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Foreign.
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Welcome to Slay the Gatekeeper. I'm your host, Courtney Johnson, and I am here to un gatekeep the gatekeep. Thank you so much for being here. Enjoy. Welcome, Lauren.
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Thanks for having me.
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I'm happy to have you here. I have learned so much from you over the past few weeks about, like, utilizing local news, which is something that's been coming up a lot. I actually, in the coworking session yesterday, there was a woman that was so excited because she got her first local news spot and it was like, so helpful. Yeah, it's just, it's something that I wouldn't necessarily think of but has so, so much power. And I just want to talk through today how really anybody can utilize local news to accomplish their goals for their business, their social media, whatever it might be. So my first question is what types of people can utilize local news as a way to help accomplish their goals? Is it content creators? Is it small business owners? Like, who can use this?
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Well, I would say really anyone could use local news to help amplify their brand or business. So service content creators. I've talked about this before, how you really want to build, like a mutually beneficial relationship between you and the media. I worked in the local news business for years and so I can tell you from that side, we were looking for content. You have to fill a show. So you, you want good content and it's a local news show. So you want to highlight local brands, businesses, creators who are doing cool things there in your city. So you need that content. And then on the other side, as a small business owner, someone who's building their brand, someone who creates a lot of content or offers a specific service. Well, you should be using local news to help get publicity and amplify your brand in that way. So really anyone could use local news to help them.
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Yeah, it's so powerful. And I also think it gives you a lot of validity and credibility because, because it is such an established form of media. If you can say as featured on whatever. You put that on your social, you put that on your website. It does look really good. It does lend a lot of credibility. So how does someone, let's say I have a small business, let's say I have a. An organic candle business in Austin, Texas. What's my first move to starting to get that on the news? Who do I reach out to? Someone like, how do I even see start that? Yeah.
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Well, obviously you want to build up your business yourself. As a creator these days, of course, it is important to have a social presence. So you want to have, you know, your social media pages going and really make them look good, make your Instagram page look great. You know, start posting beautiful photos, videos, have a website done, because you'll want to have that as proof that this is my business and this is what I'm doing. And, and then once you have that, yeah, reach out to, to local media. And this is something that I teach in my media training sessions about how you reach out to local media, how you pitch and who you pitch. I start off as I start off by saying, you know, the number one thing is that you need to watch local media if you want to be a part of local media. So it is kind of important to get to know what the media is showing, you know, what kinds of stories are they featuring on their newscast or what kind of guests are they having on their show? Because that will help you figure out how you would fit. And maybe there's a specific hour or half hour or a specific spot, you know, every week maybe they do a certain feature and you can learn, hey, I would really fit in with that. And that will help you when you're pitching yourself because it does give you some credibility that, hey, I've got this brand. And I've noticed that every Wednesday you're featuring small businesses on your show. I would love to be featured as part of that segment that you do every week. So my first piece of advice, I tell everyone, is that you kind of have to get to know how, how media works if you want to be a part of media. And then once you kind of figure out where you might fit in, you know, specifically talking about local TV news here, then you would reach out to whether it's the, the on camera host or reporter or the producer. And you can easily find out that information. Most news sites have all of their on air staff at least posted on their website and links to their email addresses. And then it's honestly takes a simple phone call sometimes or an email to reach out to the news desk of that station. Just call them and say, hey, I would love to work with the producer of this hour of the morning show, whatever it is. Can you connect me with them? Can you give me their direct line? Can you give me their email address and reach out to them and start pitching yourself that way?
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Yeah, I love that cheat code because it really one of the best like life and career cheat codes in general is just make people's life easier. And these people that are producing the show, they're running the show, they don't Want if you're like, a part of your job is they have to go out and find interesting people to have on the show. By pitching yourself to the show and saying, this is exactly why I should be on your show. I have this small business. We're doing this, we're giving back to the community in these ways I think it would fit. I actually have this idea on how we can integrate it into the Small Business Wednesday segment. You're making their job easier. You're doing their job for them. So it's making it a lot easier for them to say yes. And I think a lot of times we can feel like, oh, I don't want to be, like, asking for too much or whatever, but you're doing them a favor.
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100%. You are right on that. I can tell you that. When I was a morning show anchor, I received dozens of pitches a day from business owners, brands, publicists who worked with those businesses trying to get guests on our morning show. And the best pitches, the ones that I responded to that I ultimately would book a guest on, were the ones that outlined everything right away. This is who I am, this is what I do, and this is what I can do on your show, making it easier for me. Because, yes, I, as an anchor, along with the producers, we were looking for content to fill our show, and we were having to take time every day doing research, looking up businesses, looking up events that are going on, trying to come up with ideas and reaching out to people. So when you receive that pitch in your inbox that aligns with the kind of content that you want to have on the show, or you're looking for a specific type of guest for a certain segment once that's there in your inbox. Yes, of course, that makes it so much easier for you and easy to book that person.
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B
Another cheat code that you had that I found really interesting is to be available, like, don't do this if you're about to go travel out of town for three weeks.
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Yes. And that was a big one. Actually, when I was doing this webinar recently, talking about that, I had a friend who is in the news business and she had logged on to listen to some things and she was sending me messages while I was talking about that, saying, oh, my gosh, yes, I'm so glad you brought that up. That happens to me all the time, too, where we will receive a pitch from someone who wants to be on the show or they work with a certain business, they want to bring this business owner on the show. And then when we reach back out, they're like, oh, well, actually, like, she's not really prepared yet to be on, or she's about to be on vacation for a week or whatever it is. You know, the news works quickly, and the news is every single day. So they're constantly looking for guests and content to fill. There's cancellations all the time, so you would need people to come in last minute. And so, yes, that is a big piece of advice. If you are going to pitch your brand or business or yourself to be a guest or to be a feature on a new show, you want to make sure you are available right then and there. Start starting today, starting tomorrow. Like, if you do get that call, you need to know, like, okay, I'm available. I'm ready to go. I can do this now.
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Mm. That is so important. And I also love the fact that you're bringing up, like, it happens every day and things fall through. Like, they want to have someone that's going to be reliable, that can come on. I think that's true for a lot of mediums of trying to get yourself out there. I've seen a lot of people do that for speaking where they've said, yeah, maybe I didn't get booked at this event, but I'll be the understudy for anyone that might get sick. And there's always a speaker that's going to get sick. Or maybe you pitch yourself to the news and they're like, yeah, it doesn't really align for the content plan this week. And you're like, all right, well, I'm available in case anyone drops off. And you never know, they might be like, oh, well, actually, our person is sick. Someone had an emergency, and now we need something to fill this time. Another thing I'm curious about is, like, let's say in this example of a candle company, you have, let's say there's a segment on small businesses. Is there a way to get in, like, the sneaky, sneakier segments? Like, maybe you could do a health and wellness segment about, like, organic candles and how you're not, like, inhaling the fumes or something. Maybe you could do a gift segment. Like, can you get creative with the segments you're pitching yourself to?
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Yeah, that's definitely something I talk about as well. You know, when you're watching local news or you're finding out all the different things that they feature, come up with ways that your brand or business could work with different segments with different reporters, you know, like you said, yeah, they may have a reporter that Does a health segment every week, and those may fall under a line of more hard news stories. You know, but like you said, these. This type of candle that I make is better for your health. And there was a recent study that said if you're burning candles, it's really not good for you. So we decided to make them this way and they're better for you. So you're using that news hook of like that study and how you could align with the health story. But then also you could pitch again back to like a morning show that's maybe a little bit lighter news. And we've got the holidays coming up and these candles would make great gifts and you're supporting a local business and we've got a holiday market coming up where you can shop the candles. So coming up with different ways that you could pitch yourself to different people, to different news stations, to different segments, all of that, so that you can be a little flexible in making yourself work in so many different ways.
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Some of my favorite, like activations I've seen with local news is I have a friend that teaches dance classes and she had a really fun activation for the local news in Houston where she taught the anchors some dance moves. And that was. That was really fun.
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Yes. One of the biggest things I say to people is once you are pitching, you have to come up with what the viewers are going to see. We are talking about TV news, but even all forms of media, all mediums are talking about visuals these days. They want photos, they want video, something cool that's going to grab people's attention. So that's what I tell people to. When you are pitching or reaching out to local media, you need to include what will people see. And obviously, the more entertaining, the better. So if you have some really cool video of the products being made and make sure you include that a link or a clip of that video so that the person you're reaching out to knows what they're going to see or you tell them, this is what I can do. I can come on your show and I can teach your anchors this dance. And it will be super entertaining and fun for people to watch.
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I love that.
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Yeah.
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It's important to remember, too, that after the show is done, a lot of times social media strategy is they'll clip that, they'll put that on socials, so it's additional visibility. So, all right, I want to reach out to someone. How do I find the email or how do I find the phone number? Yeah.
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So obviously all places have websites. Start there, go on the website. If you don't find the specific email address or phone number that you're looking for, just call the main place. You know, call the news desk, call the news station. When I worked at a news station, our phones were ringing all day long. You can always find the main line for any form of media. So start there and say, you know, like we talked about, hey, I really need to get in touch with the producer of your Small Business Wednesday segment. Can you please put me in touch with that person? Can you give me their direct line? Can you give me their email address? Make sure you have their first and last name. Another thing is, with most businesses these days, your email address is the same for everyone. So if your email, you know that one person's email address is Lauren Petrowski@whatever.com the other person you're trying to reach out to, their email address is most likely going to be the same. So once you have one person's email address at a station or at a newspaper, you know that you'll be able to find the other email addresses. But it does take, you know, it's like a little bit of old school work where you got to get online and do maybe a few minutes of research trying to look for it, or just call the main line and ask for, for who you're trying to find.
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I think that's, yeah, super easy to do. I would also encourage you follow them on social media. Reach out on social media saying, hey, did you get my email? Hey, I want to follow up with this. Like, try to hit it from all angles.
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That's a big one too, following them on social media because you kind of get to know that person a little bit. And I can tell you that it always made a difference for me when I was receiving a pitch from someone and it was clear that they weren't just throwing this out there to some random person. Like, they knew who I was, they followed me on social media. They knew my interests, they knew the type of stories that I liked to report on, the type of segments that I did every day. So you get a little bit familiar with those people and that is a good place to start when you're reaching out to them.
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I love that. So one of my pet peeves is when people reach out to me and they're like, courtney, I've applied to so many jobs and I'm not getting any jobs. And I'm like, well, how, how many jobs did you apply for? And they're like, well, I applied to four jobs and nobody responded. So I Must be horrible and there's something wrong with me and whatever. And I'm like, well, you have to apply to like 100 jobs, maybe 500 jobs. So how, like, what's a reasonable number? Like, I. My goal is to get on a News program in Q1 of 2025. What's a reasonable number of, like, how much outreach do I need to do? Is it sending 10 emails? Is it sending a hundred? Is it sending a few? And then seeing the reaction, like, what would you recommend as far as volume?
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Obviously you don't want to bombard people and start emailing them every single day. But I would say a good place to start is figuring out every news station in your city. So there's probably going to be three to five news stations figuring out how each of those might work for you. Obviously, this could apply to print media too. So finding out if there's local publications. You know, we have several local magazines in Austin that highlight local businesses. Those be great to reach out to, but we're talking about TV news here specifically. You find out the news stations and then you find out how they might fit with you. Do they have a morning lifestyle show that might be a good fit for you? If you're in the health and wellness space, you know, is there a reporter who's doing health stories every week? So you want to start there. And for each station, I would say you want to have multiple contacts that you reach out to and find out, you know, who's the producer on that show, who's booking guests, but also who's the on air person during that time. Because as someone who was a news anchor and reporter, I was booking some of the guests, but we also had producers booking some of the guests. You're having multiple people working together to try to fill hours of content for a show. So you want to find out, okay, who's the on air person, who's the producer helping to book guests. Reach out to those people. And then, yeah, if there's someone else that might work for you for a different type of segment, who maybe works the evening news. So you definitely want to have two to three, four contacts that you could potentially reach out to at each station and pitch every couple weeks, you know, if you don't hear back, pitch it again. You know, like we were saying, it may not work one time and I was receiving again, dozens of pitches a day. So some of them may get overlooked or kind of pushed to the side or I would think, you know what, that would be great after the holidays. It's Very busy right now. I'll get back to them. And then they would reach out again a couple weeks later. And there were times where I'm like, oh, yes, thank you for reaching out to me. I had saved your email. I wanted to reach out to you again. So now I have the time and things are working out where I could book you as a potential guest on our show. So, yeah, we're talking. You've got multiple contacts at each station and you're reaching out to them every couple of weeks.
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Okay, that's really helpful. So we're going online, we're finding the email addresses of the people, we're finding the phone numbers we're calling in, we're getting the contacts of, I would say let's three to five news stations in your area, and I'm going to throw in three to five print publications. Then we're going to reach out to maybe four people from all of it. So that's like 40 emails you're sending because you're reaching out to 10 different publications after that. I would, yeah, probably, like, evaluate, did you get anything? What happened? What do you need to improve on? And then maybe you go to, you know, another person at all of these publications. So that's like 80 emails. Maybe you're following up one or two times. So if you're running this strategy pretty hard, where, like, realistically, that's like 200 emails you're sending, I just like to give a ballpark number because somebody's going to comment on this and be like, courtney, this didn't work for me. And they're going to send two emails. So I'm like, if you want to guarantee it's going to work, well, first of all, like, reach out to Lauren and she can help you craft your pitch and your strategy and all of that. But, yeah, like, go kind of hard, although it doesn't take that long to send. You know, you have a. You have a standard pitch. You're kind of just refining it for each. Each person. But let's, let's aim for 100 outreaches in Q in January for my listeners and then report back to me on how that worked.
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Yes. And I've got a pitch template too, where I help people with this email. But the important thing to take note of is that you do want your. Your pitch to be personalized. So you may have kind of a blanket email where you're describing who you are, what you do, what video you can send or that the viewer will see, but you want to make sure that you are Reaching out to that person by name. So not just hi, but hi, Lauren. And then, you know, making sure you've got the right media outlet in that email so that you're, you know, not getting those mixed up. Because I definitely received a lot of those pitches and I would, I would delete a lot of those because I'm like, okay, they've got the wrong person or the wrong media outlet. I don't even work at that station. So it is a lot of work. But just making sure you're changing each pitch so that is, it is a little personalized to the person you're reaching out to.
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This is super sneaky because there are PR agencies that charge like thousands and thousands of dollars a month for this information that you all are getting right now for $0, which is insane. Like, this is, this is really valuable information. Okay, so we talked about, like, I have this product. What about if I'm a person? I am, you know, a productivity coach. And I have this social media platform around being a productivity coach. I live in Austin. I want to get on local news. Can I do that or do I have to have a product?
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A
No, you could definitely do that. I mean, the harder part with that is that we are talking about TV news here where you do need to see something that's visual. You would have to come up with what is the viewer going to see. And a way to do that would maybe be interesting graphics so that, hey, I want to come on and talk about this and the work that I've done as a productivity coach and I've helped this many people and this is the feedback I'm getting. And we're going into the new year and people have certain career goals. So I think this would be a great segment as people are kicking off their goals for 2025. Here are like my top three pieces of advice. So you would just have those kind of written out and like maybe an interesting looking graphic that could be included. You know, it's really just about coming up with what are people going to see that goes along with this really important information that you have to give and spinning it so that it is newsworthy and timely right now.
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Yeah, I think something that you could do here too. I love how you're tying, like you've mentioned a few times, tying it back to something that's going on in the news. Or like a study, you could say there's this interesting new study that says blah, blah, blah about productivity. You know, as we're going into the new year, a lot of people are setting their New Year's resolutions. Here are three tips to actually accomplish your New Year's resolution. One, you can learn how to calendar block. Two, you can blah, blah. And then you're having the graphics to go along with it and you're saying, that would be a pretty solid pitch.
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Totally. What could also help you with that is having social media as a backup where you say, hey, I did this TikTok video or this reel and it got all of these views and comments or people asked to see more. So people are definitely interested in this topic. And that's a good starting point too, for you to pitch. But also if you were booked as a guest where you could mention that and you know, follow me on Instagram and TikTok for more pieces of advice and tips on this. But yeah, again, going back to making it easier for those in the news business where you're kind of like giving them a little gift, like, hey, here's my idea. We've got New Year's resolutions coming up, people setting goals and intentions for 2025. I'm doing this. I'm talking about this. I could come on and, yeah. Give you these three ideas for people. Boom. Done. Great segment.
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Yeah. I think that the biggest cheat code here is to provide value because, no, nobody's gonna wanna have you on if you're just like, hey, I'm a productivity coach. Buy my services, buy my coaching, whatever. No, no, no, they're gonna have you on if you're offering something of value to the audience. I love that.
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Yeah, definitely.
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Okay. Some. One tip that, I think you mentioned it at your webinar and that is to like tag the news organizations in your posts. I think that's so smart. Why? Why, why are we doing that and what does that lead to?
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Yeah, well, because you're getting their attention right away. And if you featured something in a post that is either super local and a great local feature, or it's a product that looks really cool and it's great video or photos, or back to being a productivity coach and you're putting out these three ideas for people for goal setting for 2025, and it's like getting a lot of traction. You know, a news station may see that and think, huh, that would be a great guest, or that would be a great feature, or that would be a great story to do, or that would be great for us to feature on our own social media. You know, all media outlets have their own social media pages. So even if they may not be able to book you as a Guest or come do an interview with you. They may think that your video is really cool and they may ask, hey, can we share this? Or you know, can we repost this? And then that's just, you know, more, more views for you there.
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B
Yeah, I think what's really important here is the concept of multi threading. So you are reaching out to multiple people in multiple ways. So you're not just sending one email to one person. It's you're sending an email and a DM on social and you're tagging them and maybe there's a phone call and maybe there's a follow up and Right. Like there's all of these different ways that way you're really reinforcing. And guys, I talk about this all the time. But the biggest indicator of buyer behavior is familiarity. It does. Like if you're going to go buy dish soap, the number one predictor of the dish soap you're going to buy is not price, it is not ingredients, it is not trust, it is not how much you like it, it's not any of that. It's familiarity that happens at a subconscious level. So any decision making happens on familiarity. So if your name is starting to buzz around in the newsroom and people are seeing you and they're familiar with you, it doesn't matter if you're a huge creator, have a huge business or tiny. What matters is that you're in their consciousness and you're familiar to them and it's a lot more likely that they're going to be like, all right, yeah, let's, let's, let's have you on.
- [24:43]
A
Yeah, definitely. It's all about that visibility and making sure that people do recognize you and keep you in their mind. An example again of tagging news media. There's a small business that I had talked to that I know you're familiar with too, where she provides a bachelorette party services for people. And then randomly she decided to add another service to her business and thought, okay, we'll see if this sticks. She set it up, posted a cool photo that looked great, tagged news media and it was timely then. And they thought, oh yeah, actually that would be great. We'd love to share this on our news station and talk about this new service that you're adding. And again, that's just more publicity and visibility for your business.
- [25:30]
B
Super cool. I also have a lot of listeners that run events, maybe conferences, events, seminars, stuff like that. A lot of friends that do maybe like kind of networking pop ups. So what do you recommend for Events. Like, how can events get in front of news?
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A
Mm. Well, local news often highlights events if they think it might be something obviously that viewers would find interesting. A lot of nonprofit events get highlighted because of course, they want to share how people are helping others in the community. But I would say if it has any sort of something different or unique, like, oh, I've never seen something like this at an event, you know, or like a certain theme, or if it's at an interesting venue or any. Anything that could make it unique or different, where you haven't really heard of people doing that before or again, where it would be great video or if it is timely, like, hey, this is an event of like set, you know, intention setting for the new year. So if you're struggling with how to start or how to improve your business or where to go, like, this is an event that we want to tell you about as we're kicking off 2025.
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B
Something I've also noticed and tell me if this is true or not. But I've seen this pattern in what news is promoting. And it seems like if an event, if it benefits, the more people it benefits to promote an event, the more they're going to promote it. So if you have an event with 100 different vendors that are all small businesses, like, that is way more likely to get promoted than just your small business, small pop up. So the more you can collaborate, the more if all of those vendors say, hey, we want to talk about this, like they're excited, they're all pitching. Like, that's so much more likely if you get other people involved and it benefits other people.
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A
Yeah, definitely. Because a lot of times on those local news shows or lifestyle shows in the morning, they need multiple guests to come on and talk about this. And so the more potential guests they have, if they're going to focus, let's say their morning reporter is going to focus on that event that's happening that weekend. Well, she may have four different live shots in that morning show. So she needs four potentially different things to talk about. So if they could have four different vendors who are offering four different types of services or have different products that they can showcase, that's four interesting, unique and different news segments. So, yeah, I think the more vendors, the more people involved definitely would help to have a better chance of getting publicity.
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B
Okay, so we got on the news, we're going on the news. We got booked. Now how do you prep? How do you show up?
- [28:17]
A
Oh, and that's a whole other. That's a whole other thing. But, yeah, you know, I. The number one thing I say to people is be the expert. You are the expert. Obviously, for the majority of people out there, speaking on camera or public speaking isn't something that they're super comfortable with. It's completely normal to think that you might be nervous or to be worried about that. But I just remind people there is a reason that you're there. Be the expert. I don't really know about your business or your service. You know about your business and your service that you're offering. I'm just here to ask the questions. You're here to tell me about it. So you're there for a reason. So get in tune with the fact that you're the expert here. I always use this example. My husband is in real estate. He in no way is involved with media, and he is not comfortable with public speaking or being on camera or being on tv. But he once had an opportunity to be a part of a TV show that talked about home building, remodeling, that type of thing. He obviously was worried about it and nervous, but you could tell he got comfortable once he really got into it, speaking about what needed to be done on this home because he's an expert when it comes to homes. So he knows everything about building homes, remodeling homes, all of that. Obviously, the thought of being on camera or talking in front of people made him nervous, but once he got going, he's an expert in that field. So just try to remember to be the expert. You're the expert. There's a reason you're there, and I'm just there to ask the questions. The person you know in the media is just there to ask questions.
- [29:58]
B
Yeah. That is so, so helpful. This has been such an incredible tactical. So many. So many tactical, incredible cheat codes. Thank you, Lauren. Okay, y'all, if you like this episode, you would love, love my Patreon, okay? You get exclusive access to me, exclusive content, tons of other resources, and a lot of juicy shit, okay? So I hope to see you on my patre.