He's like, "Oh, how can I get a feature on Ent-" And the problem with that instinct that he has is that he's really directing his energy in the wrong place.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky11:34

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JFJason Feifer11:34

      Because if he is selling hot dogs in Washington, DC, then I understand what press is for for him. Press is to drive hot dog sales. That, that's what he wants to do. Entrepreneur is not going to do that for him, full stop. Why? Because Entrepreneur reaches a national to international audience. So that means that 99.5% of the people who would read a story about this guy have no ability to go get his hot dogs, which means that was wasted effort. So fine, uh, was it that hard to come up and talk to me at the conference? No. But, like, scale that out, right? Like, how many emails is he sending that are like that? How much energy is he putting into...... chasing things that ultimately don't have good direct value to him. What he needs to do is think, "Okay. My goal? Get more people to buy hotdogs. Where am I? I'm in Washington, D.C. How can I reach people who are interested in food in my market?" So stop chasing Entrepreneur, and start chasing the local Eater or the food section of The Washingtonian or something like that, right? That small shift can give you a lot more payoff for your effort.

6. 12:38 – 14:01

   Jason’s three-step press strategy

   1. JFJason Feifer12:38

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky12:38

      This is a good segue to just ... Let's just dive in to how to actually go about getting press.

   3. JFJason Feifer12:42

      Yeah.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky12:42

      And I know you kind of have this three-step structure for thinking about it. Maybe just start with what are the three steps and, and then we'll dive into each one?

   5. JFJason Feifer12:49

      Yeah, sure. So I mean, look, it's, it's, it's pretty simple, right? Step one is prep. You wanna be thinking about how to tell your story, you wanna be thinking about the kinds of stuff I just talked about. What is press for for you? Everything that you need to do to orient yourself towards what is this opportunity and why am I chasing it and how to make the most of it. Step two is figuring out who to pitch. Not all press is created equal. There are not reasons to just go chasing everybody arbitrarily. The hotdog example is a good one. So finding the writers and editors who you're actually gonna reach out to, who are going to be most receptive to you and also making sure that because you did the prep, you can figure out how to tell your story in a way that they're gonna be interested in. We'll talk about that. And then step three is the actual pitch. What does it mean to reach out to these people, to engage the writers and editors? How do you find them? What do you send them? What are you telling them? That's it. I mean, right? But what you need to understand is that you're, you're entering a world that probably doesn't operate the way in which you think it does. And I see that all the time as the recipient of pitches. People don't understand who they're reaching out to and how I and my colleagues

7. 14:01 – 15:48

   Unpacking the media’s mission

   1. JFJason Feifer14:01

      think. W- we should maybe even start with that, 'cause that's a really important thing to understand. Just like again, to go to back to the-

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky14:06

      Let's do it, yeah.

   3. JFJason Feifer14:07

      ... the, the, yeah, the metaphor of the, the investors. You don't reach out to an investor if you don't understand what that investor does. (laughs) What they're interested in or what kinds of companies they invest in. You, you can't do that with media either. So I get pitches every single day along the lines of, "How do I get coverage in Entrepreneur Magazine? How do I get a feature in Entrepreneur Magazine?" Right? And to me, it always feels like they're ordering, uh, like a hamburger from me, right? Like, "How do I get a hamburger from Entrepreneur Hamburgers," right? Eh, they're, they're treating me like a service provider, like that my job is to provide press. And I get it because of course if you're an entrepreneur and you're looking for press, then the writers and editors out there seem to be in the business of writing about people and therefore there's some service that they seem to provide and you're trying to figure out how to get it. But that's not how the media thinks of themselves. Right? The, the editor, the writer, they ... Like I'll, I'll just say it as plainly as possible. They don't care about you. They don't care about you. They care about their reader, or their listener, or their viewer. That's who they care about. That's who they're serving. And if you can be of use to them in sharing the kinds of information that they are looking to serve their audience, then you can get what you want. But you can't treat them like a service provider because they're not. (laughs) And so you have to approach them with an understanding of what they're trying to do for their audience and how you can fit into that. Because if you don't, they are not

8. 15:48 – 22:56

   Identifying a publication’s mission

   1. JFJason Feifer15:48

      interested in you.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky15:49

      I love that. And more even specifically, what is it they're trying to do for their audience? I imagine it's just have something interesting that they want to read. Something they can learn, something they're like, "Wow, I'm really excited to read this."

   3. JFJason Feifer16:00

      Yeah. But it's gonna be more specific based on the mission of each publication. So for example, I've worked at two separate business titles. I was a senior editor at Fast Company for a number of years, and now I'm the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. The, the, the decision that is made about whether or not a story belongs in a publication, it was totally different-

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky16:24

      Hmm.

   5. JFJason Feifer16:25

      ... based on these two publications. So I, I can't speak to Fast Company now because they've gone through a couple leadership changes. I don't know what their mission is. But back when I worked there under Bob Safian, he was the editor-in-chief, that was really a magazine about where business is going. And the stories that were in the magazine were all supposed to be in some way representative of the evolution of business. And so when people would pitch, what we'd really be looking for are, are there insights into, in- in- in what this person is doing that other people could read and say, "Aha, that helps me understand where this industry is going or that industry," or, "That helps me think about how I can shape my own company to match current trends." That kind of stuff. Entrepreneur, totally different mission. The way that I think of Entrepreneur is that it's not even a magazine about business, it's a magazine about thinking. What I wanna do is make sure that everybody who comes to the magazine walks away with great insights into how to think through the challenges in their business. And so what I'm looking for when somebody reaches out is did they make some interesting counterintuitive decision that solved a problem in their business? And, and I'll emphasize in, because oftentimes when people hear me talk about p- solving problems in business, they think, "Aha, but I solve a problem in business," right? Like, "I, I saw that there weren't the best razors in the world and I made the best razors." Li- that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is (laughs) there's this woman whose name is Joelle Mertzl. She has a company called Kitchen Concepts Unlimited and she makes a butter dish. And, uh, it's a really smart butter dish because i- it is, uh, built on a hinge, right? So this is designed to solve a very specific problem which, Lenny, I don't know if you knew this, I did not, that you don't need to refrigerate butter.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky18:17

      Hmm.

   7. JFJason Feifer18:17

      Did you know that?

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky18:17

      I knew, I knew that intellectually but I still refrigerate it. Like I, I know people don't.

   9. JFJason Feifer18:22

      (laughs) Me too.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky18:23

       (laughs)

   11. JFJason Feifer18:23

       Even though I've had multiple conversations with this woman about this. You don't need to refrigerate butter.And if you leave it out, it's, it's, you know, i- it cuts easier.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky18:32

       Mm-hmm. (laughs)

   13. JFJason Feifer18:32

       It's more spreadable. Big problem, the butter dish. So, uh, when you, uh, you know, most butter dishes you just lift up. And so, if you have warm, uh, room temperature butter, eh, that's soft, and you lift, uh, the butter dish, uh, top up, you might bump into the butter and it's gonna make a big mess.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky18:51

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JFJason Feifer18:51

       So Joelle makes a butter dish on a hinge, right? It opens and closes exactly the same way every single time. No mess. Brilliant. Solves a problem. She reaches out to me about this. This is not interesting to us, right? The, maybe this is interesting for a cooking magazine, right? Maybe Bon App- Appetite is interested in this. Entrepreneur's not interested in this, because that doesn't help other entrepreneurs to have thought through that problem. But then she tells me something else. What she tells me is that she is, at the very beginning of this, trying to figure out how to answer some basic questions about her audience. Like, what colors do they want in this butter dish, and what price point are they willing to pay? And she wants to do some market research. She goes to a market research company. She says, "How much would it cost to research consumers in answer to these questions?" They say, "$10,000." She doesn't have $10,000. And then one day, she is sitting at the airport waiting to board a flight and she looks around and she realizes that airports are full of people who have absolutely nothing better to do than answer questions about butter dishes, right? Like, nothing better to do than just sit in there. And you could start at gate one and by the time you get to gate eight, everyone in gate one is new. You could do it all over aga- And you could have a 6:00 PM flight and you could show up at 9:00 AM. Nobody's gonna stop you. You could do this all day in the airport. And this is how she starts to do her own market research. She saves that $10,000 and she does it herself. I put that story in the magazine. It's tiny. This is tiny random company and this random decision. But the reason I did it is because every time I repeat that story to entrepreneurs, they're all like, "Ah! Right, totally. There's always other ways to do things." They love the ingenuity of it. That's what I'm looking for. That's entrepreneur stories. So it's not, to go back to the point that you were, you were making, it's not just about, well, it's a magazine called Entrepreneur, they must write about entrepreneurs, right? "Well, I'm an entrepreneur. I belong in Entrepreneur." Uh, people think that all the time. No. You have to step back and read what these publications are publishing and ask yourself, "What are they doing? What is the purpose here?" The editors and the writers are making decisions about what goes in this magazine and they're making decisions about how the stories are constructed. Why are they doing that? Who are they trying to reach? When you start to see it through that lens, you start to see the pattern and you get an understanding, a real instruction manual for what it actually means to pitch these publications.

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky21:13

       That is such an interesting insight. I had no idea that that was something you should be thinking about. Is there an easy way to understand the mission of the publication? I, is there like an About page they often add this to? Or is it like you said, you just read a bunch of stuff and try to s- s- suss it out?

   17. JFJason Feifer21:26

       You know, uh, nobody publishes an About page in that way 'cause that's, that's like the internal logic of the editorial team. But you can certainly make some starting assumptions based on who the publication is trying to reach, right? You know, everybody is trying to reach somebody. It gets more complicated the more general interest something becomes, right? Like, what is The New York Times? What is the mission? Uh, that's a hard thing to answer. I-

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky21:55

       Mm-hmm.

   19. JFJason Feifer21:55

       You sort of have to divide it up into sections, right? The mission of the national news desk is different from the mission of the business desk. And, and even within there, the mission of the Sunday business section is different from the mission of the Monday to Saturday business section.

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky22:09

       Yeah.

   21. JFJason Feifer22:09

       So, you know, you have to start to really parse it out. And this is the reason why people hire PRs-

   22. LRLenny Rachitsky22:15

       Mm-hmm.

   23. JFJason Feifer22:16

       ... because if they're good at their jobs, they understand a lot of this already. But I really do think that if you spent time with the content and your starting point is, "I understand that this publication is trying to reach X," right, they're trying to reach these people, then you can start to see the patterns of what it is that they're doing. How are they telling stories? What do these five stories all have in common? They have something in common. There's something that they're all doing. And you could certainly read the tea leaves and try to figure it out.

   24. LRLenny Rachitsky22:48

       Awesome. Okay. It feels like we've already gone into step one around prep. What else is involved in preparing to get press?

9. 22:56 – 26:11

   Step one: How to prepare for outreach

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky22:56

   2. JFJason Feifer22:56

      If we're talking about prep, the very first thing that you need to do is what I had said earlier, which is just ask yourself, "Wh- what do I need press for?" And you need a good answer to that question. And once you have that, the next thing you should do is you should start to think about, "Well, what's interesting about my business?" (laughs)

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky23:19

      (laughs)

   4. JFJason Feifer23:19

      And oftentimes, it's not necessarily what you think. And you can be guided in a way by what's happening in step two where you start to think about who you're trying to reach out to. Or because, for example, the story that somebody might tell me, an entrepreneur, is gonna be different than the story that somebody might tell Cosmo. There, there's a reason for a company to end up in both Entrepreneur and Cosmo, right? Maybe the product is for young women, and so Cosmo might be interested in some kind of a product feature or including the product in a roundup of some kind of products. Whereas Entrepreneur would do the entrepreneur focus story. What did this founder do? How did they... Right? Like, you can take your, you could think about your story and kind of break it up into a whole bunch of different little pieces and then figure out which piece goes to what media. But oftentimes, people make the mistake of trying to do that in reverse, which is to say that they kind of decide what narrative they would like to have out in the world and then they just go around to different publications trying to sell them on that. Uh, I, I get that all the time. A lot of my pitches that I'll receive in my inbox are...Somebody who hasn't really thought at all about what Entrepreneur publishes, but instead just has something that they would like to get out into the world. Uh, I mean a, a, a good kind of dumb example is, uh, yesterday somebody sent me, uh, an email about a company that had just hired a new president. I, I don't care about that. (laughs)

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky25:00

      (laughs)

   6. JFJason Feifer25:00

      Like, that's not useful to my audience at all. I'm sure that there is a trade publication, right, let's say that, that was a company in the restaurant industry. I'm sure that a trade publication that follows the blow by blow by blow of a, of a, a restaurant industry might be interested in your new president, but I'm not because you hiring that new president isn't useful to my audience. Stories in Entrepreneur are not really about the person that I'm writing about, they're really about the audience. They're really me serving the audience through the stories of the people I'm writing about. That's not useful. I wish that they had spent a moment and thought about that, but they didn't. So once you start to think about who it is that you're trying to reach, you can step back and say, "Well, what part of my journey is gonna be most relevant to them?" And I would push you to be really, really creative about it, because if you go back to the Buttery example, the butter dish, that, that little funny story about the airport, I mean, who else is writing about that? (laughs) It's, it's not central to her story as a brand. It's not central to her sales pitch. It was just for us. It was, uh, we were probably the only publication in the world who cared about that.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky26:09

      Mm-hmm.

   8. JFJason Feifer26:09

      But I really cared about it.

10. 26:11 – 28:25

    How press can help you

    1. JFJason Feifer26:11

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky26:11

       Amazing. Okay, so just kind of summarizing what you shared.

    3. JFJason Feifer26:14

       Yeah.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky26:14

       Think about the goal. What are you trying to get out of press?

    5. JFJason Feifer26:17

       Right.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky26:17

       I mean, goals could be awareness of what we've done, something new, investor interest. What are, what are some other, other common examples of goals that you see for trying to get press?

    7. JFJason Feifer26:27

       So yeah, awareness of something new, but does, also doesn't have to be awareness of something new. It could just be continued growth, trying to reach into a new marketplace. Uh, you know, that's fine. Uh, I mean, ba- you know, anything, anything (laughs) that's tied to, uh, growth, uh, or reaching a new customer base-

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky26:44

       Cool. Okay.

    9. JFJason Feifer26:45

       ... would make sense, right?

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky26:45

        That makes sense.

    11. JFJason Feifer26:46

        Um, but it could also be that you're looking to position yourself-

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky26:52

        Mm-hmm.

    13. JFJason Feifer26:52

        ... in your own marketplace a little differently. So I see, for example, a lot of people, a lot of big companies keep knocking on my door, 'cause we don't just hear from startups. We hear from major companies as well who are pitching stories, and I know why they wanna be in Entrepreneur. They wanna be in Entrepreneur because they're trying to position their brand as also being relevant to small business owners. And so it's helpful to have that kind of context, because coverage in Entrepreneur can help them go out to the marketplace and say, "Look, we're also reaching XYZ people." Right? So sometimes it's not even about a conversion, but rather it's about a positioning. And that's a good reason to also maybe put forward your executives. Sometimes it's just about establishing your CEO or your founder as an authority in a particular area, because they, you want them to be more trustworthy. You want them to be invited to more conferences, because all of that stuff draws more attention to the company. All sorts of reasons to do this stuff. And then yeah, uh, you know, trying to get in front of investors, trying to get in front of partners. Eh, eh, look, there's a million reasons why being visible can be useful, but you m- you need to make sure you understand what you're actually trying to do.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky28:07

        Okay, awesome. That was really helpful. So think about what goal you, you have in mind for getting press. Pick a publication and understand their mission and what their goals are, and then think about some interesting stories that you could pitch to them, not just like we have a new president, but something that you think they'd be excited to share that connects with their mission.

    15. JFJason Feifer28:24

        That's

11. 28:25 – 32:16

    When to work with a PR agency

    1. JFJason Feifer28:25

       right.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky28:25

       Kind of on this topic, I know we wanna talk about like who to contact and how to figure out who to actually talk to. A couple questions that come to mind. Uh, this is all a lot of work. Founders are really busy.

    3. JFJason Feifer28:35

       Yeah. (laughs) It's a lot.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky28:35

       So the, the... Begs the question, PR agencies, do you have a perspective on would you recommend working with PR agency? Is there a time when it makes too and doesn't make sense to?

    5. JFJason Feifer28:44

       Yeah. I mean, it's a ton of work, right? Like everything that I'm describing is a ton of work. And, and, and let me be clear, people succeed in getting press without doing any of the things that I'm describing because dumb luck happens in the world, right? You, you know, you could very well just bang out an email to some random editor and they might like it. That is entirely possible, or you could disregard everything that I've just said. What I'm really helping you do is try to optimize your approach. But yeah, hiring PR can cut out a lot of this. Now you're not doing this research yourself. You're not thinking through these challenges yourself. You're working with people who understand exactly how to identify the most interesting parts of your story and then turn them into good pitches. So why wouldn't everyone do that? The couple reasons. Uh, number one, cost. PR can be expensive, so you just have to factor that in. Number two, PR is and can be, I'll say, can be a very frustrating journey, because a lot of PR people are very bad at their jobs. They're very bad. And, and this isn't just me bashing PR people. I have literally been hired to give keynotes at PR industry conferences, and I get on stage and I say, "Most PR people are bad at their jobs." And everybody nods, like a- and they all know it, right? And they, of course, none of them think that they're one of the bad ones, but they all know it. PR is full of people who are bad at their jobs. Why are they bad at their jobs? They're bad at their jobs because they're lazy, because they're primarily relying upon email blasts, just sending things out, because they have a older idea of what it means to get the word out. For example, if you go to a P- if you hire a, or talk to a PR agency and one of the things that they recommend doing...... that you should spend money on is a press release, like a traditional press release, run as fast as you can away from that. Like as f- because you ... Yeah, I don't, uh, like I don't know if you know this. Like, do you know this? Like, the press release, there are some purposeful reasons to put out a press release. But the press release is, is really no longer the primary unit of, of m- press attraction.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky31:07

       Yeah. I get that sense.

    7. JFJason Feifer31:08

       Yeah. So, but here's what's fascinating. So, a PR agency, b- uh, a pr- a PR agency I wouldn't recommend might do this. They'll tell you, "We're gonna put together a press release about this new thing. Um, so you have to pay a little extra money for the production of this press release and then also the distribution of this press release. Because what we're going to do is we're gonna put it out on the wire," right? Because there are a whole bunch of, there are a whole bunch of, uh, uh, press release distribution wires. So they'll do that. You'll pay the money, it'll go out on the wire. And then they'll send you a report about all the places that this press release ended up on. "It ended up on Yahoo! Finance. It ended up on Market Watch," (laughs) right? And it technically did, like the, the press release is there, it was posted, and zero people are gonna see it. In the whole world. Because Yahoo! Finance has a section where they just publish every damn press release that gets published by all these different, uh, distributors. Nobody saw that. So, don't confuse posting press releases, even on very big websites, with actual success.S

12. 32:16 – 36:02

    PR insights and red flags

    1. JFJason Feifer32:16

       what you want in an actual PR person is someone who trafficks in one thing, and that is relationships. The most important thing that a PR person can have is active relationships with people in media. Why? They cannot guarantee, if a PR person is guaranteeing you press, that's another reason to run out the door as fast as possible because the PR people cannot control this. The, the, the, eh, writers and editors, they do, they do what they want. It's a completely subjective industry and it very frustrating, I completely understand that but it's totally subjective. So, the best that a PR person can do is shape your story, understand who to pitch, and then get that writer or editor to look at it, to pay attention to it. There are some PR people in this world who I think very highly of. I think they're incredibly smart, they're incredibly good at what they do, and they only pitch me when they have something that they think I will genuinely be interested in. Instead of a lot of PR people which ju- who just like send me some random thing every week or every day. I don't pay attention to those people. But, when, I don't know, just like shout out, when John Beer from Jack Taylor PR sends me a like, John, I met him in a PR capacity like a decade ago and we've since become friends, like when he emails me, I pay attention. I don't write about it all the time. I'm not gonna write about something just 'cause I like John. But I will pay attention. And paying attention, honestly, is like half the battle because PR, because people immediately are getting so much, uh, email. So, you want someone who's gonna understand you, understand your industry, understand and know the people who th- they should be reaching out to. And who really respect you as an entrepreneur. And are going to give you the hard feedback because there are a lot of people who will go and hire PR and they'll say, "I, I want you to email this and this and this and this and this publication." And if the PR person just does that, all they're doing is like annoying their contacts if they don't really feel like this was meaningful. You should like when a PR person pushes back on you and says, "You know what? I don't think that your story is right for that publication. Here's why." That's a, that's someone you should hire.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky34:34

       Is there any other PR people you wanna call out as ones that you think are awesome?

    3. JFJason Feifer34:38

       The challenge here is that I'm gonna regret not including a whole bunch of people who don't pop to mind immediately. But, um-

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky34:43

       We could include them in the show notes, whoever else you forget.

    5. JFJason Feifer34:45

       Yeah, we'll include, we'll includ- th- yeah, sure. Um, okay. So let's see. Off the top of my head, so, so John from Jack Taylor, the, he does a lot of wellness stuff. Right? So, so PR agencies tend to specialize. And so you wanna make sure that you're going with people who like really understand you and the media ecosystem that you are reaching out to. So, I think that the, the, the, J- uh, John's really smart. Let's see, uh, Hannah Lee at Hannah Lee Communications is great on hospitality stuff. So, uh, restaurants, hotels, booze, uh, they're really smart. Uh, uh Jenn Squ- Squilla, sorry Jen if I mispronounced your name, at Max Borges Agency, really good on sort of like consumer focused, um, products. Uh, Greg Dellman who I- is uh, he's based in San Francisco, he has a boutique shop called G3 Media and he does a lot of like tech startup stuff. Um, uh, just really knows that world. Uh, Greg I'll even, I, uh, Gr- I'll find writers through Greg, uh, because he just knows everybody. Like I just texted him recently and I was like, "I need somebody who can write about this very specific AI thing," and he happened to be at TechCrunch Disrupt and he's like found some freelancer and connected us, right? Like, that's great. Uh, so, those are four. I will have more that I'll give you for the show notes.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky35:55

       Amazing. Okay, this is really useful. If any come to mind as we're chatting, feel free to (laughs) shout them out again. Similar question,

13. 36:02 – 42:34

    Selecting the right publication for startups

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky36:02

       when people are thinking about publications to go after, say you're a startup founder. Is there a list you could just share of just like here's probably the top five, 10 that you should be thinking about? Like the obvious ones you talked about, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, TechCrunch obviously comes to mind. Is there others that are just like, here's a good list to start with?

    2. JFJason Feifer36:18

       You know, honestly, it really so much depends upon what it is that you're looking to do. Eh, you know, I mean, you could be a startup founder and Entrepreneur and Inc. and Fast Company are, for maybe some good reason, not at the top of your list because you're a startup founder but your goal right now is to reach consumers. And those publications don't reach consumers.... right? And they don't reach people who are in a buying mindset. They reach people who are in a creating mindset. So, I would expect that if you have a startup and that startup is not, like, B2B in some way, that it would be possibly very reasonable that business publications might not be your target right now. Maybe Men's Health is. Maybe, you know, I don't know. Anything could be. I think oftentimes people tend to think too close to them about where they belong. I, I get, right? Like, here's, here's, Lenny, like (laughs) here's a real kind of exchange that happens, which is that somebody will email me. I, I, I don't respond to every publicist. It's just literally not possible. I would not have enough time in the day. I do do my best to respond to every entrepreneur who reaches out, because I feel like they deserve a response. And sometimes somebody will email me and they'll send me something and it's not, it's just not relevant. And I'll reply and I'll just say, you know, "Hey, um, you know, thanks. Congratulations on what you've built, but this isn't a fit for Entrepreneur." And I, maybe, like, once a month, somebody responds really in a, like, testy way, and they're like, "But don't you write about entrepreneurs? I'm a great entrepreneur success story." And it's like, that, that's, no. That's not what we do. (laughs) Like, yes, entrepreneurs are featured in our stories, but no, we're not just, like, a directory of entrepreneurs, right? Here's a good, here's a good way to think about it. If you have a startup and you're trying to figure out what publications to be in, go look at where your competitors have been featured. That's a great place to start. Like, what audiences are they reaching and how are they doing it? That should give you some direction about where you might wanna go next.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky38:33

       Awesome. Awesome advice. On TechCrunch, do you have a perspective on, is it worth investing in getting featured in TechCrunch?

    4. JFJason Feifer38:40

       I'll, I'll tell you a sort of, like, personal press journey moment, and then I think that it will translate into the answer for TechCrunch.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky38:47

       Amazing.

    6. JFJason Feifer38:48

       Okay. Something we haven't talked about so far yet is, uh, uh, and this is sort of almost skipping all the steps that we've laid out, so, like, what happens after you get the press. But, like, the, the point of the press is sometimes to reach the people who are reading it, right? Like, you get covered in Entrepreneur and entrepreneurs are gonna read it and maybe something good will come of it. But sometimes the point of it is not to reach the people who are reading it at all. Possibly a very small number of people are going to read it, which by the way is a real, real possibility, because although all of these publications that I have mentioned, Entrepreneur, Forbes, Fortune, Inc., Fast Company, whatever, whatever, these are, these are reaching millions of people that the, their websites get many, many, many millions of unique visitors each month. That does not mean that your story is going to be read by millions of people. In fact, the, the largest possibility here is that your story will reach, like, 5 to 10,000 people. A small number of people. 'Cause these publications are publishing tons of stuff. So, you might get this story, it might look awesome, it might not reach that many people. (laughs) That might also be okay, because maybe the reason, in your logic, for why to get that kind of coverage is not to have reached that publication's audience at all anyway. Maybe what it really is, is to tweet it and then put some money behind promoting that tweet. Because then you can target that you got coverage to the people who you wanna notice you got coverage.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky40:20

       That's right.

    8. JFJason Feifer40:21

       And, uh, I see a lot of people do that. They'll, they'll take articles that we ran on Entrepreneur and they'll basically turn them into advertisements. And that's really smart, because what they got out of Entrepreneur was the social cache, it was the validation in the marketplace, and then they're going to do something with that themselves. That's really smart. You also see it, right, so, sometimes the reason to get coverage is just so you can put it on your website. As seen in. As seen in is probably more valuable than anyone actually reading that story to begin with. They probably won't read the story. You might not even have to link it on the website. But you can just get to say, as seen in, because it, again, it gives you that validation. Me personally, I am building a small, uh, podcast company with my friend Nicole Lapin. Nicole Lapin's a bestselling, um, busi- uh, money expert. And, uh, we, we have a company. She's the founder, uh, and I'm an advisor, and it's called Money News Network. We have a podcast on it called Help Wanted that we co-host together. And, um, we got coverage in Variety. And that was the result of pounding on a lot of doors and finally getting someone at Variety to take interest and they ran an article about us. Did we get anything from that story in Variety? The answer is no. Like, nothing. But you better believe that every email we send out to every potential advertiser, to every partner, includes the link, right? Variety has covered us, and I guarantee that when someone receives that email, it makes them pay more attention. And I have used it many times too when I reach out to people, and, it, it, it just gives you that validation. So sometimes what you're looking for is a prize to walk around with, and I would, I would bet that the same is true for TechCrunch, which was your original question. Like, why get the funding announcement in TechCrunch? Probably not because anyone's gonna care because they read it on TechCrunch. But now you can use that to your own means, and sometimes that's more valuable than the press itself.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky42:16

       That is an awesome insight. It also makes you realize you may not feel like it was a success after working, spending all this time getting a story in Entrepreneur and it's like-

    10. JFJason Feifer42:24

        Yeah.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky42:24

        ... "Oh, nothing happened." But the benefits may come later, like weeks, months, years later-

    12. JFJason Feifer42:29

        Yeah.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky42:29

        ... when you start to share that.

    14. JFJason Feifer42:30

        Exactly right. A lot of this is what you make of it.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky42:32

        Amazing. Okay, that was extremely interesting.

14. 42:34 – 47:27

    Step two: Identifying the ideal pitch recipient

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky42:34

       Okay, let's talk about step two.

    2. JFJason Feifer42:36

       (laughs)

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky42:36

       So initially you prepped, we talked about how to think about who to go after and the mission and goals. Then you get to step two, which is figuring out who to reach out to at a-

    4. JFJason Feifer42:45

       Right.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky42:45

       ... at a publication.

    6. JFJason Feifer42:46

       Mm-hmm. Okay. So...A lot of people make the mistake of emailing me, right? If th- if they want coverage on Entrepreneur, they email me. And I understand why they're emailing me. It's really for two reasons. One, I'm the most visible editorial person at Entrepreneur. Uh, and so it's easy to find me, it's easy to find my email address. And also, they just assume, well, editor-in-chief, making all the decisions. But, you know, w- w- no, right? Uh, y- you know, I mean, think about it. If you have a problem with a purchase that you made on Amazon, you don't email Bezos. Uh, y- he's too busy. And I, and n- and I'm not comparing myself to Bezos, but I am the, I'm the busiest editorial guy at Entrepreneur for whatever the hell that's worth. And I, I'm just not the guy to pitch, because I'm, my job actually isn't really to select stories that go in the magazine. My, uh, my job is to work with editors, who develop their own ideas, and then I get to say, "Oh, that's a good one," or like, "Oh, let's refine that." Or like, I'm not sourcing as much. And so, you really should start by looking at who's writing about your subject area. And you can do that by going to the website and surfing around. You can do that by Googling around. But you'll find the answer. Every publication is structured differently. Some people have specific beats, right? Some publications will be like, this is the person on the transportation beat. And some pap- some publications don't. Entrepreneur doesn't really have a beat system necessarily. But if you look, you'll figure it out. Oh, that, that editor is clearly interested in food, or that writer is clearly interested in food. They seem to write all the food stories. Or that person is writing about ... And a good way, again, to do it is to start with the publication and then look at how they're covering your competitors. So a, a good, a good example is I, I was once, um, consulting with a guy who has a, uh, like a kind of fun peanut butter company. (laughs) It's, it's like, it's like imagine peanut butter meets Ben & Jerry's, so it's like peanut butter with lots of stuff and fun names, you know.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky44:56

       Mm-hmm.

    8. JFJason Feifer44:56

       And, and so he's trying to figure out how to get press, and originally, his thinking and the reason why he reached out to me was because he's like, "Well, I, I, I'm an entrepreneur, I run a business, I should be an entrepreneur." I was like, "No, no, no, you shouldn't, because none of our readers are gonna buy your peanut butter. So who is your target audience? Who's buying your stuff?" And he says, "Millennial moms." I said, "Great. Okay, so Cosmo is a good place to reach them. So let's look at how Cosmo covers snacks." I don't know how they cover snacks, I don't read Cosmo, but let's find out. It's not hard. Went to cosmopolitan.com, search for snacks. What I found immediately was a lot of stories that are all basically rounduppy and anchored to some time se- time-sensitive things. So it's ten snacks for Valentine's Day, it's, you know, our, Our Ten Favorite New Fall Snacks, whatever. It's all stuff like that. So now we know they are not gonna run a thousand-word feature on your peanut butter company. Instead, the best that you could hope to do is get into one of these seasonalish roundups. So now next step. Who's writing these things? Let's look. Let's open some of the articles, the byline is right there. You can click on the byline, you can see what this person does. And in many cases, this person will be, maybe they'll, maybe they're the food editor, maybe they're the lifestyle editor, whatever. Like, like, you'll see what they cover, and you'll have a good understanding of now how to frame the thing that you're looking for. Now let me introduce one other possible option. They don't work for the publication at all. They're a freelancer. Publications use a lot of freelancers. Freelancers are basically independent contractors. They're, they're writers who are working sometimes, uh, sometimes they have kind of longer term deals with publications, sometimes it's just one-off. My wife is a freelancer. My wife is a freelancer who writes a lot for the New York Times and Washington Post and Guardian. And the interesting thing about my wife versus me is that my wi- wh- whose name is Jen Miller, just so I don't keep saying my wi- ... So Jen-

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky46:57

       (laughs)

    10. JFJason Feifer46:58

        Um, so Jen, on a day-to-day basis, as a freelancer, is hungrier for stories than me, because Jen has to hustle for her food. Right? Jen has to find stories and pitch those stories to editors at publications, and that's when she gets paid. So she actually is more incentivized to be looking for stories than I am, because I, uh, am a salaried employee

15. 47:27 – 52:26

    Pitching best practices

    1. JFJason Feifer47:27

       of Entrepreneur Magazine, and my email address is very easily found, and people just send me stuff all the time. And I should add here also, note that a good journalist, a good media, uh, a good writer is not actually sitting around thinking that their job is to wait for people to pitch them so that they can just write about the best pitches. Their job, as they see it, is to go and find the most useful things for their audience, and they like to do a lot of that themselves. So they're not sitting around just waiting for your pitches, and in fact, your pitches have to overcome their instinct to go find things themselves. So Jen is constantly hustling. Jen is constantly talking to people. Jen is curious about the world and will spend a lot of time hunting things down. But if somebody reads a story that she wrote and says, "Ah, I think I have an idea of what this person is interested in," and then tracks her email address down and then emails her, Jen is getting a lot fewer pitches than me, the chances of her reading it are close to 100%, and the chances of her taking it seriously, if it's relevant to any of the publications that she writes for, is much higher than me. So sometimes going to the staff person is not actually your best move. Finding the freelancer who's doing the work is sometimes the better move.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky48:43

       So many interesting tactical insights there sharing. I love it.

    3. JFJason Feifer48:47

       Yeah.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky48:47

       With this freelancer tip, how do you know they're a freelancer? Is there, like, something in the byline?

    5. JFJason Feifer48:51

       If you find them on the publication's website, so let's say that you go to Cosmo and, uh, and you click on a author's bio. If, uh, if they're staff, it'll say as staff. If they're not-

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky49:02

       Mm-hmm.

    7. JFJason Feifer49:03

       ... staff, it'll probably say something else. It might say writer, it might say contributor, it might say, uh, you know, "Jen Miller is a writer in Brooklyn, New York." (laughs) Like ... But also you can just go one extra step and just Google their name because-

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky49:16

       Hmm.

    9. JFJason Feifer49:16

       ... any smart freelancer has a portfolio website where they should be very easily found. So-

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky49:22

        Awesome.

    11. JFJason Feifer49:23

        ... sometimes just, just take their name, plug it into Google, uh, you'll very quickly figure out who they are.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky49:28

        Okay, so let me summarize things that you've taught us so far.

    13. JFJason Feifer49:31

        Yeah.

    14. LRLenny Rachitsky49:31

        One is, think about publications that go to people that will buy your thing. So in your example, Cosmo is a good example of someone who would buy this peanut butter thing.

    15. JFJason Feifer49:40

        Right.

    16. LRLenny Rachitsky49:41

        Um, two is, don't think of it as, like, a broad thing. Think about the writer at the thing. So it's not like, "Cosmo sh- would write about this." It's like, "Who specifically at Cosmo would write about this?"

    17. JFJason Feifer49:53

        That's right.

    18. LRLenny Rachitsky49:53

        And we find that is, go to their site, search for ... You talked about search for your competitors, but I think it's even broader, just, like, things related to your area, right? So like snacks.

    19. JFJason Feifer50:01

        Yeah, that's a good point. Mm-hmm.

    20. LRLenny Rachitsky50:03

        It's like even-

    21. JFJason Feifer50:03

        Search for your category.

    22. LRLenny Rachitsky50:04

        Even, like, adjacent things probably are close enough.

    23. JFJason Feifer50:07

        Right. Mm-hmm.

    24. LRLenny Rachitsky50:07

        And then this tip about freelancers is really great, that they're hungrier, and that they're more likely to respond to your pitch versus someone that's working there and just like-

    25. JFJason Feifer50:14

        Yeah.

    26. LRLenny Rachitsky50:14

        And then also this point that they're like, their assumption is this is not a good pitch and they don't want your pitch, but freelancers have a h- higher chance of being interested and, and will pay attention.

    27. JFJason Feifer50:25

        Yep.

    28. LRLenny Rachitsky50:26

        Okay.

    29. JFJason Feifer50:26

        Freelancers gotta eat.

    30. LRLenny Rachitsky50:27

        (laughs) Amazing. Is there anything else along this step of finding somebody at a publication that you wanna share?
16. 52:26 – 59:10

    Step three: Creating excitement around writing about you

    1. JFJason Feifer52:26

       for their audience.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky52:27

       Amazing. Okay. So that's a great segue to final piece, which is actually get some, get someone excited and write about you.

    3. JFJason Feifer52:32

       So how do we do that?

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky52:33

       How do we do that?

    5. JFJason Feifer52:35

       (laughs) Yeah, that's ... This is where the real, the rubber hits the road. Okay. So, things not to do. Don't call them if you track down their phone number-

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky52:42

       Mm-hmm.

    7. JFJason Feifer52:43

       ... which is a, is a real thing that happens. Uh, I ... Peo- people call my personal cellphone number.

    8. LRLenny Rachitsky52:48

       Oh wow.

    9. JFJason Feifer52:48

       It doesn't happen often, but it happens, and I, I don't even know where they get it from, but I don't like it. And media people are torn on whether or not, like, DMs by social are an okay way to reach out. Um, I find them kind of annoying because, number one, like, the format doesn't lend itself very well, right? Like if you write anything long in a DM, it just looks like this endless thing that I got. Um, but also, I don't know, my Instagram DMs I just kind of don't think of as, like, the place to be pitched. And, but other people don't care, so I don't know. You can roll the dice on that. Uh, email is just the most traditional way. If you know somebody's gonna be speaking at a conference, that's great. Come up, you can talk to them. But the question of course is what are you sending them? And here's what you're sending them. You're really sending them the product of the work that you have done in the previous two steps because you have now spent some time thinking about your story and who you're pitching and the publication and how they're telling stories to their audience. And then the individual person who you're reaching out to who you now have some sense of how to, how they write about this. And you're taking all of that and you're trying to distill it down into a presentation that they're going to find appealing. Which again, to go back to the thing about how press is not that dissimilar to going out and raising money, that's kind of what you're doing when you go and meet an investor too, right? Like you're, you are not ... If you have meetings with 10 investors, uh, your ... The way in which you talk about yourself and the company should not be exactly the same with those 10 investors because they're all gonna have somewhat different approaches and different thesis. And, and, you know, you're not trying to scam anybody but you're just trying to be as customized as possible by building in your knowledge of what it is that they do and what their firm does. And the same is true for media. So, all of this is really gonna take the form, in its most traditional sense, of a short email, a short email pitch. And what does that look like? I mean, look, there is literally no magic answer to that. But I wi- I, I wish that there was, but there is not. There's no format.Uh, people always ask me like, "What should the subject line of the email be?" It's a good question. (laughs) There's not one answer to that, right? The, the, the closest that I can give you to an answer is that, picture me, picture me at my computer. I have a lot going on and I'm glancing at my email, and 40 new emails are sitting there. And my instinct is to delete all of them as fast as possible, but I'm going to glance at each one. I'm not gonna open each one, but I'm gonna glance at it, which means that I get, you know, I see the subject line and I see, like, the preview text or just the first thing that somebody had written. What you wanna do is write something that makes it pretty clear to me that this is targeted to me. That's step number one. Because most of those emails that I got in my inbox are not targeted to me. They're mass blasts, and I'm delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. So which is the one that actually is reaching me? And sometimes you can do that by referencing something that I wrote in the past. I, I see people do that a lot. Don't fake it. People fake it all the time. People email me and they tell me they're fans of my work. They've never read my work. I, it's very obvious, right? Like, don't do that. But if you've read something or if you're familiar with something, if you're familiar with the publication in some way, any signals of that are good. Because again, what you're trying to do is just separate yourself from, like, noise to this is customized to you. 'Cause if you think about it, right, this is really like an efficiency, uh, this is, this is, this is an efficiency question. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to spend my time on the things that have the highest percentage chance of being relevant to me. And I'm filtering out the things that seem not relevant to me, who are wasting my time. So if I see something that's where somebody's writing me and they have a sense of the publication and they have a sense of me, there's a higher percentage chance that the next things that they're gonna tell me are gonna be relevant to me. Maybe even turn into a story, which is great. I like when that happens because it saves me time, frankly, right? Then I, it's one less story I have to find myself. So I'm happy for it, but it's gotta be right. So you wanna structure and then the, the email that you're writing is, don't go on forever. Like, three paragraphs max. And you are telling the version, you're not, like, writing an article, right? But you're telling me the thing that you are pretty sure I'm gonna be interested in. It's the difference between, going back to the butter dish example, woman sending me a three-paragraph email about the butter dish itself and opening up, telling me a little bit about the butter dish and then immediately moving into this very clever story about the product, uh, uh, market, uh, testing, like, uh, survey. That's the difference. She told me the story that was gonna be relevant to my audience. She got there quickly and it felt like, to me, this is a interesting human being with an interesting entrepreneurial story to tell, and that's why I'm gonna engage.

    10. LRLenny Rachitsky57:56

        And that, so that story actually came through a cold email?

    11. JFJason Feifer58:00

        That was a cold email. Yep. Just showed up one day.

    12. LRLenny Rachitsky58:02

        Amazing. (instrumental music) This episode is brought to you by Eppo. Eppo is a next generation A/B testing platform built by Airbnb alums from modern growth teams. Companies like DraftKings, Zapier, ClickUp, Twitch and Cameo rely on Eppo to power their experiments. Wherever you work, running experiments is increasingly essential, but there are no commercial tools that integrate with a modern growth team stack. This leads to wasted time building internal tools or trying to run your own experiments through a clunky marketing tool. When I was at Airbnb, one of the things that I loved most about working there was our experimentation platform, where I was able to slice and dice data by device types, country, user stage. Eppo does all that and more, delivering results quickly, avoiding annoying prolonged analytic cycles, and helping you easily get to the root cause of any issue you discover. Eppo lets you go beyond basic click-through metrics and instead use your North Star metrics, like activation, retention, subscription, and payments. Eppo supports tests on the front end, on the back end, email marketing, even machine learning claims. Check out Eppo at GetEppo.com. That's GetEppo.com and 10X your experiment velocity.

17. 59:10 – 1:05:14

    Success story: Meg O’Hara’s pitch

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky59:10

       Is there any other examples that come to mind of someone doing this well, for people to have more kind of examples of like, "Here's-"

    2. JFJason Feifer59:16

       Oh, sure.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky59:16

       "... here's what worked."

    4. JFJason Feifer59:16

       So, we'll here, let's see. Th- this is, we'll have to do this in real time here, but I keep, I keep in my inbox a folder called Bad PR Pitches, uh, and a folder called Good PR Pitches.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky59:27

       Okay, cool.

    6. JFJason Feifer59:27

       Uh, we can go through both.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky59:28

       Let's do it.

    8. JFJason Feifer59:29

       All right. So this is, uh, I just pulled this up. So this is an, and I haven't read this in a long time. I'm kind of, like, trying to read ahead as I'm talking, uh, just to see if this is appropriate to read, but I think so. I don't know, whatever. We're just gonna read it and see what happens. All right, so the subject of this was Idea for Entrepreneur and Problem Solvers: How the Border Closures Grew My Business. So this was sent to me in September of 2020.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky59:54

       And is this a good or a bad?

    10. JFJason Feifer59:55

        This is good.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky59:56

        Okay, great.

    12. JFJason Feifer59:56

        This is good. This turned, this turned into, this turned into an episode of, uh, a podcast that I do for Entrepreneur and-

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:02

        Amazing.

    14. JFJason Feifer1:00:02

        ... and I might have also then converted it into an article. I can't remember.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:06

        Awesome.

    16. JFJason Feifer1:00:06

        Um, and, uh, and so here's, here's what she did. So her name, I will shout her out. So this is Meg O'Hara, and Meg O'Hara is a, a painter, a, a Canadian landscape painter. She got a small business and she writes, "Hi Jason, I have an idea for a story I think would be val- valuable and relevant to you, Entrepreneur Magazine and the Problem Solvers podcast." That's the show I do for Entrepreneur. And then she says, "Here's what's going on with my business. Um, all entrepreneurs have, all entrepreneurs had to be flexible during COVID. This is a story about how one artist in Canada benefited from the border, border closure." Right, this just sort of intrigues me. Oh, ho, how? Um, as a, uh, okay. "When COVID hit in March, all ski resorts across North America shut down early. Skiers are a high earning demographic in Canada, they fall in the top five percent of income." Uh, and okay. Well, anyway, so she goes on. What she tells me, 'cause I remember this now, what she tells me is that her business used to be being hired by ski resorts to come and paint landscapes for their facilities.And when the border shut down and people weren't going to these resorts anymore, she had to come up with a completely different way of doing her business. And so she started to think, "Well, I can't work for these resorts anymore. They're not hiring me, but all these skiers who used to work at the resorts who have seen my work, or who used to ski at the resorts, wh- who were fr- maybe familiar with my work, um, they're not skiing either. They probably are sitting around wishing that they were skiing, they'd love something to see of their favorite ski location, and they also have money sitting around 'cause they're not spending it on, on the ski resorts." So then she lists off the problems and the solutions, in bullet points.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:43

        Mm-hmm.

    18. JFJason Feifer1:01:43

        Which I love because she has listened to the show, the Problem Solvers show, which is structured in exactly that way. "Tell me the problem, tell me the solution that you came to." So she lists it off, "Here are the problems. Uh, you know, skiers can't come, people are spending more time at home. The solution, I create artwork for h- uh, you know, for their homes that depicts their favorite views from skiing," as it were, right? So, um, she goes on and on and on. I read this and I just think, you know, there is something here about what this person did to reinvent their business at a time in which one marketplace shut down, but it created a new one, that I think people would like to hear. Because at that time, everyone was thinking about how to reinvent themselves and their business. And, you know, even though I reach people who have very complex and large businesses, sometimes it's really a beautiful thing to hear a single individual who does the simplest thing in the world, which is put paint to canvas, talk about how she did it for herself. Because you can extract these wonderful little lessons about how to reinvent yourself that I think are gonna be relevant to a very broad audience. So Meg sent me that email, I replied and I said, "I like it." And we did it. And so that- that's a good example of someone who, who spent time understanding my work down to the structure of how I'm communicating, and then sent me a pitch that very quickly and clearly seemed customized to me, and told me her story in a way that I could imagine telling my audience. At that point, it's a pretty easy yes.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:14

        That is an amazing example. I just took some notes on things that she did right, based on things you've shared in the past. So even just from, like, the subject line or the first sentence, it was clear that she knew you. She knew you had this podcast, she knew the magazine, and she even expressed, this is like specifically you're gonna be interested in this.

    20. JFJason Feifer1:03:30

        Yeah.

    21. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:30

        She mentioned how this ... She has, like, a story. She starts, like, immediately with a story.

    22. JFJason Feifer1:03:34

        Yeah.

    23. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:34

        There's not, like, the value prop of the company, "Here's what we do and here's why we're awesome."

    24. JFJason Feifer1:03:38

        Mm-hmm.

    25. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:38

        And then- and then the lessons, like the mission of entrepreneur you talked about is, like, insights and lessons that people-

    26. JFJason Feifer1:03:45

        Mm-hmm.

    27. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:45

        ... achieve and she just went straight to, "Here's what we've learned." So-

    28. JFJason Feifer1:03:49

        That's right.

    29. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:49

        ... I could see- I could see why that resonated.

    30. JFJason Feifer1:03:51

        Yeah, it was great. And she ... The- the- the next thing that made it a real success, by the way-
18. 1:05:14 – 1:08:57

    Playing the long game of engagement

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:14

       journey. I'd love to hear another example, but before that, hearing this, obviously it takes a bunch of time to do this for a founder. I guess two questions, just like how many places should somebody probably try to reach out to you to make- give 'em a chance of being successful? And then do you have any thoughts on how much time they should put into something like this? I know it's a very broad question, but

    2. NANarrator1:05:34

       Yeah.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:05:35

       ... any thoughts there?

    4. JFJason Feifer1:05:35

       It's a really broad question. So again, this is in some way why, in a large way, why a lot of people hire PR. Because PR can just move this along. They can reach a lot of people very fast, whereas you as an individual cannot. You know, one way to think about it is you're gonna be on the hunt. Mean you're gonna- you're gonna try to make this work and you're gonna take a couple bets and hope that some of them pay off. Another way of thinking about it is, you know, this is a passive activity, and I'll spend some time at- when I'm reading media, thinking about this, kind of developing an idea. Another thing that you can do, follow media, follow- follow a bunch of writers and editors on social media. Meg, I can't remember the order of operations here, 'cause I- I know that Meg follows me on Instagram now 'cause she's DMed me many times and I- I respond to everybody. I can't remember if she followed me before, but she- she might have, uh, and maybe she even DMed me a few times, right? You know, usually it's like somebody's responding to like a Instagram story or something, yeah. Um, and- and I've seen a lot of people use this strategy with me and I think that it's a really smart one, which is basically before you ever pitch, just get me to recognize your name. (laughs) You know? Like, just engage in social media in a very casual way, such that when you email me, I think, "Do I know who that person is?" Like, Meg O'Hara, that ... I think I know who that person is. Uh, it- it just- it just makes it more likely that I'll open the email.And I see a lot of people do that. They'll, they'll spend a long time engaging with me on social media, before ever pitching me. I know what they're doing. I understand that it's probably calculated. I still like it. It's, uh, it's smart because it, because it, it means that by the time that they've reached out, I think you have a pretty good sense of my work, which means that, that what you're, what you're bringing to me is probably in pretty good faith. And for that, I like it. It's a good filter. Uh, so if you've been listening to this whole thing (laughs) and you're thinking, you know, this is ju- yeah, this is a tremendous amount of work, I have a new product launch, or I, you know, I, I have a, a bunch of budget that I can spend on this, look, this individual kind of approach, it may not be for you. You might want to just spend a bunch of time instead interviewing different PR firms and find the one that seems most aligned with and understands your story and your vision and knows people in your space. Shortcuts a lot of this. But even then, even then, I think that having heard this is really useful because at some point, if the PR person is successful, you are gonna get on the phone with the writer or editor and it's very useful to understand how they think, that they're not there to serve you, right? That, that this, this isn't a service that they're providing you. So you better understand what they're entering into this with and what they have in mind. When they're asking you questions, they're asking questions thinking, "This is what my audience is gonna be curious about. This is how I'm gonna drive this person in this interview towards the kinds of insights that my audience are gonna find gratifying." So the more that you understand you're, who you're dealing with, the better.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:48

       And also just having done it yourself, you'll better understand what to ask-

    6. JFJason Feifer1:08:52

       Yeah.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:52

       ... PR folks, how they're gonna work, find opportunities to improve the way they're operating.

19. 1:08:57 – 1:11:11

    The quantity of outreach

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:57

    2. JFJason Feifer1:08:57

       Totally.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:08:57

       On the, that question of quantity, say you're doing this, say you're spending the time, I'm gonna really invest in understanding Jason and whoever else. Is there like a rule of thumb you'd re- recommend of like try to do this for three publications to get one? Or is it five? I don't know. Is there anything there that you could recommend?

    4. JFJason Feifer1:09:14

       So it's really dependent upon how, how easy you are to write about. I mean, I'll just sort of like note, right? Like if you are a, if you are a, like some kind of B2B service, especially in some kind of very niche or wonky space, you're just do- it's gonna be really hard for you to get pr- like so hard that it might actually not even be worth trying.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:09:42

       Mm-hmm.

    6. JFJason Feifer1:09:42

       'Cause there are other things that you can do, right? Things that we haven't even talked about yet. Like you could, you could say, "You know what? Screw it. I'm not gonna try to get coverage for my company. Why don't I just try to position myself as an expert?" Right? Totally different kind of approach, right? Where instead what you're maybe trying to do is just hook onto the news, try to get a quote, uh, or a perspective to a reporter who might be writing about something. Uh, you know, I get these all the time. Uh, you know, some- something breaks, some, some, something news breaks and, uh, people start reaching out to me. And they'll say, "You know, this just happened in the news and, uh, my client..." Or sometimes just the individual, you know, "I have this insight into this and here's what I would say if you want to interview me."

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:21

       Hmm.

    8. JFJason Feifer1:10:22

       It's not gonna be a feature about you. You're not gonna be the subject. There's no photo of you. You might get a quote. You might get a quote and a story, which again, is all you need to be able to say "as featured in" on your website.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:10:32

       Yeah.

    10. JFJason Feifer1:10:32

        So that's the reason why people do that. So sometimes it's about that. Sometimes it's about if you could just be a writer, right? You might try to just pitch authoritative articles by you to different publications, get yourself out in that way. Um, sometimes again, it's j- it's just, it's you're not gonna be able to be easily written about. And sometimes you are. Sometimes you made some insane technology that everyone's gonna be talking about and it's gonna be super easy for you to get press. At which point your hit rate is gonna be much higher. That's why going into this with really reali- realistic expectations, and if you're gonna work with PR, having PR who can set and hold you to those realistic expectations, uh, can just save you a lot of heartache.

20. 1:11:11 – 1:14:01

    How to structure multiple pitches

    1. JFJason Feifer1:11:11

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:11

       Along the same lines, there's always this idea of exclusivity and people want to write first about a thing. Say you're having... You talked about like an awesome technology. Do you have advice on do you just pitch the same thing to all of 'em and then hope they all write about it? Do you pitch them different stories? Do you give o- offer one in exclusive? Any advice there?

    3. JFJason Feifer1:11:29

       Everyone has a different approach to this. The number one rule here is just, uh, don't, don't do it in a way that the people in media feel like you're playing them.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:11:40

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JFJason Feifer1:11:40

       'Cause they, they won't have tolerance for it. They, I, I would rather walk away from something like this than like do some funny dance with somebody. So my favorite version of this goes like this. Uh, actually there's a founder who recently... Uh, I, I met him years ago so, you know, he, he, when he reached out, I recognized him immediately. And he reached out and he's like, "Hey, I, we just, we did this really interesting thing and we haven't told anybody about it yet. And uh, uh, I'd love to see if it's a fit for Entrepreneur." So I hop on the phone with him. And he tells me. And I, I'm not gonna tell you what it is yet 'cause we haven't run the story. But I, after 15, 20 minutes, I say, "Yeah, you know what? This is a, this is a really interesting story." And, and frankly, I know other, I know other media outlets are gonna be interested in this too, particularly 'cause there's a f- there's like a finance element to it. So I think the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and those kinds of places are gonna be interested in this. He wants to go to Entrepreneur, uh, for whatever reasons he wants. I mean, I think probably, uh, uh, two, because number one, he wants to position himself towards that audience. And then number two, there's a trust factor. He knows me in a way that he doesn't know the editors over there. And so he feels like I'll probably treat the story, uh, more carefully. So we worked out a deal, uh, which he proposed, and the deal is that we'll get the exclusive, and there's gonna be like a three-hour window after our story runs, and then they're gonna start responding to everyone else. Like and then they're gonna start talking to other people, or maybe they'll even line it up and, uh, and you know, and reach out to some other media and, um, that's fine with me. Right? Like I, I, I understand.And we're gonna create a little embargo window and we'll go first and then they're gonna talk to everybody else. Sometimes you can offer an exclusive to someone in that you're gonna release the news to everybody, but only one media outlet is gonna get the interview, which works really well if you have a big personality. So for example, recently, recently a company that Mark Cuban has invested in offered us that, right? They're like, "We have this news. We're gonna reach out. Uh, we're gonna send the news everywhere, but we're gonna give you the exclusive interview with Mark Cuban." Like he's gonna do one interview and he'll do it with you. You know, like you can parse it out in any way. Y- you just want everyone to feel like you're being upfront with them.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:13:57

       And that they're getting something special as much as possible.

21. 1:14:01 – 1:16:37

    How to engage with the press

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:01

       That makes sense. You touched on this relationship piece, and that's something I wanted to ask. It feels like in tech, a lot of reporters end up s- writing a negative story 'cause a lot of times that's what people wanna read. Why is this destroying the world? (laughs) Right? Like I actually had a Fast Company do a thing on me and I talked to the reporter and I had no idea was he gonna just completely tear me apart or is he gonna be really friendly and positive (laughs) over what I'm doing? And I have no idea and it just comes out.

    2. JFJason Feifer1:14:24

       Yeah.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:24

       Like it's not like I look at it before it comes out.

    4. JFJason Feifer1:14:27

       Right.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:27

       So do you have any just advice to give you a se- help you know if this is gonna turn into something positive or negative? I know you have no idea.

    6. JFJason Feifer1:14:33

       What happened, by the way? Was it positive or negative?

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:35

       Super positive. Uh...

    8. JFJason Feifer1:14:36

       Great.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:36

       I was very happy with it. Yeah.

    10. JFJason Feifer1:14:37

        Okay, good. (laughs)

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:39

        (laughs) Yeah.

    12. JFJason Feifer1:14:39

        Good. I'm glad to hear that.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:40

        Yeah.

    14. JFJason Feifer1:14:40

        So part of it is the publication itself, right? U- like Entrepreneur and I would say Fast Company are just sort of not in the business-

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky1:14:47

        Mm.

    16. JFJason Feifer1:14:47

        ... of running negative stories. And the reason is 'cause it does- it doesn't serve our audience. Like, you know, my audience is coming to me to learn things for their business. It's like tearing somebody apart just doesn't help them in any way. Um, so part of it is just like what ecosystem are you dealing with? You could also look at the past work of the, of the writer and if you work with a PR person, it's funny 'cause occasionally somebody has like accidentally forwarded this to me, uh, and I'll see like the dossier that a PR agency will put together on me.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky1:15:16

        (laughs)

    18. JFJason Feifer1:15:16

        You know? But like a PR agency, if, if, if they set you up with an interview with someone, they'll usually do some digging and they'll find, uh, you know, what does this person usually write about? What kind of stories they do? What are they generally interested in? So you can have a sense, right? Like are they, what kind of, what kind of thing are they doing? And, you know, past that I, I, there's also a question of like, well, what are you doing in the world? Right? I mean, if there, if there is something somewhat controversial about you and especially if you're engaging with a, uh, a, an outlet that is interested in that kind of stuff, there's a halfway decent chance they're at least gonna explore it with you and ask you about it. And if you're like weird and cagey with them, uh, they're gonna think that there's more to it and they're gonna start like digging more. But, uh, the ultimate answer here is that like every part of this, and th- this has come through I'm sure in, in, in our whole conversation, every part of this process is really out of your control. Like, does somebody pay attention to you? What do they write about you? Like when do they write about... All of it is outside of your control, which again is the, is the reason why it's not smart to think about press as a primary strategy for driving growth. It's, it's a, it's a good add-on, but these people are gonna do what they're gonna do. The best you can do is, is read the tea leaves.

22. 1:16:37 – 1:18:26

    Anticipating the story’s direction

    1. JFJason Feifer1:16:37

Episode duration: 1:42:27