692 Lisa Simone Richards:

Do you feel like you’re on an endless treadmill of content creation and posting to social media and getting more and more frustrated because it’s not bringing you all the new customers you want to attract?  There IS a more effective way to boost your visibility and my guest today – Lisa Simone Richards – shares her ABCs of visibility with practical tips on a more effective path to boost awareness, buzz and credibility.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet a PR and Visibility strategist for online coaches and other entrepreneurs who want to get seen everywhere … to help grow their businesses.

Lisa Simone Richards teaches the insider secrets on how to get exposure and reach more people without spinning your wheels on social media or wasting money on Facebook ads – with free workshops, masterclasses and mentorship program. Today we dig deep into practical strategies that are manageable and achievable no matter where you are on your entrepreneurial journey.

We live in what I like to call a time of “infobesity” – so much information bombarding us from every direction it can be overwhelming, and seemingly impossible to get seen and heard in all that noise if you’re building a business.

Bottom line, everyone in business needs a manageable and effective strategy to boost their visibility – in a targeted way across multiple touchpoints – so we can all attract our exact would-be customers who will benefit from our products or services.

For most entrepreneurs and coaches, building brand visibility seems easier said than done. But there is a proven way to boost awareness, buzz and credibility without spinning your wheels on social media.

Lisa Simone Richards is a PR and visibility strategist, who focuses her work with online coaches, and listen on because she gives practical tips on everything from cultivating relationships with journalists to get valuable earned media to how to craft one pitch that works with different audiences. Lisa spent years proving her acumen from small, beige cubicle, helping brands like Staples, Virgin Mobile, and Crayola build worldwide recognition. She says she got bored and wanted to make an impact by helping solopreneurs and small business owners leverage

visibility strategies that had been reserved exclusively for million-dollar businesses to help them grow and become recognized industry experts.

Lisa says that in a matter of months (sometimes even weeks!), her clients have built their expert authority status, getting featured on Forbes, CNBC, FOX, Inc., MSN, Yahoo, and hundreds of other major media outlets.

And these days, thanks to all the relationships she’s built, and without even ‘pitching’ herself for a single opportunity, she says she get opportunities landing in her inbox, asking her to speak on stages across Canada and the US, on podcasts, TV and multiple media outlets.

Today you’ll hear everything about how to go deep on one strategy that puts you in front of targeted new audiences without burnout or overwhelm. Be sure to keep the conversation going after the episode by joining us over on Podopolo, where you can share your perspectives and ask Lisa for advice in the comments section of Wings there.

Now let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Lisa Simone Richards.

Melinda Wittstock:

Lisa, welcome to Wings.

Lisa Simone Richards:

I’m so excited to be here, Melinda. I’m so excited for everyone else to get to hear our conversation today.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, me too, because more of us need to stand up and shine our light and be visible. And of course, you help women with that. What are your ABCs of visibility?

Lisa Simone Richards:

One of the things people come to me really often and say is, “Lisa, I want to be on Forbes, or Lisa, I’d love to be seen on Oprah.” And I always get to dial it back first. What’s the intention of getting seen? So this is where the ABCs of visibility come back in. I like to make sure that we’re getting visibility for the right reasons and based around the results that we want to create. So the first thing I like to ask people, are you interested in creating A, that stands for awareness? Are you looking for your ideal plan to know that you actually exist and stop being the best kept secret? That’s going to influence where’s the right place for you to get noticed.

Are you looking to create B, which stands for buzz? So I like to think about this like when a movie’s coming out. I just went to go see the Batman a few nights ago with my husband and we didn’t just hear about the movie once or twice. The actors were all over YouTube, Entertainment Tonight, TMZ. This person’s in a new relationship. These people just broke up. You’ve couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about it. So let’s say you’re an entrepreneur with a new program launch, a new product coming on to market. You want to be able to create this same amount of buzz.

Finally, C stands for credibility. So maybe you’re in the stage where you already have businesses going, it’s fine, but there are certain people in the industry that maybe you’ve always looked up to. You’ve attended their conferences, you’ve bought their programs. And now you’re at a stage where you want your name to be said in the same sentences as theirs. So that’s when you’re in the stage of looking for credibility. So you might be looking for A, awareness, B, buzz, or C, credibility. And if I can, Melinda, let me give you a really quick story and example of something that’s looked like in the past for me.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that, yes.

Lisa Simone Richards:

Years ago, I used to work very specifically within the fitness industry. I remember speaking at a fitness conference and a number of trainers who were looking for new training clients, some people who maybe weren’t super familiar with a gym, just wanted to get some clear direction, they would share with me, “Lisa, I want to be featured in Strong Fitness Magazine. I want to be in Muscle & Fitness Hers.” And I was like, “Okay, your gym client who’s never been to the gym before is not reading body building magazines, they’re reading something way more gentle. Maybe something like POPSUGAR, Self, Shape. That’s the place where you’re going to get into the people who you actually want to be able to work with. So the places that we love may not be the places that our ideal client is paying attention to, and that’s why I find it so important to start with those ABCs to make sure the actions that you’re taking are congruent with the results that you want.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. 100%. This is interesting because we start with these aspirational goals because we see that, oh, another entrepreneur was in Entrepreneur Magazine or was on the cover of Wired or like whatever it is. And so these are kind of aspirational goals. But gosh, you got to start somewhere. I want to talk about the buzz piece for a moment because the Batman example that you gave, they were sort of everywhere and obviously with a big budget. So practically speaking, how do you achieve that kind of buzz as a solopreneur or as young startup that doesn’t have bags of money where you want to get this sense of reinforcement, sort of like you’re everywhere?

Lisa Simone Richards:

Yeah. I’m all about teaching people how to leverage other people’s platforms and how to get earned media. So even at its core, we can think back into let’s say take a look at your launch calendar this year. Let’s say you know that you have something coming out to market 60 days from now. So all you need to do is simply reverse engineer, knowing that about 30 days coming up to my course, I want to be able to have as many people talking about it as possible. Let’s keep it simple. Rather than having you run all over the place with different marketing strategies if you don’t have let’s say a team that’s supporting you there just yet, what’s one strategy that you can go deep on that’s going to help you show up in a bunch of places?

So maybe, for example, you might spend 30 days focusing on pitching 30 podcasts in the hopes of landing a third of them. If you’re able to book 10 podcasts that all went live within the month leading up to your launch, that gives you huge searchability. And we know one person who’s listening to one podcast is likely listening to about eight on average. So what would it be like if let’s say you were a preconception health coach who worked with moms on their fertility and you had a launch coming up? And the month before, you got on to eight different fertility podcasts. How much would that build all three of those, the awareness, the buzz and the credibility?

So, we can just pick one strategy and go deep on that. If you have the means to be able to stretch a little bit more and maybe you have a team that’s supporting you, I always love the idea of creating a healthy media mix. And what I mean by this is your ideal client is consuming information in one of three ways. They’re likely reading it, watching it or listening to it. So are you able to get at least a hand in each of those pods? So no matter how your client likes to consume information, maybe you’re showing up having written a guest blog post for Reader’s Digest, and then maybe you’ve been featured on a few podcast interviews, and then maybe you’ve done an Instagram live with POPSUGAR, for example. Those are great ways to get out on all three different platforms in a way that you’re leveraging somebody else’s preexisting audience.

Melinda Wittstock:

Ah, this is so important because building your own audience, gosh, takes time. And you mentioned the magical word, leverage, and really understanding that. So it comes into a whole bunch of mindset issues for women here and how to kind of unpack these because we often fall into the trap of thinking we have to do it all ourselves, and we don’t. And so this concept of leverage, of like what are the other platforms that are already reaching exactly the people that you want to reach, and then figuring out how to do that I think is a great piece of advice. And so when you’re working with your clients, what are the kind of specifics or how do you walk through that in helping them understand where their audience actually is?

Lisa Simone Richards:

Well, one of the first things I always encourage them to do is to ask. So many times as entrepreneurs, we’re in our own head coming up with ideas and whatnot. I always say to them, let’s do an ideal client avatar interview. Round up three or five of your favorite clients that you have absolutely loved working with and ask all of them when you’re… Let’s keep going with this fertility example. When you’re looking up information on how to get pregnant, where are you searching? Are there certain influencers you’re following? Are there certain podcasts you’re listening to? Like even don’t even fill in the blank for them, let them tell you. And between five people, you’re going to start hearing a few things come up over and over again. And that tells us, perfect, if I want to be able to get more clients like individual A, this is where I can start focusing my efforts on showing up because it’s going to bring in more people just like them.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh gosh, exactly, exactly, exactly. And this is what this is all about is you want to create momentum.

Lisa Simone Richards:

100%, because, well, this is the thing that I love to even give an example of. I’m a publicist. I spend all day playing around with different visibility strategies. That’s what I spent the last 20 years doing and it’s fun for me. I, on the other hand, understand for a lot of my clients and a lot of business owners, this is one angle and one aspect of their business. They don’t want to be doing over and over again. It’s actually far more efficient for a lot of owners to have a lather, rinse, repeat strategy.

One of the things I love to teach my clients is let’s come up with a pitch that you can use over and over again, something that’s going to work for video, for podcasts, for websites, so that you can just exhaust yourself pitching it to all these different resources. And number one, it may makes it so easy for you. It’s the same message over and over again. Number two, it’s creating consistency for that client who’s thinking about working with you. They’ve heard the buzz about your name all over the place, and now they’re actually typing your name into Google to see if you are the person they’re going to select to work with. How powerful it is in building trust with them that they see that you’re talking about this consistently and creating this expertise for yourself.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that is so good because, again, it’s another example of leverage. Create it once, use it multiple times.

Lisa Simone Richards:

Yeah. If I can even actually use a quote that I love here, and I want to attribute this to Lisa Sasevich. I heard this at one of her conferences in 2017 and she said something she learned from her dad was don’t change your talk, change your audience. I absolutely love that line. So why not come up with a consistent message that you can easily use over and over and over again and just work on positioning it in front of new people because it’s new to them. So for me, for my clients, yes, totally bored of my messaging, I’ve been talking about the same thing consistently for years, but every time people find me, it’s their first time hearing this.

Then they may hear it a second or a third time before it starts to sink in for them. So it’s actually just a win-win all around when you can really nail in on that message that attracts the right client. It starts to create momentum for them in terms of creating a solution to their problems. And then of course, as they want that momentum to continue, where else would they turn to but naturally come to you?

Melinda Wittstock:

And so when your clients come to you, like what’s their state of mind, are they scattered and overwhelmed and like, oh my God, I try to keep my Instagram going and I got to be over on Twitter over here and I got to be doing this and, oh my God, I’ve got to become a speaker.

Lisa Simone Richards:

I would say there are two main things that are coming up for them. Number one, 100%, you hit it there Melinda. I am tired of putting all this time into social media. I feel like I’m doing reels and TikToks. And then I just downloaded the latest app, and I don’t have time to be doing this content all day. Actually I kind of hate it. That’s the first thing that I hear. And then the second perception that a lot of people come to me with is like, “Lisa, I love this idea of what you’ve talked about with earned media, getting on podcasts, being interviewed on various websites and blogs, et cetera, but I don’t think I’m there yet. I’m not quite ready for that. Maybe in a year from now once I’ve done a little more work, maybe once I’ve gotten another certification, then I’ll be there, but I’m not there yet.”

So I absolutely love to dispel that myth because if people knew how easy, how incredibly easy it is to get on television. I have clients who’ve never been on TV in their lives and they’ll get on television within two weeks. One of those individuals has done over 50 segments in the last two years. But everybody feels like, “Oh, well, you need to be Jillian Michaels for that. You need to have a publicist for that.” And it’s like, no, really you actually just need to figure out who’s the gatekeeper who has access to the platform, whether it’s a TV show, whether it’s a podcast, and most importantly, how can you bring value to the work that they do?

If you want to get access to this TV show, this website, this magazine, this podcast, how can you show up and say, “Hey, I have this idea that’s going to enrich your audience, would it be interesting for me to come on, share this content and help them get better at whatever their mission is?” And that’s the mistake that I see the most. People are often like, “Hey, I’m releasing this book. Hey, I’m launching this course. Can I come on your platform?” But when you reframe it as, “Hey, I’d love to be able to deliver value and start creating that momentum that you started talking about earlier.” Make sure that everybody who leaves from listening to the podcast or watching the show has had some sort of quick win. Once that ball starts rolling, we don’t want it to stop. And like I said earlier, where’s a natural place that they’re going to go to next when they want to continue with that momentum?

Melinda Wittstock:

100%. I mean, I think a lot of entrepreneurs, and particularly women, we can so easily fall into the trap of the credential-itis, like not ready yet, like as you were saying that we think we have to prove more, we have to do more. We’re kind of planning for the day when we will. But honestly, just go. Build the plane as you’re flying it. Easier said than done though, right?

Lisa Simone Richards:

Well, I won’t actually even comment on perception; perception of ourselves, perception of how maybe our friends and family see us, and perception of how our clients see us. I remember when I started my business, so I had a side hustle in 2015. I had a full-time job and I was side hustling with a PR agency. And lo and behold, I got downsized and released from my full-time job. So I was like, “Okay, you know what? My side hustle is making the exact same income. I’m just going to go all in on this.” And my mom, my number one cheerleader in the world, my best friend ever, she was like, “Well, maybe you should go get your masters now. Maybe you should get one more job.” And I was like, “Love you. I know that you want the best for me and you just want me to be safe, but I’m going in on this.”

And a few months later into the business, I’m in publicity. So obviously I know a bunch of people, photographers, magazine editors, publishers, et cetera. And one of my contacts said to me, “Hey, Lisa, we’re actually doing an issue all about fitness entrepreneurs and we would love to highlight you.” So they ended up profiling me in the magazine. It was probably a three page spread. I had a shoot with a photographer, full color images and everything. And when I took that magazine to my mom, who, again, she’s witness to my education and the jobs that I’ve done and the results that I’ve created, she’s seen it all. She knows what I can do. But when she saw that magazine, there was something that shifted for her that was like, “Okay, she’s got this.”

Like I wasn’t just like her little girl trying to do something. Like there was hardcore evidence in a magazine that I was doing it. And how different would it feel if we saw ourselves reflected in that kind of situation? How powerful is it when our friends and our family comment on our Facebook wall like, “Oh my God, I saw you on forbes.com, or I was on msm.com and your picture showed up.” So there’s that perception that also creates the confidence in, okay, well, if I’ve shown up this way, this obviously is who I am. This is going to change the story that I say about myself. And now I’m going to have the confidence to show up differently and in a more confident way to keep growing into the person I envision myself being.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that. It’s just really like all things entrepreneurship. It’s about being comfortable outside of your comfort zone.

Lisa Simone Richards:

One thing I talk about often is I love to stretch people, but I’m not into strangling them. Hey, I have only child syndrome. You can say, “Hey, Lisa, the keynote speaker at this conference just canceled. Could you hop on stage in five minutes?” And I would be like 100%. I’ll get on stage. I’ll be like, “Hey everyone, put down your phones, turn off Instagram. I’m here, let’s all pay attention to me now.” Somebody else would be terrified. 90% of the population probably wouldn’t be into that. So it’s all about figuring out, okay, if you don’t have only child syndrome, maybe you’re better off doing a guest blog post or speaking on a podcast. It’s all about figuring out what works for you personally, and again, coupling it with those business goals that we talked about earlier, and then doing something that’s going to really nicely marry the two together.

Melinda Wittstock:

100%. So we all get into this realm of we are told we’ve got to content market, we’ve got to create all this content, we’ve got to do all this stuff. Like almost every business now these days feels the pressure to be a media company as well as a company. Talk to me about the difference between being that content machine, getting all that out there, and visibility.

Lisa Simone Richards:

This is absolutely one of my favorite questions and I could get like on a soapbox and talk for hours on this one. And I actually, I left a bit of a ranty boxer for a client yesterday, so let’s tell that story. So the difference between content and visibility. There’s this misunderstanding in the market that if you build it, they will come. So maybe five years ago you could do a post on Instagram and use #BusinessCoach and that could bring people your way. And I feel like a lot of online entrepreneurs have this belief that if I do more reels, if I do more posts, if I do a TikTok, that people are going to be attracted to me. If I just put out content, people will come.

And the truth is content, what we’re putting on those social platforms, that’s what’s going to build that know, like, and trust factor with our existing followers, with the people who are already in front of us. And we also know that thanks to the algorithm, that content isn’t even reaching all of them, maybe just a quarter of them. So content is what you put in front of your existing audience, I keep stressing that word, and it’s for nurturing them.

Visibility, on the other hand, is this is getting in front of new people. We can’t expect to sell the same product to 10 people over and over again and see our sales increase. We need to make sure we’re consistently bringing new people into our email funnels, into our Facebook groups, onto our social platforms. So what are you doing to make sure you’re reaching new people all the time? A lot of people focus on paid media. So that’s doing Facebook ads, Google ads, which we know can be a very expensive game because typically you do need a professional agency to run that for you.

Most people are focusing on the social media, their own platform, which is free, and they’re just creating content on there. And the boxer rant that happened yesterday with one of my clients, and just like we were talking about, Melinda, a little bit of that fear of putting yourself out there, she has a podcast pitch that she wrote maybe about a month ago and she’s just so nervous to hit send on it and send it to the host. And she messaged me yesterday and she’s like, “Maybe rather than sending it, I’m going to start my own podcast.” And I’m like, “No, you are not. Because then you’re going to need to come up with an intro, come up with your content schedule, figure out what your own work is going to be, figure out how to publish it onto Libsyn. Like you need to get comfortable having this conversation before you go down shiny object syndrome and do the wrong thing first.”

So that’s a little bit of my little rant on content versus visibility. But we really do in essence need to be making sure we’re doing both of them. We need to be bringing new people into our world consistently. And then, of course, we have to build that know, like, and trust factor with them. So if we’re sleeping on visibility, we can’t be surprised that our sales are stagnant.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. And so digging deeper then into that visibility piece, you mentioned a couple of great hacks of talking to your existing customers and figuring out where they’re looking for things and then reaching that. Figuring out other channels, whether it’s a television show, whether it’s a magazine, whether it’s a blog or whatever that reaches those exact audiences, and pitching them. You mentioned the gatekeepers. How does one get to know the gatekeepers and develop a relationship with them? Like how important is it for entrepreneurs to sort of start making friends with journalists and producers and bookers?

Lisa Simone Richards:

I love that you asked that question because it takes me back to when I launched my first program back in 2015, my first digital course. It was actually early 2016, because I remember my tax refund funded that whole thing. It was called Make Media Friends. And it didn’t sell because no entrepreneur wakes up in the middle of the night and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I need to make media friends.” So we’ve learned a thing or two about positioning since then. But I love that you asked that question because relationships are so important. I like to say that I am intentional and strategic, but I’m also very genuine.

Lisa Simone Richards:

I even think about just to show the relevance of how these principles are very tri-tested and true, 20 years ago when I got started in PR, it was very heavily focused on traditional media because social didn’t exist. We barely had Twitter. So it was all about print magazines and newspapers and television. And now that’s evolved. But even back in the day, 20 years ago, I would be like, okay, you know what? I’m working for a fitness company and my CEO would love to be featured on in the Globe and Mail, which is one of Canada’s two national newspapers. And I know that she’d also love to be featured on a television show called City Line, which is still Canada’s longest running daytime television show for women.

So I specifically sought out who is the producer for City Line, who is the fitness editor at the Globe and Mail. So as you’re listening to this, start reverse engineering, what is that place your ideal client avatar said they’re paying attention to? Okay, who’s the producer, who is the host, who is the writer for that publication, because that’s the person you need to know.

So I started doing my research on who those individuals were. At the time, Twitter was the thing. So I remember, specifically let’s use the Globe and Mail as an example. The fitness editor for the national newspaper was on Twitter and I followed her. And she has a cat, and I have two cats. She mentioned something about the cat. I had mentioned about mine. We had a few hahas back and forth, and eventually I sent her an email and I was like, “Hey, I’ve been following you on Twitter. We’ve been talking about our cats. I know you’re the fitness writer. I work for this company. Had an idea for a story, would that be a fit?” And we had a relationship for a good 10 years after that. We all also got featured in the newspaper twice and a bunch of other places she wrote for at the same time. So how awesome that you can create a strategic and thoughtful win-win, but really build genuine relationships along the way.

Melinda Wittstock:

So there’s something you did there that really deserves calling out. Lisa, I mean, you were willing to talk about cats for a few cycles.

Lisa Simone Richards:

Oh, I could talk about cats all day. Don’t even get me started.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I’m like that with dogs. Same thing. But you developed a rapport that wasn’t directly about the sale. Like had you just approached her cold and said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” it might not have worked as well. But you already had sort of relationship that you spent some time investing in on a personal level. And Twitter, I think, still works. All journalists are on Twitter and increasingly journalists are measured by their Twitter followings and their interactions and all of that kind of stuff. And so where I look at this, I think it’s really about empathy. What does the journalist need? What does the TV producer need? How are you going to help them succeed in their jobs? And the moment that you’re pitching stories that actually assist them, they’ll be thanking you actually.

Lisa Simone Richards:

Yeah. And even if we’re playing with the Twitter subject here, which is really fun because a lot of the time the conversation goes to the shinier things like Facebook and Instagram, so I love Twitter. Number one, fantastic resource for media. And something you could do is like really, really simple just for anyone listening who wants to get started. Identify five places you would love to be featured. Follow those outlets on Twitter, follow the people who are writing the stories you would love to see. Have a little list for it and check in once a day.

Lisa Simone Richards:

One of my clients who graduated from my program maybe about two months ago has been doing this and she saw that the editor from Chatelaine Magazine. So I’m in Canada, so we have a lot of Canadian references here. Chatelaine is a national women’s magazine print in digital, typically about that 35+ segment. And the editor was like, “Hey, I’m looking for information on X, Y, and Z for a story I’m working on.” And my client was like, “Yep, I’ve totally got that. I can give you all these things. What email address do you want it at?” They’ve gone back and forth and now she’s going to be in the magazine simply just because she was paying attention to, hey, what’s this person out there saying that they want? Awesome, let me give it to you.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s fantastic. And there are other things too. You can leverage things like HARO. I mean, do you use that as well, Help A Reporter Out?

Lisa Simone Richards:

Yeah. Back when I was doing PR for my clients, of course, HARO was a big resource for me. Another one I learned about recently is freedomwithwriting.com. There are a lot of paid opportunities there as well. Now I’m in a stage where I prefer to teach people how to do it versus doing it on their behalf. But there are really good tools that people can start putting into practice where these opportunities are just fed into your inbox. So really circling back to what I was saying earlier, visibility’s a lot easier than people think. Getting exposure is way easier than people think.

You mentioned helpareporter.com. And for those who may not be familiar, if you go to helpareporter.com and sign up as a source, not a journalist, as a source, you’re going to get emails three times a day with various media opportunities. One of my clients signed up for this service and it’s free. She’s in fitness and an editor from POPSUGAR, which is one of the largest websites for millennials for fitness. More visitors than Refinery 29, Vogue, and some other huge site combined. One of the editors liked her pitch and she ended up being on POPSUGAR eight times from that. And they invited her to be on their Instagram account, which had just under a million followers at the time. How powerful is that, because she signed up for a free resource, did a good job and then developed a relationship where she showed up over and over and over again.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. So let’s get into the nitty-gritties of the pitch. So say you have the relationship, so you know who you’re targeting, you know the outlet you’re targeting, you know the person, like the producer, journalist, et cetera, the editor, whatever, and you’ve got that relationship and it’s now time to pitch your idea. What’s the best way. What are the dos and don’ts?

Lisa Simone Richards:

So number one, a lot of people are like, “Lisa, teach me how to write a press release.” And I have to be like, “The press release has gone the way of the dinosaur.” Unless you’re releasing something like an Apple iPhone that has a bunch of specs on it, typically entrepreneurs in our industries aren’t going to need press releases. We’re simply going to be writing a pitch, which is a basic email saying, “Hey, this is who I am. This is a valuable idea I have for your audience and this is how I could see it playing out. Would this be helpful for them? If yes, let me know and let’s connect.” So when I’m writing a pitch, I have a document called the seven pillars of the perfect pitch. I’m going to do my best to skim over them briefly so that people can follow along.

Lisa Simone Richards:

When you’re writing a pitch, here are a few best practices to follow. Number one, start with a brief introduction, keyword brief. Example for me. “Hi Melinda, my name’s Lisa Simone Richards. I’m a PR and visibility strategist and I work with online coaches who want to get exposure.” Very briefly in a sentence. It says exactly what I do, who I help, the results that they get. I did not say, “Hey Melinda, I went to Western University and then I went to Humber College in PR. And now I live in Toronto and I got married last September.” Because I got one of those emails the other day and I was like, “And we’re going to hit the lick because I don’t have time for all of that.” So we just want to briefly say who we are, give a little bit of context. If I can add a pro tip here, hyperlink your name to your website so that the other person doesn’t need to go on Google and search you. They can click and creep directly.

Number two as we’re going through how to do an effective pitch, show some connection, show some familiarity. You don’t want someone on the receiving end to think that this is a copy and paste pitch that has been sent to 20 other people. Show that you have read their articles, listened to their podcast, watched their television show. Comment or compliment something that they recently put out there to show that you truly are engaged with their content. Then you can move into maybe highlighting a gap for the audience. Saying something along the lines of, “I know that your listeners are working on creating X, Y, and Z, or your viewers want A, B and C. And I had an idea on how to support them with that.” And then share what that idea is.

Break down what would the takeaways be at the end of an episode, at the end of an article, at the end of an interview and ask them, “Would this be valuable? Let me know, and I would be happy to connect and create some value for your audience.” So just really briefly taking them through who you are, the pain point for your audience, the value you’d like to offer and how you’d like to be able to bridge that gap.

And even one more thing, if you’re really dying to show off your expertise, you want to be able to have a unique selling proposition. Why would this person choose you for this interview over somebody else? So you could briefly say something like, “As a publicist, I’ve helped my clients go from 400,000 a year to 4 million a year. I’ve helped them grow from 30 locations to 100 locations. Over 20 years, I’ve learned a thing or two, and I’d love to be able to condense it in a 30 minute chat. Would that be valuable for you?” You can really briefly say some of your accomplishments to help them understand, okay, this is exactly why I would want to talk with this person over anyone else.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that’s awesome because again, you’re making it convenient and easy for them. Lisa, I’m a recovering journalist myself, and I remember way back in the day I was on the Times of London writing about business and then I was their media correspondent, and I would get pitches on deadline. Like I’d be trying to get three articles written right coming up to like first edition, six o’clock deadline. And the phone would be ringing and I’d pick it up because I’d be expecting a call from a source. It was really important. And it’d be someone saying, “Hey, we have a press conference three weeks from now.” And like they’d pretty much get hung up on.

I mean, I wasn’t rude, but I was like, “I really can’t talk right now. Thank you.” Click. And so there was just a lack of understanding of the context of the reporter. Like what is their day like. When is a good time to pitch them? And also just like knowing the type of stories. Like everything you’ve been talking about, knowing the type of stories that they’re interested in. Knowing how you can advance that reporter. So it all comes down to empathy in the end. And so these days you say that you’ve moved kind of from the doing and you’ve done this for a lot of big brands, a lot of folks where you’ve been doing it, and now you help other people do it for themselves. How important is it that you do it for yourself as opposed to hiring an agency to do it for you?

Lisa Simone Richards:

Okay. I feel like I’m one person who can really speak to this because I’ve owned an agency. Part of the reason I was inspired to open my own PR agency back in 2015 is because I knew if you went to one of the big box agencies like the one where I used to work, where our clients included Staples, Crayola, and Virgin Mobile, they would say, “100%, we would love to have you as a client. It’s $10,000 a month on a 12 month retainer. Just go ahead and sign here and we’ll be happy to work with you.” For a lot of new businesses, I know that that’s not within the budget.

So, I was inspired to start my agency and I instead did shorter term retainers because I know I can create results pretty quick. So I would instead do something like maybe a three month retainer, maybe around $3,000 a month. So just around that 10 grand price point. So it was a lot more palatable for a business. However, at the end of those three months, even if they got some cool segments, all the relationships stayed with me. At the end of those three months, they didn’t know how to be able to do it over again. So they would hire me again. And that’s great for me, but not so great for them.

So, what I’ve been able to figure out is that pretty much over the course of six months, I can share with someone, “Here’s how you find anyone you need to know. Here’s how you can come up with an endless bank of content ideas that are going to work for their platform. Here’s how you effectively write a pitch and then they can do it over and over and over again.” So one of my favorite stories actually, I even just got off a call with one of my former clients this week. I brag about her all the time, Fran. She was one of my first six month clients in this new iteration of a program that I’ve done for the last year.

Over six months, I taught her all the ins and outs of it. And during our time together, she booked I think two television segments, maybe two podcasts. I think she wrote two articles. And now five months since graduating, maybe three months since graduating the program, sorry, she’s gone on and she’s booked her dream stage to speak at, she’s booked more podcasts, she’s getting paid to write articles for Reader’s Digest the UK edition. Like how much powerful is it that now she can do it all over again as much as she needs to for the next few years as long as she’s running her business, rather than needing to rely on paying me every single month to bring these opportunities to her.

Melinda Wittstock:

So do you work with individuals or is this a group kind of thing? I mean, how much is your training custom crafted for the particular business?

Lisa Simone Richards:

Yeah, I do work with people within a six month mentorship container. So we have a really intimate group, usually about 10 of us, that are going through the six month trainings of what I call the five Ps for positioning, publicity and profit. Taking you all the way from really understanding what that ideal client avatar wants and how to position that as a solution, all the way to how do you get publicity and then monetize that publicity.

Melinda Wittstock:

Is there any one-on-one time? For anyone who’s listening to this that says, okay, I’d really like to work with you one-on-one, do you do that?

Lisa Simone Richards:

I don’t anymore. One of the things that I found the most valuable is being a part of the community. And it’s so interesting for this to come from an only child. I remember the first time in I invested in working with a business coach, he was 997 US a month. And I’m in Canada. So that’s not just 997 to me, and-

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s a little more expensive, yeah.

Lisa Simone Richards:

And I would be like, “I’m sorry, there are 100 people in this program. You have to be out of your tree. If I’m spending this kind of money, I want one-on-one.” And what I actually found, I jumped in the program anyways, I had networking, I had relationships, I had other people in the same stage as me to bounce ideas off of. And now five years since I’ve exited that program, I still have those network connections. All of us have grown up in the market together and we’re still referral partners for one another. So there’s so much value in sitting in the room with other people who are going through a similar experience as you. Especially like even in my mentorship container, we’ve been working on storytelling.

Often when you come onto a podcast or any, yeah, typically a podcast really, it’s going to be, how did you get into what you do? And we worked on, how do you share that origin story? How effective is it when you have a room of like six other people who are completely cheering you on. It’s a safe space to practice at and they can all offer insight in, “Hey, this is what landed for me. This is what I connected with. This is what didn’t work for me.” So coming from only child syndrome who likes all the attention for herself, I have very much seen the power of being in a room of other like-minded individuals. And then how after that six month container, those are your networking partners moving forward. It’s so powerful to always be a part of a group.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think that’s so true. I think so much of my business success has come from being in masterminds for that exact reason.

Lisa Simone Richards:

And if I could even pepper in one more thing, as part of the mentorship program, actually when I do have a certain number of clients, I do extend a once a month private 20 minute coaching call with them. So that way they can know that my hands really are in their business and that I get what’s going on with them. But really being a part of that group has such huge transformational results for them.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. And I can see that being really helpful for women too because I think we’re just a lot more community oriented than men. So we’re looking for validation from each other. I think one of women’s deepest fears actually is, and this is one of the mindset things that stops people from stepping into visibility is like, oh, what if my friends won’t like me anymore? What if I’m so strong and successful I won’t get a man or my existing man won’t love me anymore? All these sorts of fears, like they’re unspoken, they’re maybe deeply subconscious in many cases but it’s kind of there. So if there’s a community of women all going through it together, do you think that’s an aspect of what makes that better for women generally to work together?

Lisa Simone Richards:

As you’re saying that, I’m literally seeing my life in flashbacks. And again, disclaimer, only child syndrome. I love all eyes on me, as I even think about my entire growing up childhood to now. When I was a girl, I was in Brownies and Girl Guides. Then I went to an all-girls school. Then I was in a sorority. Then I was in mentorships or at masterminds that were highly women driven. Now I’ve joined one that is specifically all women. So there is so much power in community of having that connection of knowing that you’re not alone. Just yeah, having that collaboration potential. It just, we feel so much more.

Lisa Simone Richards:

I’m sorry, I’m trying to sort my words here, but I was so surprised when I put that program together that community would probably be one of the most valuable aspects of the program. I really thought if I can give you the nuts and bolts of how to do A, B and C, that’s what people are in for, but they’re staying for the community. And here’s a fun fact, because I work in fitness for many, many years, I know this. The number one reason people renew at their gym is not for the classes, it’s not specifically for the trainers, it’s for the community. It’s for that social space to hang out in and have a smoothie after your workout, who you’re going to chat with, who came to class this week. So the long answer to a short question that you asked me, 100% community is so impactful for women to be a part of.

Melinda Wittstock:

So Lisa, I could talk to you for a long time about all of this, but so much value that you’ve provided on this podcast. So I’ll just say as a podcast host, thank you. I mean, it’s really helpful, it’s exactly the kind of information that a lot of my listeners need. And you’re a case in point because you’ve walked your own talk, I guess, just in terms of how you showed up in this podcast. Just people should listen to the podcast, this is how you do a podcast interview.

Lisa Simone Richards:

Thank you so much. And the number one thing that I even teach my clients as they’re getting onto podcasts, they’re like, “What if I trip over my words? What if I don’t cover all my points?” And I always say, lead with intention. When you get on that show, if you can think about what is the number one thing I want people to be able to leave here with, you’re not going to go wrong. Even if you don’t come up with every single point that you wanted to say, if there is something that they can walk away with and put into practice in a matter of minutes and feel success, you’ve done your job. So just lead with intention, make sure you’re giving people more than they came with at the end of the 30 minutes that they’ve invested in listening to you and you can’t be wrong.

Melinda Wittstock:

Ah, fantastic. Well, I’d love to be able to invite everybody to carry on this conversation further on Podopolo. That’s my podcasting app with 5 million podcasts, all personalized for you with all the recommendation engine and whatnot. And in the Wings community there, we have comments enabled. So Lisa, if you download the app, I can add you as a guest on that podcast. And if you’re around and able, and anyone has any questions for you or anything, that would be phenomenal to have you there to take the conversation further.

Lisa Simone Richards:

Fantastic. I’m already in the Google Play Store looking it up.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting your wings on with us today and I want to make sure that everybody knows how best to find you and work with you.

Lisa Simone Richards:

Sure. So one of the things we talked a lot about during this conversation is how can we pitch with purpose? How can we lead with value? How can we get someone to say, yes, we will give you access to this platform? So for anybody who’s interested in learning about my seven pillars for the perfect podcast or seven pillars for the perfect pitch, and they’d actually like to see what a perfect pitch looks like and see my template, you can head over to www.theperfectpodcastpitch.com, and download it. And you can take a look at the structure I’ve put together, why I’ve done it that way, and then you can just simply fill in the blanks and tweak it and use it yourself. So that again is available for you at www.theperfectpodcastpitch.com.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much. Great interview and really, yes, thanks for flying with us today.

Lisa Simone Richards:

So excited to have been here, Melinda. And the last thing I’d love to say is for everyone who’s listened to this, you’ve just invested your time. So don’t let this be interesting information, take something, put into practice and use it to create transformation in your business.