Episode 24 / Renee Warren
Why Your PR Strategy Isn’t Working: Renee Warren’s Practical PR Tips
This episode is for you if you’ve ever wondered:
The impact of different wealth-making types on relationship dynamics and business growth.
Strategies for overcoming imposter syndrome and developing confidence in a star role.
The significance of process and consistency in business and public relations.
The importance of prioritizing marriage and mutual support in achieving a balanced personal and professional life.
Practical tips on effective pitching in PR, including strategic follow-ups and aligning pitches with editorial calendars.
About Renee
Renée Warren is an award-winning entrepreneur, angel investor, author, speaker, and founder of We Wild Women, a PR agency revolutionizing how female-led businesses shine in the media spotlight. Renée is not just a leader; she's a visionary, innovating how women can achieve unprecedented visibility and success. As host of the top-rated podcast "Into the Wild," she interviews successful entrepreneurs, sharing actionable authority-building advice from those who have successfully done it before. Outside the hustle, she enjoys time with her Irish Twin sons, Crossfit, drumming, and being her husband, Dan Martell's number one cheerleader. To learn more, visit www.wewildwomen.com and @renee_warren.
“I have to conceptualize or see what the outcome is before I do the thing. And in order to do that in business, you have to put the process together because you need to know how you're going to get your client from A to Z.”
Renée WarreN
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Lindsey Epperly [00:00:02]:
Hey, Renee, I am so excited to have you today on who made you the boss?
Renee Warren [00:00:06]:
I made me the boss. So thanks for having me, Lindsay.
Lindsey Epperly [00:00:10]:
I mean, you've already answered my first question. Then tell us about that. You know, I mean, we say this title as a bit of a tongue in cheek thing for entrepreneurs, especially when it comes to the fact that you've got to look yourself in the mirror and realize, it was me.
Renee Warren [00:00:24]:
I did it. I made yourself the boss.
Lindsey Epperly [00:00:25]:
Yes. Totally.
Renee Warren [00:00:26]:
It wasn't me.
Lindsey Epperly [00:00:27]:
Specific moment where you kind of said, all right, it's going to be me. I'm a leader. I'm taking the reins.
Renee Warren [00:00:31]:
I do. Actually, it was the day when I was 17 years old, my mom told me to go get a job, and I thought that being an entrepreneur meant you don't work a lot and you made a lot of money. So I just started a restaurant.
Lindsey Epperly [00:00:45]:
Okay.
Renee Warren [00:00:45]:
And became my own boss and worked with my sister. And we employed my mom's friends, which was really interesting, and some of my friends in high school, too, and we started this restaurant. It was a seasonal thing we did in the summertime. Get out.
Lindsey Epperly [00:01:02]:
I had no idea.
Renee Warren [00:01:03]:
Yeah. So that's when I became a boss. I love that.
Lindsey Epperly [00:01:07]:
And so did that mindset just simply carry over from one business to the next? Like, have you ever been employed or have you always worked for yourself?
Renee Warren [00:01:14]:
I did have a little stint at Pizza Hut during college. I also worked at a furniture refurbishing repair shop. So I do know how to refurbish antique furniture because making pizzas and that totally go hand in hand with PR.
Lindsey Epperly [00:01:32]:
Totally. Really important for your work now.
Renee Warren [00:01:34]:
Yeah. But here's the thing, is what I learned at Pizza Hut was the art.
Lindsey Epperly [00:01:41]:
Of phrases you don't hear very often.
Renee Warren [00:01:43]:
I know what I learned at Pizza Hut that made me a multimillionaire. No. Was the art of consistency in making a product, because I don't remember the number, but we're going to say, like, a small pizza had 22 pepperonis, a medium had 32, a large had 42 pepperoni. You couldn't go over, you couldn't go under, and everything was just made according to exactly the amount of product you needed. It had to be cooked at the same temperature for the same amount of time. I'm sure they have robots do this now.
Renee Warren [00:02:17]:
But I remember the lessons learned there that probably apply to business today in that it's all about the consistency and the mundane, and you think about it. So going back to my restaurant days, what I learned about running a food business, you don't have to have the best food in the world. So there are two things that are really important in running a restaurant. Consistency and really good customer service.
Lindsey Epperly [00:02:45]:
Amazing.
Renee Warren [00:02:46]:
That's it?
Speaker C [00:02:47]:
Yes.
Renee Warren [00:02:47]:
If you think about all of the top restaurants in your area or wherever you are, they aren't necessarily the ones that have the best food, but they're consistent. And it's always fun going there. You can serve a turd on a bun and call it a hot dog. And as long as people are consistently getting the same thing, they will keep showing up.
Lindsey Epperly [00:03:09]:
Renee, you're saying all sorts of beautiful things today.
Renee Warren [00:03:14]:
Oh God, I just said something my eleven year old would say.
Lindsey Epperly [00:03:16]:
Well, we'll have to make sure they hear this episode. But I am so intrigued. I'm going to just dive right into how this applies to the company you've built and scaled when it comes to PR too. What does consistency look like there? Because from a professional services type of industry, from the travel industry, it's so difficult to scale a custom product. Right, when your service is a custom product. So what does that look like? How have you done that in PR?
Renee Warren [00:03:43]:
So the retainer model. So we offer two things. There's a retainer model and then we have another thing called the authority booster intensive, which we are re kind of branding. The retainer is custom in the sense that everybody's business is unique. So our pitches, our angles are all different. The process to get a client on podcasts or in the media doesn't change. And if it does change, it changes for everybody. And so the only thing that really needs to change in the process is the pitches, the angles.
Renee Warren [00:04:18]:
Right. So then that can easily be replicated. And that's how I was able to train my Va to pitch me to be on podcast in the media. I pitched the first woman that I hired in this company to help with pitching, who had never pitched a day in her life. I taught her the process. Within a few weeks, she was pitching getting wins.
Speaker C [00:04:37]:
Wow.
Renee Warren [00:04:38]:
And so you create a process in any industry that can be replicated, then that's when you're able to scale. Now, with the authority booster intensive, which is like a PR VIP day, essentially, you hire us for a day, ends up being a month long thing. We create your detailed PR strategy and we write the pitch angles. We create 100 accurate, 100 contact media list, your positioning, your messaging, all this stuff. So we create a very detailed strategy document that ends up being like 20 pages long.
Speaker C [00:05:10]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:05:11]:
And then we teach the person on your team to implement it. So the only difference between the retainer and the VIP day is that we're not doing the pitching and the follow up. That is somebody in house that does that.
Lindsey Epperly [00:05:23]:
So I was going to ask you about your own personal journey with impostor syndrome, but I kind of am curious with what you just described. How are you empowering other people who may not have even been professionally trained in that field to step into it and say, oh, actually, if you've got this process you can do, how are they not just feeling like, who am I to pitch to media if I've never done it before and my training is as a va? How do you empower people to get past that?
Renee Warren [00:05:50]:
I started a million dollar PR agency back in the day without having ever pitched the media day in my life. Nobody on my team but my co founder had any sort of media training whatsoever.
Lindsey Epperly [00:06:03]:
Okay.
Renee Warren [00:06:04]:
We figured. It.
Lindsey Epperly [00:06:07]:
Comes so easy, though. I mean, right? Like, you just figured it out along the way, Renee, you got to start.
Renee Warren [00:06:13]:
A Facebook advertising company. Go, okay, I'll figure it out. Yeah, it's not hard. It's really not hard. What's hard is that you create that repetitive model that people can just use and kind of like carbon copy into their business or create an SOP.
Speaker C [00:06:27]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:06:28]:
And so when I started this agency and I started, I hire people for what I think is their potential and I guess really hard to find. But we have a hiring process here which is also quite unique. But when you find the people that are capable of doing the work, then you train them and then you let them go and do it.
Lindsey Epperly [00:06:48]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:06:48]:
And so you don't have to have. I'm not saying this for every industry, but when they hired me at Pizza Hut, I never made a pizza day in my life. And they taught me the process was very strict and simple and everything was like timing and all this stuff. So we're able to pump out hundreds of pizza an hour and with hardly ever any mistakes because there was a process.
Lindsey Epperly [00:07:13]:
So you just learned early on about the idea of process. I think this is something that eluded me as a very right brained, creative individual. The idea of a process, especially implementing one in business, sounds so soul sucking. That just sounds like the least fun ever. And I think that's why I avoided it for so long. And thank God I married Jeremy, who thinks in processes and was able to come and actually instill much needed processes into Jetset and help us scale in that way. But does this come naturally to you? Or is it just that you were luckily exposed at an early age at Pizza hut?
Renee Warren [00:07:47]:
No, I think it's because I learn that way, so I have to conceptualize or see what the outcome is before I do the thing. And in order to do that in business, you have to put the process together because you need to know how you're going to get your client from A to Z. Yeah. And also when you create a repeatable model that becomes scalable, it gives you so much capacity back and so much time back. So the upfront investment of your time and your mind in creating this process, or whatever it is, is quite a lot. And a lot of people just avoid it at all costs. But at the end of the day now, these VIP days that we do are templates. So every time we do them, it gets better and better and smarter and smarter and there's way more value because we've already done the work and we have twelve plus years of experience in creating the first part of that strategy.
Renee Warren [00:08:40]:
And we just copy paste, customize. Copy paste, customize. It's like a line at a Toyota plant, right?
Speaker C [00:08:49]:
Yes.
Renee Warren [00:08:50]:
They're not creating every car from scratch and molding every tire and every little thing from scratch. There is a line that has very specific parts that go on the car at this particular times. That's how they're able to not only pump out a lot of volume, but the safety in that is there too. And so when we avoid the process, really, we're avoiding scaling at all.
Speaker C [00:09:19]:
Yes.
Lindsey Epperly [00:09:20]:
So I'm curious though, knowing your story, there was a very specific point because you started this company and then effectively did you walk away from it and then you came back to it like you had a point where you burned out. Was that because of not having these processes in? What, what caused that to begin with?
Renee Warren [00:09:38]:
So my last agency was called onboardly and we were working with funded technology startups, mostly out of the valley, but we had clients from South Africa to San Diego. I started that business when I was eight months pregnant with my first son and eleven months later I had my second baby. So in the first year of starting my company, I had two babies. So I went from being not a mother at all to being a mother times two.
Speaker C [00:10:03]:
Yes.
Renee Warren [00:10:04]:
And then also moving to a city in which I knew nobody. So I was doing it all and growing my business, and I had a co founder and I had a team and we had clients all over the world. I never got that maternity leave, never got the time with my kids, and I was in full stress all the time. But here's the problem, is that I was identifying with the complement of being a powerhouse woman or a powerhouse couple with my husband. And I did not want to let go of that identity. And so I just kept on hustling and hustling to maintain that facade of what it means to be a powerful woman, which meant it affected my sleep, my happiness. I was super unhealthy. I couldn't BReastfEed, which was a huge thing I wanted to try and do for long.
Renee Warren [00:10:52]:
But I wasn't producing milk. My kid was starving and didn't know this because I was. In my mind, success meant that I am this powerful woman that people look up to because I'm able to do it all. What a terrible example I was setting for so many people. Yeah, because it's impossible. And so eventually, year six, seven, I burnt out. We're going through due diligence about we were about to be acquired. And when I looked at the long term game plan, if we pulled the trigger on this, it was a minimum two year earn out.
Renee Warren [00:11:23]:
I asked myself, I looked myself in the mirror, can I actually do this? But for somebody else? And the answer was no. And I just turned to my husband and I said, I'm done. He goes, that's fine. Throw in the towel. That's good. It was a good run. I pushed the big red button, like.
Lindsey Epperly [00:11:38]:
We just talked about on the interview.
Renee Warren [00:11:40]:
That you did with me on your show. The big red button.
Lindsey Epperly [00:11:42]:
That was your big red button moment?
Renee Warren [00:11:43]:
That was my big red button moment.
Lindsey Epperly [00:11:45]:
But what a choice to make for your sanity and your health and your family.
Renee Warren [00:11:50]:
Family, yeah.
Lindsey Epperly [00:11:51]:
That's huge. Where do you think you first got the idea of what a powerful woman is? That you were kind of working toward this false identity?
Renee Warren [00:11:59]:
Right.
Lindsey Epperly [00:11:59]:
Where did that come from?
Renee Warren [00:12:01]:
When I was 18 years old, maybe even younger, I had this vision of what I thought my life would look like. That I would own an advertising agency in Manhattan, and I would have two kids, a dog, and a white picket fence. And I couldn't get away from that vision. I didn't know how I was going to achieve it, what it looked like. I'd never been to New York before. I love visiting New York, but get me out of there after 48 hours, please. But that was like, I needed to achieve that. And the powerful woman was like the women that were the editor in chiefs of all of these magazines, the women that were the editors or had senior positions in big corporations, and they wore their pants suits to work, and they drove their fancy cars, and they were healthy, having their shakes, walking into the building, I was like, oh, I want that oh, my God.
Renee Warren [00:12:49]:
I could not have that today.
Speaker C [00:12:50]:
Yeah.
Lindsey Epperly [00:12:51]:
So it was the look. It sounds like it was the outward appeal of. Exactly.
Renee Warren [00:12:56]:
It was the perception that that is what it physically looks like to be a successful woman.
Speaker C [00:13:01]:
Yeah.
Lindsey Epperly [00:13:02]:
You mentioned even the idea of being part of a power couple, and I kind of want to camp out on that, too, because your husband, Dan Martel, is a wonderful individual and successful individual in his own right. And you've got the two of you chasing after what feel like almost kind of parallel dreams. Right. It looks like from the outside looking, you. How do you maintain great partnership? How do you not have conflict of interest when it comes to who's on stage next? Or what does that even look like.
Renee Warren [00:13:29]:
As you embody so much? We don't have enough time for this. We've done a test called the wealth dynamics test.
Lindsey Epperly [00:13:35]:
Okay.
Renee Warren [00:13:36]:
And essentially, it's like your wealth making. Forget. Oh, no. I forget what they all are. But Dan is a star, and I'm a supporter. So what that means is the star wants to be front and center on stage, like, really good on social media. They record the videos. Like, it's exactly the life he's living right now.
Renee Warren [00:13:56]:
I need to redo this test because I feel like I'm growing into that, but I'm the supporter, and I like to help people rise up and put them on the stages and make them feel good about themselves. I'm there to do the things that you need me to do to make you famous, which is probably really good with PR. But we're in this world now where we all need to have that personal brand. And so there's a lot of pressure for me to put myself out there and to do something similar to what my husband's doing. But here's the thing. We talked about this, actually, when we recorded the episode on my show. You brought up this thing called Kinsuki. Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:14:34]:
Right. And you explained how it was like if you break a plate and you glue it back together and how in the artistry, they paint over with gold paint over the crack so people don't see it, but that plate will never break again the same spot, because it's been solidified.
Speaker C [00:14:49]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:14:50]:
Well, the same goes for our relationship. So Dan and I prioritize our marriage over our kids and anything else, and that was hard for me as a mother to be, like, what? You're more important than my kids? Screw off like that. I'm sorry. And there's no putting him on a pedestal, and, no, he's not more important than my kids. Our marriage is the foundation for the happiness and the health and the livelihood of this entire house, of our community, even.
Speaker C [00:15:21]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:15:21]:
And so we work on our relationship all the time, all the like, there's never been a moment where I'd go into Dan's office and I'd be like, I want a hug, or a be. He's been on coaching calls, and he charges lots of money to have one on one coaching calls with people, like hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I'll go in, I'll be like, I need a hug. He's like, he gets up and he gives me a hug. There's no that this person's more Tony Robbins. He was interviewing for his podcast, same thing. And I say to me, that's what I need, to feel safe. And as a woman, we need to feel safe in order for us to be intimate, to trust the other person.
Renee Warren [00:16:02]:
And it's not like I'm demanding him to do this or asking him to do this. He just does it.
Speaker C [00:16:07]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:16:07]:
Half the time, I don't know who he's talking to on the phone. Anyway, so the power couple thing is he's like, probably the most inspiring person in the world to me. And I get to see him every single day. He pushes me and pushes me. And when we first started dating, it was annoying, and it was like, I can't keep up with this guy. But here's the gift that he has, which makes our relationship beautiful, is that he sees the potential in people. And if you want to work for him, you bet that you're going to be pushed to the limits because he sees the potential in you, not because he wants more of you. An example is we talk about personal training.
Renee Warren [00:16:54]:
He saw this guy named Alan at the gym who's like, massive dude. He's like the Mr. Olympia guy. Dan's like, think that guy knows a thing or two about working out. And Dan wants to get ripped. And he had this thing called project visible abs, where he had to have his abs visible by the end of February or else he had to go on stage. So we ended up hiring this guy, and within two months, his physical transformation was out of this world. I have never seen anybody transform so fast, and he has been disciplined by it.
Renee Warren [00:17:30]:
So going back to the power couple thing, I was like, I want that. I want that, too. So now I'm working out with this Alan guy. I don't want to be Mrs. Olympia, if that even exists. That's not the point. When I went to my first training session with Alan, he goes you know what I love about you being in here is 99% of the couples I see, it's mostly men that are in here. The wives or the partners are discouraging of the discipline that is needed to be somebody that performs and goes on stage.
Renee Warren [00:18:02]:
The women are the one that push back. And what I love about you, Renee, this is him talking to me, is that I want to achieve what he's achieved. And so the power couple is that we both support each other in ways that I don't think we even know.
Speaker C [00:18:20]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:18:20]:
So he pushes me to lift heavier or do more, grow my podcast, and I kind of pull him down from getting too fast ahead of himself. And I say, hey, let's snuggle for an extra couple of minutes, or, hey, let's have family time and family dinners. And I protect that time, which, at the end of the day, is exactly what we all need.
Speaker C [00:18:40]:
Right.
Renee Warren [00:18:43]:
When we set the vision, we say our dreams, hey, I want to do this, this, and this. We work with each other to make that happen for each other. We're our number one cheerleaders. There's no jealousy. But all this to be said, the most important thing in having a great marriage or even being a great leader or a great parent is in knowing yourself and doing the work on yourself. The best thing I've ever done for the marriage is working on myself.
Lindsey Epperly [00:19:14]:
I completely agree. Speaking of yourself, you even kind of touched on here that you at first thought you were the service type in that test that you guys did right now, you feel like you're moving more toward the star dynamic. And so I would be curious to hear more about what that means for you because you did an excellent episode on your podcast the other day. We wild women, you guys have to listen to it. Renee's podcast where you talked about imposter syndrome specifically, and you had a quote, something to the degree of, the more someone puts themselves out there and in the spotlight, the more likely imposter syndrome is going to creep up. Right. Because you're putting yourself in a vulnerable place, and it sounds like you are going on that journey presently as we speak. So what are you doing to combat that and to pour into yourself to ensure that that doesn't just get the best of you?
Renee Warren [00:20:04]:
Yeah, it's working on my confidence. And so there's things physically I'm self conscious about that I'm just working on so that I'm not so self conscious about it. Right. So I'm the supporter in the wealth dynamics, but he's the star. I think it takes up like 80% of what you are, but we're all like, a little bit of everything. Those things show up. I just realized that I need to put myself in that position, the star position, more often than not, in order for me to grow my business. And it's not that I'm not doing it.
Renee Warren [00:20:43]:
I'm doing it at a pace that is sustainable to. What kind of grows is my confidence. And also, the more you do it, the better you get at it.
Speaker C [00:20:52]:
Yeah.
Lindsey Epperly [00:20:54]:
Do you feel, though, the more you do it, the more the impostor syndrome is something that you have to be aware of, or is there ever a point where you can kind of quiet that entirely?
Renee Warren [00:21:03]:
If you want to live a mediocre life, then just go lock yourself in a closet and don't have a social media account. The reality is there's a lot of just hurt people online that have nothing better to do than to say really bad, mean things to people. So the block for me, the limiting belief from me was that I'm not smart enough, I haven't grown my business big enough to be able to have the impact and even telling myself the story of things that people once said to me that I'm successful because of who I'm married to, or that I have this wealth because of the person I'm married to, which is wrong, but also there's part of it that's right. But the point of that comment was to belittle me or to make me feel like I'm not good enough.
Speaker C [00:21:55]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:21:56]:
And really, it doesn't matter how you got there. You're there.
Speaker C [00:21:59]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:22:00]:
As long as it's legal, you're there.
Lindsey Epperly [00:22:03]:
Right. But those are the trolls. So those are actual people that are making comments. At what point? Because you talked a little bit ago about having a personal brand and what that even looks like. Right. So even in your episode, I can't remember if it was your imposters episode or something else you spoke about recently, where you talked about how often within industries we carve out our niche, we become an expert in the industry, and how oftentimes individuals who aren't yet at this point, they're kind of held against this level of whatever the leading person or thought leader is in the industry. How does this individual over here, who's maybe newer to this industry of any sort, whatever you've entered into, whether it's pr or travel or anything in between, how does this person know? When is it time for me to build my brand and me to speak up with my voice? When is it time for me to have influence? What does that look like for our listeners who maybe are sitting on the cusp and they've kind of toyed around with this idea of building a personal brand, which I think is even like a misnomer because we're all doing it. It's just, what, are we doing it intentionally? Right.
Lindsey Epperly [00:23:01]:
What does that look like?
Renee Warren [00:23:02]:
Well, we're not all doing it, and here's why. It's because just to say that you have a social media account doesn't mean you're doing it.
Lindsey Epperly [00:23:09]:
Okay. So that's helpful.
Renee Warren [00:23:10]:
Yeah.
Lindsey Epperly [00:23:11]:
It's not like culture like it exists, but you have to pull it out. Like this is actually intentional. Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:23:16]:
So the intentionality behind a personal brand is that you have a goal in mind. You have a target audience of who you're trying to have an impact on. Create value for these people. The content you create is for those people, and you're the vessel that's a personal brand. And that all comes down to, sure, it could be, like, fonts and colors and logos and all that stuff. That's important. But really, to answer your question is, when do people start? Right now, today. The impostor syndrome kicks in when we know what we don't know, and we're so worried about being called out on the stuff we don't know.
Renee Warren [00:23:57]:
The reality is you only have to be 10% ahead of the people that you're trying to sell to or teach to or have the impact on. Kind of like the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio where he's like, what's it called? Oh, catch me if you can.
Speaker C [00:24:12]:
Yes.
Renee Warren [00:24:13]:
Where he's like a professor, and they ask them a question once they finally caught him. How did you do that? He goes, I only had to be a chapter ahead of everybody. We only have to be a chapter ahead.
Lindsey Epperly [00:24:24]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:24:25]:
We think we have to be the next whole series of Encyclopedia Britannica ahead of everybody else.
Speaker C [00:24:31]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:24:32]:
So we put the pressure on because we know that we don't know this stuff yet. And so if I'm considering an expert in this industry yet, I only know 20% of what the 100% is, what I think we need to know. That's when you feel like you're an imposter.
Speaker C [00:24:47]:
Yeah. Yes.
Lindsey Epperly [00:24:49]:
So what are some tips those individuals can implement?
Renee Warren [00:24:53]:
Just do it.
Lindsey Epperly [00:24:55]:
Just do it. Scared. Just do it scared.
Renee Warren [00:24:57]:
And that's the thing. I started a podcast. I didn't know what I was doing. I thought it was easy. Just record something and throw it online. No, it's not easy. And even today, I still don't know what I'm doing. I started a PR agency, didn't know what I was doing.
Renee Warren [00:25:10]:
And then things come at you like, oh, I have to do the tax, but I have to charge taxes in this province, or all these things come at you and you have to learn them. Most people just avoid doing it because they don't want to get uncomfortable.
Speaker C [00:25:26]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:25:27]:
And then you get these seasons. Like, this past summer was a season because I reincorporated my business to be in the province that we're living in now, which meant all that paperwork, all the tax stuff, bank accounts, like new invoicing system, and I did it all at once. So the month of July, August was rather taxing on me. And I'm like, I hate this. But guess what? Now it's all automated because I set up the process. I have my time back, and it's easy peasy.
Speaker C [00:25:55]:
Yeah.
Lindsey Epperly [00:25:56]:
So putting aside the fears and the doing it scared and the imposter syndrome, I want to talk about tangibles that we can learn from you as a PR expert. So someone's listening to this right now and they're thinking, okay, well, what is my next job? Or what is a strategy that you can bring us to? Kind of like establishing yourself as an authority, whether that's in your industry or outside of it. What does that even look like for individuals?
Renee Warren [00:26:20]:
Yeah, it's do one thing really well.
Speaker C [00:26:23]:
Okay.
Renee Warren [00:26:23]:
And we talked about this earlier, I think on my show where we tend to launch something, we'll say like a coaching program, and it flops. And we've only ever tried launching it once, so instead of fixing it and doing it again, we just throw it out the window and start something new. Oh, nobody wants that. So I'll do this thing. We end up starting so many different things that we never end up achieving greatness in one thing. The people that, you know, that are experts in their industry are really good around one thing we think about, like Amy Porterfield, she's about launching a course. Marie forleo is about B school, and they've been doing the same thing forever, and they didn't crush it out of the gates. They failed.
Renee Warren [00:27:06]:
Amy talks about the time that she would do, like, Facebook lives and nobody would show.
Speaker C [00:27:11]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:27:11]:
And the next time she had one person and then four people, and most people would just not continue on when they go live and there's nobody there. But you look at the people that are great, they show up no matter what, probably go home and cry and eat a bowl of ICE cream. That's fine. It all goes with the program.
Lindsey Epperly [00:27:31]:
Yeah, well, that goes back to your consistency thing, right? They might order a pizza hut pizza with exactly 22 pepperonis on it.
Renee Warren [00:27:38]:
Or if you had me make your pizza, I always throw on extra. Don't tell Pizza hut.
Lindsey Epperly [00:27:44]:
That changes the consistency recommendation. But consistency is key.
Renee Warren [00:27:48]:
Yes, it is.
Lindsey Epperly [00:27:51]:
What are you seeing in the public relations industry that individuals should know, especially if they're entrepreneurial, right? Or they're venturing into this world? What's changing? What does the landscape look like right now?
Renee Warren [00:28:02]:
What do people so changed in the last three years, all of the big publications have laid off all their staff writers, so there's hardly anybody that works as a writer for these pubs. You imagine back in the early 2000s going walking into Forbes or entrepreneur, what's just probably like a hustle and bustle and a hub of energy, people writing stuff and faxes coming in? No, that does not exist anymore. Now it's kind of like you look at an ant hill where there's, like, ants that are busy kind of making the hill, and if you kind of smush the hill, all of a sudden the ants just disperse and they go everywhere and they panic. That's what's happening in the world of media right now.
Speaker C [00:28:44]:
Wow.
Renee Warren [00:28:44]:
With journalists and writers and publicists and editors. And so it's not that these publications won't continue to exist. How they do the work that they're doing is going to change and is changing. How we approach pitching them is different, too. And so I think before we go into any strategy or tactics, and you can find a bunch of free resources on my website, if you go to wewildwomen.com. The most important thing, though, if you're committing to PR for yourself or you're doing this for somebody you work with, is do it nonstop for 100 days. Commit to 100 days of action. And this means, like, pitching five to ten people a week, following up with those people two weeks later, and do it nonstop for 100 days, iterating different pitches, different subject lines, pitch angles, ideas coming up with angles.
Renee Warren [00:29:39]:
And then you'll start to see the momentum then, because most people after two weeks are like, I'm done. But the big home runs came from me and all my career in the follow ups, 70% of the big wins come from the follow ups. So people just don't put in the time. They give up too soon. Unlike running an ad where you can deploy the ad and within 24 hours, you know if it's actually doing the work you want it to do PR, you can go three months and be like, this isn't working, Renee. And you might have the tightest, most amazing pitch, and it just takes one, and when you get the one, then two and then three. So on my team, we actually have on retainer a very notable journalist, and we make sure there's no conflict of interest. Her job with us is to answer any sort of random questions I have about the industry.
Renee Warren [00:30:32]:
But she reviews our pitches before they go out and she provides feedback. And as of late, every pitch is like, renee, this is tight, this is great, this is awesome. I have a woman who has a byline for all the top publications telling me our pitches are great and we have the right contact, it's the right time, yet they go out, they get open, and we don't hear back. This happens a lot. The industry has shifted. But guess what? Most people do? They give up.
Speaker C [00:31:01]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:31:02]:
They don't come back to, I mean, a great follow up would be a few weeks later with a different angle or a different idea. Right. So you might have pitched like, I have a dog training expert as a client. And we pitched Drew Barrymore's magazine. It was a really awesome pitch and it wasn't open because we have a mail tracking tool to know if the thing was open. And so the follow up was it three weeks later saying, hey, maybe that angle didn't work. But here's another one we think could work for the magazine. And that's just where people stop.
Renee Warren [00:31:34]:
They don't want to worry about annoying the person. Yeah, but you, what I was going.
Lindsey Epperly [00:31:39]:
To bring up, how do you get past the, I mean, it sounds like they want to hear from you with the follow up then, because you're giving them more value and more ideas.
Renee Warren [00:31:49]:
And that's the thing is that a lot of these people get, like if you're a journalist or a writer and you write for gift guides during holiday season, you'll get over 1000 emails a day.
Speaker C [00:32:00]:
Wow.
Renee Warren [00:32:01]:
I write. But in order for you to be successful, you have to do the follow up. Don't be annoying, don't be sleazy. Provide value. Be respectful to the person that you're pitching. And every single pitch is customized and individualized to the person you're reaching out to.
Lindsey Epperly [00:32:18]:
And what does value look like in that case? I know you just gave the example of giving another idea, but how can an individual provide value?
Renee Warren [00:32:25]:
Yeah. So what you do is when you're pitching them, you make sure that all the information they need is there. You're taking the work off their plate.
Lindsey Epperly [00:32:32]:
Okay.
Renee Warren [00:32:33]:
So the journalist will then say, oh, I like this angle. They still have to go to the editor. They have to sell the idea of the editor. The editor might say, not now, maybe next season, whatever. And so when you read a magazine or you see these posts online from these top publications, know that the article that was just published was something that may have been started three to six months ago.
Lindsey Epperly [00:32:54]:
Wow.
Renee Warren [00:32:55]:
I think people think it's just like something that someone bangs out overnight and it's published the next day. That does happen with news. Things that aren't news, that's how long it takes.
Lindsey Epperly [00:33:05]:
Okay, so you really, when you're pitching, do you recommend that you are thinking three to six months out as well? You're thinking in terms of 100% holidays and events and things that are coming up. If we're pitching on behalf of travel, it's not spring break because that's next week. It is actually summer travel because that's three months.
Renee Warren [00:33:20]:
Is that the even summer travel is almost too late.
Speaker C [00:33:25]:
Okay.
Renee Warren [00:33:25]:
So the best thing to do is to find top five publications that you just absolutely know you need to be in. Not because it sounds cool. Like, if Forbes has nothing to do with your industry, don't even put it on the list. Find the top five. Look to see if they have an editorial calendar online. They will. And the editorial calendar essentially for these publications is really out there for advertising. So if you want to advertise in the magazine, there's deadlines for the advertisement.
Lindsey Epperly [00:33:52]:
Okay.
Renee Warren [00:33:52]:
However they talk about the themes of the season, the Reader's Digest has a really good one. They'll say, like, hey, in September, we're doing, like, back to school and puppy training tips. Perfect. I have an expert dog trainer as a client. So we're going to pitch the angle. Yes, but that's September.
Speaker C [00:34:12]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:34:12]:
And I know now that that's what they're doing. And so in order to get ahead of the game, you come up with the pitch, and then probably four months out from that date is when you pitch the editor.
Lindsey Epperly [00:34:25]:
Wow. That is such a genius, actionable tip that anyone who is looking to get themselves placed in any outlet can start implementing today. That's really great for that.
Speaker C [00:34:38]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:34:39]:
And here's the thing. PR is relatively easy, but it's also hard to do. It's hard because people just give up too soon.
Lindsey Epperly [00:34:51]:
Well, this is what you're talking about.
Speaker C [00:34:52]:
Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:34:53]:
They don't see the results right away. And even people listening to this thinking, I don't have the time for that. I can go and do something like run ads. Hey, that works, too. But if you really want to be seen as the expert, position yourself as the authority or the go to in your industry. PR is the best way to do it. I was just reading an article the other day about this guy named Lenny, wrote an article in Entrepreneur magazine about the big spikes in sales that companies got, and he summarized three companies. The big spikes were attributed.
Renee Warren [00:35:29]:
So two of the three were attributed to a PR campaign. Yeah, and it wasn't like a detailed advertising campaign or collaboration. It was because of PR that took years, if not like months, to put together and figure out.
Lindsey Epperly [00:35:48]:
Yeah, well, and this is also to the point of hiring an expert like yourself.
Renee Warren [00:35:53]:
Exactly. Gets you there faster.
Lindsey Epperly [00:35:54]:
It does. It absolutely does. But you just even mentioned a number of free resources that you offer. So if someone is trying to bootstrap it, why not learn from the best.
Renee Warren [00:36:04]:
At the very least?
Lindsey Epperly [00:36:05]:
So tell us a little bit more about how people can find out more about your offerings, how they can connect with you, what that looks like. Yeah.
Renee Warren [00:36:11]:
So they can go to wewildwomen.com and there's a freebie section there. One of the best articles that we have is a guide that teaches you the proven email pitch templates that have successfully gotten people in podcasts and email or in media. There's also like do it yourself media kit stuff there and some really funky blog posts. I get a little bit sassy. So I have a folder in my inbox or in my email that's called bad PR pitches and it is bigger than any other folder out there. And what I'll do randomly is I'll take a really bad pitch, I'll black out all the private information and I'll just tear it apart publicly so that people know what makes for a bad pitch. And then I'll write a blog post about it and publish it.
Lindsey Epperly [00:36:56]:
So if nothing else, we need to follow along for that because I'm sure that's a little bit of good. Get out the popcorn and watch Renee.
Renee Warren [00:37:02]:
And that's the thing. But it's like, the point is to provide value to the people that are trying to write a good pitch. Yeah, I say, here's how not to do it. And I will take a little section and I'll be like, here's what they did. This is why it's wrong. Here's what you should do. Or this is what I would have done. And so by the time the article is done, at the bottom is like a fresh new pitch that I would.
Lindsey Epperly [00:37:21]:
Have done yes, it's beautiful. So anyone who's looking to increase their authority or their visibility, whether they're an entrepreneur or simply just looking to become more of a thought leader in their space, these are great next steps. Thank you for sharing those.
Renee Warren [00:37:34]:
And I share a lot of stuff on Instagram, too. So, Renee, underscore Warren.
Speaker C [00:37:38]:
Yes.
Lindsey Epperly [00:37:39]:
Check me out.
Renee Warren [00:37:40]:
Podcast, of course, into the wild, baby. Into the wild, which I'm so grateful.
Lindsey Epperly [00:37:47]:
You just interviewed me for. So excited to be on that as well. Tell me about. I always like to close with a question that my family asks one another every day, and it sounds so cheesy, but it's a lot of what we just talked about in your interview of me and kind of overcoming those hard times and holding on to hope in spite of the outcome. So the question here is, how can we hold on to gratitude every single day? And one way that we do that is we ask one another, what made you smile today? So, within the past 24 hours, Renee, I am curious. What made you smile today?
Renee Warren [00:38:16]:
What made me smile today? Well, I did a really gnarly personal training session this morning, and I got the last two reps every single time. I didn't think I could. I didn't think I had the strength in me to get them, and I did, and it made me smile. An angry smile, but I did it.
Speaker C [00:38:36]:
Yes.
Lindsey Epperly [00:38:36]:
And we talk on the interview that you just did with me about what it means to be a woman of strength and to have that kind of strength. So I love knowing that background that.
Renee Warren [00:38:45]:
Makes me smile, too.
Lindsey Epperly [00:38:46]:
That might be my smile today for you. Amazing. Renee, thank you so much for your time today. We really, really appreciate you being on.
Renee Warren [00:38:52]:
Thanks for having me.