[00:00:00] Over the next week or two, we lost about a third of our clients because people were afraid to lean in. They said, "Oh, the economy's shut down. We're gonna conserve our resources. Sorry, we love working with you guys, but, like, we need to pause right now." We did the opposite for us. We then had our best year ever up to that point, and broke a million for the first time.

[00:00:21] You need reviews and testimonials and stories about you so that when people are finding you, it's not a blank page. That's what the AI systems are taking into account, is what are the outside references on this business? What are people saying about you? Generating that flywheel for information about you isn't just a one-time thing.

[00:00:45] The people who- with the best wins and the best business results are the ones who are consistent

[00:00:50] Welcome to the Entrepreneur's Kitchen. Today, I've got a very exciting guest for you. Austin Holmes, the president of Publicity for Good, and he's [00:01:00] pioneering the next big thing in PR tech, Signal Raptor. But before we get into all of that, someone who's listening, who's thinking, "I'm a small business owner, does PR even matter in what I do?"

[00:01:12] Does it, Austin?

[00:01:14] We all as small business owners are constantly doing PR. It really starts with your friends and your family. It's just, "Hey, how am I communicating what I'm doing so that people can then go and talk about me?" That's one of the easiest ways to define what the PR effort does, is how do we get other people talking about us versus marketing is much more so what are we saying about ourselves?

[00:01:42] A lot of people think PR and they think, being featured on Fox News or they think big media. And they don't necessarily think of it in terms of like what are people saying about you. Now, to that person who's like, "Okay, I hear you, but I'm, like, trying to figure out where I fall in that,

[00:01:57] Absolutely a good point [00:02:00] of, you don't necessarily have to do earned media. That is the stereotypical "Hey, let's get you on the news, get you on that cooking segment on the morning show." 

[00:02:09] Whatever the largest 

[00:02:11] opportunity is, The new one would be get you on Joe Rogan. Those opportunities are incredible and can change an entire business. But when you start at the small business level, it's really what are people saying about you on social media? How are we making sure that our communications strategy is giving people a reason to talk about us?

[00:02:31] sometimes that's very organic and sometimes that is planned out and created and, "Hey, this is the awesome new promotion we're doing for the end of the year." I know that's what we're talking about. To go into Publicity4Good Heather, my wife, started the business a little over 10 years ago.

[00:02:47] I joined in 2018, 2019, depending on how you look at it. And the core of our mission is getting good stories out into the world, helping our clients grow. [00:03:00] And there's , this thread through media 'cause we do work in the earned media space of let's put every negative story we possibly can.

[00:03:09] Let's attack everybody else we can. And I don't think culture is the place that we want it to be the place that we are called to create to be a city on a hill by just constantly tearing everybody else down. So we wanna do what we can from our position to bring light into the world.

[00:03:29] that's amazing. That's interesting 'cause I'll ask you later, but just, you working with your wife, which is really interesting. But talking about that, you mentioned that most people are doing the marketing, okay? And everybody's focused on the marketing. And you're saying, okay, there's a job for marketing and there's a job for PR.

[00:03:45] Maybe distinguish between those two, because a lot of times we're putting them together understanding like what does what, what should do what, and if you can help frame our understanding of that.

[00:03:55] There's a really easy model I forget the creator's name right [00:04:00] now, but it's called PESO. It's paid, earned, social, and owned media. So there are people who have built their entire business by writing a Substack. That would be owned, that's slightly social too. But there's been people build their business with s- social.

[00:04:15] There's been people build it purely with cold calling. There's tons of people who have built amazing businesses by being everywhere in the media. And there's people who have never shown their face, never talked to anyone, and purely used meta ads to grow their business. So you can use any of these channels to grow a large business.

[00:04:36] But, the, the space we mostly play in is earned media, but we do all of the others for ourselves. And you can do all of them, or you can do one and still be successful. So that's a really easy way to break down kind of business communications and where they fall.

[00:04:52] I guess I'm trying to understand is, or for myself and I think also for the audience, if you're doing all the things, [00:05:00] at what point do you say, "Okay, now let me get into the earned media?" As a small business owner,

[00:05:04] A place a lot of people already start is awards. We consider that more in the PR realm, and sometimes that happens organically, like your local chamber of commerce might say, "Hey, we want to give you this award because we really appreciate the impact you're having on our community." Maybe you sponsored the local T-ball team or the softball team.

[00:05:26] , That's an easy way to then pick up an award. And then, okay, what do you do with that? Let's go talk about it. Let's say, "Hey, local newspaper, let's sit down, have an interview, let's have some coffee," and then they write up a little story about you. That happens all the time, and you walk into the local burger shop, and they have this article up from a couple years ago, and it's talking about, hey, they sponsored the T-ball team and did this amazing community giveback thing.

[00:05:53] So that's a very common scenario for a small business owner, , that can be the start of an earned media journey, and often it's [00:06:00] relationship-based. If you're going about it in a very intentional way a- and this does often happen as a business is a little more developed, they have systems in place, and they're trying to get leverage on their time because we all have the same number of hours in the day. How can we go find other people's audiences rather than paying for that audience? How do we go get that audience? Another reason to go on the earned media side is the credibility. Yes, absolutely, like Joe Rogan has more credibility than most business owners, and he has a larger audience than almost every business.

[00:06:32] And so getting on other people's platforms to promote your message is a really effective way to reach new, different audiences.

[00:06:41] Now, I'm thinking of it in terms of the results from the side of okay, this person did this, and then this is what happened to their business. Or, if you can give us stories or so someone can have an idea of okay, what was the actual impact on the business?

[00:06:55] Yeah. One that I really like bringing up because it is slightly localized in [00:07:00] the Atlanta market. One of our clients tripled her business over the course of working with us because she got a local news appearance and she was talking about her subject matter that she was an expert in, and then they started inviting her back over and over to that station to talk about that topic.

[00:07:20] And i-in that sh- fairly short period of time, she tripled her business. We've seen people have significant changes in their expected exit value and the actual exit result because of that just brand awareness. We work a lot with physical products consumer packaged goods, and that's a space where you want people to be able to walk into the store knowing your brand.

[00:07:44] Because going to the supermarket, you might have 50 different options in whatever product you're buying, and if they know your brand because they've already heard about it, whether it's on social or if it's in the media or however they've already heard about it, and they've heard about it [00:08:00] from a friend, that's a very effective way. that's a competitive advantage and that really helps products expand their distribution because all of it is about how fast can they move product on those shelves. And if everybody's walking in knowing, "Hey, I want this brand because I've heard about them. I don't know what these other 50 brands are," that's an effective use case for PR.

[00:08:21] No, that's good. 'Cause I've seen even with people who are thought leaders, it's one thing to have you going on your, whatever you're on, LinkedIn, Substack, talking about yourself. Yes, that is important. But it's another thing to have that PR strategy that is shifting the way people see you because of what other people are saying about you.

[00:08:40] That really makes a difference. A lot of people try to do this on their own. To that person who's, somewhere where they have been podcast guesting and, they've done a lot of podcast guesting trying to get other people's audiences, and it seems like it was a worthless attempt.

[00:08:54] What are they doing wrong? Is it a matter of strategy? 'Cause obviously it works,

[00:08:58] This is where [00:09:00] systems come into place of making sure that you have all of the checkboxes marked. What we've been finding over the past couple months with the changes in the way people are searching with AI, you still have to do all of the back-end stuff. You have to make sure that your webpage is optimized for SEO because you have to make it to the top 50 when people are searching for whatever your product or service is.

[00:09:24] A-and you need that baseline of trust and credibility. You need reviews and testimonials and stories about you so that when people are finding you, it's not a blank page. If you go to somebody's social and their Instagram seems awesome and then their Facebook has absolutely nothing, i-if you're checking that deeply into somebody, like that is a instant hit on your credibility.

[00:09:50] So making sure that all of those very basic free things are in place so that when people do find you, they don't hit a brick wall and say, "Oh, this doesn't even seem like a [00:10:00] real business." But to not only get on the list of the top 10 or the top 50, but actually get your business being recommended, that's where the credibility really comes in.

[00:10:14] That's where the trust of other people comes in. That's what the AI systems are taking into account is what are the outside references on this business? What are the Google reviews looking like? It really depends on which AI platform, but that is becoming the difference maker. And the way that local service ads have absolutely controlled whether somebody gets results on the local level, that's now shifting to AI searches on the local level.

[00:10:42] So having that hyper-localized information on your website, having those local stories about you, that's what's gonna rank higher now. And so that is a very easy way to directly drive results for local businesses a-and national businesses too.

[00:10:58] So I'd actually forgotten [00:11:00] about that because now when you search someone, it's this is what it says about this person, but, the AI will actually say, "But it's only them who's saying this, so don't give a lot of weight." It'll actually tell you we haven't found any record of anyone else saying this , so already that's a hit on your credibility. This is becoming even more important, would you say?

[00:11:18] There's levels to it as well. Like I, I do a lot of searches for software to find tools, to find recommended pathways on what I'm doing development-wise and for our business to use. And so sometimes it'll say, "Hey, here's a list of five to eight. these are options you should check out.

[00:11:36] These are the benefits. This is the pricing," which is a very key piece as well. Y- you see it on Google with pricing. They're now excluding results that don't have pricing available. This is true in like the contractor space. This is, has been true in retail for a long time. Can you imagine somebody going to your e-commerce page and not knowing the price?

[00:11:56] Like that has existed for a while, but now that's starting to cross into [00:12:00] every other industry. as people are finding it, you wanna go from that list of five or eight down to, "Here's your top three recommendations. These are the industry leaders," or, "These are the local leaders.

[00:12:11] These are the best three taco shops near you." getting to the positioning where you're the recommendation. "Hey, this is my problem," and AI says, "This is who you should go with because it's the exact match, it's the best price, it's everything that you want, and they have really good credibility, and they have really good customer reviews."

[00:12:30] Like this is the one. When you get into that position, you can dominate your marketplace.

[00:12:36] Absolutely. Having the reviews and the testimonials and the other people talking about you, having all those things in place. But that takes a while. 'Cause I think a lot of people when they think of, getting into PR they want instant results. They think they're gonna pay money and they're gonna, so having that expectation that is correct that this is a process,

[00:12:55] yeah it is a process and there's different stages, there's different [00:13:00] methods that you should be using at different levels of business. And whether you're operating on a local basis or nationally or internationally there are definitely different tools. When you're just starting in that first year, it's probably worth you going and getting a couple paid features where somebody writes an article about you and posts that.

[00:13:18] That gives you some credibility. That's a fairly low price point item. You can put that as seen in section on your website and people are gonna be like, "Oh, this is a legitimate business they've been talked about." That's gonna bump up your rankings. As you grow and start getting into seven, eight, nine figures, you need that credibility factor to, get ranked, to get the attention, to get the trust from the audience who is finding you, 'cause you're using one of the methodologies to get your story out there.

[00:13:47] But what are people saying about you? Generating that flywheel for information about you isn't just a one-time thing. Yes, putting it on your website, that's a starting place. But [00:14:00] now AI is also searching for recency. So how recent are these reviews? Are they in the same zip code as this person searching?

[00:14:09] It's taking in all of these data points, and so it is a game of consistency. Everybody's heard the saying of, people will move on and forget about you the second you stop talking about your business, and that's absolutely true. and we've seen this in our data. We have gotten over 40,000 media ops for our clients.

[00:14:29] The people with the best wins and the best business results are the ones who were consistent. Like I'd rather somebody spend their budget over the course of a year than try and do a three-month push for this special campaign. They're gonna get better results and they're not gonna get forgotten. It's just a consistency game.

[00:14:48] People often think, "Okay, the launching of this thing is where I'm gonna need the PR." But you're saying, no, you actually need that flywheel going the whole time to actually reap better results. I like that you talk about the [00:15:00] flywheel of your communication strategy.

[00:15:02] Now, if you were to break that down for a person who's never heard of flywheel for the communication strategy, 'cause a lot of people are thinking, "Oh, three months before I launch, let me get some PR for this thing. Let me get some PR for this book. " And then they're saying, "Oh," they're not getting any results.

[00:15:16] But when you talk about the flywheel, maybe you can explain that.

[00:15:19] Yeah. I will say for the books, you do wanna have seasons for different products. If you're doing a launch of a course as a digital creator, if you're doing a book, if you're doing a new line on a product, that is a good time to ramp up. But you still want a baseline of credibility, and you still want constant media features so that you don't get forgotten. But it also builds on each other. It's a clear progression often. Yes, some people just instantly get on USA Today or instantly get on Joe Rogan, but that is very rare. The normal progression is, "Hey, we got some local media. We had this [00:16:00] paper write about us. We then got onto a regional provider.

[00:16:04] Maybe, we're in Ohio and we got into the Chicago market, or we got into the New York market." And then that might get picked up and syndicated by every single outlet in that media network. We've seen that happen, and it might have started with a local story by a local anchor, and you guys built a relationship, and then the story there was good enough to get picked up at a national level, or it had so much relevance to what was going on.

[00:16:33] If you're talking about economic downturn stuff right now and that's your expertise, you're probably gonna be able to go pretty far in the media right now. But you don't know when those things are gonna hit, and if you don't have that background of being the expert that these people call for whatever your topic is, it's very difficult to then, when the national story does hit and you have three hours to , respond to the media to get this national placement, it's [00:17:00] very difficult in that miracle of three hours to be the person that they're gonna call on to come and talk about whatever it is going on in the media.

[00:17:08] So it, it is a buildup, it's consistency, it's making sure that you're positioning your brand as the leader in the space.

[00:17:17] You talk about , building relationships with your local media people. We often don't think about that because, they're not your customer or, that's not the people you're targeting for whatever you're selling. But if you can give people some ideas of, how to build these relationships with media people.

[00:17:31] organizations are a great place whether it's the Chamber of Commerce or maybe you have a local meetup. those are great opportunities. And the media are looking for stories. For you to bring them a story that's a good story that's relevant to what's going on makes their job easier, so they're gonna like you.

[00:17:48] So the more you're able to do that, then that's how that relationship is built, is providing timely inputs so that their job is easier. - There's a lot of [00:18:00] opportunities. It can be coffee with somebody who you know or maybe you get a friend to connect you. "Oh, I know this person who knows whoever I'm trying to reach."

[00:18:09] A- an agency is a solid option because that's what we do, is we spend half of our time building relationships with the media. A interesting stat that I just put together for us was if we've worked with somebody already, that opportunity has a 60% success rate, versus if it's a new media member who we haven't worked with before, it's only 20%.

[00:18:30] So having that relationship in place is vital, and if you let that relationship tail off and die, then it becomes much harder to work with that person. So it-- there is an absolute value to the relationship building aspect. And it's just like going and trying to prospect for clients, just, hey, your messaging is different.

[00:18:51] Rather than trying to write an email to convert somebody with your product or service, then you're writing an email to try and get somebody to talk [00:19:00] about you. a lot of people are familiar with this, - writing their customer base trying to get reviews, because we know reviews are powerful.

[00:19:07] doing the same thing just with media.

[00:19:09] Now with the AI, a lot of this is about transparency, which is a good thing. Because even you see people who used to kinda do sketchy things to get reviews, the AI will actually tell you that, "Hey, I've looked at these reviews, but something is off about these reviews because this and this."

[00:19:26] Where people often think they wanna do the fastest thing to get, whatever results, but it's so important in this AI age to do things correctly because the AI will flag those things that are, as red flags, and then you've lost your credibility, which is the whole point of doing all this, is that trust and that credibility.

[00:19:44] You said there's that 40% difference between someone who's been in your agency and someone who was a newcomer in terms of placements. What is it that you work with them on that makes that 40% difference?

[00:19:56] it's the previous experience. It's knowing that we're gonna hold to our [00:20:00] word when somebody asks for a quote or when somebody asks for a contributor piece. They know we're gonna do what it takes to make that happen. And so that success rate with media members goes up dramatically. It truly is building a relationship.

[00:20:13] It's having timely communication. It's being clear. It's not bringing in eight other things that are irrelevant, not wasting their time. 'Cause the media industry does move very quickly, and if you're not hitting deadlines, then they look bad to their leadership. again, it goes back to making their job as easy as possible because, they might have hundreds of pitches coming to them a day where they're just trying to filter it out.

[00:20:40] And if they recognize a name that they've worked with before and they're like, "Oh, this is relevant to my story. I like these guys. Let's go ahead and select this as part of this story." And that's powerful.

[00:20:51] Yeah, that frame of understanding what do they want? Not what do you want. What does the person in the media need? They're looking for a great story. , Do you have that great [00:21:00] story to share with them? The thing is, a lot of times business people don't think in stories.

[00:21:04] Maybe you can speak to like what is a good story? What makes for a good story? Yeah.

[00:21:08] The single best resource, and it's funny 'cause I'm going back through this book is "Story Brand" by Donald Miller. And if you haven't read anything like that, talking about how important story is to human culture, to the way we communicate, then that is a awesome starting place. It's on Spotify if you guys have that.

[00:21:29] I would recommend going through that today. It talks about the hero's journey is another common framing of a similar concept. But it's been proven by TV and movies so much because they get a scoreboard. They get a scoreboard of did this perform at the box office or not? And if writers do not stick to that format, which is frustrating, and you get the same movie made over and over, but it's how human psychology works.

[00:21:59] [00:22:00] There's only a couple proven story frameworks that have really been successful throughout the course of human history. if you're not sticking to those, then it's very easy to get lost, to get ignored because people check out very quickly, and that cycle has just gotten so much faster.

[00:22:19] last I checked, we're below a second on swipe time as far as the content on social media, and that used to be three seconds. And I think before that, human attention was like eight seconds on advertising. And so when we're being bombarded by like 10,000 advertisements a day, literally you have to have the right format and you have to have the right hook.

[00:22:44] Like the headline, the hook, absolutely the most important. And when we're talking to the media, it's the same thing. When we're doing it on social, same thing. When we're having those one-on-one conversations, you have to keep people engaged. This goes back to [00:23:00] the consistency. So if you just expand the same principle over time, if you're keeping people engaged, they're not forgetting about you.

[00:23:06] You are top of mind for whatever it is you're doing

[00:23:10] Absolutely. Now let's move on to your wife and yourself building Publicity for Good. There's a story online about a worst week. In 2020, the week it was the first million, and understanding what pivot adjustments, recovery was made in that first week.

[00:23:29] Yeah. The week that it's referencing is after COVID, there was a slight delay on this, but over the next week or two, we lost about a third of our clients because people were afraid to lean in. And I think this is super relevant today because it's developing into the same kind of scenario as that for so many reasons that we won't get into.

[00:23:51] But the, the tendency of so many people is to pull back from chaos and try and protect what they [00:24:00]have. The lesson that I'm so thankful we were taught by one of our mentors at that point was when you think everything is falling apart, that's not the time to pull back and defend and protect what you have.

[00:24:14] That is the time to attack. That is the time to do more. That is the time to make sure you have clarity to lead your team at the highest level and lean into the situation. And this is actually a part of StoryBrand, is you wanna provide people a pathway. You wanna give them a plan and clarity. People are searching for that.

[00:24:34] They want to know what to do. And so if you're that voice in those times of chaos, you can have amazing results come out of that. And so not only did we improve that month by the end of the month more than what we had started the month at, we, then had our best year ever up to that point and broke a million for the first time.

[00:24:56] It's very powerful to lean in those mo-moments of fear [00:25:00] because people are looking for answers. They're looking for, "Hey, what do I do in this situation?" Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of work to turn that month around from losing a third of our clients to then beating our projections for that month, and then to continue that momentum was a lot of work, but it was very much worth it.

[00:25:21] And, on December 28th, 27th, something like that, we ended up crossing that by like $3,000 and it was a really cool moment for Heather and I.

[00:25:31] Yeah. That's amazing. You said people pulled back. Let me ask you to explain it because what I got from it is like of that fear response that, in you that makes you say, "Gosh, something's happening in the market.

[00:25:44] Things are not looking good. This is frightening." And then you act out of fear by pulling back. I think every entrepreneur will recognize that feeling and, I like your mentor's advice of saying, in those moments where you feel that way and you're being driven by fear, [00:26:00] that's not the time to shrink back.

[00:26:02] It's the time sort of to, to push in and to lean in. And then I'm trying to under- in the context of losing a third of your clients, what was happening in the environment that you're saying is the same as today?

[00:26:12] Okay. I'll start with some examples. The normal move, for so many people, and we saw this then, was like, "Hey, let's pull back our advertising. Hey, let's stop our hiring. Let's not try and to expand right now. Let's just pause here, make an assessment, a-and make sure we don't lose anything." A couple things are happening with that.

[00:26:36] Because everybody's doing that, ads then become cheaper. The attention that people are trying to get becomes less competitive, and so it actually creates an opportunity. And Warren Buffett has a quote about this of, when there's fear in the streets, attack, and when there is joyous glee and everybody's prospecting, [00:27:00] everybody's in the stock market, be conservative.

[00:27:03] And so looking at the mass market and actually doing the opposite of that has served him very well. What was the second part?

[00:27:09] you've lost a third of the clients, but this is the first time you crossed the million-dollar mark. H- I'm trying to reconcile what did you do?

[00:27:18] We leaned in. We called more people. clients were pausing because they had these same fears. They said, "Oh, the economy's shut down. We're gonna conserve our resources. Sorry, we love working with you guys, but like we need to pause right now." we did the opposite for us.

[00:27:34] We leaned in. We did tons. We made sure that we were posting on content side. We made sure that we were emailing that many more people. We made sure we were getting the best possible results for our clients. And across the board, we said, "Hey, let's attack this problem rather than letting this problem come to us and just playing defense."

[00:27:55] And that created so much momentum just from that month [00:28:00] that we continued that and doubled our business that year. 

[00:28:03] thank you for explaining that, 'cause now that makes sense. The person's listening going, "Okay, what do I do? 'Cause I'm like at a loss, like what do I do next?" Now, since you talked about pitching, there is the idea of how many pitches are enough pitches? Or, people often say, "Oh, this pitching thing doesn't work."

[00:28:19] And I think it's because people don't understand sort of the data , behind what makes a pitch work.

[00:28:23] Pitching is a numbers game. If you're familiar with cold email m-marketing, it's a numbers game. A good success rate on an email campaign is 1% on conversion. I don't know the conversion rate on emails. It's probably lower than that for pitching the media. But just our response rate, we're happy with 3%.

[00:28:42] Because you're competing against hundreds of other emails every day in all the media members' inboxes. Key things with that is knowing when the media operates. Mondays and Fridays are not good pitch days. that's because they're cleaning up their inbox on Monday, and Friday they're, like everybody else, ready to go [00:29:00] home.

[00:29:00] So applying copywriting making sure that, back to headline, making sure that it is something that's actually gonna catch attention. Making sure that the details in there are correct, making sure it's not too long or not too short. Sometimes really short does work. But it is a numbers game, you'll have a higher success rate, like I talked about, with people who you know, people who you've worked with before, people who are in your community.

[00:29:24] When we pitch the Nashville media for us, we get to put in there, "This person lives in Nashville." So that's gonna create one of those trust factors, one of those points of relatability. It's just like any other relationship building of, hey, what is a commonality so that we can connect? And when you're trying to scale that from the 10 people in your local market, if, depending on what market you're in to, hey, now we're pitching every national outlet. For us I can't remember right now, but it's tens of thousands of emails I, I think [00:30:00] daily for us as an agency sending pitches to media members.

[00:30:04] So it is absolutely a numbers game. I should go back and find how many emails were sent to reach the total 40,000 media ops 'cause that, that would be a wild number to look at.

[00:30:16] That would be a wild number. Let us know what number that is. But I'm glad that you say that because, people often think, "Oh, a few emails and nobody's responded. A few more and it's like a 3% for response rate." So that's good. Keep sending more and more pitches. At what point do you say or do you ever say, "Okay, I've sent X amount of emails to that person.

[00:30:38] Okay, let me send it to another person," or you- do you just keep sending?

[00:30:42] They'll let us know if they want to stop receiving our emails. But it's also go- going back to we're trying to make sure we're providing value to that media member, and so that's how you wanna approach it. If they have a story that they just wrote about let's say [00:31:00] you're a hat brand or an apparel company, and they just wrote a story about your competitor, maybe it might be interesting to see what the differences of your brand are to that other apparel company that they just wrote about.

[00:31:14] And so it's creating that connection point of they just did a story about this. You're not coming out of nowhere just saying, "Hey, this is my brand. Please talk about us." that's not the approach. It's what value can we provide to that media member and looking at it from how can we get their attention?

[00:31:32] What's gonna be interesting to them? what's gonna make them look good? Because, if they write a story that gets elevated to national media as somebody local, like that can improve their career. So looking at their side of it and how can we reach them is a massive part of it. And of course there's different copywriting things.

[00:31:53] there's tons of books out there about good copywriting and how to get that attention. There's a lot of different [00:32:00] factors, but we've been doing this for a while, 

[00:32:02] Yeah. very interesting because to the person who's tried this on their own, I think, look, it's a whole job. You do... It's a job that if it's not what you do, don't give yourself that job. Get an agency or get someone else to do it. Which leads us to what you're currently doing with Signal Raptor, 'cause I think , there is a market of people who've always thought PR is, the big money PR.

[00:32:23] And so that's why a lot of people have not even considered PR because you just don't have the budget for it. And I'm interested in what you're doing now with Signal Raptor,

[00:32:31] yeah you're right. There's always the balance between time and money with whatever we are doing in business. And with traditional PR you're looking at it a lot like a lawyer. You're, you want the lawyer who is friends with the judge. That same relationship applies in the world of PR, but you're paying for somebody's relationships, you're paying for their knowledge, and you're paying for their time.

[00:32:55] So that is why a traditional PR is expensive. We [00:33:00] created Signal Raptor because we knew there were so many good stories out there, but still people with limited time, because when you're early on in business, you don't have all the time in the world. You're doing 100 different things. I appreciate the there's an ad out there with like sticky notes, and it's like the sticky note monster.

[00:33:17] That's a real thing for business owners. And so you can utilize your time and you can write these emails to media members and you can send them and be consistent with that every day, sending them at the right time of day. ChatGPT will tell you all of that information. ChatGPT will write the emails for you.

[00:33:35] But, you're still limited by how many times you can enter that email and click send. And so we've tried to apply the systems, the knowledge from the agency of the past 10 years and put that into Signal Raptor as a much more accessible price point SaaS product, and we look at it as service and a software, and give people an opportunity to share their story in a more effective [00:34:00] way to get that attention around their brand.

[00:34:02] So that's the intention behind Signal Raptor, but it's wrapped up to be as easy as possible for that brand or that personal story to be able to be shared with the media and do it in a very cost-effective way.

[00:34:16] Yeah. So what exactly are they doing on Signal Raptor? They're getting the guidance or...

[00:34:21] yeah. Our job is still the same but utilizing technology in a much more efficient way. We are pitching the media for our Signal Raptor subscribers and the big thing there is, we might go really deep into strategy. For these brands that are doing every single category of communications, that takes a lot more coordination.

[00:34:43] So a lot of the brands coming into Raptor might be doing one or two of the different channels, and so part of that is they're building their strategy, and we have an AI system to help them do that, of saying, "Hey, this is my messaging. This is who I wanna reach. This is why I wanna reach them. This is what I can [00:35:00] provide for them."

[00:35:00] And going through that in an intelligent way that allows us to properly frame their story, to pull out those little details about what they have going on, like what are their upcoming campaigns or are they doing a launch? And then apply that to our pitching methodology and so that they're not spending the same amount on email that we are because of just the amazing things AI has enabled us to do.

[00:35:25] Like I said at the beginning of the interview, I said, "Look, a lot of people don't even think about PR just because of this idea of like PR is the big money play." And to have that option where you can do that , at a lower price point.

[00:35:39] Now, what is the lower price point? I might as well just ask you.

[00:35:42] yeah. Right now it's $499 a month. and if you compare that I try and frame it as, getting 80% of the value for 10% of the price.

[00:35:51] So Thank you so much for that. 

[00:35:53] I noticed that you run an international team, which I thought was very interesting. What do you mean by international team?

[00:35:59] [00:36:00] Yeah. We've worked with international clients and that was part of the start of it. But, the very first person that Heather brought on to the business to help her was a virtual assistant out of the Philippines. And, for a long time we grew the company as about half Philippines and half US.

[00:36:16] But now I think we're in 11 countries and have team members all over the world and everybody brings their own culture. And that's been a learning experience. I got to travel a lot in the Navy, which was super cool. But it wasn't necessarily to the best spots in the world. But I had some of that experience of dealing with other cultures.

[00:36:34] And so we've grown that and continued with the team over time. And it's cool to see different cultures that are great in different areas of the business and trying to utilize all of that experience and perspective in order to serve our clients at the highest and best level. So now we're a team of 60 to 70 depending on the day.

[00:36:55] And it's been an incredible experience building that, [00:37:00] so

[00:37:00] How do you hire from 11 countries?

[00:37:02] Used to be a lot more disjointed and like random systems, but now it's mostly LinkedIn. Like LinkedIn is one of those that they have the network effect. They're in every country. And so LinkedIn has been our primary hiring tool for probably two years now.

[00:37:17] You have a military background, how much of that did you bring into business or overlaps that have helped you in business?

[00:37:24] It's probably more than I really know, but the systems, the discipline, the leadership I was a part of an incredible community and some of the best leaders in the world. so I got to see that as I was young in my career, I've tried to emulate the guys who I really respected and, avoid the methods that I didn't necessarily appreciate.

[00:37:49] But there's so many things that I took from that the strongest that anybody would be able to take is the mission focus of [00:38:00] making sure that you are doing whatever it takes to accomplish the mission you've set out.Now, that requires setting yourself on a mission and we're very passionate about this, that it helps businesses when they are mission-focused.

[00:38:13] And your mission can be anything. And nothing against making money, but it's very effective to set yourself on a higher purpose. What do you really wanna accomplish? Because money can answer a lot of problems, but it doesn't provide fulfillment by itself. And one of the guys I follow framed it this way of, who do you wanna help? What issue did you have in your past that you wanna solve for other people? And then how are you gonna do that? 

[00:38:40] That framing of like what is the mission, and then what does it take to accomplish the mission? And then it like washes away all the distractions and all the excuses Austin, it's been awesome speaking to you.

[00:38:51] I think I really appreciated that you're a Christian entrepreneur. Our audience is Christian entrepreneurs. You're someone who's working with your family, [00:39:00] and I wonder for those who are family first Christian entrepreneurs, if 

[00:39:04] there's a message you'd- wanna leave with them 

[00:39:06] what it would be?

[00:39:07] Yeah. Get support from the community. I see it as there is a change in the marketplace. This was one of the last things Billy Graham said before he left us, the next major revival is gonna be in the marketplace, and I think we're really starting to see that. And being a part of those communities, being involved and bringing a Christian perspective into the marketplace, that is a massive part of what changes culture.

[00:39:36] , There's several different pillars of how you can affect culture and faith is absolutely one of those. The marketplace is one of those. Media is one of those. Politics is one of those. So whatever your mission is, lean in and do what you're called to do in that area. And make sure you have a community of like-minded people around you, [00:40:00] because it's gonna be hard no matter which pillar of society you're going after.

[00:40:04] But we are called to make a difference.

[00:40:06] I like words, so when I saw Publicity for Good, I really liked the, the naming of that and just what you're doing with your wife over there. For those couples who are like trying to build a business together, I can imagine at what point is it no longer business talk and let's get the laundry done or let's get the practical things of the home done or is it always business talk?

[00:40:26] So we have four kids, four or younger, and change over time. It is not the easy path, but it gives you some really cool advantages. It's pretty easy to be on the same page because you're doing everything together. Whether it's the laundry or the kids, get help. If you guys are building a business together, get help as soon as you can.

[00:40:47] Whether that's somebody to walk the dog or do your laundry, like just get help. Walmart delivery from Walmart, life-saving for [00:41:00] us. We used to spend our Saturdays and we'd joke about it, like we're going to the store to buy groceries and this is our Saturday outing. And now we have a little bit more time freedom and eliminating those little things, at least from the numbers I've seen, you can get rid of 80% of those things for like $1,500 a month.

[00:41:19] That was an important first step to making our lives a little better. A- and another key piece that we've had for a long time is coffee talk, and we don't do it every single day, but almost every single day we have a connection point. And for us, it's over a cup of coffee or in the evenings over a different beverage.

[00:41:39] But the connection, just talking things through is critical for staying on the same page, for making sure that you're meeting your partner's needs. And without that, it... Entrepreneurship is normally incredibly lonely, but it's a little less lonely when you're doing it with your spouse or with a partner.

[00:41:59] [00:42:00] even if it's a regular partner, friends, whatever getting those connection points when you're working closely with somebody i- is very important. And not just on the surface level of, what's the budget look like or how's this part of the team doing? It's so valuable to actually be involved in their life and connect in a real way.

[00:42:19] shared values to me being equally yoked so critical. If there's anything that Heather and I specifically have learned that helped us more than anything, it was we need to work in different areas of the business. We both have our talents, skills, and abilities, and letting each other work in their zone of genius and not getting in the way has decreased conflict dramatically.

[00:42:43] Pick what you're gonna do, and then you get to have that point where you come together and get aligned, and then you both executing in the areas that you're executing in. So we work together, but we work on different things is the best way I can put it, and , that's been [00:43:00] a huge help,

[00:43:01] Oh, thank you for sharing that. that's amazing. Now, to those who would like to know a little bit more about what you're doing, Austin, where is the best place for them to go?

[00:43:09] Yeah. I-if you're looking for the PR side, publicityforgood.com that will get you in touch with us. And if you're looking for any of my stuff, AAustinHolmes on every platform at this point that I'm on. That, that's the easy way to find me.

[00:43:25] Thank you so much. I've appreciated this conversation, and I think it's really high value to the people who listen, so thank you so much

[00:43:31] It's been awesome