Overview:

Mark Stephens is a master at getting public relations. He has been featured thousands of times in the media, hundreds of times on television including A Current Affair, Today Show, Today Extra, Sunrise and others. He’s worked with Ben Fordham, Alan Jones, Lleyton Hewitt, the Cronulla Sharks and countless others. He is a self described ‘media tart’ who knows how to pitch a good story. See his media showreel here: https://vimeo.com/768066701/df92968d5c

Transcription:

We've got Mr. Mark Stevens. So what Mark is, he's, he's a master at really getting featured on TV more than, you know, more than anything. And yeah, he's been featured in the media hundreds of times on television. He was on it was on one of the major radio stations. I think 2GB is as recently as last week. I heard him on there.

Yeah. Current Affair, Today Show, Today Extra, Sunrise and others. He's worked with Ben Fordham, Alan Jones, Leighton Hewitt, the Cronulla Sharks and countless others. And he self describes himself as a media tart who knows how to pitch a good story. So with that being said, over to, to you, Mr Mr.

Stevens. And he's also a very, very good hypnotist. Australia's number one hypnotist, if you look, if you Google it. If you Google him, you know, according to his PR, you got to say nice things about yourself, don't you? Thank you very much for that. Intro Scott, appreciate it. And yeah, great to be here with you.

Absolutely loved Rhonda's presentation. So many more things we can all do to promote ourselves. In as many ways possible. And you know, that's such an important thing to do. I thought I'd give you, because I'm not a PR person. I'm not, I

guess you could call me a bit of a media expert. I've had publicists say, Hey, if that hypnosis thing doesn't work out, you can come and work for me. We'd love to have you come and work for us. So over the years, I'm going to take you back to where it all started. So here's my slide. That's an article I had a bit over 30 years ago.

Here's the actual picture. Do you like my up to date slides? That's me teaching a nun self defense. Now what happened was I tried to get a story in, I was teaching women's self defense and I was teaching meditation and Tai Chi and doing hypnosis 30 something years ago. And I wanted to I thought, Hey, I should get a story in the low, in the, the main paper.

So I had the telegraph come out, do a story and They wrote the story up and I'm waiting for that story to come out. I was really excited. They took the photos. They did the interview. Me teaching nuns self defense was, you know, a novel thing. And so anyway, that week the article didn't come out. The next week the article didn't come out.

And then I sprang the journalist and said, Hey, what's happening? And they said, Oh, look, we'll hopefully it'll still come out. We'll let you know, but it just got pushed out. And that's what happens until you see your story. On TV. I've been sitting at Channel 7 studios ready to go on the whole database waiting to see me in 10 minutes and they go, Oh, sorry, some sports coach just passed away.

We're going to have to can your story today. So, so that can happen. But what I want to do today is share some of those stories with you of how I've been able to generate some pretty good publicity over the years and get my name out there, get my face out there, get my brand out there to promote what I'm doing and whether you use this for yourself.

Or whether you use it with your clients. It'll be a good thing. So basically what happened was I went and took that story that I didn't get with the major newspaper and I went to my local St. George and Southerland Shire leader, the local paper, and they did it. This article. Then what happened next was, which was nice.

I got some calls and they put my contact details down there. Next thing, I get a call saying, Hey, I'm a producer from Midday with Ray Martin. We saw your article in the local paper. Would you like to come on and bring the nuns on and teach self defense on television? And I went, You betcha. That was my very first appearance on TV.

So there I am. See that? I think you can see that picture there. This is my up to date tech slides. And we had these photos done. So that's me, the nuns beating me up. I don't mind making a joke of myself. And there's me about to get hit and thrown and beaten up by the nun. There's, there's the nuns poking my eyes out, having a bit of fun.

Bit of vintage photo. But so anyway, I get on midday with Ray Martin. Besides the fact that I got elbowed, kneed in the groin and thrown on the ground after getting kneed in the groin by the nun I jumped back up and everyone was clapping and laughing and Ray Martin goes, are you all right, Mark? I said, yeah, yeah, I'm okay.

He said, I think we all felt that one. So what happened was that started my journey. for wanting to get some media and publicity because, you know, that day, that week, my self defense classes went through the roof. I was already running about five classes a week. All of a sudden, I was running 15 classes a week by a great bit of TV, midday with Ray Martin.

But then what I did was I took that And went back to the leader and got another story again that I'd been on midday. So they did a part two of that newspaper story. So I guess the point here is that I will use one piece of media and see how much more media I can generate with that media to keep getting more media.

So that's a lot of what I do. So just for example, over the years, I mean, I've, you know, been on lots and lots of media. I'm going to share some of those tips, but just to give you an example, I had you might remember Kate Fisher, Zipporah Malka. Now, Kate Fisher came to me, Brought to me by a publicist, by the way, her publicist, Max Markson sent her to me and we did, I helped to go down 20 kilos and we did this two page article, which, which was fantastic, but then I followed that up.

I promoted that. It was an exclusive shot at our health retreat. And I got mentioned, I got my website details on there, which is all great. You, if you can't get your website, Details in some sort of promotion, it's pretty much to me a waste of time, unless you get your name and where you're from, if they don't put that in at the very least, it's just like expert Mark Stevens, yada, yada, yada, yada.

I'm going, you know what? I don't want it. If I'm going to do something for you, I want something in return. I want to be able to, you know, at least for more information, contact. Anyway, so sometimes they put the phone number, sometimes they put the website, sometimes they put where I'm from, as long as there's some benefit coming back to me, I'll give 110%.

So what happened with that story, I then followed that up with TV and we got on The Sunday night story with Denham Hitchcock, which was a 10 minute story. It was phenomenal. Promoted to ACA. We did that the next night. So on Sunday night, we're on that. Then the Monday night we're on a current affair.

Then the Tuesday morning I was on the today show and today extra, and then on nine honey online, a whole lot of things. So what I do with each piece of publicity as it comes in, I go, how can I turn that into a whole lot more publicity? That's a real key. You take one piece of publicity and beyond putting it on socials.

Which, zero score at, but I need to start doing, beyond that, I'll generate more publicity and more publicity and how much mileage can I get out of this one story. And I'm always upselling to the journalist, the next story, when I'm doing the first story, the part two, and that's after, now being on the Holy Grail of television 35 times, The Current Affair, some of those stories, one of those stories was 14 minutes long.

Now that story went international. That story was on a fellow who I was helping. Can you see that picture? See that? Big guy, 310 kilos, but it was about him. The story was about him trying to lose 200 kilos with hypnosis. The story, when we announced he was going to do this, it went global. It was in the Times of India, the the US Times, New Zealand papers.

We were doing interviews with China, Malta, Italy, the French Tribune. Every single Australian paper syndicated in the major papers and so on, but it was the original pitch and the way I pitched that story that made it exciting, that made it, you know, newsworthy. And because he tried everything and failed.

So when we can put a little bit of pain in there, but hey, we've got a possible solution. But one of the big things we did was I suggested we weigh him at the tip. Partly as a metaphor therapeutically to help him because he'd, he'd been treating his body like a garbage bin. I mean, you know, it was, it was, he was eating huge amounts of food.

I don't need to go into that. But basically on that journey, I used this as a book to write. That's not a book, it's a brick. And if I do this, have a look, look at this. This is the book. If you go to the back, it's another book. So it's two books in one.

Did you hear that? Thumbs up if you heard it. Okay, good. So basically that's an audio. There's an audio on the front, audio on the back. You've got a 3d cover. It's not a book, it's a brick. But what that enabled me to do at the end of the journey, the two year journey, which we had three times on a current affair.

On every radio interview, we did dozens and dozens of radio interviews, but how did I get on all of them? Partly it was because it was a big story and it got picked up and I got contacted, but also partly because for 30 years now, I've been building up a Rolodex, which is no longer on a Rolodex, of contacts within the media.

So I've got within magazines, I've got a number of contacts there from editors to journalists, from. Newspapers, the same journalists and editors to TV producers to chiefs of staff on every TV show radio stations, they're producing, so on. And they're all completely different animals. You'd pitch a different way.

To the TV network, which in the way which you're gonna pitch to the newspaper in the way which you're gonna pitch to a magazine. So, for example, the second part of this story in Woman in New Idea, when Zuora went down 50 kilos the, the second new idea story was a five page article. And once again, we got in all the media, all the TV shows and so on.

So I was able to create a lot of mileage out of one positive story, but it's about what is the angle? What is the story that we're sharing? So when you're pitching to, you can have one pitch put together, but it has to be modified because say, for example, the newspapers, they're working day to day. They, their stories they're writing right now can be in the newspaper tomorrow or they can be online this afternoon.

So they're like, bang, bang, bang. They want to know straight away. You know, they want a story for now. Some of them work days ahead like Body and Soul, the Sunday lift out of the major Sunday paper. I've been in that. Half a dozen, maybe eight times. They're working two months ahead. Magazines like New Idea Woman's Day, all these magazines, they're often working three or four months ahead.

The online guys like, you know, mama Mia, nine Honey and so on, they're working sometimes that day or just days ahead. Television are usually working around. If it's a very newsworthy story, you can push in and they'll bump something out, but they're usually working a few days to a week or two ahead.

So that the idea of the pitch is always different. And I'm, now that I've got a relationship and I've built up this great relationship with, you know, so many different online newspaper magazine, I mean, you know, I've ended up doing weekly radio spots and, and all sorts of things like that. But what I'm always doing is I have a month by month plan.

Of what's my PR this month? Obviously, last month with Easter, it was chocolate. Valentine's Day, February, it was romance, breaking up, overcoming, you know the breakup, or getting into that perfect relationship. At Christmas in the new year, January, it was New Year's resolutions, week one. What are your news resolutions?

Week three, why most people after 21 days, we're now at the point when everyone's giving up their news resolutions, going into Christmas, Christmas stress the beginning of spring, new healthy you. So ideally my big tip, one of the big tips would be to create a 12 month calendar. For yourself on what can I get publicity wise, media wise over the next 12 months.

So I've got a 12 month plan right now for the next one year. I've got a great new story I'm about to pitch to the media coming up in the, in the next two weeks. It might take two months to get on. I don't care. I don't give up. I'm like a dog with a bone. You just go for it. Now here's one of the things.

My first time on A Current Affair, I, I'd rung them about 10 times, I'd sent them emails, and this is like, maybe close to 20 years ago, around 20 years ago, I, I started pitching them stories, and at the time, Robert Carmody, Chief of Staff, he came back, he gave me a call, he said, look, Mark, I like some of your stories, but we have to have something really newsworthy, and I'd just seen a clip, an old clip of Cher on the top of that singing the song, If I Could Turn Back, or whichever song it was, and on the Canon with all the sailors and so on.

I thought, what if I did instead of dancing and singing, what if I taught Tai Chi and meditation to stressed out sailors? So I, I said that to Kamo. I said, mate, what about this story? He said, mate, I love it. You can get that story happening. We've got a story. And I went, yes. You know, cause it'd been a while since I'd been on television.

So anyway. And I start to go through withdrawals. I haven't been on television for a few months. I'm starting to go, I haven't been on television for a few months. I need to get back on TV. Anyway, so I went and contacted the naval base, spoke to the commander, spoke to their, you know, team. They found about 10 sailors happy to learn de stressing on the back of a Navy ship.

And so we had the story all lined up. We turned up there, we were on our way there. And an Indonesian war broke out, and every single Navy vessel, all, well they, we got there, and they were driving out, they were floating, driving, I don't know what you do with boats, do you steer it? Steering out the harbourheads!

I'm going, what happened to our story? Anyway, I rang them up, and they said, sorry, we're off to do a war. That takes priority. Your story can wait. So anyway, I thought, damn! I went back to karma. He said, mate, come up with something else. We'll get you on. I like your mark. I've seen your Ray Martin click because I use that to send to them.

So I use my media reel. If you saw it, there's a few more than a few articles on there. I use that to promote for another new story if they don't know who I am. So karma, I'd seen that I'd been on mid day with Kerry Ann and Rayman. And if you're ever going to get yourself on TV, here's a big tip. And, or if you got clients, you get a TV interview for, then here's a big tip.

I was waiting to go on with Kerri Ann Kennelly on Good Morning Australia, and this is almost 30 years ago, with Survival in the 90s, my self defense video program back then, which is sort of out of date now, because it's way beyond the 90s. Anyway, I didn't think of that at the time. It should have been just women's self defense, any decade, beat the crap out of those bastards that had grabbed you or attacked you.

Anyway, so, I'm there in the green room. Practicing his music. And, and he said, Oh, what are you doing, mate? And I said, Oh, I'm going to teach carrying some self defense. He went, Oh, that's cool. He said, you're not nervous. Are you? I said, no, why would I be nervous? I'm thinking I'm a black belt in jujitsu. I don't get nervous.

I'm not going to be nervous. And he said, Oh mate, there's like half a million viewers and this is live. He said, I am shitting myself. And I went, Oh, half a million views. And I started shitting myself and I went, Oh, Oh, thanks mate. Nice talking. I went downstairs. I'm waiting to go on Kerry Anne. I'm just sitting on the chair on the side of the room.

And I'm like, you know, like the headlights have hit me. I'm just going half a million viewers, live TV. And cause he said, as I walked out the door, I hope you don't stuff it up, mate. Like you're on live TV, half a million people. I hope you don't stuff it up. And I'm going, Oh God, I hope I don't stuff it up.

He programmed me to think I'm going to stuff it up. But I got down there carrying comes over the ultimate professional. She said, Oh, Mark, you're the jujitsu black belt. You're going to teach me some self defense. I went, yes, I am. She said, you're not nervous. Are you Mark? And I went, well, I wasn't until five minutes ago.

I told her what happened with all my guitarist bastard in the green room. And she said, Mark. Forget that ever happened. She said, when we go out there, it's just you and me, you and me. We're having a conversation just like I was in one of your classes. There is no cameras. There is no audience. It's just you and me.

Have you got it? It's just you and me. And I went, yeah, fantastic. She said, you're right. You're a black belt, aren't you? And I went, yeah, she said, well, you've got this. And I went, yeah, I've got it. Let's go. Went out and did one of the best interviews to this date that I've still ever done. We had fun. She kneed me in the groin as well.

It's been a tough life, let me tell you. But it's worth it. I'll get kneed in the groin to appear on TV. I don't mind. I'm, yeah, I'll do anything almost to appear on TV and getting in the, kneed in the groin. If that's par for the course, it happens. But anyway. At that time, I took that story and promote, I'm still promoting that story 30 years later on my show reel.

It comes up with me and Kerri Ann back in 1990 and snippets of Ray Martin and bits of me getting neat in the groin as part of my promo. So as we build a portfolio. of newspaper, magazine, radio, TV. How can you then utilize that to build more exposure, to get more interviews? So when it comes to, to, I mean, let's go through TV, because TV is the holy grail, obviously.

Then I would say, The magazines or, you know, especially if it's something big, like, you know, I've been on a few times in the HuffPost and I think I had a Wall Street Journal. I know I did the interview, but I sometimes, some weeks I generate so much publicity at the end of the week, I forget what I've done.

And I go, you know, and I don't follow up on every article because it's, it's mainly just me. There's been a few times when I have, like when I launched my. Think Quit Book. The Think Quit Book, I was struggling to get publicity. I got a little bit, but I couldn't get myself on TV. So, I got hold of Max Marks and was happy to pay five grand for a month to generate as much media as possible.

He generated a whole lot of media. He couldn't, couldn't get me on TV until, and here's the big tip. This is the take home, Old Merv. 80 years old, I've been smoking since World War II, has tried every method to stop smoking and can't stop. It's affecting his health and he's desperate to stop. That was the pitch.

I took that to a current affair and I said, I'll have a hundred smokers in a room and old Merv has been smoking since World War Two. And they said, we love it. Great story. So when that happened, then obviously I used all of that media to generate more media. Obviously you guys being more into the whole social media thing, the online presence, and all that sort of thing.

You can then take each article you get and run it and run it and run it and milk it and milk it and milk it until forever. It never runs dry. It never runs dry. I mean, you know, here's another quick, just before I go through the main types of media, magazine article. I rang up Slimming and Health. I'd had a couple of articles in there and I said, Hey, this shows how long ago the article was.

Hey, I'd like to give away a free CD. on the cover of Slimming and Health magazine. And will you write a two page story if I can organize a sponsor to pay for that free CD? Obviously these days we can give away a little e book, we can give away an audio program, we can give away a video session, we can give away 101 things.

Like Rhonda said, we want to value add, we want to give something that's valuable in our story that makes people, that directs to. So anyway where was I a second ago? I get a bit excited. Can someone remind me where I was just before I got too excited? Is anyone listening? The free, the free CD. So anyway, I know I'm a bit all over the place, but I've been doing like the last two weeks doing some long days.

I've got a bit of cuckoo anyway. So so anyway, the free CD, I then rang up Lipton's tea and said, Hey, I've got this little sign. You know, the more water I drink, the more I shrink a little rhyming verse. And I am tomorrow what I eat today before each meal. That's what I say. And another one I can't remember, which involves green tea.

Anyway, I rang up Lipton's spoke to marketing manager and said, Hey, slimming and health. want to put a CD on the cover of the magazine, it's going to be promoting green tea to drink it and hypnosis meditation for weight loss. Would you guys, you know, be involved in that? They said, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 50, 000 CDs.

How much can you get them for? I said, 35, 000. I said, done deal. So that became slimming and health's biggest magazine issue ever. I still to this day, and we're talking CDs, we're talking that was in the, the early two thousands. I'm still getting people occasionally saying, Oh, hi, Mark. I've got your CD, your free CD off the cover of Slimming and Health.

So that's the sort of mileage. When you think about the longevity of publicity, you can generate enough media and it doesn't have to be a stack, but you utilize it again and again. So let's go back to, you know, we've got TV, but for me, this is not for everyone, but for me, the main areas I'm promoting are TV radio, print, being newspaper, major.

Newspaper suburban, newspaper regional and print being magazines, Woman's Day, New Idea, Take Five. I just had a story come out in Take Five about a two page, great two page story on a woman who was addicted to chocolate. And that had also been the current affairs story in radio interviews and so on.

So again, getting mileage out of the media. Getting your money's worth out of that one story and turning the story into a story to get more mileage. So, you know, that's what I've sort of worked out. Even though I'm not a professional publicist, I'm not a professional media person. I've worked for a long time.

To do that. And I've had publicists say, Hey, you can cover work for us, Mark, if you want, or I present to them here are my press release. And they're going, wow, we'll grab that. And that turned that into the pitch. We'll tweak the press release and we'll, you know, we'll send that out on your behalf. So anyway, so we've got those main areas and then the online presence, the, you know, the online mags.

And then obviously the blogs or the, the blogs and then the podcast. So you've got those sort of five or six key areas, but at the top is TV. To get on there, the pa, the, the producers and the chiefs of staff, they are in the zone. Their finger has a tattoo on it that says delete. Their mind is tattooed with delete.

They are ready just to hit delete, delete, delete, delete, because they're getting hundreds and hundreds of pictures a day. They're getting drowned in, in stories and they're getting, being pitched constantly. And that's why your subject line is all important. Your short to the point pitch is all important.

I, I've got one that Scott will send you after this chat where I use one example of a woman who'd had four failed laps two failed lap bands, a failed gastric sleeve and a failed gastric bypass. And so I turned that into a press release anyway. So, you want to keep your pitch to TV short or to any media short, get to the point.

Get to the point of, you know, what's the angle, what's it about? And often I'll just say, Hey, I might have a great newsworthy story for you, or here's a great story that may be of interest. And then I'll just in as few words as possible, say what it's about. Cut to the point that Chase, I wanted to give, here's another big, important point at the moment, five or 10 years ago, I could get a story.

On in a magazine, then I could run it on TV. Then I could do a whole series of radio interviews these days. By the time you've done your TV story, it's been online. It's already on daily mail, et cetera. It's, I've had a couple of dozen stories in daily mail. It's already been on daily mail. So you've got to get ahead of that game and be ready with some of that other media to get the best results.

So you don't ring them up the next day and they go, Oh, sorry, we, you know, yeah, we saw that. We've already seen it's out there. So a lot of the, especially TV, want an exclusive even the radio, the magazines definitely want exclusives. They pay for exclusives and then on top of that, the radio. Oh, yeah, we've already seen a fair bit of that.

We're not gonna, you know, it's, it's out there. There's too much. It's already been covered. Thanks anyway, Mark. So these days it's not like it was 5 15 years ago where you could get as much mileage, although if it's a big story, you can, if you've got something that's really newsworthy, something that's groundbreaking, someone's success, someone who turned their business around, they've got amazing results, whatever it might be, you can make it, if you can make it newsworthy, then, or if there's value, I mean, the other thing beyond those main media is obviously publications.

And, you know, which is more of the niche market, like the different business publications and HR publications and so on, where they might not have half a million or a million viewers or 2 million viewers or readers, they might have you know, 5, 000 or 30, 000. But those. They're valuable. They're those 5 or 10 or 20, 000 might be just as valuable, if not more valuable than half a million viewers and so on.

So, so to Mark, if you were to break this down, like into a really practical level. So if someone was going to implement PR, the first thing you do is you is you do the 12 month. Yeah, you do the 12 month sort of thing and you go, okay, Easter for my, I mean, for your business is a natural one, right? Weight loss.

I can have something there. I, you, you, you do all the events throughout the year. You do your 12 month calendar. What, do you have any examples of what I then send out and who do I target for PR? Like, like, so, like, so for example, with you know, let's say for Christmas stress. Christmas stress. I'm going to take that to everyone.

All the contacts. I'm going to go to the TV. You know, the, the last month before Christmas, Christmas stress. How do I find, like, take them to the TV? So, so let's say, let's say Belinda's business, she's in renovation, for example or not in renovation. She teaches people how to renovate for profit.

How would she go about then finding the, Like, who do you reach out to? Like, it used to be Margaret G's Media Guide, right? Yeah, I was going to show you that. That's not available anymore. That was my Bible for many, many years. I've got a pile of them. Every two years, I would buy a new Margaret G's Media Guide.

And it was, it's like the yellow pages. just for TV, radio, newspaper, publications, industry publications, and so on. Now it's Medianet. Medianet is the new Margaret G's media guide. It's about a 3, 000 spend to get on board, but you can access. Everyone in every industry, it's updated weekly, I think, and so on.

I'm pretty sure they don't do the media guide or they do a limited edition each year. I would still prefer to get the media guide, even though some of them will be out of date. I just, I'm an author. I write, as you can see behind me. I like to hold things, but MediaNet, you just then type in Channel 7.

Producers or the name of the show you want to get on, or you type in which newspaper, which magazine, which radio show 2GB drive time, and it'll come up with Deb Knight and it'll come up with you know, I think her name is Jules Hahn or something like that. It'll come up with the names of who are those guys.

Yeah. producers on that show and their phone number and their email, but more importantly, it will, they will tell you their likes and dislikes and when not to contact them. So when you're on there, the last thing you want to do is, I don't want to be pitching a story to ACA at 5 or 6 p. m. when they air at 7 p.

m. They don't like that. I don't want to be pitching the the EP, the executive producer, the producer at night at 8. 10, 10. 30 for today extra. I want to pitch them at 11. 30, 12 when they finish their post show meeting or pitch them early afternoon. So everybody has their own timeframe and you can get, and, and they tell you what they don't like.

In their little few sentences within media net of you know, likes and dislikes, what not to pitch and best time. So you can go on and go, Oh, cool. They like to be pitched on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, between 10 and 4 PM. Great. That's when I'll contact them. Do not pitch at this time. So, so step one is you create the calendar, right?

Your marketing calendar, step one, calendar, step two. Step two, your list of who you want to contact. So the, so the list, so you would come and, and how, how many is that list generally? Like, is it, like, let's say, I mean, Belinda is probably a good ca like example, but like renovation, teaching people to renovation, make money.

Like is that gonna be. Is it going to be 1, 000 PR people or is it going to be like 50? Yeah, look, first up, it can't be about really, I don't think, it can be about Rhonda. What it can be about is one of Rhonda's amazing success stories and Rhonda helps. So we make the client the hero. We make them the superstar.

So you take one of your clients, so, you know, with Luana, the chocolate story, everything I did was all about her being the hero. A couple of quotes from me and then my contact at the end, but it was all about this amazing transformation of the woman that lost 40 kilos, who was eating massive amounts, wheelbarrows of chocolate, and you know, creating that.

So it might be you know, helping someone. That angle, what they did, the most dilapidated room, you know, sparkles and shines like a diamond, something like that. So you come up with some sort of angle on a section, you don't have to try to do everything. And then, so basically it would be then going, where can this, where do I think this story can go?

Maybe it could go on television. Maybe it's a worthy, you know, the transformation of. You know, you have your before and after photos, or you can even pitch, Hey, I've got this idea. I'm going to be working with this person. Would you guys like to shoot this? Or would you guys like to write an article on this?

Or would you guys like to interview me on this? You know, we, I always pitch two or three stories at once. Oftentimes I'll say, Hey, I've got this great story idea, but I've also got two others. Just in case they don't like the first story, just in case they're going nuts. And there's been many times when my main story I wanted to pitch they took the second or the third story.

And it was great. So is this, is this a scenario where like, I can take, like, let's say I break it down and I go, okay, there's 50, there's 50 PR people that are my, are the ones I need to target. I drop them into a CRM and I go, I'm going to contact them this time. Yeah. And it's literally just, it's almost like a sales thing, but for PR.

You can't just do a blanket to the 50 because they're all working at different times. So you go, all right, here's my 50. That's a great goal to have 50 build up a, a database of 50 PR people, maybe five in TV. Five or ten in radio, five or ten in newspaper, some online, and maybe some podcasts or bloggers.

Then from there, you've got them and you go, so you have the one press release, but you slightly tweak it depending on who you're pitching to. You mainly tweak the, the the pitch. The, the short to the point, just a few sentences along the pitch to get their interest. If they see something that's like three or five hundred words in a pitch, they're going to go don't worry.

Do you have, do you have an example of a pitch that's worked like, like just one that the first thing you sent to them, the second thing you sent to them that. Sort of, they got you what you wanted, or what you wanted on TV or radio or... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I put one that I, I had for the chocolate, oh not the chocolate, the the woman with the four stories.

But, but yeah, I can, I can work, find an example. I've got hundreds I've sent out, so I've got, I can find a good example of one that did work. And it was pitching to TV and it was giving them three great story ideas. And the second story idea, sometimes I put the one I don't want first, the one I really want in the middle and then the third one.

And they came back and said, one minute meditation. We love it. A few days later, I'm on with Georgia Garner and Ben Fordham doing a one minute meditation. Then I took that and ran with it. So you build up great goal, 50 media contacts from your 50 media contacts. You then. Build the relationship. Hey, I might have a story you're interested in it's a project I'm working on, and in one sense, in a nutshell, one or two sentences, what it is.

Then from there you know, happy to send you the information, some pics and so on. Everyone works differently. The newspapers oftentimes will grab a story that you put together and just run it how it is. Or someone else might want to interview you based on that and they might grab snippets of it and then interview to get more detail so it's in their voice as the journalist.

So everybody, they're all different. Even all TV producers, while similar, they're all different because they've got their own personalities. They're on different shows in different time slots and yeah, so yeah, that's basically build that list of 50. Build your your plan for say 12 months once a month.

What could I do be prepared to pitch 2 or 3 stories at a time, but also be prepared to when you're pitching that first story to go in with a part 2 story, especially on TV. Most of the time. I'm pitching a story as a 2 parter. Hey, we've got this problem. This person was abducted as a 9 year old in Argentina held for ransom tortured with needles.

And ever since then, he's had a needle phobia, but he wants to get. The jab, but he's fainted when he goes and gets the jab. Would you like to do an interview on this? Three minutes later, I've got a story saying the boss loves it. We love it. Can we interview this guy? Can we bring him to your place? Do the hypnosis.

And I said to my, it's a two parter. We got to do before and the problem, and he gets the first jab. Then we come back and we do the second job. And he says, oh, no, I've already had blood tests on the whole thing. And so. Yeah, and it was, it was put online, Daily Mail grabbed it and then I pitched it to some other media and so on.

So yeah, so, you know, it's finding the angles is another, that's a key point, finding the angles. What's your newsworthy angle? What's a story of interest? And it can't be all about you if you've got a client you're working with, unless you've just done something amazing. Like when I, I came out, let me just tell you quickly on this.

So I wrote this book, that took me the break. This one took me two years. This one, the thin one next to it, took me 23 years. I started writing this in 98. It was sort of my life's work of all my Tai Chi, meditation, Qi Gong, hypnosis sessions I've done and so on. And in the meantime, I didn't, I did write a chapter on procrastination, just by the way, after taking 23 years to write it, thought I got to do a chapter on procrastination because I did a good job on that, taken 23 years.

So, what I did was I got the whole, it was ready, it was with the publisher, we had a list, a bucket list of every bit of media we wanted to get. And it was a good bucket list. It was everything from podcasts and blogs to radio to newspapers, magazines, and so on. The week of the book launch was a couple of weeks after the Ukraine war started.

A lot of the media, the air in the media was being taken by that. And the week of the book launch the floods, the New South Wales, Queensland floods started. We had the big story ready to go. And, we were ready to go and then Shane Warne died. Famous Australian cricketer, Ronda, legend worldwide. Anyway, so we had three big tragedies, all compiled, the month I was launching my book that took me 23 years to write.

Now, a book compared to people losing their lives in the Ukraine, a book compared to floods, compared to Shane, it's nothing. But what it, what it showed me was as good as getting publicity as I was, I hit even my local paper, I know where I'm doing hard news stories this month, and everywhere I, every corner I turn, however, I still managed to get myself on TV three times, because I didn't give up, I found a woman who was addicted to romance novels, she would read four to five a night and she'd read 40, 000 romance novels, but the night that was Promoted on the Friday night.

This will be on Saturday night. I had all my interviews lined up for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, the flood relief came on and pushed us out to the next week. And then something else happened. And so I kept getting pushed back and I'm going, damn, I got to practice what I preach here, meditate, calm. It'll all fall into place.

Started doing some radio interviews, some podcasts, a couple of bits in newspaper and so on. And then finally got the story with the. romance novel addict, 40, 000 romance novels. And at the end, Brady Hall said, but Mark, you've got a new type of book. That's not a romance novel. And we went, yes, thank you.

So that was a great little plug. And then that was followed up with some, you know, some other media. And then four weeks later, I thought, They only get me on if I'm lucky once every four to six months, I'm not a regular and they don't like to be seen promoting or treating someone specially and so on. So they've got to leave a bit of breathing space, sometimes a year, sometimes six months.

But from that one story, I'll generate so much momentum. It's crazy. So anyway, four weeks later, it's Easter. I was contacted by a woman who was a severe, this is last year, severe chocolate addict Luana, and I contacted ACA and I said, Hey, mate, I know I was only on, got a great story. It's about a woman who eats a wheelbarrow full of chocolate every month Here's a picture of her and her trolley full of chocolate, took a photo to hook them in because they're visual.

See, TV's visual. So you've got to appeal to them visually. A story has to be able to be visual. And so anyway, I then pitched it to them and he came back and he said, mate, the boss loves it. I didn't think we'd get it across the line. Yes, let's do it. I just got that two days earlier from Melbourne.

That's great. And I turned around, drove straight back to Melbourne to do this story. Well, they flew down, met them there, did the story on the way. If you can make, here's a big tip, another big tip. If you can make the journalist's job easy, if you can provide them what they need, whether that be talent, whether that be photos, whether that be some overlay vision footage, whether it be props, whatever it is.

They love you. So I went on the way, I said, I'll pick up her chocolate supplies. So I went into Costco, whatever it was down there and picked up 500 bucks worth of chocolate because she'd been trying to stop and she only had a few hidden family blocks. We got it in there. We hid the chocolates everywhere.

We, you know, we made it, we staged the whole thing like you do with any story, like a set, hid them in the cupboards, Easter eggs, had them all over the table, had the wheelbarrow full. And yeah, it was a great story. A year earlier, I'd done a similar thing with a woman who was addicted to snake lollies.

That story on a current affairs Facebook video page alone, it had over 3 million views. Somebody, and I had over a million viewers, 3 million views, 10, 000 comments. We had a thousand people, I think that 24 hours visit our website. So it was great momentum. But what had happened was you know, as I started to contact everyone, they're going, oh, we saw it in the newspaper or we already saw it on daily mile where I saw it and I'm going, oh, okay.

So I started searching, the story was already being picked up. So all my, you know, I still got a few extra interviews I wanted to, but it's about how do you build. From one story to take that story and get as much mileage as you can out of that one story. I just want to wrap up here cause I, I just wanted to get, see if we've got any questions from anyone just so we can dive into some specifics.

Does anyone have any questions from, for Mark? Yeah, I've got one, Scott. I guess a lot of this, you know, this leverage also, it just comes back to requiring that first foot in the door somewhere, right? And I think this is obviously where it can leverage off some of the stuff that Rhonda talked about earlier with dining called the tail end, or just finding a piece of interesting content and getting that out and then just reaching and then just having the balls to reach out to a bunch of people and saying things.

Thanks. Are you interested in running it as well? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you get that first bit of news, then besides the fact you can put on your socials, promote it to your database, and so on, you can then leverage that to get another bit of news, another bit of news. Let me just expand on that, on writing that first bit of news.

About 20 or so years ago, I worked with Mr. Marketing, Bob Pritchard, author of seven books, Marketing Made Easy, and so on. Evander Holyfield's manager at the time, Sidney Swan's part owner with Jeffrey Ellison. Anyway, besides all that, I did some work with Bob for a year or two and I said to him, and he had this room, his media room, where he would organize his media and he had these huge they're like meter by meter or meter by half meter booklets full of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of newspaper stories.

And I said, Bob, What's one of the secrets of getting a newspaper story? He said, and it can work on other things as well on, you know, radio, magazine, so on. He said, all right, see that story there. There was a story a little bit similar to that in a newspaper the month earlier. And he said, so I'm constantly scanning the newspaper and now to be more scanning online for headlines, grabbing those headlines and then going, Hey, there's a headline from about golf.

But I'm talking about renovations, but it gives me an idea and it's the style that they do that will then appeal to them in the subject line. So once you've got that or the headline on your press release and maybe a sub headline, then from there, you look at how an article is written. You look at what I often write what I want to write because I've done it so often, then I'll check some similar articles on the, on the same topic or a similar topic and go, oh, that's how they're doing it.

That's how, you know, I'll make some little changes here. You're not copying or plagiarizing. You're just being inspired and tweaking it to look like a real article. So it's very newsworthy. And one important point on that is, sorry, you had another question? Yeah, well, just one question from that. Is like, you know, okay, you've got your article, you've taken it and written it and it's got a bit of social media presence and I, I really love that tip about sort of looking at other people's articles and I think things like, you know, Moz and whatnot, you know, will tell you what, what's ranking in your sector.

Where does one compile a list of, you know publishers and PR people and whoever else that you could actually reach out to like I'm sure mine's just on an Excel. Rhonda's got a massive list of people. Yeah, I've just put my list over 30 years together and some of some of those people long gone on an Excel spreadsheet.

So I've got my contacts for my type of industry in health and all that sort of thing. But if you did want to go to Medianet. Otherwise, I sometimes just ring up, years ago, I used to just ring up the radio station and say, Oh, hey, it's Mark Stevens, the hypnotherapist. Who would be the best person to send an email to or to ring as one of the producers on 2GB Drive or Afternoons or 2GB Mornings?

Nine times out of 10, the gatekeeper will say, Oh, that's Jenny Smith. Here's her email address. Beautiful. Thanks. And then you go to them. Sometimes I like to go to the boss. Depending sometimes I like to go to a junior journalist because it gives them something to go in with. They get all excited about it.

So you build that your own catalog or your own contact list from either jumping on media net, searching online or or going to ringing, contacting them. I mean, you've only got to do 50. Or even 20 good ones. You've only got to get one good article somewhere or a couple of good articles and you use that and use it and use it and keep getting as much mileage as you can forever.

That's awesome. Thanks Mark. So we've probably got time for one more, one more question. If there, if there is one, otherwise we'll go to a quick breakout.

No more questions. Well, let's go to a five minute breakout. We'll come back here in five minutes and cool. Yeah, we'll be back. And big hands of applause to Mark too, that was awesome. Yeah, thanks for sharing all your all your wisdom. So let me do this, recreate.

And the theme for the breakout is just what you learn, or PR, how you can execute it.

Hey guys, welcome back. So yeah we might just do, or maybe just pick one person and see what the biggest takeaway from that conversation were, and then we'll wrap up. Scotty Baker, anything you want to share? Yeah, I just thought it was we're just saying in the thing is that that ability to, if you make it, Like the, the journalist has a job and if you can make it simple for them, but also entertaining for them, then you get the benefits of helping them.

But also just those little extra steps of say, getting the chocolate and those things are remembered by those guys. So I would just suspect that when the next time he calls and wants to do something, they're like, no as professional that go, like, no, it's not like just someone wanting publicity is a publicity.

Speaking the language, I just think that that would resonate strongly with getting, getting a story across. Having, having been a publisher once with an audience of 25 million or so if someone came to me with just a press release, I was like, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off. It had to do one of two things.

They had to increase my audience or pay me money. Right. And the first one only was if I increase my audience, I could get paid more money by other people. Exactly. That's the publisher's job. Yeah. If you've got The other thing is never make a mistake in your press release. If you have to pay someone, an editor, a writer, put it through Grammarly, whatever, they, some of the, some of the journalists, and rightly so, they hate typos.

A pitch to a TV journalist, a different story, but if you're pitching something to a newspaper or magazine, always make sure it's Grammatically accurate. It's spot on. Yeah, no, that, that it makes, makes a lot of sense. So excellent guys. Well, let's let's wrap up.