If you have the word “Co-Founder” or “Chief ______ Officer” in your LinkedIn title, there’s a good chance your inbox gets flooded with pitches from all sorts of sales people. It doesn’t even matter if the title is legit or not.
As a former sales person myself, I love getting these pitches.
I enjoy getting to cringe while reading the ultra-terrible ones, but I also love responding to the ones that are actually very good.
I received the summarized pitch below from a PR guy a while back, and I have to say his message fell into the latter of these two categories.
“Hello David,
Thanks for connecting!
Not sure if you took a glance at my profile yet but we help companies like yours get featured by some of the largest media outlets in the world including Forbes, Inc, Entrepreneur, Bloomberg, NASDAQ and dozens more. We do this on a pay for placement basis so you only pay if we can get you quoted and featured…
If this is something you’d be interested in discussing further let’s jump on a short 20 minute call so I can learn more about your brand and accomplishments and decide if we can get you featured!”
The message is very straightforward, and it’s not even that personalized. But he plays into my ego perfectly.
Getting my fledgling startup featured on one of these publications would be cool, I think to myself. I’m also genuinely interested in figuring out how he does this for companies.
So I take the call.
After about 30 minutes of chatting, I like the guy, and I think I have his system figured out.
By simply reading between the lines of our conversation, I come to the conclusion that this guy likely has relationships with a bunch of “contributors” that write for these various publications. I’m guessing that if he thinks you or your startup has an interesting angle/story/or product, he can get one of his contributors to do a feature, thus landing you a piece in Forbes, Entrepreneur, etc.
Problem was that he wanted $5,000-8,000 for a landed feature.
Operating a young company that is cautious about its resources, I passed on the offer.
But hold up… This wasn’t going to stop me from trying to get my own feature in one of these publications.
It only motivated me and piqued my interest further. Hell, if this guy can do it so easily, why can’t I get my company featured myself?
Okay, time to figure out how to do this
At this point the wheels in my head are spinning, and I’m starting to brainstorm how to do this.
I hang up the phone, and simply Google, “How to get featured in Entrepreneur Magazine”.
The very first result in Google is a blog post from Jason Feifer, the Editor in Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine himself, explaining how to get featured.
Just what I was looking for.
You can simply read the article yourself, there’s also a video, but in summary it was all about how you have to be unique, pitch value, and put yourself in the shoes of the editor.
This seems fairly obvious, but in reality people are lazy, and I bet it is actually quite rare to receive a truly personalized, great pitch.
The big takeaway that I got from this article is that the editor in chief does in fact take stories from one-off pitches. But… your pitch has to be good. It has to catch his attention.
Game on.
Cold email time
I finish watching a couple more videos where Jason (Entrepreneur Magazine guy) explains how to pitch him.
I then open up Gmail and copy/paste his email address into the TO: field.
It strikes me now as I start writing my email how I bet so few people actually watch these videos before sending him an email. I’m going to use that to my advantage. Use it as flattery.
My angle
Now I need to come up with two things:
1. Something to grab Jason’s attention. AKA something that he truly cannot ignore when the email hits his inbox. I need him to at least open my email.
2. An interesting spin on my startup that Entrepreneur could use as a story. This has to be truly unique and interesting to readers, otherwise it’ll go straight to the trash.
I come up with my attention-grabber almost immediately.
Heck, someone just offered me an almost guaranteed spot in Entrepreneur for five grand. I’m pretty confident this is something that an integrity-filled editor in chief would like to know about.
The angle on my startup takes a bit more time, but we do have something very unique: how my co-founders and I met.
Long story short, we met on Reddit.
My co-founder Lucas posted about some cryptocurrency tax software project he was working on at the time. I thought it sounded like a cool idea, so I cold emailed him and told him how I would market the project. Our company, CryptoTrader.Tax, was born from this simple interaction on Reddit of all places.
The Email
With all the pieces in place, I take about ~30 mins to come up with this email below:
Subject: I was quoted $5800 to get a feature in Entrepreneur
Date: Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 11:46 AM
To: Jason Feifer
From: David Kemmerer
Hey Jason –
I just got off the phone with a PR agency that works on a pay-per-placement model, and they guaranteed that they could get me a feature article for my startup in Entrepreneur for $5800.
This got me thinking, what’s stopping me from just reaching out myself? These editors are humans too, and they’re looking for great stories for their audience – why can’t I simply build relationships with them directly?
This led me down a rabbit hole where I found your video here on how to get featured in Entrepreneur – the key being to approach it from your (the editors) perspective, and have a unique, compelling story.
So here goes nothing.
I started a Cryptocurrency Tax Software company a year and a half ago that now has tens of thousands of users, more than 1 billion dollars of cryptocurrency transactions processed, and has partnered up with some of the biggest names in the industry like Intuit TurboTax to bring cryptocurrency tax compliance to the mainstream. My co-founders and I are all under the age of 25.
But, that’s not interesting to you – that’s just me bragging and trying to build social proof.
What is interesting is how my co-founders and I met.
My co-founders and I met on Reddit.
A simple reddit thread talking about how difficult it is for cryptocurrency traders to file and report on their taxes turned into my partner saying in the reddit thread that he wanted to start working on tax software for the crypto world. I loved the idea, so I DM’d him on Reddit and told him I’d love to help.
Flash forward a month later, I flew up to his home in Kansas City, MO and we decided to start CryptoTrader.Tax. Thanks Reddit!
I think hopeful entrepreneurs are always wondering how they can meet co-founders. The story told in the media makes it seem like you have to go to prestigious schools like Stanford to meet qualified, ambitious people. This is just not true, and we are a testament to that.
I don’t think there is one way to do it, but I think meeting people online is going to become more and more common over the next decade, and I think people need to realize that it isn’t weird to cold outreach to someone you find interesting. You never know who you might meet!
I’d love to chat further with you, and thanks for taking the time to read this long email.
Best regards,
David
23 Minutes Later…
Subject: RE: I was quoted $5800 to get a feature in Entrepreneur
Date: Tue, Jul 23, 2019 at 12:09 PM
To: David Kemmerer
From: Jason Feifer
Hey David,
Thanks for reaching out. Can you tell me who just quoted you pay-for-play? That’s absolutely against our guidelines, which means they’re paying one of our contributors. I want to find out who it is so that we can end that relationship.
I appreciate the pitch here—you did exactly as asked! Hmm, let me think on this one. I don’t think there’s a whole piece to be done on finding a cofounder on Reddit, but I do like it as the possible seed of something.
Thanks,
J
As suspected,
the attention-grabber worked. It got Jason to open my email, read it in full, and give me a response. It even built some rapport as we went back and forth for a bit after this.
After leaving the conversation at “let me think about this”, I honestly didn’t expect anything else to come from this.
I managed to build a bit of a relationship with Jason through this email sequence—which is valuable on its own, but I suspected that it was unlikely that we’d actually get a feature.
Two Months Later
Two months later I received the below note from an editor at Entrepreneur.
Subject: FWD: I was quoted $5800 to get a feature in Entrepreneur
Date: Wed, Sept 25, 2019 at 2:29 PM
To: David Kemmerer
From: Entrepreneur
Hi David,
Hope you’re well! My editor Jason forwarded your note my way. Please know we take these kinds of things very seriously.
But anyhow! I’m actually writing because we’re working on a small story about unusual ways entrepreneurs have found their cofounders, and I’d love to chat with you about your reddit connection. Do you have 20 minutes to hop on the phone next week?
Thanks!
Stephanie
Success
So it turns out my pitch paid off in the end. The December 2019 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine came out with a feature discussing unique ways co-founders meet.
Among these features was the story of CryptoTrader.Tax, a cryptocurrency tax software startup that was growing rapidly after the founders had all met on Reddit.
Takeaway
Getting my company featured in Entrepreneur Magazine in-and-of-itself didn’t drive a significant amount of user growth for the company; however, it did create a powerful piece of social proof that I can now leverage for the rest of my life: “As seen in Entrepreneur Magazine”.
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