Kris Ruby, CEO of Ruby Media | Building an Agency, Mastering Social Media & Getting PR

Welcome to success story, the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scott D. Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. The HubSpot podcast network has incredible podcasts for you to check out. Like remarkable people hosted by Guy Kawasaki. Of course, brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. The remarkable people podcast with Guy Kawasaki helps you better understand the changing world with interviews from thought leaders, legends, and iconoclasts. If you are interested in business, leadership, entrepreneurship, he interviews the best of the best leveraging connections that he's built over his career. Here's some of the episodes and interviews that he's done. He's spoken to Seth Goden, marketing god, blogger, author. He's spoken to Pat Flynn, entrepreneur, power podcaster, and popular YouTuber. He's spoken to Jen Lim, happiness evangelist, and author of Beyond. Happiness. He's spoken to Steve Blank, author, entrepreneur, and startup whisperer. If you want to listen to incredibly intelligent conversations with some of the most remarkable people on the planet, listen to remarkable people podcasts by Guy Kawasaki, wherever you get your podcasts. Today, my guest is Chris Ruby. Chris is the CEO of Ruby Media Group, a public relations and social media agency. Chris is a frequent on-air TV contributor and speaks on social media, tech trends, and crisis communication. Chris is one of America's pre-eminent social media experts and is a frequent on-air contributor on Fox News, CNBC, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and more. Chris is at the epicenter of social media marketing and frequently speaks to associations on leveraging social media to build a corporate as well as a personal brand which is done well for herself as well. She also presents social media workshops for CEO groups to empower business owners to utilize social tools for their network. Chris was honored by Columbia University's Business School to lead a social media workshop for its alumni organization, and she is spoken globally, most notably at Microsoft on personal brand authenticity. Chris graduated from Boston University's College of Communication with a major in public relations. She was chosen by the Business Council of Westchester as the youngest 40 under 40 rising stars. She is a columnist for the observer and covers social media, public relations, and tech trends. So what did we go into? So first we spoke about Chris and her origin story, her building her own agency and some of the struggles and realizations and insights she has from being an entrepreneur, especially in the social media and PR space. We spoke about agency work, how an agency can figure out if they want to work with a brand. How do you find your perfect clients? We spoke about what a good marketing campaign looks like for a company. We spoke about how creatives or agencies can build relationships with brands the right way and not risk losing clients. We also spoke about some of the problems that she sees with companies in terms of PR and crisis communications. So a little bit about PR, a little bit about social media and some of her insights on agency. And then she also just loves to nerd out at the latest and greatest tech. So we spoke about that as well. So overall a great marketing conversation. So let's jump right into this. This is Chris Ruby founder CEO of the Ruby Media Group. So my name is Chris Ruby. I went to Boston University's College of Communications. I majored in public relations. I have 13 internships by the time that I graduated. A lot of different experience in all forms of media and communication. And so basically I remember telling my college professor when I was a senior at the time that I really wanted to not go the corporate route and start my own company. And they just looked at me like, okay, you know, like it was an insane idea. And lo and behold, that's exactly what I did. And I think that one of the challenges that we have in America today is that we glamorize the notion of entrepreneurship. But we don't actually have educators at least at the college level who are really supporting entrepreneurship as a viable career path and alternative. And it needs to start at that level where we don't just have other entrepreneurs saying that it's great, but that if you have someone like myself a student who goes to a professor to tell them their hopes and dreams and get some sort of feedback from them that yes, you could do this. This is the right force for you. Ideally that person will give them that push that they need so that they can try. At the end of the day, we all need someone who is going to believe in us and believe in that idea. And I think what's so interesting is when we look at the creator economy, just how many people right now are really making a living off of these different no code tools, these different SaaS offerings, products that they're creating. It's such a different world even from when I graduated BU, I think over a decade ago at this point. You know, my I was starting out on the social media wave. Of course, like, you know, Facebook was the big thing then since that we've had Snapchat, TikTok, Clubhouse, everything under the sun. So there's so much opportunity for people looking to create something in this economy today. So you, okay, so you are entrepreneurial by nature. And I think that that's a whole other conversation and we won't get into why I think education systems are broken because I definitely do and that's a that's a separate that's a whole other hour. So we won't go down that road. But I think that so you were entrepreneurial not entirely encouraged and encouraged growing up. But obviously, you know, you probably went through multiple jobs, probably wanted to do your own thing. I always want to do your own thing. So you went through many jobs. What was the what was the point where you went and decided to start your own thing to actually build your own firm? I just want to say one thing. I think I was always encouraged by my family. It was just not encouraged by that one, you know, the one professor, I would say. But also it's not that it's not even not encouraged. Like the education system is instead of to support that. Like the the I don't think that a lot of when I was in university or college high school, like a lot of the classes were not focused on building your own thing on trying to create something, take it to market, understand how to find product market fit, sell to your first cut. That was not stuff that was taught at all. Not even close. I think what's really interesting is that all of this started with my like senior, the final like capstone project where I actually had to choose a real company. I chose this company in Hollywood that I knew you need to create a publicity plan for them. I still have that with me today. If I look, I'm not going to find her right now, but I put it together for this company and he had he implemented and executed some of the ideas and he said to me, you know, we companies would pay you for this. And that's when I realized that way to second, like this is actually maybe something that I should be doing above and beyond just majoring in this. Like I think that definitely got me like moving in that direction. And then I think there's some people who are meant for corporate America and some people who aren't. So I had what was an internship that I had already had that was going to turn into a full-time opportunity lined up before I graduated. I think that lasted all of maybe two weeks because they said, here's a press release and you're going to craft this and this is the best time to put the release out. And I looked into it and I said, no, it's not. And they're like, you didn't listen to what we said. Like this is not like, so you define the order. And so I was like, but it wasn't the right time and we wouldn't get the maximum, you know, media coverage if we did it at this other time. So right off the bat, that's all I needed to know to see that I needed to do my own thing. And to this, and I still have, you know, it's here. I like 14 or 15 years later, I'm still doing my own thing. I've still never worked for someone else. And that's what the entrepreneur lifestyle is really about. What's fascinating is there's a lot of people that sort of, I think, go back and forth between it. I'm not sure that I look at that as like the true entrepreneurship lifestyle because for someone like me, you're not, I'm not going to succeed in a corporate environment if you give me a boss. That's just going to stifle my creativity. I'm going to feel like I don't have the wings to fly and I'm not going to do my best work. That doesn't mean though that I can't work with other people in a collaborative way. I mean, that's what I do every day with clients, of course. But the structure of that is vastly different. I have more independent and creative freedom to create. And I think one of the things that we could also talk about is like, how do you get the most out of the creative people that you hire? Like you're spending a ton. You spend a ton on an agency, whether that's a PR firm, marketing firm, you hire a consultant. And then I see it all the time where you're going to bring that person to either create their best work or their worst work. And you are part of that equation as the person hiring them. So what can you do to make your most out of that investment? You have to understand that who are they? Like what is their personality type and who are they going to get along with and who are they going to clash with? And these are the things that no one asks in an RFP, which is still mind willing to me to this day. Chemistry is the most important part of an agency client relationship. But it's often not looked at until far too late until you've made a decision. And I will never understand how we can continue to make buying decisions or at least other people can make buying decisions and not truly evaluate, can we get along? Are we going to work well together? Okay, so let's go down that path. That's very interesting. And I think that's something that I've never even thought of discussing. So thank you for bringing that up. So let's first queue up what do you do? What do you do for companies or people that who don't know who you are and who your PR agency is? What do you do for companies? And then let's talk about some of these things that come out of that out of the work you do. Yeah, so I am Christopher B. My company is Ruby Media Group. I do public relations, media strategy, media relations, media training, all of these different services for clients. So basically I have a three step process which is package, pitch and promote. It's a process that we have come up with. And really my brand ethos is that if you build the brand of the person, you build the brand of the business. So we start first with the person, figure out what type of thought leader they are, what type of expertise they want to be known for. We package that. We then pitch that to the media to target media outlets of their choice. And then once we get and secure media coverage through traditional outlets or podcasts or or digital outlets or even television, we then take that and we promote those press placements on different digital media or social media platforms where people go wrong is that they get a ton of publicity, but they don't package it. So publicity in and of itself just getting it is not the end goal. Putting it all together in one clean package where someone can see this whole body of work that you've done is really what the end goal should be with PR. And what are end to to to speak to some of your wins? Can you name clients or or some people that you've companies you've worked with that would just show the level that you're playing at because I know that you've worked some big names as well. Yeah, so I've worked with, for example, IHG Hotels for probably over seven years. I have worked with, I was the agency record for Equinox in the Tri-State area, New York, Metro, for many years handling the local PR for all of the different gyms in this area. So those are two that I can name that I've done and also there's some other ones, but it's super hard to talk about most of them. No, no, I know. I appreciate that's what everyone's you're allowed to talk about. Okay, so let's say that point you just brought up. I thought that was interesting because that's a something that, so Sam and Brand, I'm trying to work with a PR agency. I'm putting out an RFP. So how do you know outside of the, you know, you check all the boxes, they fill the requirements, but the thing that they don't look into is how am I going to work with these creative agencies? Well, how are we going to match? How are we going to actually create the best possible work? So speak to that a little bit about how a brand can figure out and also how a creative agency can figure out if they want to work with a brand. I mean, I think there are so many signals, right? Up front where from a creative side, you can look at the questions you're being asked in that initial, whether it's RFP process or just decision-making process, usually someone is going to get a feeling. And when you've done this for so many years on end, you get a feeling of, is this person just shopping around? Do they just want information? Or are they really ready to make a commitment and buy? I always say there's a difference and people say I want very specific ideas. That's always a red flag in PR or marketing world because that is the thing that we sell, right? So it's like sort of going to a bakery and saying, just give me the cookies, just give me a croissant. And it's like, I guess you could just give someone a bag of croissants, but isn't that what the bakery sells and what they do for a living? It's the same thing with PR and marketing. So when you're saying to someone, just give me your ideas, it's like saying I want the croissants, but I'm not going to pay for them, just let me taste the croissants first. And I think part of this is also like an educational journey for the people who are buying these services. When we look at this country, we talk about all of these things that are broken that need to be fixed in America. We talk about these huge sweeping issues that need reform. I don't hear anyone talking about this issue. And this is an issue that needs reform, especially as you have more people entering the creator economy. We need to start calling out bad behavior. We need to start holding people more accountable, especially people in positions of power, who I think often can abuse that position of power by asking people to do this work on spec and then never moving forward to actually work with them. You know, when I write a lot about cancel culture, I never hear anyone and I'm not saying I'm not for cancel culture in any way, but I've never heard anyone talk about cancellations for the behavior I'm talking about. But it's actually in a way or form of IP theft. When you're asking people to do work, when maybe you have no intention of ever hiring that person in the first place, or you just want to get as many ideas as possible without hiring that person, take all the ideas and then give it to someone in house to execute. And as far as I'm concerned, in 2021, the year we're in, that should not fly anymore. We should be having more business conversations about why that should not fly, why that is wrong, because if you look at a small business, someone like myself, anyone who has to actually respond to those therapies and give those ideas, I could be doing 34 to 8 hours of work. My best work on on a request like that, only for that to go nowhere. It could also go somewhere, but it could go nowhere. And at some level, we have to hold people accountable to the to really what the asks are. What are you asking if someone to do? What, what, you know, hoops do they have to jump through? Now, when we look at, by the way, there's a ton of threads on this. If you ask someone, you want to hire them for social media for a full-time job, and you say just do a social media calendar or create some graphics, those people will say, this is not cool. They're asking me to do this work on spec. There's many Facebook guides about this. But with consulting, it's different. With consulting, it's this understood, unwritten expectation that you're just going to do it, because you're not a full-time employee. And because if you really want to work, this is what has to be done. So I think we should have a conversation about that. So, okay, so this is a great segue because a lot of creative, you know, the creator economy is growing. A lot of a lot of people are trying to branch out. The traditional nine to five isn't what it used to be. So people are trying to do their own thing, start their side hustles. And I see a lot of people that are trying to build their own consulting firm, services firms, they just take on anything because they just are, they're like, they're hungry, right? And I think that's, those are the people who get screwed the most. People that are just starting out. Not the more tenured firms that stay away from things like this. It's the people that are probably going to get hurt the most, the young people that don't have the experience or the time or the money to really to do work for free. But those are the ones that end up responding to these RFPs or doing work for spec or whatever. So advice for people that are starting to build their own thing. How do they build it from scratch when and find good work? How do you find good work as a creative? How did you start? I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode Shopify. And don't you love that sound. As a sound of another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business. See Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big businesses. So upstarts, startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere, synchronize online and offline sales activity and effortlessly stay informed. 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I would like to say that this is an issue that only affects new creators, but I don't think it's true because I think 10 years and 15 years in the same issue still exists because we have a system that supports it and that's the unfortunate reality. You know, that's like super disappointing for me to sit here and say, but it's an area that is broken and no one is really saying, wait a second, like this isn't cool. Like there's no campaign around stopping this. There's no one saying I'm not going to do this or if you want me to give you lots of ideas that's called a paid discovery or a paid audit, right? In SEO, we know that that's called a paid audit and someone will say, okay, I'll find everything that's broken before I even fix any of it. Here's what it's going to be for my time to find it. And that's how they start. And what I'm saying is in PR, we very much so need to do something similar, right? Like we're in that first month, you're saying this is happy to discover these issues, but pay me to discover them and pay me to figure out how I'm going to fix these things or come up with the pitch angles for you. But just doing that creative work should not just be given that you're going to do it in order to get something. So to answer your question, the first client I had, I think I met at the the gym. They had a, it was in a yoga class and they actually did a big business and that's how we met and they told me that they were looking for someone to help with social media. So if you're just, if you are just getting started, I actually think there's, there's two new sites right now that are looking to take on LinkedIn as competitors that have like heavy VC backing and I can share the links with you afterwards. What's really interesting about them is I do think they're going to change the game in terms of a visual resume. And that is a great thing for creators because people are going to hire, if you just show what you've created, like if you're a graphic designer and people can see what you've made for other people, that's great. You can skip a lot of what I'm talking about. I think some of this becomes more challenging though when your work, at least in the PR perspective, it's, I don't know how to show what I've done unless I post pictures of people I've got on TV or podcasts I've got for other people. Most of the time I can't really share any of that because I'm under, you know, NDA and confidentiality agreement. So it does make it a little bit more challenging in regards to answering your question. So it's not just early creators that I didn't realize it was so bad. I just assumed that early creators would fall victim to it more often, but that's kind of upsetting. But I also think that it's not a very public issue. Like if you have an experience this yourself, do you know that an RFP could require, like I don't think that the average person would even know that. How do you fix something like this? How do you, you so want to, one example would be building portfolios like visual resumes or just, you know, list of work. But if you can't do that because you're under NDA, like I'm putting you on the spot here, but you have a fix for this because I see it being an issue, but I don't see an easy fix. I can't think of something that could be like right away. Yeah, we're going to solve. Well, the New Year Times actually just wrote about this. And so what's fascinating is the influencers have come up with a few, like TikTok influencers or Instagram influencers, they've actually created a solution to this. I won't even say the name of the site out loud because it has a profanity in it, but I will send you the links. And so some of them are created by influencers to rate brands. It's almost a good glass door for brands about influencer and partnership deals that they've done where they can say this is what they asked me to do. This is what they paid me or this is what they didn't pay me or this is what their expectation was. So they're now like circumventing the system. So instead of all of these people just being alone and trying to figure it out, they're rating their experience with that brand. I think that's probably a really great solution as long as they're not, you know, defaming whoever that brand was and they're giving good feedback. I think that will be good to hold people accountable for bad behavior. Okay, that's great. So they're building a community around. So yeah, you'll have to send some links because if anybody is listening to this and is a creator, these are resources that I think would be very very helpful for them. So that's one. So let's go through. Let's go through some of the issues you see in your industry because that is that is one issue that we see. So outside of outside of the brands abusing, not abusing to some extent creators, what are some other issues you see that revolve around PR? Wait, I just want to be careful with that word brands. So not abusing. Perhaps not. It's I guess it's my word. So, you know, I'm not putting words in your mouth, but I would say that brands are not not comping. I don't, I think it's I think it's I think it's not it's not in good faith, but I think it's when brands don't copy for your work. I mean, it's all saying can I pay you an exposure? Yeah, you know, and it's like stop asking if you can pay someone an exposure. Stop assuming that that's a way that someone can pay their bills. Like you're not you can't pay Verizon an exposure. Like you're not going to pay your phone bill an exposure. Like you're needing real money. Whatever that money is, maybe it's a bit coin. Who knows these days, right? But you're there's got to be something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think just understanding and having respect for the craft of creativity and on earth, there's a reason you're going in these people. They're clearly able to do something that you feel you can't do in house that you're reaching out to them for. There's a price for that. And I think that price has to you know, should be in a line with what an alignment with what the market is and what they are providing. They are innocent in a way, you know, providing creative for you. Just like a podcaster. I mean, you know, this too. I mean, you're a creative yourself. Podcasting, producing content, all of that, I think falls under the creative realm these days. For sure. And I've never so I you know, I guess I'm more sensitive to come from a bit like a B2B background and a business background. So I never do anything for free. But I know that I know that some people that maybe maybe they just jump onto these contracts and maybe they that's what I mean. I know that abusing is not a good word, but it's like they're taking advantage of because of the naivety and just not being aware of what they can ask for and what they should ask for. And I'll just give you another example that I've seen. So I work with a lot of creators and people that ask for advice on how to build things and I see for example, sometimes a company outsources, especially for influencers, I think, because influencers aren't full marketing agencies. Company outsources of campaign to an agency and an agency will go to an influencer and they'll say basically build us a marketing campaign. And now they're expecting the influencer to build a marketing campaign that they're going to take back to the company that's hiring the marketing agency. So it's almost like they're it's almost like now agencies are doing it to creators as well. They're outsourcing work. And I also think that's another issue. It's if you don't even want to think through the process, you're not even trying to be the creative. You're just trying to act as a broker and leverage people that may not know as well or may not have the infrastructure or may not have the resources. I think that's also an issue. Well, so I think what you just said also goes back to to another possible issue, which is when we talked when we started out today talking about chemistry, compatibility between agency and client relationships. And you just said is a really important point in all of that. Do you want someone who is going to be collaborative with you or are you looking for someone we're going to say these are I just want you to execute this, right? So if someone comes to me and they were to say these are our creative ideas, you just go and execute it. I'm never going to be a good fit for that. I'm going to be a good fit as a strategic partner who can push back and say, wait a second. Let's think about this. You're coming to me as an expert here, right? Just like if you look at a doctor analogy, right? You're not going to go to your doctor. Insta doctor, give me a list of XYZ medications. I've self diagnosed on Google and just, this is all I need for me. The doctor is going to say, hey, wait, I would lose my license for that. I wouldn't be practicing medicine the way I'm supposed to if I just write a prescription for everything that you think you need. But yet we have people in our industry, in the PR marketing industry who practice this field every day this way, and which in my opinion is a form of malpractice when you if you're accepting payment from someone and they're telling you to do things that you know are not going to get them the best possible results, but you're doing it anyway, because you don't want to rock the boat. You want to make that client happy. They're the client. The client is right. After all, they're always right. But is the patient always right? If the patient says, give me self, if the patient's self diagnosing, yeah. So this is where again, there is you said, what's wrong with the PR industry? What's wrong is that you have people who hire agencies who then dictate and self diagnose and you don't have practitioners who push back and say, if I do that, I'm not actually doing the right thing for you, right? I could do that for you because and then they won't say much because they they want to keep that account at all costs, even if it's not in the best interest of the person who's hiring them, right? So if I go to a doctor another example and I say, I need these things, the doctor could say, well, I could give them to you, but just so you know, if I give you what you want, I could kill you. Are you sure you still want it? Now anyone that have a brain is going to say no, fine, forget it. I don't want it. But when we think about things in PR terms, when we we have this conversation every single day from a PR agency client side and people will like, oh, it won't really kill me fine do it anyway. And that's just ludicrous to me. There is no governing body in public relations that I mean, we have we have PRSA in the code of their ethical I think their code of conduct. So we follow that. But there needs to be more done in this area because I do think it's a real tragedy when you hire people to who are experts and then you don't let them be experts. Do you have a do you have a suggestion for people that are creatives that are in this cycle where they don't want to lose clients? How do they how do they approach the relationship the right way? You need to find the right fit. So I can tell you this. It's really, really hard. I can count on one hand. The number of times I felt I've had the freedom to fly and to do my best work with the people that I work with. And it comes and it takes so many things coming together the right budget, the right. And why do I say the right budget? Because that means it's scoped properly and spec properly for the actual amount of time needed to do something so that no one's resentful. Everyone's happy that they feel like they're getting compensated to do what actually needs to be done. That effects work, by the way. That affects outcome. Just like it would if you had an employee and you, you know, for example, paid them an entry-level salary for a senior level role. All of these things still apply in the world of consulting. I'm not sure why when we look at the creators and the creator economy, we somehow apply a different set of rules for them than we do to the people that we hire. These creators are showing up for your business every single day in a pandemic, by the way. That has gone on for over a year and they're still showing up to do the work every day. Collectively as a society, we need to respect that, honor that and have more mutual respect of what that actually means. They're showing up for you the same way your employees are. But yet they're often just totally neglected or rejected out of any team activities or anything else that I think is going on. And so I think that we need to really rethink how do we view the role of creators and 1099s and consultants as being part of our team because the world of work is changing. And you're going to have way more contractors as more people are working from home, as more people have left corporate America want to do their own things. So if we want to keep them, we need to first ask the question, what can we do to make them happy to make them satisfied? It doesn't just mean thinking about how can we keep our full-time employees happy. We have to start asking how can we keep our contractors happy because they're showing up for you the same way your full-time staff is. I want to unpack from you what good PR looks like a good campaign looks like because I want to understand what companies who perhaps impose their own idea of what good looks like on a campaign that you're running and it's not perfect. You said you can kind of one hand how many times you've had creative control and budget and everything all the stars align for a great campaign. So what does a good campaign look like for a company versus what do most companies sort of just allow to happen when they run a PR campaign? I think old companies are not that's that's not the right way to say. I think a lot of companies are using old PR metrics to evaluate the KPIs in success of a campaign and what I mean by that is they're just looking okay we paid X and how many hits do we get for Y every month? I think PR is so much more than just media relations and by that I mean it's not only how that agency is managing relationships with the media for you it's also looking at things like brand activism like evaluating corporate social responsibility in your place and role in all of that and if you don't have a CSR campaign possibly creating one for you right and so that could be months of creating that campaign before you ever pitch right so how are you going to look at for those months if you use the old metrics like I'm talking about to say success of a PR campaign is only getting X amount of hits well then what's going to happen for those months that you're building something you're building something that can truly change the trajectory of that company it can change recruiting out for as it can change people wanting to attract and retain talent at that firm right but if you're looking at it like oh we didn't get you know five national hits this month then you're not going to be truly actually looking at yes we didn't get XYZ but we were building so that we can now get something even greater so I think that in order to evaluate PR we need to look at what PR is PR has changed it is not just getting someone placed on a podcast or a digital outlet it is looking at all the different ways that we can connect with the target audience and consumers that our product or service or company can reach and being part of those communities a lot of times it means finding those communities to start with it doesn't only mean getting a hit on a national TV show anymore and so I think there's this divide in the PR world of the people who practice PR the traditional way which is to say there are some people that are just TV bookers there are some that are just radio bookers there are some companies that only do podcast booking and then I think there's companies like mine where it's really what we do is I think more digital PR where it's content marketing it's personal branding it's social media it's digital PR it's a combination of all of these things together and understanding how that's going to for example fit in with search results and what sites will move the needle for that for page one for you right and so that's something where you could get a hit on a national TV show but does that actually change anything from a ranking perspective you know what's interesting I was talking to I was talking to the head of Andrew Yang's marketing campaign and how he basically took him from his mother's house for when he was making the presidential run and he said he got traditional media he got him on news and it was like nobody cared nobody cared when he was on I think I think he went on Fox once he got like 10 hits on the website then he got him on Reddit and it just like overload and then he got him on Joe Rogan and that was even even more so I think he's like these really niche media outlets if you understand your audience it is not just getting on Fox or CNN or MSNBC or any outlet it's just about getting where your audience actually cares and I think that that's very important so on that point when you run campaigns you're looking for a more holistic strategy that actually impacts the the company versus we're just going to put you prime time somewhere no one's going to give two shifts about this segment except you because your audience doesn't care and that's the only thing that we're going to get out of you and that's something that you think is more of a traditional PR I think just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now the holidays are here and that means client gifts maybe your classic type that goes for the champagne or the gift basket or maybe you're a little irreverent and you go for the custom bobblehead or monogram stress ball gifts are a great way to show your customers that you care what clients want what they really really really want is time and attention and a little bit of love HubSpot CRM platform 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I think the holistic so I so I just want to push back on that a little bit because they do care right it's just one of five things so I don't want to say that they don't care because having that you know to say that you're on national TV is still good in a wheel of things right what I'm saying is that to only just have a you know a book of PR hits works just one type of media yeah I don't find that to be holistic I think it has to be all of these different types of media and I think that's super challenging right so for people I'll tell you this for someone like myself I'm an on-air commentator abundant I've been on national TV over 200 times when I started doing podcasts that was a huge change for me I am trained in speaking in sound bites and in speaking in cable for cable news where I'm in and out with three to five minutes and then I start doing podcasts and they're recording for 30 minutes an hour and then I start running clubhouse rooms are going on for six hours that is a very different environment than what I am used to and clubhouse I think in many ways was also a a big challenge I think for someone like me or with a traditional journalist background yeah yeah yeah yeah um so so but regardless if you if you do you have this holistic strategy you still have to have a good story you have to you know you have to get people's attention so tips for tips for that would be great just how to build that story how to get that presence how to get people's attention even if it's a cross a variety of different mediums it's there still has to be a story to tell we have to under look at what the market wants right now don't look at why you created your company for example why did I create my company 15 years I always hate telling my origin story actually because I I feel like our origin no but I feel like it has to change right and so sometimes I feel like well someone has this sexy origin story who's creating a business today then they did 15 years ago because whoever's creating it today ideally it's probably going to be more in line with whatever's happening so what I've learned and I've like really thought about oh this a lot and I'm glad we're talking about it what I've learned is that you have the core of your origin story but you can also update it right you can update it each year to keep up with times and and adapt so that why you created something 15 years ago is probably not like if you were to create that today it may not be the same and so I think that we have to adapt the message adapt the mission so that we feel good about what we're putting out into the world right like if you ask someone why they created something you know 10 years ago they're not going to be super pumped I think about that there may be more pump to talk about like why they're creating some new AI application right now or you know a new tool and so we have to figure out ways to update the messaging to update our own messaging and our own narrative of why we did what we did and do we still choose that same path today and I think like that is a really tough question for a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs to think about it's easy for everyone to come on a podcast and say here's my great origin story and here's what I'm doing but it's not as easy for them to be honest and real with themself and say is the reason I created this company 15 years ago the same reason that I would create a company today or a new company and if it's not that leaves them in a position where they have to really think about the future trajectory or how can they update that message or that company you know it's interesting that you mentioned that because even before we were talking about you know what should we talk about on the show and I was saying oh you speak about so many different things like we have to figure out like you know which direction we want to go in and it was and you're like well isn't that everybody and I really do find that people have like this one specific focus for like a task that they're working on right now in life and that's what they want to talk about but it's never updating the origin story it's like here's my origin story plus item that I care about now and that that's like that's a small piece of the thing that keeps changing just like the book or the podcast or the or the you know the and the company I just started but it's like that's like the thing they want to talk about but they don't ever really update the backstory the back story is like well I've it almost gets to the point where they just it's like people who are excited about their origin story and they walk through because they're very they feel like it's very impressive and then there's people that have just lived so long they're just like oh yeah you know I had a great career and like this is what I'm working on that but nobody really tries to update the context of their story and how it's impacted I guess their journey as they as they've grown professionally personally like everyone just kind of leaves it the same way and they just keep adding on bits to it and then it just turns into just like this giant thing that well that that's it and then I guess the thing is that's not relevant to the audience that's not as relevant anymore if you have this giant origin story this lasted 30 years and you just it's like this like list of bullet points that now you just read through every time you go on a podcast or when you talk to somebody or when you you know if you have like a you know a website that's what people know you for it gets it gets old it gets tired I completely agree I'm so I think we're probably having one of those the realest conversations around this of anyone on any of these podcasts because you're right I think what happens is people have the the narrative the talking points or the the talking points that maybe the PR firm has given them that they want to stay within right and that's considered like a great head and they don't want to go outside of that but I think the more challenging conversations are like wait a second let's really talk about what is that does that origin story still apply is that does that origin story not only inspire your audience but does that origin story inspire me today like these are the tough questions I think as creators or business owners we need to talk about but we are too afraid to talk about it because it there's vulnerability in saying I need to put my origin story on the table and some of that is deep reflective work for the entrepreneur I mean I have to tell you it's something I think about every single day every single day I think about how can I update something I created 15 years ago to be as hot and sexy as these other things that are being created today and that's a really hard thing to do when you're I have to re-evaluate everything that you've built and so much of the time I mean this is why people even when they're doing content pruning or unawd it on their site they don't even want to get rid of content that doesn't rank or doesn't perform because it's something that they created it's something they've written and it's so hard to let go of what you've created and the best way to look at it is that it's not necessarily letting go of it it's just trimming it so that it can be replaced with something different or better or that reflects you today you know what else I think that it's it's interesting that we're we're talking about this because people in their mind think that they have to be this perfect iteration of themselves that to be the perfect version of themselves and you tell an origin story so many times and you tweak it and you refine it and you change the verbiage every single time you tell it so that it's almost like you have like some superhero origin story and nothing bad has ever happened to you ever and that's what the end result is after you know mentioning it for a hundred times in a row but I find the stories that are most compelling and the most emotionally engaging are the ones that actually have a lot of a human component a lot of a lot of failures and a lot of lessons and a lot of things that because I find perfection and success nobody really cares about that people want to people want to dive into how you failed how you succeeded how you figured this out how you you know fuck this up and it was just horrible and then how did you recover from that and I think that actually the people with the best stories are the people that include a ton of failures in their story versus just the like the highlight reel I completely I completely agree and that also makes me think a little bit about cancel culture too right when you talk about failure I mean there's so many different definitions of what a failure is today and and where do I mean that's a whole probably separate conversation we can have on it that's a long conversation I think that I think that right now it's it's unfortunate you know there's obviously some things that are not great things that people have done in their past but a lot of people have grown as individuals and I think that makes a very compelling story if you can grow as an individual over over your life and I think that that's something that cancel culture definitely does not enable people to be real about who they are and who they were and how far they've come because God forbid people find out of something that you've done 20 years ago and all of a sudden that's relevant today whereas you've you've made leaps and bounds in who you are since then and it's not forgivable but it's something that I think somebody who's hit a low and has become a better person in my opinion is has more has more depth than somebody who's just done everything right their entire career and has never understood it down you know one of the things I say in so I wrote an exhaustive and very comprehensive article on cancel culture and brand management and we can share this resource with your listeners because I think there's a lot of helpful information there but one of the questions I asked readers is I say how can you cancel yourself before someone else does and one of the ways that you can do that is to actually as you're thinking about your origin story right maybe if you know that you've done something that is worthy of the public's eye if you canceled for possibly include that in your origin story just own up to it before someone in the media decides to write about it I mean there's so many ways to tackle it but you're I think that's a really interesting topic and tie into this notion of an origin story I just don't get the whole origin story it's interesting I guess origin stories are perhaps really inspirational to other entrepreneurs or someone thinking about starting something but for me like I want I want to hear what's your day-to-day story how do you make work with people forget your origin story 15 years ago like how are you making it work today in the middle of the pandemic like when we have inflation going on in this country when we have people being canceled left and right like what is your today's story how are you living and just getting by you know and I think that story is the story we need to hear what what what resonates most with out with with media when people are trying to get their story out there what should people consider is it is it what you just said it's the it's the today's story it's the thing that you're doing right it's always no it's not really about what you're doing it's about what's going on in the media and how your expertise ties into that so it's actually not about you in any way people spend way too much time thinking about themselves when it comes to coming up with a PR media strategy well they don't realize is the meeting that has their own they I'm not gonna say they have their own strategy there is a new cycle there are things happening they need experts to plug in to talk about those stories so you have to figure out what type of expert are you what do you want to be known for and how can you help them when there is breaking news so for example I provide commentary on social media tech big tech censorship things like talking about clubhouse anything or a tick-tock or Facebook so that's going to be in my wheelhouse but I'm not going to say let's say Instagram comes out with something about I don't know follow hiding likes or this or that actually that is something I spoke about but the point is there's a difference between what is relevant to me and my audience and to other trade publications to what is relevant to the national news so you have oh I was gonna say give tips for so say somebody wants to to so tips for people who want to be relevant for a national news cycle get more traditional coverage yeah so I'm gonna look at right now I'm gonna Google social media on Google that I'm gonna click on news oh here we go like here's the top story help on being shame for not being an activist on social media this is actually so this is something like this comes up as the top story interesting that I see this this is something I could provide commentary on and what I would do and this is where content marketing ties into this I've written extensively on cancel culture I've written extensively on brand activism and on corporate social social responsibility I would tie in this story that I just saw and include the links of three other pieces of work that I've spent months working on in research and then give someone examples of me on air so they could see and say if you're doing anything on this or if you want to take this and turn this into a segment here's what it could look like here are my talking points on it and I'm an expert that could provide commentary and add to that story that is PR in a nutshell it's how can you look at something and be helpful to the person who may be booking that or who may be producing a segment on that but it's also understanding I'm looking at other things on here right there's there's other things that I'm I'm probably not going to comment on so it's not it's not thinking that you're an expert in everything it's figuring out the things that you truly are and putting that on a plotter to the media very good advice very very good thank you I appreciate no that's that's that's that's great it's just it just simplifies it it really it really simplifies like the concept of PR which I like even again we were talking about you know how many other PR experts have you had in the show and not not many but I think that it's still very confusing for some people what PR is and what PR isn't and and how to get an effective campaign out how to get some awareness out and I think that just simplifying it so that somebody who is perhaps not at the point where they can afford a firm can at least get some coverage and understand what news and outlets are looking for so that they can at least try and get something on their own that's that's really the the goal if you want to get media coverage pretend that you work in a newsroom pretend that you work you know an or in a national broadcast environment and pretend it's your job to find and book guests every day and to follow with what is going on with breaking news literally forget thinking about PR for a second and put yourself in the position of someone who is in charge of producing and booking these shows that is the best PR advice I can give anyone but it's the advice that almost no one takes because instead they think about the Stan C C sweet strategies that everyone is going to sign off on and that everyone's going to love but may have zero to do with that what's actually going on in the news or in the world and I think that is where a lot of I think campaign sort of go flat is that they think of it like a campaign they don't think about it like how can I actually be helpful to the person whose job it is to create and book guests amazing good no that's great advice um okay so let's uh let's wrap up this because I want I know that I know that we at least spent a whole much time talking before this and we killed a whole much time just riffing on on various topics so I want to ask some rapid fire like career questions to pull some insights out of you because you have had an incredible career um before we pivot whether were there any other things that you wanted to bring up about PR about about agencies that we didn't go into yeah so you one thing that you asked me was about well I can talk about the future of PR I think the future PR is AI integration into PR and that's the thing I'm most excited I forgot to ask you about that I know we could do a whole other episode on that but so I think I'm really excited about AI and how it can help uh publicist do our jobs in a different or better way so that is what I spend a lot of time researching right now what do you uh what do you we were talking about some tools like like like gbt3 like writing tools and stuff like that um uh so what what things do you mess around with that get you excited what tools new tack out there yeah I so I can't say specific names of one although I I do have a text stack I think I've bought almost everyone that exists to try them out and I probably have more than 13 of them at this point and even if I hang up today and there's a new one I'll probably buy that too so I'm fascinated with all of this in the use cases for them and how we can create things but I think that I mean that's something I'm currently working on right now um the integration of PR AI and and some of these tools we're talking about to figure out how can we use this in our industry I don't think anyone is truly necessarily like solved or address that so I'm spending a lot of time looking into that as all I can say do you feel like it's at a point in 2021 where it can start to replace the human component or the creative component I don't think we'll ever replace it I think that it complements it so there's all these articles will writers lose their job because they I know I think that none of I think that the output of these tools is not meant to replace the input of that makes sense what you should get is ideas from that output but if you're using that as is if you use that verbatim that's not actually how any of the the people who create those tools advise that you use them so I think that if you are a smaller boutique agency I think having access to these tools is tremendous for you because it's like having five more brains around you and it helps you think if ideas um and that's always great in terms of the creativity process I want to do I want to do an entire episode on on Chris Ruby's absumo tech stack I don't really want to do that would be my favorite episode to do I know I know you get you I nerd out at the stuff I told you before I live on absumo I go to product time all the time and I try and find new stuff on product time like I love this stuff so I do too so my prime time for finding these tools is between one a.m. to like three a.m. that's like literally when I'm searching two miles and face that I think that's when you spend the most money too you just like at that point you don't even think like if I'm ever going to use this like oh this is for life like how is the deal if it's for life exactly exactly oh my god all right um okay if people want to if you want to connect with you I want to drop your socials and and just contact info in the show so where should they go you know I want to I want to say one last thing because you made me think about it when you just said this is for life you here's what I'm going to leave your listeners with yeah PR is also for life PR is not a three month campaign it's not like you're just going to if you're serious about it if you want to be a commentator if you want to be part of this world in the media it's actually a lifelong commitment it means being part of the news following the news reading the news doing your own research on a daily basis it does not mean you just hire a firm for a few months you get a few logos and you call it a day so similar to what's got to said about these light time deals being a lifetime commitment I think the same is true about PR especially in terms of your niche and what you are pigeonholed into so if you are going to be a social media expert you'll be a social media expert for the duration of your career so understand that whatever you are pigeonholed into now is what you will be known as forever so it's very hard to move in and out of those titles so think long and hard about what what title and what area of expertise you want to stay in for a very long time I think that is something I wish that maybe was shared with me before I even started and so hopefully that will help your your listeners today that's smart that's good advice okay so where can they where can they reach you what's the best spot they can you can reach me uh ruby media group dot com or chris ruby dot com I'm on uh instagram at chris ruby twitter at sparkling ruby or linked in at chris ruby okay perfect um okay so rapid follow you can you can i say rapid fire some people take a long time it's up to you but you can longer a story as you like for these questions so biggest challenge in your career what was it how did you overcome it I think the biggest challenge in my career is that I started out without having that corporate uh training that in terms of management I think is really important to have so really trying to I overcame that by leadership and management courses that I think definitely help bridge that gap good okay um one person that was really impactful in your life who was it what did they teach you my dad has been very impactful in my life he's always been super supportive of uh of what I've done although I'm sure he's not thrilled with all the conservative media that I do because he is not conservative he's on the other side of all of that but other than that he's still um supportive I think of what I've done and as far as what did he teach me he said never be afraid of big numbers then that his background of course was in finance and I think that was a really great lesson for me to understand right I think a lot of creatives we get scared to say I can do this but if to do the job you want made me notting a few you know extra zeros to order making like really specking it out or scoping it properly and said that that advice served me well throughout my career very good um if you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing what would that be it's hard if I could tell my to I'm really thinking about this I mean I think as a woman in business it's it's hard right we focus all of our time goes to our company and our business and sometimes like the years can sort of just go by so fast and so if you if you're thinking about something like a family you're settling down or marriage or any of those things it's important to me be like just keep that on the back of your mind as opposed to thinking like oh I can I have tomorrow or I have another day or I've another year so I think thinking about that is probably important to do as a woman and if you could recommend a book or podcast or some some source people should go and check out what would it be let me think about this there is a book that I would recommend and I can't think of the name right now so maybe we'll cut this question and I'll think about it for you I'm sorry that I can't think of the name right now and that's gonna kill me but okay well whatever that book is I'll put it in the show notes you think about it come back to me okay and last question then oh I thought of it oh okay the book okay so I'm gonna start this over the book that I'd recommend is called win without pitching I think it's a really great I believe it's by Blair Ns and it's a really great resource for any creative okay cool all right I've never had that one on the show before I've never had that recommendation win without pitching okay I'm writing that down for me for later okay and then last question what does success mean to you it's a hard so for me success means I created something new and put that content into the world I feel really good as I create or whether you know if I'm creating a piece of content for a client there's a client I work with and so they're an interventional cardiologist and so we write about amputation prevention and diabetes and I think that that content I feel really great that that content when that is out in the world and that's created like that is helping someone who was searching for content in that area to be able to extract that thought leadership knowledge from that doctor and use my you know creativity or PR skills or content marketing skills and then put that out and publish that I feel really good about that so for me success is feeling like I have used my skills to help people in some way and to create something that will last for a long time be on me it's a pretty damn good answer that's a very good answer that's all I got