Ask Joe: How did you get on so many media places? | PoP 620

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Image of Joe Sanok is captured. On this therapist podcast, podcaster, consultant and author, talks about how did you get on so many media platforms.

Do you want to work with different media opportunities? How can you become involved in local media outlets to advertise your practice and skills? What are the steps you can take to get in touch with experts?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks about how to get featured on different media.

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In This Podcast

  • Getting local attention
  • Help A Reporter Out
  • Launching book PR

Getting local attention

First and foremost when you have a local practice you want to be in every single one of the local papers, local magazines: everywhere has its own thing. (Joe Sanok)

Your city and state will have their own “things”, whether online websites or local newspapers and pages.

Getting onto Forbes is great for your website and image, however, to get into contact with your local ideal client to get them into your practice, you need to work with your top local media outlets.

Look at local:

  • Radio
  • Newspapers
  • Television

[Taking] the lead on [that connection] locally is less reactionary than just waiting for them to reach out to you … reach out to local radio and see if you can have a weekly show. (Joe Sanok)

Help A Reporter Out

Consider working with outlets like HARO which sends out three emails a day about different categories.

Get in touch with them and see if you can pair up with a reporter and help them to publish their article on the topic that you know. In your email, provide your:

  • Name
  • Type of license
  • Business

So that they can include your information on the published article and reference you correctly.

I would say “here’s one quote of three sentences, here’s another … feel free to edit it as long as the main context is kept. Here’s my cellphone number if you have any follow-up questions, I’m happy to talk to you.” (Joe Sanok)

Launching book PR

This was a multi-level media coverage project.

  • Joe reached out to all the podcasters who had been on Practice of the Practice Podcast and set up an easy way for them to book Joe to discuss his book.
  • Hired Interview Valet to help Joe get onto other people’s podcasts to advertise his book.
  • Higher-end podcasts and higher-end media: Joe’s team worked out a budget to bring in experts onto the podcast to talk with him about topics relating to the book.
  • Investing in a PR company that can open doors to high-end connections.

Maintain your relationships with people who work in the media because these relationships can grow over time and open doors for you down the line.

Books mentioned in this episode:

Image of the book Thursday Is The New Friday written by Joe Sanok. Author Joe Sanok offers the exercises, tools, and training that have helped thousands of professionals create the schedule they want, resulting in less work, greater income, and more time for what they most desire.

Useful Links mentioned in this episode:

Check out these additional resources:

Meet Joe Sanok

A photo of Joe Sanok is displayed. Joe, private practice consultant, offers helpful advice for group practice owners to grow their private practice. His therapist podcast, Practice of the Practice, offers this advice.

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

Thanks For Listening!

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Podcast Transcription

[JOE SANOK]
This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 620.

Well, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. I am Joe Sanok, your host. I hope you are having an amazing day. I hope life is treating you well. Hey, just last week, Thursday is the New Friday went live worldwide. Audio digital, tangible copies of the book are available everywhere. Last week I was on Bloomberg News, in September, Harvard Business Review and Smart Passive Income, EO Fire. And the one thing podcast dropped last week as well. So wherever you want to consume some of that content, check it out. We are in the final stages of getting people together for both Killin’It Camp, where if you buy five copies of the book, you get access to that. That’s happening just in a couple days here.

And the Thursday is the New Friday mastermind group. So that’s an incredible thing that’s going to be happening starting the first Thursday in November. The only way to get in is to purchase 10 copies of Thursday is the New Friday, then just submit your receipt over at thursdayisthenewfriday.com. So within that group, we’re going to meet six times. It’s going to be over seven weeks because we’re skipping Thanksgiving and we are going to meet for an hour at noon, Eastern, every single Thursday. We’re going to be covering deep dives into the book. We’re also going to have a couple hot seats so that people can really practically work on making Thursday the new Friday and having that four-day work week. But the most important thing is you’re going to be networking with tons of other amazing entrepreneurs, podcasters, therapists, counselors, coaches, people that are really evaluating their time and saying, we want to do something about this to make more money in a fewer amount of number of hours, focus on the big picture, those things that really help you level up.

So it’s going to be an amazing community of people. So if you already bought your five books for Killin’It Camp, all you have to do is buy five more. It’s a total of 10 and then just submit your receipt by over at thursdayisthenewfriday.com and just say, “Hey, I bought a total of 10.” Then we’ll add you to that list. And we’re pretty excited about it because it’s going to just be this great group of people that get to know each other and it’s not a paid thing other than just buying the books. You just buy your 10 books and you’re in. You also get a handbook that goes with it and we’ve got some other surprises in store for you as well. So just make sure you submit your receipt for your books that you’ve purchased over at thursdayisthenewfriday.com. That’s the best way to stay connected with everything around Thursday is the new Friday?

Well, every Wednesday for a number of weeks, for months now, I’ve been doing the Ask Joe show where people can submit their questions all about private practice and whatever’s on their mind because there might be things that you heard in one of the podcasts that you’re like, “I wish Joe would’ve gone deeper on that. I wish we could do a little deeper dive into understanding that.” If there’s those things, submit your question over at practiceofthepractice.com/askjoe and just submit it there and we might get to one of your questions.

I’m really excited, Lexi and Ron who are two of my consulting clients for podcasting, they’re doing the Done for You Podcasting where our whole team is supporting them launch their new podcast, which is the Married Entrepreneurs podcast, specifically for people that are married, running a business together, it’s going to be such a resource because I remember at Killin’It Camp, there was a number of couples that worked together, that do things together, and there weren’t many resources out there. So the Married Entrepreneurs podcast is going to be coming out this fall.

They asked the question of how did you get on so many media places? So they saw over at practiceofthepractice.com where we see “as seen on.” So I’m going to talk through the different ways that you can get local and national media attention. So the first thing to do is you do want local attention, especially if you have a private practice because that’s where your clients are. They’re locally. So it doesn’t matter if you get into Huffington Post or Forbes or things like that. It looks good for your website, but those aren’t your ideal clients. So first and foremost, when you have a local practice, you want to be in every single one of the local papers and local magazines.

Everywhere has its thing. So we have the Northern Express here in Traverse City. We have the Traverse City Business News, we have Grand Traverse Women’s Magazine. We’ve got local radio, local TV, all of those things. When I had a private practice, I was constantly trying to connect with the media. So I actually would get people’s cell phone numbers and I always saved them in my phone as their name plus media. And oftentimes what happens is that cell phone number for a TV, 7 & 4, or the local Record Eagle newspaper is owned by company. So once you have that number, if that person leaves, you often can still have contact with them. So when big news happens, I would often text the local news and say, “Hey as a local therapist, a psychologist that owns a counseling practice, I’ve got some thoughts on this thing that just happened. Let me know if you want to have any sort of snippet of me talk about that.”

Because that adds some authority and some vibrance to their story. So taking the lead on that locally is less reactionary and just waiting for them to reach out to you. No, like reach out to local radio, see if you can have a weekly show. I thought every radio station probably has their own kind of go-to therapist and I realized they don’t. So I was on the Mary in the Morning show every Tuesday morning for a while. For a while, I was on the Crystal Frost Show for probably like three years, every Tuesday, talking about all sorts of mental health issues. Having people call in just builds that overall image of your practice. So it start locally.

Then the next thing is Help A Reporter Out. So HALO sends out three emails a day, morning, noon, and night around every single meal in a variety of categories. It can be health and medical and business. And they’ll say this reporter is looking for this type of person. This reporter is looking for this type of person and you just comb through it or have your assistant comb through your email or have it go to their email and then usually what you want to do is respond to that email, using exactly what they say. They’ll say I need a three to five sentence quote about parenting post pandemic. So you do the actual quote and give them everything they need in the email. So you’ll say name, Joe Sanok, license, licensed professional counselor, limited licensed psychologist, business, Mental Wellness. Counseling, or Practice of the Practice, LLC.

So they have all the information that they can pull from it that they can have your initials you want after it. They don’t really want to talk to you and go back and forth. They just want the quote. And then I usually would send several quotes. So I would say here’s one quote of three sentences, here’s another, and here’s another, feel free to edit it as long as the main context is kept. Here’s my cell phone number. If you have any follow up questions, I’m happy to talk to you today. And from that frequently, I would get people that wrote for a variety of different magazines. I had one media contact, she wrote for Cosmo, she wrote for Good Magazine, she wrote for Readers Digest and there was a fourth one, I don’t remember what the fourth was, but once she got me into one of ’em, I just texted her and said, “Hey, here’s some other topics that if you ever need a last minute quote for just let me know.”

And then every, probably three months I would just check in with her and send her a quick text and say, “Hey, just a reminder. This is Joe. Here’s some of my specialties. Here’s also some things I’m working on. Let me know if you need any quotes for anything.” And almost always, she would reach out and get me another quote somewhere. So then once you’re in a few places where it’s like “as seen in Cosmo,” “as seen in these places,” then you get more and more authority, which is really cool to see start developing. And you can then put that on your webpage “as seen on” or “as quoted in” that then when your clients come to your website, they say, “Oh my gosh, like you’ve been in some big places.”
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[JOE SANOK]
So then in the launch of Thursday is the New Friday, we had a multi-leveled approach to our PR. So first it was reaching out to all the podcasters that have been on the show, that I’ve been on in the past, reaching out to all those people, working through all those contacts, setting up an easy way for them to book with me. So we set up a link that went right to my calendar so they could book in over the two months. It’s how we did over 200 media appearances in the lead up to Thursday is the New Friday So it was my own contacts. I wish I had kept track better of all those people before, but we actually, Jess, my director of details just combed through and did a killer job bringing all of that together.

So our own contacts, people that went through Podcast Launch School or things like that. Just people from the email list that maybe want to interview me for something. Then the next level up was we hired interview valet. So interview valet was able to get me on 25 or so kind of midlevel, kind of my level of podcast type of shows, like not huge big time shows, that mid-level show. So they were able to get me on all sorts of different shows and then kind of the next level up is the higher end podcast and the higher end media. So that was a two prong approach. So early in 2021 with Next Level Practice, I decided that instead of bringing in people that I had connections with already, I was going to bring in people that I wanted connections with into Next Level Practice because every single month we bring in top-level experts in a variety of areas.

In the past we had brought in great people that we like, like Jessica Tappana to talk about SEO, Gordon Brewer to talk about Google Docs and how to use that in your practice, people from Therapy Notes, Brighter Vision, and they were talking about websites and EHRs. These people, I already had connections with that I think are awesome, but I was thinking I want in 2021 to meet people that I normally don’t meet. So we put a budget in place to spend a $1,000 to $4,000 a month to bring in those experts. So we brought in John Lee Dumas and by doing that, we bought a hundred of his books and sent that out to our Next Level Practice members. I then created a relationship with JLD so much so that at Podcast Movement, he and I hung out a bunch of times.

He’s this top level podcaster, but I was showing that I could play at his level. So sometimes you’re kind of paying to play to at least get through that door. Same sort of thing with meeting Pat Flyn, did a bulk book buy, brought him in then through that process, got to know him and got to know his awesome assistant, Jess and actually went out for coffee with her when I was in California and developed a genuine relationship with pat and with his team to then serve them and to be able to kind of help out in the SPI community. And I’m a part of SPI pro. So showing that I’m getting involved in the work that they’re doing, and then they get to know me. Pat and JLD, both gave amazing endorsements of my book. They had me on their podcast, that podcast, Smart Passive income dropped right before the book.

So that kind of level was relationships that I was paying people for. So Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, we brought her in and just paid her money for coming in to speak to our community, so sometimes getting access to those people, but then developing the relationship afterwards. So Julie as I’ve been going through a rough family period in 2021 she was so kind and reached out and said, “Here’s some books that I think that you’re really going to like.” She just reached out in a very jet genuine friendship way. So these people that I’ve looked up to for years, I mean the Gottman’s, I was studying them in college and to now be emailing with Julie and getting to know her as a person that happens over time. So then those relationships open up other media opportunities.

So then the last factor was hiring Cave Henricks out of Austin as a PR company. Cave Henricks was hands down one of the best investments for the lead up to Thursday is the New Friday. They’re the ones that made Harvard Business Review happen, Forbes, Inc, Money, Entrepreneur, all sorts of live events that I’ve been doing. Those connections that they already have are just insane. They’re very expensive, but I said to Harper Collins from the very beginning, I’m going to take the entire advance and put it all back into marketing, which is why they doubled their offer with me, because I said, listen, I’m here to play. I’m here to get the biggest media that I can in the launch for the book so that they knew I wasn’t just taking this money and going home with it.

A hundred percent of the money that I received through the advance it went all back into the marketing of the book. So then I had a huge budget on someone else’s to promote my book. So, of course I want it to be a New York Times bestseller, of course, I want us to make Thursday the new Friday, the new revolution. I genuinely believe the four-day work week is awesome for society and could just help us be more creative with the challenges we’re going to have in the 21st century. And if that doesn’t happen, I’m holding it loosely where I’m saying, okay, I want that to happen. But if it doesn’t, I’ve now used someone else’s marketing money to promote my work, to get me into all these things. So now the media side of it, I can point back to you, listen, I had a Harvard Business Review article. I had a Forbes article, an Inc, article, all these other excerpts that are really hard to get into.

So when you’re ready to really play big, having a quality PR company, there’s a lot out there. It was actually Angie Morgan, she’s a New York Times bestselling author that lives locally here in Traverse City. I’m going to have her on, she has a new book coming out in 2022 called Bet on You. So we’ve collaborated on a lot. She was the one that interviewed me for the Thursday is the new Friday podcast and has helped guide me as a mentor and as a friend to then open up these doors to hire Cave Henricks. They’re the ones that got her on the Today Show and other things.

So it’s really incredible to see how, when you can play at a bigger level, oftentimes it takes a budget, but you can do so many things. You know, the only thing that really costs my money and all of that, other than paying my staff it was interview valet and hiring Cave Henricks and hiring some of those experts. But all the 80% lead up to that most of the things you’ve seen on the website has just been reaching out on Help A Reporter Out, doing it well, keeping those relationships with the media and then over time, making sure I’m pitching them again on what I can talk about and what’s changing. Because the things that I care to talk about now are much different than maybe two or three years ago when I was still doing some of the mental health things. I wanted the back links for Mental Illness Counseling. I wanted all of that, whereas now it’s definitely more Practice of the Practice and then stepping more and more into the business and entrepreneurial community.

So that’s how you do it. That is how I have done it. There are probably a million other ways that you could go get some big media.

So thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Therapy Notes is our sponsor today. Therapy Notes is the electronic health records out there. So many people in Next Level Practice and in our membership communities are using Therapy Notes. If you use promo code Joe, you’re going to get some months for free. So make sure you use that promo code at checkout. It also shows them that this works, that it’s a good use of their medium money. So go check out therapynotes.com, go use promo code [JOE] to get your months for free.

And thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your a brain. And if you’re watching this on YouTube into your eyes, have a wonderful day. I’ll talk to you soon.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We really like it. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.