Dashboard: Every Business Has a Story to Tell

[Music] Welcome to another 21 Hats dashboard. I'm Lauren Feldman and I'm here today with Sarah Seagull, who most listeners to this podcast know is founder and CEO of Seagull Communications, a public relations firm based in San Francisco. Welcome to Dashboard, Sarah. Always a pleasure, Lauren. It's great to have you here. I've been eager to do this, Sarah, because I talked to a lot of business owners who actually seem to struggle with sharing their own story. In fact, some even have a hard time explaining to a civilian what exactly their business does. I'm wonder do you find that too? Uh yes, 100%. And you know, it's funny though um even in the PR industry that I'm in. I was um there's a there's a um an agency head here in the Bay Area and he actually wrote a children's book about PR because that's even hard to explain to somebody like what it is. But um it it it is a common problem. Um they just don't know where to start. It's that writer's block of putting it down on a piece of paper. And you know, when I when I think about messaging, so when I was a TV reporter, um I spent a lot of time in the field. Um you know, I did a lot of burning buildings and you know, if it bleeds, it leads kind of stuff. And um I was very specific. I was a broadcast reporter, so I had the luxury of working with a a camera person. And when I would go out to do my stories, um, my job was just to listen, you know, and ask the basic questions, but my goal as a reporter was always to take the seemingly complicated and make it digestible. And so when you're looking at your message for your brand, the easiest, and I'm sure everybody's heard this before, but like think about talking about your brand to somebody who may have no visibility into what you do, right? So this could be your kid. For me, it's my grandmother. Like if if I can't explain it to my grandmother, then I have done a terrible job. So, it's explaining it to my grandmother. You know, there's the whole like um in journalism, it's right right at a fourth grade level, but I don't believe that. I just find an audience that is outside of your your industry and try to explain what you do to them. And that's going to be a good starting place for where you should start your messaging. And then you get into the whole, okay, what's my elevator pitch? Can I say what I do in less than three sentences? And then you get into creating things like your boilerplate, which is you're a little bit longer. It's it's it talks about, you know, why you started what you're doing and what your your your goals are and all of that kind of stuff. But really, if you think about it in the most basic sense of like a very simple audience, it it it can get you started. and and getting started for any writer or any person working on messaging is really the hardest part. You know, I I think that's a a great suggestion about thinking about how to explain what you do, but I think kind of the next step is all right, I can explain what it is my business does, but what would other people find interesting about my business? How do you try to answer that question? So when we work with a a a client, we're working with them on their message, which is their baseline message, right? But that message may vary based on their audience. So um we were talking to uh actually um having a kind of a side conversation with a member of the 21 Hats community um who operates a business that creates the Morgan Square, which is a very specific tool for carpentry. So, we're having a good conversation with her and the conversation basically is yes, this is the tool that you do. You you've created it. It it solves a problem that people first of all didn't know existed, which is like the best kind of problem to solve where it's it's a timesaver. It does all these things. But who are your audiences? Yeah, your audiences may be somebody who works in woodworking, but you also have an audience um who may be interested in your entrepreneurial journey, right? So, those are going to be totally different things that are going to be and it's going to have a lot of different components that are interesting to each audience. you know, the the the trade publications are going to be interested in the um the application of it, the time-saving aspects of it, the manufacturer, the availability, the different SKUs that are available. And then you're talking about the entrepreneurial journey. You're going to have publications that are interested in um kind of a mid um a midlife um new career. um the challenges the um being a woman in a maledominated industry um you know in that kind of explore. So you have to develop messages for new people. So start out with a basic person, your grandmother, your kid, somebody who's not in your ind. And then you're like, okay, who are the who are the next targets? But you also have to look at the value of those targets as well and whether or not you should be spending your time creating a message for those targets. I can talk a little more of that. Well, let me ask you this. I've talked to a lot of business owners through the years. I've been doing this for more than two decades somehow. Um, I've come to believe that pretty much every business has a story to tell. And no matter how boring that business might seem to some, even to the people who who work in it, um, there's something different about just about every business. It sounds like you agree with that. Oh, 100%. I I totally believe not even every business, but everybody has an interesting story to me. Like I've always wanted to like whether they know it or not. Right. Yeah. And most people don't know it. And it's it's interesting because I think as a reporter like my my husband would always make fun of me because we'd go to like cocktail parties and like I get in a conversation with somebody and I'd be like just sitting there asking them questions. He's like you're being a reporter. I'm like I'm like but I want to know about them. I know about me. I don't need to talk about me. I'm you know I know about me. I I want to learn something from somebody else. Um but yeah, I believe everybody has a And here's the thing. The biggest one of the big mistake I I see with companies is they think the story should only come from the owners of the business and we work a lot with businesses where we're like okay um yeah that that your owner has a lot to say about the business but what about the other people that are involved right so we work with a nonprofit and they it's a they have a a kitchen um in that provides like 2,000 meals a day to people that are um uh you know dealing with homelessness and and um low uh you know low income and you know we're talking to them and it's like yes you have the head of the company with the organization and and he's a very wonderful inspiring person but can we talk to the chef because the chef has an interesting story she can talk to us about how she substituted out eggs because of the egg crisis. is how you know there is planning going in terms of um uh how do you how do you create a good meal that's healthy and nutritious if we're impacted by food prices. You know that there are other people in your organization and it can even be you know your accountant can have an interesting take on things that they see. So don't don't only look at your your your executive bench. You got to look at the people that are on the ground. Like you're you're cleaning people. Like there's so much content out there for uh like how to clean things better. Like if you have a great cleaning crew, then they do the cleaning for whatever large organization its press. It's still going to get your name in the in the in the in the news. Um which for anybody who works in SEO would be happy about because it creates backlinks, but that's a whole another story. It does feel a little bit risky. I mean it opens yourself up to questions like are you paying these people well and um other possibilities have you actually helped the business with that kind of uh PR outreach uh in terms of spotlighting people at lower levels of the company. Oh 100%. But the comp the company else has to be comfortable that they're you know paying their people well and and being a good employer to even do I mean honestly if you're being if you're a cruddy employer you should probably shouldn't be doing PR to begin with. Fair enough. You need to figure that stuff out internally or you need to be putting together your crisis plan which again a lot of companies don't do until there's actually a crisis which is another um another issue we see a lot. All right. So, somebody decides they do have a story they want to share. How do they decide whether to uh do the outreach or even the storytelling themselves or or to try to get somebody else to tell their story? Well, um it depends on their comfort level. You know, some people some people look at journalists and are afraid of media because they're, you know, they're they they can do anything with their story. They could misquote you. um they could, you know, cover something you don't want covered. You know, there's there's a there's a it depends. You lose control. Yeah. You lose control. You're you're handing the keys to somebody else. And um you know, having worked in the media, you and myself, like I I know what to expect. So, it's easy, but I think it depends on a your comfort level and b you know, where you are in terms of your business growth. you know, if you're a if you're a startup um and you just don't have the bandwidth and the staff to do it, yeah, you should reach out to reporters. But, you know, you also should do a little bit of homework on how to deal with reporters cuz I've had many conversations with journalists who say that they prefer to work with PR people. Not because the PR people um are are, you know, uh any more qualified to tell the story because nobody's better than the owner or the founder or the the the innovator to do that. Uh but we just understand the deadlines and the requirements and the things that they need. So before you reach out, if you're going to do it on your own, just make sure you have all of the elements you think that they would want. They'll probably want to interview you. They'll probably want a photograph of you or a photograph of anything that you're you're talking about specifically. um they'll uh you know background on the company, a bio, you know, and put it all in a nice little folder that you can share um uh during or after the interview um so that they have the tools that they need. So, we see this a lot where you're not going to get media coverage just because you exist. That's not how it works. You need to think about what is the timely hook that's going to get someone to cover me now. Are you launching a new product? Is it tequila day and you have a tequila brand? Um is it are you an expert in um uh do you have a tra a hotel and you can talk about you know um tourism in a particular city like whatever it is you just have to have a hook. Um, but once you and if you have that hook, you might sit down and write a press release. Not a press release that you're necessarily going to be pushing out to anybody or emailing to anybody. But what a press release does is it forces you to put all of the relevant details that a reporter might want into one place and you create kind of a one-stop shopping. And you know, you you can find press releases on online about it, but you'll see that it's it's what's happening now. why should I care? Um, and and who's telling the news? And there's like there's a lot of templates out there. I have a template I could probably share and you can give a link, but like um if you if you've done all of that, then by all means, you can reach out to reporters. Um, and but how do you find reporters? Lauren, uh, that's a great question. The advice I usually give is to think about which publications you'd like to be in and try to figure out which reporters at that publication are writing the kinds of stories that you'd like to be a part of and then try to create a relationship with those reporters. Yeah. But I think it goes beyond that because why why do you want to be in that publication? What is the value of that publication going to be if you're a um a coffee cup manufacturer? and you come to me and you say, "Well, I really want to be in the New York Times." My question to you is why are the people that are going to buy your coffee mug reading the New York Times in that particular thing? Like you want to go where your your potential c most most people want media and press because of brand awareness and building a kind of brand equity out there, but also they want a return on the investment. they want people to come and buy their service or their product. So where first you got to look at where who you who's buying you, who's your perfect customer. And then step two is what are they reading? And it may not be um the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. It may be woodworking magazine. So, uh, you have to get this idea that only like the big, um, um, major news publications are going to be right for you. It might be a podcast that you should be featured on. If you're, for example, 21 Hats, perfect example. If you're a bis B2B um service or technology, this is the perfect place to be featured because it's it's an entrepreneurial small to mid-size business audience that is eager to find tools to make their their work better. So, you need to it could be a podcast, it could be a blog, it could be a um it could be a a a Substack newsletter. There's a lot of different places out there. Um, but you have to look at who what you want on the return side if it's just for vanity. Yeah. I mean, then why are you doing it? Like that to me is a waste of money and time. You mentioned that you work with reporters who who like to work with PR people. Oh, yeah. And, you know, thinking back to my years, especially at the the the Times or Forbes or Inc., Uh that was certainly true of me but only with a very exclusive group of uh public relations people. I mean if I heard from you uh that would have been an email that I would automatically pay attention to and I would welcome that cuz I would know that the the person that you were calling my attention to would have been well briefed and would know how the game is played and that it would all be handled professionally. Not everybody, you know, not all journalists know what they're doing. Not all PR people are uh on top of things the way uh perhaps they should be. The flip side of that I found is that if it wasn't coming from a PR person that I had worked with a lot and really trusted and really knew, I tended to be a little bit more skeptical. And often that skepticism was rewarded. And I found that the people that they referred to me, you know, they kind of they've been briefed in a way to just tell the story they wanted to tell and they didn't really want to answer the questions that I wanted answered. Uh, and I found in those situations, I would prefer to just have somebody deal with me directly. And I dealt I had a lot of great relationships that grew out of uh someone reaching to me oneon-one directly and saying, "Here's what I'm doing. Here's my story. are you interested? And it led to relationships that lasted a long time. Well, I mean, that goes back to like saying that you have to be ready for it. Um, and you have to be cuz nobody's going to like a journey. If you go and you're um you have an interview um with a reporter and you stick to the sound bites and you stick to the script and you don't let the reporter ask anything about you know X Y and Z or expand on it or or get cur like they're not going to call you back up because it was a waste of your time and their time. like there's a you have to be ready to kind of open up yourself for any kind of question. And I I actually think that there's another thing that people should consider is that if you find those journalists that you really want to cover you, don't expect them to respond to you after one email. There's a there's a craft to it where sometimes it just is a slow roll where okay, I'm going to introduce myself in this email and then I'm going throughout the year find moments to update that reporter on something else that my company is doing. And it may take six months to get them on the hook. um or you know if if you're not sure if they're the right reporter to cover it, some reporters will respond to you and say, "Hey, this is not you know something I'm going to cover." And then you move on. You find another target there because every publication has a a a a great bench of of different journalists that you can reach out to. So it might not be that particular reporter. So you just need to be able to switch gears. But don't expect to be in the limelight the first time you you reach out. I think that's great advice. Um I think one of the biggest mistakes I saw people make uh when reaching out to me and other reporters is that they viewed pretty much every interaction as transactional. Uh I want you to write about me. Here's what I've got. Um, and the relationships that I developed that turned into stories that I think work for me as a journalist and for the subject grew out of conversations that were not transactional. They were with somebody who was eager to do what you just described to kind of develop a relationship and be helpful uh at times even if it didn't provide any advantage necessarily to the business of the person involved. But it built the relationship and eventually led to something. Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't, you know, like and every email or outreach that you have to a reporter, um, it doesn't have to be about your business. It could be, you know, that you know their beat, right? And they're, you know, if they're on a particular beat, um, they're they're scanning the different um, other trade publications and and they're seeing things, but you're on the front lines of stuff. So, you may see something that they don't see and just, hey, flagging this for you because I know you cover it. I I have no relationship with it, but like, um, I just thought that it might be interested you. You know, give them other stories. And then they're going to start looking at you be like, "Oh, okay. This person's kind of selfless. They're they're interested in the industry. This is a relationship I can kind of build on." Um, follow them on their social media feeds and comment. like if they have a LinkedIn profile, follow them and comment on some of the stuff, build a relationship there. If they're on X or if they're, you know, Instagram's a little more personal, so I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend that necessarily unless they're lifestyle. Um, but but interact with them and and develop a relationship that way. People see when you're trying to build something with them and eventually they're going to open the doors um and have a conversation with you. What do you think of uh people who want to try to write and tell the story themselves? Uh whether it's through their own podcast or through a blog or LinkedIn or one of the contributor networks like Forbes or Harvard Business Review or Inc. Um there are a few others. Mhm. How do you approach something like that? When we work on by lines, um the first thing we look at is we'll start with the publication and be like, okay, what does the publication look for? like Business Excider Insider for example, they love it's kind of like news you can use. They do a lot of like top 10 things I learned building my business from a million to 10 million or whatever it is. It's the how how what I learned along the way. Um and with those publications, most of them are going to want to hear about your mistakes and the lessons learned. They don't want to hear everything was a bed of roses and you've never made a mistake. They want to hear the real life story of how you went from, you know, A to Z over a period of time. That's what's going to be most interesting to them. And you'll see that across the board. um or if you um you're not interested sharing that kind of business growth and and uh story, do you have a specific um do you have a specific passion about um a an aspect of of of what's happening in the news cycle? Um uh uh Liz is a perfect example of it with CityB where yeah she she creates a product that solves a problem for for waste um management in in in major cities um but she's also impacted by tariffs. So she's out there talking about tariffs and she doesn't use a PR person. She does it herself even though she knows me and that's fine and she does a great job and I know that she's at a you know I I know that she can do it really well but and here's the the other thing is that yeah you can do it yourself but then you have to come to a point in your business where you have to make that decision of is it it's a lot of work this is not something you do on like a Tuesday every six months you know this is a consistent amount of work. And so at some point in your business adventure, you need to look at yourself and go, is this a good use of my time? Should I personally be doing this or should I be going to the trade show? Should I be going and and do this conference and meeting with people? Should I be doing spending my time in a different way? um still doing the interviews but having somebody else do that kind of back-end work. Um and it that's a hard decision because you have to make an investment in it. But um you if you find the right agency to work with, they should be in the kitchen with you developing things and being very transparent with you and really helping you craft that story for new audiences and asking you lots of questions. Um, but yeah, there is a time in in your business life cycle cycle that you need to think about, okay, yeah, I shouldn't be doing that anymore because I I get paid too much. When someone comes to you and they have dreams of being featured in a high-profile publication, whether it's the Times or the Wall Street Journal or a magazine, whatever it might be, and that doesn't happen overnight, but they start getting interest from uh publications further down the the food chain, as you mentioned before. It could be a podcast. It could be a a local business journal. Uh whatever it is, do you sometimes have trouble convincing them to uh to to play along with that uh publication that's further down the chain? Um I don't know that I have trouble I I I think that um if I can usually see it coming like there are there are clients that come in that want the moon, right? and they haven't done anything or if they have done it, it's been very inconsistent or it has been like uh their coverage has been um uh linked to some sort of big moment that they have, but they expect to have coverage regardless of big moments because well, we we were mentioned in Inc. once. Well, I'm like that's great. What what are you doing next that we can get you coverage for? So there um I look at communications and in media relations all that as a snowball where if you do it you're going to start small and then you're going to start building that until you have a large snowball that you can kind of build upon. But it depends on the publication too. Like we've worked with hotels um in like far-off destinations where we started working with them and they're like we want to be in condai nest we want to be in you know uh uh this traveler magazine and all these different publications um and we're like that's great that will take time and in between us um in the beginning you know it's getting mentions in blogs it's getting mentions it's little things right And um about 3 months in um they canled our contract and the very because they wanted to be in the big publication and the very next day the reporter that we had been telling them about that we've been working on a story for 3 months um in Kanye Nast came out the next day and then two months later the reporter that we had been working with at Vogue posted an article and that came out. So, it it takes it takes time, especially with the travel pubs. It takes forever to get those. And the you have to remember here though, reporters don't have end end all beall control about when something goes live. There's a especially like in the tourism and travel industry um a lot of those reporters are freelancers and so they write their article and then the publication date is really based on whatever the edi the editor the in-house team decides. So you got to have you have to go in and you have to be patient. So take the little stuff because also the little stuff is going to help you prepare for the big stuff. um you know, we'll meet people and they'll be like, I want to be on the Today Show or Good Morning America. I'm like, "Okay, well, have you been on television before?" No. Okay, let's start out with doing some local news to just get you used to it. um do a little bit of media training and get you comfortable in that space because they go on and then they go on it and they're like, you know, that was they get nervous and they talk too fast or they don't hit their messaging points or they cut off the the the broadcasters who's asking the questions. And I'm like, you don't want to do that when you're on the Today Show. You want to you want to cut your teeth and the smaller stuff. So the small stuff is going to cut is going to help you cut your teeth. But also you have to remember that some of that small stuff is actually more value than the big stuff because the small stuff has a very dedicated audience and um may actually be the people that are going to buy your product. If someone is thinking about hiring the services of a public relations firm, can you give them some sense of what they should expect to pay for that? Oh, for sure. So I if you're really kind of in the in the beginning parts of your business and it's like you maybe another a couple other employees in a wall and that's it and you're you may not be ready for an for an agency and and that's just full transparency. Um you may think about hiring on an independent contractor and there's a lot of great independent publicists out there. Um, uh, I I redirect people to a variety of those people all the time. Um, but if you go into an agency, the benefit of an agency, and our best clients are the clients that don't just have us do the media relations, they have us do their influencer relations and their social media. because these three different um uh pieces of work, there's a lot of cross collaboration on it. So like we land an influencer, we want to make sure to do a collaborative post on social, then they're reposting it in our own feed and like there's a lot of kind of um overlap across these things or like I get um a coverage for them in a in a publication. We want to highlight that on the appropriate social media feeds. We want to do some thought leadership and make sure that the the owner of the company is reposting it on LinkedIn with a comment. So, we're drafting that. You know, if you're if you're if you work with an agency, um I'd highly recommend trying to find an agency that can do a little bit of everything and give you a nice package. So, um a small um it dep if you're um kind of a small to midsize business. And this may be just because I'm biased, but I would I would work towards finding a relationship with a small to midsize agency because going to one of the Goliaths, you're going to pay through the nose. It's the same kind of it's the same same work. Um, but you're going to be a very small fish in a large pond. you know, if they're if they're doing work for McDonald's and you own three chain restaurants, you're not going to get you're not going to get the that the the level of um of leadership on your account that you might get if you were McDonald's. Pricewise, if that's what you're asking, um, I would for an independent contractor, I would expect to pay anywhere from $125 an hour to $200 an hour, depending on their experience. If you're working with an agency, I would expect to start at minimum $2,500 a month. And that's literally for uh baseline PR um for one, you know, one business. And that's baseline PR. That means that they're, you know, just reaching out. And that's that's going to be you have to be comfortable with the slow role because there's only so many so many hours they're going to spend on you as a client. Our sweet spot is more in the 5 to 10k range. Um where we get to do all the things. we get to do the influencers, the socials, and the and the and the and the and the PR. Um, and that's where we see the most rapid growth. But if you're looking just to kind of entry in it, you know, you're in that smaller range. And then, um, if you're a larger company, you're uh, with it, you're going to you're looking at retainers that are between 10 and $25,000 to begin with. Got it. Sarah Seagull is founder and CEO of Seagull Communications. Thanks for taking the time, Sarah. Lauren, always a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Have a great week, everybody. [Music]