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

“There's a reason for a company to end up in both entrepreneur and Cosmo, right? Maybe the product is for young women. And so Cosmo might be interested in some kind of product feature or including the product in a roundup of some kind of products. Whereas entrepreneur would do the entrepreneur focused story. What did this founder do? How did they, right? You can take your, you can think about your story and kind of break it up into a whole bunch of different little pieces and then figure out which piece goes to what media. But oftentimes people make the mistake of trying to do that in reverse, which is to say that they kind of decide what narrative they would like to have out in the world. And then they just go around to different publications trying to sell them on that. I get that all the time. A lot of my pitches that I'll receive in my inbox are somebody who has”
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 we're talking about prep, the very first thing that you need to do is Once you have that, the next thing you should do is you should start to think about what's interesting about my business. And oftentimes, it's not necessarily what you think. And you can be guided in a way by what's happening in step two where you start to think about who you're trying to reach out to. Because, for example, the story that somebody might tell me an entrepreneur is going to be different than the story that somebody might tell Cosmo.”
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 you have to start to really parse it out. This is the reason why people hire PR is because if they're good at their jobs, they understand a lot of this already. But I really do think that if you spent time With the content. Your starting point is I understand that this publication is trying to reach X, they're trying to reach these people, then you can start to see the patterns of what it is that they're doing. How are they telling stories? What do these five stories all have in common? They have something in common. There's something that they're all doing. And you can certainly read the tea leaves and try to 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
“You know, nobody publishes an about page in that way because that's like the internal logic of the editorial team. But you can certainly make some starting assumptions based on who the publication is trying to reach. You know, everybody is trying to reach somebody. It gets more complicated the more general interest something becomes, right? Like what is the New York Times? What is the mission? That's a hard thing to answer. You sort of have to divide it up into sections, right? The mission of the national news desk is different from the mission of the business desk. And even within there, the mission of the Sunday business section is different from the mission of the Monday to Saturday business section.”
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
“Love the ingenuity of it. That's what I'm looking for. That's entrepreneur's stories. So it's not to go back to the point that you were making. It's not just about Well, it's a magazine called Entrepreneur. They must write about entrepreneurs, right? Oh, I'm an entrepreneur. I belong an entrepreneur. People think that all the time. No, you have to step back and read what these publications are publishing and ask yourself, what are they doing? What is the purpose here? The editors and the writers are making decisions about what goes in this magazine and they're making decisions about how the stories are constructed. Why are they doing that? Who are they trying to reach? When you start to see it through that lens, you start to see the pattern and you get an understanding, a real instruction manual for what it actually means to pitch these publications.”
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
“Market research. She goes to a market research company. She says, How much would it cost to research consumers and answer these questions? They say $10,000. She doesn't have $10,000. And then one day she is sitting at the airport waiting to board a flight and she looks around and she realizes that airports are full of people who have absolutely nothing better to do than answer questions about butter dishes, right? Like nothing better to do. Just sitting there. And you could start at gate one by the time you get to gate eight. Everyone in gate one is new. You could do it all over again. And you could have a 6 p.m. flight and you could show up at 9 a.m. Nobody's going to stop you. You could do this all day in the airport. And this is how she starts to do her own market research. She saves that $10,000 and she does it herself. I put that story in the magazine. It's tiny. This is tiny random company in this random decision. But the reason I did it is because every time I repeat that story to entrepreneurs, they're all like, ah, right, totally. There's always other ways to do things.”
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
“Big problem the butter dish. So when you know most butter dishes, you just lift up. And so if you have warm room temperature butter that's soft and you lift the butter dish top up, you might bump into the butter and it's going to make a big mess. So Joelle makes a butter dish on a hinge, right? Opens and closes exactly the same way every single time. No mess. Brilliant. Solves a problem. She reaches out to me about this. This is not interesting to us, right? Maybe this is interesting for a cooking magazine. Maybe bon appetite is interested in this. Entrepreneur is not interested in this because that doesn't help other entrepreneurs to have thought through that problem. But then she tells me something else. When she tells me is that she is, at the very beginning of this, trying to figure out how to answer some basic questions about her audience. Like what colors do they want in this butter dish? And what price point are they willing to pay? And she wants to do.”
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
“Me too. Even though I've had multiple conversations with this woman about You don't need to refrigerate butter. And if you leave it out, it's cuts easier. It's more spreadable.”
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
“Walks away with great insights into how to think through the challenges in their business. And so what I'm looking for when somebody reaches out is, did they make some interesting counterintuitive decision that solved a problem in their business and emphasize in? Because oftentimes when people hear me talk about solving problems in business, they think, aha, but I solve a problem in business, right? Like I saw that there weren't the best raisers in the world and I made the best razors. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is this woman whose name is Joel Mertzel. She has a company called Kitchen Concepts Unlimited and she makes a butter dish. And it's a really smart butter dish because it is built on a hinge, right? So this is designed to solve a very specific problem, which Lenny, I don't know if you knew this. I did not, that you don't need to refrigerate butter.”
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, I can't speak to Fast Company now because they've gone through a couple leadership changes. I don't know what their mission is, but back when I worked there under Bob Saffian, he was the editor-in-chief. That was really a magazine about where business is going. And the stories that were in the magazine were also supposed to be in some way representative of the evolution of business. And so when people would pitch, what we'd really be looking for are there insights into what this person is doing that other people could read and say, aha, that helps me understand where this industry is going or that industry or that helps me think about how I can shape my own company to match current trends, that kind of stuff. Entrepreneur, totally different mission. The way that I think of entrepreneur is that it's not even a magazine about business. It's a magazine about thinking. What I want to do is make sure that everybody who comes to the magazine”
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, but it's going to be more specific based on the mission of each publication. So for example, I've worked at two separate business titles. I was a senior editor, a fast company for a number of years, and now I'm the editor-in-chief of entrepreneur magazine. The decision that is made Whether or not a story belongs in a publication, it was totally different based on these two publications.”
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
“That's who they're serving. And if you can be of use to them in sharing the kinds of information that they are looking to serve their audience, then you can get what you want. But you can't treat them like a service provider because they're not. And so you have to approach them with an understanding of what they're trying to do for their audience and how you can fit into that. Because if you don't, they are not interested in 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
“I get pitches every single day along the lines of how do I get coverage in entrepreneur magazine? How do I get a feature in Entrepreneur magazine? And to me, it always feels like they're ordering a hamburger from me, right? Like, how do I get a hamburger from entrepreneur hamburgers? They're treating me like a service provider that my job is to provide press. And I get it because, of course, if you're an entrepreneur and you're looking for press, then the writers and editors out there seem to be in the business of writing about people and therefore there's some service that they seem to provide and you're trying to figure out how to get it. But that's not how the media thinks of themselves. The editor, the writer, like I'll just say it as plainly as possible, they don't care about you. They don't care about you. They care about their reader or their listener or their viewer. That's who they care about.”
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 investors, you don't reach out to an investor if you don't understand what that investor does, what they're interested in, or what kinds of companies they invest in. You can't do that with media either.”
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
“Out to and how I and my colleagues think we should maybe even start with that because that's a really important thing to understand. Just like again, to go to back the metaphor of the.”
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
“Everything that you need to do to orient yourself towards what is this opportunity and why am I chasing it and how to make the most of it? Step two is figuring out who to pitch. Not all press is created equal. There are not reasons to just go chasing everybody arbitrarily. The hot dog example is a good one. So finding the writers and editors who you're actually going to reach out to who are going to be most receptive to you and also making sure that because you did the prep, you can figure out how to tell your story in a way that they're going to be interested in. We'll talk about that. And then step three is the actual pitch. What does it mean to reach out to these people, to engage the writers and editors? How do you find them? What do you send them? What are you telling them? That's it. I mean, right? But what you need to understand is that you're entering a world that probably doesn't operate the way in which you think it does. And I see that all the time as the recipient of pitches. People don't understand who they're reaching.”
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, sure. So, I mean, look, it's pretty simple, right? Step one is prep. You want to be thinking about how to tell your story. You want to be thinking about the kinds of stuff I just talked about. What is press for 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
“Direct value to him. What he needs to do is think, okay, my goal get more people to buy hot dogs. Where am I? I'm in Washington, D.C. How can I reach people who are interested in food in my market? So stop chasing entrepreneur and start chasing the local eater or the food section of the Washingtonian or something like that, right? That small shift can give you a lot more payoff for your effort.”
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 he wants coverage in Entrepreneur Magazine. Like he's like, you know, how can I get a feature? And the problem with that instinct that he has is that he's really directing his energy in the wrong place. Because if he is selling hot dogs in Washington, D.C., then I understand what Press is for him. Press is to drive hot dog sales. That's what he wants to do. Entrepreneur is not going to do that for him. Full stop. Why? Because entrepreneur reaches a national to international audience. So that means that 99.5% of the people who would read a story about this guy have no ability to go get his hot dogs, which means that that was wasted effort. So fine. Was it that hard to come up and talk to me at the conference? No, but like scale that out, right? Like how many emails is he sending that are like that? How much energy is he putting into chasing things that ultimately don't have good”
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
“Oftentimes it's not even about the moment, but it's about the publication. So I'll give you an example. I spoke at an event once, and afterwards this guy comes up to me and he has like a small hot dog food truck business in Washington, D.C. So he's got like a couple trucks and he's doing good business selling hot dogs.”
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, I would put that to the side and only think of press as like, you don't go out and raise money if you don't know what the money is for. You shouldn't go out and try to get press if you don't know what the press is for.”
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 should step back and think really as a starting point, what do I need press for? And if you have a good tactical answer to that, that could be because I need to drive awareness to a new product. That could be because I'm going out to raise money and I need articles to show that the marketplace takes me seriously. These are good reasons. But I get a lot of emails. It's funny because people are like entrepreneurs in particular. They're just so vulnerable and it's kind of a wonderful way sometimes. And sometimes people will just email me and they'll just say, you know, I've worked really hard and I just feel like I deserve this. I respect that and I relate to it in some ways with my own trying to get attention for my own work. But I deserve this. That's not a good tactical decision for your business. That doesn't do anything for 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
“Think about press the same way that you think about raising money, which is to say you do it when you know what the money is for. And you should do it when you know what the press is for. A lot of people reach out to me at such an early stage that if we wrote about them, it wouldn't get them anything. They're not at a stage where they could use that press in any meaningful way. And so there's really no purpose in chasing it now.”
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
“How to tell the right story to the right potential media outlet. And instead, what they're doing is they're just playing a numbers game and they're just blasting it out to everybody. And that means that you could end up, I write this newsletter, right? Entrepreneur magazine is the thing that people obviously would pitch. But then I have this newsletter where I don't interview anybody. There's no opportunity to be featured in my newsletter and I still get pitches to the newsletter because somebody saw it and dropped it in some spreadsheet and it just, now I get it. And I think that's a real disservice to entrepreneurs who are paying for people to do that. And I really hate 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
“It doesn't take much because you just end up on some list. And what's really interesting, and we'll talk about PR later. I know, but one of the great insights that you can get into the challenges of that industry is how completely automated a lot of it is, where a lot of people in PR are not thinking specifically about”
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 percentage of direct messages from founders that I'm getting is low. I would say probably 20, 25%. And then the 75% is PR in some capacity, either targeted PR where somebody's intentionally reaching out to me or mass blast press releases.”
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's tremendous. It's ridiculous. I would say that by the time we're done recording this podcast, I'll have, I don't know, I mean, it could be anywhere from like 30 to 50 pitches in my inbox. It comes all day. Now, to be clear, most of that is garbage in the real garbage-y sense, right? It's a lot of completely unrelevant press releases that were sent to me and a bazillion other people. But within there are definitely some people who have spent the time to reach out very specifically to me. And everybody in media gets some kind of volume like that. To reach out to somebody in media is to be shouting over a lot of noise.”
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'm really happy that you asked me to do that. This is something people ask me about a lot. I've been in media for decades. I've worked at a lot of different magazines. Obviously, I run entrepreneur magazine now, but I was a fast company. I was at mental health. So I've seen a lot of different sides of media. And it is a very misunderstood tool, particularly for people in business. And so I love demystifying 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
“The editor, the writer, they like, I'll just say it as plainly as possible, they don't care about you. They don't care about you. Care about their reader or their listener or their viewer. That's who they care about. That's who they're serving. And if you can be of use to them in sharing the kinds of information that are looking to serve their audience, then you can get what you want. But you can't treat them like a service provider because they're not. And so you have to approach them with an understanding of what they're trying to do for their audience and how you can fit into that. Because if you don't, they are not interested in 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