Public Relations for Startups with Cheri Garcia

Source: GeniusDen archive transcript checked against the recording. Administrative opening and closing material is omitted; the presentation wording is otherwise preserved with light readability edits.

Britney Spears, what's up? [unclear]. So, I'm Cheri Garcia. I was the assignment editor at CBS 11, meaning I was the person that ignored all of your press releases. So, the only time that I would open a press release is if it was from the fire department or the police department. And after I left news, I decided that there's a better way to get in front of the media. How many of you guys have been on the news or on TV before? How many of you want to be for your business? Should be all of you if you're here right now or else I'm wasting your time.

So, it all started out working in the newsroom and then I left to invent my first product. I invented the Luminous Envy Tanning Float. It's still sold nationwide today. I got the patent on it. It was this cool sell thing. It's kind of the inventor's dream. I came up with an idea. I got it manufactured in China. Not the U.S. It's too much money. And then I brought it back over here and got it onto the market, and now I get checks every day or every other day from [unclear] or different retailers. Well, after that, I decided I wasn't making enough money and I needed to supplement my income with something that was going to actually pay us. So, I became vice president of a PR firm here in Dallas.

We were doing a whole bunch of different work with lawyers, attorneys, all kinds of different doctors. And I started feeling the itch to work more in the entrepreneurship and startup area. And the whole Mark Cuban thing, so everybody always brings that up. It's kind of a curse, because now it's like, oh, this is Mark Cuban's PR, but I'm like, no, I'm Cheri Garcia. I reached out to him on an app called Cyber Dust one day. And how many of you know what Cyber Dust is or have Cyber Dust? Okay. So I reached out to him on an app called Cyber Dust. I was like, hey, let me do your PR. And he was like, I don't believe in paying for PR. And I was like, I know, I know, I've read your blogs.

Let me do your PR for free. I know you believe in free work. And he was like, okay, we can do that. And so he was like, do you want to meet with my CEO in LA? And I was like, you know what? I'm getting on the plane. I'm going to go out and meet with him. So I spent my own money, went out there, talked to him. And I just started getting him on the news. I started small. I was like, Dallas Morning News, and then all the way up to Fox News. And then he started endorsing me. So I was at the PR firm and I was very loyal to them as their vice president. I took the company from $300,000 a year to $2 million a year. And once Mark posted on Twitter and on Cyber Dust, "Cheri is the ultimate PR person," I was like, okay, what am I doing? Why am I not on my own now?

So I took a huge leap of faith. And I left the PR firm. And I just said, okay, I'm going to only work with inventors and entrepreneurs. And it was awesome. I would say that Cyber Dust actually was the platform that got me all that business. I started putting out PR tips every day for a year. I didn't stop. So then people started hiring me. I got to work with all kinds of different startups. Well, just recently, I got an investment for an app that I have. And I got into Tech Wildcatters. I don't know if any of you guys know what that is, but Tech Wildcatters is an accelerator. They basically give you $25,000 to do a three-month program. It's kind of like they just micromanage you a little to make sure you're going in the right direction.

And then you do a big Pitch Day, which is coming up. We have a big Pitch Day coming up. You've read the schedule? We have a big Pitch Day coming up, and after that, you're supposed to get more investment. So whenever I got the investment for RentEval, I started to say, okay, how am I going to keep helping these entrepreneurs and startups with PR, and essentially helping them grow their business while [unclear]? So just recently, I decided to kind of hang my hat up for PR. And I want to teach other entrepreneurs how to do it. Because when I started Luminous Envy, I didn't have money for anything. I mean, every tanning float I sold was like my grocery money.

But all the tanning floats I sold was through PR and marketing. And if I didn't know how to do that, then there'd be no way I would have saved any money. So that's why I'm doing this talk today. Even though I'm super nervous for Pitch Day, I even told Joe, I was like, I can't do this talk before Pitch Day. I have to prepare. And then I was like, oh, but then again, I just want to get it out there and help everyone else, especially the Tech Wildcatters people. So with that being said, I'm going to jump into how to get your own PR. So first of all, there are three things to a news story. Where most PR people mess up is they think there's only two.

They make a press release and they're like, "Hey, so-and-so invented this, or so-and-so is the founder of this, and we have a launch party. This is what it does." No offense, but nobody cares but your family or your mom. The news, they want to know what's going to benefit the consumer. So where they're messing up is they're forgetting the most important part, which is the poster child. So instead of saying, "Hey, we have a launch party, and I created this product," instead, it should be, "This product was created because it helps these people, and this is the person it's affecting." So let me give you an example. One time I had, what client was it? It was a drug and alcohol addiction expert.

And they were like, hey, get us on the news. And I was like, okay. So I went to, and this is something you might want to write down, I went to news.google.com, and I wrote addiction. And I saw that there was a study that came out that said addictions cross with gastric bypass. And I was like, that's interesting. So it was saying that basically when you get gastric bypass, because you don't have that addiction to eat anymore, then it fuels other addictions. So I said, okay, so here's the story. Addictions, they cross with gastric bypass, and here's your expert. Someone says, so-and-so says this is true. He sees patients come in all the time that say that they have cross addictions with gastric bypass.

But if I were to send that story alone, the reporter would have opened up the email and said, wow, that's a really good story. But how on earth am I going to find somebody who had gastric bypass who's now addicted to something? And then they put it in their back pocket for a slow day. Well, there's never a slow day in news. They're short-staffed. They have a lot going on, and they have tight deadlines. So I took to Facebook. I took to Twitter, and I tried to find somebody. So I found the right person. I reached out to him, and I was like, hey, do you want to help other people by telling your story? And he was like, okay. So then I wrote the story to the reporters, and I was like, gastric bypass and addictions, you know, they cross with each other.

And then I went in to say, Craig Thompson lost 200 pounds after he got his gastric bypass. But then he became a full-blown addict. And I gave a quote for him. And then I said, you know, John Doe expert at Karen Treatment Center says he can confirm this. And I put a quote for him. Within three hours it aired. My expert was on TV. But the story was about the poster child. So that's where the story is, the poster child. Speaking of poster children, how many of you have heard of HARO? Help a Reporter Out.com. So it's Help a Reporter Out. I think it's Help a Reporter or just Help a Reporter.com. And basically if you sign up for the service, it's totally free.

And every day reporters who might not be so busy and got a story like the one that I sent will reach out. And there's like 30 different inquiries. And it says "Looking for somebody who had gastric bypass and, you know, has addictions," or "Looking for somebody..." And it can even be something easy, like "Looking for young entrepreneurs," or "Looking for women entrepreneurs." And these are reporters who are trying to quickly fill a deadline. So when you open up that HARO three times a day, they send it three times a day, so make sure it's an email that you don't want to really get blown up with. You just respond to them. You don't always get a response back, but it's almost the easiest way to get coverage.

Let me see. Who in here has a business they want to get on TV if you could tell me like an industry or something? Using genetics to create health management solutions, so fat loss programs, mood balancing, peak performance. Okay. So maybe what I would immediately come up with, and I could be off track because I don't know exactly what you do yet. But you want to do something that's timely. So first of all, I'd say timely, it's the whole summer. And you want to do something that's relevant. And relevant, I would say a whole bunch of women right now are trying to do all kinds of things to hurry up and get slim for summer. They're doing all kinds of different fad diets.

You know, the lemon and water diet or whether it's the cayenne pepper diet, all these diets. So you could come in as an expert and talk about what's the right way and what's the quickest way to get right. Instead of pitching exactly what you do and that you're the expert, then you find somebody who will go on and talk about, hey, I, you know, I always did all these fad diets, but once I found this program, this is how I got better. I could be off track, but that's an example of what I would do. You go to news.google.com, you type in fitness, weight loss, and you'll see all kinds of different statistics. So statistics are very, very important for news stories.

Anytime I pitch a news story and I say, okay, I'll use Mark Cuban's brother, for example. Brian Cuban, how many of you guys know him or see anything he does? So he does a whole bunch of addiction. He was suicidal, all kinds of problems. So he now speaks about that and wrote a book. And he's always reaching out to me and saying, hey, can you get me on TV? So I have to go and type in male eating disorders. He had an eating disorder. And whenever I reach out to the media and I say, did you know that 56% of men have eating disorders, but it's stigmatized? That gets the reporter's attention. Then I go in to say, Brian Cuban had an eating disorder for 26 years.

And then I go into the expert. So once again, that's your top three things and that's what you need. It's the expert, the story, and the poster child. Does anybody have a business that they want me to try to throw out something right now? Business incubator. Business incubator. That's easy. All day long. So if you look up Dallas startups or Dallas tech, you'll see that the statistics are huge right now on everybody moving to Dallas, and you would actually be the poster child. So you wouldn't be the expert at this point. You'd be the poster child, and the expert would be somebody in the economy, and you would go talk to them and be like, hey, can you talk about the numbers and what you're seeing?

You have somebody in real estate. So you could get, what's his name? Forget his name, but CBRE, you could get him to be the expert to talk about all the new startups that are moving in. I know you're friends with him, I can't think of his name. He could talk about, oh yes, we see a whole bunch of people coming in, everybody's wanting space, we're running out of space so much that everything, all the prices are rising. And so now this tells the consumer all the prices are rising. And so that's why it's important to the consumer, because now they want to know. And then you're the poster child, which isn't, that doesn't happen a lot when you're the one pitching a story.

What else can I think of? Some things. So another thing is pitching the right reporter. So a lot of people, they have their idea and they want to pitch a reporter. So they write their press release or their pitch, whatever they're going to write, and they just send it to news at [unclear]. Well, that just goes to me, the person that was getting a thousand emails a day, and I'm like, boring, boring, boring, deleting. What you want to do is watch the news. Before you're going to pitch your story, you really want to watch the news. So I see Arezow Doost, which was an old co-worker of mine. She's on there, she's talking about murder scene, murder scene, or weather, weather, weather.

She's talking about news of the day all the time. I'm not going to pitch my startup to her. Then you have Mike Castellucci on Channel 8, who is always doing stories about startups. He does all these stories with his iPhone, Shot with My iPhone. That's the person you want to pitch. So there's a difference between a feature story and hard news. All of you guys in here would be pitching a feature story, unless you wanted to get really creative with a client. I'll give you an example. I made one of my stories hard news. It was the drug and alcohol rehab expert again. So I told him, I was like, okay, I can get you on the news, and we can do something about your new facility and we can try to get something to happen, but it's going to be at the very end of the newscast.

Nobody's going to watch it. They might or might not. Or I just found this thing online that teens are smoking alcohol. The news was crazy for it. Teens are smoking alcohol. Were they? I don't know. But I made sure that everybody else thought they were. So I called one of my friends. No idea how I got him to do it, but I was like, hey, I need a big favor. And he was like, what's that? I said, can you smoke alcohol on camera for me? And he was like, yeah, man, I'll do anything for you. We're high school buddies. I was like, OK. So I talked to the doctor. I was like, look up smoking alcohol. Dangerous trend. What all is it going to do? So then before I knew it, two days later, it was the top of the newscast on CBS.

It was everywhere, but every single news camera in DFW, plus national, went to this facility, and guess what? This beautiful facility was filmed. And not only was it filmed, it was at the very top of the newscast. So that's an example of how you can twist a feature story into top of the news. This is important. Like Scott with Raspberry. Anything that's like consumer alert, Home Depot, the breach, the hacking, everything with Home Depot or Target. Right when something comes down on that, that's when it's a feeding frenzy. When you're like, okay, so you have an app, you can, like everybody has an app or has a business that you see something on the news.

You're like, well, if they were using my app, that wouldn't happen. If you find yourself saying that, you better be emailing the reporter and saying, hey, I just saw your stand-up on TV. Awesome job. You look great, by the way. They have a big ego. Awesome job. You look great. But I have a company that specializes in this. I can come and talk about how they could have prevented this. Then you're at the top of the news. Now you're not on with Mike Castellucci at the bottom as a feel-good feature story. What else? I still feel like Britney Spears, by the way. I feel like I need to [unclear]. Yes, Harley? How is it different, local versus national?

Very different. It's a whole different ballgame. So local, obviously, like if it doesn't affect somebody here locally, then they're not going to do it. National is way hard. Local, with my eyes shut, I could call the media right now and probably get one of you guys on TV. National, it needs to affect everybody nationwide. If it's just a Dallas story, not going to fly. So if you have, unfortunately, if you have a business that is, and it's not even unfortunate, if you have a business that's here locally and it's just, you know, a spa or something, you don't need to be on national news anyway because the national media can't, it's not like anyone's going to fly from Kansas to come see you.

But if you have an app, you need to find stats in the United States and you have to make it nationwide to pitch it. Not only that, you have to really—so if you guys want to write this down—Muck Rack dot com, M-U-C-K-R-A-C-K, Muck Rack dot com. You're able to search, like, Today Show or anything, like local, anywhere you want, and it will pull up the reporter's contact info. And you want to target that one. And even better, you can pull up—I had some kind of vegan Mexican restaurant, which, don't even ask how that's possible, but they were a client. And so I went to Muck Rack dot com and I typed in vegan, and I found all the reporters, national and local, who had vegan in their Twitter profile. So basically it brings up their Twitter—who were, you know, "I'm a vegan and I'm a news reporter." So then, when you reach out to a reporter based on what they like—and that's another thing—look at the bios.

If they love yoga, or if they love guns, if they love fitness, whatever they love, you need to try to target them, because at the end of the day, we're the ones that go in. We go in every day at two o'clock or nine, depending where our shift is, and we have to have at least two news stories a day. If you don't have them, they're going to let you know. You suck. So you go in and you say, here's my story idea, here's my story idea. They usually turn them down because they have their own agenda. But if they don't, then they're going to usually say a story they're interested in. I know me as a reporter, I wouldn't go in and pitch a story on something I didn't know much about.

I wanted to have an easy, smooth sailing, go in, pitch my story, and then they say, okay, that sounds good. What else? Sorry, I'm just trying to take pieces. I have a PR Academy that's coming up on June 5th. I'll tell you about it. It's $500. It's a whole eight-hour course. I take you all the way through with PowerPoint. You get a PR certificate at the end of the day. I'm really excited about it because I taught my brother how to do PR and he ended up getting a PR job. I taught another guy how to do PR and he was like a good old hunting boy. And I taught him how to do PR and he makes six figures a year just working from home. So I wanted to be able to do a PR course that will help everybody.

Whether you're an entrepreneur and you have a business and you want to know how to do it yourself, or you want to send an employee and then come back and they're able to do it for you, like have your receptionist go and she can come back and be like, hey, by the way, the phones aren't ringing, get us on the news. Or if you end up getting a job and you want to negotiate a higher pay, if you know how to do PR and marketing, that's usually pretty expensive. I know our firm charges in between $4,000 and $5,000 a month for a six-month contract. And working with all these entrepreneurs and these startups and inventors, I realize that it's just so hard on them. So like I said, I hung up my hat for PR, but why not try to spread the word? All these other PR people are just trying to hold all the info to themselves if they even know it.

But they're still doing press releases, but they try to hold the info to themselves because they want [unclear]. And I'm focused on RentEval and Pitch Day, so I'm just trying to give all the info I can. What time is it? Six forty. Okay, that being said, so I want Susy. She's my friend and business partner. I want her to come up here. You may remember her from TV. She was on the news for ten years here in Dallas. She was a reporter for CBS 11. We didn't actually work together, so it's weird how we connected. And she was also on Channel 5, but I'll let her tell you about it. Hi everybody. Hi. Are you guys awake? Yes. So yeah, I was a reporter here at CBS and NBC 5.

Everything she said about getting press releases, totally true. I mean, I was out on the streets. I was the schmo who was, like, racing after tornadoes and, you know, standing in a puddle of water and saying, everybody, it's wet outside, back to you. So, and reporters are always looking for stories. We have to come up with stories at least three a day, and we're pitching to a room of people who don't want to have anything to do with any of the stories that you're pitching. So what Cheri's talking about, all of it is true. I mean, for me, the most important thing is make sure that you sell the story and not whatever product it is or whatever app you're doing.

The biggest question that we would get in editorial meetings, there's probably about 12, 14 people in an editorial meeting, and that's where we pitch. It's like Shark Tank. And the biggest question that everybody gets is, why does anyone care? How does this affect our viewers? You know, why does anybody care about this? And so that's what you have to think about as an entrepreneur is why do people care? You know, who does this affect? Who does this help or who does this hurt? And so those are things that you need to think about before you start pitching reporters. The other thing is, you have to know, so a little bit about my background, again, I was a reporter.

I started, I've done a million press releases that I just deleted. A lot of PR people just didn't know the kind of time constraints that reporters are on. I mean, when I call you and I say, hey, I heard you sent me a pitch, for example, and I call you and I say, hey, you know, my producer's like the story, can we talk to you? And everybody's like, yeah, when can we schedule this? And I'm like, we need to talk to you in an hour because we need to be live at 4, 5, and 6. And people are like, uh, how about in two weeks? In two weeks, no one cares, you know? So that's something that you need to be aware of is like, when the media is asking to do a story because it's a slow news day or whatever the case may be, maybe it's topical at the moment, you need to be ready.

And you also need to have, you know, your message ready and be able to be camera ready at that time. Unfortunately, it's not fair, you know, I mean, sometimes like maybe you do have something really important going on, but I guarantee you that if you say no to a reporter once, they're never going to call you again. I know, I was that person. You know, what I would do when I needed to talk to somebody is I would call three or four people and see who would call me back first and make themselves available. And then I'm going to continue to call that same person as a resource. And if you become a resource for a reporter, that's a really good opportunity for you.

For many reasons, like small business owners or whatever. If there's something going on in the news concerning small business owners, then you're the poster child. Oh, yeah, come on in, get video. If a reporter calls you, you have to just assume that they're going to want you on camera. I don't know how many times I would say, hi, I'm Susie from CBS 11 and they would say, this is going to be on camera. I'm like, people, it's TV. Like, hello. What do you think is going to happen? So I also do media training for law enforcement and fire departments. You've probably seen, I've done dozens of really bad interviews where people just are nervous or they're scared of the media.

Media, they don't know what to say. It's really important that you guys, especially as business owners, know exactly how to get your message across, but in a very short amount of time. Because generally, as a reporter, again, we're moving very quickly. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you like three important questions. A good reporter will keep it tight. A newbie is going to have like a 45-minute interview. The reason why you don't want that is because you have to log all of this. You have to be on the air at 4, 5, and 6, and your photographer is going to hate you because you have so much tape. So you have to make this 20-minute interview into a one-minute...

And generally the longest time you're going to get on the news is like a minute 30. So you need to be able to know exactly what your message is as a business owner if you're going to pitch them. And if you guys have a really complicated app or business or whatever, for lack of a better word, you have to dumb it down. A lot of times I think people get, they're really in their head and they're really involved in what it is they're doing. And so to them it makes sense because you've been around it so much. But as a reporter, I would always say, well can you explain that to me like I'm a five-year-old? Because that's what you have to do to make it understandable to all of these TV viewers.

They say that the average is about an eighth grade language that you should be using. So that's really important. That's something that I tell people is, or tell all my clients, is what is it that you want to convey? You have to be able to do that in a very, very short amount of time so that everybody understands exactly what you guys are trying to do. And also, it's really important when you're on camera to not be nervous, to be comfortable with these people, because otherwise you lose credibility. If you are nervous or if you kind of stumble, then you lose a little bit of credibility with the viewers and it just doesn't look good for your business.

So that's what I do generally is I kind of coach people on how to create that message and figure out exactly what it is that they want to say. Am I talking too loud? Trying to figure out what's wrong with the mic. Okay. I should know this. So anyway, so that's what I do, and I also help people just feel more comfortable on camera. You also don't want to be wearing like some crazy outfits. You know, you want to make sure you're not like sweating. You don't have like pit stains. You know, these are like small things that you don't really think about. But then when you see them on camera, you're like, what the hell? Why didn't anybody tell me? You know?

What questions do you guys have? We're gonna open it up for a Q&A. Yeah, let's do a Q&A. Yes. What are the demographics for local news viewers? Well, there's generally, I think people try, the news stations really try to target 25 to 54. But as you know, our generation doesn't watch that much news, and they generally get it on social media. So I would say probably the demo is like 45 plus, and that's being conservative. Yeah. So this is probably a question for both of you. I currently have a PR company that I go through, and there's a specific reason for that. For your services, when you pitch yourself to somebody saying they can help out, what is your ROI that you try to explain to them aside from a good portion of vanity, like showing off new business, how do you explain how numbers end up being that?

Can you repeat the question? Sorry. So what he's asking is, so in other words, he's like, why am I paying this PR firm? I mean, I'm not seeing ROI. Pretty much. [unclear] So when I talk to startups, I'm like, hey, you know what? If this is the last amount of money in your pocket, don't hire us because [unclear] right away. However, we do have some clients who, like, one of them is a Co-Launch competition, and he wants to get more applicants in the door so he can have a bigger, you know, bigger space, bigger competition, more people. And because he went on the news, he got tons of applicants.

Now, if you are a doctor or a lawyer, and you come to me and say, I want to see the cash register ring, I'll say, not in a million years. But this is for you, it's credibility. So when people are searching the web for different lawyers, and they see that you have as seen on CBS, as seen on WFAA, they're going to be like, man, he must be a big deal. No, his PR team probably did a good job. But if you have a product, I would say for startups, all I can do is say, you know what, Luminous Envy, like that's what sold all of my products is because I went on the news. But it's really hard to promise that. And that's a hard thing about the PR industry. A lot of PR firms, the one thing that I would say is, I actually hate the industry.

I really do. I can't stand them. They blast out all these press releases. They do mass emails. They post three tweets a day that don't get any interactions. They're just doing their job. And they're saying, oh, you didn't get any news this month because Obama spoke on the second. For me, I just feel like my selling point, if I were to continue to do PR, is I will get you on TV no matter what, or on radio or print, at least four times a month. So as a PR person, I'm doing my job, but [unclear]. I don't think any PR person can, but we can certainly put you in front of people and give you credibility. I don't know if that answers your question.

Yeah, I mean, for example, I'm working right now with a former Tech Wildcatters company, and they actually have a really great product, and they don't have a PR person, so they need help. And their backstory is actually really interesting, so that's why they hired me, is they need somebody to be able to convey whatever their message is, and all of the new partnerships that they're doing. So unfortunately, I am writing press releases, which I don't necessarily enjoy, but that's something that is part of the business. But also, I'm helping them kind of with their social media, and just creating that brand awareness. They don't necessarily want, at this point, to be on the news.

But what they do want is they want brand awareness and they want somebody in-house who kind of knows, you know, what their brand is all about. Would you suggest telling people to save their energy for the news stories until there is something like where people want to go, where they're trying to get people in for a meetup or say they're launching a product on Kickstarter instead of just, here you go, let's just put you on the news for no apparent reason right now just to get out of it? Well, if it's no apparent reason, you're probably not going to get out of it. You know? I mean, there has to be some sort of compelling thing that's happening either with the business or, you know, for example, like Co-Launch. You know, like, okay, this guy's having a competition for apps.

Like, okay, no one really cares about that. Like, as a news person, I'd be like, okay, delete, delete, you know. So how we framed it and how we got him on TV was we said, well, this guy's helping entrepreneurs realize their dream of becoming entrepreneurs. And there's already been, you know, six companies launched from this competition. So that's how we framed that particular story. So it wasn't necessarily—we didn't—the headline was not the competition. The headline was that this person is actually helping people, helping other people realize their dream. And so that's how he ended up getting on TV and getting all these applications for this Co-Launch.

So, an example of the Co-Launch. So, there are some companies that I did PR for that I was like, how am I going to get them on TV? It was actually just a plain T-shirt company. And they were actually out of Canada—even harder. He was like, I want to be on in the United States. And I was like, okay. I wiped my sweat off my forehead. And I was like, we'll figure it out. And then I saw Cuban posted something about the refs. They suck. I want fans to stand up. I want everybody to say, refs, you suck. And so I was like, hmm. So I called my T-shirt guy and I was like, can you make a T-shirt that says, refs, you suck? And he was like, I absolutely can. I said, okay. Then I called ESPN slash FanSided.

That's a great article for you. A fan has responded to Mark Cuban's tweet and he has created shirts to where fans can participate and buy the shirts and show up for the games. Within 30 minutes, it was posted on ESPN, FanSided, and I was like, what's up? And then at that point, still, the Mavs and Mark Cuban, that was all SEO'd in with his brand. So that's an example. It's like he asked, how do you get ROI? I don't know, like, it's hard to say. But at the same time, would that ever have happened if you didn't have a good PR person? There are some—I mean, I wouldn't say just go out and hire just any PR person. I think one thing is, if any of you want to hire a PR person, you have to ask.

I think it would be fair to say, give me three story ideas right now about my business. If they can't do that, I don't think they'd be able to do it, right? Yeah. I mean, for example, the type of kind of company that I'm telling you about, they were like, we just haven't had really any good experiences with PR people. And there's been a lot of over-promising and under-delivering. So I'm like, well, I talked to them about who they are, what they do. And I said, I think first of all, we need to have a discovery session to figure out what angles we can actually pursue. And they were like, no PR person has ever done that. So I think that's what happens is we're coming from a storytelling side, and generally a lot of PR people don't get that stuff.

Some of them do, some of them really do get it, and they do know how to pitch stories, and they do know how to pitch a reporter, and they do know the time constraints that reporters are under, and they do know that you're going to ask for a poster child. And so that makes life easier. But that's definitely the minority. Any other questions? Okay, operating in a B2B space, it's easy. After chatting with you, looking at if there's a data breach at Home Depot or there's a HIPAA leak that you can get it down to the consumer level and present yourself as an expert on that, what do you do for the ones that aren't so obvious? How do you go about finding what those angles are?

If you're primarily the B2B, or if you're only the B2B. So I'm only the B2B with RentEval. So RentEval, it's an app that I created and it basically simplifies the process for property management companies to do inspections. So when you move out of an apartment, they have to go in and do an inspection and see what's good or what's bad to where you get a deposit or not. Seems like a hard thing to get on the news, but the past three months, I got RentEval on the news 10 times. How did I do that? I found the entrepreneurial angle. So I'll tell you exactly how I did it. It was Women Equality Month in March, I believe. And so I went crazy.

I'm a woman founder. And so now, whenever I'm pitching these companies, you know, even though I'm B2B, at the bottom of my email, I have [unclear]. You know, even though it's just about, you know, a girl founded this company and she's kicking ass, they might not even watch it, but they're going to be like, man, she was on all this stuff. So B2B, that is more difficult because it doesn't help consumers. But if you find somebody within your company, anybody that has a story, even if it's just an employee that just started, they have a hell of a story, and they're going to come to your place to film it, and that's what the background is, then guess what? Boom, your company gets all kinds of different publicity because of the story that was being told.

For me, the story wasn't RentEval, though. It was in it. The story was about a young girl pursuing entrepreneurship. [unclear] Yeah. Well, what I would do—well, for example, what I have done with other clients where it seems like, does anybody really care about this? What you have to do is really figure out, you know, what is your story?

That's what I always ask, like, what was your motivation behind this? Like, what is your background? Where are you coming from? You know, and what was the motivation behind this? And that's how we start. We say, hey, this guy kind of has a really good story about business or he launched this particular thing, or let's say you helped somebody, you know, some, you gave a homeless guy, you know, one of your t-shirts or whatever. And now that's what you do, you know, and so that's a story right now. So that's what you want to figure out is, and it's hard for people who I guess are not necessarily in the news, but you have to think like a journalist, and you have to think like, what is the back story that is compelling for the news?

You know, because you don't just want to hawk a t-shirt because there's a million t-shirts out there, nobody gives a hoot. You know, so you have to figure out, you know, what is it that makes your brand compelling? Why would people care? Is it, you know, when I was a kid, you know, my dad died, and the t-shirt that he had on I recreated, and now it has a special place in my heart, you know? I mean, things like that, the news will eat it up. So I wasn't going to go into this at all, but it's a perfect example. I went on the Steve Harvey show, and they did exactly that. I was pitching them a whole different thing from one of my businesses, and they go, well, what's your story?

And I was like, well... and I started going into it. And then before I knew it, I was on TV talking about, I went from cheerleader, you know, like, straight grades, all A's to drug dealer. Overnight, I did. I became a drug dealer, and then I got out and then I patented a product and became an inventor. All of a sudden, they're like, oh, girl, you're getting your own story? You went from drug dealer to patent holder? OK, you get your whole story. And then guess what? They promoted every single little thing I was doing because they wanted to make the story better and better because this is a girl who started from the bottom, now she's here.

Right? They really wanted to just oomph that up. And then, to make it even better, because I'm a volunteer for the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, I brought on one of the prisoners I was mentoring, and then they interviewed him and it got back here and a whole bunch of publicity. So it's all about your story. And if you have one, use it. Yeah. Don't be shy. I mean, everybody loves an underdog story, you know? So what is it? You know, what was the struggle that you had to face while you were trying to get this startup created? Did you, you know, one of our friends, he's like, I lived under a bridge for three days, you know, while I was trying to get this going.

And so it's these kinds of things that really connect with people and with viewers, and those are the stories that you have to tell. So that's gonna be the forefront, but the background is gonna be your business. And that's how you have to approach pitching your story. What else? All right, well, thanks for letting us talk to you guys. Thank you.