YouSaid · the spoken record

Jason Feifer

lines on the record: 129
first: 2023-10-12
most recent: 2023-10-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The web address one thing better that's one like ONE one thing better.email just plug that in one thingbetter.email. And I said that's a good way to reach out to me because if you get the newsletter and you reply to it, it goes to my inbox. I guarantee I will write back to you”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, Lenny, thanks for all the work you do, which I just really love and for creating the space for me to share all this insight. How can you find me? Well, I'll offer two things. So an opportunity set B is like a good launching point for both of them. So I wrote a book. It's called Build for Tomorrow. It is meant for anybody who's going through any kind of change in their lives or their work. And there's an audiobook version that I read myself, but also hardcover and ebooks. Just find it wherever you get books. Again, it's Billed for Tomorrow. Opportunity set B, that whole thing is actually a chapter in the book. So I go into a lot more detail there. And then if you want to get in touch and also get those kinds of things, I have a newsletter, which is called One Thing Better each week, One Way to Improve Your Work and Build a Career or Company that you love. Again, the kind of opportunities that B is that's the kind of thing that I put out. It's very much about the personal and emotional side of work. And so you can find that by going to”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am here, and therefore I can get there. Nobody's ever going to ask me to do it. I have to do it myself. It's the thing that I always think about, and it's the thing that keeps me up at night. What am I doing now that is leading me to something else? I'm the only one who can figure it out.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there's nobody's asking me to do leads to the next growth, either because it turns into an actual opportunity or because it informs some future opportunity. I got to entrepreneur magazine zero, zero people when I became editor-in-chief. Zero people said, you should hit the speaking circuit. You should get really good at being interviewed on podcasts. You should write a book. Nobody said any of that. My job was to make a good magazine and direct the editorial of the brand. But all those things were available to me. And once I recognized that, I realized that I can pursue them. And in doing so, also think differently about who I am. Am I a magazine editor? Not really anymore. That's one of the things that I do now. I think of myself as an entrepreneur, as a person who is now in the business of helping others. I'm an entrepreneur who helps entrepreneurs. That's what I think of myself as. And I only got there because I was thinking.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could be pursuing a hobby. It could be starting a podcast because you like listening to podcast What I have found throughout my own career is that opportunity set B is always more important, infinitely more important. Because the thing is that if you only focus on opportunity set A, then you are only qualified to do the things that you're already doing. But opportunity set B is where growth happens and where you push yourself in different directions. And I found a long time ago that it was just really helpful to think about these two things. Oftentimes maybe we don't do opportunity set B because we don't know how it's going to pay off or we don't know where we're going to find the time. But I have always found, always, that engaging in these things of what is available to me, what's available to me right now, around me.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, sure. So in front of you right now, like you, Lenny, you, everyone listening, watching, there are two sets of opportunities. Opportunity set A and opportunity set B. Opportunity set A is everything that's asked of you. So if you have a job, it's what your boss expects of you. If you have your own company, it's everybody expects of you. And doing good at those things is really important. That's a measurement of success. That's opportunity A. Everything that's asked of you. And then there's opportunity set B. And opportunity to set B is what's available to you, even though nobody's asking you to do it. And that could be, again, if you have a job, that could be taking on new responsibilities or joining a new team or something. But personally, it could be.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And she said that it took her like a solid year to adapt to that reality. And then it became fun. But I think it's a thing people forget.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I know we're in the lightning round and we've defied the logic of lightning rounds, but I'll just add one other thing to that, which is that I had this interview, I interviewed Michelle Pfeiffer for the cover of the magazine. One of the things that I thought was most fascinating was she started this fragrance company. It's called Henry Rose. And she said, the major difference between making movies and building a company that she found was that when you make a movie, all the work happens in the beginning. You make the movie and then the movie is out and then you are done. Like you don't have to work on the movie ever again. And she was not really mentally prepared for a company being the exact opposite, that the launch of the company is actually the start of the work. And it has a kind of, there's an endlessness to it.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And at some point, you have to step back and think, am I building something where at some point there is sustainability for me here, or is this unsustainable? And what's the point of building something if you can't maintain it is just like a great reminder for why you're building something and how you have to build it?”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something that I've been repeating a lot to people is something that I heard. So I recommended Catherine's book The Perfectionist Guide to Losing Control. I met Catherine because we've since become friends, but I interviewed her for the podcast when her book came out. And we were talking about feeling overworked and being stretched too thin. And she gave me this question, which I think about almost daily, and I repeat to people all the time. And that is, what's the point of building something if you can't maintain it? And I love that question because I, like probably everyone listening to this, pushes themselves really hard.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you write a script, right? And then you just import the script, and then you choose the speed, you can futz with it, you know, how many words per minute.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I've tested it out in a million different ways, and it really works. Like you're reading it and it really looks like you're looking directly at the camera. I love it. It has saved me so much time.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I use Big Voo. I don't even know how to pronounce it. Big voo, B-I-G-V-U all the time. It's a teleprompter app. I spent like $150 buying an actual teleprompter because I make a lot of video. And that teleprompter is actually for people who are just listening to this, I'm pointing at another desk across my room where it's sitting there and I've never used it. And the reason is because then I discovered BigVoo, which is just a app that runs a teleprompter like very close to the camera, either in horizontal or vertical mode.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All right, what would be a good neighborhood that we should feature in the real estate section? And I was like, oh, I don't know. I named a neighborhood. He's like, what would be like three good elements of that? He just kind of kept pushing me, drill down, drill down, drill down. And there was no right or wrong answer. He just wanted to see how I thought. And I found that to be incredibly powerful. And I do a version of that when I interview people.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To ask them the thing that they haven't been asked. And what I love about the theory is that it shows them that you're really listening and you're trying to understand them. And, you know, it's so interesting that you did that. And I wonder if it's because of, you know, XYZ think, like that gets them to react in a really earnest, honest way. And I would say for what it's worth that as a job candidate tactic, it's not that bad either. My favorite job interview that I ever did as a candidate that I didn't even get the job was years ago I interviewed for a job at New York magazine. I interviewed with Adam Moss, who is not there anymore, but he was like the legendary editor-in-chief. And he made me on the spot drill down specifically into an idea, right? He was like, he was like, what's your favorite section in strategists, which is one of the sections of magazine? I was like, I really like the real estate section. He's like,”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My favorite strategy for interviewing people is to throw a theory at them. And I don't mean like a theory of the world, right? I mean that maybe 10 minutes in after they have told me a couple different things and answered some different questions, I'll make a connection in my head. And I'll say, you know, I want to run a theory by you. Do you think that the reason why you're really interested in this or you made that decision is actually because of this other thing that you told me a little bit about? You're listening. It's really active listening and you're combining things together into some theory. And the reason why the theory works so well is because it forces people to think in real time in front of you. And I like that because I often interview people who have been interviewed a million times before, right? Like, you know, I interview Jimmy Fallon and the Rock and whatever. Like they've been interviewed a million times before. So how do you get them to think in front of you? And the answer is.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll take it a little bit different because we've been talking about press. This is a really great strategy for interviewing people, and I'm going to tell it to you because I think that it's also good in any other context. And it might be a thing.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't get to see a lot of movies these days because I have two little kids, but I took my eight year old to see the new teenage mutant ninja turtles, which was great and a really nice way of like I loved them as a kid and so it was cool to see the modern version and then my wife and I just finished Better Call Saul like years late but it was like just perfect”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Andrew Chen's The Cold Start problem has come up over and over again for me because there's just really great lessons about network effects. And I've been having a lot of conversations about like anxiety and perfectionism with entrepreneurs lately. And a book by a psychotherapist named Catherine Morgan Schaffler called The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control, as I think are just a really great read.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The reason why that fast company reporter liked you, I am very sure, was because when they got on the phone with you, you were just like a normal, nice guy. Like if you presented yourself differently because you just wanted to frame yourself in some way or you felt protective or something or whatever it was, like the reporter would have thought this guy is a dick and he would have written a totally different story. Be as human as you can, and you will be dealing with a human who will receive that.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This has come up in different ways, but I'll just put a point on it as a maybe final way of thinking about this. Be human Be human, right? Press releases don't work because they are not human. And I don't like interviewing people who are on talking points because that's not human. You're ultimately engaging in a human business, a subjective decision is being made about how to serve an audience of humans. There's no right or wrong. There's no way to know. Media is a sort of barely data-driven industry because every story is kind of different. It's like it's hard. It's hard to optimize the product because the product changes every minute. And so you're dealing with humans. And the more that you can be human in every step of this process, when you pitch, write a human email, don't write a thing that looks like it came off of, you know, some marketing copy. Write a human email to another human. And then when that person engages with you, be very human with them. I mean, like, Lenny, you're...”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Zapier. Zapier is a great example. I get a pitch from Zapier every single year about the fastest growing business apps of the year. Based on Zapier data, because they see what people are using and they just compile that together into a top 10 list and people run it. It's very smart.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Turns out that Utah is the top. I don't know if that's true. Is the top state for that? That's something that people will write about. You're giving people things to write about. And then once they do that, you are a part of the story. I get those pitches all the time. I occasionally bite on them and Fred from Ripperug got himself a big feature as a result”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Authoritative thing. And it's produced by Barbara Corcoran, which immediately put her in the position of being an authority in this space. And that was so smart and I see it happen all the time. My inbox will also be filled with, for example, a company that specializes in remote work consulting. So especially remote work consulting, you can hire them. It's a B2B service. It's hard to get pressed for that. Here's what they do. They pay a surveying firm to find all sorts of things. The top states for remote work. The top companies for remote work, the top whatever for remote work, and they produce all these surveys and they send the surveys out. And the surveys get covered because now they're creating a piece of news. They're creating some context in which they just happen to live in. Hard to write about them, this random company, but you write about the survey. That's interesting stuff.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She's been a regular on Shark Tank since the very beginning. And she made her fortune by building like a real estate company called Corcrane, a realtor, so realtor, buy and sell property. And the way in which she built this company is fascinating. So, Barbara, before she was Barbara Corcoran of Corcoran Realty, Barbara Corcoran was random New York City Realtor, Barbara from New Jersey, and she was trying to figure out a way to distinguish herself from the NASA's. She came up with an idea, which was to take her own sales data, right? The only window she has into the Manhattan real estate market at that time is what she is buying and selling or what her clients are buying and selling, what she is facilitating. She has that data, is going up or down relative to last year. She puts all this data together in what she calls the Corcoran report. And she starts sending the Corcoran report out to the New York Times and the New York Post and whatever. And because nobody else at the time was putting together a report on the health of the Manhattan Real Estate Market, everyone started reporting on the Corcoran report as if it was an”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And sometimes that means if Fred stumbled into it, but I get plenty of people who reach out. And maybe they have a real estate startup. And there's something really interesting happening in the real estate space. And they reach out and they tell me about this really interesting thing that's happening in the real estate space and the role that they happen to play in it. And now I think, oh, well, that's interesting. Maybe there's a story about that. My wife, the freelancer, Jen Miller, she's done this many times where she wants to the story about there was a bunch of startups that were all related to helping people prepare for death in some way or another. She's not going to write about one of them. But when somebody reached out and said, hey, here's a trend happening and we're one of them. Well, great. That's an interesting story. She wrote that and the company that reached out to her, you know, got kind of prominent billing because they were the ones who reached out. So Barbara Cork, you know, Barbara Corker from Shark Tank.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I thought it was fascinating. It's like a problem small business owners are dealing with. And so I was like, Fred, do you know other people who are dealing with this? And he's like, yeah, because I talked to them on a line all the time. And so he sends me off. And so I reported this whole thing out. I wrote this like three, four thousand word story on this thing. And Fred was the main character because he was the way to understand this problem. And I did all the reporting and I contacted the platforms and I contacted the people who make the arbitrage software. I did a whole report. But Fred got his press because sometimes, and here's the lesson, sometimes... You are not the story. But you can be part of the story.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you might think, well, why would Fred care about this? He still gets the sale. The reason he cares about this is because the ripple rug shows up at the customer's house and it shows up in an Amazon box, even though they bought it on eBay. And they think, why did that happen? And then the next thing they do is they go to Amazon and they discover that it's cheaper on Amazon. And now they feel ripped off. And who do they feel like they got ripped off by Fred? Because they don't know about the arbitrage or they don't know that they exist. And so this person who has at this point opened the cat toy and probably had their cat roll around in it now shoves the whole thing back in a box and returns it and Fred gets dinged. And that's why he doesn't like this. And he has tried and tried and tried to get Amazon and eBay to stop this, but he said nobody seems to care. And all these small businesses are losing tons of money on returns because of this. And I had never heard of this.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Finally, I understood it. So, this is, and maybe people are familiar with this, but this is sort of known as like Amazon to eBay arbitrage. So basically the idea here is that Fred is selling his ripple rug on Amazon, or at least he was then. I don't know if he still is, he's selling his ripple rug on Amazon. But there are a lot of people who are copying the listing for his ripple rug and making their own postings for it on eBay. And they sell it for a slightly higher price. So let's say that, and again, I'm making these up, but like let's say that Frant is selling his ripple rug for $30 on Amazon. So somebody will sell it for $40 on eBay. And then somebody buys it on eBay. They find it, they buy it on eBay. They pay $40. So that person gets $40, takes 30 of it, goes to Amazon, buys the ripple rug, and then just has it shipped to the buyer. And so it's arbitrage, right?”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He wanted to tell me about the sales of this ripple rug and about how sales are skyrocketing and all the things that he thought made it special. It's made out of recycled bottles and whatever the stuff, right? Made in the USA. All cool stuff, but not relevant to me because, you know, we're not cat toy monthly and we're not reaching a whole bunch of cat owners, not that I know of. And so I replied and I said what I usually say, you know, congratulations on what you've built. It's just not a fit for coverage. Now Fred stumbled his way into this, but he did really a very smart thing because what he responded with was he said, totally understand. If you're ever interested in learning about a gigantic scam that's happening on Amazon and eBay that we've been caught up in, let me know. So, you know, it's like, oh, well, yeah, I guess I am interested in hearing about that. So I said, tell me more. And he sent me this long email. Fred loves long emails. And I got him on the phone and had him explain.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From a guy named Fred Ruckel. And Fred Ruckel has got a cat toy, and it's called the ripple rug. And it's basically like imagine a rug and then another rug kind of on top of it, but ill suited so that the rug is lumpy. There's a lot of lumps. And there are holes. And this is for a cat, right? To kind of crawl in and out of these spaces and bat and do whatever cats do. I don't know. I don't own a cat. And so”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tell you about a pitch. I don't know that I have it in my inbox still, do I? No, it's not there, sadly. I'll just tell you about it. But it leads to something that is another way of thinking about getting press, which is really important for people to remember. So far, Lenny, we've spent the majority of our time talking about press in the form of some kind of feature on you, writing about you or including you in some kind of prominent way in a story that's basically highlighting the thing that you wanted to get out there, your product or something about your business, something, right? Then we talked a little bit about another way of doing it, which is sort of putting you out as an expert and authority. There's another way of thinking about this, which is that you can either create or present context in which you just happen to be a part. So here's the story pitch that I got that leads into this. Okay, so this is years and years and years ago. I just started a fast or an entrepreneur. And I...”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The more the reporter is going to be annoyed at you. And the more, in fact, the reporter might try to take a shot at you in the story as a result because they just found you too controlling because they felt like you had something to hide. This is not a comfortable thing. You have to go into this being vulnerable and you have to know that there's a chance that it could blow up in your face. That's the price that you're paying for reaching their audience.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is. It's strange. And I find that people often don't, in business, people understand the structure of what's happening, right? Like they understand that we're a business magazine. We're going to write a story about a business. It's going to sort of like take a certain form. But I've done a lot of different writing. And I have had the experience many times over my career where I will spend a lot of time with people and they will have really no understanding of what it is that I'm doing at all. Like they can't conceptualize it. And then the surll come out and then they'll always reach out to me and they'll be like, oh, now I finally understand what you were even trying to do. It's fascinating. You're really, you are, you is a vulnerable experience. And you have to know that. The more you try to control it,”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every part of this, and this has come through, I'm sure in our whole conversation, every part of this process is really out of your control. Like, does somebody pay attention to you? What do they write about you? When do they write about? All of it is outside of your control, which again is the reason why it's not smart to think about press as a primary strategy for driving growth. It's a good add-on. But these people are going to do what they're going to do. The best you can do is read the tea leaves.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you know Past that, I think it's also a question of well, what are you doing in the world, right? I mean, if there is something somewhat controversial about you, and especially if you're engaging with an outlet that is interested in that kind of stuff, there's a halfway decent chance they're at least going to explore it with you and ask you about it. And if you're weird and cagey with them, they're going to think that there's more to it and they're going to start like digging more. But the ultimate answer here is that like.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay good. Good. I'm glad to hear that So part of it is the publication itself, entrepreneur and I would say fast company are just sort of not in the business. Of running negative stories. And the reason is because it doesn't serve our audience. My audience is coming to me to learn things for their business. Tearing somebody apart just doesn't help them in any way. So part of it is just what ecosystem are you dealing with? You can also look at the past work of the writer. And if you work with a PR person, it's funny because occasionally somebody has accidentally forwarded this to me and I'll see the dossier that a PR agency will put together on me. But like a PR agency, if they set you up with an interview with someone, they'll usually do some digging and they'll find, what does this person usually write about? What kind of stories they do? What are they generally interested in? So you can have.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go first, and then they're going to talk to everybody else. Sometimes you can offer an exclusive to someone in that you're going to release the news to everybody, but only one media outlet is going to get the interview, which works really well if you have a big personality. So for example, recently a company that Mark Cuban has invested in offered us that, right? They're like, we have this news, we're going to reach out, we're going to send the news everywhere, but we're going to give you the exclusive interview with Mark Cuban. He's going to do one interview and he'll do it with you. You know, like you can parse it out in any way. You just want everyone to feel like you're being upfront with them.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interested in this too. Particularly because there's like a finance element to it. So I think the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg and those kinds of places are going to be interested in this. He wants to go to entrepreneur for whatever reasons he wants. I mean, I think probably two, because number one, he wants to position himself towards that audience. And then number two, there's a trust factor. He knows me in a way that he doesn't know the editors over there. And so he feels like I'll probably treat the story more carefully. We worked out a deal, which he proposed. And the deal is that we'll get the exclusive. And there's going to be like a three-hour window after our story runs. And then they're going to start responding to everyone else. And then they're going to start talking to other people. Or maybe they'll even line it up and reach out to some other media. And that's fine with me, right? Like, I understand. And we're going to create a little embargo window.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone has a different approach to this. The number one rule here is just don't do it in a way that the people in media feel like you're playing them. They won't have tolerance for it. I would rather walk away from something like this and do some funny dance with somebody. So my favorite version of this goes like this. Actually, there's a founder who recently, I met him years ago. So, you know, when he reached out, I recognized him immediately and he reached out and he's like, hey, we just, we did this really interesting thing and we haven't told anybody about it yet. And I'd love to see if it's a fit for entrepreneurs. So I hop on the phone with him and he tells me. And I'm not going to tell you what it is yet because we haven't run the story. But after 15, 20 minutes, I say, yeah, you know what? This is a really interesting story. And frankly, I know other media outlets are going to be.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to be a feature about you. You're not going to be the subject. There's no photo of you. You might get a quote. You might get a quote in a story, which again is all you need to be able to say as featured in on your website. So that's the reason why people do that. So sometimes it's about that. Sometimes it's about you could just be a writer, right? You might try to just pitch authoritative articles by you to different publications, get yourself out in that way. Sometimes, again, it's just, you're not going to be able to be easily written about. And sometimes you are. Sometimes you made some insane technology that everyone's going to be talking about. And it's going to be super easy for you to get press. At what point your hit rate is going to be much higher. That's why going into this with really, really realistic expectations. And if you're going to work with PR, having PR who can set and hold you to those realistic expectations can just save you a lot of heartache.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, it's really dependent upon. How easy you are to write about? I may not just sort of like not, right? Like if you are some kind of B2B service Especially in some kind of very niche or wonky space, you just do it, it's going to be really hard for you to get. Like so hard that it might actually not even be worth trying because there are other things that you can do, right? Things that we haven't even talked about yet. You could say, you know what, screw it. I'm not going to try to get coverage for my company. Why don't I just try to position myself as an expert? Totally different kind of approach where instead what you're maybe trying to do is just hook onto the news, try to get a quote or a perspective to a reporter who might be writing about something. I get these all the time. Something breaks, something news breaks and people start reaching out to me and they'll say, you know, this just happened in the news. And my client, or sometimes just the individual, you know, I have this insight into this. And here's what I would say if you want to interview me.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If the PR person is successful, you are going to get on the phone with the writer or editor. And it's very useful to understand how they think that they're not there to serve you, right? That this isn't a service that they're providing you. So you better understand what they're entering into this with and what they have in mind when they're asking you questions. They're asking questions thinking this is what my audience is going to be curious about. This is how I'm going to drive this person in this interview towards the kinds of insights that my audience are going to find gratifying. So the more that you understand who you're dealing with, the better.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a bunch of budget that I can spend on this. This individual kind of approach, it may not be for you. You might want to just spend a bunch of time instead interviewing different PR firms and find the one that seems most aligned with.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just engage in social media in a very casual way such that when you email me, I think, do I know who that person is? Like Meg O'Hara, I think I know who that person is. It just makes it more likely that I'll open the email. And I see a lot of people do that. They'll spend a long time engaging with me on social media before ever pitching me. I know what they're doing. I understand that it's probably calculated. I still like it. It's smart because it means that by the time that they've reached out, I think you have a pretty good sense of my work, which means that what you're bringing to me is probably in pretty good faith. And for that, I like it. It's a good filter. So if you've been listening to this whole thing and you're thinking, you know, this is just, yeah, this is a tremendous amount of work. I have a new product launch or I.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Media follow a bunch of writers and editors on social media. Meg, I can't remember the order of operations here because I know that Meg follows me on Instagram now because she's DM me many times and I respond to everybody. I can't remember if she followed me before, but she might have. And maybe she even DM'd me a few times. You know, usually it's like somebody's responding to like an Instagram story or something. And I've seen a lot of people use this strategy with me. And I think that it's a really smart one, which is basically before you ever pitch, just get me to recognize your name.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So again, this is in some way why, in a large way, why a lot of people hire PR because PR can just move this along. They can reach a lot of people very fast, whereas you as an individual cannot. You know, one way to think about it is you're going to be on the hunt. You're going to try to make this work and you're going to take a couple bets and hope that some of them pay off. Another way of thinking about it is, you know, this is a passive activity. And I'll spend some time when I'm reading media thinking about this, kind of developing an idea. Another thing that you can do, follow.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's why when I talk to an entrepreneur, I expect them to be really open about that stuff. And if they're not, I basically lose interest.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not everyone is. I will get a pitch from someone who is presenting like, oh, you know, we had this challenge in the business. But then when I talk to them, they act as if there was no problem. Or the problem was really small and their ingenuity immediately made this a very successful business. And that's not interesting to me because success stories are not interesting. They're not interesting to anybody, right? It's not useful for you to just hear that someone else succeeded. What's useful is for you to hear how someone else faced challenges that you faced and got through them so that you can see, aha, that's an interesting strategy to use for me. I hate success stories. I love problem solving stories.”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was great. And the next thing that made it a real success, by the way, for her was that once I got her on the phone. She was, and I find this is a make or break thing for me because I can still, I can talk to somebody and then kill the story or not run the podcast, right? She was willing to be open about challenges. I mean, she had reached out because of challenges, but”
2023-10-12 · Lenny's Podcast · How to get press for your product | Jason Feifer (editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source