Please note this transcript is generated by AI  - apologies for any mistakes

Pippa Goulden (00:02)
Hello and welcome back to PR Made Simple. Now I'm gonna talk to you today about something that's happened to one of my one-to-one accelerator clients and I talked about this on my Instagram and had so many comments and so many questions about it so I thought I would deep dive into it today in more detail. So last week one of my one-to-one accelerator clients had not one but two journalists contact her in the same week.

She wasn't pitching them, she wasn't chasing them on anything. They came to her, stylist and a major industry title, perfectly targeted for her audience. And they came to her to ask her to contribute to features that they were writing. And I wanna talk in more detail about why and how this has happened to her. Because it wasn't magic, it didn't happen overnight, but it did happen. They came to her, it wasn't just her.

pitching away, slogging away, and it can happen for you too. But I'm gonna talk through the process of how to make this happen, right? So I've been working with this amazing accelerator client for about six months. She's absolutely brilliant at what she does. She has every right to step into her authority, into her expertise. She has the experience, she has the client feedback, she gets the results.

And when she came to me, she was doing what so many brilliant established founders are doing. She was showing up, working hard, getting those amazing results for her clients. She was incredibly and is incredibly well respected and known within her existing world. But outside of that world, she wasn't really known at all. Not because she wasn't good enough. She absolutely is. But because she didn't really have that authority ecosystem working for her.

because she hadn't made that decision yet to get known beyond her existing network, beyond her bubble. And I know she'd been thinking about PR for a while. She knew she should be doing it. She kept putting it off, kept thinking, ⁓ it'll happen to me. I'll start when I'm ready. Sound familiar? Because I know that so many other founders feel that too. And when we started working together, the first thing we did was get really clear on her positioning. She works with lots of different types of clients.

She works in lots of different scenarios, but there are some really clear things that we honed in on that were really her areas of expertise. We really drilled into what she wants to get known for, who her audience was, where they were hanging out, what publications and podcasts they were reading, listening to, where they were influenced, what they were influenced by. And that work that I do with founders time and time again is so important.

I mean, I work with six, seven figure business owners who often aren't clear on that positioning piece. And actually when you get clear on that positioning piece, it unlocks so much for you in terms of knowing what you wanna talk about, knowing where you wanna talk about that stuff, knowing how to talk about it. It makes your content easier, it makes your emails easier, it makes all those elements of your business easier because you're coming at it.

with a really clear positioning, with a really clear starting point of what you want to get known for, and you can build around that. So once we had that strategy in place together, she started pitching. Not to everyone, absolutely not, not spray and pray, we don't do that in the PR set. She started pitching to the right people with the right angles at the right time. She sent the fucking email peeps, she sent the fucking email. And then she got on with it, you know, she carried on doing her job and

This is the bit that people don't talk about enough. She didn't sit there obsessively wondering whether the emails had landed or waiting for a response. She didn't send 17 follow ups. know, I do encourage a follow up or two, but it's not about, you know, ramming yourself down the journalist's throat. She pitched strategically, she followed up, and then she trusted the process. And this is what I see happen, that sometimes those pictures are gonna land, sometimes they don't.

Sometimes they don't, and that's it, full stop. But sometimes they don't land straight away, but you've caught the attention of the journalist. They've saved you in a folder or you're in their inbox, and they will come back to you at the right time. So journalists aren't ignoring you, not all of them anyway. They're filing you away. They are noting that you exist. They're noting that you exist.

They're seeing that you know your stuff. They're seeing the types of things that you can talk about that you have a point of view worth listening to. And then when the right story, the right opportunity comes along, when the right feature lands on their desk or they've pitched an idea to their editor that's got the go ahead, they then need the expert who they can speak to who knows exactly what you know about. So they go back to their files. They look at who can help them with that feature. Because remember, they're not the expert.

You are, that's why they need you to do their work. And if you have shown them that you're the real deal, then your name comes up or you get talked about or you get recommended, okay? So this week, with this opportunity twice for my one-to-one accelerator client, she had actually done some work with the journalists first. So she'd pitched to them both. They came to her for various different things. And then, you know, she'd written some articles or she contributed to a feature for them.

And then several weeks later, both of them think, I'm writing this article about something and I need this expert. So they got in touch with her. Two journalists, two major titles in the same week. And I really want you to think about that because this is what I call the shift in the work that I do with my clients. It's that moment when you stop chasing the opportunities and they start finding you. They start coming to you. You have built that momentum.

You've pushed that snowball up the hill and it has started gathering speed on the way down. And it's that point when it's gathering speed, when I see that momentum happen, when the shift comes in, it happens because you've done the work. You've built the relationships. You showed up in the right places. You've proven that you knew your stuff and I know that you know your stuff. And that momentum builds until one day they come to you. And

This is one of my favourite things in the work that I do with my clients because I see that shift happen and it helps it build the confidence, it creates more opportunities for you. Watching that founder realise that the thing that she thought was out of reach, national press, major industry titles, journalists coming to her, is actually available. It always was available but you just have to put yourself out there. You have to start showing people that you know what you're talking about.

You know, I talk about this all the time, but I sat waiting for the speaking opportunity that I really wanted to do for three and a half years. I connected with them on LinkedIn. I thought, they'll see that I know what I'm talking about. And it wasn't until I actually pitched myself for that opportunity that I got it. Okay, we sit with this stuff, waiting for it to happen to us. And actually what we need to do is take the bull by the horns and go for it because you just don't know.

what opportunities these are going to open up for you. And I'm telling you this because I really want to help you understand something really important. That journalist or those two journalists who contacted her this week, and I know there will be more of this to come with her, they don't care about her Instagram followers. They don't care about her LinkedIn followers. They're not looking at her email list size or how much income she has. They didn't even ask her how long she's been in business.

They cared about what she has to say because she knows her stuff. She's got a clear point of view. You know, she's shown up before and she's delivered for them. She's created and proved herself as a reliable source for them. That's it. That's the whole secret. You do not need to be famous. You don't need a huge platform. You just need to know what you want to get known for and you need to know who needs to hear it and you need to send the fucking email. And then you need to trust the process because this works.

builds. Every pitch you send, every relationship you build, every piece of content you create that demonstrates your expertise, it's all building towards something for you, even when you cannot see it happening. And I know that that can be really frustrating. And I know when people say PR hasn't worked for them, it's one of two things. The first one is that they weren't doing it strategically and they're getting press willy nilly in the wrong places and it's not doing anything for their business. The second...

and this is the usual one, is that they give up too soon. I've tried pitching, it didn't work. it's a waste of my time. You know, that's what happens to people when you don't give it enough time, when you don't keep going with it, when you don't keep putting yourself out there, when you take the rejection or the lack of hearing from anyone as a, well, I'm just going to give up now. Because honestly, when you do this work, when you keep going, when you push through, it can...

really change things for you and your business and it can create so many incredible opportunities that just wouldn't come about if you were just doing email marketing and posting on your Instagram. And of course, you know I'm not anti any of that stuff. I think it's all really important. It all fits together. But getting those opportunities for you and your business, those ones that go into your like annual highlights at the end of the year on your Instagram reels, you know, those things don't just happen.

to you. You have to go out and make them happen for yourself. So if you are sitting on pictures right now, if you've been meaning to reach out to that journalist or that podcast host or that event organizer, then this is your sign. Send the emails, not next week, not when you film already. Let's get going with this. Do this now. And if you want support doing this work strategically with me in your corner helping you figure out

exactly what to say, exactly what your positioning is, exactly what you want to get known for, exactly what to put into those pitches, then you're in the right place. I have my one-to-one accelerator where I do this work with you, pipper in your pocket and a rocket in your PR. And I am also doing my get known sprint in June. That's my six week sprint where we focus on your positioning, on your pitches, we get you sending those emails.

It kicks off the week commencing the 8th of June. I have just announced it. The link is in the show notes for all of them. Go out, let's get those emails sent, let's get this happening for you because it can really happen for you and your business. Use the example of my one-to-one client as inspiration. There's no difference between her and you in terms of your business. She doesn't have some magic secret sauce. It's just that she's doing it. Okay?

All the links in the show notes and I will see you again very soon for another episode of PR Made Simple.