Trash, Rats, and Garbage Juice: A Case Study in PR

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Liz picarazzi tells Jay gos and Sarah seagull about her first brush with bad publicity Liz's debacle started with a negative post that appeared in a prominent local blog it was about a Times Square pilot program for which her business City bin is supplying trash bins the problem the bins were not being maintained properly and there were photos to prove it at the time we recorded this conversation Liz was bracing for additional stories in both the New York Post and the New York Times both of those stories have since been published we'll talk about them in a coming episode and you can find links to all of the coverage in the show notes for Liz perhaps the biggest challenge was defending her company without trashing her client even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know that Are Not Alone In facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report wi in magazine recently named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Jay goz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home Liz picarazzi who is CEO of City City bin which is based in Brooklyn New York and Sarah seagull who is founder and CEO of seagull Communications a public relations firm based in San Francisco the episode is titled trash rats and garbage juice a case study in [Music] PR welcome Jay Liz and Sarah great to have you all here let's Dive Right In Liz you've had an interesting time of late uh as you've informed us you've had your first brush with some negative publicity can you tell us about it well sure I can say that the roller coaster is such that the thing that I'm most most proud about is the thing that I'm currently most ashamed of and that like 180 degree shift has really thrown me so as I've shared on here a little bit my trash enclosures are in many neighborhoods in New York City now but most recently they're en Square so it's the highest profile client I've ever had in probably the highest profile location in the world my product is there at the intersection of five different uh Corners in Time Square and a Twitter person uh last week took a photo of the bins in a very sorry condition they were very dirty um they were bulging with trash they had garbage juice in front of them and you know the person said hey New York City how is that clean curbs program going for you which was bad enough but then one of the reporters who covers a lot of um you know Civic local issues related to trash saw it contacted me for a quote and then when we ran with an article the next day about how filthy these bins were and the News hit last Wednesday which was our 18th wedding anniversary we woke up to that and we're planning on going to the beach and we did go to the beach but we were completely freaked out and talking about this the whole time there were other reporters from other Publications including the post contacting me and um it felt completely out of control I've never had bad press honestly I've always gotten good press and it's usually because I go for it and this was something that was out of my control and frankly something that was somewhat warranted it was an issue that we were aware of the maintenance work in Time Square are supposed to be cleaning them daily and they weren't they're over stuffing the bins which is you know why they were bulging at the bottom as for the garbage juice you know what that's a little out of my control like I can't lie awake at night worrying about trash juice in Times Square yet that's kind of where I'm at right now so that's what happened Lauren Liz you said you were ashamed is this your responsibility I mean you you sell the bins but it's you're not maintaining them right you're correct and the shame is not that I didn't do what I could it was really that it is my creation and it's on display and I'm very very proud of that creation and to have it in that sort of shape and then to be lambasted in the press and knowing that there the times is also probably running something this week I am ashamed because it's hard to pull apart the were they serviced and cleaned correctly with how does the thing look and I think that for the public they may not think oh you know Time Square they weren't cleaning the bins as often as they should they're going to say oh hey mayor Adams how's this clean curbs program working for you look at how dirty this thing is so that's where the shame comes from regardless of whether it's warranted wasn't part of the problem that the the garbage juice I just been hankering to use that phrase I never thought I would that the garbage juice they took the bins out there's supposed to be plastic bins in there that would contain it and they took the bins out isn't that true no they don't use bins within the bin they put the bags in there straight ah so basically all of that juice is being compacted until it's picked up and it's spilling out the front and did the city tell you that they were going to get this under control or is this just beyond them so it's actually not the city it's the Time Square the business improvement district so they have a private cleaning crew that handles all the trash and all the cleaning in the area and um you know they were pretty appalled by this as well um they took immediate action and have shifted to daily cleaning we went there the very next day to change the cladding from kind of a lighter brown color to a very dark gray color which is something we should have done before to change the what the cladding so the siding on the bins they're these bamboo composite boards that are usually used in decking so they clean like a deck they clean very well but if you don't clean them they're going to look really bad so we reclad them from this brown color to this dark gray color and also are making sure that they're washed every day so the situation is much better than it was but you know the responsibility is on this private company and you know I actually do trust that they are going to turn it around because it does reflect negatively it doesn't look good and the whole point of this which is the ironic part is to create clean curbs which is to beautify the city and not to have it be an isore can I ask when reporters reached out to you I mean I can imagine you're in a bit of a tough situation because you don't really want to rake your your client over over the coals right for their lack of of maint Maintenance of of the bins what did the reporters ask and what did you say so far I've actually been very diplomatic and I want to be because Department of Sanitation and Times Square have been really good partners and I believe that partly because this happened we're going to be even closer Partners um but I definitely did not want to bash my client I talked about it more in terms of this as a pilot you know we're working with Time Square on many aspects of the bins including some of those that were pointed out you know we're working closely with them on a maintenance plan that you know may be better than where it was and you know just as a reminder this is a pilot we're piloting this with the city and the point of a pilot is to gain learnings which will make the product better so I even said something to the effect of that I was actually glad that my bins were being uh tested in Time Square because there's probably no other place in the world that would stress test it as much as Time Square so I replied and a way that I think showed that I'm up to the task and that I do have a strong partnership with you know Department of Sanitation and Time Square but I hope did it in a way that didn't make them look bad well I also thought what you said especially acknowledging um Time Square and the stress test aspect of it I I thought you came across as acknowledging the problem and but not sounding defensive about it so this happened on your anniversary how much coverage has happened since then or did it die down so I'm glad you're asking cuz you might be able to give me some advice on this um the post reporter contacted me the day it happened which was last Wednesday that's the New York Post right the New York Post contacted me and you know we I talked to them for probably like 15 or 20 minutes and they were actually asking a lot more questions about myself and my company and how I came to get my bins into Time Square than they did about like the garbage juice and some of the other stuff so I was feeling kind of encouraged that the questioning was headed more in that direction and I also was encouraged that they asked for like a head shot cuz I thought if they're going to like criticize me would they really ask for a head shot several people have said yes of course they would I was hoping oh well that's such a personal thing they wouldn't be asking me for it if they were going to like put nasty words next to or something if they want a head show yes yes so they haven't uh run the story yet and I actually did contact the reporter and I said hey you mentioned it was going to come out on Saturday I haven't seen it yet and he said that they're holding it potentially for next week so you did a lot of things right yeah I mean first of all you responded to the reporters right away I assume you know you're not in the wrong it's a test program you not responsible for the maintenance of them you do provide the product and you you had a statement right away I mean a lot of people when they something like this happens their their first reaction is you know no com comment um I'm not a believer in that um I believe in responding to the reporters right away saying hey what can I do to help you and providing them uh context which is I think what you were effective in doing and so now they're taking the story and going okay well maybe there's a larger piece of this where um it's worth kind of giving an evergreen story to where it's uh the reporter probably wrote something that's not linked to any moment but it's a more kind of big picture what's being done to clean up Time Square and that's why there's no urgency in running that story but uh you know you did a you did a lot of things right you kind of turned the narrative from a negative about your bins into a positive of you know we're trying to make change and we're trying to do things I can tell you a fun story about a client that had a similar incident um this week but we were able to kind of just have fun with that narrative it's not Apples to Apples but I think that it's kind of reflective of the the fact that yeah this is a news moment for a day but Mo news moves so quickly that nobody's going to remember it tomorrow yes what's the secret to having fun with it Sarah how should Liz have fun with this we had a client um who runs a successful Boutique crafted wonderfully uh delicious doughnut company uh in the Bay Area and they have several stores and they actually had somebody break into their corporate office steal their petty cash and then apparently the the blurg left realized they had left their keys or something and came back um all I know is I get a a text from the client you know we have the Associated Press calling us they're doing a story and if anybody knows anything about the associated press once you get into the on the Associated Press it goes viral cuz it's syndicated across everything so they're in a panic about how uh a happy fun warm brand is all of a sudden going to be associated with a crime and so the way that we dealt with it was that we thank goodness the the founder um has a wonderful sense of humor and so we worked with him to draft a couple quotes and responses that were you know along the lines of we're just happy that no Donuts were harmed in the process we're delivering um uh you know a couple dozen donuts to uh the the officers who came to our Aid and it got picked up and it blew up I want to say yesterday there was uh it had hit 291 pieces of coverage on that one little story wow and it put them in a good light right and that's kind of what you did was that you went all right yeah yeah it's a negative story but I'm going to say this is actually a positive thing we're doing and there's room for human error and everything that is done out there and we just need to make sure that the headline isn't the only thing people are getting out of the story I think you can make lemonade out of your garbage juice I agree my first question are we sure that they just aren't using too thin a plastic bags maybe simply changing the bags they're using would not explode so easily and let the garbage juice out that'd be first question nope nope I've spent many hours in Time Square actually observing them and talking to them and I see how they move quickly and they need need to move these bags in and out so I don't think any thickness of a bag would really help that much here's my second thought then I think by Framing this all in you know what we've sold thousands of these they've worked out beautifully in most occasions uh we didn't realize that Time Square is your local Condo building times 20 and we're making adjustments you've just now told them yeah they usually work out just great and like who can argue with the fact you didn't realize how intense Times Square was you know who who can blame you for that I'm going to disagree with that really because by her saying that that she didn't know means that she didn't do her homework as a business owner like as a business owner she should know that should be part of the process not necessarily her respons responsibility but the the business district they should know how much garbage is going to be going into those bins and be prepared for it it should be part of like the onboarding process right except even if she knew that she wouldn't know they'd be pushing the bags in there so hard that the garbage juice would explode out I mean that's why it's a pilot program sometimes you just can't predict everything well I think that's the point Jay you can you can say that without saying I didn't realize we didn't figure this out we should have thought more about you can just say it's a pilot we're learning part of this is that now you're going to add it to your best practices when you on board a client right you see this is not a trash compactor don't do that definitely and you know some of those learnings have led us to even question the sting that we're using you know we had a couple of meetings in recent days with providers of other materials including wraps like commercial vinyl wraps and there have been a couple of companies that do advertising on the side of you know Municipal fixtures like bus stops and whatnot that are really interested in doing something on City bin with that I've kind of taken it as push it to the side it may be an interesting thing but I'm not going to compromise my relationship with these business Improvement districts by bringing up advertising on my product like that's not cool but I have learned that there is a real estate value for advertising of these bins that people are thinking of even if I'm not you know something like a wrap could take care of some of the dinginess that you can get if it's not power washed but then again with those we're going to be testing those those might not power wash very well because the ink could fly off of it but one funny thing from in terms of the garbage juice um in the um streets blog article I was quoted as saying that the problem is from misuse and garbage juice and it like rhymed and I thought oh my gosh I never would thought I would have said those words but then yesterday I Googled something that was even more nuts that I never would have thought I would be Googling and it was wee we pad for garbage juice was the search term because I was thinking about putting a we wee pad on the bottom of my bins like I'm taking this incredibly seriously I'm Googling things I never would have thought were possible because I want to solve the problem we we pads are generally for pets right they are can't you put a plast tub in there that would just enclose it all and not let it leak out of the bottom it's not quite that that easy because the doors have um bars between them oh so and I don't think having you know a different pan for every module would be very good from a user's perspective but you know I don't want to troubleshoot it necessarily here but I think the overall point is that we're adapting our residential product for municipal and we're having growing pains with it and that's natural and some of the growing pains that we overcome are actually going to enable us to create an entirely separate line of Municipal City bins that are beefed up and tricked out with everything cities would need so it would be at a higher price point Liz you talked to us about that when you first told us about this in fact I think there was some discussion between you and Frank wasn't there about what material should be used to create these bins and how much wear and tear they would take being in Square as opposed to being at a you know a residential building do I remember that correctly yes we were talking about steel or aluminum and that's actually part of the test so we're piloting Steel versus aluminum for a year and I think that's going to give us our answer i' like to throw out an unpopular thought probably that it's possible that at the end of this given that you've been very successful with these and they work great in most applications that maybe maybe you just want to say at some point you know what they're not appropriate for Time Square because the amount of energy I I don't know that this is a fixable thing if the maintenance people don't keep up with it you're just making their problem your problem and you have a very successful concept that works in 99% of applications uh at some point I think you need to just consider we're going to give it our best shot but you're not the mayor this just isn't your problem at the end of the day and if it's if they don't maintain them properly why continue to put yourself In Harm's Way with this whole thing just food for thought well I don't love that opinion but it is something that I've thought of of course I have to think about it yeah it's not failure and I have to think about you know how like if this turns out a negative picture of my product all the time I think I would want to do that because I wouldn't I wouldn't want to Trish my brand in the residential front where I started these are in commercial districts so this is where people are going to eat dinner not just Time Square but generally the business Improvement districts if they see something like a city bin that maybe at the residential level were thinking of buying and then they see a dingy one in public they may have a second thought about buying that for the residential so those are the sorts of scenarios that go through my head and you know it's also something that Frank and I sometimes butt heads about because you know I am the CEO the Visionary I'm the founder I'm always going to be many many steps forward so I'm going to think about the brand implication of using one color versus another color like I will think really hard about which color we should put on these and he won't spend any time thinking about it um now he's needed to um and he's like totally come around but um my position now is we are not putting anything except for the darkest color in any public spaces and that was not a position that we would have had even two months ago I think you need to look at it like you're you're going to have a timeline you're like we will do this for 6 months one year what what have you and say we will give it a go and and then we will make a call on this date and give yourself a hard deadline to make a decision on whether or not you want to continue with this product line whether or not it's more of a headache than a benefit to your overall profits it's like being an actor what people go to New York I'll give myself three years and then I'll find a real job well but I've already made it into Time Square yes this is true an actor comes in you make it there you can make it anywhere today though you simply don't have complete control over this situation so there's only so much you can do you're not the ones maintaining them so at some point it might make sense to just say you know what it was a good pilot we we just this isn't our business and I just I'm glad you have that as a possibility it certainly is not failure but Jay keep in mind she's got business uh Improvement districts around the country reaching out to her because of this all publicity is good publicity yeah well and the the story on this could be you know Brooklyn entrepreneur adapts her residential bin for municipal use like Nationwide or International like you name it saying 90% of my product is solid maybe 10% of it needs Improvement but I'm going to use this Time Square pilot to solve that 10% and then therefore for other bids the business Improvement districts it could be you know what time Square was our our guinea pig so that you could have a better bin that makes everybody look good you know so they know any potential buyer is going to know that it's going to get more beat up in Time Square than anyone anywhere else so to Lauren's point if I if I get it done there if I do a great job that's going to help our selling proposition in everything else we do Liz I think it's worth keeping in mind correct me if I'm wrong but the alternative for Time Square is they had just been throwing these bags of trash on the sidewalk right exactly where the garbage juice ran free right well no I don't know that it did cuz they wen't being smooshed so maybe the juice problem wasn't as bad because they were just laying I don't know on Mas they are smooshed you've seen the mountains they're actual mountains I have not been as attuned to garbage juice as I should be so I don't know L that well and I don't know garbage juice that well that is how I make a living I've got more expertise on the garbage juice front than you do I'm sure you do I can predict the the name of the headline of this podcast is garbage juice and something you know you're right Sarah unlike Jay I've been waiting all my life to use the term garbage juice so you never heard it my whole life so that's the difference CU I'm in Chicago where we're civilized and we have alleys and the garbage is in the alley and there's no bags of garbage on our sidewalks I know that's shocking yes however Jay do you know where the worst rat situation in the US is according to Orin Chemical Company where is it okay I'm not surprised surprised by that it is yeah is it Chicago Liv except they're in the alleys they're in the not just this year not just this year it's every year because I'm also in the rat business not just the garbage juice business the rat business and I know that Chicago is always in the number one position but our rats are friendlier and um they're more down to earth they're not snobby like the New York rats what kind of pizza do they like Jay do they eat they Chicago style Chicago style they would turn their nose up at the New York style Chicago style pizza they would not be able to carry that up the subway it's a dine in it's a dinein choice this is getting out of control I want to move on to another topic but first I one last question Liz you mentioned that the New York Times might be doing something about this and I'm curious have you reached out to them have they reached out to you do you know they're doing something where does that stand so haven't reached out to me which actually is a little disturbing because I would like to have my voice in it but someone from uh someone from the city government said that they had been interviewing people about I think the program in general have you tried to figure out which reporter is doing that interviewing and try to contact them I thought that would be too forward no go for it hey they're probably looking for you unless I I mean I'm assuming you have a press email on your website but you should for sure reach out to them say hey I know you're doing a story I'd love to offer up some insights for sure do you know what the good news is the good news is people say oh New York's a ghost town not anymore there's so many people down there the garbage is back that's not a bad there's a lot of people in Time Square seriously it's good to hear there's a lot of people in Time Square I'm glad to hear that that wasn't the case a year ago problem number two Sarah you've had a situation recently that you described to me where you have been struggling with potential customers who ghost you after you've done elaborate proposals for them tell us about that it's an industry problem advertising agencies will generally request budget to come up with an ad campaign um a proposal for their clients PR has never done that and I don't know that social media has ever done that if you're as if it's a social media agency I can't tell you um but generally you get a potential client that reaches out and says hey I I want to potentially use you for PR you have an initial call they tell you all their problems and kind of what their goals are and then you go away and you put together a deck essentially and then you go through it on this you spend an hour going through with the client on the call with the time and and energies of your entire team and I want to say like 20% just disappear has that number gone up has it has it gotten worse of late no it just feels like it I just I put a lot of energy into these things like we we audit they're competitors we put a lot of time and effort into it we did one uh earlier this year where the entire team worked on it it was it was a client that is totally in our area of expertise like we would have rocked this um actually two I had two people two different clients do this and we put together the proposal a lot of energy time hours doing it and then you know our follow-ups um we would get oh yeah we're reviewing it we're reviewing it and then you'd not hear from them so you follow up again and like we're we're reviewing it and eventually they just stop responding then you find out through the Great Vine that is the industry that you know another agency got it and and my question is is like you just wasted how many hours potentially billable hours that I could have been working on current clients of our time I don't have the the courtesy just to send a simple email that says hey thanks for your time we decided to go another direction as opposed to like you know we just putting out these follow-up emails um into into cyberspace it's frustrating because you know we all get excited about working for these clients and we get that they're probably talking to other agencies we're not we were born yesterday it's just where where do we lose common courtesy in just communicating that we're doing something else and has an impact on you beyond that in the sense that you have to be prepared to take on that work which means you need to have people available if the client calls back and says yes we want to do this oh yeah and it's it's much harder when you're like a smaller Boutique agency because you know if we get a new client that's going to pay us to do their consumer technology PR um and I don't have enough people on my team then in tandem I need to find somebody to kind of add to the team or somebody over from another team it's not as fluid for a small agency cuz we don't have as many bodies to serve as a client right away it's just a lot of there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of stresses for sure I just want to be clear are you telling me that somebody sends an email to the person in charge and says hi Bob it's been a few weeks since we made our presentation we're we're planning out our next 60 days if you've decided to go some other direction we certainly understand but could you just give me a yes or a no please get back to me um by the end of the week has it been that direct to say please give me an answer or is it hi just following up I probably haven't been that direct I mean and I probably could be right would you worry that it would be off-putting to somebody who not at all not at all if I made if I was getting bid somebody whether it's heating air conditioning or PR or anything else and it's been a few weeks and someone said Jay we'd love to work with you um we're getting we're starting to get busier for The Fall season we would just love to we just we would like to know where are we at on this if you're not going to choose this you know we understand there's you know a lot of things go into there I wouldn't be offut at all I'd be like no no it makes perfect sense as a business person I get it people understand there's limited resources and you're just trying to give give me a hand here and I think if you put in there a sense about if you decide to go in a different direction we certainly understand to let them know you don't have to be embarrassed by it it's fine we we're big boys we're big girls we get it I think the perfectly crafted email I think would get a response I would think versus a hey we're just following up I mean I could those all the time and it's like great I just want perspective like how Liz how do you um follow up with potential clients so we mostly do it by email and we usually only do two follow-ups maybe one will be a week after and the other one maybe two weeks after we use the phone two weeks after what Liz is it a two weeks after we give them an estimate or a quote um and then we rarely use phone I think we should be using it but our close rate is really high because we often I mean I guess this is like you if you've done a proposal and a presentation in our sales process we most of the time have been to their property have met them have taken measurements have done renderings and have given them a formal written proposal I mean maybe it is because there aren't that many competitors out there that they're not shopping around whereas maybe with your business there is a little bit more shopping around so like when we follow up it's pretty sure will we know whether you know they want it or not do you customize your um proposals or is it like you have it so dialed in that you're just like clicking buttons and it's done it's dialed in dialed in for the most part the renderings sometimes take more work but that's also down to a science where we have all of the you know the EPS files to throw into a rendering superimposing the uh the bins on their property and that was something that used to take us a lot of time to do but now we have someone that does it and it's a really quick turnaround but you are going out to their locations we most of the time are yes yeah so that's something that did change in in PR and just general agency is that you know pandemic happened and then we all started doing our proposals virtually prior to that it was like everybody got on a plane and went to see the potential client and talked to them in person and I've been thinking about this lately like do I need to start getting back on a plane so I can breathe on people Sarah tell me about the proposals that you prepare you said that you spend time talking to the potential client and they tell you all their problems how far do you go in terms of addressing those problems I think the most of it is the is the competitive audit that we do we kind of look at them comparing to you know peers in the in their industry and kind of see where they are stacking up in terms of press media coverage like um brand awareness all of that kind of stuff share of voice where are you currently and how do you compare like we're talking we've been talking to a a potential client that um makes special mattresses right and their their main biggest competitor is Sleep Number has this technology driven um product looking at the that competitor as well as some other smaller competitors and saying okay this is where they are and this is how they got there and this is what they're currently doing this is what your smaller competitors are doing and based on that and based on our expertise this is what we think you should be doing um if you if you have a small medium or large size budget so we're putting together proposals that are very specific to them and their landscape I think the most underused tool these days is the telephone I can give you 20 examples of everybody thinks that email not everyone many people think that the emails replace telephones and they don't call and it's not the same thing yeah I just had a thought on this too Jay with like we sometimes talk about the sequencing of our followup and it's that there's proposal and then two follow-up emails I think it might make sense to actually do a phone call insert that phone call in before the first follow-up email because the phone call will be close after that email with the proposal is sent and that phone call could be kind of like just wanted to make sure you received it so like when I was a consumer more of those some sort of services that sort of a phone followup after I had received a proposal did register with me more than if I was only getting a couple of email follow-ups I like that it's powerful I think that's an opportunity to go old school yeah go old school for sure is this reflective of issues in your uh ability to obtain clients or is it more of an issue just you know why can't they be polite and let you know he's asking how's your close rate my close rate is pretty high like we do pretty well but there's this like 20% that like when we don't close them they I'm saying that of the people that we don't close 20% of them are just people that ghost us and here's why I'm asking because we're sitting here talking about ways strategies you could use to get them to be more polite and respond as opposed to talking about ways to get them to sign you up that's fine I mean this the signing up part we're fine with how many of them ever come back when you think they've disappeared do they ever just show up and say we're ready to go sometimes they'll resurface there's a there's a it's a problem with the pr industry in general eneral the ghosting um aspect of it where it's just they disappear Without a Trace and then they turn try to come back and turn you on when it's convenient for them I think it's worse for that indust for your industry simply because if I need a heating air conditioning system I need it even advertising you need a PR maybe you're going to do it maybe you're not going to do it maybe you're going to wait a little while that it's it's much more of a are you going to do PR at all is not even necessarily a case of they're going to use you so I could see where that that happens more often there is another issue is that and this is a conversation I see a lot in my industry feeds that I'm part of there's a sense that some of these potential clients go out to you know 10 or 12 different agencies to just literally gather ideas wow with no intent on hiring them that's bad yeah that definitely happens in a lot of Industries and so that's the that's the service industry um like you don't can't really do that with know things that are containing garbage you're not going out and getting somebody's ideas cuz you can see touch and feel the idea um or Furniture framing or whatever you're doing but when you're in a service industry it's like they're just trying to mine for smart things and you know I've always been like the person I'm like I'm going to put my smartest ideas that I can come up with only knowing so much about the client in my proposal but then sometimes I'm like you know what I can't do that because what if they walk away from us and they take our smart idea we don't have anything in writing that says these ideas are only for um our execution and we will sue you if you take our idea and give it to another agency and do it but I've heard stories of that Sarah do do you ever get a client without going through a formal proposal process you have a established clients you have a nice website you have credibility to people ever just sign up without making you give away your best thoughts uh generally no like we usually have to go through the process of like showing that we understand what they need and how we should do it people generally want to see that I've only ever had um like maybe one or two that are like yeah sign on the dotted line but those are like long-term relationships if it makes you feel any better believe it or not it's actually in the Bible the Old Testament that wasting a salesperson's time with no intention of doing business with them is a is a sin I love that yes it's in there no I'm telling you someone told me that I looked into it it's absolutely right I wrote a Blog on it one time and I got I got some people that that wanted to reprint it because it's absolutely the truth I'll put that at the very end of my proposals from now on yeah put a little as it would be a sin this is a venial sin just saying yeah there are businesses that have said we're not going to play this game anymore when I was at Forbes we wrote about an advertising agency in Toronto that just decided we're not doing any more spec work uh we are who we are if you want to hire us hire us if not don't and they acknowledged in the article that they probably lost millions of dollars of Revenue in the in the immediate years but that over time uh it worked for them and they probably didn't grow as much as they would have but they did great work for great clients and were very happy with the choice they made well they might not have grown as much but their costs were less too so maybe it worked out right but I wonder I wonder like you know if I were to do something like that where I'm like okay I'm not going to do these proposals anymore because they're a Time suck they're a lot of energy um and they're a waste of time if somebody doesn't sign with us do I just provide here's our menu of services and call it a day I think that there's an expectation that you're going to do the dog and pony show and so I get I wonder whether or not that would have a negative impact on us or whether people would be like oh yeah I get that I don't want to waste their time they don't need to customize something for you I'm happy with the menu well there's no question that will turn some people off the question is will it be enough to make a difference there's no question some people are going to go on to someone else but I don't know if that's 50% 10% 80% that's the question you I guess you'd have to try it out not this year when you more business and you know what to do with that's when you try that out exactly exactly or when when it's uh when I ask them if their retainer is above or below a certain amount I'll be like all right if they're below a potential like retainer is below this amount they get the the menu above we'll we'll do some dogs and ponies wait you ask them what their retainer is as opposed to telling them what you charge for a retainer well usually they come in and you you ask you know what what is your your line item in terms of your budget for this because they'll be like well we only really set aside you know $6,000 a month for PR and then when you know that going in you're going to give them a proposal that is $6,000 you'll probably add a couple things and say but if you give us $7,000 we can do this if you give us $8,000 we can do this but it's customized to their priorities so if they come to us and they say we need people to talk about us and and influence um uh other people to buy our product but we only have $6,000 and they're a lip gloss company we're going to look at them and we're going to say oh well you we should work on influencers for you because that's really going to be what's going to give you uh additional transactions and people buying your stuff whatever as opposed to um someone saying I have a new garbage bin company and need to you know increase our brand awareness we're not going to say they should work with influencers we're going to work on traditional media um some product placement probably so we're really it's it depends on what their goals are I've got a question uh for you Sarah when you get a client that definitely is not at the budget level that you would need do you ever refer them to another company even if it's somewhat of a competitor well usually um we'll talk to them and it's either to another company but usually it's a uh usually it's to a freelancer or we'll say okay you're you're you're on a much lower budget level you probably need an independent contractor to work with you and that's how we we would make those referrals we're not an edel Edelman size or fleshman Hillard size yet um but actually had a conversation with a PR professional the other day who works in very Niche uh technology um and she was telling me that a lot of their clients come from one of the larger agencies that have a minimum retainer size of $25,000 a year so anything below that range in potential um retainer size they pass along to uh smaller agencies I think that's a perfectly reasonable when I've interviewed PR firms I would appreciate if they just told me up front listen before we talk to you I just want you to know our minimum is X just tell me and then I'll oh I don't want to spend just tell me it's good for them good for me CU you never know what you know it took me a while to figure out that five Grand a month is nothing right it's not a lot for a PR firm no from the other side though it seems like a lot it's kind of like how long a minute is depends on what side of the bathroom door you're on you know when you're paying it five Grand's a lot when you're taking it it's not so I would appreciate it if somebody just said listen our minimum is whatever 15 okay what made you realize that five Grand's not a lot by talking to enough prf people over the years I I've I've probably used I don't know four or five different PR firms over the years and I've had the independent person who's on their own I've had the quote unquote firm and I've had the one with the two or three people and I know that I know now that I'm not going to get anything for I'm not going to get much for $5,000 a month just from talking to people but like I said if they would have just told me that up front I could have saved could have saved them ask I no I they're coming out they you know they come out they want to make a proposal I wouldn't be insulted if before they came out and say Jay have you used the pr person before PR firm for not really I just wanted you know give you I don't know what do you have a budget for it ask me do I have a budget no not really okay just so you know our typical clients generally range from just tell me but you could ask they probably would tell you I guess yes I could now but in the beginning I didn't bother because I didn't think it was an issue now I know it's an issue so I would ask upfront because I wouldn't waste their time I wouldn't waste my time but I only do that now because I've used some PR firms in the past I think the typical person small business that hires a PR firm they have absolutely no no idea what it's going to cost I know I actually just wrote a blog post about cost and like kind of what our ranges are um uh I'm including it in our newsletter but like I'm I'm probably going to put it up on our our blog as well I wrote a blog post like ages ago about pricing and to this day it's still the most searched and SEO most valued um article that we have on our site I can totally see that there's really no way an entrepreneur would have any how would an Notre know what PR cost asking other entrepreneurs well that's the thing is that you it's hard to work with entrepreneurs I'm sure it's easier to work with an established company that has like 500 to a th000 people no question PR is an understood necessity they see the value in it when you work with entrepreneurs and that have never experienced PR you're having to teach them it's it's a lot more work no question I absolutely can see that and it's it's the money right out of their pocket it's not coming out of a budget somewhere I'm I'm sure that's true most entrepreneurs don't have PR firms that's just the reality I've been in business groups with I don't know 60 60 entrepreneurs I'm not so sure that I can think of more than two of them that ever used a PR firm it's not a typical thing for a small business no but there's a lot of stories that come up where us PR people look at those and go oh my my goodness they need PR yeah for sure for sure sure how about trash rats and garbage juice I know I was like boy did you respond to all of those yourself did you have like did you have holding statements put together already like that's actually something that you should consider doing um is just thinking of all the potential things that could go wrong that the Press could pick up on and draft those statements before they happen I truly believe if a reporter reaches out to you and says um I need to talk to you about this terrible thing that happened you need to email them back like instantaneously and say happy happy to provide you um uh information um what is your deadline and then you have a buffer you've you've responded you've put the b ball into their court but you should have your holding statements set for anything that could potentially go wrong I could talk to you guys all day but we are out of time my thanks to Jay goz Liz picarazzi and Sarah seagull as always thanks for sharing wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's L RN at 21h hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcast follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by just thubron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone [Music]