Episode 63: How to REALLY Get the Attention of Journalists with Entrepreneur Magazine Editor-in-Chief Jason Feifer
"What does it take for top-tier journalists to finally notice me?"
That's a question most small business founders, like you, frequently ask.
You've pitched a thousand times. But still, what you often receive from journalists are rejections or unresponsiveness. This only means that something needs to change.
However, that change requires more than some modifying your emails, subject lines, or business models.
In fact, many business founders may not be aware of this crucial detail when they pitch to journalists.
So, if you really want to get the attention of the journalists, then you'll have to do this one thing to set yourself apart from everyone else.
And it is this secret:
Your pitch before journalists should show how you can serve their publication's audience.
That's as straightforward as it can be!
It's a simple insight. But fully embracing this shift in your mindset and PR approach could bring massive returns to all your PR efforts.
Moreover, this mindset shift will help you position yourself as an expert and, most importantly, as a valuable resource for journalists and their readers. This approach has led most of my students to capture the attention of top-tier journalists and publications.
You're not far from getting similar and better results now that you know why you should follow this approach.
In this episode, we'll leave the 'how' of getting the journalists' attention to our podcast guest, Jason Feifer. He'll share with us what it takes for business founders to finally make the journalists want to share their stories with the world.
"If you listen to the questions that people ask you, you realize what they're really doing is telling you what they think your value is to them. What you're really hearing is an opportunity. Because if you can fulfill the thing that people think you are valuable to them for, then you know exactly how to serve people."
-Jason Feifer
Jason Feifer is the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine, author of the book Build For Tomorrow, a startup advisor, and host of the podcasts Build For Tomorrow and Problem Solvers. LinkedIn named him a "Top Voice in Entrepreneurship" for 2022. Prior to Entrepreneur, Jason has worked as an editor at Men's Health, Fast Company, Maxim, and Boston magazine. He has written about business and technology for the Washington Post, Slate, New York magazine, and others.
If you really want to get the journalists' attention, stop whatever you're doing and tune in. This episode will help you make the journalists read your pitch, see how your business can help people, and give you the recognition you truly deserve.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
The qualities of the most successful business founders
Why journalists care more for their readers than you
The real reason why business founders fear change
The pitching elements that matter most for publishers
Getting to the deepest core of what you do with your business
How the organic PR model can truly help business founders
If you want to land your first feature for free without any connections, I want to invite you to watch my PR Secrets Masterclass where I reveal the exact methods thousands of bootstrapping small businesses use to hack their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought-after industry expert. Register now at www.gloriachou.com/masterclass.
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Gloria Chou on LinkedIn: Gloria Chou
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community: Small Biz Pros: By Gloria Chou
Learn more about Jason Feifer: jasonfeifer.com
Listen to Jason Feifer's podcast: Build for Tomorrow
Download Jason Feifer's free audio course: How to Future Proof Your Career and Life
Additional Resources:
Join the Small Biz PR Pros FB group
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Here’s a glance at this episode…
[2:59] The most successful people are adaptable. You see it in ways large and small that people who get into entrepreneurship or anything else with this understanding that they should have a plan and also have a plan to abandon the plan, and that they are kind of constantly revising what it is they do and the way in which they do it.
[11:24] The greatest ideas aren't things that they didn't work being down from Mars. Supernatural force did not create them. The greatest ideas are sometimes the ones that we ourselves said, too difficult, too hard, not reasonable.
[12:53] Do not think of a pitch about yourself as a piece of self-promotion. Instead, think of it as you have learned something other people can benefit from it. You are doing your service as an entrepreneur and trying to get that message to other people.
[20:54] We've realized that when change comes, what it really impacts is simply the output of our work.
[29:44] Spend time thinking about what your goal is. Then identify your publication, and then just spend time trying to see how they write the kind of story that you would be in.
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Jason Feifer 0:00
You could buy an article in some second, third fourth tier publication. If you do that, here is I think what you're gonna get from it, nothing. You're gonna get nothing from it. And the reason is because if a publication has an audience, they can monetize the audience. If they don't have an audience, they have to monetize you. So you are going to pay to be in a publication that zero people are reading.
Gloria Chou 0:28
Hey, friends, I'm Gloria Chou, small business PR expert, award winning pitch writer and your unofficial hype woman. Nothing makes me happier than seeing people get the recognition they deserve. And that starts with feeling more confident to go bigger with your message. So on this podcast, I will share with you the untraditional, yet proven strategies for PR marketing and creating more opportunity in your business. If you are ready to take control of your narrative and be your most unapologetic and confident self, you're in the right place. This is the Small Business PR podcast. Alright, what's up everyone, I'm so excited to have the one and only Jason Feifer on the podcast. Many of you might have known him from Twitter from all the online spaces. But he is the Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine and the host of not one, but two podcasts. Most excitingly he's about to launch his book out in September. By the time you're listening to this, it might already be out. It's called Build for Tomorrow. So welcome to the show, Jason.
Jason Feifer 1:23
Thank you for having me.
Gloria Chou 1:24
So you do so many things, right? You're a startup advisor, you're a host of podcasts, you interview entrepreneurs at every stage of their business. What do the most successful ones have in common? Whether it's mindset, or whatever it is.
Jason Feifer 1:38
Yes, it's funny. That was the question people kept asking me when I first started, which was I became Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur magazine in 2016. And I had a media background before then. So I worked at Men's Health, Fast Company, Maxim, that was a terrible decision of some other places. And I kept getting once I became Editor-in-Chief people started treating me differently, they started not understanding me as a media person, but rather as like a, like a authority, which I was not prepared for or used to. And the question that they kept asking me is, you just said was, what are the qualities of the most successful people that you meet? And I, I realized something, which is, if you listen to the questions that people ask you, you realize what they're really doing is telling you what they think your value is to them. The question is, basically, hey, here's how you are valuable to me. And if you listen to that, then you what you're really hearing is an opportunity. Because if you can fulfill the thing that people think you are valuable to them for, then you know exactly how to serve people. And I thought, well, I better know the answer to this question. So I spent a long time researching it, talking to people just thinking about it, it was constantly on my mind. And the answer that I came to was adaptability. The most successful people are adaptable, you just, you just see it, you see it in ways large and small that people who get into entrepreneurship or anything else with this understanding that they should have a plan and also have a plan to abandon the plan and that they are kind of constantly revising what it is they do and the way in which they do it. Those the people who get ahead and the people who fall behind I think are the ones who either are afraid to shift into something that feels unfamiliar, or to anchor to the thing that they already knew even is even as that thing declines in value. And, and this separation just just takes place, I become kind of obsessed with what it is that enables the people who are adaptable to adapt.
Gloria Chou 3:45
Well, I love that you said that because I really think that's the resiliency, adaptability, the ability to wear many different hats. I've seen it myself. So I really can validate what you're saying. I cannot wait to dive into the book. And I want to talk about all things journalism, obviously, you've worked on the media side, you've probably received, I don't know, hundreds of pitches in your entire life. How do you think of that?
Jason Feifer 4:04
Hundreds. I mean, like 10s to hundreds of 1000s of pitches. I mean, I get you know, I get I get probably 300 pitches a day. I mean, my inbox is stuffed.
Gloria Chou 4:15
We can make a YouTube show just with you reading your subject lines. I'm sure that would be great.
Jason Feifer 4:20
Oh, yeah. Oh, you totally could. There was a great one today. About It was like, it was like NFT influencer releases his first wrap on TikTok. I was like, there's just every single part of this is not interesting to me. Like every part of this sentence is uninteresting. Anyway, yes. It's hilarious. What flows into the inbox?
Gloria Chou 4:41
I mean, I would just love the peek inside. Now. You said that's uninteresting. Why don't you tell me very broad strokes. What is interesting to you?
Jason Feifer 4:49
So I need to break out into two parts. Because there's me, personally, what is interesting to me in the world, and then there is what are the things that I'm looking for for Entrepreneur Magazine. And I think, it's let's start with Entrepreneur Magazine, because here's the thing. If you're pitching a publication, what you need to know more than anything else, is you need to know how they serve their audience. You know, I always tell entrepreneurs, and this is not meant to be an insult. But a reporter doesn't care about you. They just don't, it's not their job to care about you. It's their job to care about their reader, right? So, so what you need to do is understand how they are serving their reader, and how you can be valuable to that mission. Because if you do that, then they will write about you and that will be of benefit to you, obviously, but the reason that they're going to do it, the reason the reporter is going to do it is not because they're here to serve you. I mean, Gloria, I get so many emails from people who treat me like I sell hamburgers, which is to say they think I'm a service provider, how can I get a feature in Entrepreneur Magazine? How can I get a hamburger from your hamburger shop? That's exactly what this feels like the same thing. I'm not a service provider, right? Like my job isn't to give people press, my job is to serve my readers. So the more you understand that, the more you can understand how to pitch yourself. So to your question, how do I select the stories? What are the things that are interesting? Yeah, my philosophy. My philosophy is this, I don't believe that readers of Entrepreneur Magazine are all that interested in reading a magazine. I believe that what they're interested in is building something, they are building something for themselves, they're building something for their community. And they need insight on how to do that. The magazine just happens to be a really good vehicle to deliver information to them. And therefore I am not interested in anything that doesn't help their mission. So we tell stories of people in business. But when we do, we're doing it because that person has figured something out. They have made some kind of counterintuitive decision or something that's surprising and really smart. They did something they learned something that other people in other industries could appreciate to like, the, to me, the greatest stories that we run are ones that I and I do, I get on stage in front of 1000 entrepreneurs who are doing 1000 different things. And I tell the story, and every single person in the audience is like, oh, that's so smart. How that helps me think about my own business in some way? Those are the stories that I love. So that's what you need to dig into. I don't care about your success metrics. I don't care about your quirky background, I don't care about the really super interesting thing that you do. And the reason for that is because that's not useful to other people. What decision did you make? What smart thing did you think through? That's what's interesting to other people.
Gloria Chou 7:53
Right? So it's, so would you say, it's not so much about whether or not you have a lot of revenue or that you know all these fancy people. It could be just a nobody like a small town hero, right, in pitching.
Jason Feifer 8:03
Totally.
Gloria Chou 8:04
Can you give examples of small town heroes? For example of that, someone who literally is like a nobody who does not have any connection to VC. Maybe as an immigrant to this country, but you are fascinated by historian gave him that him or her that platform to tell that story.
Jason Feifer 8:18
Sure. So there are, there are like there are so many of these, and I end up just repeating them. Every time anybody asks me a question, because these little tiny stories in these little tiny decisions, I think ultimately come to represent bigger, broader ways of thinking. So I'll just give you one. There's a woman named Lena, she has a wig shop in a wig store in Baltimore called Linas wigs. And Lina used to operate that store as a storefront. You know what a storefront is, people walk in they shop. And she had a person on staff to greet all the people who would walk in and then the pandemic arrived and Lina could not operate her storefront and the way in which she used to and she does not know what to do when she comes out. The only thing she can think of is not some like radical insane idea. It is in fact something that she had thought of before but had discarded is something that was not right for her business, which is appointment holding. She was an operator her business appointment only, which means doors are closed, you cannot walk in off the street, you have to make an appointment. Now the reason she didn't do that before is because she thought well, too much friction, right? Like you don't want to create barriers for your possible career, your potential consumer to come in and do business with you. So she'd never done it before. But now she did it. And to her great surprise and delight, revenue went up and profits went up and consumer happiness went up. Why? Well, because here's the thing. As it turns out, out, the people who are walking in off of the street into Lina's wigs were not consumers of hers. They were interested in wigs, they were curious, they were going to look around, they weren't going to buy a wig. Because they're not the person who buys wigs. The people who buy wigs from Lina's wigs are generally buying because of a religious or medical issue. They are people who do not want to be trying on wigs. With a whole bunch of random people who walked in off the street, just loitering around, they would love to make an appointment, would love to have a private experience. And so here, by being forced into this change, Lina was actually able to identify and serve her true customer. And then just pushed to the side, the customer who was just spending her resources because they were spending her resources, Lina was paying a person to greet these people to come in off the street and not buy wigs, that was not a good spend of money. So now Lina doesn't have to do that anymore. And anyway, the reason why I love this story is because this isn't just a story about one wig shop and one decision that was made. This is what I've come to think of as a great example of reconsidering the impossible that when change comes along. And this is this is the whole point of the book built for tomorrow that even. When change comes along, it shoves us outside of our comfort zone, outside of the little box of of ideas that we thought were good, and only worth considering. And instead, we are forced to try things that we had discarded before. So the greatest ideas aren't things that were just, they didn't work being down from Mars, supernatural force did not create them. The greatest ideas are sometimes the ones that we ourselves said, too difficult, too hard, not reasonable. And Lina was forced to reconsider the impossible, and it completely transformed her business. And those are the kinds of stories I love. I love those stories. Lina just told me that out of nowhere, she just emailed me, I think she follows me on some social platform. And I had like, put out some question about like a, you know, who, who's made a big change that they didn't expect would be to their benefit. And she wrote me and told me that little story and I have repeated it for two years. I just, I love I put it the magazine, too. I love those kinds of things. And I hear them all the time.
Gloria Chou 12:05
So it wasn't a fancy PR person who was like to whom we can she literally pitch to herself.
Jason Feifer 12:11
It was Lina, it was an email from Lina.
Gloria Chou 12:13
So now in terms of the actual pitching, first of all, that's so inspiring. I can't wait to hear other stories in your book, I'm sure there's a lot of really good stories.
Jason Feifer 12:20
Thank you
Gloria Chou 12:20
In terms of the actual writing, somebody was listening might have a story just like Lina, right? But they are so petrified of sending you that email. So how can they put everything that they want to put in the email in a way that's, that's appeasing to you, that's a part of the solution and not too pushy.
Jason Feifer 12:38
So I get it, I was once very uncomfortable doing self promotion, I know where you're coming from. I would encourage you to reframe it in your mind, which is to say do not think of a pitch about yourself as a piece of self promotion. Instead, think of it as you have learned something, other people can benefit from it, you are doing your service as an entrepreneur, and trying to get that message to other people. Right? And if you are truly writing an email with that spirit in mind, then it will be it will be better received. The the problem is when you just email out and you just say, you know, I'm killing it. And I think that, you know, everybody should know about me, or also like, a version of this that I think falls short is when people reach out to me and they're just they'll just say something like, you know, I have been very successful, and I want others to be inspired by my story. But that by itself is not inspiring. I just, I just have to tell you. That is like just telling your story so that it can be promotional to you is not inspiring to others. Dig deep, right? Like I am sure that if you pulled Lina aside and you said Lina, the Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine is going to tell a story about you for the next two years. What would you like that story to be? I'm sure that her answer would be, I have great customer service. I have fantastic wigs. I serve people who need it. Right? Like it would have been a self promotional thing. Instead of this like story about the appointment only like the whole thing. But the appointment only story is the one that's useful to other people. So zero in on that think about what other people need from you, not what you need from other people. And then as soon as you do that you will have an idea of how to tell your story in a way that's going to be useful to other people. And it should it really should make you feel good about trying to get that message out.
Gloria Chou 14:37
Yeah. I think that's really the why people start businesses, but I don't know if it's the marketing world, or the ads. They get so far away from that message that it becomes so hard to get to that why. Why do you think it is so hard for founders to reframe their message in a way that you just said makes total sense?
Jason Feifer 14:54
I think it's because We are very naturally associated with the output of our work. We think primarily about what we do. Because that is the thing that generally defines the grind of our daily lives. I make a widget, I got to think every moment of the day about how to get this widget out. How to make sure that the people are making the widget? How to make sure that the machine is making the widget? How to ship the widget? And so if somebody were to come up to you and say, well, what do you do? You'd be like, I make a widget, right? But that is not really the reason why you do it. And we you need to drill, I mean, Gloria, I've come up with this little, this little, this little exercise. It really helped me years ago, because I used to do this for myself. I started as a newspaper reporter, I identified as a newspaper reporter, come up to me at a party, what do you do? I'm a newspaper reporter. And, and then I realized that being a newspaper is actually kind of socked. It's just really unstable industry. It wasn't for me, I'm glad it's for other people. But it wasn't for me. And but you know, if I think about myself as a newspaper reporter, and I don't have a newspaper jobs, and what am I? So and then I, then I started talking to entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs have this totally different way of thinking where they have identified this core thing that they do, that is not associated with the literal output of their work. The CEO of Foodstirs was talking to him once about this major change that happened, his business food services company to make baking mixes and other sweets and Sarah Michelle Gellar as a co founder. And anyway, they went through this big change. And I asked Greg the CEO, if the change freaked him out. And he said no, because the mitten this is I can't remember exactly what he said. But it was like he was like, you know, nobody's the mission of our company is to bring joy to people through sweet baked goods, right? It's not the mission of our company is to make chocolate baking chocolate cake baking mixes, right? Because if sales of chocolate cake baking mixes go down, and suddenly you're adrift, bring joy to people with sweet baked goods. That you could be doing that in any number of ways. So anyway, here's my exercise. I'm going to run you through the same scenario three times, with a slight difference each time. Scenario number one, Gloria, you want to play along? I'm gonna, I'm gonna pose it to you. Somebody comes up to you at a party and they ask what you do. What do you do?
Gloria Chou 17:25
Well, I can give the answer you don't like, which is, I'm a PR coach and a podcaster.
Jason Feifer 17:31
Yeah. Great. But that is the answer I don't like but that's the answer that you would give. And that's a perfectly reasonable answer. Right? It was when I was a magazine reporter, magazine, I was a newspaper reporter, I would have said, somebody comes up, I would just said I'm in a magazine. I have a newspaper. I'm all confused. And I said I was a newspaper editor or a newspaper reporter. Can I just note, it's 3pm. My toddler is home. It's been a crazy day. I don't know what I'm talking about. Anyway, you can hear it. So I would have said I'm a newspaper reporter. What I do, I go out and I report the news. Okay, great. So now, what have we done? What we've done is we have talked about our tasks. We have asked been asked what we do, and we talk about our tasks. So I'm now going to run the scenario. Again, somebody comes up to a party and they ask what you do, you can't talk about your tasks, anything that you said, you cannot talk about. Now. I think what you would naturally do is you would talk about your skills. So Gloria, hey, great party, what do you do?
Gloria Chou 18:32
Well, I instill confidence in founders, to help them great their narratives so that their little side hustle is a legitimate, credible business.
Jason Feifer 18:41
I love it. I would have said, well, I go out and gather information. And then I process that information in a way that's useful to other people. And that's great. Those are those are our skills. Now we're going to do one more time. What are we doing? We're peeling away the onion here, right? Because we so we so instinctively relate and identify with our tasks. And we forget why we are doing it in the first place that we need to like just kind of set it on the table and then set it aside. So somebody comes up to you to party and they ask what you do. You can talk about your tasks, you can talk about your skills, at this point, what's left to talk about, I think that what's left to talk about is your core, your why. The thing that is so, so deep inside you that it fueled you to develop the schools, if you'll do to develop skills that enable you to do the tasks. Not everyone is going to have a easy answer to this. I don't know if you do. I would suggest coming up with an answer. That's like a sentence. Like just a few words. Really, really so core to you that it could fuel a dozen different jobs. I have an answer for myself that I came to after a long period of time. Do you have an answer for yourself?
Gloria Chou 19:57
I do. I do.
Jason Feifer 19:58
What is it?
Gloria Chou 19:59
Helping elevate the stories of founders of color so that they can be seen, heard and valued.
Jason Feifer 20:04
Amazing. Amazing. What's so great about that is that there are so many ways that you could do that, like you do it in a couple of ways right now. But if you woke up tomorrow, and for some reason, like all the ways that you do it right now are not available to you anymore. If podcasting disappeared from the planet, you could find other ways to accomplish the thing that you just said. Similarly, the thing that I came to was I tell stories in my own voice, I tell stories, not magazine stories, not podcast stories, not newspaper stories. In my own voice, I'm setting the terms for how I communicate, I'm not telling you somebody else's voice. I'm not serving somebody else's mission. I did that earlier in my career, I'm not interested in it anymore. Am I just doing this kind of exercise, just having that clarity of purpose that you just expressed, I think enables us to navigate limits of change, because we've realized that when change comes, what it really impacts is simply the simply the output of our work. That means that maybe we can't do the thing that we do in the same way. But that doesn't negate the core value of what we do. And the more that we can identify what that is, the more we can find endless ways to express it.
Gloria Chou 21:13
Yeah, I agree. And if you look at the thought leaders, if you will, right, we don't know what they sell. Like a lot of people talking on stage, I don't know what product they have, or what their business model is. It's really about what they do and kind of their why. Right? If you look at Simon Sinek, I don't know what he sells, right? Or even you, like I have no idea. I just know your values and your mission and whether or not I'm aligned with that. And obviously, yeah, now I know that I am. So I love what you said about that. I want to talk a little bit about journalism, because we live in an age of pay to play of paying an influencer of $5,000 to wear a sweatshirt. It's so blurry now. Right? There's so many magazines. So where do you think journalism, journalism is headed towards with all this kind of changes?
Jason Feifer 21:56
You know, it's a question I don't, I don't pretend to know the future. But my general belief on how things evolve is that nothing ever gets wholesale replaced, you take the best of the old and the best of the new and you eventually combined them into something. I mean, I am, I am disappointed to see the degree to which I think a lot of legacy media brands are. You know, I think, basically selling off the only thing that they have left, which is their reputation, and not selling it off in a way in which you could buy it and promote yourself. Right. Like, there's a there's a lot of confusion, which we should talk about, where people wonder, are stories in entrepreneur or other major media outlets paid for? The answer is no, they are not paid for. But, you know, a lot of media brands entrepreneur included, just to be frank, you know, have kind of let the walls down about who can write for the publications, you know, with the idea that well, this is not like a kind of community platform. And any, you know, like, as long as you pass a kind of verification, you know, you can you can write, and that, that brings a lot of value to people. But it also I think, really ultimately kind of devalues these brands, which used to be based on really strong focus and creative material, you knew that if you wrote, if you read something these brands, it was because 10 people looked at it and made sure that it was polished and clean and up to standards. And you know, that's just not something that any brand can keep up when there are like just a bazillion pieces of content being posted online every day. And I worry about that. I just don't think I just don't think that that's a lot. That's a that's a I don't think that that's long term good for the media industry as a whole. But, but it is the model right now. And, you know, there's you take the good with the bad, because certainly there's good with it, too. And so what I would do, I think I think that I think that there will always be a media ecosystem, full of noise, and full of chaos. They're there. That's the media ecosystem that we came from. And it's the one that we're building now. Right? I mean, if you look back at the early days of newspapers in the United States of America, what you see is just chaos. You see every city that has like 12 different newspapers, and they're all owned by by, you know, like, the party men. And and, you know, they all have completely contradictory information in them. And, you know, yet people found a way through and they they found the things that they trusted and some elevated and became the New York Times and some became the New York Sun and fell apart into nothingness. And that's just what it'll be. That's what it'll always be. And I think that right now, you're even seeing in the newsletter space, you're seeing really smart accomplish smart people. I said smart twice, but that's fine because they're smart. And they are establishing themselves as separate and above a lot of the other noise. And they will become the new standard bearers of people who are trustworthy, and who will go out and gather information in a honest way, and the others will, I think, ultimately be seen for what they are, and in the middle will be a lot of noise. That's what it'll be.
Gloria Chou 25:20
I love that you validated that. There's always going to be different business models. We live in a capitalist society. But I do think the value of knowing how to pitch yourself, it cannot be understated. Right? You can't just hire someone to tell your story. For example, Lina's wigs, Lina knows her stuff more than anyone. Right?
Jason Feifer 25:36
Yeah.
Gloria Chou 25:37
I love that you said that journalism is not dead. You don't need to pay to play. You don't need to hire a fancy PR agency, but really get to your core. Before we hop up...
Jason Feifer 25:44
And actually, yeah, can I, can I just say another thing about you don't need to pay to play. I mean, like, here's the thing. If there are pay to play options out there, typically, like, what what are they? Well, you could you could buy an article in some second, third, or fourth tier publication. If you do that, here is I think what you're gonna get from it, then nothing. You're gonna get nothing from. And the reason is, because if a publication has an audience, they can monetize the audience. If they don't have an audience, they have to monetize you. So you are going to pay to be in a publication that zero people are reading. I don't see how that's valuable. And then yes, it is totally true that you might hear some story about how somebody and you know, I've just just purely by example, random example here. I'm not making any accusations. But you know, like somebody paid and they got into Forbes, okay, well, what was that? I'll tell you what, that was, that was not Forbes, that was not somebody at Forbes, what that was, was probably a bad actor who has become a contributor to Forbes and is somehow sneaking around, and getting people to pay them to write about them in Forbes, and someday that is going to be found out and that stuff is going to get deleted. It has happened, an entrepreneur, and we have deleted, we delete, delete, delete, so that means that you paid somebody who's a jerk. And, and, and you got nothing out of it. It's just not worth your time.
Gloria Chou 27:14
Yeah. I love what you said about it. Because, you know, obviously I teach about the organic, right? Because it's so much easier to not do the work and just pay someone but I love what you said about if they don't have an audience, they're gonna monetize you. But if they have built up the audience, which is years, or if not decades of credibility, then then they don't need to monetize you. So I love what you said about that. Because let's be honest, even to this day, like if I open up my Instagram, I get those spam messages all the time. Do you want to get featured in 30 Under 30? I know no one's reading that. Or the best one is, do you want to pay $20,000 to be on a TV show that is going to broadcast at 5am or 4am but no one's gonna watch, right?
Jason Feifer 27:52
Yes, that is such a thing. That is such a thing, right? You pay to be on like ABC. And so what somebody does is that they'll like film you, and then they'll run it in, in this tiny market in South Dakota at 4am. And so I guess technically it was on ABC, but zero people saw it. And now you have a video of it, that I guess you can put on your website, but it's just garbage.
Gloria Chou 28:13
So before we hop up, do you have any quick tips on people who want to do it the right way? Right? But they also aren't natural pitch writers. How can they start to consume the news and be a good steward, and then get to the point where they can actually get on to someone like you?
Jason Feifer 28:28
So the first thing I think that you should do is you should step back, and you should ask what is pressed for for me, like what do I need it for? Because that's going to dictate who you're going to reach out to. Right? If you are a, if you're I you know, I don't know, if you're in the consumer product space and you target then your target consumer is a college aged woman, you know, you could try you could try to pitch entrepreneur. Because and this is what people tend to think is when they reach out to me because they always tell me this, they'll be like, well, I want to be an entrepreneur because I'm an entrepreneur. Okay, fine. But if your job is to run your business, and to in the goal that you have right now is actually to drive consumer awareness and to drive sales, then entrepreneur is not your audience. It's just, it's just not. You're not going to reach people who are going to buy your product, you need to be reaching Cosmo or Teen Vogue or something like that. Right? So you got to think through who your audience is. Why would people pitch entrepreneur? I mean, you know, some of them are because they create products and services for entrepreneurs. But um, but but a lot of them actually are the reason that if you and I've had like conversations with people is like, why did you pitch me? And the answer is because they're about to go out on a fundraising round and, and they want something that they can show investors. That's why so spend time thinking about what your goal is, then identify your publication, and then you know what, just spend time trying to see how they write the kind of story that you would be in. Just the other day, I was talking to a guy who runs a snack food company. And, and his target is is millennial moms. And so, and so I said, alright, well, why don't we go to cosmopolitan.com and see how they write about snacks. And so that's what we did. And what we found was that they write about snacks in list format, you know, 17 snacks for the summer, or whatever. It's like all that. So great. Now, you know. And so now you can you see who's writing these stories. So now go check out their work, figure out their email address and reach out to them. And don't just be like, hey, next time you're writing a running list about snacks, consider including me, because that puts the work on them, do some work for them, maybe you reach out and you're like, hey, I'm in the snack industry. I seen these really fun trends happening right now that I bet your audience is going to be really into, you should totally do a list on like 17 something, something, something, something. And you know, my product happens to be a fitting that, but also here for more than I think a really great like at that point, the person is like, Oh My God, thank you, you've basically just saved me hours of time. And now you've got, now you've got a you're delivering value, and you're telling your story in a way that they tell their story. You're telling all tied up. You're telling your story in a way that the publication is talking to its reader. And as a result, they're going to be far more receptive to your message.
Gloria Chou 31:11
Oh, you just validate so much. Thank you so much for that. I, that's actually exactly how I write a pitch, I have like three bullet points of trends. And maybe the product is one of those three, but I'm not going to talk about selling to the journalist because journalists is not going to buy your product, you know. So before we end, I want to have one more question is you have this book that you've written, you have decades of experience, you've interviewed entrepreneurs in every corner of the globe. Why is your book different than some of the other entrepreneurial books that are coming out?
Jason Feifer 31:36
Oh, great question. So my book is called Build for Tomorrow. It is an action plan for embracing change, adapting fast and future proofing your career. That's very long, I use the subtitle, it's just called Build for Tomorrow. And the way that the reason that it's different, I'd say is because of this. So first of all, I have access to everybody, to the just the most accomplished people in the world, and also the main street heroes like Lina who you've never heard of. And, and I've spent years understanding the patterns of how they work, and how they adapt. And then I've married that to this other thing that I've spent years doing, which we didn't really talk about here. But did you find my podcast is called Build for Tomorrow too, which is I studied the history of innovation. I'm absolutely fascinated by why some of the things that we, the things that we take for granted today, things like teddy bears, and coffee and chests and bicycles. These things were scary when they first came out. Literally, 1907 America had a national moral crisis over the teddy bear. The people were freaking out, the schools were banning teddy bears. Why? The answer is because change is very, very scary. And by studying how today's entrepreneurs navigate, change, and see opportunity ahead. And then by finding the parallels in how the world that we live in was built by people who understood how to navigate change, or at least figured it out along the way. I think what, what I hope that I've put together is this guidebook on how to change yourself and how to see change as opportunity. I break changed down to four phases, panic, adaptation, new normal and wouldn't go back, and then give these lessons and exercises that I've learned over the years from the smartest people that I've talked to about how to navigate you to them. And, you know, I hope that I've offered something that's really unique. But I guess if anybody listens to this, and then reads it, they can be the judge.
Gloria Chou 33:43
One thing about changes is, I mean, we're recording this in 2022. I literally told my friend with what's happening with government, with abortion rights, with guns, with the war. I almost feel like you've done like 10 years of changes in six months. Would you agree?
Jason Feifer 33:57
Totally.
Gloria Chou 33:58
The only thing now is change. Change is the new normal, even more now than ever.
Jason Feifer 34:03
Yeah, I think that's totally right. You know, we, I like to say, I like to think that we are we right now what we have an opportunity to do is to live in the conscious cycle. It just to say changes, like changes a cycle, you've gone through many of these before, like whatever it is that you do right now, is the product of you navigating change, endless times before, right? Like just the number of times that you change what it is, who you are and what you do, and how you relate to people, all of that produce whatever it is you have now. And the problem that we have is that at some point, we get to a place where we're like, okay, now I've got it and I'm done. And, and then when change comes along at that point, we say, oh, I this, I can't do this anymore. And so now, as we're all forced into it, because the pandemic forced us all into it. Now we have this opportunity to monitor the experience to say, this change is disruptive and scary. But also, oh my gosh, here are these new opportunities. Oh, here are these new ways of thinking about work. I can't believe that I didn't have this before. And this is now like I said, the conscious cycle, you can pay attention to this, you can notice what you were doing and the experience that you're having, so that the next time it happens, because it will happen again, you can think back and say, I remember it. I remember tracking it, I remember seeing how I experienced it. And I know that there's good on the other side of this one, because there's good every single time prior.
Gloria Chou 35:32
Right. And every time you go for it, you get feedback, you get faster, stronger, and better. Boom. How can people find you connect with you and support you?
Jason Feifer 35:41
So I would love, love, love, if you picked up the book Build for Tomorrow. You can also find me on my website, which is www.jasonfeifer.com. And if you look at the top right of the website, if you go to jasonfeifer.com, you will find this little button that says free training, which is a free audio guide that I put together about how to become more adaptable. It's just sort of some of the lessons and tips that I have. It's sort of like a little teaser for the book, so to speak. It was made long before the book. So it's not actually a teaser for the book, but you know, you get the idea. And, and so I'd love for you to download that because, you know, I think it'll give you a little jolt of inspiration and also it'll enable you to be on my mailing list so that we can stay in touch.
Gloria Chou 36:23
Yes, get on his mailing list and get the book. I can't wait to dive into, not only learn about the entrepreneurs we know about, but also the main street heroes like Lina. So thank you so much for doing what you do.
Jason Feifer 36:34
Thank you!
Gloria Chou 36:34
And congrats on the book.
Jason Feifer 36:34
Hey, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you for all the work you do.
Gloria Chou 36:38
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