Episode 87 - How to cold pitch to media and get into Forbes, Fast Company, and win a 40 Under 40 with serial entrepreneur Vincent Phamvan (Copy)
Make a quick Google search, and you’ll be immediately met with hundreds of pages giving you advice about your searched topic. In this day and age, standing out from the noise and getting your business the attention it deserves is a huge and time-consuming undertaking.
And the key to fast-tracking and bypassing the years of social media content and SEO efforts is through getting coverage in top-tier publications.
One of the best ways to get your foot in the door is through cold pitching.
Cold pitches are a simple, fast, and effective way to get in front of a journalist, who will then generate media attention and build a long-lasting, beneficial relationship between you, your business, and the press.
However, media outlets, editors, and journalists are inundated and overwhelmed with hundreds 9if not thousands) of pitches from business owners and entrepreneurs on a daily basis.
If you’re ready to learn the do’s and don’ts of cold pitching so you can write a standout, attention-grabbing pitch (especially one that sticks out like a beacon of light in the sea that is a journalist’s inbox)...
This episode with Vincent Phamvan is for you.
Aside from being a PR Starter Pack community member, Vincent knows firsthand the tremendous impact that PR and media features have on a business. Having been featured in major publications such as Forbes, Entrepreneur.com, Fast Company, and many others, Vincent was a recipient of the 40 Under 40 Award from the Nashville Business Journal.
If you’ve ever been enamored by a business or entrepreneur’s “as seen in” banner, wondering, “How do I get seen in these publications myself?”
This episode is for you.
Vincent shares his advice on writing a pitch that stands out in the endless sea of pitches that is a journalist’s inbox. He also goes over how media coverage takes on the heavy task of building social proof and credibility better and faster than you could if you were only relying on social media and SEO.
Whether you’re a blossoming, brand-new business, or a business in the thick of the growth stage–this episode will give you immense value, so take what you need.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
How to write a standout, attention-grabbing pitch
The do’s and don’ts of pitching
Tips for pitching your story (and making it irresistible)
Effective ways to follow up on a cold email
Powerful email subject line that gets clicks
How to use social media to build relationships with journalists
P.S. If you want your small business to go from invisible to visible, seen, and valued, register for my FREE PR Secrets Masterclass. Soon enough, your credibility and visibility will skyrocket. Register now at www.gloriachou.com/masterclass.
Resources Mentioned:
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community: Small Biz Pros: By Gloria Chou
Additional Resources:
Join the Small Biz PR Pros FB group
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Here’s a glance at this episode…
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00:00 - Introduction
00:31 Background Music
00:40 Gloria Chou: Ok, So you've been in the CMO seat, which is the highest like most senior seat in marketing and now that you've founded multiple businesses, you've also done pr on your own.
So can you talk to me a little bit about PR versus marketing and the more diy approach that you've taken with PR versus, you know, working with a huge agency which you've also done before?
00:58 Vincent Phamvan: Yeah, I mean, it, it all like everything else in business. It comes down to resources, right? Larger companies have an unfair advantage of having cash to deploy. So, you know, I've been a CMO at two different companies, one was venture capital backed, the other one was private equity backed.
And so the amount of resources that you have are just different, you can lean on subject matter, experts within different marketing agencies to be able to help your business grow or continue to grow. And so in the past, I've worked with, you know, some of the largest pr agencies, you know, it's the, the, the classic, like New York City agency, you look at their website, you see all these big logos of like, you know, the, like the food brands that you eat, the companies that like ship your products, the companies that, you know, you get your cell phone from.
And so when you are working with those large agencies, they have a lot of experience, they have a lot of built in relationships, but you're also paying a lot of money to be able to leverage that knowledge and expertise. And it was a little bit of a shock to me when I went off to go start my own venture, how much I had to learn. And a little, a lot of it was really, really daunting and I think that's where it was.
I don't know if fate is the word to describe it, but I was so fortunate to be able to get an introduction to you and meet you because you really opened my eyes to some of the areas that in the past, I just took for granted because I was working with these large PR agencies. So even though I had a background in marketing, I'm a marketer by trade. And so because of that, you know, a lot of the branding, the messaging, the words on my website are about the features of our products and how they benefit customers.
And in the past, the thing that was happening behind the scenes that these big PR agencies were doing was translating that into what journalists want to hear and what journalists want to write about.
And what I love about what you're going out and you're teaching is you're showing founders and even seasoned marketers like myself how to do that themselves because in this world that we live in today where it could cost you $500,000 to open up a brick and mortar retail shop or you can spend $500 and open up a Shopify store.
The pr starter pack and companies like Shopify have been able to level the playing field so that in these David and Goliath situations that the underdog has a chance of winning and the underdog has just as equal of a chance of being able to spread their message and get their word out because that's what every entrepreneur wants, right? Every entrepreneur has a problem or an itch that they want to go out and solve and they want to be able to help other people solve that same problem. And so I had to learn how exactly to do that.
04:10 Gloria Chou: Now, was that worth your time? Because I think a lot of people think, you know, either I pay someone else to do it and depend on that relationship or I just don't do pr and what have you learned about doing it on your own and very successfully, by the way, because you've been on so many features now. So tell me about how that curtain has been lifted.
04:27 Vincent Phamvan: I think at one point, it took me a while for CPR to really click for me. And what I mean by that is when you create something yourself, it's like your baby. And when you go out and you tell other people about it, like you're so excited about it that you want other people to be just as excited about it. And the challenge is that good journalism is, is not, is not an advertisement, right? And so when you read a magazine, magazines already have advertisements in them, you don't want articles that are also advertisements.
And so being able to understand what the trends are in the world and what's happening in the world outside of your company and how your company can, can be a part of that conversation and can contribute and further that discussion is a big difference versus like your marketing language that you might have on your website, which could per work perfectly well in your website.
But when you go out and you pitch that, you know, it, it really took me some time to really, like sit down and absorb your CPR method in order to be able to understand like how to send those emails, how to send those pitches in a way that hooks somebody and makes them more interested and in a way that builds credibility where you might not have credibility in that space or authority in that space today.
And the truth of the matter is, like all these people that we look up to where we're like, they know so much about this, right? They've spent so much time doing that. All of them had to start from square one at some point in time. Like none of them were born with that credibility.
Nobody wakes up and you know, is born as a newborn baby and is an expert in, you know, whatever that area is, that's something that's learned and that authority is built over time. But all of them, everybody that we look up to that have these blue check marks on their social media profiles had to start from square one at some point.
06:50 Gloria Chou: Yeah. And, and what about the, what it taught you in terms of doing that own exercise, getting clear on your message and not relying on someone to kind of do it for you. Like, what have you learned because you've had, you've done it both ways.
07:03 Vincent Phamvan:
So, I mean, let's go back to the time that I hosted an online event, a virtual summit at the beginning of the pandemic, right? It was May of 2020. And when I sat down with you Gloria, we liked my pitch as I'm hosting this big event. I want everybody to come.
Here's the benefits. If you, if people show up to this event, X Y and Z, this is what they're going to get and what I was doing there was trying to create news, right? I was trying to get a message out where I wanted the focus to be about this event. And where I was off was, being able to take a look at what was happening at the time.
And what was happening at the time was the class of 2020 was about to graduate. And when that class of 2020 started college, they were starting college while the economy was at an all time high. College graduates were getting paid more than they ever were.
After graduation jobs were available, people got degrees. It's like, you know, you grow up as a child and you're told you go to college, you graduate from college, you get a good job. That's just the way that life is supposed to work. And that's what the class of 2020 was supposed to experience. And then all of a sudden the pandemic starts, companies are laying off thousands, millions of workers.
And that class in just two months had the carpet pulled out from under them. And this was similar to what I experienced in 2009 after the recession in 2008, where I graduated from college in 2009 and had a really hard time finding a call, finding a job after college. And so I wanted to be able to host this event for the class of 2020 to be able to help them navigate.I wanted to create the event that I so desperately needed back in 2009.
And when I started to understand what the wave was that was already occurring with the class of 2020 that wave was much bigger than any wave that I could have created. And so by being able to tell a story and being able to contribute to that existing conversation about what was happening with the class of 2020 you know, I live in Nashville, Tennessee and our local newspaper here was the Tennessean.
I sent an email to not to the editor of the Tennessean because they get so many pitches. But I went and I looked at, you know, who is normally writing about the economy, who is normally writing about, you know, the local companies that are hiring or who's writing about, you know, companies that are announcing that they're opening offices in Nashville.
And I wrote an email to that person and, and within a few days we were on the phone and I think a week later, there was a photo published in the Tennessean from my event and talking about the class of 2020 as well as you know, my experience having a hard time finding a job after college myself and how I, I went out to go help other people do the same.
And I think that's like a story that like every entrepreneur, there's something about like your hometown paper that no matter how big or how small of a publication it is, it's a cool thing to be a part of your local community and like contributing to your local community.
But had I just sent out like a press release that was just like, I am hosting this event on this day at this time with these speakers. I doubt that that would have gotten any momentum.
11:06 Gloria Chou: Yeah. And so the CPR method, would you say kind of not only gave you a framework to pitch, but it kind of changed the way you have dialogues with anybody in the future, right?mBecause then you went on to speak at panels and you know, get awards and I mean, you just had tremendous success when I Google your name now.nIt's like this whole, I see a lot of you.
11:25 Vincent Phamvan: I would say that the hardest one is the first time, right? And like everything else in this world. Like it's tough being on social media and seeing all these like incredible things that other people are doing.
And you know, when you go to like these websites for new companies, you see all these logos on those sites, it's really easy as an early entrepreneur to get down on yourself and have like logo envy and to think, gosh, like, how am I going to do this? I don't have that.
The hardest one is just the first one because to get the first one, you have to understand that pitching is all about getting rejected. It's all about getting rejected and being ok with getting rejected and understanding that that's part of the process and you know, like everything else in life, it only takes one.
Whether that's raising funding for your company, you know, to close your first round, you only need one lead investor to be able to, you know, get that dream story, that dream coverage that you want to be able to get out because you want to be able to go make a difference in this world and go help and serve other people. It only takes one. And so, you know, from there, the second, the third, the fourth one becomes progressively easier to be able to do because you're starting to build that authority and credibility.
But that's something that for the first one, you have to go out and just do and to be able to go out and just do, I think was the hardest part because, you know, I sat on, I went through the CPR method and I, I rode out the pitch and then I think I, like, sat on that pitch for like a week and I didn't email it out to anybody because I didn't, I, I knew that I would get emails back saying thanks but no thanks or like even worse.
Maybe, I don't know, like I knew that there would be a lot that I would just send and, and not hear back from. And I didn't want to feel that I didn't want to feel that way. And so I just procrastinated on what inevitably I knew I needed to do, which was hit that send button and to just go for it. And I think now, like knowing what I know now and knowing that that's part of the process, it's a lot easier to be able to handle rejection when you expect rejection. But also knowing that it only takes one.
14:05 Gloria Chou: Yeah. One thing you said to me over and over that I say all the time is what, listen to what Vincent says, everything is on the other side of the send button, right? You told me recently that you had coffee with the contributor at Forbes who covered you and to be able to build that relationship where someone is in your town and you grab coffee with them is just so tremendous, right?
But I think even more than that, it obviously helped you build your mailing list. So before we talk about all the obvious success that you've had and you've been able to sell your company. I want to talk about the survey that you did because a lot of people, they, they think they can do a survey, but they think it's a huge daunting task. So break it down for us like how you actually did the survey and how do you incentivize people to actually fill out that survey?
14:47 Vincent Phamvan: So I think even before we talk about the survey, like what I did for the survey, we gotta talk about why journalists like data, right? It's one thing to go out and to be able to say my opinion is X Y and Z, it's another thing to be able to go out and say I've talked to hundreds of people, thousands of people or I have data from, you know, this mobile app that I'm building where thousands of users are doing X Y and Z.
And it's more or less what we saw last year. That data becomes something that within your business only you have, right? Only you have that information, other companies don't, other people out there might not be seeing the same thing that you're seeing. And So because you're the only one with that information, you have a unique angle and you have a story that you can tell that is different from everything else that's out there.
If you go on Google News and you do a search today for like any word, you know, in the parenting space right now, because of Biden's build back better plan. There's a lot of conversation about paid parental leave. And so if you go and you do a search on Google News for paid parental leave, there's hundreds of articles about paid parental leave and you know, journalists don't wake up in the morning wanting to write the exact same story as what 50 other journalists have written already out there, right?
They want to write unique content or they want to write, they want to break that news, they want to be the first to break that news and then have others follow them because then they're, they're being the thought leader within the industry. And so, you know, Gloria, you, one of the things that you told me was when we were hosting the event that I hosted at the beginning of the pandemic to help people find jobs. I invited a few journalists to be panelists at the event. So we had a writer from Fast Company, we had the editor in chief from Inc magazine. We had the linkedin news editor who writes about jobs.
And so we had this, these journalists participating in the event, but I also had 7000 people who registered for the event. And as soon as you have a group like that, it's really, it was really easy. We used Zoom webinar to be able to host this online event. Zoom webinar has a polling feature where you can send out polls. And so I went out and I asked a few questions like, you know, are you currently looking for a job? Yes or no? How many jobs have you applied to in the last 30 days?
And things like, you know, how many interviews have you received in the last 30 days? from the number of applications that you have and you know, when do you expect to find a job in three months and six months and 12 months? And you know, you can even ask questions like, how do you feel about your job search? Do you feel optimistic about it? Do you feel or do you feel not optimistic about it?
And as soon as you do that, you have data that somebody else can use within a story and that ends up being really interesting to be able to write about things like the average job seeker at the time was applying to over 100 jobs, right? That tells a story about the economy that's different and also makes it really tangible for readers to be able to understand what a job seeker is going through at that time.
And so I did that survey and then after that, I went around and I shared some of the data with a few journalists and it ended up being, you know, facts that they included in their stories. But they did that because it was, it was unique data that they could then use within their articles, which is much, much different than, you know, oh, Vincent heard from one job seeker that they were feeling this way, right?
Because that might be how one person's feeling. But it doesn't necessarily mean, you know, that's how Americans are feeling or it doesn't mean that that's how all parents are feeling. And so, with that survey, you know, it just gave something really tangible to be able to include in these pitches. Now, I know, you know, a lot of people listening to this might be thinking.
Yeah. But I don't have an event that I'm hosting. I don't have an audience or I don't have an email list. And, you know, there are so many different ways to do surveys today that that's just one way of doing it. Let's say you go into a Facebook group and, you know, you, you ask the moderators of the Facebook group, hey, I'm doing some market research and I was wondering if I could post a poll in this Facebook group to be able to understand how people feel about X Y and Z.
I'm not here to promote my company. I'm not here to try to sell a product. I'm just doing research so that I can better understand how to serve the types of people who are in this Facebook group. And you can post that poll on Facebook and get those results. Most people you know, maybe not most people, but a lot of people have, you know, 500 linkedin connections.
That's 500 people that you can put a survey out to. So you could post a poll on linkedin. And what's beautiful about polls on linkedin is as soon as somebody votes in your poll, it'll actually rebroadcast that poll out to that person's network. So like, for instance, like, let's say on linkedin, I only have two connections and one of them is like my brother and the other one is Gloria. But let's say Gloria has 2000 connections on linkedin.
If I post a poll on linkedin and Gloria votes on that poll and leaves a comment on that poll that will, then that poll will then show up on the news feed for all of Gloria's friends. I only have two friends but she's got 2000 and now all of a sudden I have the ability for my survey to be able to reach all of Gloria's connections.
Yeah, I could do the same thing on in, I could go on and on and on. But Instagram stories have a poll feature and, you know, just the other day I, sent out a poll, asking people, how they feel about the future of remote work and whether they were, if they work out of a coffee shop more than one day a week if they work from home, if they plan to go back into the office.
And I just like, I tagged a few friends in that Instagram story and they reared it onto their stories. And like all of a sudden, I had more votes on the poll than the small number of Instagram followers that I have. And so there's different ways to be able to do this but being able to use that data to be able to go out to a journalist and say, hey, I noticed that you wrote an article about paid parental leave and I actually ran a survey about paid parental leave.
And how many weeks somebody actually took for, for their paternity leave or maternity leave and how many weeks they wanted to take in an ideal world, how many weeks they would have wanted to take? And I haven't shared this with anybody, but I thought it would be interesting for you to see since you wrote an article about that last week.
Like that's a way of being able to contribute to a conversation and to be able to start building relationships because you have to pay into people's buckets before you make a withdrawal. Right? You have to.
Nobody I think likes sending out messages where it's like, hey Gloria, I know that I know on linkedin it looked like you were connected to this person. Can you make an introduction for me? I'd really appreciate that favor, right?
Nobody feels good sending that where they're like asking for help. But imagine if like all the emails and messages that you're dreaming are actually, hey, Gloria, I, I saw that you wrote an article about, you know, I'm, I, or actually I, I saw that you wrote an article about the, like the future of work and whether people are going to be going into offices and, you know, it's so funny.
I like posted a survey on my linkedin last week about that and here's what I found and I talked to a bunch of people and what was unique was I found out that a lot of people like to do this because they actually prefer to work at night and they want to be able to go to the gym in the afternoon when it's not busy at the gym, but their most productive hours are actually 10 o'clock to midnight. And so that's when they get their work done and, you know, that was a really interesting article that you wrote and I wanted to be able to share this with you.
Like that's different because you're reaching out and you're helping that person instead of reaching out and just trying to ask, ask, ask where, you know, editors and journalists get a lot of pitches. And so, you know, imagine how refreshing it would be for them in a sea of pitches to actually get an email where it's like somebody trying to help them.
24:15 Gloria Chou: Yeah, I love that too. And I think it comes from the mindset shift of, you know, marketing your features and why your product works and being like, I'm going to contribute to this larger conversation. Let me be a conduit of information, right? Everyone listening right now, I don't care if you're Rene or if you make soap at home, you have access to your audience.
So like, please let's use that, right? So I love how you talked about surveys. Is there anything else that you've used? So let's say, you know, you did the survey, you pitched them and then what happened, like take us on the journey of, of what happened after you did the survey.
24:48 Vincent Phamvan: So, you know, then you get, I would say first and foremost, you know, pitching is about building relationships, right? And so when you have journalists who share their articles, whether they, whether they share them on linkedin, whether they share them on Twitter, you know, everybody likes it when somebody likes their post, right?
Everybody likes it when they get a comment as long as that comment is not like the really mean ones on youtube videos and, and stuff. But everybody loves a comment. That's like, wow, this really, I really appreciated this. I found this to be valuable.
And so that's the start of building these relationships. And you know, the, when people, when you build those relationships, it will naturally occur that these journalists, like, you know, they see your email address, they know that the end of your email address is your company page, they'll go to your website, they'll see like what your company is doing.
You don't need to sell that. Meaning your company website, what you need to sell is yourself and your relationship between you and the journalists that you wanna be able to build connections with.
And so, you know, part of, I think being able to build these relationships is if you see that, let's just say at a fast company that there's a writer who often writes about a topic that your company is interested in. You should follow that person on Twitter. You should turn on notifications so that you get a notification any time that they tweet, you should follow them on linkedin. You should turn on notifications on linkedin so that you get a message any time that they post on linkedin.
You know what's interesting is a lot of these journalists when they post on Twitter, they get a lot of comments and replies on it when they post on linkedin. A lot of the time it's like crickets, it'll you know, the same person, the same article, the same post will have like seven likes and maybe like one or two comments. And so, you know, if you leave a comment on that linkedin post, they're much more likely to see it.
And what I love about linkedin too is it's super easy for them to be able to then click into your profile and see exactly what you do at what company and go to your company web page. And that isn't always clear on Twitter just because you have much, much less space in your Twitter bio. And so if somebody sees you commenting on, let's say, you know, three of their posts over the course of a month, by the time that you do send them that email, that's not a cold email anymore because you've done what's, what's called warming them up, right?
And, you know, it's a classic sales strategy that a lot of salespeople use. But you can do the same thing as you're building relationships and you know, that person ideally would then, you know, when they get that email, they would go.
Huh? I recognize this name. This is the person that left, you know, all these positive comments on the articles that I posted in the past, they must be really interested in what I'm writing. Oh, wow. This is interesting. Like, you know, they're sharing something that they've, they've learned or they're seeing or a trend that they're seeing. maybe they, this would be an interesting person to talk to and once you get to that point, then, you know, you're not asking them, they're asking you, they come, they'll come to you and say, hey, Vince, like, is it possible to get 20 minutes of your time to be able to chat? I'm actually working on a story on X Y and Z and I'm wondering if I'm wondering what your viewpoints are on X Y and Z?
28:38 Gloria Chou: That's awesome. So you did this. So, just to recap, I mean, so much, so much good knowledge. I hope everyone's listening, that's taking notes.
So use a survey. It could be as simple as doing a shoutout on Instagram or using a poll feature on linkedin and then also follow the journalists on Twitter and linkedin and warm them up by liking their articles before you send them the email.
So let's talk about the actual email stage. Is there something that you've learned that works in terms of timing or subject lines or something like that that can increase your open rates
29:08 Vincent Phamvan: Shorter is better. I think I, I I'd be curious on your perspective on that, but I always find that like when I sit down to, to write one of these emails, like all of a sudden I'm like, looking at like 1000 word email, in my first draft and, and I can tell you my long emails have, have not worked.
What I mean, what do you think about that, Gloria?
29:29 Gloria Chou:
Well, that's why the CPR method works because actually, I love bullet points. But I also think the subject line is important because I think a lot of people in the subject line want to do something that's very gimmicky and that's such a turn off.
So, have you noticed something that's worked really well for you in terms of subject line or timing or maybe the cadence of follow up.
29:48 Vincent Phamvan:
So in terms of timing, I usually send them, I usually write them towards the end of the week, but I wouldn't send it out on a Friday. You and I are recording this on a Friday. Like I'm not gonna get off this podcast and go send out a bunch on a Friday afternoon.
So I typically like to schedule them. I use Google, you know, whether you use Outlook or whatever, you can schedule your emails. And I typically schedule them for about 7 30 in the morning on a Monday or a Tuesday in that person's local time. So like if I see on linkedin that that person lives in New York, then I'll send it out at 7 30 in the morning, New York time.
I don't, I don't have quantifiable data to say, like, that's absolutely the best time to do it. But that's typically what I do is I try to avoid the end of the week. I typically go for the beginning of the week.
And in terms of subject line, you know, I would say the, the big one is, is instead of going for like the click bait types of subject lines, I would just think of like the types of subject lines I would use like, if I was sending emails to a friend, like if I was sending an email to Gloria about, you know, something I, you know, it's a more casual subject line, you know, I'm not using all caps.
I'm not trying to do something gimmicky, like putting Gloria's name, you know, in the subject line. I'm not using a bunch of emojis, and a lot of the times like simple tends to work for me. But, you know, it could be as it could be, as simple as, you know, your article last week on Millennial Parents. And, you know, I might open up the email with just like one sentence about an article that they wrote last week. How much I liked it.
What I thought about it and then went into something that furthers the conversation.
31:44 Gloria Chou: Yeah. How do you end it? Because a lot of people feel scared to ask, but we all know that the email is a pitch. So how do you like to end the email?
31:55 Vincent Phamvan: There's a term in journalism that's called burying the lead. So like burying the lead is where you, I mean, you, you've all seen it. It's like before, like a news broadcast goes to a commercial, this person did this incredible thing after this commercial, stay tuned to find out what it was.
And in the emails, I think it's better personally not to bury the lead. So like in the bullet points, like I would put that, you know, the opening paragraph and I use the word paragraph lightly because I'm like my paragraphs are like two sentences long, three bullet points for you. And it could be something as simple as something as simple as 45% of the dads that I talked to found that doing this with their child made their child happier in my community.
And then at the end, I would just say if you're interested in going deeper on any of this data, happy to happy to chat.mI usually just leave it at that.
33:06 Gloria Chou: Yeah, I love it. It's friendly, it's collaborative. It's, it's not begging, it's not, please feature me in your gift guide. So OK, so you took us from the survey data, the tone of the email and then at what point do they, first of all, obviously, it's all in the follow up.
33:22 Vincent Phamvan:
Sorry to cut you off with an email signature. Let's talk, email signature. Do not make it hard for that person to reach you. Because what I've, what sometimes I've found is like they're working on a story and they have a deadline, right? And if you make it hard to schedule time with you, they might go to somebody else who's just easier to reach because they have to, they have to send that piece in by the end of the day.
So in your email signature, I always have a cell phone number in there. And I always put not just like a cell phone, but I put call slash text after the phone number because a lot of the times, you know, they know they, they know because they work with so many sources that a lot of times, you know, a lot of the people that they talk to have back to back meetings and so they'll call, but then they'll shoot a text right away and, and the, and so make it super, super easy for them to be able to reach you and you'll be, you'll be surprised like how often that actually happens where they'll try to reach you once and if they can get a hold of you, like you just, you know, you just made it easier for them to get their story on time.
But, you know, if it takes two days for them to schedule time on your calendar, you might miss the train.
34:43 Gloria Chou: Exactly. I mean, one of my clients who I actually got her to speak to someone at the Guardian, she didn't run the story almost a year later. That same person messaged me back and was like, is someone available today? So it might take you 10 months, but you want to be there at the right place at the right time.
I'm so glad you said call slash text. And then in terms of follow up, right? Because we all know it's not just one email, it's multiple I teach as well in my pr star pack. Can you talk to me about follow up because a lot of people are so afraid of following up.
35:11 Vincent Phamvan: Yeah, my follow up. So I typically wait 2 to 3 days, so I don't follow up right away and my follow up usually is just a reply to that first email that I'll actually usually do from my phone.
So I'll just reply from my phone so that it leaves like the scent from my iphone and it'll just be simple, Gloria just checking if you saw this note.
35:35 Gloria Chou:
Mhm Nice. What about Instagram or linkedin?
35:41 Vincent Phamvan: Yeah, Instagram or linkedin. I mean the same thing continues, right? Like before you, before you reach out, you want to reply to their tweets and comment on their linkedin posts and afterwards you would just keep doing the same.
Like I, I personally like, I don't, I won't do like the slide into the Twitter D MS and be like, hey, I sent you an email. Did you see my email? Right? Because you already sent them an email, they saw the email. You don't need to send them and ask them if they saw your email because you already sent them the email.
Instead, what I'll do is I'll just, I'll leave, I'll leave a helpful comment, a positive comment on their post. And you know, people, people when they see faces like the same face on that email avatar versus, you know, your social media profile pic like they'll put two and two together.
36:33 Gloria Chou: Yeah. Well, I'm actually less patient than you. I actually tell people to follow up and not just say, hey, did you see my email?
But also, you know, encapsulate kind of in a more concise way what the pitch is and say by the way I sent you more information in this email because people just don't read their emails, you know, I mean, obviously you want to install an email tracker, but you want to just remind them to keep reading that email and have you, this is another thing is so many founders think, oh my God, I'm bothering them.
I can't follow up more than once. Have you ever once gotten a journalist that's like, you know, you're not allowed to follow up with me.
37:07 Vincent Phamvan:
No, I don't think that's ever happened. Yeah, I mean, the worst case scenario is somebody doesn't reply.
37:13 Gloria Chou:
Exactly. So it's worth it because the benefits are so huge right now in terms of following up, I would say, you know, I teach my starter pack students as follows every week, you know, until they respond.
If you really have a good pitch, maybe change up the subject line a little bit. But it's, I can't tell you the number of times it's just that one more follow up more than you're comfortable with. And then boom, you get a reply.
37:36 Vincent Phamvan:
I agree with that. I think like however many follow ups you're comfortable with sending, send one more than that because you have nothing to lose. The worst that'll happen is, they don't reply.
And I've even heard from a friend that their follow up is they just send the exact same email they sent the first time and they'll send it one week later not as a reply, they'll just send it as if it was like a fresh email. And I asked, I asked this person, well, why do you, why do you do that?
And they said, it helps the other person's face. And what he means by that is like, the other person doesn't have to explain why they were ignoring the email because you just sent them the email as if it was like the first email. So the other person can just pretend like they didn't ever see the first email and they could just reply to the second email right away as if it was the first email. But it allows that person to be able to say face and I haven't tried that, but I thought it was a really cool, cool strategy or an idea.
38:29 Gloria Chou: I love that. I mean, I, I always tell people you feel uncomfortable, like you should be so following up to the point where you feel uncomfortable because you are competing with these very pushy pr people that are getting paid way more.
Right? And so now that you've done it yourself, you know that it's all about the follow up. Are there any other dos and don'ts or things that you found that works well or maybe doesn't work well?
38:48 Vincent Phamvan: I would say, you know, read the news in your industry. Like if you want to be able to contribute to the conversation, like you have to be a part of that conversation, you have to understand that conversation.
And so, you know, the venture that I'm working on right now, it's called Parents Club, Parents Club started because my first daughter was born about 2.5 years ago while I was launching this first business.
She actually made a guest appearance on that online summit that I did and I realized as a father that I wanted to do everything that I could to be the best father that I could possibly be. There's so many resources out there that are really geared towards moms. And there's a lot of really great resources for moms.
But I didn't really find, you know, the modern father content that I was looking for the modern parenting content because like the modern families now, you know, oftentimes have two working parents and as soon as you have two working parents, all of the traditional gender roles, all of the traditional gender norms go out the window because you have moms who are returning back to work, you have these child care problems that working parents are facing, but you also have fathers taking on roles that traditionally they wouldn't.
Because in order for moms to be successful in the workplace, dads need to step up at home, dads need to take their fair share of the work at home in order for their partners to also be successful at work. And it's not fair for one partner to have to do all the work at home and also have all of the work that she does at work as well.
And so, you know, this was an example of something that I was seeing that I was seeing not only for myself, but I was seeing it within my community, within my company, you know, my parents club members were telling me that they were also facing these similar challenges. And so I went out and I looked for journalists who also had these similar viewpoints.
And what I found were, you know, these journalists that were facing the same experiences as a working parent that were facing the same child care shortages or daycares that were shutting down while they still had deadlines to be able to meet. And so this is an example of something that I'm seeing and experiencing in my personal life.
I go to my community that I'm building. I use the word community lightly. Like yes, it could be like a structured community like a, a forum on your site, a slack that you run with your clients or with your customers. But the community could also just simply be the comments in the social media profiles for your company.
But I'm seeing something within my community and then I'm commenting on the posts from these journalists when they're talking about those areas. That is what allows me to be able to further that conversation and add to that conversation. And it also allows me to be able to better serve my community as well through my product.
When you know what your customers are facing at a deep level, when you know, when you understand their fears, their aspirations, their hopes, their desires, their dreams, this is what allows you to be able to create great products and services for them. But this too also allows you to be able to be a part of that story that journalists want to write about.
42:15 Gloria Chou: Yeah, 100%. I mean, it's and I also recommend it for anyone that's listening to install a Google news alert. You know, at least you know the subject lines and the keywords and start to train yourself. So that because now Vincent can send an email very quickly and know what's in the subject line.
But if you're starting out, like start to start to train yourself to do that. So now you've had all this press success, how are you able to leverage it for other aspects of your business?
42:39 Vincent Phamvan:
So, you know, the press is one part of the growth strategy for any business. And I would say the biggest thing that it does is, it provides you social proof and credibility, right? Social proof and credibility.
People naturally want to like Gloria, if you and I were like walking down the street in New York and there was like this storefront and there was like this long line of people standing out the outside of the store, but you had no idea what was going on there. Like we would be interested in it, right?
Because you're like, wow, all of these other people are standing in line, there must be something here worth waiting for. And that's what this press does is because it creates digital social proof for your business. And so it's kind of like a fuel that's like the accelerator for your business. I think a lot of people expect, you know, oh, if I could just get this one piece, I won't have to do anything else for my business.
Like customers will just come flooding to my business and experienced entrepreneurs know it's a little bit more nuanced than that. Right. You still have to build relationships with your customers. You still should have a good social media presence where you're engaging with your community. It doesn't have to be across all channels, right? Just pick one or two to start and just do those well.
But when those news articles get published a lot of the time, you know, they will tag your company, they'll tag your personal linkedin profile or your personal Twitter account in their posts, you know, within the news articles.
The bigger the publication is, the less likely they are to actually link to your website in the actual article, but you will get people who are Googling your company after they read that article. And so it is important to be able to have blog posts for them to find on Google. But the biggest thing is it creates that awareness around your brand and it provides credibility and social proof because it tells somebody who hasn't heard about your brand.
Other people are talking about this, maybe you should check it out. It's the equivalent of that long line outside of your, outside of your store that's just pulling in interest.
44:58 Gloria Chou: Yeah. And now you're such a master at your story, both from the marketing point of view and pr because those are, those are two very separate messages. And I think a lot of people, just like you said, in the beginning, the agencies, they just give the journalists their marketing speak, but that's not a new story, right?
So now you know how to be invited to every table, you know, exactly exactly how to, how to have a value driven conversation. What would you tell the other founders who are listening and saying, well, I don't have the success that Vincent has. I don't have these, you know, I, I whatever, all the, all the limiting beliefs, right?
What would you tell them to just nudge them in the right direction because this is not rocket science, right? Anyone can do this?
45:34 Vincent Phamvan: Yeah, there was a book Gloria that I know you and I both read, which is launched by Jeff Walker, a really great book about being able to launch products and all types of products, whether you sell digital goods, whether you sell physical goods, whether you provide services. It's just about being able to, you know, do what the book says, which is launched.
And one of the stories that he tells in the book that I thought was really interesting was this story about,, leaving the parking lot after I think it was a football game, you know, when you're in a parking lot and there's like all these cars and you're in a traffic jam, you're all trying to get onto the highway. Everybody's trying to go to the same place most of the time. You just stand and wait in line.
Well, the story is about this person who gets out of the car and they take a flashlight and they just start shining the flashlight, directing cars and all of a sudden, you know, cars got out of the way and this car just pulled out of the parking lot. And the reason that that happened is because that person had authority, that person had credibility and other people saw that credibility and authority.
That's why the cars moved and they got rolling and that car got out of the parking lot in this story. Like nobody gave that person authority. Nobody gave that person credibility. They just got out of the car and started shining a flashlight and, you know, building authority and credibility. I think it's really easy to be able to look at all of these things and to go, oh, you know, 40 under 40 Forbes Council featured in fast company, you know, he got quoted in Forbes last week and to go, I can never do that.
And the truth of the matter is, the majority of the people that you read about, have those logos on their website they're not anything special, you know, at the end of the day, you know, I woke up, I woke up this morning, I did some reading. I got my kids dressed, I dropped off my daughters at school. I came home, I made breakfast for myself, had coffee and now I'm here recording a podcast, but like there's nothing special about me and you know, a lot of it, I'm a nobody, right.
But one day I woke up and I wanted to be a part of the conversation. I wanted to start building relationships and I wanted to serve my customers. I wanted to serve my members of the parents club and help them be great parents and help their families thrive.
And I wanted to be able to share the story of these communities and what these people are feeling during the pandemic with journalists who could further, you know, further, help other parents be successful in raising their kids during these really, really challenging times.
48:21 Gloria Chou: I think when you remember why everything else seems so easy because you're not worried about coming off as sales. You're so focused on your why. So thank you so much for inspiring us for giving us not only mindset tricks but actual tangible tactical things that we can all do.
And I encourage everyone to relisten to the episode because Vincent gives us so many different pointers on how he was able to use the starter pack after having worked with big agencies. So we're kind of at the top of the hour. Is there one last parting thought that you want to leave my audiences with?
48:52 Vincent Phamvan: If anybody wants to connect with me, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter, my DMS are open and after this, if anybody's listening and, and you're a parent, this website doesn't exist yet, but we'll get it up by the time this episode publishes, but we'll get a, we'll get some type of special offer for your listeners.
You know, I always wanna be, you've heard on this episode, I, I wanna be able to help as many people that I can. But, Parents dot Club slash Gloria, we'll check that out. We'll make that new website for you, but we'll have some type of special gift for Parents Club for any parents who are listening.
These are really, really hard times as a parent, give yourself some grace and give yourself some space and just know if you're a parent and you're listening to this, it is really hard to build a business and it's also really, really hard to be a parent and it's even harder to do both of those things at the same time and just remind yourself no matter how hard today was with you, whether it's with your kids, whether it's with a customer that you had, whether it was, you know, some type of emergency at work, you're doing a good job, you're doing a good job.
But come join me, come join my community parents dot Club slash Gloria and we'll give some type of special gift for you there.
50:01 Gloria Chou: So awesome. Thank you so much, Vincent, for inspiring us.
50:04 Vincent Phamvan: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me here today.
50:07 Gloria Chou: Oh, wow. I love that. You're so inspiring. Vincent.
50:09 - Outro