Armando (0:00 – 1:17)
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You have nothing to lose. Enjoy this episode of the Founder’s Guidepost. Hello, this is Armand Aroman with the Founder’s Guidepost, here with David Josh Weiss of 10 to 1 Public Relations.
Josh, how are you?
Josh (1:18 – 1:20)
Very well. Thanks so much for having me on.
Armando (1:20 – 2:20)
Good, good. Josh, I’m excited to have this conversation with you, because as people have their businesses, they grow them to get to a certain point, then they begin to wonder, what’s next? How do they transition out of that company?
How do they take that company and grow it? And sometimes as they’re thinking about that next stage for themselves, they come to the realization that, yes, they’ve got a great company, and it’s doing really well, and it’s worth, it’s a valuable asset now, of course, that they have for their family. But they sometimes come to the realization that what they really need to do is take that company’s footprint and grow it and make it larger.
And that’s where you come in. Because as a public relations firm, as I understand it, and I’ll ask you to clarify so that it’s clear, but as I understand it, part of your role is to get the messaging out there that the company wants the public to hear to help achieve the goals that the company is trying to achieve. Is that about right?
Josh (2:21 – 3:37)
It’s pretty close. So there’s a little difference between marketing and public relations. So it makes sense to start with that, right?
So a lot of people combine the two different notions, and they’re definitely related, and you need both. But marketing, if you think about it, it’s like having a billboard, right? And that billboard with your logo on it and all that kind of stuff.
It’s like an advertisement. So when someone sees a billboard, subconsciously, they’re like, I need that product right now. At least I have the phone number in front of me.
I have the website address. I’m going to call them right now, right? The signage is about an immediate sale, in terms of the product or the company and helping them.
Public relations is about building a long-term image and reputation. And so that six months from now, if they’ve heard all these good things about you, six months from now, when they need your product, they got to find your billboard, the paid advertisement, to know what phone number to call, right? But if they have three billboards in front of them with different company names, but they have a good feeling about you, they’re going to choose you first.
They’re not going to know why, but they’re going to choose that product, that company to be their vendor, because they already feel good about it. They already are aware who they are, and they feel like before they needed you, they already had a good impression of you.
Armando (3:37 – 3:46)
And so then you’re helping to build that impression so that they have the feeling that the business wants them to have?
Josh (3:47 – 5:18)
Correct. So it’s really building that reputation, that image, that kind of brand awareness. And so that is what helps expand the business, right?
That’s like the long-term benefit to help you get more customers or to offer more services or expand into new markets, or all those things are really helpful, obviously, when people think good things about you. And so I’m a big believer that you need to build up goodwill before something bad happens, right? So the name of my firm is 10 to 1 Public Relations.
So our philosophy is that it takes 10 good things we said about you to equal one bad. So you got to build up your goodwill bank before something bad happens. So the easiest way that I’d explain that is, let’s say there’s a restaurant that opens in your neighborhood.
The first thing you hear about that restaurant is negative. You’re never walking in the door. It’s just off your list, right?
You wouldn’t even consider going in. But if you heard from different friends and neighbors, oh, I didn’t have to wait for my table. Oh, the food was good.
Oh, I like the ambience. Oh, my server was so nice. You hear all these little positive comments.
And then you hear, no, I went there. I just didn’t like it. It may not be the first restaurant on your list anymore to go to, but it’s still on your list.
You’re still willing to walk in the door because you heard enough positive things first, right? People will give you the benefit of the doubt when they know who you are and they think you’re good people. If the first thing they hear about you is negative, they’re not going to give you a chance or it’s really hard to regain that trust.
And so that’s more the public relations aspect, right? Lots of little stories to build that up.
Armando (5:19 – 6:32)
Thank you for making that a little more clear there. So I’ve heard business owners before, as I’ve had conversations with them, where they really are a bit tired and they’re kind of ready to sell and step out of their company. But then at the same time, they’ve wondered, do I double down?
Do I put in another two, three, four or five years to grow it? And what will it take money-wise? What will it take from me emotionally and just the energy I have in me to really grow that business?
So from your perspective in the public relations space, if someone is having that kind of a mindset about, is it worth it? Is it not? And they’ve never say hired a public relations firm before, and maybe they’re established, they have several locations and they’ve got a pretty good size footprint already for their business, but they understand they need to expand that, get a bigger footprint, get more customers, more revenue, just grow it.
When you’re having that conversation with them for the first time and they’ve never hired somebody like you, how do you help them understand your process, what you would do for them, how that would roll out and what should they expect?
Josh (6:33 – 8:44)
Yeah, it’s a great question. So let me turn it around a little bit, right? Because we work with a lot of companies that they have that two or three year plan where they want to sell and they know that they want to do that.
They want their employees to know that they’re planning to do that, but that’s their plan. And so we build a lot of PR strategies around that goal, right? To help you position yourself for that potential sale time, wherever that fits on your calendar, that your best position to make you more likely to be bought.
And so I would argue it also a little bit differently. And so it’s a mindset needs to be, right? There’s the side about building your business or building your personal brand for your life after your business.
And we can talk about that in detail. I think the bigger question for a lot of companies and the best way to understand the value is if you’ve got two businesses, like in the end, when you’re ready to sell your business is worth what it is, right? Doing a PR campaign right as you’re ready to sell, isn’t going to work, right?
The PR campaign needs to start earlier in a way. So if you’ve got two businesses, your dollar values, you’re still your dollar value. If you’re $25 million, right?
And so now the potential buyer has a choice, right? Do they think you’re worth $25 million? The better thing is if you think about that purchaser, the people who are interested in buying, they’ve got their $25 million.
They know they’re going to buy something with that money. So now they got two businesses in front of them. One that has a really good reputation that it’s really being a part of the community that people think good things about.
And one company nobody’s ever heard of before, and they do good work. They make their money, but you don’t really know who they are. So if you’re a buyer, which one are you going to buy?
You’re going to buy the one that already has a good reputation, that people already think good things about because you don’t need to build that from scratch, right? And it’s a lot easier to grow upon a positive image and reputation than it is to try and build one from scratch. So the way to think about it when it comes to the sale time is that does your company have a big enough reputation beyond just your dollar value to make you chosen over your competing options of who they might buy?
That’s one of the benefits of having a good PR already in place when you’re ready to sell.
Armando (8:46 – 9:10)
And so when a new client comes on board with you and they haven’t worked with a firm like yours before, but they’ve decided that they should have a conversation with you and you’re describing what you do, how you would do it, how does that roll out? You have to know what the company is, what they’re trying to accomplish, I suppose. But how do you begin to roll out a plan and that?
Yeah, great question.
Josh (9:10 – 14:06)
So PR is a long game. And if you don’t walk in accepting that, you’re not going to be happy, right? And so almost think of it backward, think of it like a political campaign, right?
So a political campaign, election day is all that matters, right? You need 50% of the vote plus one on election day, otherwise you wasted a lot of time and money, right? You don’t need it tomorrow, you need it on election day.
Like having a lot of support tomorrow doesn’t help you if the support doesn’t remain on election day. So what we do is we plan backwards. If we know that your goal is to sell in three years, if we know that you want to reach this milestone in 12 months, we literally build the calendar backwards.
So that we’re not sprinting to get there as fast as we can today, we’re actually taking a few steps every month to get you closer to your goal so that you actually reach your goal a little bit early. But you’re on track and it’s manageable and everybody’s still talking to each other and everybody’s kind of happy that we got where we wanted to go. But it also doesn’t overwhelm your staff by going too fast, right?
What are you actually doing? Oh, okay. So I’m sorry.
Thank you. So for our firm, we’re traditional PR only. So we don’t buy anything, right?
That’s advertising. What we do is we’re very, very aggressive with media relations. We’re going to generate as many positive stories for a company as possible.
And I can explain what that means on a local level and there’s so many different avenues to take on that. The other part is thought leadership. And thought leadership means a lot of different things to different people.
Part of it is positioning company leaders as an expert in their field and helping them get interviewed as an expert to explain things to reporters or explain how it connects. And that helps build the brand because you’re viewed as a resource, as somebody who’s more educated than the reporter or the public and you’re educating everybody about something. It doesn’t have to be about promoting your individual business.
It could just be explaining a complicated issue. That’s really useful. But when I’m talking about thought, a lot of that to me is media relations, right?
That if you’re already talking to a reporter to explain something, that’s media relations in terms of getting your story and your name out there. What I’m talking about for thought leadership is awards. I’m talking about speaking at trade shows.
Those are great opportunities for companies. There’s so many different things when it comes to thought leadership. When you’re in the newspaper, when you win an award, that’s somebody else saying that you’re an authority.
Somebody else saying you’re good at what you do. That’s credibility. Every award you get is really, really helpful.
You should try to nominate yourself for as many awards as possible. Every company should do that. It could be for you personally.
It could be for the company as a whole. It could be for your product. I don’t really care.
I want to nominate you for everything. We build out that calendar of what kind of awards you might win. It might be local chamber of commerce.
If you position yourself as a great community business, that makes the community proud of you, but also it adds value to your brand. That helps make you more sellable because you’re a mainstay of the city and you’re well known. There’s a bunch of industry magazines.
A lot of them have their own awards. If you’re in multiple states and you’re expanding in multiple places, that’s a perfect opportunity for you to position yourself as that leader because as you enter new markets, you can say, don’t just take our word for it. We’ve won this big industry award that shows our product is so good or our leadership is so good.
You want to hire us even though we’re new to your city because you can trust us. There’s a lot of credibility from the awards standpoint. The nice part about awards is that you don’t actually have to win.
You just need to be a finalist. This is something a lot of people forget. Oftentimes, they’ll name the top three or four finalists.
As soon as they announce a finalist, if you’re on that list, put on a press release immediately. Get as much press, put it on your website, tout it like you won. We’re so excited.
We find out in three months if we win or not at the big awards center, but we are a finalist. We’re so proud of that. That’s something that your team should be proud of, that you personally should be proud of.
Tell everybody right away. Put it on your website. Three months from now, when the actual awards event comes, if you win, you get to do a second press release saying you’re the big winner.
If you came in third or that you didn’t win, you’ve already made the announcement that you’re a finalist. Everybody already knows. It’s already on your website.
You’re not going to do another press release saying you came in third. You’ve already gotten your press out of it. Take advantage of that.
What’s funny is that sometimes it’s better to not win the first year. If you’re a finalist, you can apply again next year to be the winner. When you actually win the award, you usually can’t apply again for three to five years.
For some of our clients, we’re totally fine with you just being a finalist for a year or two and then winning the third year you apply because that’s three years of publicity instead of one year.
Armando (14:06 – 14:27)
Yeah, that makes sense. Are you wondering if you’ve missed anything in your financial planning? We hear that a lot from very smart, very successful people.
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Josh (14:28 – 16:33)
Take advantage of being a finalist and really highlight that. There’s another trick to awards if you want me to share it. Please.
Okay. It’s not that hard to be a finalist if you know this trick. Fill out the form correctly.
As silly as that sounds, if you think about it, the judging panel for an award, they’re giving points to figure out who the finalists are. A lot of times, they do that before they even do the interviews to decide which of the finalists is the final winner, like the in-person interviews. They’re literally looking at a form, a piece of paper where you gave your answers.
A lot of times, they might say, tell us about your CEO. Tell us how old he is, where he grew up, where he lives now, his current title, whatever. When they ask for that, look at that.
That’s one answer to one question, but it’s actually five different sub-questions in the one question because they ask how old you are. They ask where you grew up. They ask where you live today.
You need to make sure you don’t just cut and paste your standard bio from your website. You need to actually answer all the things that they ask for because they literally are checking off, did you give me your age? Did you give me where you grew up?
Where do you live today? They are literally marking that off. If you forget to put your age and they ask for it in the body of the question, you lose a point.
Your goal of submitting an award nomination is to get every point possible. What we do as our team is when we’re filling out awards for our clients, we have one person who’s trying to fill it out. We have another member of our team who acts like the judge after we think the award nomination is ready.
They go through and they check off to make sure every single thing asked and every question that we’ve actually answered that because we just are going for points. Even if you submit for yourself, my big advice is make sure you’re playing the game for points when you submit an award. You got to answer every single question in there.
Armando (16:34 – 16:36)
Thank you. I’m making some notes here.
Josh (16:37 – 16:40)
You’re going to apply for some too, I know. You definitely will win some.
Armando (16:40 – 17:38)
It’s funny, you said fill out the form correctly. It sounds why even say that, but when you explain it, it makes perfect sense because if they have that matrix and it’s all point-driven on how they add those points up, then you better make sure you’re answering their questions correctly. Then Josh, just to use an example here, let’s say there are five biggest plumbing companies in Arizona and someone right now is number five.
They want to be number one or number two. Then your role as you come in to understand them is to help them get into maybe the trade magazines or help them get good media outlets, get some media coverage, and you’re helping to build that warm fuzziness about them so the public, when the pipes burst in my home, I need to call a plumber. If they’re not top of mind, when I look up plumbers, the one that I see that you’ve been promoting, I get a good feeling about, and I might not know why, but I feel good and I call them.
Josh (17:38 – 25:40)
You call where you’re comfortable, right? You call where you have recognition. Absolutely.
When it comes to media relations, there’s a lot of different ways. Our philosophy at 10 to 1 is lots of little stories adding up to great effect. We play the small ball game.
I’ll give specific examples for HVAC companies. Happy to do that, but I think it’s important to get the idea of our approach to media relations because it’s a little bit different. Our view is we want, if you’re a baseball fan, this is going to make more sense, but we don’t try and hit home runs.
We just want to get base hit after base hit after base hit. Think of a home run as being on the Today Show or being in Forbes or being in the New York Times. Those are the tier one media.
They’re the big national media. That’s a home run. We want to get a home run, and we definitely get them for our clients.
Don’t misinterpret, but the truth is I believe that getting 10 small stories in industry magazines, in your community newspapers, in your local market media, that’s much more effective for businesses, especially if you only operate in Arizona. What good does it do to be on the Today Show, right? That’s not really going to help you.
You want to be in Arizona where your customers are, right? That’s going to pay off a lot more. If you’re only in the HVAC industry, you want to be in there from the commercial side or building your business credibility-wise because that’s where your potential buyer is going to come from.
Down the road, they’re going to see the good reputation in the industry magazines that you have. They’re more likely to buy you. Again, like that same $25 million, which one are they going to buy?
They’re going to buy the one that already has a good reputation. It’s going to help their whole portfolio. The other way to think about it is I’d rather get 10 stories from small industry or local market media across the country than one mentioned in the New York Times.
If you walk into a sales meeting and you have a choice of handing over one New York Times story or 10 small stories that only talk about you, that talk about your clients, about how happy they are with you and their testimonials, those 10 stories, whether it be for an investor or a potential buyer or whether they’re much more likely to like the 10 small stories than the one home run story. What we do is we just get base hit after base hit after base hit. We want to run up the score.
It’s not as sexy a game, but it’s going to have the effect that you want. You’re much more likely to win. The nice part is if you’re the lead-off hitter, going back to the baseball thing, if you hit the ball just right, a few of those are going to go over the fence anyway.
You’re going to get a couple of home runs. You’re not trying to get the home run, but you’re going to get some anyway, compared to being the home run hitter where you’re up there expected to get a home run every time. You get 30 home runs, you’re the best home run hitter on your team, but you strike out 200 times also.
I just want to get base hits. That’s our approach to media relations. Going into HVAC companies, because we work with a bunch of them and we work with a bunch of groups across the country from that regard, there’s so many stories that aren’t that complicated that you can see that other markets are doing that can be repeated city by city.
Just because somebody’s doing something in Denver, if it’s not done in Phoenix and you do it in Phoenix, you copy the idea. It’s new to Phoenix. It’s a new idea to them.
When you’re building out a media calendar, there’s a couple of things you’re looking for when you’re trying to figure out what kind of stories you can do. One trick is what’s unique about the owner or what’s unique about the company, whether it be you work with a certain kind of company or you do certain donation programs or you give away certain things to veterans or to teachers or whatever. What’s the story?
Are you a third generation owner? That’s a family story. There’s a bunch of interesting stories from that side.
Are you a woman owner? A lot of companies actually are, but there aren’t that many women in the industry overall. That makes you quite interesting.
You’re more likely to get some coverage because as a woman owner, you have a different vantage point. We had a client, for example, that when she took over for her father and became the new president of the company, there were individuals in the company who said, I can’t work for a woman. The father said, then you can leave.
That’s an interesting story in terms of that whole transition. It makes it really interesting, whether it be for an industry magazine or even just a local community newspaper story. Now people are rooting for the new owner, the woman, leadership and her credibility of being the owner and how she’s been there for so long and all the things she did to work her way up.
It wasn’t just handed to her. She earned taking over the company. She was more interesting than the product.
Sometimes the person’s more interesting and that’s okay because it brings attention to the company. Other times it’s another thing to do when you’re building it out. Take a look at a calendar.
This is a mistake that a lot of people do from a PR standpoint. Literally, guess what? Christmas comes the same time every year.
It’s amazing. There’s a Mother’s Day every single year. There’s Veteran’s Day every year.
There’s Valentine’s Day every year. There’s Thanksgiving, same time every year. Build PR events around the calendar.
That tells you in advance that you need to do something for a certain thing. There’s a silly thing we like to do for plumbers. We work with a lot of B2B companies and medtech and all that kind of stuff.
We have a soft spot in our heart for home services types of companies. We’re really good at that. We like the multiple market thing.
One of our favorite stories is sometimes you can be a little punny and people enjoy that. I personally like puns. We end up accidentally doing that more often than maybe some others.
But for Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving is on a Thursday. The day after Thanksgiving on Friday is actually called Brown Friday. That sounds really dirty.
It sounds like you’re clogging the toilet. We’re actually talking about the kitchen sink because people are putting too many things down the kitchen sink for Thanksgiving that they shouldn’t be doing. All of a sudden, the garbage disposal can’t hold it.
You have the backups and all kinds of stuff. We’re actually talking about the kitchen. The Brown Friday jokes just open up fun.
Whether it be a couple of days before Thanksgiving or right after Thanksgiving, you can do a bunch of stories about Brown Friday because the local TV station likes the pun too. They can have fun with it. You can generate stories around that concept where you’re telling people, do not put turkey grease down the drain.
Do not put the rice down the drain. This is going to clog you up. Just don’t do it.
All those kinds of little lessons. It just positions you so that when the bad thing happens and you do get clogged up, you do a quick search. What do I do for Thanksgiving clogs?
Hopefully, that news story pops up. You’re the first one called. They saw you on TV a few days before.
You messed up. They realize that, oh, you know what? I didn’t pay attention to that TV story.
They give you the call to get the job. You can have fun with it, but use a calendar to build out those calendar things. I do the same thing with awards.
Use that calendar that you built to figure out all the upcoming awards for the industry magazines or the local chamber of commerce only has the award once a year. There’s all these different kinds of things that figure out those timelines. A lot of other businesses, it goes to trade shows too.
If you own a business and you have a booth at a trade show, that’s a huge missed opportunity for many, many companies. Can I give an example of what I mean?
Armando (25:40 – 25:41)
Yes, please.
Josh (25:42 – 31:29)
Think about it. If you’re an exhibitor at a national industry trade show, a bigger show, because the local shows, the small community only ones don’t necessarily do this. Some of the state ones do and some don’t.
If it’s a big national industry trade show, even if you have a really small booth at it, if you think about it, every magazine for your industry, all the associations that have magazines, all the industry specific media go to that show because all of their customers are there, all their readers are there, all their advertisers are there. Their audience is in one room at one time. A lot of the big industry magazines, they send at least one reporter.
On top of that, if you’re an exhibitor, they don’t want to pay for their ticket either. If they’re a member of the media, oftentimes they can get a free media pass. They can come as a reporter for free.
When they’re there, they schedule as many meetings as possible because everyone’s already in the room. They don’t randomly walk around from booth to booth. They have a schedule to keep.
If you’re at a really big industry show like RSNA in Chicago every year, that’s one of the largest healthcare related shows in the country. It’s for radiology and all that kind of stuff. It’s a huge radiological society of North America, I think, is what RSNA stands for.
Gigantic show. It’s literally the second biggest healthcare show in the United States. Gigantic.
If you think about it, you’ve got all those media who are going there. It’s such a big show. A reporter doesn’t want to walk from one side of the hall to the other side of the hall for a meeting and then have to walk all the way back.
Literally, they schedule out their path of where they’re going to walk. I’m going to be in this aisle in this hour. I’m going to schedule my bathroom break because the bathrooms are at the end of this aisle.
I’m going to not have a meeting for 15 minutes so I can stop in the bathroom and not have to rush. Then I’m going to be at the end of this aisle, which leads right into the food court around lunchtime. I’m going to get lunch.
I’m going to take a break. The really good reporters who go to the shows every year, they know this. The last thing you want to do is it’s tiring to walk from one hall to another or different sides and all that kind of stuff.
It’s just easier to have a schedule. If you are going to those kind of shows as an exhibitor, you often get a copy of the media list. The media list of all the reporters who are going to the show.
You’ve got to ask for it. Sometimes it’s posted and it’s publicly available in exhibitor only section. Sometimes you need to ask the sales rep who sold you the booth for a copy of the media list.
Here’s the other trick on the media list. The reason you want the media list is you want to schedule out as much as eight weeks before. You want to start calling and say, hey, can you stop at my booth?
I want to talk to you. I want to show you this. I want to demo this.
I want to introduce ourselves. You want to ask for those interviews far in advance before their schedules are booked. That way when they know what aisle they’re going to be in, you’re on that list before they fill up that aisle and then have to move on to the next one.
You want to schedule those in advance. But some of those media lists, a lot of times media sign up at the last minute. What they actually do at these bigger shows is they give you last year’s media list.
Now you’ve got the show from 2023 instead of 2024. But if you think about it, all those national magazines, they go to the same shows year after year after year. A lot of times if someone’s a reporter in a magazine, they’re there for multiple years.
A lot of times it’s the same reporter who goes back year after year after year. Now you’ve got contact information, or at least you’ve got their name of who’s coming, so you can look up their contact information. You can reach out to them and ask them if they want to meet with you.
If they say they’re not attending the show, say, oh, totally get it. No worries. Who from your magazine is attending in your place?
Because somebody’s going to be there. Now at least you can narrow down who you’re talking to and schedule them in advance. You can be prepared.
You have a demo ready. You’ve got your press release in terms of launching something. You know what you want to talk about.
You’ve read their magazine. You’ve got a full thing. Sometimes we actually get clients who hire us just out for trade shows.
Most of our work is retainer, long-term based. We don’t like doing project work. But we do do a three-month project related to trade shows where we have the list far enough in advance.
We’re scheduling people out eight weeks before. We give the client a full, if they’re a retainer client or just a project client for a trade show, we give them a full booklet that says, here’s the reporter who’s coming to your booth at this time. Here’s their background.
Here’s what they want to talk about. Here’s the information about them. So you can be prepared for your 30-minute meeting and really have something ready to go.
Then it’s a follow-up after the fact to any final questions, anything we still have to send them. It’s usually a three-month engagement if we just do a project for a trade show or even if they’re a current client, we’ve got that on our calendar of things to do, knowing that it’s going to be a long-term process. It’s a lot of work to do by yourself, but you can do it by yourself as a company.
Especially if you’re thinking about selling in a couple of years, building that national reputation of being a leader or a thought leader or being smart at what you do really helps. Because when that investor is looking at you, when that purchaser is looking and you can demonstrate that you’ve got a voice in the community and that you’re well-respected, not just you personally, but your company, it makes you much more valuable. It doesn’t change your dollar value again, but it makes you much easier to spend the money on.
Armando (31:29 – 31:31)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Josh (31:31 – 31:35)
Your value much more strongly than just looking at the bottom line number.
Armando (31:36 – 32:20)
Good. I’m glad you talked about trade shows. That was interesting to hear just the process and just how that works.
I did take a look at your website. You talk about setting goals, target audience, media channels, and activation as you work with the client and how you’re helping to things out. A question that came to mind for me, there’s so many media channels now, the traditional, of course, magazines and newspaper, yes, from back in the day, but there’s so many social media channels now and there’s just so much information out there.
I wonder from your perspective, as you’re helping to build that goodwill and get the company out there, how do those come into play as you’re conducting your work?
Josh (32:20 – 35:42)
Yeah, that’s a great question. There’s a lot of media outlets that are closing up or there’s not as many local news that people think anymore. In some regards, that’s accurate.
There are less paper magazines. There are less newspapers in communities. The other side is that there’s a lot more online.
It’s a matter of if you consider them real media or not. My view is that take every story you can, even if it’s small, even if it looks like the audience is small, because it can help you from an SEO standpoint. It becomes a social media post you can put on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and all these different things that give you credibility.
I view your social media channels as your megaphone. I view them less as here’s how I educate in terms of the first story. I wouldn’t want the story to just be on Facebook.
I still rather share a link to a real traditional media outlet on Facebook to give you more credibility. But sometimes people don’t show up to your news events. Sometimes people aren’t interested in your press release.
You still should announce on social media and treat it like a news announcement and announce that very proudly. You should announce every new hire that you have. I kind of joke about this, but I’m really serious.
I don’t care if it’s a receptionist you hired. You should be putting out a press release. It’s not going to be on the front page of the New York Times.
But it can get in the little community newspaper where that office is located or in the hometown of where that employee lives. The benefit of that is it’s still one towards ten, those little stories. So take advantage of that new hire announcement.
It might just be Josh was hired as a receptionist at company XYZ. Who cares? Take it.
Because if you think about it, you could have just fired five people and hired one person. But now you’ve got a little newspaper story saying you hired somebody. The average person who reads that, because a lot of people look at the on-the-move sections of those papers, right?
Someone says, oh, wow, that company must be doing really well. They just think they are hiring. They don’t know you just fired five people.
So it sets an image and a reputation, helps look good that you’re growing in the community and that you’re giving people jobs. The other part that’s nice about it is that that new employee sees that you think so highly of them that you announced that they’re part of your family now. They actually work a little bit harder for you.
They actually feel a little more committed because you’re putting it out there that you believe in them, so they should believe in you. And so that plays a big role for retaining employees as well and just showing that value that you’re proud that they’re part of that team. And there’s a benefit to that.
And so if people are just kind of going through that paper again, right, and they need your product or they need your service, and they see you in there that you just hired somebody, even if it has nothing to do with who they will work with, or they say, oh, wait a minute, I didn’t know Joey, my friend, is now working at that company. I didn’t know that they’re working at that law firm. I didn’t know that they’re working at that medtech company.
You know what? I need that product. I know that I won’t talk to Joey when I’m there calling them, but yeah, by all means, I might as well help Joey out by buying the product from where he works and just helping him stay employed.
Those little things happen more and more often than you realize. There’s a credibility point when people recognize people in their community.
Armando (35:43 – 35:52)
Wow. And a question for you about press releases. Those are text or text and pictures or is it depends?
Josh (35:53 – 38:43)
It’s a great question. It does depend. But I would argue, depending on the announcement, I’m a big believer in pictures.
So I think the best stories that you have are when the picture tells the story without you having to use any words. So a gripping grin kind of image doesn’t help. But if you can show an action of you doing something, handing over an envelope, instead of just you both standing there next to each other smiling, they still see your faces, but make it an action photo.
What happened that you’re reporting on? And so the picture, if it demonstrates what you’re doing, makes a much better picture. The other benefit of that is that it draws people into your story when they see it.
And so what’s a good example? This relates. So if you had to choose what paper you want to be in, like the Arizona Republic or the Church Bulletin, which one is more important to your business?
It really depends. But oftentimes it’s the Church Bulletin that’s actually more influential and helps your company more than the Arizona Republic. And here’s the thinking, right?
How many people actually look at every page of the Arizona Republic? They don’t. They go online, they look at azcentral, they pick the stories that they’re interested in, they follow it, they’re still up on the news, they might see your story, they may not, but they’re going straight to the sports page, right?
Or they’re going straight to whatever. When you get your Church Bulletin or your association magazine, that’s why we’re so big on believing that industry magazines are so important. When you get those Church Bulletins, you go through every page.
You don’t read it. I’m not pretending you read it, but you look at every picture and you look at every headline to decide if you want to read it. The reason is you self-selected to be part of that community, right?
That religious institution, that industry association, you chose to be part of that and you tend to know people there. So if you see a familiar face of somebody in the Church Bulletin, even if you don’t know their name, you’re more likely to read it because you recognize the person’s face. If you see something fun happening in the picture, you want to know what you missed out on, right?
You want to know what happened. You want to know what’s going on. So now you look at the headline or the first paragraph to get more information.
So whenever you can, a picture is really useful. Even if you’re just doing that new hire announcement, include a picture of the person, right? Because I may not remember everybody’s name, but I’m very good at remembering faces and conversations.
So if I see somebody’s face in the newspaper, even if I wouldn’t have noticed their name listed in the article, oh, I know that person. I’ll look to see why they’re in there. And so a picture really does help share your story.
Armando (38:43 – 38:56)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Like I said, they self-select to be part of that association or part of that religious organization. And so they have more of a vested interest in seeing.
It’s more relevant to them.
Josh (38:57 – 38:57)
Yes.
Armando (39:00 – 39:26)
So as you’re rolling out a campaign, a PR campaign for a company, and like you said, the long story, the long game, that’s what you’re there for. And they may not see results on day one, but over time, they’ll begin to get that warm, fuzzy feeling or hear that from new customers that come on board. Are there some surprises that people share with you, your clients as you’re helping them go through this process?
Josh (39:27 – 40:24)
We get them all the time and it’s really rewarding. It feels great when a client, it kind of clicks all of a sudden, they see the benefit or somebody saw the story and said something, I saw that you did this. And they’re like, wait a minute, it’s working.
That kind of mentality. PR, it’s like drips out of a faucet. Lots of little stories add up to big effect, but it’s not one story that’s going to do it.
So you got to collect the water. You need to be patient. You’re going to see some results, but it’s going to be hard to show the ROI right away.
Over the course of six months, a year, you’re going to see the ROI is much more than you paid into it because it’s the bigger collection. But it’s one of those things. It’s like, if you’re trying to grow something in the desert, you got to keep watering the desert.
That’s not easy. That takes time before anything starts growing. So you got to have enough patience to get it started because the sooner you start, the more it’s going to pay off six months from now.
Armando (40:25 – 40:54)
And so a question for you then, understanding your clients, you mentioned plumbing or HVAC. You mentioned the daughter who took over when dad stepped out of the company and she’s a female owner now of a plumbing company. It sounds like you really have to understand that company, what is different about them or what opportunities you can use to help get them some publicity and not just the company, but the ownership and the leadership of the company as well.
Josh (40:54 – 42:43)
Absolutely. We really dig in really deep. So we’re going to look for trends.
We’re going to look for things happening broadly, but how does that really relate to the client? And so for us, because we’re building a relationship, we’re not interested in fly by night. We have a great client roster from across the nation, but we really get to know our clients and they need to let us in.
All right. They got to let us understand what’s important to them because we need to build stories around what they care about. So it is about that give and take that collaboration of stories.
Sometimes an individual does not like promoting themselves. And so we got to play around that. Or maybe there’s a story of why would a printing company donate significantly to a certain type of cancer association?
Well, usually it’s because someone in that company was affected by it. Or a family member of someone who’s a leader in the company. Are they willing to share that personal story?
Because if you can tell a story about why this is important, it’s a much more effective story because people want to root for you. They want to help, right? If you as a leader are really involved in you on a personal level, how can that be used to promote you personally to then help the business overall?
Because if somebody is rooting for you personally, they want to help your company too. I’m not just talking about the leaders though. I’m talking about anyone in the company.
If you have a staff member whose big dream was to climb Kilimanjaro and they actually climbed Kilimanjaro, how much fun would it be when they came back? If you had all your staff lined up, like they’re walking, you know, in hiking gear or whatever, like as they’re walking into the office, like they’re taking the last steps of K2, how much fun would that be to have like the whole staff cheering them on to celebrate their personal victory?
[Speaker 3] (42:43 – 42:44)
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Josh (42:44 – 43:12)
That’s a fun visual. That’s a fun thing. But why shouldn’t media know about that?
So now when people learn about that individual having reached this personal goal, maybe they even show a banner of the company, right, who gave them the time off and support for doing this. Maybe they part of the deal is that say, you can do it. We got your back.
But hey, do you mind if you’re up there? Can you like hold something up with a company logo? All right.
Yeah, that kind of, you know, it sounds silly, but you know what I’m saying?
[Speaker 3] (43:12 – 43:13)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Josh (43:13 – 46:24)
Take advantage of it from the company perspective, but have fun with it and celebrate your individual people. There’s one other thing, if you’re thinking about selling your business, when we’re talking about highlighting people, that I think it’s really important that the owners consider. You may not want to publicize yourself as the owner, as the leader.
And so think of it this way. If your goal is to sell and leave, the last thing you want to do is draw more community commitment to you personally, right? You need to start transitioning your company’s success to your staff who are going to remain after you sell or to the company name itself.
Make it less about you personally. Because it’s kind of like when you, you know, a lot of, it’s always bad in a way when you have your name on the door, right? Of your own business, the company is named after you personally, because people only want to talk to the person whose name is on the door.
They don’t understand that there’s other talented people who work there too. Well, if you over promote yourself, as you’re thinking about leaving your business, now the new owner is like, well, I’m going to buy it, but you have to stay for a longer amount of time, or you need to stay in the face of the company. And you’re forced to not really leave, even though you’re getting a nice payday, you know, through that process.
This might be the perfect time to transition to the new leaders of the company, especially when you’ve already become the face of your company. But talk about that vice president and build them up, knowing that they’re going to end up being the new president once you sell to somebody else, or even if you’re selling to someone inside the company. Take advantage of those opportunities to transition to help the overall brand instead of yourself personally.
The other side though, is sometimes, and we’ve worked with a few people, that when they’re planning to sell and all this, they actually want to promote themselves, because they’ve been a little bit quieter behind the scenes, because they’re trying to set themselves up for their next act. Not everyone, when they sell their business is ready to retire and just be done working. They may want to transition from their business to become a consultant, or to build up this new business that they’re working on on the side, or they have a different plan.
And so building up that person before they leave the company helps them in their new venture. And so sometimes it does help to promote the individual person. So again, these are all things that we really quietly dig in deep with, with the ownership, because a lot of times for bigger companies, their directors, their communications department, their vice presidents, may not know the secret plan of selling in three years.
They may not know that not only am I planning to sell, but I don’t plan to stay. Instead, I’m going to go build a separate business, or I’m going to go somewhere else and do something different. I’m not going to directly compete, because you probably can’t, but it’s enough that you can’t do both openly at the same time.
And so you need to start building your own credibility to help you in your next venture. And so those are private conversations we have with clients. We keep them confidential, of course, but we know when we’re building a strategy that that’s part of our strategy.
It may not be open for the whole company to know, but we understand that.
Armando (46:24 – 47:09)
Yeah. For you to be effective and to really help reach those goals, you have to understand what the ownership is really thinking. I had an investment banker once tell me, and it was interesting, what she said is, as the owner’s thinking of selling, they’ve got to kind of flip the mindset a little bit, that it’s not the owner leaving, now the owner’s done.
It’s that company is going to transition to new leadership and new ownership. That company will continue. So give that company what it needs before that transition so that it’s best positioned to go forward.
And by doing so, it ensures the best continuing home for all those employees who’ve been loyal to the company for so many years. It helps them.
Josh (47:10 – 48:00)
Yeah. A hundred percent. And the other side too, is that, again, if you’ve got those two $25 million companies and you’re trying to figure out which one to buy, you want to buy one that you know can survive after the owner leaves.
You’ve got everything in place and the public is aware of it. And you’ve got that stability point where the person doesn’t all of a sudden retire after they’ve sold and the company tanks and loses 10%. You don’t want to risk that either as a buyer.
So building all those things up play a big, big role. There’s one other aspect we actually get some calls to, and it’s, we do a lot of crisis communications work. And so sometimes from the crisis side, somebody is getting closer to wanting to move out or whatever, and something bad happens.
So usually what we do is we build out, I actually have it on my desk. Do you remember Mad Libs when you were a kid?
[Speaker 3] (48:00 – 48:01)
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Josh (48:02 – 49:58)
Right. So it’s the idea that we want to build out all the scenarios where a freight can happen, and let’s pre-decide what we’re going to do if that happens. Let’s have the core statement ready to go.
But we know from your perspective that it’s already been approved by the lawyers and the executives and all this kind of stuff. And all we’re going to do is fill in the blank if this bad thing happens. And that’s like a holding statement to buy you time to learn more detail and to really solve the problem.
But you got to respond to a crisis quickly when it happens. So the reason I’m saying this in general is it’s a lot of the stuff we do with our clients is we build this out beforehand, especially when they’re a regular retainer client, or sometimes they just hire us to build out the crisis plan for them. But we do get a lot of calls that the crisis has already happened and they don’t know what to do.
Right. So we do a lot of work for that. A crisis is bad for any company at any time.
But it’s really bad for that owner who thinks that they want to sell in a year and wasn’t really prepared for this crisis. And all of a sudden, they lose 25 percent of the value of their company or their reputation is negative. And they don’t really want to spend the time to rebuild.
They don’t want to have to spend the next three to five years just to build back to where they were. That’s why we saw a lot of companies with COVID. I know a lot of other PR agency people who are just like, it’s not worth rebuilding after COVID.
I’m just going to sell to another company or I’m just going to retire. I’m just going to make sure all my employees have a good spot and I’m done because they just they were already at that. They were close enough that they could retire or they could have retired and they they didn’t want to spend the next five years rebuilding.
And so part of it is planning for those things, dealing with those crises as they happen, just managing them really well so that you don’t lose as many steps in the process, but also protect your brand enough that you’re still somebody that wants to be bought. So that way you’re not being purchased as a depressed company.
Armando (49:59 – 50:34)
And so I think part of what you just said is that even if there is no crisis, having a plan in place so that if one does come up, you already know what to do. You’ve already got steps outlined. It’s okay.
Now let’s go to this playbook for now because we have to no matter what the situation is. And that’s, again, being proactive in the planning versus waiting for the oil spill in Alaska and now it’s a problem. Well, now what do we do?
How do we message and how do we save face? How do we clean this up? But proactively planning has got to be better.
It sounds like any situation.
Josh (50:35 – 51:11)
That’s when it goes back to the example of that restaurant that I gave at the very beginning of our conversation. If you hear the first thing negative, they didn’t like going into that restaurant, they’re never walking in the door versus having heard positive news and then they’re still willing to try it out. So it’s one of those kind of full service moments that if you’ve got that plan, if you’ve built up goodwill beforehand, you’re a lot better off.
If the bad thing happens, you’ve got to have a plan of how you’re going to recover or how you’re going to stop the bleeding. And so don’t do it with a chicken with your head cut off mentality of figuring it out at the last minute. When you can have that plan and you’re ready to go, you’re going to be much more effective.
Armando (51:13 – 51:25)
And I guess that also gets back to your point about having 10 good stories already built up, a good will bank. So when that one thing does happen, you’re in a better position to handle it. 100%.
Josh (51:25 – 51:47)
And when the bad thing happens, it’s going to happen. The only law you’re going to break is the law of averages. It’s only a matter of time until something bad happens.
But if you can have that plan ready, you’re going to be much more effective. You’re going to be a lot happier through the crisis. People give you the benefit of the doubt and they’re not going to be as mean to you.
They’re going to want to forgive you.
Armando (51:48 – 52:10)
So what have we not touched on, Josh? We touched on a lot of different things. You talked about trade shows and trade magazines and press releases, having a media calendar built out around the calendar.
What have we not touched on in this conversation yet that’s part of your playbook as you’re rolling out?
Josh (52:10 – 55:40)
I think one thing that we didn’t directly talk about goes back to trade shows a little bit, is that submit yourself to be a speaker at trade shows. And we have a whole strategy of how we do that, and I’m not going to get into all the detail of it. But when you submit, that’s an opportunity as a thought leader to explain.
I’m not talking about being a keynote speaker. You’re not going to be a keynote speaker. I’m talking about being a workshop leader, right?
That when they have five tracks going at the same time and you’re leading a 45 minute or one hour session on a specific topic, it’s not a sales thing, but you can use real examples of your product or what you’re doing and why this is a solution everyone should consider, right? It needs to be presented in a not salesy way, but submit to be a speaker. Now, the thing is, if you think about the timeline of that, the show ends, three months go by, they usually post a call for presentations, a call for speakers, CFP, call for presenters.
They post it on their website. So know that three months after a show ends is usually when they post that. And then the opening to submit is usually about a three month window.
So literally six months before the next year show, they’re already deciding, they’ve already made their choice of who the speakers are going to be. That takes another month or two before they actually finalize the agenda of who’s speaking at what time and all that kind of stuff. You need to agree and all this kind of stuff.
About three months out, four months out is when they start promoting the speakers because they’re trying to get people to sign up for the conference. So there’s a whole thing about the best way to submit submissions and we can get into that some other time, right? I mean, the easy answer is start looking for it far in advance, but you need to be planning far ahead.
That’s the example where that PR calendar helps to know that that show and the timeline of when to look to submit your speaker presentation. But the easy answer is submit. I mean, so they don’t accept you.
So what? So you wasted 45 minutes an hour putting together an outline of a presentation you are willing to give. Chances are that same outline is good for other conferences too.
So it’s not a waste of time. You can reuse that for different things. But if you do get to speak, you’re now an expert, right?
They chose you. This organization believes you’re so credible. And so you might as well make an announcement about that from a press release standpoint.
You might as well, when you’re there, tell media, hey, why don’t you come meet with me? Why don’t you come to my session? These are simple things that you can do to try and build up recognition for you.
And a lot of times, you know, potential owners and buyers are at those shows. They’re looking to expand their own business, an air conditioning company that already operates in multiple states. Going back to that example you gave before, they want to enter, you know, the Tucson market.
They want to enter the Denver market. Well, all of a sudden they’re seeing, you know, this company, they’ve got a good reputation, you know, they’re kind of come, they’re kind of, you’re now on the radar. And if the message gets out that, yeah, you’re kind of ready, I’m like, oh, I saw him speak at that conference a year ago.
I really like what he said. I really like his, you know, how he built out his business. You have a lot more credibility, they’re much more likely to want to talk to you about a potential purchase, because you’ve got a positive reputation in the industry, let alone having a positive reputation in your community.
The other thing I threw out there that we do as part of all this is that we really are, we really do a lot of media coaching for our clients. So not everyone is comfortable doing an interview.
[Speaker 3] (55:41 – 55:41)
Okay.
Josh (55:41 – 56:54)
That’s okay. So I kind of joke that I can raise you one letter grade, but I can’t do better than that. You’re really, you know, if you’re a C-level interview, we can make you a B.
Don’t try to be an A, right? Maybe, for example, you’re fantastic on the phone because you’ve got all your notes in front of you and all that kind of stuff, but you’re really nervous if you’ve got a camera in your face. You know what?
We’re not going to schedule interviews for you with a camera in your face. We’re going to try and do print interviews. We’re going to try and do phone interviews.
We’re going to try and do Zoom interviews where they’re not recording you, you know, directly. If you like telling stories and all this, like, I love doing podcasts. I was so excited when you asked me.
I really appreciate you asking me, but you can kind of see, I don’t mind having a conversation and sharing all these ideas. This is a good forum for me, but in another area, I may not be as comfortable. So I kind of joke that we can coach you and make, you know, we can raise your level one letter grade, and so you might already be an A at, you know, phone interviews, but you might only be a C at TV interviews, and we’re going to get you to a B, but you’re going to have to be at a B for a while and be very comfortable before we can start working to get you to that A level, and that’s okay.
Armando (56:55 – 57:00)
Yeah, but that makes a lot of sense, though. Some people are extremely uncomfortable in front of a camera.
Josh (57:01 – 57:26)
And what’s the point of trying to force somebody who’s going to make you look bad or make the company look a little less positive? Pick the mid-level person who’s all photogenic and really into that kind of thing. Let them be your spokesperson for a media stunt or a simple story that you’re doing.
If it doesn’t require an executive level response, why not let the demo come from a mid-level person who’s really excited to do the demo?
[Speaker 3] (57:27 – 57:29)
Yeah, that makes sense.
Josh (57:29 – 58:08)
And so pick the right person for the right forum and promote members of your team that you want to use to sell your business, right? If you’ve got a head of IT or you’ve got someone who’s a developer or someone who’s, you know, really strong at building a product, highlight your assets of your company, get a story about that product, get a story about that amazing designer, get a story about those amazing techs that you have. Because that’s what somebody’s buying, right?
That’s what you’re wanting to sell. So if you position your own staff in that way, that just makes you all the more palatable to purchase.
Armando (58:11 – 58:52)
Well, that makes sense, Josh. And you’ve covered a lot of areas that I imagine as you’re onboarding a new client and they have not worked with a firm like yours before, I imagine there’s a lot of education that you’re doing and you’re doing a lot and helping them understand why it matters and how it’s going to have that impact. So then I guess a question for you, when they’ve got you on board and you said, playing for the long game, they’ll begin to see results.
Is it, I guess it depends what the goal is, but is it six months, 12 months, five years? What kind of a timeframer are they typically, should they typically expect?
Josh (58:53 – 1:02:08)
Yeah, I think that it’s hard to answer. So for us as ongoing PR, we’re trying to build you up long-term over time. So when we sign contracts, you know, we want to work with you forever.
They should expect to see results pretty fast though. So don’t misinterpret me. I know that, you know, it’s hard to prove ROI in PR.
It’s one of the worst parts, right? It’s not like an advertisement that you know immediately if it worked or not. One of the advertisements people are ready to buy right now.
When a PR is, you don’t know when they’re going to buy, but he wants to do good things about you. So it’s a hard transition point. So when we start with a new client, we understand they expect to see some stories pretty quickly, right?
They want to see that their money is going somewhere. And we understand that. And we’re going to work really hard to get them some stories.
It may be small, right? But we’re going to work really hard to get a couple of initial stories. They start understanding what we’re pitching and the kind of things that we’re putting out there, right?
We’re going to work with you quickly to put out a press release. We’re going to work quickly to pitch an expertise of a person. But if we’re submitting you to be a speaker, again, that’s a really long process.
We submit now, we won’t know for three months of your chosen. You won’t know for six months until after you speak, how many clients you went off of that. That’s a long game.
Same for an award nomination. If we submit you for an award, you won’t know for several months if you’re a finalist or not. And so those are longer term things, but we have to get started on them because we need to let you see results six months from now.
And so we need a client who understands that it’s going to take time. They’re going to see how we’re spending our time. They’re going to see that we’re doing a lot, but it’s like that depth duck under the water who’s paddling.
You know, they’re going to know we’re really paddling, but they’re not going to see like constant motion immediately. But once we get some momentum going, they’re going to really feel it. They’re going to feel it long term.
So our clients, we have several clients. I mean, we’re only a 12 year old company and we have clients that have been with us, you know, 10 years. That’s a long time.
Really proud of that. But at the same time, you know, our goal is long term to help companies. And, you know, we recently lost a client and it’s because we helped them get bought.
And that was part of the plan. And we knew we were making ourselves obsolete, but that was the plan. And I think the greatest compliment we received from them as a result is, and they were a Wisconsin based company, you know, they weren’t even here in town and he came to town on vacation after the sale kind of thing.
And, you know, we’d already stopped working them for a month or two. And he, when he was here in town for vacation, he wanted to come to the office and he brought us all cookies. And he just said, you know, he said, I just want to say to your face, because I’ve already sent it to you an email, like the reason we’re able to sell and the reason why we got so much.
And the reason why, you know, I’m able to be here on vacation today is because of you guys over the last several years, just building our positive reputation. And they had several choices of who to buy, but they chose this company because it had such a great reputation. And so that was such a, it felt so nice.
It was such a, you know, it, I was so proud of my team.
Armando (1:02:09 – 1:02:22)
Yeah. As you should be. And that is a great compliment to you.
And it’s such an intangible that, that he knew it was there. The owner knew it was there and that’s why he thanked you, but it can be such an intangible thing.
Josh (1:02:23 – 1:03:37)
Yeah. It made it, it was, it was great. It just, you know, just kind of like reminded everyone what we’re doing.
I mean, yeah, we lost a client. Yeah. The new owner already had their own systems in place and didn’t want to keep us, you know, built us into their bigger model, but it just, it was wonderful.
So, I mean, we get a lot of compliments and sometimes just emails and sometimes they get a direct message and like, I just want you to know that, you know, this employee of yours is just, you know, amazing. Right. And so it just feels so good.
So, I mean, hiring is the hardest part of any job, but I’m just so lucky to have the team that I do. We look at everything, you know, collectively, we actually have a no jerks policy. And so it’s literally on our website and our no jerks policy refers to our clients, you know, they can’t treat us like jerks, but it also refers to our coworkers.
So we all need to be, you know, friendly with each other. We need to support each other. We need to be able to help each other and we don’t compete with ourselves within our team.
And so then no jerks mentality has really helped us, you know, feel confident in how we help our clients and really feel good to come to work every day.
Armando (1:03:37 – 1:03:50)
Oh, fantastic. So Josh, if someone heard the conversation and they’re thinking they’d want to have a conversation with you to learn more and maybe talk about how you might be able to help them with their company. What’s the best way for someone to reach you?
Josh (1:03:51 – 1:04:54)
Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. So my website is http://www.10to1pr.com. So it’s 10to1pr.com.
The numbers are numbers and letters are letters. You can email me direct at josh at 10to1pr.com. But I’m happy to, you know, I kind of joke about this that my opinions are free.
I only charge for implementation. So I am happy to have a conversation, just share a couple ideas and see if we’re a fit. I’m really honest if we’re not.
I don’t want to my time or your time. So if it just isn’t the right fit for us, I might have a better referral of somebody who’s more aligned with what your goals are. But the opinions are free.
I’m happy to have a conversation, give you a couple ideas you might be able to do on your own or if we’re a good fit, I’ll tell you why and how I think we can help and we can have a broader conversation going from there if they so choose.
Armando (1:04:54 – 1:05:08)
Fantastic. Josh, thank you so much for the conversation. Really appreciate it.
And keep up the good work. I’m glad to hear the compliments on that. That’s always rewarding when you hear something come back that just kind of makes you feel warm and fuzzy as well, right?
Josh (1:05:09 – 1:05:09)
Absolutely.
Armando (1:05:10 – 1:05:14)
Good, good. Josh, enjoyed the conversation pretty much. Have a fantastic day.
Josh (1:05:14 – 1:05:16)
Thanks so much. I appreciate you as always.
Armando (1:05:17 – 1:06:02)
Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Founder’s Guidepost. When you think about exiting your business, that’s often a once-in-a-lifetime event with no do-overs and the stakes can be very high for your family. Before making that leap, ask for your free copy of our Scottsdale Founder’s Forum white paper, packed full with information that first-time sellers should know before exit.
And schedule your 30-minute Founder’s Strategy Call at axiomcorp.com. Your exit can be amazing, everything you dreamed of, when you plan ahead and take all the appropriate and necessary steps. That’s what’s possible.
Until next time, I’m your host, Armando Román.
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