Lessons - The TV Producer Who Got Her Clients on CNN, NBC and Fox Without Spending a Dollar on Ads | Cheryl Hunter - Founder of Magnify Your Message

In this lessons episode, discover why great communication depends on the messenger as much as the message. Understand how to adapt messaging for different audiences and media platforms. Explore strategies for building lasting relationships with gatekeepers before opportunities arise. And uncover how continuous feedback and refinement create greater influence and long-term credibility. Is there a big difference if you were going to media train somebody for prime time news or talk show? What is the biggest difference who somebody is heavily involved in social, who's built an audience or a brand between... all traditional media or whatever you want to call it and youtube and reels like what's the thing that they are going to miss because there's going to be somebody who's listening to this who has built an audience on youtube and they're like i i have like two million subs i think i'm media trained enough They're probably missing something. I know for sure they are, because I know people that also just do traditional media, and there are nuances. What's the difference? Your audience that you've built has a particular way they like to consume content. There's a particular kind of value you provide for them. You give them tangible takeaways in whatever way you do. The media source that also has millions of followers, or not subscribers perhaps, but how they do it, they have an audience that consumes content in a different way. They want takeaways in a distinct fashion. you can still impact that audience positively, but you have to first put your ear to the ground and find out how does their audience consume content? What do they leave with? What kind of segments... Do they get the most bang for their buck on and that they continue to repeat? And how can I approximate what I do in that format and present it in such a way that the media platform is, oh, this is a no-brainer. Because... I have relationships with, I don't know, 50 or more, 45, 50 gatekeepers at different media platforms. And they say something similar each time, which is every time I put someone's name in the hat or pitch them up the food chain at work, my job is on the line. It may sound counterintuitive. One of our producers on our team has been producing network television for 30 years. How could her job be on the line? She's been in the DGA and the PGA and the blah, blah, blah, blah. Every time, if someone goes in and screws up, they're like, Barbara! Never again! She can't afford to have that happen. Nobody can. So you've got to make the decision for the gatekeeper such a no-brainer by removing all the barriers to entry for them so that they have no fear of pitching you. No fear of throwing your name in the hat. And once you've done that, you've let them know what's in it for them. The gatekeeper, personally. What's in it for the media source? What's in it for their audience? What all of those things, once you make that crystal clear and do it in a concise way, that's a soundbite, that when they get 500 emails a day, they're going to go, yes, you've done it for me. That right there... can help remove those barriers to entry. And if you've got 2 million subscribers, by all means, say so. Mm-hmm. Because it makes their decision way easier and removes the barrier to entry. But for people that aren't already famous, is there a right time when they should start approaching traditional media? Is it when you're raising a funding round? Is it you want to build more of an audience, a brand? Is it after you've accomplished something? Is there like a sweet spot or is it everyone's subjective? Yeah. So there's... What is that old proverb? The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. Yes. The best time is one second. Yes. So often clients come to us and they're like, yeah, I launched a book. I've got a brand new book. And boy, I think I should, I don't know if I should do it now or later. And we're like, when did your book come out? Four months ago. Wait, that's so late. It's like Sisyphus trying to push that boulder up the hill and having it roll back down every day. No, you want to build renown before you launch anything. So you're not launching into a vacuum. You want to substantiate that you're the expert in your field long before you ask for funding or what have you. It's, there's two different kind of lanes that we go in. You know, yes, we do bespoke PR, but mostly what people want is to learn how to become their own publicist for the life of their brand. And we help them do that. And for those people, you want to start building relationships with the right gatekeepers at the right major media sources for you yesterday, 20 years ago, so that by the time your book comes out, Well, you've got an opening or a launch or something. You've got such a relationship with them, so you're no longer positioned as somebody who's like, please, please, Benjamin, how could you use me? No, you're a peer or even a resource. When you're positioned as a resource with this gatekeeper, all bets are off. Those people appear on media all the time. And you see them. Like you see them repeatedly. You see them all the time. Whenever there's a segment, that's when the gatekeeper reaches out to those people. But they've had the relationship for X amount of years ahead of time. Or weeks or months. It's, look, it's no longer the media. I talked about how it's no longer the business days of old where you hung up a shingle, put it up on Main Street, we're now open Saturdays, and people wouldn't run to you. Excuse me. Media's not the same anymore, either. It used to be back in the days of Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow, they had one hour of news to fill a night. That's it. They had a team of people working around the clock to fill an hour. Now they got 24 hours. And your boss is on your back day and night. What are you getting? What do you got for me? I need something good. This one's got a hit. We got sweeps coming up. No producer can come up with that much content on their own. So if you've got a message and you've got expertise and you can serve their audience, you need... to get out there to them and have a relationship with them because they need you as much as you want them. And if you can leverage that, that 24-hour news cycle to your advantage by creating things that they want to feature, they will be reaching out to you all the time. I've got clients like that right now. Anytime there's something political, anytime there's national security, I've got this client, Gene Moran, and every time there's something happening, some drone strike, some this, some action, some... That's the go-to. They have to call him. When you say the problem isn't the mess... The problem is the messenger, not the message... What does that mean? Because again, these are all ideas that without context, they're counter to what we just spoke about. It's that kind of bravado like, yeah, yeah, I did Toastmasters. Yeah, I've founded three companies. I don't need to. It's the ego. It's the ego. Linda, right? It's, I'm going to just, I know they said not to talk about my business, but I'm going to talk about my business. Yeah. Instead of talking about what you're there to talk about and weaving through your business story such that people will beat a path to your door. But it's the arrogance of thinking... It'll be different with you because, after all, you're special. You know what it is? I think that social media removed gatekeepers from creating audiences. So you can build an audience, but a lot of people don't monetize their audience the way they should. They don't leverage the audience the way they should. And they probably don't have a lot of people telling them that they suck. I'm saying, yeah, you get a lot of... trolls in the comments of people actually saying that your messaging is not good. You should do this, that, or the other. Or if your messaging is really bad, you're just not getting accepted. But if you pressure test yourself against media gatekeepers that they need your message to hit and drive ratings at a massive scale that you probably day one will never have access to on a YouTube or a TikTok or whatever. Like this isn't actually a really good way to see if your message hits home. Because now it's no longer you just putting out content and you building an audience with an algorithm that may or may not serve you. It's putting out content that there's professionals that gatekeep and will tell you if you suck, which is actually very useful feedback for a creator. If you're like a prolific creator or if you're just starting out. But I'm just thinking through this now. I don't do traditional media. I do podcasts. Unless you tell me that it sucks, like I guess downloads, whatever, but maybe it could be 50% better if I... you know, buttoned up my media training, went to try and talk about entrepreneurship, business, whatever, try and get on Squawk Box or something like that, nobody's listening to me. I'm like, oh, shit, I better figure out what I stand for, the story that I want to tell, and then maybe I carry that into my actual content. I don't know. I'm just thinking. And vol or die, right? It really... Yeah. It's such a smart idea. Like, in one regard, you don't have to. And at the same time, For each of us, if we don't evolve, if we don't iterate and optimize and test and continue to push outside of our comfort zone, somebody else will. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.