In this episode, Ann Convery, pitch expert, shares how to pitch your story for massive media attention and how to use the media to your advantage once you start interviewing. She blends neuroscience and storytelling for book pitches that bring immediate attention from producers, publishers, agents, podcasters, and audiences for fiction and non-fiction books alike. If you want massive media attention, don’t miss this episode!
Resources Mentioned
100 Words to Yes, Complimentary PDF www.speakyourbusiness.com
Contact Ann@speakyourbusiness.com
3 Biggest Takeaways
The media wants a story, they don’t care about what you are selling
Give the benefit of what you do to get the sale.
Be prepared, so you can always bring it back to the points you want to make, if the host doesn’t ask you the questions you want to answer, otherwise you’ve just wasted your time.
Transcript
[00:51] Ellen: Hi everybody and welcome to Episode 45 today, my guest is my good friend and colleague, Ann Convery, and has helped authors and business owners to pitch their books or their business for over twenty-one years. Ambulance, neuroscience, and storytelling for a book. Pitches that bring immediate attention from producers, publishers, agents, podcasters and audiences for fiction and nonfiction books.
She helps business owners and entrepreneurs tell strategic stories that bring in up to 50% more business. And Anne has spoken all over the U. S., Europe and Mexico. I have known Ann since the very beginning. She was one of the very first people that I ever interviewed. I was totally impressed; I thought she was brilliant. And it’s just so exciting that here we are like almost sixteen years later. So, welcome to the call. I am.
[01:48] Ann: Thank you. I’m so thrilled to be here. Back at you. I think you’re absolutely brilliant as I’ve told you many times.
Ellen: And can you get closer? Is this better?
Ann: Yeah. As I said, as I was praising you and I admire your business and everything you’ve done and your achievements and I just love that I know you.
[02:07] Ellen: Ah, thank you. Why don’t we start by telling people more about your story?
[02:12] Ann: So, my husband owned a PR firm, and he had a client who was the CEO of a major, at the time, alternative herbal company. And she was supposed to go on local CBS channel the next morning, and she refused to go. She was terrified. And for no reason that I can tell you, I said, “Well, I can help her.” And I rented one of those big camcorders and I drove up to her estate in Malibu, and I worked with her for two hours. And she said, “Oh, sure. I’ll go on, no problem.” And she said, “You know, you should do this.” And two days later, one of my friends who was friends with Richard Riordan, and he was actually running for mayor, I think at the time.
Ellen: Yeah, I liked him
Ann: And she said, “Well, I booked you for Dick for two hours tomorrow.” And I said, “Don’t you dare, I’ve only done this once in my life,” And she said, “You’ll be great.”
[02:59]: And I said, “Get me out of this.” And she said, “Nope, you’re on for four o’clock.” And it really took off from there. I absolutely love media training. And about fifteen years ago, I decided to switch from media training to business. And I used the same exact formula because the minute I started media training, I realized that the story that everybody wants to tell is never the story that the host or producers and audience want to hear.
Ellen: Interesting.
[03:27] Ann: It’s a real marriage, and nobody knows this. So, I developed a system. I actually, I didn’t develop a system, I just taught media training for business, it was beyond belief. People kept saying to me in my first class, I was kind of scared and I was teaching, this and I wasn’t sure if it would work. And I got an email saying,” I just made an extra $40,000 last week with that technique you taught.” And it kept happening and happening. “I just did $8-million at a Fortune 200 in six months or something.
And I was kind of nervous cause I thought, I’m really making this up. I was teaching five media-training principles, right? And then in 2011, I really plugged this in some of my speeches. Then in 2011, I read neuroscience, neuro-marketing, and I thought, “You can’t make this up.” I mean, I was teaching five of the six principles of the old brain, and that’s why it was working.
Ellen: Ah
Ann: So, it was amazing. Thank you for asking. It’s a funny story to me now.
[04:25] Ellen: Wow, yeah. So, today what we want to talk about story and pitching and message.
Ann: Okay.
Ellen: So, why don’t we start with the story.
[04:34] Ann: To start with the story, uhm, to be very brief about this. They’re a people basically, I could go into this at least a half an hour. It’s funny, but we don’t listen to each other. And Mark Bowden, I have permission to use his message. He has a YouTube, a TEDx talk, and it’s called The Importance of Being Authentic. And Mark says after 700-million years of of evolutionary psychology or 500-billion years, we have evolved to see each other as one of four things: either when I first see you either on screen or in person, you are either instantly a friend, a predator, a sexual mate or I’m indifferent to you. And the general rule is that if there are 7-billion people on earth, we are indifferent to you.
Ellen: Oh, no!
Ann: So, hearing your message basically, and this is what we’ll get them.
Ellen: No one wants to hear what?
Ann: Your message or your message.
[05:32] Ann: We’re not waiting. We say, “Hi, what do you do?” Or, anything that you put online, we are not waiting and ready to hear this because we’re thinking about ourselves, and the conversation is going on in our heads, and a million other things. And you’ve got to grab attention; you have eight seconds to grab the attention of the lizard brain, that very ancient brain. And why do you want that attention? Because that’s the brain that makes decisions. That’s the brain that actually buys. You want to talk to them.
Ellen: Yeah. I actually just did a tweet on that today. I was listening to Russell Brunson or somebody that was on the call he was doing, and that’s what he said. He said, “It’s the person who gets the most attention, makes the most sales period.”
[06:15] Ann: Yes, it’s true. Yeah. The thing is you have to grab that attention cause that brain is very efficient. And if you don’t interest somebody in eight seconds, that brain will go on hibernate, and you’ll get a lot of fake from a person like, “Oh really? How interesting.” But they’re not listening, you know? And online, they’ll click off. So, what I ask people to do is actually, well to start off with a hook, because if I say to you, “What do you do?” And you say, “I’m an attorney, I’m an insurance, I’m in real estate.” My first response is “I’ve got one, I don’t need you.” It’s like, “Oh great, you’re not going to cost me money. I don’t have to listen anymore. All I have to do is be polite.” Right? Because I’m looking to slot you, so you don’t have to cost me money, and won’t take up space.
Ellen: Right, exactly. Yeah.
[06:59] Ann: Don’t help me. I actually had a guy come to me and say, “if I mentioned the word ‘insurance’, I clear the room.” He was really desperate and we came up with when people said, “What do you do?” And he said, “Well, actually I find between $10,000 and $30,000, people didn’t know they had in sixty minutes or less.” Completely different. He was ecstatic. We got about ten messages like that.
[07:21] Ellen: Well, isn’t that also looking at the benefit instead of the feature?
Ann: Um-huh. Exactly.
Ellen: By doing it that way.
[7:25] Ann: Yeah, exactly. And so, I ask people to use a hook sometimes if they have a very common profession and a hook might be, “Do you know the number-one reason people won’t return to a hotel?” Or, “Do you know that men fall in love after the third date but women don’t fall in love until date fourteen?” You want to disrupt them (people). They didn’t expect that coming out of your mouth. They think, “No, you’re kidding. What?” You really have attention now. Now, how do you keep it?
Here are the keys to keeping it. The first one is, of course, “What’s in it for me?” That might sound like duh, like how obvious. But it’s really not obvious because you are not the story. The story is about them. And, for example, I had one client and I said, “What do you do?”
[08:13] And, Ellen, feel free to tell me when you’re bored. And she said, “I own two event-planning companies. We’re one of the top, corporate event-planning companies on the West Coast. We serve blue-chip corporate businesses. Individuals.” Okay. It went on like that. It was good, but she said, “I’m not getting any attention.” So, we changed it to “I own two-event planning companies. Every client we work with saves up to $150,000 or makes up to $400,000 in new money on every event we produced for them. And once she delivered that at a networking event, before she sat down, she had a hundred-thousand dollars contract,
Ellen: Whoa.
[08:47] Ann: I know, so I don’t know whether I should use this language, but we’re all interested in money, love or health. We can get laid, get paid or live forever.
Ellen: Ah, or all three!
[08:56] Or, all three, exactly, yeah. So, that message tells you right upfront, if you work with her, you make money. And she is selling money. We’re all really selling either money, love, or health, and that’s what she was selling. And that’s “What’s in it for me?” and nobody has to guess. Nobody’s got to guess. And the second thing is street language because you don’t want people to think. If you say, for example, these are all examples from people I work with, but “We offer customized, scalable solutions for your IT infrastructure strategy.” Okay? Nobody knows what this guy did.
Ellen: Right. Technobabble.
Ann: Yeah. Technobabble. We’ve all got a babble of our own. We don’t realize it.
Ellen: Right, like our own shorthand…
Ann: Right.
Ellen: … and we think everybody else understands what we’re saying. And a lot of times, they don’t. I remember one time I was just using the word “authenticity” and somebody said to me, and I was, I guess it was talking to realtors and he said, they don’t know what that means.
[09:48] Ann: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so, he came up with, and this guy was a genius. He said, “If you give me five minutes, I could show any CEO what software they’re using that’s losing them money.” Well, needless to say, I mean his business eventually triple, but he got a lot of messages like that one because that is street talk and nobody rolls over in the morning and says to their partner, “Gosh, I wish we had a leverage progression plan for our liquid assets.” You don’t, right?
Ellen: Right.
Ann: You say, “Can we afford Paris?” I mean, this is the way we all think.
[10:20] Ellen: Right. And that’s true with anything. I mean, I’m editing a book right now for a woman, and it’s the same thing. It’s like she’ll have this flowery language trying to make it sound, I don’t know what, but I said to her, “It’s not connecting with your audience. You know when you use these metaphors that don’t work or you get this flowery language, I don’t even understand what you’re trying to say.” And I’ll say to her, “Well, what are you trying to say?” And then, when you ask people what they’re trying to say, they’ll tell you in street language.
Ann: Exactly.
Ellen: That’s why it’s like you really should read back, or say out loud, or actually ask yourself, would I say this? “Would I talk this way?”
[10:56] Ann: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The other interesting thing is that if you use that highfalutin language, right? You use scalable infrastructure. You are talking to the thinking brain. The one up here, the frontal cortex, right? The thinker. And people will do what you ask them to do. They will think. They’ll say, “Oh, I’ll think about that.” Don’t want to talk to the thinker because the thinker is not the one who’s going to say, “Can I have your card? This is interesting. Can I call you?’ Or, whatever, you know, click, like you, whatever online. And this is the way you do it. It’s “What’s in it for me?” It’s street talk. You make it visual because we are visual processors. Visual learners comprise 65% of the population. The brain processes pictures 60,000 times faster than hearing. 90% of the information that comes to the brain is visual. So, you really want to take advantage of this, right? And you want to tell a story. This is so important. You want to tell a story that is visual.
Ellen: What do you mean by visual?
[11:53] Ann: Well, for example, we’re in the first phase of funding for an online retail hub for plus-sized women. Now that’s okay, but that doesn’t really tell me anything. And if I’m not in that niche, I’m probably not going to be interested. So, if I said, Oh, I got an even better one than that, actually. “We’ve created a blockchain technology for the entertainment and sports sectors in emerging markets.” Hey, now, I don’t know what that means, but this is what these guys were saying.
Ellen: Right.
[12:17] Ann: And so, I said, “Well, why didn’t you do this?” This is one of the kids said, “Well, have you ever tried to get tickets to Beyoncé concert and there’s scalper tickets for 1500 bucks, and you’ve been online for five hours and you’ve missed it? And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Well, we use blockchain technology, so you’re not a ticket slave.” This was like a slur at ticket master.
He said, “We’ve created blockchain technology, so you get the tickets you want at the price you want the first time. Every time.”
Ellen: Wow.
Ann: So, it came out of his own experience. He was trying to get his date tickets for her birthday to Beyoncé. And he only got one ticket because the boss had bought them all up, but he had to get a scalped ticket. But that’s, you can see it. Of course, I had, everybody knows what scalpers do.
Ellen: Right.
Ann: And it’s very, very visual or you know we’ve created an online hub for plus-sized women, and then you can…the other, the alternative to that one was “Sixty-seven per cent of the women in the country are plus-size and the fashion industry ignores them and their shopping choices are cruel. And we decided to do something about it.” So, instantly you get it.
[13:19] The fourth thing is before and after, and this is huge. This is really, really big because you’re talking to the brain that is the decision-maker. So, it likes really easy decisions, hot, cold, fast slow, black, white; that’s its job. So, you do not want this brain to think. It doesn’t think, it doesn’t really understand three-syllable words. And you want to make it really easy. So, I was talking to, I love this story, a woman in one of my classes years ago and I said, “What do you do?” And she said, “Well, I help women entrepreneurs.”
And I said, “Well yeah, you and 5-million other people. And she said, Well I help women entrepreneurs make six figures.” And I said, “Okay, you and 2-million other people.” And she got frustrated and she said, “Well okay, let me show you. When I first met Peggy, she was in tears. She had $11 to her name. ten months later she had $350,000.” And Ellen, you could’ve heard a pin drop on the phone line because she was in a class and people were like, “Oh my God, could she really do that?” And this is a huge before and after $11 and $350,000, what would you choose to? You know?
Ellen: Yeah, right.
Ann: So, she went back and redid her whole site, all her business, and within six months she was working with one of the biggest names in our industry.
Ellen: Wow, that’s fantastic.
Ann: And she just got it; she just got it. But you want to give that brain….
[14:40] Ellen: So, what was the thing that put her past saying, “I help women make six figures?” Cause there was something else she had to add to it, didn’t she?
Ann: Well see the thing is…
Ellen: How she did it or something?
[14:51] Ann: See no, you know, but see that’s the icebreaker that gets the lizard brain to go, “I want more of this,” instead of, “Oh yeah, women entrepreneurs. Yeah, I know, I know about that. Goodbye.” You know? You have to have something that provokes and this is great cause this is our fifth point, you have to arouse emotion. Emotions are part of the neurotransmitting system that gets this message back to this ancient, ancient brain. No feel, no get. And I was working with an attorney and he said, “Well you mean I have to get emotional. I spent seventeen years being unemotional.” And I said, “No, no, no. You don’t have to get emotional.” They do.
Ellen: Right.
Ann: It’s not, Peggy with the tears; the emotions are, “Could she really do that?” Could she do that for me?” And as proof, two people in my class called her up that night and signed up for her biggest program. So, it worked.
[15:38] But the real emotions you want to produce, because you have to move people out of a state that we’re all in, we’re in the state of power, and nobody buys from power. Power is, “I’m fine. Don’t sell me anything. I’m fine.” I might’ve been fighting with my husband, my kids on drugs. I’m worried about my job, but I’m fine.” And no one buys from power. No one who goes on Amazon is in a state of power. They’re in power stress, which means “I’m stressed enough to want something and I’m powerful enough to get it.”
And you need to move somebody from power to power stress, which is where they will take action. And the thing that does that are the emotions that you produce when you tell them your story. They have to feel “Really? Oh my God, seriously? Oh wow. I wonder if they could do that for me?” that “I wonder if she’s making that up?” Wow. I got to see if she’s making this up, which she might. You know lust, envy, greed, anxiety, curiosity, anything that stirs the pot and begins to wake up that brain center and say, “I want this. I want more.”
[16:35] Ellen: Oh, interesting. So, what do you say to these experts who say, “Oh, I don’t want to say anything negative. I don’t want to stir the pot. I just want to come from love.” What’s your take on that?
[16:48] Ann: Well, people will jump off a hot stove faster than they will take a plane to Paris. There’s a wonderful book called Habits of a Happy Brain by Loretta Bruning, whom I love. We are not created from cave days to be motivated by pleasure. I mean we are, excuse me. We are. We’re motivated for that next dopamine hit, that next hit of oxytocin but programmed so that the oxytocin never lasts. You know, like the second bite of that chocolate cake never tastes as good as the first bite. Right?
That’s part of our evolutionary psychology where we are evolved to go after something again because after we’ve had the first hit, then we’re restless for more. So, I would say that you must show people that they are uncomfortable or you remind people, if not them, then others are very uncomfortable with this because we’re real good at blocking stuff out and denial and “No, I’m fine.” That’s the state of power. “Don’t bother me. I’m fine.” Well, actually, there are so many things I want if you scratch the surface, so you have to remind me of why I want them. “I could be happier at thinner, richer, whatever if f this happened,” and when you hit that, it’s like triggering a hunting dog, and I will go after what you’re offering me. Does that answer your question?
[18:14]: Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean like, I think it’s ridiculous, personally. I mean, when I said that it’s like, just come from love. I’ve never seen that work myself. So now I understand why because you’re explaining the kind of the science, the neuroscience behind it. So, it’s like people can say that all day long, and to me that all almost sounds like it’s another way of being in denial.
[18:33] Ann: In a weird way. Picture, you’re lying on a beach and you’re perfectly happy, the gorgeous beach in the Caribbean, and you’ve just had the perfect drink and you really are happy, you’re totally relaxed, and someone says, “Would you like to go on Amazon and look at that dress… and you’d probably say, “Nah, I’m just going to stay here.” You know? “I’m happy, I’m fine. I don’t need anything”. You’re happy. You don’t need anything, you know? So, I totally agree with you. No, it doesn’t matter.
[19:04] Ellen: Yeah. I mean there’s, “I’m happy but I could have more.” So, I think there is one piece of what motivates you, but it just sounds like from our evolution that it’s way more, like you said, I mean, if you have something that’s urgently hurting you, you want to get rid of it.
[19:22] Ann: Yeah. And even if it’s not a, “Okay. My house is not about to burn up, but I don’t like the extra twenty pounds that I can’t get rid of” Or, “I don’t like the way my kid’s behaving,” or you know, that’s stirring…” I don’t, so yeah.
[19:38] Ellen: So, what are the three things that the media looks for in a press release? I mean, how does this relate to trying to put yourself out there?
[19:45] Ann: They look for, let me get this right. Oh, press releases I’m not too fond of unless they’re done correctly, because there are services that will send out book press releases, so they maybe get a thousand a day. And they look for, let me see if I can get this right, they look for celebrities, breaking news or I think emergencies. And if it’s got none of those in it, I could be wrong about the third. If it doesn’t have one of those three, they’re like, EH, you know? And whereas someone else might have a terrific story, but it doesn’t have one of those three elements. The first scan is not going to make it. So, you need a press release that’s tailored to that specific media and that’s a whole different ball game. Then you can get in.
[20:31] Ellen: Well, do you think that people writing books should even use a press release for a book?
Ann: Nope. I personally, no I don’t because this comes from thirty years of PR. I mean, the firm that I work with uses press releases basically to please the people that they’re working with. But it’s all done through two paragraphs in an email and follow-up phone calls. No one takes the time to read five or six paragraphs or God forbid, two pages. And also, if you’re pitching a woman’s magazine, you want to say, you don’t pitch your book, you pitch the story.
Ellen: Okay.
[21:07] Ann: For example, you never pitched the book. You always pitched the story is this is what we go by. But let’s see, for example, “My kid woke me up, my child woke me up two months ago and said, “Mom, can I talk to you about my feelings? And she was six years old, and she got in my bed, and we talked about her feelings about the virus and why people were walking around with masks and what it meant. And then, she went back to bed and I was up all night because I thought, she’s really worried. And I thought, “What can I do? How can I help people? And I’m a counselor and I wrote a book that shows you how to talk to your children, how to soothe yourself, how to reframe what your children are experiencing into a good experience, how to prevent any kind of PTSD, what to do when you notice your kid has mood disorders.”
So, this is the pitch; you see the story is what happened. And then, this is what you can talk about.
Ellen. Right, because that’s like the solution…
Ann: That’s like the solution
Ellen: …to the story.
Ann: And also, if you say, “I think this would be a good fit for your readers in your tip-of-the-month section in the back of your magazine, that means you really know what they want and you’re giving them a story that will fit exactly what they want. That’s the number-one thing they want to hear.
[22:27] Give me a story I can use.
Ellen: So, I want to hear some more stories, like what, what’s the best thing that people get when they work with you? Like what is it that they’re missing that they need?
[22:43] Ann: Well, they’re missing the fact that their book is not the story. And in the same way, I don’t mean to be mean, but, not you (Ellen), but you are not the story. If someone’s, this is classic, this is what I learned immediately, somebody would come and he was the CEO of a pet-training company, and he wanted to-he thinks-we all think that the media is there to help us showcase our pet-training company, or our ADD center, or whatever we’re doing, right? I’ve worked with like a hundred different industries and they’re not. Their job is to give a great show, make their producer happy, make their editor happy, give a great story. They want you to give great guests.
So, since the media is the 800-pound gorilla, right? We want to make them happy. It’s a dance. You want to make it a great article, a great show, great segment. And you also want to get your points across. So, when people work with me, we get classic: “What are your three most important points?” And they could be phrases, but you want to work them in no matter what they’re asking you. They might not ask you the right questions, you know, so that’s not really their job. The host may get obsessed with… you’re talking about, I don’t know, addiction recovery and the host might get obsessed with, “Well yeah, but what about marijuana? You know? And then, it’s radio, so, they say, “Well thank you very much. Thank you for being on our show.”
[24:03] And you’re like, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I didn’t get any of my points in.” And so, I want to make sure that never happens. So, we get your three most important points, and we learned how to segue. If someone is asking you things and you think, “Well, I’m getting off track here.” You can say, “You know, that’s really important, and answer the question really briefly, like “You’re right, that’s true. But you know what shocks people? You know what surprises people? Something that I believe is the most important thing in this whole topic?” And you bring it back, and you introduce what you really want people to hear so you make sure…
Ellen: That is priceless cause that’s what you need. Cause it’s like you said, otherwise you’ve just done this thing, and it was just a complete waste of time for you.
[24:43] Ann: Yeah. Yeah. It happens all the time. I was on a radio talk show and they got the wrong press release. And it was a shock-jock show and he had four different guests that he was racing around saying, “Okay, what do you think? What do you think?” And he said, “Okay. And here we have Ann Convery, an expert on Chinese domestic imports,” (And Ann said), “What?” And this was national talk show and I had five seconds. He said, “Well, what’s your opinion on the Russian question?”
Ellen: Oh my God, what did you say?
Ann: I don’t (Laugh). I said something like, “I think the government’s policy is really sane.” But, that happens. And then, he came back and, obviously, somebody had told him like that she’s not, you know? And he asked me something that I actually knew the answer to. But this can happen.
[25:29] So, you really want to have fun with the interview. And, have an “Oh yes, I got my message out.” And don’t get bored with your message either because you’re branding yourself. You want people, it takes like twenty-seven touches or something before people think they know you. So, you want them to think, “Oh yeah, her, her. Yeah, that story. Yeah. I love that story.”
Ellen: Yeah, you have to keep yourself engaged.
Ann: You do. You really do.
Ellen: Yeah. Cause, yeah, when you’ve been doing it for a long time, it’s can get rote.
[25:57]Ann: Yes. And you don’t want to be. The other thing is that, especially for example, if it’s radio or TV though, they might call you to pre-audition you. That’s just to see if you have a pulse if you’re going to be interesting, and they want energy. And if the hosts are good at this, the hosts are good at delivering a show, even if like, well, of course. Right? But you want to have fun, and they love it when you have fun when you tease them and make jokes. And we’re not used to this. So, a lot of when I first started training people, people hugged the back of the chair on TV because they’re scared and they need to be asked all the right questions. And it’s like an exam, right? They give answers to the questions. And we’re used to nighttime talk shows. We’re used to Stephen Colbert. So, we want to see you at your best. Yeah.
[26:43] Ellen: That’s so funny because I had a friend for years, and she went on one of these game shows, and they were doing the same thing that you’re talking about. You know, trying to see if you’re going to be a good guest, and she let out an “Oh shit,” and she got canned. (Laugh)
[27:02] Ann: Alright, well just like your pitch should be your movie trailer. Excuse me. Excuse me. No, your media interviews should be your movie trailer. And when you get on the show, I show people how to do this; I think it’s fun; I call them cliffhangers. So, you know, like an interview, like we’re doing now, it’s like a game of tennis. Like I say something…
Ellen: Right.
Ann: … and you comment, you bat the ball back and forth.
Ellen: Uh-huh.
Ann: A lot of times, the host will throw you the ball, and you’ll just answer it, and you’ll kind of keep the ball. You can say something like, “Well yeah, there are three problems to this. You know, number one, number two and number three and number three is a horror show.” And then, you stop talking and, of course, you’re leading them. Then they say, “What do you mean, horror show? And you drop these little cliffhangers in because it’s fun for them. They can pick up on what you just said, and they can continue the conversation, and it makes it much more entertaining. This is infotainment. This is edutainment at its best when it works.
[27:56] Ellen: Yeah. And infotainment is great. I mean I’ve always been sort of envious of people who are good at that. Cause my brother was always entertaining my parents, and I always felt like I couldn’t live up to, you know what he did? And the irony is he felt he couldn’t live up to what I did because I was a smart one. So, the bottom line is everybody has their gifts, and you really have to play to what works for you. But it doesn’t mean you can’t learn certain techniques like what you’re saying. You know, because you’ve given us some really great information there…
Ann: Thank you.
Ellen… that I hope people will use. So, before we go, cause it’s about time. Do you have any closing tips or thoughts that you’d like to share before we wrap it up?
[28:36] Ann: Let’s see. Really, really remember that your book or what you do is not what they’re interested in. Take it one step further and give us a great story and tailor that story. if you want to pitch the Wall Street Journal and you’re perfect for it, know the section, go ahead and do it. But say, I think this would be perfect for this section, and give this story because the stories are meat and drink to the media, and that’s what they need every day; they need millions of stories. Make your story the best story you have, and then pitch it.
[29:09] Ellen: That’s awesome. So, how can people reach you?
[29:12] Ann: It’s PRforwriters.com in the media training page and anybody who wants to email me, it’s ann@speakyourbusiness.com and I know that’s a little confusing, but thank you.
[29:24] Ellen: Yeah, and I thought you had a free gift for people too.
[29:28] Ann: I do. I have 100 Words to Yes, which is the cheat sheet on how to do a great hook and a great pitch. So, this will show you how to do it.
Ellen: And how did they get that?
Ann: I’m going to check.
[29:40] Ellen: Oh wow. And is looking for that. If you want the transcript from today’s call, once we’re done here, you can go to www.booksbusinessabundance.com/podcast and you’ll also get access to our private Facebook group and it’s on the page there@booksbusinessabundance.com/podcast. So, how can they get your freebie?
Ann: They can go to speakyourbusiness.com and simply put in your email and download it, and it’s yours.
Ellen: Okay. Great. Well, thanks so much for coming on.
Ann: Thank you. This was wonderful.
Ellen: So, that’s it for today, and if you want to take the next step, then I want to invite you to a complimentary 30-minute Bestseller Breakthrough Consultation and I will help you clarify what your topic is or what your avatar is, and help you plan your book. So, to get started, you can go to www.booksopendoors.com/questionnaire. Fill that out. Someone will get back to you in 24 hours. And that’s it for today. So, till next time, Bye-bye.
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