421 | Leveraging the Media with Kate Delaney

Leveraging the media can boost your brand and your business. However, not all strategies are going the move the needle. This is another special episode where I am talking to an expert about what I can do in leveraging the media to help me toward my goals. My guest today is Kate Delaney. Kate is an Emmy-award winning journalist, speaker, and author of “Deal Your Destiny.” She is known in business and sports. Kate endured five years of rejection in the sports world to make it as a hard-hitting sports journalist finally.

Today we talk about leveraging the media. You can pick up on the tips she shares with me. Then use those tips to leverage your media to achieve your goals.

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Target Audience: Kate has 20 years of experience in radio and television, Kate brings her unique background and unforgettable style to help audiences across the country break through their barriers to truly hear and be heard. She is a +Talk Radio guru+Glass ceiling breaker and Content Curator/Biz Speaker with an Emmy Award-winning journalist.

 

Kate Delaney: The Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

Leaders in the trenches and your host today is Gene Hammett.

Gene Hammett: Hi, my name is Gene Hammett. I’m the host of leaders in the trenches. My question for you today is, are you leveraging the media at your fullest potential? What is leveraging the media anyway? Well, if you are being recognized for the work that your company is doing, the impact that it’s making in the world for the progress you’re making towards your mission, then you are being are leveraging the media. So how do you leverage it to your fullest potential? Well, you’ve got to get specific about your strategies that today’s a special episode because I wanted to go and do something that it really ever do. I did one last week, so that was the first time. This is the second episode, but I opened myself up to being coached by an expert in this area. Our expert today is Kate Delaney.

Gene Hammett: Kate is an Emmy award winning journalists. She is known as well and the sports world as she has in the business world. And she talks about, you know, leveraging media, becoming a rock star in your industry and about how you do that. We talk about some very specific things today that will help you if you take notes and take really focused around what to do. You may not have the same things available to me. You might not have a podcast, you may, you may not write for different publications like I do, but you can still do what is talked about inside this message. Kate talks about leveraging the media so that you can actually become the Rockstar in your industry. Again, special episode today where I’m getting coached, it’s a little bit longer than normal soap, excuse me for that, but I think there’s some insights in there to help you understand the media better so that you can get more press so that you can get more recognition.

Gene Hammett: Just as a side note, I have been working on doing some of the strategies inside here since we talked a few weeks ago and starting to get some traction around that. I recently came and to entrepreneur magazine is one of the top speakers. I’ve got a few more things, cooking with some, some writers that I know around speaking and also around what I’m doing inside my business. That’s a little bit unique around fast growth companies, so stay tuned for more media coming out from me, but in the meantime, an end to this episode with Kate Delaney talking to me about leveraging the media and you will get more insights about how to move your business to the next level. All right, here’s the interview.

Gene Hammett: Hi Kate. How are you?

Kate Delaney: I’m great. How are you doing Gene?

Gene Hammett: I’m fantastic. Little nervous because this is a different kind of experience today. Instead of me interviewing you and your expertise and I’ve already let our audience know a little bit of who you are, but you’re going to be coaching me today. We’re going to make this an episode, so I’m putting myself out there for the benefit of the audience. Before we get there, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and who you serve?

Kate Delaney: Sure, absolutely. I’m all about creating buzz for my clients. In other words, making them the rock star, the celebrity, the authority in whatever their field is. How do they expand that expertise so the world

Kate Delaney: knows their greatness? Because often when you’re in a niche, if even if you are crushing it, the rest of the world doesn’t really know you and how much money are you leaving on the table and how much more leverage could you get? And my career has been in front of a camera or I’ve been writing my whole life, whether it was traditionally newspapers, et Cetera, or now blogs and obviously interviewing people. So I’ve interviewed over 16,000 people, a lot of them rockstars in business. And the one thing that the true rock stars, whether they’re in business, sports, politics, whatever that they all had in common is they were tenacious. And they doggedly pursued through people around them, through what they were doing, the idea of becoming known in their space, but also beyond their space. And that help them capture really bigger business and very, very broad connections because you never know who’s connected to whom and what could end up being just an incredible opportunity. So really my word is about leverage and creating, as I said at the beginning, that leverage, what are you missing? What could you be leveraging? What do you have to frankly offer the world that would be fabulous for people who would have a chance to get to know you, whether it’s through a mainstream publication or maybe even a more of some of the niche opportunities that are out there that you could expand upon even more.

Gene Hammett: Well, that gives us an idea of what you do and who you are. You’re also known, I don’t know, maybe people recognize the voice. You have a background in sports.

Kate Delaney: I do. And what happened was, I’m the prime example of this team. I like sports as a kid growing up and I was a TV anchor and with somebody on the set, one of the guys I work with convinced me, you know, you know more about sports than I do when I go away. I think you should fill in for me. So he pushed to make that happen. And then I decided, you know what, my three things really are business, politics and sports and I wanted that real opportunity to feel what it was like to do sports and have the chance to be able to cover teams and do a sports talk show. And sure enough it took 500 or injections, but I ultimately got there and absolutely that’s part of the 16,000 people or a lot of those rock stars that I got to interview, which was really cool about breaking through the glass ceiling because I traveled with the Dallas Cowboys, covered the New York Yankees, worked in the biggest station in the United States. It was really awesome.

Gene Hammett: Know the 500 you left out something there that you normally tell, and I guess maybe this is from stages, but you, how many times did you actually try to get into the locker room with these professional athletes?

Kate Delaney: Oh it took hundreds and hundreds of times before that actually happened. And then when it finally did, I’m not a nervous person, but of course I dropped the microphone cause my hands were sweating and you had 70 naked men in various forms of undress. That’s where I say I learned to look up that all of a sudden we’re very quiet when that microphone.

Gene Hammett: All right. So that gives you our listener a little bit about who you are. So this is a different take today. I know you’ve done this many times before, so you’ve looked at the podcast, you looked at, you know, writing for Inc magazine, you’ve looked at some of the other media that I’ve done, the ink magazine Article or entrepreneur article that came out earlier this year has been something I’m proud of. Where listed one of the top motivational speakers for 2019 and I, you know, I was just been thinking like, you know, how do I leverage this into bigger place? And that’s the reason why we’re having this conversation. So where do you want to go from here Kate?

Kate Delaney: Well, one of the things you have to do is, first of all, you have to develop a target list. I mean, what would be your, you’re the ultimate places that you want to be seen it. Do you want to be quoted in the Wall Street Journal? What would it mean to be in other publications? To be somebody that sought after for quotes, when it comes to a growth, when it comes to business, what it, how do you combine your niche, what your expertise is with your target? Who are your big targets? You got to make that list and you have to know the people that can get you there. So another words, the big mistake a lot of people do when they’re trying to leverage is they say that question. It’s like when somebody asks you, well how much money you want to make? And you say, well, $10 billion a year.

Kate Delaney: Okay, well what’s Your Business Plan? So what’s your media plan? How do you go after those people? And who are those people? So who are the reporters know their names and know what they cover. You’re not just blindly throwing darts. I don’t understand why people do it, but I see it all the time and a lot of the big companies where I’ve worked with people and even individual incredible entrepreneurs, they’ll say to me, oh well I want this, this and this, but they have no idea what they’re covering. They’re not paying attention to the world around them. One of the other things you have to do, so you’ve put that target list together. I would love to be quoted in the Wall Street Journal. I’d love to be in Time magazine in an article I, you know, shoot big and then shoot smaller. So you put that list together of huge national places where you want to be and then look around you regionally.

Kate Delaney: Where could you be quoted? There’s business journal’s everywhere for you. You’re an Atlanta. So why aren’t you the Goto person for the business journal in Atlanta? What if you were quoted six, seven times in that business journal? Guess what? A lot of prominent people pick it up and read it. People who could hire you and you become that rock star there. And then a lot of times in those business journals and even expands across the United States to the other publications in that same realm. So you want to think big and then you want to think regionally and speaking of reasonably who has reached in radio because radio was still relevant. Yes, there’s podcasting and you know that from the success you’ve had with podcasting. But what about the rest of the world that’s still out there driving around in their cars, in traffic, in a city where you live.

Kate Delaney: And a lot of people probably listening to this are in that same boat who are the so called known personalities on morning shows and it can be a news oriented morning show. It can be kind of a wacky morning show if something that you do fits into what they would talk about because there’s something about the power of that. Trust me, I am in media, but I am a sought after guest on some very popular radio shows and in publications like the Wall Street Journal. And guess what? That’s led to business for me. So, not just being in my own media platform, but the fact that other people are seeking me out as an expert in asking me for my opinion and somebody hears it and then they pursue me. That shows you the power of leveraging the media you get, but the question is getting that media, you have to come up with that list.

Kate Delaney: You have to know what they talk about. So in other words, if you have to take a DV, you take the DVR and you DVR some of the places where you’d like to be on, so you really know how they operate, how that personality is and who they like. That way they’ll have you on if you can create the right itch. So that’s number one. You have to know who the targets are in. So many people don’t do that. They just throw out the blanket statement of, Oh, I want to be on MSNBC. I want to be on ABC, I want to be on the Today Show. I want to be on Good morning America. You have to target that. Definitely.

Gene Hammett: When I think about this, we definitely want to talk about how do you engage with them, but let’s back up to the whole target lists. Like I never thought about the Wall Street Journal and maybe I should. I typically think about Forbes fast company. A lot of the people I work with now and the people that I admire read three publications. They read Fast Company Inc and Harvard Business Journal and I asked them, that comes up over and over and over. So you think that’s the best play for me or do you think I should think even broader than that?

Kate Delaney: I think you think even broader than that because you don’t want to take all over. It’s like I say, do you want the map or do you want the territory? I’m just going to tell everyone I want the territory so I don’t just want the map. I think yes, absolutely. Those places, Harvard Business Review, of course, every place that you just mentioned are, that’s all fantastic, but why wouldn’t you want to be in the other spots as well? Why wouldn’t you want to have a guest shot on Fox business news, I’d say, or CNBC or any of those because that only adds to your credibility and more people, Gene get the chance to hear your message. So shoot for the moon and see what happens. And absolutely you have the prestige of the places you really want to be seen in, but there’s no reason why you can’t pursue the others that are equally as good and have a different, broader maybe audience.

Gene Hammett: So I want to take the devil’s advocate to their son because I know I’ve had people go, you know, you should get on like these noonday shows and I kind of joke and smile. Mike Boyle, who’s at home watching noonday, people who don’t have jobs, not my ideal client. And I know there’s more to it than that. Like you get the video clips, you can leverage that you can add in. A lot of times if you want to be on like a CNBC, that’s not the first place you’ve showed up on TV. They’ve seen you or they know that you’ve been on, you know, five other stations and you’ve like, you’ve carried yourself fairly well. Is there some truth to that?

Kate Delaney: There’s a complete truth to that because if you’re solid, this is what a producer wants and this is ultimately what the talent wants. They want to know that you have what we call chops so they can go to you and you give good answers and you’re interesting and people gravitate towards you and your conversational with, especially if it’s that format with whoever the host is and they’ll go back to again and again. And that’s the beauty of that. So for me that I have relationships like that had been developed because I know the producer knows I’m reliable and good and then the people on camera, NO, that I give good media so that I’m provocative, funny, and have some sort of message that will draw people in because they want to get ratings. So that helps them and that’s what they’re looking for.

Gene Hammett: So would you say regional leads to national?

Kate Delaney: Yeah, regional can lead to national. There’s no question about it because then you’ve got the proof like, Hey, you know, Gene’s been on 35 shows and here’s what he’s had to talk about before and in the trenches, here’s what’s really sexy and exciting that your listeners will care about. For example, I’m just using that as the twist and I can give you some really good examples of that. This is somebody to look up for. Anybody out there that’s listening to us, Steve Spangler, who has a niche, he blows things up. He’s the science guy, he’s on the discovery channel. He’s also happens to be a speaker, but he started to go on a show where he lived in Denver and every, I think it was every week they would have him on like on a Monday and he would do silly, funny things using science and it was really cool and people tuned in and they watched him and I got his name even out there, a little bit more vigor so to speak, and now he’s on then on the Ellen show, probably more than a dozen times and it doesn’t get much bigger than that. She’s got a very big influential audience and there’s an example of that show comes on during the day, but people know who she is. She’s a brand. There are plenty of corporations that pay attention and pay her big money. So to be considered practically a regular on Ellen and you’re not a famous celebrity, that’s pretty darn good. And a lot of that happened because he got known regionally in a medium to large market.

Gene Hammett: So my first thought behind this is, and I see the value of this because if we have more credibility that leads to more credibility. So almost like we, both you and I are both speakers, Kate. And so that small Gig, you never know who’s in the audience that leads to the next association or the next conference. And a lot of times that’s the only way you get there. Cause the very best way to get a speaking gig is for someone to see you rocket on stage and go do, you’d be perfect for our event.

Kate Delaney: Yeah.

Gene Hammett: And so if you apply that to media, you want to kind of identify places that are good from me and the brand and you’re also saying go wider than you would normally go. Don’t just be is focused. So this is one place where I would say, you know, if you’re trying to, if this is all about brand, go to other markets, other regional markets possibly to get that rounding to lead to bigger markets to lead to national. Right?

Kate Delaney: Absolutely. Because you know, there’s, there’s that old saying about, uh, well any publicity is good publicity, right? And there is some truth to that. So if you get known regionally and even in areas near you, wherever it is, that only can help in that road to making you somebody who national media looks at and look, morning shows are big. A lot of corporate people, people that could hire you, people with money frankly, are watching morning shows. They’re running round, getting kids run it ready, but they’ve got that on in the background. They’re paying attention to that or there because we live in the world of you can download it. If they have favorites, they download them. That’s for sure. That’s why now what they’ve done with big news media is that they certainly podcast it and there are people that download those podcasts left and right. It definitely doesn’t hurt you. Then the key is what is the pitch?

Gene Hammett: Well, I was going to ask you once we have a list and we’ve gotten the list as I’m taking some notes here. That’s the reason I keep looking down. If you’re in buys watching the video, it’s the place, but it’s also the people. You know. It’s surprising and I’m going to say this and maybe I’ll get a bunch of pitches behind this. It’s surprising how many people don’t pitch me because I write for Inc., but they do pitch me because of the podcast. I’m getting three to five a day for the podcast. Wow. Very few come in for an article, kind of traditional pitch and we’ll probably, hopefully we’ll go into this cause I think most pitches absolutely are terrible. But after you have the list of the places and the people and then you’ve got a little bit of research on what is it, how you would fit into that. Like what’s their format, what do they talk about? I know from a writing standpoint, the easiest thing is, and I don’t want to steal your thunder, is you know I cover leadership and culture well who were the other people that cover this? So people should only be pitching me on leadership and culture and growth, right? If they’ve done their homework, don’t pitch me on your new crypto stuff cause I, it’s real easy for me to ignore that. What do you do? What’s step two?

Gene Hammett: So the next step is once you really know who that person is or the market you’re going after, find out who the gatekeeper is. A lot of times there’s an assignment editor, if it’s local television or it’s the producer of the show, the morning show, the evening news, whatever it is. And that’s who you need to know to send the email to or maybe eventually call, or if you’re really clever, maybe you send them a clever video. If it’s not annoying, you get to the point and it and you feel like it’s going to work for you, then you could go that route too, but you have to figure out who the person is that does the booking. So it’d be just like anything in life, whatever business you’re pursuing, you need to know who it is that makes the decision. And usually that’s who those people are.

Kate Delaney: The publisher, the assignment editor, like I said, is very, very big producers in radio and TV because they’re the ones that look at the stories ultimately and make the decision and pitch it to the rest of the crew and then boom, they hopefully book you because that’s what you want and what is very key. And you said it, gene is all these people that we’re pitching you that had, there’s no way you would’ve looked at them because they didn’t realize or they didn’t care. This is what he specializes in. So there’s no way you’re going to look at those. I’m going to tell you that I do a syndicated radio show and especially on the west coast is very popular and I get about 700 no exaggerations. That’s a big number. 700 pitches a week and I don’t look at hardly any of them because they have nothing to do with what I’m talking about and people don’t know what the show is. They don’t. They just know, oh, I know who she is, I want to get on that show or I think I want to be on that show or Gosh, if I could just get media coverage and of course the pitches are terrible and they haven’t even listened to a show and you got to really know the show that you’re pitching because that gives you an advantage. Why waste your time?

Gene Hammett: What are the key things that we need to know? Like what would be the things that we need to really look at?

Kate Delaney: Here’s the low hanging fruit as I call it, pay attention to what is happening. Two things, low hanging fruit can mean what is the day? You know how they always have these crazy, it’s kind of Cliche, but it’s, you know, today is pizza day or something, whatever it is. There’s a national day, it seems for everything. But maybe what you do can be tied to what that day is or even to a holiday. Holidays are slower. So sometimes that’s a good time to pitch. And guess what actually a lot of people watch TV or listen to the radio during the holidays. Shockingly. And what you want to do there of course is look at what’s coming up. So for example, of whatever it is, if it’s St Patrick’s Day, if it’s Easter and there’s a tie in to Easter and the economy or something, whatever it might be, summer vacations, kids going to school.

Kate Delaney: There’s just a zillion stories that are always covered that you might have some really clever idea to tie yourself to that story that’s low hanging fruit. Or the other part of that is what is happening in the world? Paying attention. Like when we were kids to current events, what’s going on. You know, a lot of people say to me, Oh, I don’t watch the news. I have no idea what’s going on. That’s not the good way to be. It doesn’t even have to take long. Just update yourself every day. What are the top headlines? It’s just like on Twitter. Why does Twitter do trending? Because that’s what people are talking about. That’s why there’s hashtags. That’s what people are talking about. So know what it is that creating buzz every single day. Cause that could create the opportunity and if you make yourself available and you are available and it happens to be tied to what a hot story is that day, that’s tremendous.

Kate Delaney: Oh, I’ll give you a personal example to really nail this for all of you. I got a call on Friday, one of the last Fridays. There was a big story that broke that was in the New York Times about two women who covered the World Cup in Russia. Now that’s been a while, but this video surfaced of them being harassed. One of them kissed, another one grabbed. So media came to me because they view me as that expert to comment on women and sports and is it any better? Are Women treated still? Do they get a raw deal? So they went to me and I had to make myself available. I did three TV hits. I had to be able to go to a studio, I had to be able to set up a studio and it was good for me because in the end I ended up getting some runoff, shockingly, for a speech where the person just happened to see me on television and I made myself available.

Kate Delaney: They called me. I only had a few hours, but I know the subject matter, I could comment on it. I looked at the video, I looked at the New York Times article and then went from there. So if you can tie yourself to something currently happening, Oh boy, that is a home run because now people want to know about that story.

Gene Hammett: So a lot of that happens after you have become the rockstar. Cause Kate, you’re now the rockstar get to that place. Right yet.

Kate Delaney: Yes. But you could still be the person that pitches you see something in the morning. That’s the story that you say, wow, I am the expert to talk about that. You caught be aggressive. Call up the station. Hey this, I know you guys cover this. I listened to you. Here’s what we know. This story just broke about GM letting go of X, Y, Z people. What does that mean for the company and their growth? What are they trying to do? I have some thoughts on that that I think would just really nail it home for your listeners and boom, that’s how you can absolutely get on the air.

Gene Hammett: So that would be something that happens in the day. So I saw yesterday, JC Penney closes 27 stores, right? And I could go in there with some kind of a pitch and to know, we’re probably talking about that a little bit more, but I would probably say something similar to, you know, yes, there’s a big change going on within our economy. How can cus., how can other businesses make sure that they’re not next? Perfect. Can you evolve?

Kate Delaney: Absolutely. Because now if I’m out there listening, Ooh, I don’t want to be that person. And you know this, that when things are working, a lot of times people don’t want to mess with that in companies. But why do you pay attention to the trends? Why do you look at what’s happened to other companies? Because you want to avoid that. They’re giving you a piece of the map and saying, Ooh, don’t do what we just did. So you’re the perfect person to comment on that.

Gene Hammett: So that’s kind of in the moment. And I would call that kind of newsy. I know cause I write for ink, I see a lot of stuff going through. I don’t write the newsy stuff because it’s just so hard for me to, to do that. I mean, I guess I could, and I know it’s called news jacking. I’ve had David Meerman Scott on before to be able to, to ride the wave of that topic or that trending. But the other thing that you brought up there was, you know, the day, right? So you know, maybe there’s secretary’s Day, I don’t know what day that is, but how far in advance, once you identify those key days for yourself, would you suggest like picking five or six or seven of those days and just start planning for what that would be so that you put it on your target?

Kate Delaney: Absolutely. That’s a great idea because then that doesn’t overwhelm you anyway because you’re not trying to make herself busy chasing the immediate around and not earning money doing it. But that way that gives you time to to push that out. And I would say you don’t want to send it to the media, you know, two weeks out. You don’t want to get too far down the road where, hey, five months ahead of time, I’m sending you this because the way media and the cycles move is so quickly, you’ll get thrown in a file somewhere and who knows if they’ll remember you. So I wouldn’t go too far out in the pitch, but I would target the date.

Gene Hammett: What is that sweet spot? Is it four weeks? Is it two weeks or?

Kate Delaney: I think it’s two weeks. We pause for most shows, even big shows like the today show or an I keep going back to that because they still have really decent numbers of people watch them or a Good Morning America I guess has more, and that’s just a national show and people watching in the morning who were corporate people. So I would say yes, two weeks is where it’s kind of that sweet spot. I mean you couldn’t do it four weeks out, but then you’d have to send another one, two weeks and that’s okay. But you also don’t want to be too obnoxious because then you just end up in the rotating file of we’re not looking at that person.

Gene Hammett: Okay. So that we talked about low hanging fruit. Was there anything else we needed to go through and step two?

Kate Delaney: the other thing is you could, and this depends on you, but you could create your own event. So in other words, if you did something way out of the box or something worth covering, something that was unique or had a twist that could interest somebody, then I would say you make your own pitch. It’s your own. I’ve created this thing. Here’s what I’m doing. I’ll give you an example that I can think of Gene, and looking at all of your stuff, something that you do that is unique is yes, you have the business brain and they act human. And you know, you talk about growth, et cetera and leadership and culture and all of that. But when you’re on a stage, you incorporated this ballroom dancing element that’s really clever. So if there was some way to tie that to where the media could see you will, for example, if you were speaking somewhere and you knew you were going to do that, you know, here’s the business brain and the ballroom dancer.

Kate Delaney: There are are stations that do what we call and they still do them kickers, which is the lighter story. So in a sense you become delighter story but with serious, uh, background attached to it and that makes you memorable. We remember those kinds of, I mean who doesn’t remember the reporter who was doing the very serious story and his children came into the room and his wife came behind him and had to pull them out. I mean everybody remembers that and that’s just a silly thing that happened when he was on the air. But if you do something unique and different and you can bring a TV camera there, they can come in then that makes that pretty interesting. I think especially visual. That makes that pretty interesting. But it would even work for like a business journal. It would work for anybody who takes photographs. Like I’ll give you an example in my neck of the woods because I’m based in Dallas. There’s The Dallas Morning News and they have Dallas morning news.com so newspapers are relevant digitally too and they guess what they come out and do a story on you, take a picture of you and then write about what you do and how you meld these two completely different things together. That would be interesting. That could be a pitch.

Gene Hammett: So I think of this is two separate things and they’re all related but create your own event. The example I think of, I think it’s perfect is two of my good friends, one of them, a client created an event called 48 and 48 which is they create 48 websites in 48 hours for nonprofits. And so that the scale of that now is phenomenal because they don’t just do it. And Atlanta, they’d done it in Boston. They did in Atlanta I think three times. They’ve done it in New York, Boston, Minneapolis, and they’re just there. They’re making their, basically their goal is to 48 of these in a year.

Kate Delaney: Yeah, it’s brilliant.

Gene Hammett: And they’re getting press. I covered them three times I think because I would go down there and like do something on the spot and uh, it’s been really good for them business wise. And so you’re talking about somebody like that, like you create this idea and you do it. The other piece to it would be I’m speaking and Orlando in May I guess you you basically it’s about like that two weeks out pitch you go, hey I’m going to be in Orlando. Here’s what’s unique about this. So you’ve got to have something probably unique. It’s not just like another speech. That’s what you’re kind of saying. Right? Cause that.

Kate Delaney: Sure. Cause you’re creating, I mean you’re creating the reason to go to the event I guess is a better way to say it. And then your piece about the event is also quite clever. Takes more work and you have to really think about it. But that absolutely works as well. I mean that’s like the Guinness Book of World Records. We’re going to, you know, build the biggest blockchain or we’re going to do whatever and that would interest people. But when I travel and I’ve been traveling a lot and I’ve got a big group of speeches that are coming up in April, I’m going to Ireland, I’m going to Hawaii, I’m speaking in, I’m speaking in Georgia, I’m speaking in different places. I’m speaking in Austin, Texas. And guess what media is already lined up actually because of what me talking about dealing your own destiny and they’re interested in that as being the glass ceiling breaker. So it makes for good TV and, and I’m doing a couple of mornings shows in a few of those spots where I’m going to be speaking.

Gene Hammett: So I know we haven’t talked about the details of the pitch. Is there something between where we are right now before we go into the pitch or do we start talking about that

Kate Delaney: now? We can. I think we’ve given people some really broad strokes and then kind of narrowed it down for them as well. The pitch, what’s important is now that you know who you’re targeting and even if it’s you’re on the road somewhere and it’s these stations that aren’t in your neighborhood, you know who you’re going to go after. One of the key elements is if you send that initial email, is brevity cells yet to the point, don’t everybody tends to send their resume. And I’ve done this, I’ve scaled the Eiffel tower and then I ate a hundred pizzas and, and it gets so convoluted, I’m exaggerating, but it gets so convoluted. Nobody’s reading that it’s gotta be short to the point. And why do we want to interview you? So on that subject line, it has to be something that grabs their attention and then the body of what your pitches also has to be grabbing who, what, where, when, and why. So why do we want to have a conversation with you? And if you can do that and really nail that, then you have a good chance of even at the email level of breaking through. If you don’t have a great subject line and you meander, say I wrote a book and it’s a bestselling book, it’s, that’s great that it’s a bestselling book, but don’t make the mistake of pitching how fabulous incredible you are and how amazing this book is without telling them why they need to have you on.

Gene Hammett: So I keep, I know not everything is in here, but I’m looking back over my email. I categorize everything as a pitch that comes in. Like I’m going to read a couple of headlines, potential podcast guest for you, question mark. To me that’s not a good subject line.

Kate Delaney: No

Gene Hammett: Hardcast guest inquiry. You know, I’m just trying to see if I can find a good one. I, there’s not many of these in here, so I want to ask you what makes a good headline? Here’s one of them. It’s kind of interesting. I guess membership is like a box of chocolates.

Kate Delaney: Okay, so what does that mean? Is it sweet or, I have to pick the right chocolate. I might look at that.

Gene Hammett: I think I have to look at it to see what it is. Now, if I clicked on it again, I don’t know who these people are. That’s a pitch for services, so it kind of got in the wrong place. But let me see if I can find another one. That Unicorn of Napa Valley.

Kate Delaney: I like that. I would look at that.

Gene Hammett: Yeah. Not just a Buzzword, how Disney’s mission drives its continuing success. But the biggest problem I have with with these pitches, and you’ve kind of talked about it, but I just want to kind of hit this home cause I think this is really helpful to everyone. I’m a switch back so I can see you, um, is it’s the, I’m awesome email. There’s literally, I get three to five of these a day of how awesome someone is and they will be nice enough to go love your podcast. You’re doing a great job. Nothing specific. They could have said the same thing to 40 other podcasts and then they just kind of like really go. I think that what they’re, they think they’re doing well, does it, they’ll, they’ll say, you know, there’s companies that are closing every day and here’s a stat they give some well wild stat and you’re supposed to pay attention to the stats. They don’t really get my attention. But then the rest of the email is seven ways. They’re awesome.

Kate Delaney: Right? And that does not sell. It does not work for me now. It doesn’t sell. I’ll give you an example of a pitch. I just got. This is, this is, this is as we’re sitting here talking and it says, can any company offer a chance of 90000% Roi despite severe market volatility? That could be interesting. Yeah. And, and then this goes on to say it’s, it’s about this platform where that’s what they do. And they’re saying that they do this in real time and it’s too well known entrepreneurs. And this is a pitch to me. So, and then they even have on this, this is something you could put if your brief, your provocative and you prove why we want to have you on, they actually put sample questions on it. So one of the questions is how exactly can transparent business boost productivity 15 to 40% and eliminate overbilling and then they go through that. So then if I read the questions, I would get the idea of, okay, this is what we’re going to be talking about.

Gene Hammett: So on subject lines and in the pitch, what do we avoid?

Kate Delaney: Avoid making a pitch that’s generic and boring. That where you say how great you are. You mentioned that and usually that comes in the body, but sometimes it comes right at the top because that’s not going to interest anyone unless you’re famous. If you’re super famous, like Khloe Kardashian and available to talk about making the Forbes list. Of course, yes, I want to have her on fine to talk about that or I don’t, but at least I know.

Gene Hammett: Or how about I think it was yesterday. Kylie Jenner is now the youngest.

Gene Hammett: Yes. Oh, that’s a perfect example right now on the other side of that, you could take that and say, is there any one in your, you know, something where relates to growth? Would you like to have her growth? If you could somehow tie those two together, that would be kind of clever. So that goes to the news jacking again and taking something that’s not related. It’s like that reverse engineering that does make you think, oh, okay, we could bring her up and then you tell me how that’s nearly impossible, Kate.

Gene Hammett: So we talked about avoiding and what are the things that make a good subject line. And I’ll tell you my best open subject line ever, and this is mostly for speaking, but it works pretty brilliantly almost anytime. It’s very simple name of the company or name of the organization.

Kate Delaney: Exactly.

Gene Hammett: It gives you nothing else in there. I guess it’s a curiosity play. Like I sent out one the other day to spanx and I, you know I thought about for a long time like what am I doing making this this subject line? And I’m like, what are they going to open? That’s all it is, is like what are they going to open? And I go spanx. They’re like, what is that like? I can’t even just like throw it away because maybe it is something that’s the number one open I have.

Kate Delaney: I think it’s good. One of the, one of the, if, if it’s something where somebody connected me to somebody about a keynote speech and they haven’t reached out to me, I’ll give you the examples. So I just say speak at Boone, the event, right. Cause I’m a busy meeting planner, so why do I have to hear a woman who broke the glass ceiling, won an Emmy, lost it on the road, eight of million hotdog that would lose me. But if you just say you’re right, if you just say exactly what it is, interview opportunity, boom for you know, the Kate Delaney show, et cetera. And then dot, dot, dot. That’s a good way to do it. Or something provocative. That works.

Gene Hammett: All right, so we’ve talked about subject lines. What about the, you said who, what, when, and why? Those are the four. Is that it yet?

Kate Delaney: Yes. Who? Well who, what, when, why and where. Okay. Like let’s say you’re going to be in town or you’re pitching that, then that’s, then you can put the wire in there. The, whereas is just kind of the question mark, but the why is big.

Gene Hammett: That leads me to believe, and I’m not trying to be a devil get, I’m just trying to understand like you, you started this whole thing out and I wrote it down. Brevity sales.

Kate Delaney: Yeah.

Gene Hammett: I’ve got it highlighted. I’ve got it. I’ve got us ready to go. Brevity cells. How do we write an email with the who, what, when, why, and where. With brevity

Kate Delaney: You can write a dislike that you can even put it, why, boom, boom. Why do you care? Because X, Y, Z and it’s really just short. A short sentence is just laid out just like that. Not a big well engineered put together five paragraphs. Because if they want more information, they’re going to get that from you. And usually it’s about those snap decisions honestly with the media, like, oh, this really fits. I’m interested in this. And then if they need something from you, that’s what they’ll do. They’ll ask you, hey great. Would you send us some sample questions? Hey, great. Would you send us a copy of your book? Would you send us, so if I’m going to be on TV, I just had this happen to me. Where was that World Cup story? I gave the example of, they wanted a copy of my book because good for me. They put up the, they put up a copy of the book when they were talking to me. And actually I didn’t, of course I didn’t plug it. They plugged it and they asked for a couple of other things. Like my bio, they wanted a couple of quick highlights. So I gave them some bullet points. So even though they could look me up, they knew who I was, I gave them the bullet points and that’s what they wanted.

Gene Hammett: So short sentences, I always think too like bold and unique and you know, you picked up on my dancing. One reason why have dancing inside. There’s because I wanted to bring a piece of me to the stage that no one else is doing. And from a memorable standpoint, now I fully expect, most people have shared this with, they love it, they think it’s very engaging. And now I do get a lot of people going as long as you don’t call on me to dance, they want to see someone else up there. They don’t want to see themselves. But that’s the purpose of doing it. Cause I talk about facing fear and shifting your identity. What would you tell us about this unique element? Because a lot of people think, well, I just, I’m an accountant. I can’t, I don’t have anything unique about what I do, or I’m a business coach or I’m a speaker. What do you say about getting attention through that unique element?

Kate Delaney: Well, that first of all, it’s a problem. If you don’t think you’re unique, you need to sit down with yourself and you need to write on, I talk about this, I get hired to speak about it a lot and it, it goes with branding, but what’s your wow, how do you clearly confidently describe what you do, who you are, why do we care? It goes back to the why do we care? A lot of times it has to deal with, so when you say, well, I’m just a business growth guy, or I’m just to whatever, we’ll really, how much money have you saved companies? 20 million, how much and what have you produced? I guarantee if it’s going down that lane, there’s probably some very sexy number. That’s the reason why you have the job you have. That’s the reason why you are the expert. And if you don’t think you’re an expert, that’s a problem that beyond even the media, again, you have to find out what your wow is.

Kate Delaney: Because even if you were networking for goodness sake, people, even though we can go to our I phones and just get information that way and exchange information that way, if your car just has a label on it and you’re in a really unique, great convention or networking opportunity and you’re just handing out cards that have a blank lit, have a label on it that nobody gets, what you’re wow is then start there. And it’s the same thing with pitching the media. You have to sit down just like we said at the beginning and you’re doing that targeting, tell us what is unique about you and there’s going to be something. You uncovered it and you uncovered it new. And I had that conversation where you saw something unique on a stage and you realized light bulb moment. Oh well I do this and this would really fit. And it works with what I’m doing in my speeches. So it’s not odd, but it’s incredibly different and that’s unique and can draw people to you.

Gene Hammett: When you think about my, wow, is it immediately the dancing or is there something else that comes up?

Kate Delaney: I think it’s the dancing, but, and then of course your business acumen, what you’ve been able to do for people, how you’ve helped them grow, that change their culture, grow their culture. I think it’s really, growth is a big piece of this and who doesn’t want that? So if I, if I hear that you used X, Y, Z, and I’ve created this much wealth for however many companies, that’s pretty, that’s pretty interesting to me. Especially if I’m a business reporter or I’m doing something related to business. It’s like business in the ballroom.

Gene Hammett: I know we’ve gone over here, so I want to be respectful of your time, but I would like to dive in a little bit further. You can you spend one more time?

Kate Delaney: Yeah.

Gene Hammett: So let’s get really specific because I would say this normally and a friend of mine had actually helped me see it, but he goes, how many people have you interviewed about growth? And I go over 300 and that’s an easy number for me to come up with. Cause I’ve, I’ve been, I’ve had my podcasts for over five years. We’ve done over 400 episodes. Not all of them are about growth, but I’ve also done hundreds of interviews, not even on the podcast with the founders of the fastest growing company. So I feel like I am have the most interviews of anyone I know with the Inc5000 level owners just to understand how they think about growing their business. So that’s a big number I do is more than 300 and then the other one is up. Had seven clients make the Inc5000 list. So they’re considered the fastest growing companies in USA. Of course I write for Inc and it’s even uncomfortable when I say this, but you know, writing for Inc puts me in front of 21 million page views per month. And last year I did 75 articles. So

Kate Delaney: You could say you’re the king of growth. I mean, if you want it to be just blunt about it. And then why. So the reason why is list the numbers. This, this, this, this. Okay, we can give you that title. You know, why am I America’s number one female sports caster, somebody called me that and that stuck. Why am I somebody, this has started to happen to me lately. Simon Sinek is the Y and I’m the wow because I teach people how to find their wow and it’s working and I’ve created wealth that waste for people because they didn’t have that equation down. You’ve created wealth for people by doing what you just said. And by also finding out the secret sauce of how has this work for people. So now you have a formula and you tell me that formula and if I follow it, I have a chance at success because you’ve seen it work and you’ve also implemented or helped people implement that in their companies. So that is the, you know, you’re the double threat.

Gene Hammett: So I’m not violently opposed. And I know a lot of things that you have to lean into the courage, because I talk about this all the time, but king of growth, I’m like, that would not be something I would call myself. But is it what you think I should want? I mean I want, when they think of growth like this is, this is kind of a conversation I’ve had with my team is when someone thinks growth, I want my name to come up. Just like with y Simon’s comes up or vulnerability or shame come up. Who Do you think of?

Kate Delaney: Brené Brown.

Gene Hammett: Yeah. So I would love for anytime where there’s a growth conversation, like who do we get for this? For it to be mean. So I know that, you know, the whole targeting and all the, you know, getting out in more media. Is there anything else I should be doing to kind of plant those seeds and engineer that?

Kate Delaney: I think if you work that whole media angle, that would certainly have, and you’ve got to be able to have that tagline. If you’re gonna call yourself the king of growth or whatever the, it doesn’t have to be that, but whatever it is, you need to really use that. It’s like me using the, wow. That’s why so many people just call me up. I want the wow. They don’t even, they just know they’ve heard of me connected to the wow. And then I have to explain it more. So that means I’m really getting branded with the word that I trademarked. You know, what’s your wow and it would be the same thing for you. So the more people connect you to that and you gave really huge examples. Simon Sinek is very famous. Brené Brown is very, very famous. We talk about Tim Ferris, very, very famous. And the reason why is because it’s quite clear that they are owning that space and certainly Brené Brown.

Kate Delaney: Guess what? She’s not the only one that talks about shame and there are really good people and she would tell you that, that talk about that same area and in maybe in other ways they have experienced business growth. Oh, a lot of people claim that they are the business growth expert. You can look that word up and you’ll see it all over the place. So you want to own that. If that’s what you feel you do and you have the proof, that’s your expertise and people need to know that. And sure, by the way, for people listening, you can have other, I don’t necessarily believe there’s only one lane. You just don’t want too many. We don’t want to be stuck in traffic in La. I visualize La and if I’m stuck in traffic in La, I’m not happy. So if I have that many lines, it’s not good. But just because you’re owning something that you know is your expertise, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t other drippings underneath that. Even Brené Brown has that. Even Simon Sinek has it because they’re always trying to leverage what they do so well into a little bit of the other areas that work for them too.

Gene Hammett: I will say that. I understand what you’re saying, but I will also go from my perspective, because I’ve, I’ve done literally probably a hundred episodes on niching and I’ve interviewed a lot of companies that are just so narrowly niched and they have such an easier time building traction.

Kate Delaney: Yeah.

Gene Hammett: If you can’t build traction in one area, it’s really hard to build it in five.

Kate Delaney: Oh, I agree with you. You’re excellent at that. And you and I talked about that even off air, I’ll call it. And you’re absolutely right, and if you can’t build traction, but I’m saying if you are a mean, if you are the monster truck and you have built massive traction, then you can do that. But certainly not if you haven’t done that.

Gene Hammett: And kind of, that’s where I’ve grown as a business owner. So taking the audience back, if you don’t know me before this, six years ago when I leaned into this coaching full time, I started out with web designers and I did speaking for, you know, 1520 different events. I still have a client today. Thank you Damon from five years ago from a speech that’s still with me. Wow. And I love working with him. He does more than web design right now with his is a technology development company. But I grew past that to reach these new markets. And then sometimes I feel like maybe I’ve grown too fast because it’s not as comfortable knowing exactly that one market. But I knew the bigger stages, the bigger clients, the bigger work is at this next level. And there’s been a few levels in between there, but right now I’m focused on the corporate. And when you look at my brand, cause that’s where we’re kind of doing a different interview. Is there anything else besides what we’ve talked about today that we need to highlight? If the focus is more corporate, being known and being seen as the celebrity. And I know that’s kind of weird, but in the speaking world it’s not weird because we, we get beat out all the time because someone is known more than us probably. Right.

Kate Delaney: Yeah. That, that goes to the media angle of it. That’s why the media is important. I always laugh when people say, oh, media doesn’t matter. That’s not true. Not if you’re leveraging it and using it correctly because the more you’re seeing, the more you’re quoted. I mean look that Simon Sinek and Brené Brown got on Oprah’s radar. She didn’t intend to do that, but then she was goated in a way and to doing a Tedx talk and she went and did it and then sure enough, yes, she was a professor. Yes she had all of this, you know, history and, and had statistics and put a book together, but she was not known. She could have been somebody else who wrote a fantastic book but didn’t get known. But she got on the radar of somebody pretty big and then that just spread like wildfire from there. So there is absolute power in that.

Kate Delaney: But you don’t get to play in the big leagues if you’re not trying to at least get out there in any league. You can meaning media regionally, locally, all that stuff, which is I guess the same thing. But broadening that and then going nationally, that is the key because how do you become a celebrity? More people are paying attention to you and more people are paying attention to you outside of your niche. I mean, even if they’re the people that hire you, you’re expanding. Be like Malcolm Gladwell’s a good example of that. Who is Malcolm Gladwell? I Love Malcolm Gladwell. I like listening to him. I like his books. I’ve read every single one of his books. But why did he become sexier than the lane that he was in? Because he was provocative 10,000 hours. That’s what you need. And uh, you know, to become the expert, he had the big statistic out there that people debated was false or it was right or it was whatever.

Gene Hammett: Now we haven’t talked about that much. Like I think for any of this to work, and this is just my, my opinion is you’ve got to know where you stand on the issue. This is a great example, the 10,000 hour rule. And if anyone who’s not aware of that, you need to go look it up. But the basic idea is mastery comes when you’ve worked at something 10,000 hours and some people have said they’ve just proven it to be more provocative, but at the time when this came out, it was huge because it explained why there’s no such thing as an overnight success.

Kate Delaney: Yeah.

Gene Hammett: And how do you think I should or could be more provocative in what I’m doing? w

Kate Delaney: Well, again, you have to look at your numbers and you have to decide. You have to really hone in on that. Wow, what is the, wow, what is, what are people gonna say? Wow, that’s interesting. If there’s reverse engineer something you do, is there something that you say that, I’ll give you another example of that member Kia Saki and all of his books, the Rich Dad, poor dad thing. Again, it’s another book and other guy, oh, he’s in real estate writing this, so who cares? Except for that, he took the anti approach of what they were saying and housing and what they were saying in real estate. So that made him interesting to people like, wow, what’s he saying? Why is he saying that? A lot of times you don’t take the anti approach just to necessarily take it, but if you have, if you’re not in swimming down that same stream that everybody else’s swimming down, then that can be a really good thing and you use that, hone that in and get that message out.

Kate Delaney: You have to figure out what that message is. I’m a great example of that because I’m an anomaly and you said it when you asked me to talk about the sports thing because I was a journalist and I was a really good anchor and had awards and all that kind of thing. But once I went to sports and I broke the glass ceiling by became very interesting to people of what makes you think you can do that? Why did you do that? I swam against the stream. So just by swimming against the Stream, I made myself interesting to people. I wasn’t intending to do that and I never thought about it until I sat down and started to look at that. So that’s the same thing you have to do.

Gene Hammett: Let me ask you a question cause I think this is one of the areas where I can be provocative and I play around with it different ways. And then we’ll just be blunt with you and maybe we can shape it a little bit. I asked over 300 founders as a leader, what’s more important to you, customer, first or employee first?

Kate Delaney: And what’d they say?

Gene Hammett: What do you think they said?

Kate Delaney: I’m going to say that they said, customer.

Gene Hammett: So 94% of the fastest growing companies said it’s employee first.

Kate Delaney: Ah, and that’s good. It should be. ThatIt really should.

Gene Hammett: So, and I’ve talked to, you know, service-based brands like focus brands, CEO, you know, they, they have um, a Cinnabon and Moe’s southwestern grill and all these chains, they’re like, look, we want to make sure those employees feel really taken care of so that every experience with a customer, they take care of those customers. And there’s many variations of that. I’ve interviewed the CEO of Home Depot. He’s like, we want them to think like they own the building, not as our name out there. So that’s one area where I’m going to be leaning into this basically going the truth and lies of customer first. What do you think about that?

Kate Delaney: Well, NC, I think that’s good because look at what my natural reaction was a customer. And why is that? Because I’ve certainly been on the sales side and all the people always emphasize customer first, customer first. But I agree with you. I think, and that’s why I think that’s really good, is I do a thing about recruit, retain and romance. Uh, the people who work with you. And why is that? Because I don’t want to have to have all these replacement costs of hiring people who don’t want to be with me. You said it, the employees and home Depot’s right. You want to keep those good employees. Why? Because they are happy and they’re good with the customers.

Gene Hammett: So it’s controversial and I know it’s a hard decision. And, and the way I kind of phrase it is if you have a marketing and sales kind of viewpoint of the world, you’re going to say customer first. Because that’s what the question was, is the leader’s job to focus on customers first are the employees first. The leader’s job is to focus on employees so that the employees can put the customer first. And so fast-growth companies are really employee first and customer-centric.

Kate Delaney: Right. That’s good.

Gene Hammett: So that’s kind of my, my provocative area that gets people, we didn’t plan this cause you, you honestly, we’re like it’s customer right now when I talk to fast growing companies like I was just at the great places to work conference. Guess what? Every one of them goes. It’s employee first. They get it.

Kate Delaney: Yeah. They get it in there. Right?

Gene Hammett: Yeah. So I don’t know, do I need more than just that or is that, can I just ride that wave until something else comes up?

Kate Delaney: I think you ride that and see where it goes. Okay. Cause it goes back to what you said before of not getting too convoluted. See what happens with it. Cause you can always, it doesn’t take away from anything you’re doing. So yeah, absolutely.

Gene Hammett: You like that phraseology of it. The truth and lies of the customer first.

Kate Delaney: Yeah.

Gene Hammett: So that I can see it doesn’t tell you what it is. First, it just says, why is it not a customer? Like I just wanted to spark curiosity. Would that be a good pitch that you can make to someone under the right framing of it? But we would talk about that.

Kate Delaney: Sure. I mean you could even shorten say the customer is not number one. Boom. Yeah. Well myth of the customer being number one, the anything like that. You can play around with the words, but I think that’s, yeah, because you can say then I interviewed this many people, this many leaders, and here’s what they said and here’s what I’ve seen. So if your company isn’t focusing on that, which by the way, there’s a lot of companies that don’t focus on that. They don’t, even though maybe they should, part of the problem.

Gene Hammett: Yeah, there are many reasons behind it. So you don’t need a lot of these is, I guess you’re saying that if you can take a pre provocative statement. Malcolm Gladwell is prolific, so that example like he’s got many different aspects of what he’s done. So I won’t try to put myself in the same category, but this is one I’ve discovered do my deep work and I just need to write it better.

Kate Delaney: Right. And you found it so you put it out there and you see what happens with it. But that’s what I teach people to do. You find that wow. Because once you have the wow, then you go, you know, once we discovered the wow, then you see you ride it and see what happens with it. But like you said and I brought up Gladwell is the prime example of that.

Gene Hammett: I’m going to be honest with you here cause it’s, this is a safe space between you and the audiences right here listening. Cause you’re coaching me. I have resisted writing this customer or employee first kind of thing too much and ain’t none. Not because I’m scared of it or don’t believe it. And then it all, I’ve been trying to figure out how to play it because I would rather be interviewed on it then write about it.

Kate Delaney: Right.

Gene Hammett: And I’m working with, you know, a little, some, some people out there to got to get this perspective out there because it’s, it’s better in a media standpoint. A lot of people would love to write for ink and it is a great honor, but it’s better when someone writes about me,

Kate Delaney: Right. If you’re trying to become the celebrity and the noun person and you have, uh, you, uh, you’re shooting high, then you have to realize it has to be about you. Because if not, you’re not the Simon Sinek. You’re not the Bernay Brown, you’re not those people.

Gene Hammett: It’s interesting that he used those two because two weeks ago I tried another valiant effort to get them on the show and get to write about them for Inc. And ink is a little bit more of a draw than the leaders in the trenches podcast. It just is because of the media, the national media aspects of it. And so I reached out specifically to Simon scene, put it very thoughtful pitch together. Right? I’m really trying to get him on for me to write about his new book coming out. And I did the same thing. We’re Bernay, I took time to do this. And I actually laughed when I got the rejection letters because they were very well done. They were very nice, but they’re like, we’re not in a news cycle right now. We’re focused. We’re heads down on this. They’re so known and so famous that they turned down media that most people would be like, absolutely let like put me in. What do I need to do? And I just smiled and I said, you know, it’d be nice to be that way.

Kate Delaney: And that’s when you get to the top of the mountain and you break through the wall. And that’s why they’re that way. Even with speeches, you know, they have set a set number that they’ll take and they have people around them and they do not just do speeches. They’re booked. She’s booked out two years in advance almost.

Gene Hammett: As we start to wrap this up, leverage like getting the media is one thing, but what do you do with it afterward that makes it more even powerful than just the showing up on the radio segment or showing up on, uh, you know, some kind of news day or morning show.

Kate Delaney: You’d take pieces of it and you share it all over the place. You blow it up all over social media. Okay. And that way, because just because you were on a radio show, you might have had an incredible appearance, said something provocative, something useful people can use, but they didn’t hear it because you did that in Atlanta and I’m in California, but hey, I like your stuff or I’m interested in that. So why not broaden the net? Most people, the mistake they make is they don’t share it afterward and the wear and sure it lives on your real estate, on your website. But who cares? How about the rest of the world to hearing that or seeing that?

Gene Hammett: So I would call that, not necessarily just sharing, but that’s just promoting that piece of it. I’m a content creator. I’m not going to apologize for it, but I create content and I, I actually do a better job this past 12 months and I’ve ever done to share the content they were creating. This podcast will be sliced up and put into, you know, Instagram and Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and some other places as well. And we do this as a repurposing strategy and that’s part of the promotion. But I could always, I think there are always more things I could be doing to do this because a lot of people just aren’t willing to promote. Is there an example you can think of someone that did something really well that allowed them to get mileage out of a moment?

Kate Delaney: I’ll just use myself. I’ve become more and more of a celebrity because people are more aware of how much media coverage I’m getting. So I didn’t use to do that. I used to be on big shows, interesting shows, whatever they were. And I didn’t really share that out there because I’m too busy and I wasn’t thinking, well, that’s not, who cares. It’s, I’m glad I did it and that’s terrific. But I’m already in the media, but I realized there was power outside of my own media. So I’m the great example of it. And when I started to share things, I’ve gotten booked half a dozen times at very big conventions because people saw the swell of the media around me and that people wanted to talk to me. That made meeting planners way more interested in me because now I’m not just Kate the speaker now it’s like, wow, she was on this, she was on that. Here’s what she said. And they could, plus they could see me. So with the television things, they can see, oh, you become a real person in how you look and what you’re saying. And that’s almost like an extra sizzle reel. So for me, using myself as an example, that’s become very powerful. When I’ve done that.

Gene Hammett: I want to ask you one question and then maybe drive this home. How often would it be to, let’s say you get a good piece, right? You get good, you’re on a local radio station, you get to talk about your business. You can talk about something you’re doing. How often would you share that without worry? That it’s too much. Would it be once every month, once every quarter, once every six months? Or do you think is something else?

Kate Delaney: No, I think it’d be once or twice a month depending on what it is. And it’s also the way you share it. So if I have, I say that I share relevant and valuable content. I’m a content curator, definitely with my journalism background, et Cetera, just like you in a different way. So I want you to see those nuggets. So it’s not like when I’m sharing it with the world, I’m also not being overly Braggadocio that hey here I am on the cover of People magazine, which of course I wasn’t, but I was in people magazine. Here I am in people magazine. Why do you care? Again, it goes back to the quick way. Guess what bump up up above. And especially for like Linkedin, it depends on where your placing it to, which makes a big difference.

Gene Hammett: So that is triggered for me too cause I appreciate that one to two. I think probably I would have never done it that much. I don’t mind. Like this podcast will come out, I’ll share it a lot that week and we need to do a little bit better job of pulling up the archive. Like the things that we did three months ago are still evergreen, but I also don’t want to overload. We create a lot of content, but there should be some key pieces, these cornerstone pieces of it, I would think of that you would go, they should be shared at least once a month if not more. And maybe you do it in different ways and different channels.

Kate Delaney: Right? Absolutely. You nailed it. That’s what the key is. And it’s not too much. I mean, of course, every day ridiculous overload. Yes, I agree. But again, you have to remember people are busy, they’re not paying attention. You may miss them the first time around, but guess what? On the second time, they get it. So that’s why that is valuable. I find what’s happened to me, I’ve seen this happen lately and again that’s because my, for lack of a better way to describe it, my star is rising. People that have interviewed me have shared stuff that they’ve done with me and I’ll see it pop up and I’ll say, wow, I did that a year ago, but they have a good picture there with me. There’s something relevant so it doesn’t hurt me, but they’re trying to draft off of me and saying, Oh, I interviewed her.

Kate Delaney: So that’s how you also know that things are happening for you when people are resharing again and again and again and it’s smart on their part and then I see it and it makes sense and that’s what happens with super famous people. So we use the examples of if we’re going to use the business type person that has the relevant content, Brené Brown and Simon Sinek, his stuff, you see his stuff and how often if you googled it or whatever search engine you use, if you look through it, you’ll see how many times something he’s done has come up and been shared. Here, here, here, here, but it’s old.

Gene Hammett: It’s, I appreciate us going through this cause anything, a lot of people are so afraid of self-promoting themselves too much and the humble brags and, and we know we see this and when there’s some people that we just really go overboard, but if people paid attention to us as much as we thought they did, we’d probably all be rich.

Kate Delaney: That’s it. Here’s a great quote. Uh, Alan Weiss, who some of you may know if you’ve done it, you can certainly look him up. He says if you don’t toot your own horn, who’s going to do it?

Gene Hammett: I want to give you one last chance, and this is, this is really specific to me because I want to make the most of this and maybe I need to frame this differently. I booked a Gig in May and part of the gig comes with, because they couldn’t pay my full fee, just being honest. And so I said, you’ll, well, how do we, how do we get that to balance out? You know, what, what other things can we put with this? Well, they’re going to do the recording, which is great. It’s going to be good like 500 person audience, so I’m excited about that. But then they’re also said we run a print magazine and we’re going to print your article in our magazine as, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten an article in the print version of any magazine. I take that back. I did in 1993 but let’s just assume that that’s too old to apply. I know one’s red, that industry magazine that that was the electrical industry, but is there anything I should be asking for or using that in that print? I did ask for, I think they’re called tear sheets. Right?

Kate Delaney: Right.

Gene Hammett: Examples that I could send to someone in part of my first speaking gig or something like that. Is there anything else I should be looking at with that?

Kate Delaney: It’s smart. If you’d asked for the tear sheets. That was good. Another thing to ask the meeting planner is do you have any media connections? Okay. Do you have any media connections that you could hook me up with for the cause? I don’t know what the Gig is from what we’re doing and they might cause you never know if you don’t ask them, you don’t know if the meeting planner does and some of the times they do

Gene Hammett: And if they do, that’s a good, good leverage point. But then I could also go back to what you talked about earlier and say, Hey, I’m going to be in Toronto for this Gig. It’s, I think it’s called your workplace as pop culture. And so it might be something they want to cover.

Kate Delaney: Right, and that would be smart because now you’re leveraging that and you’re there speaking and it’s all good. It’s also good for the meeting planner because if you go your own route and they see that, it’s like, wow, he’s getting covered. Are you kidding? That happens to me all the time and they’re shocked. They opened their morning paper and they’re like, you were in the paper. I can’t believe it because I leveraged what I knew how to leverage and so that, or you were on the news in the morning show, whatever. It helps.

Gene Hammett: I want to give you one chance to poke at me the program. Am I doing wrong?

Kate Delaney: You haven’t been doing the things that get you the exposure. So exposure becomes this dirty word when you’re around certain people or in the speaking community, and you have to realize that’s not true. I mean, yes, I understand you’re not speaking for free or you’re not leveraging marketing dollars. That’s a whole different business thing. But when you’re talking about if you want to become known, you got to work at it. You can not be passive. You cannot say, oh, I can only share this once in a while. You can not worry about what people think because you think you’re a rockstar. You want people to know that you’re a rock star and you want to explode your business. So if you want to be in that lane, you have to own that. And you have to realize deep in here, I have something valuable to share. And if I make millions and millions of millions of dollars, trust me, I have a philanthropic side, I’ll share it or I’ll do whatever. So don’t let your brain fight with Ooh, am and I am I an egomaniacal person. It’s not about that because the world, it’s very tough to get heard in this world, and if you don’t put yourself out there and nobody’s gonna find you, they’re not going to find you on their own. There are a lot of business growth in people. There’s a lot of people who deal with the word leadership and culture and they’re probably nowhere near as good as you are, but how were they getting known?

Gene Hammett: Yeah. I don’t have a problem of being proud of who I am, putting myself out there. It’s more or less like will this extra work pay off longterm because none of what we really talked about today is short term. I mean, I think there are some things that can come up short term, but it really is more longterm and I and I am in the business longterm. I’m not here to just make a buck this month. You wouldn’t have a podcast for five years if that’s what you wanted. I am looking long term. But you’re, you’re suggesting that I just lean in a little bit harder toward the media side. Knocked in me being the media but actually getting covered by the media.

Kate Delaney: Absolutely. And then you don’t, I mean you don’t overwhelm yourself where you’re ignoring your business. Of course. Not none of that, but you know how to do this. So you said it, I say this all the time. It’s leverage and the long game leverage and the long game. So you know it’s going to take time. That’s okay because every little hint is a step in the right direction. And if that’s what you want, then that’s what you do. You take the leap and you start moving toward it and that’s how you’ll get it because it does take time. It certainly, I’m, you said it before when you’re even talking about your clients. It’s true. It’s not where we were talking about Malcolm Gladwell. It’s not an overnight success. That’s not what usually happens.

Gene Hammett: Yeah. Well we’ve gone way, way over longest episode maybe I’ve ever done. I want to say thank you. If our audience is interested in following you and finding their wow and dealing their destiny, where would you point them to?

Kate Delaney: The best place to go is KateDelaneyspeaker.com of course, like everyone else. I have a couple of other places, but Kate Delaney, speaker.com is probably the best. We’re deal your own destiny.com

Gene Hammett: Perfect. I wanted to thank you again for being here and I’m trying to be as coachable as possible through this. I do. I do want more of what we talked about. It is something I think about a good bit as the business is evolving and I appreciate the kind of step by step and in helping me figure out what’s most important. I know when I hate getting pitched the wrong way, so I’m always careful to do it is right as I can, so I appreciate your insights.

Kate Delaney: Yup. Excellent. It was fun being with you. Good luck. Nail it.

Gene Hammett: Fantastic. Love this. I know it was a lot longer than normal, but we just got into some of the details of this and I, I showed some of my insecurities around what I’m doing and how often I’m sharing my message. But let me rest assured that I really believe in what I’m doing. And I think you should too. You think if you are making a difference, if you have your clients that are getting the results that you’re promising and you are doing this in a way that really supports them and guides to do it faster than they would have done it on their own, then you really are someone who that should leverage the media or should be leveraging the media every way possible. So hopefully you’ve got some joy out of this. If I’d love to know the impact you’re making, reach out to me. Send me an email, [email protected] and if you have any questions, make sure you just quite an ask me. As always leads with courage, we’ll see you next time.

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

 

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