How to Get PR (Public Relations), Publicity and Massive Exposure for your Coaching Business – with Jason Womack

Owen: Hi, everyone. My name is Owen McGab Enaohwo and welcome to H.Y.V.A.™, the show where we bring you successful coaches to come on here to talk about why they are successful in their business and we ask questions so that you can take the information on here and implement in your business. This is the very first episode of the “The Coach Blueprint™.” And today, my guest is going to share with you how exactly you can go out there and get PR for your business.

So, my guest today is Jason Womack, he is the CEO and Founder of the Jason Womack Company. He is an Executive Coach and the author of “Your Best Got Better: Work Smarter, Think Bigger, Make More.” So Jason, thanks for being the first guest on The Coach Blueprint™. The three big main ideas that we want to learn during this interview is “How you go ahead and identify the media outlets and the bloggers that you want to go after?”

And the second main idea we want to learn is “What is the right bait to give to them to get them to be interested in interviewing you?” And then since most people don’t think they want coaches, what are you bringing to the news media and the bloggers; the bait that makes them say “Hey, let’s get Jason on here to do an interview with.” And then one of the big questions I want to also have answered is during the interview, how do you deliver the goods to them that makes them that “Hey. This guy, we just brought on here the right person” and not only that, “How do you connect it back to your bottom line so that you, as a result doing the interview can get to build your list or sell your products?” and that’s it. So, let’s get started.

Jason: We have a little bit of time Owen because that’s a tall order with a lot of background behind it and as what I promised you in the pre-interview I’ll be as transparent as possible, I’ll share everything that I’ve done. I do need to say from the onset everything I’m going to tell you, I learned from somebody else. So, you’re going to hear me reference names, those of you watching right now get a pen, get a piece of paper because we’re going to go pretty fast and furious. I’ll give you some names; some other advisers, some tactics and we’ll probably share some stories along the way as well.

Owen: And I know just when I was doing my research on you that you’ve been on CBS, you’ve been on Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and recently you’re on Fox News talking about your new book. How did that feel?

Jason: Awesome. I mean, every single one of us has a book inside of us and a book is just a noun. Everyone has a story, everyone has an experience. If any of you watched the Ted Talks of Ted.com, what they’re doing is they’re curating the world experts in different areas who have something inside to share. And so, the very fact that I have gotten to sit in that chair across from a video camera that’s going out to 60, 120 or 300,000 people at one time, it’s pretty awesome. And then obviously, the benefit to the organization is huge. It adds credibility to our company, it adds credibility to me, it puts me in new markets that I may not have gotten into or may have taken me a different tactic or longer time to get into those markets.

Owen: Definitely. And not only have we established that you’ve been on the news media and Inc Magazine. You’ve been on Fox News talking about your book, we also want to give the audience, fellow coaches, business and executive coaches listening to this some context as to the success you’ve been having. So, how many coaching clients you have?

Jason: So, I do a lot of work with organizations, one of the banks that I work with has 60,000 employees. I don’t coach all 60,000 but what I’ve done is I’ve kind of niche myself into three different industries. Investment banking, I do a lot of work with them. Aerospace, I do quite a bit of work with them. And education, I’m a former high school teacher. I taught 5 years between 7th grade and high school here in the State of California.

After that, I went and worked with the “Getting Things Done” material. I did that for about 5 years and then in 2007, my wife and I started the Womack Company. And since then, I positioned myself as a “performance coach.” And I’m not doing time management, I’m rarely doing systems. I don’t coach anymore in how you setup an organizer, how you print documents and file those off to the side of your desk. What I’m looking at is what are the behaviors? What are the habits that people have put into place that have gotten them to where they are? And what are the decisions that they need to be making to change how they’re working for the better?

Now, I know I took a little tangent but I wanted to give you some of the context behind that answer of how many coaching clients do I have. So, I’ve got four investment banks that hire me almost monthly and that’s between New York, London, Zurich. I’ve got an Aerospace company in Washington D.C. and in France who I do quite a bit of work with and that’s all the executive coaching, that’s pretty high level stuff. And then in education, I’m working with the New York City Department of Education actually this year.

Owen: Okay. So you actually answered some of the questions that I was going to ask you, what are the names of some of your most notable clients? Do you have other ones that you want to mention too so that the audience will know?

Jason: You know it’s one of those things Owen and I know you know this but it’s that client privilege or something. So, just know that if you walk down any street in New York, you’re probably going to find one the banks that I work with.

Owen: Definitely, I’m always trying to give a context as where you at in your business so that the audience can aspire to be like you.

Jason: Yes.

Owen: What kind of revenue did you generate last year? Feel free to answer.

Jason: Great question. So there are three different revenue streams that we have. We’ve got the live presentations that I do with lots of conferences, a keynote or an in-house seminar. I’ve got the executive coaching, that’s the one-on-one. And then I also have other kinds of the products; from the book to the online programs to the downloadable stuff that we provide. So, I charge $10,000 a day for a speech. I charge $5,000 a day for coaching and we have a PDF that’s $14.95 and then I have an online coaching program that takes 5 weeks and that’s why I work pretty in-depth with one person and that’s $1,500.

Owen: So which ones do you have most of your clients buying? Which of your products do they buy the most?

Jason: So, great question. For those of you who are getting into coaching, all three. And what you want to do, what I wanted to do is I wanted to cross-sell, up sell, oversell. I wanted everything to come at once. So for example, there’s a client that they started me doing in-house seminars. They gave me 4 hours and they gave me three topics. They said “We want the psychology, sociology and technology of a productive day.”
So, I built the seminar, just kind of created and collected and I said “Well, here are some ways to think and that’s the psychology. Here’s some way to communicate, that’s the sociology and then here are some ways to organize your digital systems, the technology.” Now, what I did was on most of those seminars that I presented, every now and then I get a request for coaching. Perfect.

So, the next month I would go out, I would do a seminar on Tuesday and then I would follow that up with 2 or 4 days of coaching and they would just have me bounce around from the office to office to office and then, and you can see where this is going. I started writing documentation so that I could either drip that out. So for example, on my website there is a PDF that you can download and this is the printed version but this is the “7 Keys to a More Productive Day.” This is what I’m using as the freebie.

Owen: Yeah.

Jason: Give me your e-mail address and I want to send you this. I also printed this up. It’s nice, it’s full-color, and you can see it here. And then what I’m doing is I’m sending this in the mail with a little note, “Hey. It was great to work with you in a seminar. If you like to apply that information one-on-one, have me come in for a day and we’ll go through the 7 keys to a more productive day.” And so, my goal in it was to mix it all together so that they almost have to buy it all.

Owen: Before we will go to the main meat of this interview which is PR.

Jason: Yes.

Owen: Just give people some context to your background. Share with us the story as to how you became a coach and what was that primary motivation that made you want to become a coach?

Jason: I’ve always been fascinated by the educational process and then I’ve also been driven by this question “Why do people do what they do? Why?” I mean, if you ask my mom, she’ll tell you that I came out asking why and my original path was the most logical. And the only thing that I understood for that kind of propensity or that strength if you are using the strength finder stuff, it was “education.” So, I went and got a master degree in education, I specialized in assessment. Then, what I did is I went beyond that. I started asking, “Well, wait a minute. How do we teach so that kids start asking the question of why and how not just what?”

So, I started running these Saturday classes, Owen, when I was a high school teacher once a month. On a Saturday, I would do a learning class. How to take a test? How to organize workspace at home? How to organize your backpack? How to talk to adults who will listen? And I believe that was really my first foray into non-traditional but much leveraged, high level coaching. Even though I was coaching 16 and 17 year olds, I can probably go on and on and on. I got an assignment for one of the presidential libraries, they we’re building a leadership program, curriculum for teachers and that was my first experience where I started teaching my peers. So, that was kind of interesting in a way I was putting together classes and I was helping other teachers learn how to teach leadership, learn how to learn about those things.

And then, I guess when I started my company in 2007, my real focus was I wanted to work with a few and generally I work just below the C-Level executives. So, I’m working with partners, I’m working with managing directors, I’m working with VP’s because by the time they work with me, the directions are already been set. I’m not a CEO Coach but what I am is once the CEO, COO and the board has decided that the organization is moving in this direction, now that level of leadership, the people who are going to manage, the people who are doing the work, they are the ones who are about to get overloaded and overwhelmed. Those are the ones that might need to change the way they think.

Owen: Okay, was this the transition that got you to that point where you figured out the specific target audience to go after, their needs and the value you provided to them? How did you come up all that?

Jason: And this is going to lead us right into the meat of this discussion. “Listening to what was hurting.” Listening to the pain points, listening to what people complain about. A complaint is just a hidden project. As soon as someone starts saying “I wish… It should… Why doesn’t…” and those are the things that I listen. When I’m in a conversation with someone and they say something like “Why doesn’t my iPhone just …” or “How come I can’t get my staff to …” Those two things for me, that is where the gold is hidden. If I can figure out how the technology does that and if I can figure out how the sociology does that, I’m now a leveraged asset not a liability. I’m not another coach, I’m not another author.

Owen: Definitely and so, you say you are listening to people and I’m trying to figure out like okay but then every coach comes in trying to figure who their target audience is and you are listening to people but how did you figure out that it was the financial and the aerospace industry that was the right people for you? I’m curious.

Jason: That was completely by accident. Now looking in hindsight, kind of like what Steve Jobs said, “Looking in hindsight, all the dots lined up.” But while I was in it, I didn’t have a plan, here’s what happened. The people who are intricately tied to performance, very interested in working with us. The people who as long as they just show up, sit in their desk and use that space and then go home at 5 or 5:30, we generally don’t get called by them. So, that’s why for me like a conference is, there’s so much interest in what I have if I’m talking in an industry conference like I’ll talk at a mortgage industry conference, I’ll talk with the sales industry conference, I’ll talk at the technology industry conference and those groups know, the better they do, the better they’ll do and there’s a direct correlation to that.

Owen: Okay. And so, it seem at this point now you figured out what niche you’re going to go into but we told the audience we’re going to talk about PR.

Jason: Yes.

Owen: Why did you find that there was a need for you to get involved with PR? I’m trying to get to the beginning, to the point where you made up your mind to actively seek PR and reach out to journalist and reporters in news media. So, when was that point where you realized that you needed to do PR?

Jason: I was standing in my garage and I was putting something away and I looked over and I race triathlon and I bicycle a lot and I mountain bike a lot. Anyways, I looked over, Owen, and I have four bicycles and they’re all from the same brand – Specialized. And I realized, I said, “You know what? I support this company with my wallet. I’ve bought probably another two or three bikes besides those over my lifetime. Right?

Owen: Yes.

Jason: It’s like, “I get that company. I trust that company” and that to me was a huge turning point. I’d buy what I trust. By the way, you’ll never see a Specialized advertisement on television. You’ll never see a Specialized advertisement in the Wallstreet Journal of the New York Times. But what is it that this culture had done to engender trust in me over the years? And there’s probably we could come up with things. But for the point of this discussion, people will do business with you when they trust. You have their best interest in mind and that’s why this whole whether it’s Gary Veynerchuk talking about the Thank You Economy. Whether it’s Karen Pryor talking about the Positive Reinforcement Effect in her book “Don’t Shoot the Dog” or maybe it’s even Napoleon Hill, “If you believe it, you’ll achieve it.” We want to be around people. Here’s what my wife says at Owen, she says, “People do business with people they like.”

Owen: So, know, like and trust and they will eventually buy from you kind of transition. You thought that was what you needed to do and PR would play a role in it.

Jason: Absolutely.

Owen: Go ahead.

Jason: Absolutely, because what are public relations other than letting people know how to get in relationship with you, right? Letting the public know, here’s how to get in relationship with me, I mean when I go to the coffee and I always have a copy of book with me. But when I got to the coffee shop, I actually put the book on the table facing away from me. It’s right there and I could be sitting around four or five people. That’s public relations because the public is looking and they say “If I was in relationship with him. If I was in a discussion with him, he’s probably going to talk about that thing.” So now we take a look at what are the main modes. What are the main models? And this is where Seth Goden really helps out a ton of people but he talks about the TV environment that we’re in. Is it bombarding you?

I was watching last night and of course we have TV, right? And so, I’m watching and it goes from the program to the commercial break and I would love the piece of technology that could test this but I want to know the decibel change in volume that they pre-program because it’s louder, it fascinates me. I’m waiting for my show and then the commercial has come on and it goes back to my show and I was like “Wow. They’re playing us” and again they’re playing us because that’s their job of public relations.

Owen: And so, the thing is you decided you want to go and seek PR but then where did you start from? I want to go back to the beginning. Where did you start from? How did you figure out what to do?

Jason: This is a book by a friend of mine here in Ohio. His name is Larry Chambers and it’s called “Credibility Marketing” and what he does is he says “If you want to be known as the expert. If you want to be known as the go-to person, you need to become the go-to person.” In fact I’ve got a website, one of my pages on my website gives people the third question that I strongly encourage. There’s three questions to ask every Sunday night. But the third question to me is the most important question of all three questions. The first two are really important but the third question is “What do I want to be acknowledged for next week?” If that’s my filter, if I’m sitting there Sunday night and Monday night and I’m thinking to myself what do I want to be acknowledged for this week?

Owen: Yeah.

Jason: And I want to be acknowledged as a domain expert in the field of productivity and performance. I also want to be acknowledged as a great husband. I also want to be acknowledged as a decent tri-athlete. I can just go down that list. How does that become? What needs to go into that? And in the book “Credibility Marketing,” what Larry Chambers says is there’s a continuum of developing expertise. He says, “The first thing that you start doing, writing authors of the articles that you read.” Owen, I would bet I write five to ten journalist a day between newspaper articles, blog post, magazine articles, journals that I subscribe to, letters to the editor. Some of those are handwriting and some of those are e-mail and what happens is in a week, let’s go on the low side. Let’s say in a week I reached out with 25, that’s a hundred. In a year, I’m reaching out the 1200 journalist.

Owen: Wow.

Jason: Now, if you have a pen and paper, if you’re watching this or I’ll tell you this again later but there’s a series of things that I do when I write to this journalist. The first one, “Thank you.” Thank you.

Owen: Why just “thank you?”

Jason: I mean, let’s just start there. You have dedicated your life to what I’m not going to do, you go out and get stories, you go out and interview people. “Thank you.” The second thing, here’s “Why?” And I pick up piece of that article that was specifically very interesting to me. The third that I do is “I reference somebody out in the space who I know is doing something along those lines.”

Owen: Another journalist in the space is that what you’re referencing?

Jason: Say again?

Owen: Another journalist in the space, is that who you’re referencing?

Jason: Journalist, another author, a speaker, a company, anything because what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to become a hub. I’m trying to become in the middle of that wheel voices. This is exciting, Owen. This is fun. In the middle of that wheel, I want to connect this person to this person. They may or may not know each other yet but my goodness, if I’m the reason that they meet, I’m a matchmaker now. So, the first thing is “Thank you.” The second one is here’s “Why?” The third one is “And by the way, here’s somebody out who I read recently about that” and then the fourth one and I believe and then we’ll dive into the Fox and the CBS and the ABC and the things. The fourth one is “And here’s what I would like to add.” Based on my experience, based on my research, based on my profession, based on my – whatever that is. Now, what’s interesting about this is for all the coaches out there, you can be in any coaching industry. You can be a parenting coach, you can be an energy coach.

Owen: A life coach.

Jason: A life coach and what you do is you read through that article and you thank them, you tell them why you’re thankful, you connect them to somebody else in the space of what they’re writing about and then from your perspective and here’s what I could add if you’re ever writing something like that again.

Owen: Okay, when I do interviews besides those getting the concept, I want to back it up with a concrete example. So based on what we just said, looking back at your experience, tell us a story of how you applied that, I guess.

Jason: I was in a conference in New York City, actually just got invited. It’s next weekend.

Owen: Wow, recent.

Jason: It’s called the ASJA, American Society of Journalist and Authors. Join. I mean, here’s the American Society of Journalist and Authors and based on how they found out about me and this was maybe 18 months ago was I was leaving comments on LinkedIn posts. I mean, everyone in the world is saying comment on blogs, comment on Facebook post, comment on LinkedIn. Do it and even if it’s just setting a goal of one a day, do it. Anyway, I started leaving comments around and I got contacted by someone via LinkedIn. “Jason, would you present a panel at this ASJA conference?” and then they gave the details. “We don’t have any money, we can’t pay you, we don’t have a budget” all of those things. Folks, here’s my advice. If you can take a stage, get there. 30, 40, 50, 300, 3,000 people in the audience, what would it take for me to generate 3,000 leads via my website?

Owen: Quite a lot.

Jason: During that program, by the way, so here’s my negotiation. When someone ask me to speak in a conference and they don’t have money, I ask them for something because they have to have an in. So I’ll either ask them to buy books. I’ll ask them if I can have a conference pass. One conference, they had no money, no money, no money so I worked out a deal where I get to go to their conference for free for the next five years.

Owen: Wow.

Jason: I may or may not speak but I have a ticket for the next five years for that conference. Now, who knows if I’ll go, but they had to give me something because I was going to give them something and if you have not read anything by Robert Cialdini yet, please, please, please go read about the Psychology of Persuasion. He talks about the six influencers about how we influence one another. And one of the biggest influencers is if you give me something and I give you something back, we’ll continue to play together. If I just start giving and I don’t get anything in return, there’s going to be a disparity. So, I went to the ASJA conference and I did my panel, the next day I attended classes and in the class was a woman from entrepreneur.com.

Owen: Wow.

Jason: During the class and by the way, at these conferences they always put up on the short sheet their e-mail address, their Twitter handle, their whatever. During the session, Owen, I drafted out a 6-month article series. I walked up, there was a line, right? Because after every panel there’s always a line to talk to them. Thank you so much, can I have your card? And what I did is I handed her a piece of paper. I said “Hey, Laura. My name is Jason. Great panel. I’ve drafted a 6-month series that I’d love you to take a look at when you have time. I’ll e-mail this to you later on but I want you to take it right now” and she looked at me and I know every now and then I get a little bit, people are a little overwhelmed by how energetic I am at times. I got a call the next week.

Owen: And I’m curious, which part of the fourth steps you just mentioned was that process?

Jason: It was all 4.

Owen: You did all 4 at once?

Jason: I walked up, I said “Thank you very much. Here’s what I like about the panel. I attended up” and you know what I did with her is I said “I spoke on a panel yesterday.” By the way, the panel that I spoke on that day was called the “Post Project Hangover.”

Owen: Okay.

Jason: Right? Think about when you get to the end of a coaching assignment and you’re done with that client and you’re like “Now what?” How do you get back into the game and so those are the things and then, what I did was I said and here’s what I would like to add.

Owen: And that was the sheet of paper that you gave that showed all the different articles that you plan on contributing I guess.

Jason: I then I need to say because I want to be completely transparent with you and your audience, Owen, she didn’t like any of the six. In her e-mail to me the next week, she didn’t like any of the six and you know what? She didn’t hire me to write for anything that I wrote down. She hired me to write because she saw the drive, she saw the interest, she saw the dedication and I think she did Google my name.

Owen: And that’s great too because at the end of the day, it’s really just to get that conversation started with them because they have editors that they have to answer to and you have to write according to what they are looking for but based on your own perspective on the story, I guess.

Jason: Public relations.

Owen: Definitely.

Jason: Let me say one more thing and then we’re going to go to that. I think most people treat their marketing, their advertising as what I call, “PT” or Public Transaction. What you and are talking about is a public relationship.

Owen: It’s a good distinction to make. And you see in this example you mentioned how you actually got PR based on you going physically to a conference.

Jason: Yes.

Owen: But there are also different ways in which you do it that doesn’t involve you physically being there to get it, right? Can you show with us some ways in which you target the people you want to go after and what kind of baits or things you get them to get interested to even talk to you in the first place?

Jason: Well-written copy will get a lot of people’s interest. Split A/B testing is absolutely critical, more and more and more. If you can subscribe in iTunes, there’s a podcast called “I Love Marketing.”

Owen: I love them too, Joe Polish and Dean Jackson.

Jason: Yes, Joe Polish and Dean. Yeah. Just I listen to them, I mean, their podcast comes out and I’m listening to what they’re talking about.

Owen: Yeah.

Jason: So, the bait or what Dean Jackson calls the cheese, right?

Owen: The cheese. The Cat & The Cheese.

Jason: The Cat. The cheese. How much cheese can I give away? And for those of you who aren’t familiar with this analogy, how much of the good stuff can you give? I made this PDF and quite frankly, it’s another eBook. Well, what I did is in my marketing system, if you go to my website, you can sign up for that PDF, you drop in your name and your e-mail address and you go into my e-mail system. Some of those form. What do you call them, the forms?

Owen: Yeah.

Jason: I’ve actually added a physical address. Now, why would I do that? Because there are some people who I send that landing page to that are more qualified than the general public.

Owen: Okay.

Jason: Okay. So if I do a seminar for an investment bank, for one of my aerospace companies. If I want to test something with a higher level manager set. What I’ll do is I’ll set them up. They type in their name, their address, their phone number, their e-mail address. They’d get the PDF and then 3 days later, this comes in the mail. 5 days after that, I send them a DVD. A week after that, I send them an audio CD and a week after that, I send them a postcard and I say “If you’ve watched the DVD and listened to the CD, tell me and I’ll send you a copy of my book.”

By the way, see what I’m doing with that last one, I’m going for reciprocity. If you’ve watched the DVD and CD, let me know and I’ll send you a copy of the book because there comes a point where I can’t just keep on giving stuff away for free because then they just look at it as more free stuff. So there’s no value to it. What am I asking in exchange, not the $125 for the DVD, not the $30 for the CD, I’m asking for two hours of their time. But here’s what I know, if I can get a potential client to invest two hours of their time and then a week later this shows up in the mail, the chances just increased that they might be interested in my online coaching program. They might want to download the DVD series that is all asynchronously delivered.

Owen: But I’m curious though, is this the same process you use when you’re going after PR now, the traditional media bloggers? And if so, explain how it relates to it?

Jason: No, the thing about bloggers and journalists and people in the news, they are so busy, they don’t even have time to filter. Their filter is “What just came in, can I use it?” So, what I thought I would Owen and I can share this with anybody who wants. We should probably make a landing page after this for people to get more information. But what I did is I brought for you just and I’ll explain this because I know you can’t see it. This is about an 8-page press release. It’s only 2 pages because I have a lot of stuff to fill in right here. Let me back up. Let me give you the formula for our press release. Problem, significance, statistics, solution, case study.

Owen: Okay.

Jason: So that’s what I did right here. The problem is in May. By the way, we’re recording this in April just so people have a time frame. In May, thousands of college graduates will leave university. They’ll have gotten their degree and they’re going to be ready to enter the workplace – problem.

Owen: Yes.

Jason: They need now need to enter the workplace. What’s the significance of that? Well, right now in America, we’re facing between an 8 and a 16% depending on where you are unemployment rate. People are fighting for jobs. People who used to be retiring at 55, 62, 67 are not retiring. What are the statistics? Those are easy to come by. What’s the solution? Well, the solution and here’s what I’ve done is I’ve come up with sixteen possible solutions to what college graduate could do as they enter the workplace. But you see anyone of those sixteen, that’s a bullet point of the ticker that goes down on a TV show. That’s a paragraph that I can place into a LinkedIn comment and I’ll send that whole 7-page press release, I’ll send that directly to any of those journalist who have replied that I’ve been writing to by the day for the past 10 years.

Owen: Okay. But I was curious that you mentioned that data was so much stuff and you mentioned something about giving the cheese up from. So, I’m trying to relate it to because if I just came in, I just give them a whole press release and a bunch of big page with all the information, they’d probably just going to throw it away. So, I’m trying to figure out how.

Jason: And you know what? I’ll challenge you on that only based on my experience. When we do one of these a month, we figure out something to do with one of these a month and I’ve set Google alerts for my name. I’m sure you have too, right?

Owen: Yeah.

Jason: The week that we start submitting this to journalist and authors, dozens and I’m not kidding. I have it on my website, dozens of websites will copy and paste.

Owen: Wow. Just copy and paste the stuff itself exactly as you gave it.

Jason: If you go to my media page on my website and you scroll down below the videos, most of those articles are copied and pasted press releases.

Owen: It makes sense because you give them exactly what they’re looking for and you use your step. But then I’m also looking at it from a perspective of because they have so much stuff coming to them, how do you breakdown that barrier so they say “Okay. This guy. Let me take a look at what he had and copy and paste.”

Jason: Perfect. If you go back to the example that I gave you, my bicycles, if you’d go back to why will I always buy Specialized, If you go back to what I do every day in reaching out to journalists, there are people I’ve never talked, most of these people I’ve never talked to voice-to-voice.

Owen: Okay.

Jason: But because the first e-mail that I even send was a thank you, here’s why, do you know this person, here’s what I would like to add. Anybody who’s ever replied back to me, they go into a special database.

Owen: I see. I’m hitting you to get the goods now. Go ahead.

Jason: We’ve developed a relationship, not a transaction and I can give you the two reasons that most journalists will delete what they receive. Number one, most people will send a half-thought idea. Number two, they’re sending an email cold.

Owen: Yeah, I see the point. You’ve already created a relationship with the first 4 steps and you’ve been building relationship with them over time. Am I getting this correctly?

Jason: I want to give you something that I picked up from Joe Polish. Actually, Joe and I attended Singularity University last December and we’ve been hanging out since about 1999, 2000 but do you remember the 9-word e-mail?

Owen: Yeah. I actually use it too though. Like coaches for instance? My own case now is do you want more time to focus on coaching your clients? That’s one e-mail. You want more time to focus on marketing for new clients or the other e-mail if you want clients? That’s it.

Jason: Here’s what I’m doing. For journalist, I’ll read, I’ll read, I’ll read, I’ll pick up, okay, they’re talking about road warriors, traveling executives, people who spend time in different continents during the month and I’ll send them an e-mail and it will be something like the subject line is their name. “Susan,” that’s it. In the body, it’s “Are you still looking for ideas on road warrior productivity?”

Owen: Great. Go ahead.

Jason: And that’s it, like I don’t give her the ideas. Are you still looking? I’m going to get one of three answers, right? Yes, no, leave me alone. But now we know. So whatever your industry is, you can come up with these ways of the bait is giving. It’s giving.

Owen: The cheese. Yes.

Jason: It’s the cheese. And you know what Robert Cialdini says is we do business with people we trust and there’s this Law of Reciprocity. Let me give you something and I’ll accept whatever you give me in return.

Owen: Okay. And because we were breaking this into steps, I want to dive into that a little bit more. So, the first e-mail was just their name and asking them a question about the cheese, what will be the next step in that? Is there series of steps with these e-mails that you’re doing with them? The next one is the…

Jason: Here you go. Here you go, right? Because the first one was every short and the next one is and here’s everything I have right now. I’ll tell you right now, the one that we’re doing for the graduates, I’m going to find journalists and authors who have written about education, parenting, new hire orientation, the Gen-Z or whatever we’re calling on these days and I’m going to say something like “Terry. Are you still looking for ideas on what graduates can do with their career?” If she comes back and says “yes,” I’ll go “Great. Here are 16 ideas. Use any ones you want or I would love to come on a show and talk about that with you.”

Owen: Wow. But this people now, they’re not just cold contacts. Are they cold or I remember you mentioning four different steps initially while you build that relationship.

Jason: Right.

Owen: Are these people cold or are they part of those people you already contacted using your initial 4 steps?
Jason: And again, look at this as a 9-month or maybe even an 18-month strategy everyone. And if you have any doubts about that, go read Chris Brogan. Go read Seth Godin. Go read Ali Brown, Pam Slim. All of these people will transparently tell you that their road to overnight success took a decade.

Owen: Definitely.

Jason: And for us, for anyone Owen who I’m going to share this interview with my community. For a lot of them it’s going to be their first time seeing you. For your community it will be their first time seeing me, what’s the easy thing to think? “Oh, he just popped out of the blue.” There are miles on these tires, right?

Owen: Definitely. Definitely and one of the things that we promised the audience is that how to do the list or figure out which PR audience to go. I mean, which journalist, which bloggers that are relevant to them to go after. In your case, how do you figure out what list to go after? Is there a process to use?

Jason: I live on Twitter search and right here in my iPhone, I’ve got one of those little blocks where you open it up and all of these are saved searches inside Twitter. So, I have one where I have saved a search for the words “Need to be Productive,” I have another saved search, “Best Better” I have another saved search, “Meeting Productive” etcetera, etcetera. And what I’ll do if I was bored right now or you suddenly got distracted, I was just checking and I would scroll through who has written the words “Meeting Productive” in the same sentence.

And then, what I’ll do is I’ll start jumping into the conversation if in when appropriate. I’ll follow that person and then, if I can, I’ll tweet at them. I’ll add something to them and tag them and then where it gets really interesting is if I jump over to the journalist side, what journalist are Tweeting, Facebook-ing, LinkedIn-ing, blogging and then what can I do to join the conversation? What can I give to the conversation? So that if and when I do make an ask, it’s like “That Jason guy, I’ve seen him before.”

Owen: Is there an example that can help to back this point you just made?

Jason: Inc. Magazine. So, we just got a great article on inc.com. So, I’m working on the magazine because pages are very valuable to them.

Owen: Yes.

Jason: But this was I went to South by Southwest, the conference in Austin. I know you’ve heard about it.

Owen: Yup.

Jason: And I’ve gone every year and every year, something amazing happens. Three years ago, I met a journalist for Inc.com. He does some other things but he does a weekly column at Inc. Two years ago, we saw each other again. By the way, 12 months gone by, we hadn’t seen each other. Saw each other again at South by Southwest. “Hey, Howard.” “Hey, Jason.” Once I went to New York and I gave him an e-mail. I said, “Hey, I would love to hang out with you in your city. You name the place and the first round is on me.” He took me to a peanut butter and jelly restaurant.

Owen: Wow, never heard of that.

Jason: So, I bought us a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Fast forward, a month, 2 months ago we are South by Southwest. He saw me from across the way. He said, “Hey, Jason. Come here.” 45 minutes later, he walked away, 3 weeks after that, I got an article in Inc. Magazine.

Owen: And this is based on the relationship that you’ve built.

Jason: Absolutely.

Owen: You identify the list of people you want to go after because he’s a journalist, he’s a blogger, talking about stuff that you want to do.

Jason: Yeah.

Owen: Did you establish the relationship with him based on those 4 steps you mentioned and then it turned into this? I am also curious about the in-between point where you’re building that relationship and giving them the cheese. What do you do to build the relationship?

Jason: Perfect question and by the way, I really appreciate you bringing me back to this because I forgot to mention something. Make the list. Go to your white board, open your Moleskine or open up Evernote. Make the list by magazines where you want to be. Newspaper, where you want to be? Bloggers you want to mention you. Radio shows, television shows. Make the list. There’s something about telling this universe what it is that we’d like. Where it is? Which Sandbox we want to play in, then things can happen to move in that direction. So, I made the list, I wanted to be in Fast Company, Forbes, I wanted to be in Entrepreneur, in Inc. I wanted to be in USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and I could go on. But you get the point?

Owen: Yeah.

Jason: What I did then was I set Google Alerts for all of the journalists who write in my domain. Every day if Sue Shellenbarger for the Wall Street Journal, if Gary Stoller for USA Today, if Martin Wolf for the Financial Times. If they write something, I get a note. There was one woman who I was driving to Los Angeles Airport, Lucy Kellaway. She writes for the Financial Times.

Owen: Yeah.

Jason: She was on NPR. We’re driving to the airport. I’m listening to NPR and there’s Lucy Kellaway. I opened up my phone, I sent her an e-mail. “Lucy, just heard you on NPR. Good job.” Mind you, I’m in California, she’s in London. She e-mailed me back 5 minutes after the show ended “Thanks for listening.”

Owen: Wow.

Jason: That’s all. By the way, I’ve never made any ask of her. Not yet, right? Because she’s up here and I want to make sure that I got the relationship that’s been going back and forth and I still haven’t totally figured out that play. My next thing with her will probably be “Can I send you a copy of my book?”

Owen: I’m glad you mentioned that because it seems that depending on who the journalist is, you have the creative way to keep building that relationship with them. So that they’re here, you keep building and giving and giving and giving them until it get to the point where you provide them an additional cheese that will get you on the show, I guess.

Jason: And although there are going to be buckets of strategies, you’re absolutely right. This is not a one size fits all.

Owen: Great. Go ahead. And so the next now that I was thinking about is there might be a challenge what coaches say in all that and some people will say it’s hard to even get clients to understand. Some clients don’t even think they want coaches, right?

Jason: Right.

Owen: So that’s one thing. So think of now that PR, a person or journalist or blogger, how do you convince them that a coach is the right person to come on there to speak to the audience? How do you make that transitions that I’m trying to get?

Jason: It’s a great prompt. Drop the word “coach.”

Owen: Drop the word coach, okay.

Jason: Expert, researcher, author. That’s always a good one because what happens is we lend credibility to people who have written, spoken, studied something for their 10,000 hours. Malcolm Gladwell, thank you very much. But what happens is and I don’t know how it is in the community or the part of the world that you’re in on the East Coast, but here on the West Coast, I don’t use the word “coach.” Adviser, that’s the one that I use the most. “Jason, what are you doing for a living?” “I’m an adviser. I’m a strategic adviser. I’m an executive adviser.” “And what do you do?” “Well, I work with people who want to upgrade their level of performance, I help them with the psychology of productivity, I help them understand the different ways that sociology works within an organization where there’s multi, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.” So, with that in mind, I would make it a study and I’m just looking around, it’s just too far away. Study magazine headlines on the front of the magazine cover.

Owen: Okay.

Jason: Because generally what they get is between 3 and 7 words. There’s the magic saying and advertising 4 words or less.

Owen: Okay.

Jason: Four words or less and if I can share what it is that I do in 4 words or less, then suddenly people are able to grab on and this where Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen I think really broke the mold in promoting this. I don’t know if they came up with it. But their whole thing, if someone asks you what do you do for a living, you might reply with something like “Well, do you know how many coaches or so busy working on their business?” They were so busy working in their business, they never get to expand?

Owen: Yeah.

Jason: Yeah. Well, what hire your own virtual assistant does is we… You’ve heard that before.

Owen: I like that. You’re even giving me some words to use in my marketing and I like that.

Jason: I mean, my whole thing is I can say something “Jason, what do you do?” “Well, do you know how a recently promoted manager thinks that if she gets into the office earlier in the morning, she can get a lot of work done and then maybe she’ll stay at work later in the afternoon and she’ll get more work done? Have you ever heard of people doing that? Well, what I do is I work with recently promoted managers to find new ways of working that are smarter, more effective, more efficient so they can get everything done during their day that they have to do and be able to get home with the family.”

Owen: And this is how you translate that, what you do to the PR and the bloggers so they understand using this kind of information?

Jason: Because the other thing is they don’t want to have to figure it out. By the way, if I’m on television in the morning in Minneapolis, they had me on its 7:15 in the morning. In Los Angeles, they had me on a 12:45 in the afternoon. I said different things, right? Who’s watching the news at 7:45 in the morning? Who’s watching the news at 12:45? Those are different audiences.

Owen: Yeah.

Jason: So, to the audience at noon, I was putting things in terms of and I didn’t say this out loud but this was my hidden agenda. I was saying things like if your spouse is at work right now and you’re at home right now, here are some things that they could be doing to be able to get home tonight and have dinner with your family.

Owen: I like that.

Jason: So what we’re trying to do is meet them where they are and grow from there. By the way, can I give you the worst question to ask at a networking event?

Owen: Go ahead. Go ahead!

Jason: “So, what do you do?”

Owen: That’s the worst question to ask somebody?

Jason: Worst question. Why?

Owen: Why?

Jason: It immediately causes dissonance and distance and comparison. If I walk up to you and I say, “What do you do?” You have to come up with an answer and the possibility that the answer is going to be indirect alignment with what I’m interested in. It’s so small that suddenly you start talking about what you do and I start disinteresting myself.

Owen: So, what would be the best question in a meeting like that then?

Jason: Well, I talk about it in the book.

Owen: And audience, you will have to go and buy the book to get that kind of information, you need that.

Jason: Right. I mean there’s four questions to ask in a networking event, right? So, you walk up to someone, what is your name? Where are you from? What do you do?

Owen: I lost you into that.

Jason: Get to that fourth question.

Owen: Can you repeat the fourth question because I lost you. What was it?

Jason: No, it’s totally different for everybody.

Owen: Okay.

Jason: By the way, you know the name tags that they have for conferences? The name tags? The name tags handle the three questions. Here’s my name, here’s where I’m from, here’s what I do, what’s the fourth question? And the reason that I can’t say it out loud Owen is the fourth question is different for everybody.

Owen: So, it changes for everybody. Great. And so, I’m curious because you have so much experience in going on securing shoves and also going on having journalists, magazines and all that interview you.

Jason: Thank you.

Owen: But how do you define success of any kind of PR event that you’re at?

Jason: It’s a great question. How, like the success mean to that person? I’ve been in the game for a couple of decades now and so my definitions of success obviously have changed from before until now. But I’ll get e-mails, I got an e-mail recently from someone who read the first 2 pages of the book. Actually, he read the prologue. So, they weren’t even numbered pages. He read the prologue of the book, he handed that to his wife. She read the prologue of the book, they put the book down, they sat in their living of their house and for the next 4 hours, they had a discussion they’ve never had before.

Owen: What was that discussion about? Did he tell you?

Jason: About where they were going? What was important to them? In the first 2 pages of the book which you can download for free by the way from my website. You can get the first 38 pages and the first 2 pages of that prologue describe to the reader the concept to what I called, “The ideal day.” And so success to me means that I’m living right now in what I would deem elements of an “ideal day.” So, let’s go very specific. When I’m on a news station, a TV station at 7:15 in the morning, can I get an e-mail or a phone call or any response from somebody who says something like, “Jason I was on my way to work, I heard you talking, I used one of your techniques, I save some time today.”

Owen: And so that’s how you relate your fact that you’re getting, being quoted in news media and having interviews back to use you in the day. Success and you’re doing this stuff.

Jason: And it’s a great arbiter Owen, right? It’s a great filter. So, if I do something, if I do a media play, if I do an article or a blog post, if I don’t hear from anybody, I don’t blame them. I look at what did I not do, what did I not give, what did I hold too close to my chest so that they were not able to listen or read and do.

Owen: And so I’m curious because I’m sure depending on the media outlet, the interview, the way which you will frame that question that what do you have to do for you to make this PR events you go into or this blog post you’re writing or this new article being successful that you can get that response is going to be different, right? But you have a formula in which you create that angle. You understand what I’m saying?

Jason: And what it is building content beyond that instance. So for example, from this interview, after we’re done you’re going to go back and do some editing, you’ll do some writing up. I’m going to go back and I’m going to make a special landing page for your community. I want to be able to offer them the PDF. I want to be able to give them the bibliography of the books that I mentioned. But on that landing page, there’s going to be a little form and that form is going to say, “To stay in touch with Jason Womack, give me your e-mail address” and hopefully and I’m saying this live so that everybody can hear me, hopefully I’ve given you enough where you’ll share your address with me so that I can continue to develop the relationship.

Owen: And you know what I like about what you’ve been doing so far, you’ve been planting the seeds, at this point, someone is listening to the interview out to this point will definitely take you on your offer.

Jason: I hope so because there’s a lot more there. We can only do so much in 45 or 60 minutes and there’s a lot more behind that and if I can share anything with you that I learned that has helped me with my overnight success, if that can help you with your overnight success, then let’s do this thing.

Owen: And so, audience, you’ve been listening so far and one of the thing I always want to ask every guest is what is that one thing that the audience, the coach who has been listening to this so far trying to specifically get some gems in how to’s and how to build and be successful with PR just like you had. What’s that one step they need to take after listening to this interview in order to move forward to as getting that success with PR?

Jason: I’m going to give you an easy one and a hard one. Okay?

Owen: Yeah.

Jason: So there’s two, which one should I do first? I’m going to the easy one. The easy one is set an intention and set yourself up once per day for the next 5 days. Write to a journalist, write to an author, write to somebody. Now, in 5 days I’m just asking for 5. And by the way, this is as easy as all I’m going to do is I’m going to go through the magazine. I’m going to the section of the Letter from the Editor which is always right down here in this magazine and I know that William Folk wrote this. I know that the address of the magazine is right over here. Over on the side of my desk on this side, I have cards and stamps. That’s it. “Dear, William. I read a couple of articles in the week. Really like that section on… Have you ever thought about running an article on this? I know somebody and if you ever want to add something on productivity…” Here you go.

Owen: Back to your formula. I like that.

Jason: And just do that one time per day. Now, when you start to amp this up, what I have over here on my iPhone, are you on an iPhone or Blackberry or Droid, what do you want?

Owen: I’m an iPhone guy, can you see me?

Jason: There you go. Cheers! Do you know you can do the keyboard shortcuts, the snippets?

Owen: I haven’t even tried that yet. Go ahead.

Jason: Perfect. So, watch this and you can do this in Blackberry and you can do this in e-mail on your PC or your Mac. But what I’ve done is okay, you know when you misspell a word and the iPhone fixes it?

Owen: Yeah. It gives you a suggestion. Yes.

Jason: Perfect. You can go in and you can tell the iPhone what misspelled words should become.

Owen: Okay.

Jason: So, I actually have full paragraph blocks pre-written that only take me two characters to start.

Owen: Okay. So like shortcuts.

Jason: So, that formula that I gave you, on the iPhone I generally got that down to. If the give me their e-mail address which a lot of magazines are doing these days, I read the article and their e-mail address is there, it takes me about 3 minutes to do what I just told you.

Owen: Nice. I like that.

Jason: I travel with my cards. So, I always have those with me. So, I’m going to hit the road on Saturday. I’ll be gone for 9 nights. I’ll bring about 15 note cards with me. Okay. That was the easy one. Can I give you the hard one?

Owen: The easy one. The hard one now.

Jason: The hard one is spend more time thinking. Whatever that means to you but spend more time thinking. There’s a reason that you’re coaching. There’s a reason that you’re here. There’s a purpose beyond getting another client and getting another form and getting another lead gen. What is that core purpose? I write about it in chapter 7 of my book, Owen where I talk about your “So that” and if you want an activity on this, you go to a white board or you pull out a piece of paper and up on top you write down the words “So that” and then you’d give yourself a gift of your own attention. You write. I am coaching so that… I am writing articles so that… I’m getting home in time for dinner with my family so that… And once you give yourself this gift, I’ve seen it start to shift a little bit what people stop allowing into their lives. What e-mails they stop collecting? What conferences they start signing up for? What clients they start attracting?

Owen: Definitely. Hey, Jason. I really appreciate you doing this interview and giving us your secrets on how you’ve been scoring PR and been successful with it. And hey, just so that the audience can thank you, how best can they reach you?

Jason: Google. Jason Womack or you can go to my website womackcompany.com and of course the book is yourbestjustgotbetter.com. But at Twitter @jasonwomack. I’m abundantly findable.

Owen: Definitely. As to audience, get in contact with Jason and if you have questions about this interview specifically, make use of the comment forms and I’m sure Jason will see it and would like to join conversation.

Jason: Yeah. Add some comments down below because Owen and I can jump back in and we can keep that dialog going. So everyone, scroll down the page, leave a comment.

Owen: Thank you very much, Jason. I really appreciate it. Thanks. And if you enjoyed watching this video, I bet you want to discover everything you need to know about hiring, training and working with a virtual assistant, tips and strategies that you can immediately put use in your business. Go now to virtualassistantblueprint.com and get my free 5-day future training course and you will instantly discover how to avoid the five most costly outsourcing mistakes and how to make working with virtual assistants more profitable and fun. I can’t wait to give you access to the video, so go now to the free training course and the site again is virtualassistantblueprint.com. I’ll see you soon.