Today, we're diving into the world of press releases and media relations with Mickie Kennedy, the founder and president of eReleases. Celebrating 25 years in the business, Mickie has witnessed the evolution of the press release industry firsthand.
Join us as we explore the differences between traditional newswires and article-based newswires, uncover the secrets behind creating newsworthy press releases, and learn why an amazing quote can make all the difference in captivating journalists. Mickie will share invaluable tips for small businesses on how to gain national media attention and build strong relationships with local media outlets. Plus, we’ll touch on the challenges of modern media landscapes and the importance of a unique selling proposition in your pitches.
Whether you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, or coach, get ready to take notes—Mickie’s insights could transform how you approach media relations. And don't forget, Mickie’s rainbow glasses aren't just a style statement—they're a symbol of his colorful and impactful career.
Stay tuned for an enlightening conversation!
In this episode you will learn:
You can reach Mickie at: eReleases2@gmail.com
Website: https://www.ereleases.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/publicity/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ereleases.press.release.distribution
A little about me:
I began my career as a teacher, was a corporate trainer for many years, and then found my niche training & supporting business owners, entrepreneurs & sales professionals to network at a world-class level. My passion is working with motivated people, who are coachable and who want to build their businesses through relationship marketing and networking (online & offline). I help my clients create retention strategies, grow through referrals, and create loyal customers by staying connected.
In appreciation for being here, I have a couple of items for you:
A LinkedIn Checklist for setting up your fully optimized Profile:
An opportunity to test drive the Follow Up system I recommend by taking the
3 Card Sampler—you won’t regret it.
Connect with me:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiceporter/
https://www.facebook.com/janiceporter1
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's
episode of relationships rule. My guest this week is Mickey
Kennedy who's coming to us from Baltimore County. And he is the
founder and president of E releases this, the small
business leader for press release distribution, now
celebrating 25 years in business. Congratulations,
Mickey. Thank you. He is an expert at helping small business
increase their visibility and credibility. And he's here today
to share some valuable insights all around that. So welcome to
the show.
Thanks for having me.
My pleasure. And I have to start, and I know I'm
sure other people have done this with you before. But I have to
start with the glasses because I love them. So we have the
rainbow effect here. For those of us of course, my audience
can't see you. But they will see an image of you on the podcast
with the rainbow glasses. They're fantastic. But it made
me think, actually, before I go there, I found a picture of you
on your website. They're not there. No. It's an old picture.
You need to change it right? Yeah,
I started wearing them in pride three
years ago. And then people gave me a hard time because they
really liked them. And then I think that two years ago, I put
them on for pride. And I just decided to keep them on. So
well. I wondered if it actually had anything to
do with your branding at all, or whether it was just a statement
about you know, about? lb? LB, I shouldn't say that it should
just say pride, because then I can't I can't remember them all.
But anyway. So
I don't know, I think it started out as just
wearing them for pride. And then it just became something that
people liked about me and something people looked forward
to. And people would say, Do you have a headshot with the
glasses? And I'm like, okay, so it was very obvious that people
really liked the glasses. So it's like, this is going to be
my thing. So
they're fun. They're, they're totally fine.
I've interviewed a guy from the Maritimes, in Canada, one of the
Maritime Provinces, I think he's from Nova Scotia, I can't
remember. And he is a marketer. And he talks about standing out
from the crowd, and he wears this yellow jacket with tulips
all over it with a red tulip on it. And then he's got one the
opposite. It's like, yeah, standing out from the crowd. And
you can definitely remember that for sure. So, okay. My audience
is small business owners, entrepreneurs, some like
Realtors nor mortgage brokers, that kind of thing. And coaches,
consultants, and we're all like small business owners. And so
I'm trying to get my head around. Do I need a peel a press
release? Do Why do I need one? What would I need one for?
Right?
So potentially, you could? So
I'm open to it. I just want to know, why do I need
one? Right?
So it depends if national media attention is
important to you. And for some businesses, it's not like if
you're a local mortgage broker or something like that, PR and
media could be valuable for you. But you're probably looking at
local media. And my service, e releases are big value is the
national distribution. Okay, that's good. So, okay, so I do
tell people that for local media, you are the best person
to get it. The thing is, if you think about it, in most local
markets, there's probably less than a dozen people that would
cover you, you know, at your local paper, you know, find out
who covers your industry, that reporter and reach out to them
get their email address it, you know, have people say, Oh, can
you do that, and I'm like, these are not celebrities, these are
members of your community, they should be accessible for you to
pitch them. And if you if their email addresses on their website
or easily locatable, you can just call and say, Hey, I'm
trying to get this person's email address, because I'd like
to pitch them on a local story. And that's completely
reasonable. They'll either give it to you or patch you through
that person. But just start building your local Rolodex. If
you happen to be lucky enough to have a business newspaper or
business magazine, and in the Baltimore market, we're lucky
enough to have both. Again, find out what writer would probably
cover your industry or covers at most regularly get their email
address. And and then you know, maybe consider TV and radio are
their segments occasionally that spotlight local businesses. We
say hey, they did that with a chiropractor, but I can envision
be as a dry cleaner, or a mortgage broker in a different
light. So call and ask for the booker or producer of that
segment. And you do have to distinguish in some markets,
whether you saw it on the morning news or the evening
news, just be as specific as you can. And they'll, they'll
usually put you in touch with that person, or give you that
email address. And, you know, other things are, you know, are
their specialty magazines or newspapers that might be
appropriate. We have Baltimore magazine, which is, you know,
mostly for consumers. So it's not appropriate for b2b. But,
you know, if you're a business, that's your clients are made
above just regular people and not businesses, then perhaps
some of those could be a good fit. And then, you know, look at
like, neighborhood weekly papers that are given away, a lot of
people overlook those, and they are so focused on advertising,
that content is an afterthought. So if you approach them with a
story, and even if you come up with a ready made article for
them, they would really like that. And I've had many clients
say, Hey, I took your recommendation, and pitch them a
monthly column. And they really wanted a weekly column. Of
course, they do, they want the free content, but I stood firm,
and they agreed to do give me a monthly column, I get to mention
my business works really well, I've got a dentist who did this.
I've got a couple of people in fitness, they talk about
nutrition, and exercise and things you can do around the
house to stay fit. But you know, also people in therapy, you
know, practices, where they provide mental health things
they can do, like monthly check ins, you know, like how, you
know, maybe as we get closer to June, they do a column about
people who are planning for weddings and all the stress
that's related with that same thing with end of the holidays.
And so, you know, these are opportunities for you. And all
you have to do is, you know, build that Rolodex want, stay on
top of it, you know, because people leave relationships,
right. And then, and then just reach out to them and just
introduce yourself, you know, that you're a member of the
community, and what you feel that they might want to cover
today. You know, it could be something that's trending in
your industry. I'd mentioned dry cleaners before, and going green
and getting away from chemicals and stuff like that you could
talk about, hey, I'd love to share with you something that we
did recently, it was a huge investment, but it's so much
better for both the environment and individuals, you know, just
sort of, you know, make your pitch. If you do have some
candid photos, feel free to attach one or two of those. If
you have a ready made, quote, you know, put that in there,
because a journalist can build an article around an amazing
quote. And, you know, the first thing people ask us, Well,
Vicki, what's an amazing quote, and it can be, you know, how
beautiful it was that you wrote it, you know, like, I'm a poet,
so maybe I'm a wordsmith, but it doesn't have to be, you know, a
quote can also be amazing, just because how well you condensed
and really made that sentence so tight, that if they were to
paraphrase it, it would be a loss, you know, and so just
really spent a little bit of time on a great quote, quotes
are probably one of the most overlooked things in press
releases. And here, you're not including a press release,
you're just writing a few sentences of a pitch, but put an
amazing quote in there. And often, you may get the interest
of local media, local media is a little hard to break into, but
it pays off because generally, if you do this, say every other
month, or at the minimum quarterly, you know, brainstorm,
keep an eye on competitors and other cities. That's a great way
because you see somebody in another city that is covered in
your industry on a hot button item. You can, you know, don't
tell them, Hey, I saw this in another city, or another
journalist wrote about this person, but you say, Hey, I've
noticed in my industry that people are really paying
attention to whatever the focus of the story was it I would love
to talk to you. That's why I, you know, a local business and
your community would fit perfectly. Here's an amazing
quote, here's my contact information. Here's a link to my
website, whatever collateral you want to include, maybe a photo
or two, and send it off. Now, I've had people who've done this
and they've gone nine months and nothing's happened. And then all
of a sudden, something happens within the year and often it's
not what you pitched. But it's them reaching out to you under
deadline saying, I'm working on a story on XY and Z, I thought
that you would be a perfect example to put in there, could I
get a quote from you, and you're like, Sure. And, and the reason
that you came to their attention is, you've reached out to him a
few times, you're on their radar, they weren't, you know,
inspired by anything you'd sent to that point. But now they have
a need for you. And as that happens, it happens more
regularly in the Baltimore market, I see in the Baltimore
Sun, the same company that gets plugged into articles two or
three times a year one might be about HR, you know, talking
about the trend of people doing hybrid and trying to, you know,
establish a workplace culture, how difficult that is. So
they're talking to the HR person at this ad agency. And then
later, they talk about, you know, creative things that
people do to give back to the community. And they talk about
their program, where people are allowed to do certain amount of
days per year, where they work out in the community, and it's
counted towards work inside there. And they just get plugged
in, because they're a go to, and they know that the people will
give an amazing quote, every time they'll do candid shots,
they make it very easy to work with the media. And, you know,
whenever the media is under deadline, they just reach out to
them, because they know that they can get what they need very
quickly. And it'll be of a quality content. And so those
are the types of relationships you work on, I say the first
year is the hardest. And usually after that, it gets a lot
easier. The exception being those weekly neighborhood
papers, those are usually very easy to, you know, get columns.
And if you have ready made articles, they love that as
well. We call it as features, as opposed to a press release. They
really are looking to copy and paste. It's just to have
something to look like there's content with all the ads and
those things. But the thing is people read them, there are
people who look at the ads, they look at the offers the coupons,
whatever it might be in those. And so it can be a great way to
sort of get recognition in your neighborhood. If you have a
vibrant neighborhood and you're part of it. So I you know, I
tell people, local media, go out there, get it yourself. It
really is one of those things. That seems like a lot of work.
But it isn't, because like I said, once you break it down,
it's not a lot of people.
Yeah, that's there are a lot of there were a
lot of nuggets in everything that you said there. And but
what I found, what I have found is I remember like years ago,
when I was getting started in working for myself, and I was a
professional organizer for about three years. And I was involved
with the Chamber of Commerce at the time, and the local
newspaper was more vibrant than it certainly is now today. And
it was easy to get articles in there. And they'd have pictures
of me and we talked about being organized in your office or your
home office. And that was that was just from knowing the people
in the community. Today, it feels so different. Because
number one, as I said, the newspaper the local newspapers
are ones gone and the other ones disgusting. Now, it's not really
much in it. But you know, to your point that they're looking
for things. And then the other thing is that everybody's
online. So does that fit? Well, your business is called E
releases, right? So you do things online, right? And that's
how you distribute things so many so much more easily today.
So I think that what you just said makes total sense for
entrepreneurs, solopreneurs. And people like that. I remember an
it I don't know why I got into their emails, but I did. But
there's an organization I think it's called Hero. Is it, harrow
harrow
out? Is that still happening? It
is. I think it's mostly paid though, I think
there still might be a free, there still might be a free
component. But what I have found is it doesn't work as well as it
used to used to be a secret. And what happens is the journalist
says, I'm working on a story. And I would love to speak to
someone who is a, I don't know, a consultant and beauty or you
pick something and all of a sudden you're like, ooh, and you
write in and you tell them about you and why you'd be perfect for
them to do and it used to work because it would be like you
know, 4050 people competing for one spot. And you know, if you
were media ready, and you could fire off a really well written
pitch. You stood a good chance of being picked up. I hear of
journalists today saying aye. Aye. To get to three 400 people
competing for one spot, and that just makes it really, really
unlikely that you're going to stand out enough. Now, if you
believe that you have a strong, unique selling proposition, and
you are very distinct or unique, then maybe you could rise to the
top more often than not, but for most people I'm finding, it just
doesn't have the magic that it used to.
Like so many things. So that means that we
have to be more creative and do things in a different way.
Right. So what makes your company stand out in that
regard?
So I think for us, the big thing is that,
number one, every distribution that we do is a national
distribution over PR Newswire. In the US, there's two news
wires a press releases. Its PR Newswire and Business Wire. And
so it's largely a duopoly, there was a third player who tried and
tried to get market share. But here's the problem. Journalists
are busy. And they're always under deadline. And they have
the situation where they can go fish into ponds, and get like 90
some percent of all the releases that are important. And so then
this third player says, Hey, come Come here, too. And they're
like, Ah, I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. I like
it would just to be honest, I'd like it if there was one. So
they they just haven't been able to make inroads with
journalists, like Business Wire and PR Newswire. But what they
did is a pivot, where they said, Hey, we meet all the SEC see
disclosures, you know, getting you on MarketWatch getting you
on Yahoo Finance, getting you on certain places. And so they've
gone to these publicly traded companies, many of them smaller
and saying, Hey, you don't even want to journalists looking
through your numbers. Just use us. We're a lot cheaper than
Business Wire and PR Newswire and so that that's their pivot.
But outside of that, people probably know of other news
wires, like the Associated Press, Reuters, Dow Jones, those
are not wires of press releases, those are wires of articles
they've written. So for example, the Baltimore Sun in my
backyard, if there's breaking news at 6pm, like the Supreme
Court came out with a late ruling, rather than the
journalist who reports they're at the Baltimore Sun has already
gone home for the day, they can just license that article that
was written by the Associated Press, they know the Associated
Press, you know, all these places produce really good
content. So they can just use that article and not have to use
the labor of someone or pull them out of their, their their
home life and able to get something done. So a lot of
people do rely on those types of wires. They don't run press
releases, but they do accept press releases. And again, if
they're inspired enough, and you could possibly get them to turn
that into an article that they've written. That is rare.
But it's not impossible, it does happen. But that's pretty much
the landscape. Despite that, if you go to Google and type in
press release, you'll probably see another 30 companies with
wire in their names. They're not real news wires. A lot of them
are syndicators of press releases. And that's what it's
called when the press release appears on Yahoo Finance and
market watch and a bunch of these financial websites as well
as other little websites. The thing to know is that's usually
part of SEC compliance, meeting some disclosures and things like
that. But very few people see that, you know, you're not going
to no one's typing a stock ticker in for you, because
you're a private company. So you know, the fact you're on one
section of Yahoo Finance doesn't really mean anything. Very few
people are going to read it, no journalists are going to see it.
And so that's not very important. So there is a lot of,
you know, mis communication in the industry. People come to us
and say, Hey, why would I pay you guys four or $500 to move a
release? When I can go to XYZ wire for $59? So I'm like, well
with us, you go out through PR Newswire and they charge
$1,600 600 Word Press release through us. It's about a third
of the price of what you would pay directly with PR Newswire.
And with these other, you know, XYZ wire or whatever it is, you
don't reach journalists at all. And so there's never the
opportunity for an article to be written. That being said, I
would say that the majority of people who use the $59 service
and a $1,600 PR Newswire have a very similar result in that
nothing happens. They might have the sense though, they will
definitely have the syndicated releases that appear on those
little websites, but they both probably will get no earned
media. And that's because most press releases don't result in
earned media. Most people look at press releases that everyone
else is doing. And they write it and they send it out and nothing
happens, you know, my, the most popular release we get an E
releases is a new hire. And it's usually not an executive, you
know, a new director or President or Vice President, you
know, really important person. And it's also usually not an
industry veteran that people know. And so for that reason,
that people who would be interested is very small. This
is a case where you take that person's picture, you write a
few lines about, you know, their story, you don't need a whole
press release, send it to your local paper, maybe send it to
the local business, magazine or newspaper, and then pick a
couple of trade publications, often those that have like on
the move section, and send it directly to them. Because
outside of that, it's very unlikely anyone else is going to
cover it. And it's not worth spending money to go on the wire
for that. The second most popular release I get is a
product launch, press release. And in theory, that could be
newsworthy, but most of the time we get, here's our new product,
here's the list of features, here's a page to learn more and
buy it. And at the end of the day, journalists are
storytellers, and they like a story arc. And they basically
have to protect their biggest asset, which is their audience.
And so they have to decide is this important enough to that it
will really educate or entertain, or ideally, both to
their audience, and a list of features probably isn't gonna
rise anywhere close enough to interest their audience. So you
know, the thing that you can do is to inject the elements to
make a great story, you have that for
a second, stop there for a second, because I
want to ask you, so if somebody has that need, they've created a
new product, or they have a new product launch, or whatever, and
they come to you. And they've got this laundry list, like you
just described, and you say, this isn't going to cut it, do
you guys then rewrite it for them. So
we, if you come to our website, and upload a
release and schedule it, and you've written it like that, we
just distribute it, right, I used to go back to them and say,
Hey, I make this recommendation. And about a third of the time
they cancel their order. And, and would write a bad review
saying I'm trying to upsell them. So I don't unless they
come to us and say you're not
creating, then you're just the, the vehicle for
them to
for most clients, we do offer writing.
And if someone approaches us and ask us to take a look at their
release, we'll do that. Whether you use us or not, you're always
welcome to send a Release to us, and allow our editors one to two
business days to review it and get back to you with some tips
and advice. And it may be to completely rewrite it. And in
which case, we'll check in generally give you some notes as
to what to incorporate into it. But I find that just people who
have already made press release, and that's often how people find
us, they go online, they they do a search saying I've got a
release, I'm looking at where to send it, they come to us they
upload it they date, schedule it, and then again, not much
happens. So after the sale, I then try to educate people
because I find it doesn't work to educate them in the
beginning. Because they just want to send that release out.
Well, and
yet that's kind of a license to print money.
Right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I felt that you you're a heart centered person
and that, but you just answered the question. So you wait until
maybe they call and say hey, nothing happened or that you
found it interesting, that client interesting enough for
the presser that you knew you could help them. So you give
them that opportunity to work with you.
Right, we actually follow up by email, and
we actually follow up with new customers with ideas for their
next release that are a bit more newsworthy. Now
it's is that a team of people that does that,
or is that you know,
is not me, it is a team of people. We have 65
editors, one managing editor and assistant, some freelancers as
well. And as a team, we work to get it done. And we do sort of
help out each other and try to provide the customer service.
The one thing I don't have in the business is salespeople. My
customers don't want to talk to a salesperson. They want to talk
to an editor and I just find that editors couldn't provide
better ethical customer service than a salesperson and, and all
my people are empowered to tell someone if they just don't feel
like we're a good fit. Because I don't want to take money from a
small business. If it doesn't look like we'd be able to help
them. Wow.
Yes, that's that just sort of, I think I missed
the boat originally on that, that people just they use the
service, you're not necessarily creating the press release for
them. But you do have that opportunity when to work with
you that way.
Yeah. And another thing I have is a free
masterclass where I try to teach anybody who will listen, people
on podcast, as well as my clients, the types of releases
that were because like I said, you know, 90, some percent
don't, but the small numbers of people who do have releases that
work, they are patterns and similarities. And so I put
together, it's an hour long video masterclass, that goes
through the types of releases that people should consider. And
if anyone's interested to you, releases.com/plan, PLA n, I
don't charge anything for it. Because I really just want
people to do more meaningful press releases, because I know
if they follow this, some of them are a little involved. But
there's a great reward for those. But at the end of the
day, if you follow these, you're going to have more hits than
misses, because these are the types of releases that
journalists are engaging with, and finding high value and being
able to build good stories with. That's
very generous. That's great. So that's on your
website. I'll put that in the show notes as well. I want to
shift gears a little bit before we wrap up, because I know we've
got a few minutes yet but you said and I also saw in your in
your one sheet that you're a poet. Yeah. And did you study
poetry in university?
I did. I actually pursued a Masters of
Fine Arts and Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry. And
I that's I graduated 27 years ago. And my career plan was to
wait tables and write poetry. And I did that for a summer
after I graduated. And I tell you, my my feet never stopped
hurting, my back never stopped hurting. I felt so
psychologically wiped after every eight to 10 hour shift. I
didn't read or write anything. So at the end of that summer, I
said, I need to pivot to a safe office job. But I didn't call it
pivot, because that wasn't a word thing. But I do I need to
define something. So a basketball player, I got hired
to the telecom research firm in DC as employee number three. And
because I had writing on my resume, even though it was
creative, they said write press releases and figure that out.
And I sent out releases with our data in it, and nothing
happened. And then I realized that the journalists are
interested in the story behind the data. So I would look for
anomalies in our data to find out why that was, report that
story. And the first time I did that, it was like there was a
Caribbean country that had more inbound and outbound traffic to
the United States than all the other Caribbean countries
combined. And I was like, why is this I researched it. And I
found it as because that was the call center for one 900 numbers,
which were popular 27 years ago. And so I put that together as a
story oriented press release. I started out that release got
picked up by the Economist Financial Times, Washington
Post, Wall Street Journal, and three telecom trade
publications. And they just thought I was a god there at
that little telecom research firm. And so I did that again
and again. And I didn't get as many hits with the subsequent
ones. But I consistently got hits, because I was finding the
stories and getting them out there. And one that was
meaningful was patterns where we'd see growth in certain non
industrialized countries over a period of years, and then all of
a sudden, you'd see huge swings and strong economic growth. And
that one got picked up. And we got so many orders from hedge
funds, investment firms, and before that every single order
that we got for our research reports was from telecom
companies. And so it just opened us up to a whole new customer
base that we didn't even realize was there and we find value in
it. Well, hopefully
you had it, you got a raise.
I did really well there. I loved it. When I
started the company didn't know how to price their data and it
was literally $600 a year, a ticket, a physical book. Now
it's a license that starts at $30,000 a year per person. Yeah.
And so they really recognize the value today but It was a fun
time to work and I learned a heck of a lot. I'm sure you
did. Okay, back to poetry for a second. So, tell
me who your favorite poet is.
Oh, there's so many of them that I just love.
But I think right now, Diane Seuss. I just love everything
she writes. And she wrote a book recently modern poetry that's
just phenomenal. Okay,
what about the classics? Um,
let's see. Sylvia Plath. And Elizabeth
Bishop are two of my favorites.
I don't know Elizabeth Bishop, but Sylvia
Plath very dark. Very, very, yeah.
And Elizabeth Bishop is she she's very strong.
She's got one, I think called the fish that I just really
love. It's just a great poem.
Do you still write,
so I quit. I didn't write. But I was running
my own company and building out after the telecom startup. But I
started writing about five or six years ago. And this past
Friday, I signed a contract to have my first book published in
February of 2026.
Fantastic, congratulations. Thank you. So
do you write short poems? Do you write long poems? Do you write
story type poems?
So I've write very narrative poems. For the
most part, I have written some that are kind of lyrical. But
most of them are narrative. And they tend to be small. There's
some that are two pages, but most all of them are under a
page.
You know, it's funny, I know this is a complete
sidetrack from your business. But I was just fascinated and
curious about the poetry and then it reminded me that the
other day I was trying to entice my granddaughter who's going to
be five next week. Two, I told her, like, I have a lot of books
up in my cupboard here that were from my kids, right? And I saved
the ones I love. And there's two books there that I've that I'm
waiting to, you know, lure her into. One of them is a a Milne's
poems, when we were very young, and when we were five or
something, anyway, Emile, and the second one is Shel
Silverstein. And, and, of course, they're just so great in
terms of kids poems. And, but there's no real pictures in the
book or anything. So it's like, how are you going to get a kid
to? It's probably the rhyme or the, you know, finding one that
like I I could talk about James James Morrison, Morrison,
whether it be George Dupree, who love to go down to the city,
although he was only three and that's like, a Milan poem that I
remember when I was a kid, right? So it's interesting to
see how I'm gonna get her to find a love of of those
are there is one that has sketches in it. That's
just an adorable book called The Bat poet by Randall Jarrell. I
don't know that one that that is illustrated by Maurice Sendak.
But that's not typical Sendak. It's very just nature oriented
for the most part, but it's a very adorable book that I think
a young child would appreciate. Okay, I'll check it out. Thank
you. So before we wrap up, I want to just ask you
a question that I love to ask some of my guests. Not always,
but I feel like wanting to ask you this question. So my
favorite word is curiosity. And I want to know if you think that
curiosity is innate, or learned, and the second part of the
question is, what are you most curious about these days?
So I'm not sure whether it's learned or innate,
I know that I have an insatiable curiosity. I you know, just go
down rabbit holes and try to learn as much as I can. Right
now, I have a you know, that book coming out a long time. But
also I do press releases. So I wanted to learn about a lot
about book marketing. So I bought 40, Kindle, book
marketing books, I've, I've plowed through 11 of them in the
past two weeks, and I'm just trying to learn as much as I can
about book marketing and how, you know, different people
approach it, and see whether I might be able to utilize it, you
know, for myself. It's also you know, also whether I might be
able to offer something of value to to people who come to us as
authors, because we do get a lot of authors and E releases. And
it used to always be self published until about 10 years
ago. And then we started getting traditionally published authors.
And it seems like even you know, the big companies are saying,
hey, you know, we don't do marketing unless you're really
big, and so you're on your own, and so I do see a need for
people to have access to book marketing options that are out
there. So that that's the big thing that I'm passionate about
at the moment. That's
exciting. Thank you. Thank you for that. So one
last question. If you could give me your favorite or best piece
of advice around your business for my audience, and you've
given us a lot of actual, actually a lot of hit hints and
tips around what to do, but your your, your pet phrase, perhaps
your pet piece of advice.
I think that you know, don't don't feel that
you're too small to matter to the media. Journalists love to
be seen as curators. And you'll often find that they put the
spotlight on a small business, more likely than a larger
company. Of course, they have to cover the big companies in
particular industries. But they love to spotlight the small
businesses because their audience gives the most love to
journalist and accolades. When they profile a new tool or
resource from someone they've never heard of before. So many
times, being small and unknown is an advantage because
journalists love to put the spotlight on those types of
businesses.
That's great advice. Thank you. Thank you for
being here today. It was a lot of fun to talk to you. And I
learned a lot. And I wish you well with your book on your
poetry book. And, again, thank you to my audience for being
here. If you like what you heard, please, I will put
Mickey's information in the show notes please check out his
company and his services and in case you want a press release
and have it sent out to the National Blood Services, I guess
I would call it Yes. So thank you again and remember to stay
connected and be remembered
Here are some great episodes to start with.