Episode 89 –You’re Missing out on Free Advertising

Show Notes

First of all, let’s get the freebie here out of the way, because it’s an amazing gift from our Guest JUST for our CASPodcast listeners!

It’s a course outlining her one of a kind strategy on getting free publicity for you and your business – just visit this site to register: http://www.PitchPublicityProfit.com

BUT – listen to the entire podcast first. Because it’s a good one.

First, we talk about how I found Christina, what that has to do with my Dad, and how I got hooked on this idea of PR.

Then we’ll tell you how that relates to YOU and your business. IN your town.

You’ll get some background on what makes Christina a pro at this and how she’s helped small businesses boom in the past.

Then we’ll go over the 3 Simple Steps to Free Advertising

Step 1: Personal Brand – become an expert
Step 2: Pitching the Media
Step 3: Keep Profiting off of free tv, magazine and radio spots

And finally, we’ll brainstorm some custom t-shirt business free advertising opportunities.

This is a GOOD one! Full of new ideas. You don’t want to miss it.

Part of your homework in this episode is to review some of our recent Success Stories and think about how you could use something like this in YOUR quest for free advertising: https://coldesi.com/success-stories/

Transcript

Welcome to the Custom Apparel Startups podcast, your best source for information, news, tips and tricks to get you off the ground running, and earn success with your custom apparel decorating business. So, get ready to soak up some knowledge!

Now, here are your hosts, Mark and Marc!

Mark S: Welcome to episode 89 of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast! My name is Mark Stephenson, from ColDesi.

Marc V: And this is Marc Vila, from Colman and Company. We’ve got a guest today, fantastic, really exciting! You guys are going to love this, because you’re going to learn something real from this episode today. That’s always my favorite thing.

Mark S: Yeah. You’re missing out on free advertising! We’ll get right to the punchline. Folks, you are looking, if you’re on YouTube with us, you are looking at Christina Nicholson, from MediaMavenAndMore.com. Say hi, Christina!

Christina: Hi, everybody! Thanks for having me.

Mark S: Before I let Christina kind of drop some wisdom on us, to let us know how we can get some free advertising, I wanted to tell a story about PR. I had this vision. PR is public relations, if you don’t know.

I had this vision, frankly, of my dad, who spent his career in PR, for companies that probably needed a lot of it, like American Cyanamid and Dow Chemical. He was an old guy, and wrote a lot, and PR was this stodgy kind of thing that big companies did, in my head.

Then, I started working with a local client, outside the custom t-shirt business, and had this thought about just letting media know, locally, that she had this great woodworking shop, and she taught people classes on how to do woodworking.

Let me tell you, within about 30 days of doing that, she was on TV twice, and got inquiries from newspapers all over central Florida. So, I’m like “This is something,” because I could see her sales and the analytics on her website go up.

Then, I started looking at PR for us. At the same time, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, SmartPassiveIncome.com, and this lady came on and just blew me away, with kind of these simple instructions, and making it seem so easy to get free publicity.

This is the one thing that we don’t talk about on the podcast. We talk about marketing techniques and [inaudible 02:54] techniques, and paid advertising. But honestly, we don’t talk about anything free. So, that’s how I found Christina Nicholson.

I’d love for you to just kind of tell us a little bit about who you are, and how you got into doing PR, and talking to people like us.

Christina: Perfect! My background is in TV. I was a TV reporter and anchor for about ten years. When I was in TV, I was getting pitched all day, every day, by publicists at PR agencies, or by business owners who wanted that free publicity.

They saw we would bring people in on the weekend morning shows, that we were doing different news packages, and they wanted a piece of that pie. But the problem was that a lot of these publicists sending emails, they would send long, boring press releases.

Or when you would open up an email and read more than a sentence of what they sent, it was very overly promotional. It was like “Give my client a free commercial,” or “Give me a free commercial. This is why I’m amazing. This is why my client’s amazing.”

It’s not the media’s job to give you a free commercial. There was nothing newsworthy. There was no reason for us to even respond to these emails. So, 9.8 out of ten of them got deleted.

Mark S: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Because 98% of all statistics are completely made up!

Christina: That might be made up, but you get the idea.

Mark S: I do. Okay.

Christina: Because nine out of ten, that’s just not enough, so I had to go with 9.8. So, fast forward a couple of years, and I had two kids. After having my second, I needed a more flexible schedule. Local news is not a job that warrants a flexible schedule.

So, I started to work at a PR agency. It’s actually funny, because -.

Marc V: [inaudible 04:46] sell 100,000 of them in a day.

Mark S: I get it.

Christina: Yeah. That’s a great question. It’s the hardest part, no matter what your industry is. No matter if you sell a service or you sell a product, you need to give the media a reason to do your story now. So, if we’re going to go the t-shirt route [inaudible 05:05].

Mark S: [inaudible] run up to a big cheerleading convention, or a national show, they’ll produce a bunch of artwork in advance. There’s also people that print political t-shirts. There are people that do event-specific t-shirts.

Marc V: It could be concerts.

Mark S: It’s also something that’s very, for me, it has a lot of small local business kind of interest in general, rather than just the topic of the shirt.

Christina: Okay. That’s exactly what you’re going to get the coverage on. Nobody is going to bring you on air or do a story about what you print on a t-shirt. They’re actually going to go a little bit deeper on why you print it.

For example, if we’re talking about cheerleading, then we’re probably going to focus on trades and things that people involved in cheerleading are reading. If it’s some kind of local cheerleading squad, who maybe they’re really good, and they’re traveling nationally in different competitions, then they can wear their t-shirts on the local news, and do a cheer, and show their [inaudible 06:07].

“Oh! I have a [inaudible 06:09].

Mark S: [inaudible] Because we do have a lot of folks that do custom apparel and bags and things like that for teenagers going on missions overseas. That’s actually a big thing. Then, it can be about that kind of evangelical effort. “By the way, this is what we do.”

How about a small business opening? Is that something that – for example, we’ve got Athena’s Creations, over in Tarpon Springs. Our thought was, we did a success story on them, showed some great video. And they’ve got a nice retail shop in a tourist area, opened up a brand new business.

So, our press release is about this great new business, this story of a small business. Then, we happened to mention that, by the way, this is how they got started, with our equipment.

Christina: Yeah. I think that’s a great idea, I think with you guys, specifically. I was just talking to Amy Porterfield about this, earlier today. The big thing right now is that anybody can start a business from anywhere.

She mentioned she recently saw an article about the government shutdown, and how somebody in the article said that whatever hobby you can do, and try to make some money off it, start doing that now, because who knows long this government shutdown is going to last? This was a few weeks ago, when she saw this article.

Something like that, if somebody is talking like that, that’s when it’s like, here are three business ideas. One, start your own custom t-shirt business. This is why you should start it. Because custom [inaudible 07:48].

Mark S: I love everything about what you just said.

Marc V: You had mentioned that you have some courses. Mark’s been taking them. I have not, but I am sure that I will. What are some of the steps? Can you give us a little bit of -?

Mark S: The one, two, three.

Marc V: Yeah, the one, two, three. An elevator pitch of like if somebody walks up to you and says “How do you do it?” What are some of the steps that you get into? And then, I’m sure your courses and other information provide all of the details on that.

Christina: Yeah. I would say step one, and Mark, you know this, Module One, I go through some introduction about finding time to do this yourself, because a lot of people, they’re solopreneurs. They need to do this themselves. They can’t hire an agency, and pay $6,000 a month.

So, I tell them how they can actually block off time, and do this quick, easy and effective. Because it’s no good to learn something, if you’re not going to implement it. You’re just wasting your time learning, if you’re not going to do anything with it. So, I’m a big stickler on actually doing it.

That’s why, Mark, I asked you [inaudible 09:00].

Mark S: [inaudible] 12% of people that sign up and pay big money for a course, actually take the course.

Christina: I know it’s not a lot. To me, it just blows my mind, just because I’m always somebody that if I’m going to invest in something, I’m going to do it. I’m going to see it through.

Marc V: Somebody listening to this right now, [inaudible 09:19] apparel equipment, and did not complete their training course. We can go in there and we can see their name, that you did 40% of it.

Mark S: You just spent $30,000!

Christina: Doesn’t it drive you nuts?

Mark S: It’s crazy.

Marc V: The thing is, is because oftentimes people who will say what you teach does not work, you could probably find those people in your course, and say “Great! You also didn’t even finish the course. So, how are you saying it doesn’t work?”

Mark S: Which we call people out, all of the time. That’s our advantage. It’s like “Oh, you’re having problems? I see you only did two lessons of your training. You need to go back.”

Christina: That’s so true. I’m in a YouTube course right now, and somebody just posted in the Facebook group, “This is the least engaged Facebook group of any course I’ve been in.” And then, somebody commented “Have you ever posted in here before?” And they were like “No, this is my first time.”

Marc V: Back to the question.

Christina: I know. We digress. Okay, that’s one. In Module One, I talk about your personal brand. If somebody is going to put you on TV or quote you, we have to know who you are. You have to be building a personal brand.

Gone are the days of “I am hiding behind the scenes,” because people do business with people. So, you need to be known as an expert in your industry. There is a reason that Kim Kardashian is selling out of perfume that is only sold online.

People cannot smell the perfume, because you can only buy it online, and she sells out all of the time. That is because of her personal brand. So, you need to be branding yourself as an expert in your industry.

Then, we’ll work on pitching the media, which is step two. Because Mark, if you pitch me, and you say “I have a great solution for stay-at-home moms who want to get back into work, and they want something to do from home. It’s designing custom t-shirts, and making these for other people, locally,” whatever it is.

Then, I go to Google you, and I search you, or I looked at [inaudible 11:19].

So now, I can’t even imagine what it is, but that you need to see something seven or eight times, before you convert to take the steps to buy it. Now, it’s probably so much more, just because of all of the content that we get.

So, you can’t just get that publicity, think you’ve made it, and call it [inaudible 11:39].

Mark S: [inaudible] our customers that are listening out there, that I really think that that personal brand is a big deal. Because a lot of our customers, especially the work from home kind, they don’t put themselves out there.

For example, we do success stories on our customers. We’ve put over 30,000 people in business, in the history of the company. And you would not believe how hard it is for us to get somebody to do a success story.

All I need you to do is answer these five questions, take a couple of pictures, and I will send it out to between 60,000 and 100,000 people. I will put it on my website, and I will pay for a press release, to send it out on the internet.

Christina: Mark, you’re killing me with that. That is so annoying to me, that people don’t take five minutes to do that.

Mark S: Here’s the thing. A lot of them are shy.

Marc V: That’s the biggest thing.

Mark S: They don’t want it to be about them. But I can see, just from what you’re talking about, that at least at some level, like the company – what is it? – Black Rock Investments doesn’t go onto CNBC to do a news story. It’s the owner.

The entire Giants football team does not go on Sports Center. It’s the guy with the name, that goes on. So, it’s got to be the same thing for you guys out there. However you want to do your personal brand, whether it’s do a profile of how you started the business, on your website, with a picture.

Participate with people like us, where you can get your story out there, and have something else to point to. I can see that as like a stumbling block, or at least a big first step for the people that we sell to.

Christina: I think a big part of it is people, they either don’t feel like they’re worthy of it, like they don’t feel like they’re ready, because they think that because they see somebody on TV, or they’re quoted in the paper online, that “They must be so far ahead of me. I’m not ready for that. I’m not worthy of that.” That’s not the case. That’s what grows your business.

People can’t do business with you, if they don’t know about you. So, it’s getting on TV that will build your business. You’re doing this backwards. You think you need to build your business, to get on TV. No, you need to be on TV, to build your business, so people get to know about you.

Mark S: And then, you’re right, to your third point about profiting from all of that. What I’ve seen in the past is you get a big spike in traffic. So, somebody sees the story, and then maybe later that day – if they read in it a magazine or see it on TV, wherever it is – they’ll see it, and you’ll get a big spike in traffic, like we do when we do PR.

Then, maybe a couple of extra sales, and then nothing happens. Because you’re right. People forget about you immediately.

So, the great part about getting video done by a TV crew, or getting published by a magazine or a newspaper, or whatever it is, is just like you said. You get to cut that up and reuse it. You get to talk about it, and you can also use that to inspire other similar outlets to do the same thing. Right?

Christina: Oh, yeah. Because when other people see that you’re earning media exposure, the perception changes. They’re like “Oh, my gosh! That person was on TV. They must be a big deal.” It’s not just potential customers that are seeing that. It’s also other people in the community, other people who maybe know people in media.

Then, people are coming to you. At first, you’re doing a lot of pitching. But then, you’re landing stuff. And then, you keep promoting the stuff that you’ve landed. Eventually, people are going to come to you.

Do you think Gary Vaynerchuk or Oprah, do you think they pitch themselves at this point? No. But at the beginning, they did. So, you really just have to act as your own publicist.

I know it’s uncomfortable, and I know it’s going out of your comfort zone. But to build a business, that’s what you have to do. You can’t just do all of the fun stuff all of the time. Then, once you get out of your comfort zone a couple of times and start doing this, you actually start to like it.

The only reason you don’t like it right now is because you’re not good at it. And you’re not good at it, because you’re not doing it! So, if you just do it a little bit more, you’ll like it.

Mark S: The title of the episode is “You’re missing out on free advertising.” Right? It’s not really free, because you’re putting in effort.

Christina: Yeah, your time.

Mark S: Your hours and your planning, and you’re putting yourself out there. But the results can be incredible. Really, that’s what made me think of bringing you on, Christina. I know that there’s a couple of places that we have sold to in the past, in every city, that could tell a great story and be an expert, and get the coverage that could bump them up a notch.

Marc V: In this podcast, one of the things – I always say that I always say this, and I always say it.

Mark S: You do.

Marc V: Because I always say that I always say it, and I do always say it, that what drives me crazy in podcasts – I listen to marketing podcasts and sales podcasts and all of this stuff – and everyone has these great high-level ideas. Then, I’m like “Great! Not practical at all, because I can’t think of how to relate this at all, to my business.”

“What you’ve told me is you sign up for an email software, and then you get people to sign up. Then, you send them six advertisements, and then they buy something. That’s the plan.” I’m like “Okay, how do I get people on my list?” I’m really trying to think of what is an actual angle, that if you’re a t-shirt shop, you could pitch.

I’ve got a couple that I’ve been thinking of. One is the one that you guys mentioned, that maybe you’re doing something for a local mission group of kids. Are you saying that you might go to your client, who is this church, and say “You know what? I think this is a real interesting story. I talk to people in the local news,” or they may have a local online   blog or website that’s popular.

“And I would like to talk with them about your mission group, and pitch it to them, and see if they’ll be on the news.”

Mark S: What do you think about that?

Marc V: Is that something that you might do?

Christina: Yes. That’s good, because local news, they like those local community stories. But what are we talking about here? Do they have an event coming up? Do they have a fundraiser?

We can’t just bring them on and talk about them to talk about them. There has to be a reason.

Marc V: Like they’re going to be flying to Croatia for six weeks.

Mark S: That’s a good pick, Croatia.

Christina: That’s a good reason to come on the news and do a story. I suggest that while you’re doing that story, they’re all wearing their shirts, and they say in the interview, “Oh, yeah! You know, so-and-so made these shirts for us. You can get your own. Here’s a link.”

Because when you are booking these, and I always talk about TV, just because that’s my background – when you are booking these TV segments, you are giving them talking points. You want the host or the anchor, and the producer to know, like you want to make their job easier.

So, you’re like “This is what we can talk about. These are some things you can throw up on the screen. If people want to buy shirts to support us, 20% goes back to our mission,” or whatever. “Use this link,” and they put that on the screen.

They’re going to earn that coverage to talk about their upcoming trip, to talk about what they’re doing. But while they’re there, they’re going to say “Oh, and do you love our shirts? We got these made by so-and-so.”

If it’s a newspaper article, for example, a photographer will come out. They’ll take pictures, or you can supply a picture of everybody in the shirts, and you can say the shirts are provided by so-and-so, and that’s how you get the coverage for something like that.

Marc V: Okay. I like that. That’s practical. So, if you find something that seems like it’s an interesting story, and you’re making apparel for that event, try to be the coordinator between news media, whether it’s online or TV, wherever you’re starting to make connections, as you’re trying to make these contacts.

Because I gather you could just say “Yeah. I have a contact with somebody at the news station,” or TBO.com, or something like that, which is a local newspaper converted to online, and try to make that coordination.

The other thing that I was thinking of, that could be a practical idea, was what if we went with the pitch, like you contacted a local station or a local website, or whatever it would be, and say “Custom t-shirts are hot right now. It’s the hottest thing. Everyone wants a custom t-shirt.”

“I know I’m an expert in this industry, because nobody knows how to pick sizing for a t-shirt.” You ask somebody what size t-shirt they are, and all of a sudden, they just turn into just blabbering. They have no idea.

Mark S: And there’s tears. There’s usually tears.

Marc V: “I’m a small if it’s this kind of shirt. It’s an extra-large -.” So, maybe you can start by posting on say, your social media platforms, all about that. You can write little articles. “How to pick a size t-shirt.” You can make a video how to do that. You make yourself an expert on how to pick the right t-shirt.

Christina: 100%.

Marc V: Then, you [inaudible 21:15] to the local news, to say “Listen. I want to teach people how to do this. I’ve got this great information. You can see links to me online, where I talk about this. I think that this is really interesting, and it’s worthy of talking about. People are going to like this piece, if you put it on your station.”

Then, hopefully that piece, and your expertise, are good enough that somebody says “You know what? That actually is an interesting story.”

Mark S: Let’s go to the pro. What do we think about that?

Christina: I like it. I like it. I like setting yourself up as an expert in your industry. If you want to be the fashion expert, if you want to be the t-shirt expert, whatever it is. I think, because we’re talking about a t-shirt business, you have both that expertise that you just touched on, and you have the product.

So, I’m thinking too, you could use so many different angles. You guys have – I don’t know if people that you work with do one-offs. So, if it’s Valentine’s day, or on Spring break. We’ll use Spring break, as an example.

I know a lot of people go to Disney, and all of the families, they’re all wearing their matching custom Disney shirt.

Mark S: Yeah, yeah. Family trip.

Christina: So, it’s like family trip shirt ideas. You come in for your segment, you have five different designs for family trip ideas. If you want to sell on a bigger scale, to like a whole corporation or a team, or people who work at business together, it’s like “Let’s make the shirts fun!”

These are clever things. It’s not just a boring shirt, with a logo, like people have been doing for years. I’m sure you have some people who have really fun designs and unique things, or fun sayings. So, like how to make work more fun with custom t-shirts; your five ideas.

It’s really like I said, it’s the hardest part, just coming up with these different timely ideas to pitch. But as a custom t-shirt designer and store owner, you have both the expertise and the product. So, you have two different angles that you can always be using.

Then, you also have the whole business thing, too. Like how to start a business from home, how to be your own boss, how to work from home with kids part-time. Depending on who the person is, you have so many different angles that you could use, as well.

Marc V: That made me think of one more, if you don’t mind.

Mark S: Go ahead!

Marc V: The next one I had is possibly -.

Mark S: You go into a bar.

Marc V: You go into a bar. People love making their own shirts. Right? Like these Cricut and these Silhouette machines. I’m sure you know somebody who owns one. Everyone’s got a friend or a cousin, or someone.

Mark S: Scrapbooking.

Marc V: Yeah. They use them for scrapbooking, they use them for making t-shirts, YETI mugs, all of this stuff. Our customers, you know how to use those machines, because they have commercial grade of that type of equipment. It’s the same type of equipment. It’s just commercial grade. It costs $2,000, instead of $300.

So, my thought is you could make a pitch to say “Listen. People love making their own shirts. Billions of people own these little Cricut machines across the world. In our city, there probably are 30,000 people. If you guys published an article on how to use this machine to make a t-shirt or to make a mug, then I could come on here, and I could provide you guys with some funny sayings, some interesting things, some designs to teach people how to do it.”

And actually go online and show people, and you’ll immediately capture the attention of all of the people who own these little machines. And the owners of these businesses might think “I don’t want to teach people how to do what I do.” My thought is, they’re already doing it, anyway. You’re not giving away any secret sauce.

Mark S: What do you think about that kind of an angle?

Christina: I think that would be good for something that’s more specific, like a trade outlet, like people who are into crafting. If you go to Joann Fabrics, you have all of those magazines there. Something like that would be good.

I think stuff like that would be good for trades. Or if you’re a niche, like if you’re designing t-shirts only for people in non-profits, there are tons of non-profit websites and non-profit magazines, I’m sure, that you could pitch to with that specific angle.

So, don’t just think traditional media. Go niche’d and trade. I have clients who are Doctors, so we focus just on certain hospital outlets. It’s only for people in the hospital industry and the health industry, who want to read up on each other, and see what their competitors are doing.

Focus on traditional, yes, to reach the masses. But also focus on the trade outlets, to get super specific, if you are catering to just a certain amount of people, or a specific kind of person.

Marc V: That’s cool.

Mark S: It’s kind of what we do, on a very disorganized, sporadic way, for ColDesi.

Marc V: I like that. So, you could be – just mentioning Doctors – you could go to a trade publication for Doctors and nurses and medical employees, and try to go in on an angle of how to decorate scrubs, or how to paint [inaudible 26:25], or something like that.

Christina: Yeah. I actually saw – I don’t know if you fellows watch the Real Housewives, but there was recently an episode of the Real Housewives, and they did like a fashion show, and they did scrubs that looked like super-hero costumes. They totally re-did them.

Marc V: I actually saw that on Instagram.

Mark S: Sure you did. You can say you watch Real Housewives. No one but me is going to judge you!

Christina: No shame! There’s no shame here in the Housewives game, Marc! But that’s a great example, because it’s something different, and it’s unique. I mean scrubs, they’re all the same. So, if you do a different take on scrubs, then you could use that to target the trades.

Mark S: I like this a lot. I think that we’ve given our listeners a huge amount of things to think about. But I know that something you also always say is that there should be some action takeaways. I want to think of a few, and then, Christina, I want you to, because I am taking your course on personal branding, and getting my PR game up there.

Naturally, so I can apply it to what I do here at ColDesi. What I would like to do is let’s do some takeaways. Then, Christina, we’ll get you to kind of talk about your course, and how people might want to interact with you, going forward. Okay?

Christina: Perfect! Thank you.

Mark S: What do you think?

Marc V: I like that. I love takeaways and action and homework, and things like that.

Mark S: Now, listen. I really do want you to tell Amy Porterfield that I perpetually feel bad, because I download 100% of her documents that you’re supposed to do, her worksheets, and never finish a single one.

So, I hope our listeners are a little bit better than I am! That’s what I really hope for.

Marc V: Some initial practical things you could do, besides obviously, what you’ll finish with, Christina, in talking about your course and how to interact with you, and maybe that might be the perfect solution for some people.

But one thing that I think that you could do would be, for one, make sure you kind of go back to other podcasts, where we talk about starting your business and your brand, and things of that nature. And kind of make sure you have a definition for who you are, and who your company is.

Start from scratch, there. Just say “Okay, I focus on this type of apparel. This is my personality.” Whatever it might be. It could be you’re edgy, and you work with that. It could be very, very corporate. It could be cheer and loud and bling.

Mark S: We’ve talked about that a bunch.

Marc V: Yeah. We’ve talked about that a bunch. So, that’s your first step. Then, your next step would be you could start brainstorming on things you could be an expert on, so picking the right shirt, picking good designs, what’s hot in fashion, things like that.

And then, further from that, maybe start looking at researching either publications that might be in your niche, if you have a niche. And also local – local news, local websites, different things like that. If there’s a newspaper, do they have a website, as well? Try to find where some of those PR contacts might be.

Those are a few steps you could start doing. Then, you could start creating yourself a little bit of content online, like writing little articles on your website.

Mark S: Establish a base.

Marc V: Establish a base. At that point in time, you’re building up the practice and the confidence, that by the time somebody asks you “Are you an expert in apparel?,” you could say “I’ve written this bunch of these blog posts, and I’ve done a bunch of these videos, and I really feel like I’m the face of apparel.”

Mark S: “I’ve made 1,000 shirts!”

Marc V: Yeah. So, I think just building up a base, to prepare yourself, can be a great place to start.

Mark S: I like that. Okay, Christina.

Christina: Yes! I think those were great takeaways. I think just to piggyback off of what you said, always start local. You’re more newsworthy where you are local, because you’re that local entrepreneur, you’re that local business person. So, start local with where you are. That’s a great idea.

Then, another thing that came to mind, Marc, when you were speaking, was jump on the fashion trends. I have a client who does glasses. So, if any celebrities are wearing glasses, we jump on that. Like I think it was the Oscars last year, a lot of them were wearing glasses. I think a lot of them were fake glasses. It was like an accessory.

So, we jumped on it, like “Oh! Glasses are trendy! They’re an accessory. Here are some from this website, that are super unique, or just like the ones Meghan Markle was wearing,” or whatever.

So, pay attention to if celebrities are being photographed in custom t-shirts or cool graphic t-shirts, because that could be a fashion trend that you get coverage for.

Okay, do you want me to tell people where to find me?

Marc V: Please!

Mark S: Yeah, that’s it!

Christina: Awesome! I’m on social. I’m pretty social on social. I don’t treat it like a billboard. I actually talk back to you, so you can find me on Instagram and Twitter, at ChristinaAllDay. Then, like the Mark/c’s said, the website is MediaMavenAndMore.com.

I do have a freebie. I can give everybody listening access to a free three-day video class. Day one, we teach you how to pitch the media. Day two, to earn publicity. And day three is to turn it into profit. And you can get that at PitchPublicityProfit.com.

Mark S: Cool! If you’ll send me the URLs and everything for that, we’ll put it in the show notes.

Christina: Yes! Awesome!

Mark S: So, it will live forever.

Marc V: So, the next homework and takeaway is you should just do that.

Mark S: Do those things.

Christina: Yeah. It’s just three days, three videos, super easy. I actually share, and you should totally do it, because here, I’m going to make it better. I actually share the exact pitch word for word, that led to a local woman, mother of five, working part-time as a dietician, led to her getting coverage on local TV in San Diego.

She literally sent the pitch on Monday, and she was on air live, for a five-minute segment, on Wednesday morning. And I share that exact pitch word for word, in Pitch Publicity Profit, so you can get that, too.

Mark S: That’s great. I know, because you just described the kind of thing that a lot of our customers are.

Marc V: Yes. This is just a fact of the matter, that local news is not known for being the most interesting thing in the world today.

Mark S: What?!

Marc V: They are looking for things to talk about.

Mark S: There was a supermarket opening just the other day.

Marc V: I mean, they literally cover cats in trees. It’s not an insult to that, but what it is, is that they are trying to find local things to talk about. There is always something bad for them to talk about, a car accident, or something like that.

So, when you give them the opportunity to talk about something different and interesting, they want these fun little segments to put on. Like you mentioned, 100 people might come to you to try to pitch, to get into that little segment.

You’re going to pick two. So, if you make something interesting enough, they’re going to need it. And the smaller town that you’re in, the probably better of a chance you’ve got, of making something happen.

Christina: That’s true, because there’s less competition.

Mark S: Don’t be the 9.8. Okay! Thank you very much, Christina Nicholson from MediaMavenAndMore.com. It was fun, it was a pleasure, it was educational.

Look for the show notes, and we’ll have links to all of those goodies that you talked about.

Marc V: That’s at CustomApparelStartups.com. Find this episode.

Mark S: Yep, episode 89.

Marc V: Click on the link there, and you’ll see all of the notes, if you haven’t done that before. Also, you’ll find it on YouTube, all of these types of things. You’ll find all of the links everywhere, for this stuff. But make sure you go to the show notes, because you’re going to get a free course, which is awesome. It’s going to teach you something useful, how to do. You should just do that. That’s it!

Mark S: Okay, guys. This has been Mark Stephenson, from ColDesi.

Marc V: And Marc Vila, from Colman and Company.

Mark S: You guys have a great business!