0:00:00 A: Iāve been trying and, you know, Iāve been tested. Welcome to the Friends in Business podcast with your hosts, Ben Wright and Jemima Ashley. Ben, known as the sales strategist, and Jemima, our resident visibility expert, are here to share their wealth of knowledge and experience with a little fun along the way. Whether youāre a leader, entrepreneur, or aspiring business owner, this is the podcast where we share everything we know about business to help you succeed.
0:00:31 A: Letās get started. Welcome to the Friends in Business podcast. Aināt nothing gonna stop me now.
0:00:43 Ben Wright: Good morning, Jemima.
0:00:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: Oh, good morning, Ben. Another day in paradise.
0:00:48 Ben Wright: Another beautiful day.
0:00:50 Jemimah Ashleigh: What a hard day weāre having already.
0:00:52 Ben Wright: And episode nine of Friends in Business.
0:00:55 Jemimah Ashleigh: Double what most people get done. I love it.
0:00:58 Ben Wright: I like it. How was your morning been?
0:01:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: It was one. I had a really wonderful morning. I went for a really long walk. I had a delicious breakfast. How about yourself? Whatād you get up to?
0:01:07 Ben Wright: Yeah, I went running, actually, and I had quite a bit of time to think. I ran for an hour and a half this morning. And for me, thatās a long time compared to where I was at, say, two or three years ago. But itās funny, I was thinking about your rule of five. What are we. Episode nine. So that would have been episode six, seven for those that havenāt listened. And essentially your rule of five said, you are the sum or the average of the five people you spend the most time around.
0:01:33 Ben Wright: And that can vary. It might be the five people intellectually, and that influences your intellectual drive from a health and fitness point of view that the sum of my five are actually five incredibly fit people. So for me, 23 years ago, going out on a Tuesday morning to go and run 90 minutes.
0:01:52 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, right.
0:01:52 Ben Wright: Leave the house at quarter to six.
0:01:54 Jemimah Ashleigh: Thatās almost hilarious, right? Like, Iām not doing any of that. Yeah.
0:01:57 Ben Wright: Whereas I can guarantee this morning that out of those, that group of five people, I still had the shortest session. So itās funny how youāre stepping up and itās really had me thinking those last couple of weeks about that rule of five and who the five people are. And for me, I wouldnāt have it any other way from a sporting point of view, because Iām trying to do some things that I havenāt been able to do yet in my life. And itās. Look, at the moment, itās working. So I know youāre going to take credit for this, but.
0:02:21 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes, I am, but.
0:02:23 Ben Wright: Okay, weāll let you have that one. All right, so Speaking of free time, which I had lots of time this morning to think when I was running. I want to talk about something else today thatās free. Well, for some people it can be.
0:02:36 Jemimah Ashleigh: Very free or it can be very expensive. Yes, Iām advocating for free today. Yeah.
0:02:40 Ben Wright: Yes. And that is media. Yeah, they get free media, free press.
0:02:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: Ben, Iāve been waiting to talk about this. This is my favorite thing, you know that. So I think, I know that people do not take advantage of the fact that we are in a 24 hour media cycle. Ben, Iāve got a question for you before we start. Do you only work with people in Australia? No, yeah, of course not. Neither do I. Do you work with people in Europe?
0:03:05 Ben Wright: My predominant base is the U.S.A.
0:03:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, same with me. So do you work with people in the us?
0:03:10 Ben Wright: Yes.
0:03:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: Could you work with people in New Zealand?
0:03:12 Ben Wright: Yes.
0:03:13 Jemimah Ashleigh: We have now covered all the bases for time zones.
0:03:16 Ben Wright: Yes.
0:03:17 Jemimah Ashleigh: Which means in theory we have 24 hour news cycle constantly running at different times. People are watching prime time, theyāre on the tv, weāre on social media at this completely different time. And what I find really interesting is people go, well, Iāll only try my little wheelhouse. Iāll only have a look at maybe a couple of Australian magazines. All right, I pitched to a few people. It didnāt go very well. And so we forget that there is a whole big world out there.
So today I want to Talk about the 24 hour media cycle and specifically how to get coverage because this is, I think where people go, oh, but you have to pay a PR company a lot of money. You donāt, I promise you, you do not have to do that. So letās start at the beginning.
0:03:53 Ben Wright: Great. Because Iām always here.
0:03:54 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, love that. So first thing is that I want to teach you is that journalists are always looking for sources. How many stories do you see every day? Online blogs, media call outs, tv, podcasts, like those experts on tv. Why arenāt you the expert that theyāre calling? People think they always have to wait by the phone. Weāre like, Iām just going to wait a call. At some point, I do that, theyāre going to go to the person who actually contacted them and said, I can talk about this issue.
0:04:21 Ben Wright: Yeah, of course.
0:04:22 Jemimah Ashleigh: Journalists have, we have moved away from one person having a job at the Herald sun or having a job at the age we have moved to journalists or freelancer into multiple, if not dozens of different magazines.
0:04:34 Ben Wright: Okay, so thatās a change.
0:04:35 Jemimah Ashleigh: It is a huge change. And thatās been really big. Since weāve really had this online of the online media, we arenāt buying the papers anymore. You used to fly Qantas, used to get given a newspaper. Do you want a copy of the. I think it was Australian. As you walked in. No oneās sitting there anymore with these big broadsheets.
0:04:51 Ben Wright: I loved that, especially when the person next to me got the big broad sheet and put it over on to my side.
0:04:56 Jemimah Ashleigh: And you could have a raid and.
0:04:58 Ben Wright: Well, I stopped whatever I was doing. So I had to have a read.
0:05:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, of course. Yeah. You canāt even have your breakfast at that point.
0:05:02 Ben Wright: Thatās right.
0:05:02 Jemimah Ashleigh: So weāve moved away from this and gone to the phone. Weāve gone to digital media as how weāre doing it. So journalists donāt really need to have a desk anymore in an office for a print newspaper. They can work from home. Flexible working arrangements have really changed. And what weāre seeing is journalists writing for multiple different places. Now, hereās the thing. It also means theyāre writing for totally different topics. They used to be a sports journalist. There used to be a weather. Just the weather guy. The weather guy is now doing nine different things. Itās how it works. So what ends up happening is journalists are always looking for people and experts to talk about a specific thing. So if you think about a few months ago, there was a criminal charge case that happened in Victoria and it was involving mushrooms.
0:05:44 Ben Wright: How could you have missed that?
0:05:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: No one missed that one. This was about probably over a year ago now. But there was a guy at Melbourne University and he was an expert in cordyceps. This guy was suddenly charging like five grand for an interview and got hundreds of them because he was an expert in this thing. If you think right now youāre listening to this and going, Iām not an expert in anything, and no oneās going to want to listen. Trust me, there is somebody that wants to listen to this. So firstly, is the first thing I want people to know is that there are journalists who are looking to talk to whatever your industry is. Theyāre looking to talk to you 100%.
0:06:16 Ben Wright: Thatās important. Iād zone. There are people who want to listen to what you have to say.
0:06:20 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. And sometimes you can make your own cases. I know weāre going to talk about podcasting on a future episode, but some people really do want to build their own platform. But there are other people may as well leverage off what other people are already doing. Right. To me, thatās the crazy way. So first thing is you have to know that itās 24 hour media cycle number two. Where to go because itās. The first question is. So if youāre an expert in anything, someone wants to talk to you.
0:06:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: Here are my top tips on this. There is a product in Australia called Sauce Bottle. S O U R C E source bottle. They send out every day, two emails filled with up to 20 to 30 different media call outs and anything that you thought of, itās in there. Iāve seen one for. Have you used band aids? Do you like the iPhone? John Mellencampās greatest hits CD collector, sales experts, strategists, plant experts. They are looking for journalists. These are journalists who are writing legitimate stories, who are just pushing for sources to come forward. And this is the only thing they do on this platform and it is completely free. Source Bottle of interest has around a quarter of a million subscribers. What percentage of those? How many people per day? Iāll give you a number. How many people per day? Actually check those emails.
0:07:37 Ben Wright: So youāre saying itās got quarter million subscribers? Subscribers. These are people who could provide content.
0:07:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: Who could provide every day they get two emails that come out at 10 and 2pm how many?
0:07:48 Ben Wright: Well, I can tell you Iām actually on that list.
0:07:50 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great.
0:07:50 Ben Wright: And I probably. Iāve had. Iāve had a busy few months. Oh yeah, I probably checked it twice.
0:07:55 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great, great.
0:07:56 Ben Wright: In those couple of months. So if I run off those numbers. 2%, thatās what Iām going to guess.
0:07:58 Jemimah Ashleigh: Well, 2,000 people.
0:08:01 Ben Wright: 2,000 out of the 250,000. So less than 1%.
0:08:04 Jemimah Ashleigh: Less than 1% have been checking it every day.
0:08:08 Ben Wright: So Iām actually doing well.
0:08:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: Youāre doing really well. Because I will say every time I have this conversation, people go, Iām on Sauce Bottle. When did you read it last? You donāt get anything from it. The Age, news.com, ABC, SBS, UC, the Project. These ones Iāve just been featured on, these arenāt even one of my clients have picked up just by learning how to pitch them. Next one is collectively. So this was what used to be called for American guys Harrow help a reporter out collectively. So this is the US one. So if youāre like, I want to do the US the same idea.
0:08:40 Ben Wright: Right.
0:08:41 Jemimah Ashleigh: But this thing is on steroids. If youāre not handling Sauce Bottle, do not even try to bring collectively into this. They will send upwards of 3 to 400 different media opportunities per day.
0:08:50 Ben Wright: Wow.
0:08:51 Jemimah Ashleigh: Free and all you have to do is respond to the journalist.
0:08:54 Ben Wright: Not bad for getting your name out there, if thatās what youāre trying to do.
0:08:58 Jemimah Ashleigh: For sure. So, third thing I want to tell you about is that you can pay for media. Right now, would you like to be on the front cover of Entrepreneur magazine?
0:09:07 Ben Wright: Well, as soon as you said you could pay for media. I started looking at the birds in the background here. Almost lost me completely. Would I want to be on the front cover of Entrepreneur magazine with what Iām about to do in three or four months time, that would be perfect.
0:09:19 Jemimah Ashleigh: How about gq?
0:09:20 Ben Wright: Yeah, look, itās funny, right? Imposter syndrome starts to go through the roof. Yeah. But yes. Letās say yes.
0:09:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. Great. If you could just give me about 500,000 U.S. iI could organize both of those.
0:09:30 Ben Wright: Great.
0:09:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: One of the things youāre going to say, and this is really important, I think, for people to foolproof and understand media. What we see a lot of times is people who go, Iāve been on the front cover Entrepreneur magazine and buy my course, and itās $5,000. If theyāve only paid $250,000 to get on there, 50 people to cover their $5,000 program to go and like, really sufficiently pay for that and to make really good profit at the other end. There is a real way that there are people out here paying for front covers of things and being like, hereās the go to. Hereās the story. And the cover is great. The story is great, too. You donāt need to pay for this stuff. This is whatās so interesting to me. The other thing also, and I know weāll get into this in a future podcast episode, but you can pay for awards as well. So you have awards.
0:10:13 Ben Wright: Arenāt awards meant to be given on merit
0:10:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: Wouldnāt you think?
0:10:16 Ben Wright: Well, actually.
0:10:17 Jemimah Ashleigh: I want you to really think about Business world for a second.
0:10:20 Ben Wright: If we start to talk about some of the awards Iām seeing just out at the moment. There are participation awards for just about everything, but. Yes. So I think awards should not be on merit. They should earned.
0:10:29 Jemimah Ashleigh: I agree. Paying for an award for me seems actually crazy. It seems. But people doing it all the time. And this is where I think we need to have this almost like filter for. This is complete rubbish. Versus this is really good. And this is whatās really interesting because people think, oh, I need to pay a million dollars to get immediate. You donāt. But youāve seen other people doing it and talking about it. And thatās why you think you need to do it.
0:10:53 Ben Wright: Right.
0:10:54 Jemimah Ashleigh: So letās talk about the magazines you should be in, because this is what I think is really important here.
0:10:57 Ben Wright: And will we go back to awards before the end of the podcast?
0:11:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: No, weāre not. Weāre going to come another whole episode about that, Ben.
0:11:02 Ben Wright: Right.
0:11:03 Jemimah Ashleigh: I think I could lose you for three to four hours on awards. Iām sure of it.
0:11:05 Ben Wright: So before we then go on to that. So when you talk about paying for awards, essentially what youāre saying is thereās lots of awards out there that we can be signing up for, that we can receive without having to pay.
0:11:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely.
0:11:15 Ben Wright: As well as ones we can pay for. But getting awards are a way of getting some free press.
0:11:20 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. And the same thing with media. You can go for free stuff and you can go for the paid stuff.
0:11:24 Ben Wright: Great.
0:11:24 Jemimah Ashleigh: Both exist.
0:11:25 Ben Wright: Both. Weāll do that at the end of this episode. What Iām going to make sure we do is we go back through those five and just get some really chunky one steps out of them. Because it can be a real difficult mindset.
0:11:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: A lot of stuff going on here when youāre talking about any type of media, because people immediately go, well, itās a 24 hour media cycle. It can be in every country. Where should I be going? These are the two or three places Iād recommend. Yes, you can pay for it. I do not recommend it. I have not paid. And I hand on heart, I have been featured at least 350 times in the media for and varying levels of, like Joeās blog, so and soās podcast, who got three episodes done and I was the first guest versus all the way through to the project Sunrise Today. Like these werenāt difficult to get on and Iāve not paid for any of it.
0:12:09 Ben Wright: Yeah, right.
0:12:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: And so people go, well, how much did that cost you? Nothing. It cost me time, strategy and process. So the next thing I want you to know here is that you need to know where youāre going to be featured. Itās all well and good. If I said, hey, Ben, Iāve got this media opportunity for you.
0:12:24 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:12:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: Are you excited? Itās going to be great. Itās in Horse and Hound magazine.
0:12:30 Ben Wright: Thank you, but not for me.
0:12:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, but this is what traditional PFMs do is they give you the thing, theyāre like, oh, weāve got you this interview. Go and do it. And you go, I trust you guys, but all right, Iāll do this Horse and Hound interview. No, we need you to go and do the one for Entrepreneur or GQ or to Mamma Mia. Or Forbes or these ones where your ideal plan, spending time and money. So one of the things I hear all the time is where to start. Iām a huge advocate for one being greater than zero at every time. If you are brand new and youāre listening to this and youāre like, Iāve never done media before, I recommend you do the Joās blogs blog. I want you to go and do those ones.
0:13:04 Ben Wright: I want you making mistakes.
0:13:05 Jemimah Ashleigh: Make mistakes early when no oneās listening. Like learn the moment where you kept talking and you can watch the interview go, oh, sheās still going. Okay, great. You want to be able to read the room better. You also want to listen to the answer and the questions and how you tell your story and get some practice. Because if you firstly go to Forbes, we now have a bigger problem.
0:13:24 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. Practice makes perfect. We anything we do, we practice away from the big stage.
0:13:29 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:13:30 Ben Wright: So when we do get to that, weāre ready to go.
0:13:32 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. And the big thing here is know where your ideal clients reading, we go back to this all the time. Whereas your ideal client spending time and money and this includes their attention. So if you know that all of your people are reading Forbes magazine or Entrepreneur, and I know weāre talking about business owners here, but for the women who are listening, Mamma Mia. 97% female base, 2 million logins a week. Thatās somewhere you need to be spending your time and your money for sure.
0:13:58 Ben Wright: Great. Got it.
0:13:59 Jemimah Ashleigh: Final thing that I want to say here. Pitch some stories.
0:14:03 Ben Wright: Pitch some stories.
0:14:04 Jemimah Ashleigh: Pitch some stories.
0:14:07 Ben Wright: So does that mean you need to know your stories?
0:14:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: I would say that this is one of the things Iām a huge advocate for is creating 10 things that you want to talk about. Whateverās happening in your business, someone wants to know about it. Now, it may not be the end person that you would like. Forbes may not care that youāre releasing the course or that you won that award or that you were featured on a tiny podcast. They may not want to know that. But I can guarantee you your local newspaper will. Yeah, I can guarantee you that if youāre doing something that helps businesses start and launch startup ladies, Startup hub will care.
0:14:44 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:14:44 Jemimah Ashleigh: I can guarantee you that if youāre a woman in business doing cool stuff, Mama me is going to want to grab you in a heartbeat.
0:14:48 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah.
0:14:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: You need to find who is going to care about your story and whoās going to Advocate for that and start telling them. It is as simple as doing an email and saying this is what weāre doing at the moment and this is whatās happening. The alternative to that, and Iām sure weāre going to do on the podcast on this in the future. But how to pitch an idea across is just look at whatās happening in the media and make it fit.
0:15:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: If the budgetās changed, youāre able to pitch it. If the budget has taken your money away from small businesses or even larger businesses or tax cuts have happened or not, do you know how easy it is to get picked up that week?
0:15:23 Ben Wright: So thereās a couple of things in here. I just want to unpack them because we jumped across a couple. So the first one is get your 10 stories right.
0:15:28 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes. What do you want to be known for? What do you want to talk about? What are you happy to be in the media for? If I gave you a microphone right now, Ben, what could you talk about for 10 minutes? Might have some questions being asked, but we want to know.
0:15:39 Ben Wright: Second one is once youāve got those 10 stories, work out, which publications or newsletters are going to care. Okay, so weāve got two things there. So thereās quite a few things in those five. What would be great to do now, if thatās okay, is letās just go through those five again top line.
0:15:56 Ben Wright: And then weāll do some tips around where you can start.
0:15:59 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely love it. So first things first, it is a 24 hour media cycle. Number one. Yeah. You need to know itās 24 hour media cycle. If you are working in the States or youāre working in Australia and youāre dialing in from another country. If youāre looking at the Europe or the UK, this is perfect for you to know. You need to know this. Itās really important. Once you know that youāre in a 24 hour media cycle, the second tip is start looking for where those free media opportunities are. So number two, look at things like source bottle. Look at collectively look at help a reporter out. Still sending out emails. These places help a reporter out. Really, really important.
0:16:34 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:16:35 Jemimah Ashleigh: Number three, know that you can pay for media because I want you to really understand that thereās some for some of you guys really worthwhile for other people, I do not recommend that at all. But know that it exists so you arenāt getting fooled by other peopleās stories. I really want you to know that thatās there.
0:16:51 Ben Wright: So what that essentially is doing is itās talking about how we influence ourselves as consumers.
0:16:55 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:16:55 Ben Wright: So we donāt believe everything we say because we know thereās paid media. Great. Number three. Number four.
0:16:59 Jemimah Ashleigh: Number four, know where your ideal client is, what theyāre reading, where theyāre spending time and money. Know where theyāre reading so you can start to look at how can I get in front of them.
0:17:08 Ben Wright: Okay, great. Weāve spoken a lot about knowing where your ideal customers hang out.
0:17:11 Jemimah Ashleigh: Itās our favorite thing to talk about, actually.
0:17:13 Ben Wright: Itās an extension of that. Yeah, great. Okay.
0:17:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: And number five is start to look at pitching to them, make relevant stories. Get ready to start just emailing and saying, I want to do a press release to you. I want to pitch a story idea to you. Itās a lot easier than I think people give it credit for.
0:17:28 Ben Wright: Yeah, Yeah.
0:17:29 Jemimah Ashleigh: I think these are such easy little things that you can do. Checking Source Bottle is not hard to do. Might be for some people.
0:17:35 Ben Wright: Yeah. I think that was directed at me.
0:17:37 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely.
0:17:37 Ben Wright: Not everyone listening. I feel like Iāve supported you pretty well through this podcast. I want to get that. So 10 stories gets you going, gives you a baseline to be able to roll out repeatedly. Great.
0:17:48 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, absolutely. And the great thing with this stuff, if youāre only talking about 10 things, if thatās all youāre talking about, if thatās what youāre leaning hard into, these are 10 things that youāre going to be known for. This is what youāre pitching to the media. Thatās not going to change significantly. So what ends up happening is when a Source Bottle comes out and you go, thatās relevant. Well, super relevant to the one that was on Thursday. Let me just go back and grab the cut and paste and put that in there. This stuff, again, is systemized. Itās process driven. It is just having that time to go, itās 10:00am I better check my email.
0:18:18 Ben Wright: Yeah, cool. Perfect. Love it. All right, so those five tips are really good, but thereās a lot in there and weāve spoken a few times around the destination, sometimes stopping the journey starting, and how we need to find little pots of gold along that journey to make sure that weāre not overwhelming ourselves.
0:18:36 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely.
0:18:37 Ben Wright: With what we need to get done. So if youāre a novice right now in this, and it doesnāt matter whether you own your own business, whether you work in a professional job or a subcontracting, doesnāt matter what it is, where would you start?
0:18:50 Jemimah Ashleigh: I would start by establishing the 10 things that I want to be known for. And once I have that down, and I know that most of you guys have probably worked on that before, is to sign up to Source Bottle and put a reminder in your calendar to go and check it. It comes out at 10am and it comes out at 2pm every day.
0:19:06 Ben Wright: Yeah. Okay, excellent. And would that also be your number one tip?
0:19:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. If youāre going to be the person who wants to really start taking media seriously and get into these ideas, Source Bottle, help a reporter out how collectively, these places are going to give it to you on a silver platter. And itās just very easy and super repeatable for you to go and find how to get there.
0:19:28 Ben Wright: Great. Itās interesting when we talk about our key takeaway from podcasts, sometimes we will have different takeaways and other times weāll have exactly the same thing. And for me, I interviewed a gentleman named Akeem Shannon out of the So less than 1%. US A few months ago. Flip Stick is his business. He created Flipsticks. Thatās the application you put on your mobile phone and then it makes it stick to the wall. Famous business had a famous story around it. He had a great quote that has stuck with me. Iāve interviewed a lot of people over the last 18 months and this one stuck with me. And it said, not everyone is a great storyteller, but we all have stories to tell.
0:20:02 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:20:02 Ben Wright: So on this one, I agree with you. I would start with the your top 10, or it might be 8, it might be 12, but get your top stories down pat so you can practice them so that when you do get to the big show, youāre ready to go. And then the second part I would say is, yeah, jump onto Source Bottle one at a time and use it. So.
0:20:18 Jemimah Ashleigh: And just get used to it. I think this is the other thing is it can seem like. And there was a lot of information this podcast, I understand that, but itās like if you can start at Source Bottle and go, Iāve now got this under control. Now itās the time to introduce Harrow. Nowās the time to get collectively, these are the things that we can slowly build into. Itās the same thing that we talk about regularly with social media. Start with one, move to the next, add to it, and once you are comfortable with one of them. But if we can start building this stuff in, and even if you only get five or six media opportunities in a year, thatās five or six that you didnāt pay for additional eyeballs on, you additional visibility. And thatās what weāre all about here.
0:20:55 Ben Wright: I like it. And you know what, Jemima? You might, just might make friends with a journalist or two. But if you donāt, youāre always going to have your friends in business, which has been us. And weāll see you next week.
0:21:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: See you guys.
