well thanks for having me on first of
0:18
all i'm excited and you nailed it as far
0:20
as the message is really the
0:22
the oil in the gears that accelerates
0:25
your business and so
0:26
we're gonna drop some major value today
0:29
i grew up
0:30
on a farm in arkansas um it
0:34
was we had 100 chickens we had eight
0:36
rabbits we had 12 horses
0:38
it was everything you thought it sounds
0:41
like
0:42
um and uh and you know
0:45
it was a dream come true for little
0:47
ashley to be able to ride horses all day
0:49
but
0:49
honestly i couldn't see my neighbors out
0:51
the back door and so the horizon line
0:53
for women was
0:54
i would say quite low um all my friends
0:57
were married by the age of 19 which
0:59
if that's your dream then fantastic but
1:01
i always wanted to be more do more and
1:03
have more it's kind of a
1:04
guiding light and so i went to college
1:07
was the first woman
1:08
on both sides of my family to graduate
1:10
with a degree
1:11
and um and and fell into
1:13
entrepreneurship
1:15
um i was invited to be on the founding
1:17
team for a fashion magazine in new york
1:19
city
1:20
and kind of self-nominated to run the pr
1:23
just because i get really excited about
1:24
stuff
1:25
and i want to celebrate other people's
1:27
messages and had no background in media
1:30
did not study it did not know a soul and
1:33
just knew i needed to do whatever got
1:34
results
1:35
or i would be fired and for anyone who
1:37
lives in new york city
1:39
that's not a good option so
1:43
uh so i self nominated ran the pr
1:45
marketing rollout for the magazine
1:47
it wound up going viral seven countries
1:49
we got 180 features in eight months
1:52
and it was all the major outlets for
1:54
picking this up
1:55
i was fangirling at fashion shows and
1:58
in dressing rooms for ew
2:01
and new york times but what i realized
2:04
is this
2:05
so many people are hustling 24 7
2:09
wondering why they're not getting
2:10
anywhere and the reason why
2:12
is because if you don't have a space in
2:14
the marketplace
2:15
you have to carve one out for yourself
2:18
and the way you do that is by enrolling
2:20
people in your vision
2:21
and the way you do that is by telling a
2:23
compelling story that people can rally
2:25
around
2:26
so that you can mobilize a movement
2:28
around this cause
2:29
so the magazine was the first no
2:31
photoshop fashion magazine
2:33
but think about what you're doing in
2:34
your business or your life
2:36
it could be different disruptive
2:39
innovative solution
2:40
creation in the market and we can build
2:43
a whole system
2:44
in how to tell a story that's not just
2:47
hey we're doing this cool thing
2:48
but actually enrolls people in the
2:51
vision so that your clients and
2:52
customers come to you right to your
2:54
doorstep
Speak your language
2:55
yeah i'd love that you said that you're
2:57
totally speaking my language
2:58
you you know and a powerful thing that
3:01
you
3:02
you see more and more too is that
3:04
oftentimes
3:05
the vision doesn't really have much to
3:07
do with the products or services
3:08
themselves
3:10
but what those products or services do
3:12
for the individual
3:14
for the family you know for the business
3:17
and i think there's a lot of power to be
3:19
had there where where
3:20
you know about the apple computers right
3:23
at the end of the day
3:24
you know all their products are to help
3:26
you think different right
3:28
and to be innovative and to do something
3:30
more modern and futuristic
3:32
and uh and so that i i think that's
3:34
super clear how did you come to
3:36
recognize the importance of what you
3:39
said with that
3:40
um well trial by error we were working
3:44
for two years
3:46
nights and weekends when i say we were
3:49
living on hustle and
3:50
caffeine that's pretty accurate and
3:53
what would happen was the investors were
3:56
skeptical
3:57
the readers weren't really sure what we
4:00
were doing
4:01
it's kind of cool to launch a fashion
4:03
magazine but
4:04
print is dead that's what we heard time
4:06
and time again
4:08
the defining moment was when we were
4:11
working at a core key space we were the
4:12
only all women's table
4:15
of female founders in the co-working
4:17
space the fedex guys used to drop
4:19
packages off at our table
4:21
thinking we were the secretaries and so
4:24
we knew we had to do something different
4:27
after two
4:28
years i told the team we need language
4:31
to tell people how what we do is
4:33
different from everyone else
4:34
that's when we branded it as the first
4:36
no photoshop fashion magazine
4:39
and so any anything you're doing in your
4:41
business if you feel stuck and
4:42
struggling
4:43
think about what you're doing
4:44
differently from anyone else in your
4:45
industry
4:46
really pull that out extract that and
4:48
then craft a narrative around it
4:51
so what we did was we cast models off
4:53
the street
4:54
and we put them in the pages of a
4:56
fashion magazine
4:58
and that was that was the first thing
5:00
that was kind of a
5:01
differentiator but the immediate
5:04
response
5:05
where you go from 30 000 traffic a month
5:09
and today it has a million views a month
5:11
we saw an uptick
5:13
to 280 000 views a month in just two
5:16
weeks from one media story
5:18
so that was an aha moment of you know
5:20
we're working but
5:22
hustle's not gonna get you the red
5:24
carpet so many people think if you
5:25
hustle harder the red carpet rolls out
5:27
for you if you just have a cool product
5:28
that's patently false so what i always
5:32
say is you have to build your own red
5:33
carpet
5:34
and there are pillars to do that so
5:37
there's a pillar
5:38
to a prestigious brand right
5:41
pillar could be you have a podcast like
5:44
you
5:45
um you've given a ted talk you've been
5:47
in three to five
5:48
key national outlets i call them the
5:50
white whales right
5:52
you've been in forbes you've been in ink
5:53
you've been a business insider
5:55
you've given a talk on a stage of 500 or
5:57
more these are
5:59
credibility markers and they're pillars
6:01
to a prestigious brand
6:03
and so as soon as we started landing
6:05
those national outlets people took
6:07
notice
6:08
but what i've seen now in working in my
6:09
business with appleseed communications
6:11
working with clients
6:13
there's a sequence to roll out the
6:15
pillars
6:16
and most people do not know that so it's
6:19
scatter shot
6:20
you're working you're trying to land
6:21
some feature here a small blog there
6:24
your guest posting once a week on a
6:27
small blog
6:28
what i say is listen if you have only so
6:31
many hours in the day
6:33
you need to use that time
6:37
to leverage it in the highest ticket
6:39
outlets
6:40
that you can because it takes the same
6:43
amount of time and energy
6:44
to land a national media outlet as it
6:46
does a small one
6:48
then all the small ones will get in line
6:49
to feature you so let's say
6:52
well anyway we can go on and on about
6:53
that but does that answer your question
6:56
it does and actually keep going on with
6:57
that just a little bit more
6:59
uh yeah okay so there's a sequence to
7:02
rolling them out
7:03
so let me give you an example of a book
7:05
launch campaign
7:07
we do a lot of book launches campaign in
7:09
fact one of my clients
7:11
was the former co-president of the oprah
7:13
winfrey network
7:14
she worked for oprah yeah very yeah
7:18
so we know we talked about this um
7:20
sherry
7:21
worked for oprah for 25 years her book's
7:23
coming out
7:25
just think of how many pr people she
7:27
worked with in the course of her career
7:29
she hired me specifically to help with
7:31
the rollout of her precious memoir the
7:33
beautiful no
7:35
and so what we do works but let me give
7:37
an example of a sequence okay
7:39
client comes to us they have a book out
7:42
maybe it's just launching
7:44
maybe it's been out six months they
7:46
haven't really got what they want they
7:47
hired two or three other
7:48
agencies and firms it wasn't working
7:51
they got a few leads but there's no
7:52
momentum
7:53
what you're looking for is the sequence
7:55
so that you can get the momentum
7:58
so they had amazon best seller but they
8:00
didn't have anything else
8:02
okay that's a good launch but it's not
8:05
what you
8:06
could do we built a plan where we got
8:09
them
8:09
wall street journal bestseller usa today
8:13
bestseller
8:14
within the first two weeks of signing
8:17
with us
8:18
then we rolled them into our tv package
8:22
why because we can script what the
8:25
anchor says
8:26
to introduce you so coming off the back
8:29
of a new
8:30
wall street journal best seller ranking
8:33
the
8:33
anchor is going to say here we have
8:36
dr so and so recent wall street journal
8:40
bestseller
8:41
award-winning such and such here to tell
8:44
us about this
8:45
topic then you have assets
8:48
that that video content is going to be
8:51
an
8:52
asset you can put in your funnels for 10
8:55
years
8:56
because we got the best seller first
8:58
then
8:59
scripted what the anchor says then
9:02
this client we got 17 tv features within
9:06
six weeks of signing
9:08
he can now say i reached over 10 million
9:12
people that's another
9:13
pillar and abc nbc
9:16
cbs these are all pillars so he has all
9:19
those video assets
9:20
then what do we do we take those video
9:22
assets and we start to pitch him
9:25
to top podcasts because
9:28
top podcasts and you know this being a
9:30
podcast host
9:31
you want to know that you can actually
9:33
have a chat with someone
9:35
they're gonna have something interesting
9:36
to say you're gonna have some sort of
9:38
rapport
9:39
with this person so we send them the tv
9:42
clips we get him on top podcasts
9:46
500 000 or a million in reach
9:49
okay then we take that video
9:53
and we pitch it to a national media
9:55
outlet
9:57
and we place in the national media
9:59
outlets after that
10:00
so he has long-form video content short
10:03
form video content
10:05
best selling awards and national
10:07
features what's the final step
10:09
a tedx talk so that's the long game
10:12
because it takes you pitch and you play
10:14
that's that's the pinnacle you would say
10:16
of that
10:16
authority experience is that
10:19
that's a great question i wouldn't say
10:21
it's the pinnacle of the authority
10:22
experience
10:23
but i would say it is the long it is a
10:27
long tail play because you have to pitch
10:31
six to 12 months out to even get placed
10:34
that's how far in advance they're
10:36
booking speakers
10:38
so to ensure they get placed we're going
10:41
to
10:42
build up such a stable of high quality
10:46
features basically stakes in the ground
10:50
for your brand
10:51
that the tedx speaker selectors say whoa
10:53
this person's a rock star
10:55
look at what they've had in the past six
10:56
months we're placing them
10:58
so that could be a typical 6 to 12 month
11:01
campaign
11:02
but you can see how the sequencing of
11:04
the rollout
11:05
ensures that we hit every marker
The Hierarchy of Needs
11:10
yeah that's so i mean that's so powerful
11:13
you know and
11:14
and i love that you started with a
11:16
foundational item right where
11:19
you think that most people who want that
11:21
fame right
11:22
a lot of us who are in business
11:23
entrepreneurs part of it is for sure
11:25
money
11:26
and impact but a lot of people love that
11:30
sense of belonging and connection that
11:31
comes through fame and recognition right
11:34
yeah and you know it's one of those uh
11:35
essential what the hierarchy of needs
11:37
of human fulfillment by maslow and
11:41
the fact that you could break it down in
11:42
a clear path
11:44
for people versus like put me everywhere
11:47
at once
11:48
you know make it happen yeah i love that
11:50
you have that framework to follow
11:53
uh and that you know it works and
11:56
yeah what what really i mean at the core
11:59
of it
11:59
and this is actually one of the
12:00
questions that you introduced me on
12:02
too early is relationships
12:06
yeah um how does relationships play a
12:08
role throughout this entire experience
12:11
yeah that's such a great question okay
12:13
so everything about relationships and
12:15
powerful relationships has to do with
12:16
empathy
12:18
so you want to anticipate what your
12:21
person needs the most
12:22
and deliver it to them on a silver
12:24
platter
12:25
okay there's a new show coming out it's
12:28
um it's with grant cardone
12:30
people have different feelings about
12:31
grant cardone but it's on it's called
12:34
undercover billionaires
12:36
and basically you watch him
12:39
try to generate a million dollar
12:40
business in 90 days
12:42
for only a hundred bucks okay here's
12:45
what he did
12:46
that everybody in media needs to do you
12:48
have to identify who your key players
12:50
are
12:51
okay so that could be a forbes writer it
12:53
could be a tv producer
12:55
whatever it is but then you have to
12:58
anticipate what they need from you
13:00
to say yes so there's a key
13:03
structure in how to deliver a story to
13:07
them
13:08
in a way that gets an immediate yes and
13:11
it's my signature system
13:13
but i call it uh archetypes the media is
13:16
looking for stories
13:17
you need to have a certain archetype
13:19
that they're going to immediately
13:21
resonate with
13:22
and deliver to them here's the key point
13:24
in the form of a headline
13:27
say write headlines so you have to
13:28
deliver your story in the format of a
13:31
headline
13:32
so don't write a huge long bio why
13:35
you're so awesome
13:36
you have to literally say this is what
13:38
i'm offering
13:40
three strategies to never hit snooze
13:41
again even if you're not a morning
13:43
person
13:45
okay something like that so you know i
13:47
know this is something that you
13:49
talk about all the time is this
13:51
something that you have done or that you
13:53
have seen work well
13:54
i'm curious you know it's that kind of
The Power of PR
13:56
scroll stopping right
13:58
especially in the social world you need
14:00
that kind of headline to gain attention
14:03
and then people can identify whether is
14:05
this for me
14:06
or is it not for me yeah if it's not for
14:08
me then i'll think of someone who i can
14:10
maybe
14:11
reference this to um and it's powerful
14:14
that you stepped through this process
14:16
too because
14:18
it's a sales tactic you're trying to
14:20
sell yourself and your authority
14:22
to get to this level right and every
14:25
form
14:26
of anything we do um i mean i was
14:28
telling you i have a four-year-old at
14:29
home right
14:30
um before we started recording yeah i
14:32
have to sell him on ideas
14:33
and like why he needs to do something he
14:36
sells us on on ideas
14:37
so it it starts from day one and and i
14:40
think it's powerful that you kind of
14:41
pointed out that that sell strategy
14:43
behind
14:44
getting yourself placed and using that
14:46
power of pr and relationships
14:49
yeah and think of think of media as i
14:51
love that you went there it's it's
14:52
totally sales
14:54
if you don't have another platform you
14:56
have to leverage a platform
14:57
to propel your own so you have to put
14:59
yourself on a media platform where you
15:01
can sell
15:01
think of this media feature as top of
15:03
funnel
15:04
and people ask us a lot what's the roi
15:10
so what we did last year is yeah
15:13
it's like if you're a business owner you
15:15
want to know what you're even buying
15:17
are you just paying for a service you
15:18
don't know what you're going to get when
15:19
you're going to get it
15:20
that's not a very good way to decide to
15:23
invest in pr
15:24
and like i felt that pain that's
15:26
frustrating i've heard of so many horror
15:28
stories people coming to me
15:29
we're the third we're the fifth someone
15:31
paid a hundred thousand dollars to get
15:33
one feature
15:35
and i just feel like that's unacceptable
15:37
in the world we live in today
15:39
so what i did last year was i went to
15:42
the numbers
15:44
and i partnered with a facebook ad
15:45
agency and we ran
15:47
like a thousand ad sets on
15:51
all things being equal same copy same
15:53
call to action
15:54
but you put a forbes feature in there
15:57
what does that do for you and we found
16:00
that it
16:01
huge yeah yeah yeah so uh we found
16:05
and if you've done anything like this
16:06
i'd love to hear your results too
16:08
we found it lowered your cpl
16:13
by 121 right away you're saving money
16:18
then you run people through that funnel
16:20
let's say it's to book a call
16:23
the increase of close rate on the other
16:25
end
16:26
was 43 increase
16:29
so you're saving money you're making
16:31
money and then
16:32
that product that they were selling was
16:35
fifteen
16:36
thousand dollars that's a high ticket
16:38
item
16:39
to cold traffic that's powerful
No Love Trust
16:42
you know super power something i love
16:44
with that too is
16:46
it eliminates the extra leg work that's
16:49
often required
16:50
to warm up those leads from cold to warm
16:53
to hot
16:54
and the way i kind of break down that
16:56
lead
16:58
or that customer journey is through a
17:00
relationship
17:01
type framework where people hear the
17:03
know like trust factor which is huge i
17:05
call it no
17:06
love trust because all true
17:08
relationships require love not
17:10
hey i like you you know so
17:13
with that no love trust the no phase is
17:16
all about that cold
17:18
traffic people start to fall in love
17:20
with you when they become a lead and
17:21
that's that warm traffic
17:23
and then they show that they trust you
17:24
when they pay you uh and then that's
17:26
that
17:27
hot traffic and so the fact that you can
17:29
put that
17:30
forbes feature in that cold traffic
17:33
phase
17:33
you're kind of speeding up that
17:35
relationship um growth
17:37
by inserting like hey you can trust me
17:40
you can even fall in love with me the
17:41
fact that hey do you also want a forbes
17:43
feature or whatever other promise result
17:45
that you
17:46
you are presenting and and so kind of
17:50
infusing
17:51
those multiple touch points in one as
17:53
long as it's a relevant message on that
17:54
cold traffic side
17:56
that's that's such a great example i
17:58
love that yeah
18:00
you said it perfectly and something i
18:03
want to highlight
18:04
to close the loop on what you said
18:05
earlier about maslow's hierarchy of
18:07
needs
18:08
so many people think pr is a luxury it's
18:10
that pinnacle thing that you do at the
18:12
top
18:13
when everything else is already in place
18:15
and if people listen to what we just
18:17
said
18:18
about how it saves you money and it
18:19
makes you money by
18:21
buying that asset you need to put it in
18:23
the back down at the survival category
18:26
this is the foundation this is the
18:28
foundation that saves you money it makes
18:30
you money
18:30
and it's something that you can leverage
18:33
literally for years on end
18:34
so i would put that more in the
18:36
foundational launch pad
18:38
of your business growth and really let
18:42
that sink in because it challenges a lot
18:44
of paradigms
18:45
around the role of publicity so what i
18:48
want people to hear and consider
18:50
is that if you do it right and you get
18:52
the p
18:53
you get clear on what the pillars are
18:54
going to be for your brand you get clear
18:56
on the sequencing
18:58
and then you can work with someone like
19:00
you know at our agency
19:01
we can walk you through even how to do
19:04
it yourself
19:05
and plug and play that is going to be
19:09
leveraged for 2021 think of it like a
19:12
true investment at that point
19:14
and so you know we're talking about a
19:16
lot of different things it's sort of if
19:17
this is a new world for anybody
19:19
i break it down i break it down step by
19:22
step it's really like three key steps
19:24
that you have to think through but it's
19:26
concrete and it's in the book that i
19:27
have i'm happy to give it to your
19:29
audience for free
19:30
and you can visit my website unknown to
19:32
unforgettable.com
19:34
to get it for free just pay for shipping
19:36
but it walks you through what's the
19:37
story angle that you're going to use
19:39
how do you leverage it how have other
19:42
people leverage it
19:43
one of my clients kelly she literally
19:46
500
19:48
increased her prices off the back of
19:51
like
19:51
five tv features she's doing over 12
19:54
million now
19:55
this is this is life-changing for people
19:58
and
19:58
where she was three years ago when she
20:00
started this
20:02
it was like a million which is still
20:03
awesome
20:05
but think of like okay if you could be
20:06
at 12x what you're not what you're doing
20:09
now
20:10
in a matter of three years like people
20:12
can get excited about that yeah
20:14
oh yeah for sure wow that that's so
Wrap Up
20:16
incredible
20:17
uh you know and so definitely go check
20:20
out what ashley has uh i know we need to
20:21
wrap up
20:22
uh this i'll call it a little bit of a
20:25
workshop actually i i think there's so
20:26
many practical things people can start
20:28
to implement consider
20:29
yeah in their pr and communications plan
20:32
and uh what would you say is kind of
20:34
like a wrap-up
20:36
question with all this being said like
20:38
what is your vision
20:40
as a result of this like what are you
20:41
looking to achieve for yourself
20:44
uh and for those around you okay my
20:47
guiding mission
20:48
is to impact the lives of a billion
20:49
people worldwide
20:51
and the way that i'm going to do that is
20:52
by working backwards to the number of
20:54
clients that we serve
20:56
and the volume of reach that they have
20:58
so the example i gave you with our
20:59
recent client who
21:01
launched a book he has now reached well
21:03
over 12 million
21:05
in less than six months through media so
21:08
if we work backwards
21:10
we just work the numbers so it's this
21:11
volume of clients
21:13
this amount of reach we're going to
21:14
reach a billion people we can do it in
21:16
a year or two but that's what really
21:19
gets me excited
21:20
because we live by the stories that we
21:22
tell and as a society
21:25
i want us to have access to solution
21:28
creators who are leaders
21:32
visionaries just like the name of your
21:33
podcast and giving people
21:36
that compass of what is possible for
21:39
them
21:39
so that we can move forward together as
21:41
a healthier
21:42
more whole people
21:45
oh that's so powerful thanks so much for
21:48
sharing i can
21:49
tell that you're so clear on this and
21:51
it's so important that you know you have
21:53
that huge vision people are like billion
21:54
what
21:55
but you can break it down you know how
21:57
to measure you there's probably like
21:59
a dashboard that you're seeing these
22:01
numbers tick up you know like
22:02
either in your mind or you know on a
22:04
computer somewhere
22:06
yeah um but this has been so good ashley
22:08
uh thanks so much for this value and
22:09
your time
22:11
and definitely go like we'll have the
22:13
the links available down below to go
22:16
check out more what ashley offers from
22:18
access to her book
22:19
uh you get it for free and also
22:23
access to her agency as well so thanks
22:26
for having me
22:26
yeah of course thank you thanks so much
22:29
for listening
22:30
uh once again if you would like to learn
22:33
more about
22:34
how you can use your unique message and
22:36
share with the world
22:37
through video and create videos that
22:40
actually are professional
22:41
and perform bring you money and all of
22:45
the results and influence that you want
22:46
to make
22:48
then i invite you to learn more
22:51
by going to contentsupply.com
22:54
thanks again for listening and we'll
22:56
talk to you very soon
