Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - How To Leverage PR & New Media with Ulyses Osuna

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Welcome to a new episode of Escaping the Drift. Join us on a journey through the dynamic world of PR and brand building with John Gafford and Ulyses Osuna. Ulyses shares his transformation from college dropout to PR guru along with insights on mastering publicity and leveraging connections. Learn how to set clear goals, build authority, and strategically use PR to propel your business forward, all while navigating the ever-changing landscape of media exposure.Highlights:"Every time he spoke to me, he said 'we.' He was big on making sure that I didn't feel like he was a dictator, because he actually wasn't.""At its core, if they give it away for free, people won't value what they're saying. Because what's the value of something if it's FREE? Zero.""Results don't aren't the only thing that matters...you have to provide an amazing service experience."Timestamps:00:00 - Ulysses's journey to PR expertise02:23 - Contacting Neil Patel: Learning the Ropes04:27 - Initiative and Effort06:23 - Learning to Acquire Clients08:23 - Leveraging Relationships15:57 - Understanding Publicity's Value19:22 - Leveraging Authority25:45 - Tearing Down Others27:14 - Battling Negativity30:03 - Value of Paid Knowledge💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below! ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford using this Link! ⤵️     / johngafford.  .💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full service title and escrow company.➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:Instagram ▶️ / thejohngaffordFacebook ▶️ / gafford2🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here:Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80g...Listen On Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... *************#EscapingTheDrift

Your favorite podcast host here was on a reality show. You didn't know that? I saw that. I was fired by the 44th president of the United States on TV. Well, anyway, after you get fired from old Mr. Trump, the next day you're in New York and you go do press. You're running around New York and you're going on, and I'm not talking about wake up Las Vegas.

I'm talking about MSNBC power launch. And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of Escaping the Drift. And like I said, this is the show that's going to get you from where you are to where you want to be. And today in the studio, we've got a great guest, man. We've got a great guest. This is a guy that I met through some friends of mine randomly at a dinner not too long ago. I guess it's been a while now, maybe almost a year ago now. And this dude is like, he's one of those guys where you would

never see him coming. Like you just never would see him coming. And sometimes the biggest people come in sort of the smallest packages, if you will. I don't know if he's going to hate me for saying that or not, but I'm going to, because this is the guy kind of behind the guy of a lot of your favorite people. And I'm going to explain to you what that means in just a second. We're going to get some great secrets from them on how to expose yourself and how to get PR and what you need to be doing to help build your brand out in the marketplace. Ladies and gentlemen, live in the studio. Thanks for joining us today. This is Ulysses Osana.

What's up, buddy? Thank you, man. I appreciate it. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I love Vegas. So every time I come here, I enjoy it. Cool. And just for the record, you're 5'1", so that was okay to say that.? Thank you, man. I appreciate it. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I love Vegas. So every time I come here, I enjoy it. Cool.

And just for the record, you're 5'1", so that was okay to say that. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You've heard this before. Everybody knows. Everybody knows I'm 5'1". You're a giant little package. That's what I like.

Yep. So I like it. It's one thing to, I know a lot of small men in big packages. We'll leave it at that. So it's good that you do that. So welcome to the show, dude. I'm glad to have you. You are a walking encyclopedia

of PR. You probably know more about this than people have ever learned. You've forgotten. And some of your clients from Ed Milet, I'll let you talk about some more of those guys, but the biggest of the big people utilize your brain to grow their brand. So how'd you get into that, dude? Where'd that start? Well, you know, I, I, so initially I dropped out of college cause you know, I just wasn't for me. And the way that I kind of got into it is I saw this guy named Neil Patel. You might, do you know him? So I was kind of taking a look at online marketing and when was this, how long ago was this? Oh man, like seven, eight years ago, probably. Where'd you go to school? I went to school to heritage university.

Heritage university. Where's heritage university? Oh my my god it's like an uh like it's it's in the middle of nowhere basically right like i mean you you know about like university of washington like harvard or like yeah like this is not one of those colleges not one of those schools it's not even a community college so it's just uh yeah this was right out of high school everybody's going to college i should go to college too. Yeah. How did you know it wasn't for you? How'd you know?

So I went through the entire thing. I failed every single class except business. And towards the end, I just told my parents one day, I'm like, hey, I'm just, I'm just going to drop out, you know? And I had to go to the college because obviously I was living under the roof. So I wanted to follow their rules. Yeah. I mean, but like.

It was school. It was school or out or job. Essentially. Right. And I didn't have a job. So what happened when you quit school? Well, with the parents, I mean, not. Yeah.

Well, at first, you know, they obviously weren't happy, but we made a deal, you know, thankfully. But they said, hey, I'm going to give you, you know, a year. If you don't make any money from this online thing within the year, then obviously you got to go back and you got to actually pursue something that's, you know, that people pursue. Okay. So you spun this up living at home. You were like, I'm going to get online and I'm going to spin up this business. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So what was the idea? You started following Neil Patel. I started following him. Um, and I just reached out to him a ton. And I did like an internship with him for about a month.

So it wasn't anything long. But what I realized is, number one, you can obviously make money online. And then number two is I was just enamored by the fact that I would read his bio and it says, you know, Forbes named him X. Or he got, you know, an award by the Wall Street Journal. Or he met, you know, the president. And I'm like, how the hell is this guy getting all these awards? Well, hang on a second. Cause there's an amazing lesson in just something you just said. Yeah. Cause here you are with your stunning heritage college, one semester education under your belt, right? You are cold emailing a guy that's incredibly successful and you get him to take you on under

an apprenticeship or mentor you. So I want to hear that process because again, if you're somebody out there that's drifting along, a great way to get out of that is to get a mentor, get somebody to assist you in because you can collapse time by having somebody show you the way. But it's very difficult to get someone that is of a certain level of success to take interest in you. Yeah. So that in itself is a skill set. So walk me through step by step how you got Neil Patel to take you on. Well, number one, I was very naive. So I didn't, I mean, to me, I'm like, he's just another human being. Like I can definitely talk to him. Um, and that helped me out a lot because, you know, for me, he, he writes every single day, essentially on his blog.

I read every single blog. I even printed out each of it, each of his blog posts back from like 2017 to however many years it was. And I printed them into books and I digested everything. I commented on everything he did. I emailed him and obviously he wouldn't respond back all the time. Um, but what he noticed was effort and I was incredibly young and I'm assuming because I was young, he was willing to give me the chance. Now, you know, most people would, would say, you know, just fuck off or like, Hey, you know, stop bothering me. But no, he was,

I mean, he's a nice dude in general, you know? So he, he gave me the time of day and he said, Hey, let's test this out. Um, I mean, he even introduced me to, to Mike Kama, who I mean, he's a nice dude in general, you know? So he gave me the time of day and he said, hey, let's test this out. I mean, he even introduced me to Mike Kama, who I think is either the CEO of Neil Patel Digital. And I don't know if he was the CEO at the time, but, you know, he wanted me to like, I don't know if he was a partner or, you know, be under him or something like that. But I mean, he believed in me and Neil actually did the same thing with like. Wait, slow down.

Because you said something, you said eventually your communication, he said, let's test this out. Yeah. So you were going to him. Number one, you showed a lot of initiative by reading all of his stuff to show that you

were really invested in him. It wasn't just a, Hey, I'm a videographer editor. I edit reels. And here's the 5,000th millionth email you've gotten or DM on Instagram about it and your stuff. You were like, went deep on him.

You were like, I'm all into, I'm reading everything you've ever written. I'm digesting it. I have questions. It showed a lot of interest. But then you said that when you finally got in with him, he said, let's try this. What was the try this? Were you coming up with solutions to problems that you saw that he had? Is that what you were doing? Yeah. Okay, cool. See, that's a key part of the story, man. Yeah. Yeah. No,

that's true. You know, and kind of looking back at it, like you forget a lot of this stuff. Cause it's like, Oh, it's in the past, but you're right. Like that's actually very important, especially for people that, you know, um, they just kind of listen to the story and be like, Oh, it sounds great. Well, there is a lot of intricacies into that. Like, um, for example, the stuff that I would come up with, it was basically off of his blog. So the stuff that he was mentioning, like he would say, cause he's a big SEO guy. So he would stay, you know, one of the things is like identify broken links inside of like blog posts and then have them linked back to things. So, I mean, since I was diving into each and every single one of his

blogs, I found broken links, you know, very, just naturally, because I was taking a look at that stuff. So I would email him about this stuff. And that's kind of one of my ways of like showing initiative, right? It's like, hey, you know, I realized you talked about this. I found this, right? And this is on your website. Like, you know, don't know if you know about it or not, but here we are. Yeah. So, you know, that helped me out a lot because I didn't know that people like Neil or people like Ed were untouchable. And because I was naive, I'm like, I mean, I can just message him. I can just talk to him. You just send it with the power of social media, man. Just send the DM. That's true. Cause you never know. So you sent him, what was the idea you sent him? He said, let's try this. What was the idea? Um, well he told me, he's like, Hey, let's try this. Like I can tell you're very,

okay, let's try bringing you on. I got it. Yeah. Um, and that's when like the one month, you know, internship kind of, kind of happened. Um, and one of the things that we did during that time period is, so he has this LLC, it's called, I'm kind of a big deal. LC and great name. Yeah, it is a good name. And I ended up buying the domain name, the website name for him. Because obviously if they know Neil Patel is trying to buy the domain name, they're going to charge him a lot. Sure. So I was able to get it for like maybe a few hundred bucks or so. And I sold the domain to him for like five grand. So it was like my easiest five grand that I could make. Arbitrage Neil Patel Patel. That's a nice move. There it is.

So little things like that, that I would say in the grand scheme of things don't matter too much. Broken links and things like that, it's not going to move the needle for your business. But for him, it showed that I was a loyalty member. So you went out and got that domain and got it done. So in that month, did you go to him or did you guys just work remote? No, I, yeah. Remote the whole time. Everything was remote. Yeah. And that month, if you had to compare that month with Neil Patel learning this business versus that time at heritage college. Yeah. You can't even compare it. Dude. I'm going to have, I'm going to have heritage college on the map by the end of this podcast. Their attendance is going to go through the roof by the time we're done. It's

going to be crazy. So, uh, yeah, for sure. We're going to get that done. But anyway, um, what did Neil T what, so what did you take from Neil that you turned into your, into the first business leadership? Um, he, every time he spoke to me, he said, we, us, um, he was, you know, big on making sure that I didn't feel like he was a dictator because he actually wasn't. When he would assign me things, it was results oriented versus task oriented. So it wasn't like, hey, do this, do this, do that. It was more so like the goal is this, you know. Get to here. I don't care how we get to here. Just get to here. Exactly. And it was nice because before that I was working with, you know, just other companies and they were dictators.

You know, it was very, very much like boss and, you know, employee type relationship, which is which, you know, I think at times is OK. But what I what I learned from him is like I was much more willing to help him because he would say we or he would say, you know, it's in the betterment of us or, you know, things like that. And, you know, I was all in going to make the team better. Yep. So after Neil, do you have your own clients during this other than Neil, or were you just trying to learn what he was doing? And now it's time to go out and get my first clients. Yeah. So what was the, what was the, did you build a business plan or did you just, were you slinging from your hip? What were you doing? Yeah, I just, it was kind of fell into my lap actually, because, because of working with Neil and because he had such a big name, I was able to write for some publications.

So it was a very easy kind of in for me because I was able to write for Huffington Post at the time, literally just because I was working with Neil. And because I had that in, it allowed me to get access to things that people didn't have. And that's when I realized like the, it was the first easy money that I had ever made because people, you know, some guy told me his name's Patrick. Um, he's like, man, you can make a lot of money being kind of like the broker, you know, the person that makes the connection between whoever wants the publicity and the person that does the publicity. And, you know, at the time I'm like, dude, there's no way this is going to work. Yeah. Yeah. And he found me a client and he's like, Hey, you find somebody on entrepreneur that wants to write about me and my story and I'll give you two grand. I'm like, all right. Well, I emailed the buddy that I knew

at entrepreneur. They said, yes, the guy paid me two grand. I made the introduction. That was that. Oh, like, so now all of a sudden you're like, I've discovered gold. What's happening here. So it's all about just connection. It's, it's all about the connections, kids. It really is. And I'll give you an example of this. Um, like at a higher level, like with blue wire, you know, I tried to get into blue wire initially and they didn't let me in obviously. Cause I didn't have a podcast. I didn't have an audience. I didn't have anything. Right. Right. Um right right um so because of that they they wanted to charge me obviously to use the studio a lot yeah it was a lot um when they first quoted me it was like four grand an hour so i was like holy shit like i'm not gonna spend four grand an hour that's that's ruthless yeah that's that is

ruthless and i realized uh you know like i don't know they probably did that the highest number i've heard and i honestly think the person that quoted me that just like quoted it to me because he didn't want me to like pursue it further. Right. But obviously because I'm in the business of relationships and connections, like I actually got in for free. And I used the studio for, I don't know, like a year maybe. And I didn't have to pay a dime, you know. And I just kind of went around the guy that quoted the gatekeeper. Yeah.

The gatekeeper. And what's funny is like full circle. They introduced me to the gatekeeper to get me onboarded. So it was a nice little like circle. He's like, great. And here we are. This is, this is spectacular. Perfect.

Yeah. And now I'm sitting here in front of you. So when you talk about getting people PR and I, first of all, I'm going to break this down to what is the, like, why is that important to anyone that's in business? And what can this, what can this kind of stuff really do for you? and they found him strictly off of a New York Times article. And not because he was featured in the article, but because it said photo credit in the name of the guy that took the photo. So not saying that's going to happen for everybody here, but the power of publicity is very important.

If people don't know about you, then it's very hard for them to, you know, for you to be top of mind for them when things come up. So if somebody is interested in like a pod, a podcast or a TV spot or speaking on stage or things like that, and I'm on top of mind, then I'm naturally the first person that they're going to come to. And publicity helps accomplish, you know, that. Now, it's not going to happen all the time for everybody, especially if they just try to get one type of press.

But what you should be looking at is your personal brand as a whole. And what do people see about you? What do they believe about you? And how can you control that narrative? Dude, I got to tell you, this is the biggest hurdle for, for real business people to get over. You know, it's been years now, but I'll never forget when, you know, the blue check mark was everything on Instagram. That's $10, but the blue check mark was everything on Instagram. Right. And so, you know, we all got, everybody gets pitched. I get to the blue check mark was everything on instagram right and so you know we all got everybody gets pitched i get the blue check mark and there was some heavy duty fees involved getting that done we at that time like we used to sell that too

yeah like it was a hot what were you selling for uh instagram alone was like 8 000 and then like facebook was like two three thousand i think yeah so we were paying because we were getting because the press is what got us there, right? Because you had to get LA Weekly, you had to get Entrepreneur, you had to get Fortune, you had to get all these articles written, right? It was crazy. So yeah, my number was exponentially higher, especially higher for that years ago. But the problem with it was, was like, and anybody you talk to, right?

Like even Fleischman back in the day, I was like, Dan, what's the value of the blue check mark? And he's like, I can't tell you. It's intrinsic. There's no way to measure it. And when you have these serious business people, they're like, everything's a metrics, everything's ROI. Everything is, if I'm going to spend dollars here, I need to see a return on those dollars because that's how we think, right? We think P&L, we think very, very strategically in that manner. And some of this stuff is just so hard to quantify. So what do you tell somebody that's thinking about this stuff? Like, how do you quantify it to those guys? How do you quantify it to me? Yeah. I'd say the easiest thing is, you know, most people that believed, you know,

press is just like vanity or things like that is mainly because they only use it as the deliverable itself. They don't use it as a tool. Naturally, the press, if you get on, let's say you get on LA Weekly or New York Times or something like that, the traffic alone is not going to drive you business. Just because these publications get millions of page views a month doesn't mean yours will, right? It won't even get a fraction of that. Maybe a couple of hundred views, maybe a couple of thousand if everything goes well.

And then again, it's also their first time ever knowing about you. I don't know too many people that make decisions off of the first time knowing about you, you know, and moving forward with that.

So the way that we do it is more so in an ecosystem. So I'll give you an example. We had a client, Austin Netsley, who essentially his whole business is systemizing and, you know, helping people double their business by systemizing stuff. Now he was able to get on four podcasts and he generated 150 grand, but not because of just one thing, but because he had an ecosystem of things. If he was just on the podcast alone, it didn't, it didn't, did nothing. He had no funnel. He had nothing to kind of send people to.

And all he did was just kind of shoot the shit on the podcast. Guaranteed he wouldn't make a dime, right? So it's how you kind of leverage everything to actually generate the revenue. The podcast alone, the TV spot alone, speaking on one stage won't drive you anything, but we both know people like Russell Brunson or Grant or other people that speak on stage that generate millions. So what are they doing that other people aren't? They're using it. They're leveraging it. Well, they begin with the end in mind. They know exactly what they're trying to do and the strategy of what they're trying to do.

Which is revenue for them. Which is all revenue. Yeah. And for me personally, like all of that stuff, we lever into the know, like, and trust with our client base. When you can start adding all of those, you know, as seen ons, as here, here's the articles. It does build a lot of credibility in what we do. We deal with a lot of very high net worth clients in the real estate space. And when we're dealing with them, they want to know that you're somebody of value. And a lot of those things do carry weight. So I think using them in that, I think you got to go at it from both ways. I think A, there's plenty of, you know, I saw the greatest phrase ever for him today. Oh, my God. It was a registered flex offender.

I thought that phrase I saw today was on Baller Busters or one of those things. I saw the dude call somebody a registered flex offender. And I literally thought that is the greatest phrase I've ever heard in the history of Instagram was the registered flex offender. But the, I just thought it was great, but people that just go out and just want to be on podcasts and want to do this without having an end in mind, for example, just, just me personally. Yeah. I have been other than my own because, because I do this one and I do this one for several reasons. A because I love it. B because this is how I get to really know people that I want to know. And B because I really genuinely

think the information we provide actually helps people on the back end. However, I have not done, I have said no, literally today it popped up on my Instagram story. It was funny. It was a headshot. It was me, Robert Kiyosaki, and Cody Sperber. And it was from Clever Summit. That is the last stage that I've been on by design. How long ago was that? Two years. Oh shit, dude. Well, the promotion was two years ago, but it was in the summer, but whatever it was, but I purposely have not been on a stage because I have a book coming out very, very shortly. Um, should be at a final edit, hopefully no later than April 5th. And then we'll move on to publishing from there. And the people I'm working with in New York are wonderful and they're great. And

that's going wonderfully. Um, but yeah, I purposely have held back on all of that stuff because for right now, other than promoting our businesses that we already own, that's what I'm going to need to push. That's what I'm going to need to go. So that's my end in mind. So I'm still using all of that other press. I still use this. I use everything else to do to leverage my authority in the marketplace. But really doing a big push like that is all on hold. I did, I did, I think, you know, Monsi, I did, I did, I did one of her clients, a favorite blue wire a couple of weeks ago. I was on his show, which was great. It was cool. It's been a really long time. So I've been a guest on somebody's show. I did a, I did Cole Hatter show maybe four months ago and, and yeah, that's it. And it's just cause they were like, Hey man,

I need somebody. And I was like, I gotcha. Yeah. But trust me when that book comes out, I'm going to be everywhere. The goal is to just be everywhere. That's the way to do it. So, you know, like you come with an end in mind, like I'm pretty sure. Cause you're not just going to do things just for the sake of doing them. That's like, first of all, it's a waste of time and then opportunity costs, right? You have tons of other stuff that you got to do. So, but with the book, I mean that a hundred percent makes sense. So with this, you, with you, with your clients, are they looking more for authority building, uh, authority building stuff or they, or are they really end in mind funnel

with this is headed somewhere? What are they looking for? I would say most of our clients end in mind because you can hire any agency really that at least that's worth their salt that can deliver the PR to do that, right? To do the PR itself. But for some of the bigger clients, I mean, with or without me, they could get the same connections that I have. It's just they at the time either don't have them or don't want to build a relationship to get them or

whatever it is. Right. But I'm just a vessel to exactly. I'm just a time machine. Speed it up. You're a time machine. Yeah. It's what you do. You can press time for people. Literally what it is, at least for, for people on the higher end that, yeah, that are kind of looking to do like a book launch or, or, you know, stuff like that because they, everybody can do it themselves. Well, I also love, I also love that, you know, I do, obviously when you have a podcast that's done as well as this one has, dude, it is a, it is a never ending sea of emails and DMs of, of apparent stuff and everything. We just shove everything to the site. Um, but I love kind of your approach where you're like, Hey, I got this guy. I really believe in this dude. and if you'll put him on and i i know that you're

not going to send me some scrub that you know i did one paid appearance one time and i'm never not gonna mention this guy's name but i did paid appearance one time it got me gun shy on paid appearances i just raised the paid appearance price really high now yeah because this guy i did 45 minutes with this dude and he was talking about the most boring it was it was like an infomercial for the most boring thing that was like a really technical i don't want to say exactly what it was i don't want to out the guy but it was a really technical piece of equipment he was trying to sell on his back end and it was like a 50 minute infomercial and at the end of it i said okay cool and then i watched it back as soon as I watched it back, I sent him back his money.

And then I sent him all the footage. And I said, you can do whatever you want with this. Go crazy. Cut it up. Post it. Knock yourself out. I'm not putting this up. Yeah.

Because it's a commercial. But with you, back to my original point, when you came to me, you were like, hey, I got this guy. I really believe in him. He's going to be great. And then I'll trade you out because I have access to this billboard in times square and i'm thinking hmm i have that ryan sirhan episode coming out that we just did he's in new york wouldn't be too bad to have my face on a billboard next to ryan the middle of times square you bet because you were coming it was a win-win for both of us. And that's what many people don't get. Like they feel too entitled to not give anything else or not, or just, you know, by name alone, I should be on

this show. And I mean, a lot of people do that with speaking engagements and that's why we beat, I'm not going to say we beat everybody, but we beat a lot of those people out that are just looking based off of entitlement because we're giving something else as well. Like give us something of value. Well, it's not just that. I think some people, I think some people miss the point and it goes both ways. There's people that I've reached out to that I'm like, Hey, you know, we've got a top 15 podcast on Apple. We'd love to have you on. And then it's just crickets, right? Whatever. Cause I'm sure they're getting 5,000 of those things, but I don't know who everybody is. I don't know. And there's been times where like people send me somebody, I think this might've been your guy. When I looked him up, I was like,

oh hell yeah. I know exactly who this guy is. I'm always, I'm always pleasantly surprised when that happens. I love that. Do you find yourself, okay. Do you, are you choosy about the clients that you take on? Like if you don't believe in what they're trying to do or are you equal opportunity, I'll handle everybody. Well, we've had a situation before in the past where we did take on somebody and he turned out to be a fraud. And that hurt our business a lot. Yeah. It was actually, I mean, it was very stupid of me. But essentially, the guy was going to buy my business at the time.

This was like maybe five years ago for like three million bucks if we got him, if we got him on all of these like publications and I mean, I was so stupid, but the idea that he sold me is that he was a 21 year old kid that sold the company for a hundred billion dollars. Now that sounds like a load of bullshit, but at the time I'm like, I mean, he signed a check and everything.

So I don't know. And then he sent me bank statements. Like there was a lot of things that looked right. And I even sends it to Neil. I'm like, Neil, like, does this look right?

And he said, no. And I'm like, well, you're not necessarily signing the $3 million check. So I'm like, I'm going to take the bet and like, you know,

move forward with it. I moved forward with it. It was like one of the worst things we did. Um, because I lost a lot of the contacts that I initially had at that time because I, cause they had egg on their face for, Oh,

a hundred percent. I mean, they, some of them their uh ability to write at these publications so you know it wasn't necessarily yeah it wasn't a good time you know um but i learned a lot through that time period and because of that like yes i wouldn't say we're like 100 choosy on you know who we take on there's vetting yeah yeah i was gonna you that. Cause something happened with claims. Something happened the other day. It was funny. I actually called my buddy, you know, pace Morby. I'm sure. Yeah. I reached out to him about this as well, because something happened the other day that I did not like. And I'm not going to mention this person, my name, because that would make me a hypocrite for what I'm about to say. But there's somebody that has, that had a podcast and they put a clip up on Instagram and that clip

was calling somebody out my name and saying, basically this person is a scammer. And the only thing I can, I can guess is this person saw baller busters starting to build and do well. And granted with some of the people they're on, I think they are doing the Lord's work. Don't get me wrong, but I have, I don't know why, but this really strikes a chord with me. I have a super serious issue with people that try to have the tallest building by tearing other people's buildings down. Yeah. You want to have the tallest building, build the motherfucker, but don't tear other people down. Yeah. And it really pissed me off. And I saw it was funny because Pace had commented on this and was like, bro, what are you, what

are you doing? Like, this is not at all. But of course, I think this person probably of all their posts, this one blew up. So that's like feeding the beast and it's going to get, it's going to happen worse. But my roundabout point with that is, what do you think the state is of the online coaching mastermind? Where is that? I mean, I kind of feel like we're at a tipping point where, what's your thought? Dude, I, I agree with you. Number one, I think there's just a lot of negativity. Um, and you're not going to make everybody happy. It's literally impossible to make everybody happy.

You know, I don't know how much I want to dive into it. Oh, we're diving deep. We're diving deep, Ulysses. But I know exactly what- Just don't say names. We're fine. As long as you don't say names, we're talking about concepts. Well, I know exactly like, you know,

what you're talking about here. And, you know, obviously I don't know like the scope of that, of that stuff. And I do want to get on that, that guy's show as well, but I don't agree with what he did. You know, um, obviously he's, he's free to share his opinion. What I didn't like is that I think he saw that there was momentum there and he's trying to ride that, that. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you're i mean i

mean it's your opinion like you know if you don't if you don't think somebody provides value like obviously you can't combat that if i if you know if somebody doesn't think i provide value like what am i gonna tell you like you're wrong i can't tell you that it's your opinion but the negative hate trail the you know like let's ride this thing and all that type of stuff. That's a, you know, I, I just don't think it's right to stand on somebody else's shoulders and call yourself tall. Yeah. I think that sucks. And, uh, and hopefully I, you know, I don't know. I mean, look, if people are really taking advantage of people in a negative, negative, negative way. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. They should be, they should be handled, but

I kind of felt like it was almost jumping on a trend and I, and I, and I don. They should be, they should be handled. But I kind of felt like it was almost jumping on a trend and I, and I, and I don't like that trend, but I do feel that I think people are masterminded out. I think people are coaching programmed out. I think people are everything, but I will say this and I'm going to, and I'm going to say this as somebody that, you know, our company here, we have a large company, the real estate company has just that 600 agents here. And I do do coaching groups within, and I've done this for years within our agent group, right? If you want to sign up for an intensive, we'll do like a 40 day run intensive with me every day, blah, blah, blah. Not running physically. Cause that's insane. And I'm not David Goggins. I mean, running a business, but we'll do that. And I've done that

so many different ways, right? I've done it where, Hey man, just show up. Don't worry about it. I'm not David Goggins. I mean, running a business, but we'll do that. And I've done that so many different ways, right? I've done it where, Hey man, just show up. Don't worry about it. I'm doing this for free. Cause you guys all work here and we'll call and include it. And I've done it where I've said it costs you a hundred bucks a month, which is not a lot of money to a lot of these folks, but it's something. And I can tell you right now, every single time when they part with their money for the information, they take it more serious and they do better. When it's a free course, it's here, it's fine. So a lot of people say stuff. I see a lot of negativity in those comments sometimes where people are like, why

would somebody that's a millionaire have to charge this to help other people? And the answer to that is my answer. Let's hear your answer first. I'll tell you my answer. Go ahead. Well, they don't understand that it's in the benefit of that person to move, to pay something, to be invested, to move forward. I agree with you. There's a lot of things that I've done for free that people never move forward with. I've done the, you know, the, the studio, um, uh, blue wire, like where I've gotten people on there for free. Some people don't even show up. Like I have no idea why, but anyways, I actually,

you can take the floor from that. My answer to that is this people that reach a certain level of success, right? And take Cody Spurber, Spurber, the Spurbs, like I mentioned earlier, that dude does like pace Morby.

That dude does so much. I don't, he's on the road more than like the freaking rolling stones he's just always somewhere with his with his tribe and i heard he like spoke like at like 100 plus places last year dude it's crazy the dude is somewhere all the time yeah but he genuinely loves and a lot of people i know that are very very wealthy genuinely want to give back they want to see the next generation come up they want to part with their knowledge they want to give back. They want to see the next generation come up. They want to part with their knowledge. They want to do this, but they understand at its core, if they give it away for free, people won't value what they're saying because what's the value of something that's free

zero. You didn't pay for it. There's no, there's nothing involved. So on some of that stuff, I, I disagree with a lot of the comments. I know luckily none of the people that are doing a lot of the expose stuff have really said this is a problem. But where the problem lies is when you're just full of shit about your background, when you're selling a course based on something you can't really do or you have not really done or you're misrepresenting facts, figures, numbers of what is going to happen, right? That's where there is a definite problem.

But there's a lot of good people out there. Let's get back to PR. I know we kind of took a little, little segue there. It was just fresh in my mind. Cause that just, that just happened. And you knew what I was talking about. If I'm, if I'm somebody that wants to get some PR, what is the best bang for my buck that I want to go out and get? I would say, you know, get paid placements like paid TV or things like that. A lot of people don't know, but you can reach out to your local city and ask if there's paid segments. Um, and then do that. Like it could be a couple hundred bucks. Um, you're talking about like the day, the daytime wake up, wake up Las Vegas. Yeah. Like morning blend here. Uh, there's another one here, Las Vegas now, or something like that, where, you know, where they have them here, they do paid segments here. Oh yeah. So, um, you can do that. And a lot

of people think there's this misconception online that like, if, if it's paid, it's like somehow less credible now. And that's just, just such a load of BS paying for things as speed. Right. And I say this, actually the best analogy, I said this a little earlier today, not here, but I said this earlier where, you know, I said this a little earlier today, not here, but I said this earlier where, you know, we have this client, his name's Cliff Brooks. He's in the health space. A lot of people that are in the health and fitness space, the clients of theirs just want to look good naked. They want to have abs like they, you know, do it for super superficial reasons. However, for Cliff, the story is a little bit different. His dad passed away when he was

young. And because of that, I mean, he's- He's trying to live as long as he can for his kids. Exactly. And that's the reason I started working out is because of his mission. I don't care about looking good naked, but I have a daughter that I want to be here for a long time. I bet there's a woman somewhere that would argue with that, Ulysses.

Yeah, I bet. There's women everywhere that argue with that. That hopes you're concerned a little bit about it. Yeah. And, you know, for, for, for Cliff, like just because he gets on a TV spot that's paid, it doesn't make his story any less credible. Like it doesn't make it any less genuine. It's not different.

Yeah. And nothing else happens other than the fact that it was a sponsor. It was an advertisement, right? So what, because you saw something that's sponsored, you're now not going to take into account the story and want to do something about it. That's just, to me, it's stupid. But those are my thoughts on that. So people really say, ah, it's a stigma.

I don't want to go on TV. I'm not paying for that. Oh, yeah. Somehow they're better than that. Somehow, like, oh, if the media just build and they'll come. If I'm good at what I'll do, the media is going to come to me now doesn't work that way now god because they don't even know you they should be beating my doors down where's your media where are you people this is ridiculous exactly my doors down that's why like man it's that entitlement or

i don't know what it is but it's just insane to me that people think that they're going to be so good better than everybody else out there that they're going to me that people think that they're going to be so good, better than everybody else out there, that they're going to get that person, that one person that's going to be like, you know what? I like you. Let me go ahead and interview you. Yeah. They're waiting for that moment so they can feel good on their high horse. You know what it is? I think it's ego.

It's ego. People think it's cheating. I think people compare paid PR to buying followers on Instagram or buying likes or whatever else, which I do not recommend, which I have done, which I was recommended to do it many years ago. And I've been battling with that ever since. Because it does not help you in the long run. Believe me, it does not. And if you're one of my fake followers watching this on Instagram, please stop. Just go away. I don't care. Beat it. I really don't care. Go away. You know, one thing that I want to mention about that, because that's you bring up a really great point is the, the, the followers thing, they do compare it to the, like the paid PR. And I understand why, like there's people that obviously just get paid PR and it's like, Oh, how this guy makes X amount of money and like retired his mom or something like that. Right. Where the story, you know, is 100 percent, maybe not fabricated, maybe it's true, but they're all trying to sell you on this like pipe, you know, this dream life. Right. Right.

The luxury life that I understand. But I think everybody associates paid PR with that, that they fail to recognize that there's genuine stories that just can't get out there that need a little help and that need the push and that's why we do the p you know paid me uh pr and that's why i have a big uh i'm a big advocate for that type of stuff but i understand where people come from with that because they associate it fake followers you're just fake you're just this right you're fake yeah but the whole industry isn't like that no you know that's well i mean you got at the end of the day i mean fortune 500 companies have pr farms for a reason yep you know they that's, well, I mean, you gotta, at the end of the day, I mean, fortune 500 companies have PR firms for a reason. Yep. You know, they're not, you know, when the new McGriddle is coming out, you know, nobody at the New York times is banging down the door to write an article on that. But somebody will do a taste test. So there you go. So yeah, I think that's it. I think,

I think it does kind of get a bad rep a little bit in those angles, but I think it's not there. So again, back to this, let's say I come to you. I do my day. I do my day show. What should I plan? If I'm going to do a spot, what should I have planned out? Um, if you're going to do TV, you definitely need to plan soundbites. Um, are you familiar with like Vivek Ramaswamy? No, no. Okay. Well, he's a political candidate that he was. Okay. Jesus. Yes, of course. My God. Yeah. Okay. He was running for president.

You idiot. No, no, no. I do. Yes, of course. I know he is. Well, he's phenomenal at soundbites. He's great. He's great on TV.

He's great on, you know, his messaging is the same everywhere. Right. And on longer form podcasts, he does phenomenal as well. But I think he really shines in the five minute to 10 minute segments. So if you're going to plan, you just got to know your end goal for each, right? Number one for articles, people are not going to read through the entire article. So you got to control what they see, control what they skim. For TV, you got to make sure you have your sound bites down. What do they actually need to know? And it has, it can't be technical like the guy that you had on your show,

because then people are going to go, you know, they're just not going to pay attention. And then for podcasts, that's when you kind of have to show your convictions and your beliefs, because if you don't even believe what, you know what you're saying, then it's like, it's very easy for somebody else to just, can I tell you about my biggest failure in this arena?

For sure. This is a sad story, folks. It's a sad story. Once upon a time, many, many moons ago, your favorite podcast host here was on a reality show.

You didn't know that? I saw that. I was fired by the 44th president of the United States on TV. Well, anyway, after you get fired from old Mr. Trump, the next day you're in New York and you go do press. You're running around New York and you're going on. I'm not talking about wake up Las Vegas. I'm talking about MSNBC power launchgas i'm talking about msnbc power launch i'm talking about good morning america i'm talking about i'm sorry the today show you are on the

creme de la creme of television shows so here i am i'm like okay we'd plan this for eight weeks because you know show was already shot so no i was getting fired yeah plans for eight weeks my tech firm spun up a new real quick portal that we liked, WebPopper, that we could just capture a lot of domain registration traffic, whatever. All of that stuff. Had it all laid out. I'm going to go on. This is the message.

I'm just hitting WebPopper over and over and over and over and over. Go on my first show, which was a filmed MSNBC Power Lunch first. So I'm like, this is great NBC power launch first. So like, this is great. This is business. People watching this. I'm going to capture the shit out of this. Yeah.

No, I'm sorry. That's not true. It was Fox and friends. Sorry. Cause it was the day before. And what we talk about for the entire three minute, four minute segment that I'm on there is they talk about how much I look like

Vince Vaughn at the time where they like put his face up in my face and they're comparing his hair and this. And I'm like, Oh, making jokes about it. This and that blah, blah, blah. And I'm just about to start. And they're like, okay, thanks for joining us. And I'm like, I literally just wasted this moment. So I think your point about being prepared for going on these things is so clutch because you're getting, I mean, I get it. It's their show, but you're going to have to take control. Would you agree with that? Have to. Vivek does that amazingly.

Like they'll try to spin it or they'll try to like take him down a rabbit hole and he doesn't have that conversation. He has a conversation that he wants to have. Yeah. That's great. I know what I want to talk about. Yeah. Fuck.

So I should, I said, I said, that's like my biggest regret for the whole thing was those interviews where I just got spun out. Dude, I feel you. I've done the same thing. Terrible. Yeah. See, I said, I said, that's like my biggest regret for the whole thing was those interviews where I just got spun out. Dude, I feel you. I've done the same thing. Terrible.

Yeah. See, I needed a PR per, I needed a good PR person to coach me on this Ulysses. That's when I needed it. Time. And where were you, man? You were, no, I'll tell you where you were. You were in fifth grade. That's where I saw that.

I'm like, Oh shoot. Like, yeah, that was deep. It was deep. It was a while ago, but yeah, at this point it's like talking about how many touchdowns I scored in high school, which is none, by the way. Zero on that too. So yeah, it's a little goofy, but he keeps running for president.

So as long as he's alive, it stays relevant. That's true. Hey man, I'll keep riding that. I'll ride that horse till she bucks me, I guess. A good way to look at it. So your clients that you get on, what is, when you onboard them, what's the structure like, how do you get them from A to Z? What do you plan for them? I mean, tell me what it's like to be one of your clients. Number one, I would say, you know, results don't, don't, aren't the only thing that matters. Like a lot of people think that it's just the only

thing that matters, but it's not like, you know, experience matters a lot as well. And I think that's what the clients pay me for too. Cause if you go to a steakhouse and you have the best steak in the world, but like the waiter, you know, forgets about you, doesn't bring you the bill, never, you know, give you your drink, uh, or she does come and she's like, yeah, I'll go get it. And she never comes to go get it. By the way, that waiter works at Outback Steakhouse just down on Stephanie. Cause she waited on me. She waited on me last night. Don't even start to keep going. I'm sorry. No, but she works at Outback Steakhouse, that waiter. And we've all experienced, you know, but she works at Outback Save House, that waiter. We've all experienced, you know, that.

And it's just the worst, right? Like, it just sucks because you're like, man, the food was good, but like the service here sucks and people are going to review, you know, make reviews about the service. So because of that, you can't just provide the result. You have to provide an amazing service experience. So because of that, onboarding matters because of that, the intimacy or the engagement with the client matters. Um, everything essentially matters there. Like for example, um, you know, quick story with like Brandon Dawson, when he was

going to New York city to do like a few interviews and the billboard and things like that, like we, we prepared the entire agenda for him. Right. So instead of like having just his team worry about that, we prepare it for him. So instead of having just his team worry about that, we prepared it for him. So he knew exactly where he needed to be at every single time. When we did the Blue Wire interview with him, immediately when we were done,

I had him on a Zoom call with four different writers at publications so we can get that done 15, 30 minutes, and then he's out. So understanding that, number one, they're busy, so opportunity cost is huge for them. And number two, making it as easy as possible for them to do whatever is needed.

And get back to life. Yeah. Get back to life. How'd you get Ed Milet? How'd you get Ed? Well, initially I didn't know. I mean, what he is now, like, I didn't know that he was, you know, he was going to be that or. This was, so this was pre Ed Milet.

This was just Ed. Yeah. This was Ed. In fact, I didn't know how big he was going to be that, or this was, so this was pre Ed, my lad, this was just Ed. Yeah. This was Ed. In fact, I didn't know how big he was until we closed him. Um, because I didn't, I didn't speak to him when we closed him. Um, it was one of our sales reps and they're like, man, he's so huge. Like he's friends with Tony Robbins. He's like, and I'm like, you know what? Everybody says that everybody says they're so big. Who isn with tony robbins in their own mind right 100 i walked on fire we're buddies no yeah and everybody that at that time at least because we were just selling press alone so it was like ego-based primarily that was my thought everybody thinks that they're really big so you know to me it was like just another another day um and it

wasn't until we started working with him i'm like holy fuck like this this guy is actually very very big um we made the connection to ed my let with ryan stuman and ryan got you know ed on uh you know a couple pieces and then you know ryan stuman invested into ed stuff and then i just started noticing like ed blowing up you know um so we were very blessed him was blowing up in the last, in the last year and a half. He he's really blown up. A hundred percent. His apex facility in Dallas is something to see, man. Yeah.

He's, he's killing it. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, at the time it was, it was a blessing in disguise. And I mean, he didn't, he, I mean, it's not like he did a whole big things with, you know, a whole big thing with us. He got maybe like five ish, you know, plus articles. Um, so it wasn't like a whole thing.

And then we helped him out with a couple of other stuff that I won't mention. But other than that, it was a good experience, you know, and obviously the name allowed me to get another big name and another big name and just kind of work, work, work. Daisy changed his way up. The, the snow whitening, the teeth whitening thing. Did you catch them early? No, you got them. He was a major success already. He was already there. there yeah so it was so easy for us yeah it's like hi uh we're the best

thing since sliced bread can you help us make us popular sure no problem i got i got it it's easy yeah yeah and when you have clients like that i mean it's just you want to ride that momentum too it's like man get them on everything even like because normally there's a certain set of deliverables i mean we do that and then some, right. Cause obviously we want to do more than just fulfill the contract. What about, what about crisis man? Anybody, anybody like get a black little, little bit of a black mark on their nose and then hit you up and say, Hey, I need some help to change this image. I try not to. Yeah.'s pushing uphill. Yeah, it's pushing uphill. And number two, I don't know enough to really know if I can help combat this or not.

Have you been approached with this before? Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of people that like, hey, you know, I have Reddit threads about me or hey, I'm on ripoff reporter, things like that. And, you know, I'm not a lawyer. Like, I don't know your side. I don't know his side. And what happens if I, and this has happened before where we've worked with the client and we, you know, help blow them up.

And then it turns out like, I mean, they're being investigated or, you know, things like that. We don't know it at the time, you know, and it's very hard to know that type of stuff. Yeah. Um, you know, so I try not to. Because what's the dumbest thing somebody's ever done? Me or somebody else? No, not you.

Don't know somebody else. Like say you said somebody else went up with something and then somebody called you and said, holy shit, man, this guy just went off the rails. Thank you, ladies. I'm assuming it's a guy that would do this. No, it is. It is.

Not sexist, assuming it's a guy. Okay, so we have one client where we got him a ton of big press and he wasn't happy with it. And he was happy with a Medium article that he got, thinking that a Medium article was bigger than the stuff that we had gotten him in Entrepreneur and like all this type of stuff. And because of that, he burnt bridges with the people at Entrepreneur.com over a Medium article. And for people that don't know, Medium is free. You can log in right now and post an article and i have no idea how he came to that conclusion um i mean in fact he actually he we went out we uh what is it called when you go to like court it's like small small claims okay he he tried suing me on that. And I'm like, I have no idea from like,

to this day, how somebody believes a medium article is more credible and more just bigger than an entrepreneur, a Forbes, a fast company, things like that. I would say that's pretty dumb. Yeah. I'm going to agree. I'm going to totally agree with you. Let's say I'm somebody that wanted to do my PR by myself without hiring you. What would I do? First things first is end result, right? What's the end goal in mind? After you know that you can work backwards from that because you don't need to do everything.

But I would say right now, because I just took a look at a stat not so long ago, like 80% of like internet consumption at the moment is video. So if you know that, then you know, if you try to get an article, it's not going to matter too much. That's like the 20%. So you want to do the stuff that matters a lot at the moment is video. If you know that, then you know if you try to get an article, it's not going to matter too much. That's like the 20%. You want to do the stuff that matters a lot at the moment. Right now, it's video. That means doing podcasts. That means doing more of that.

If you're just starting out, number one, focus on the end goal. What is it you're looking to accomplish? Is it more exposure? Is it more revenue? Is it more whatever? What's the best avenue to that? Because it might not be podcast. If you're looking to control the narrative and, you know, get articles that way, when people look you up and it's not going to be

pods, it's going to be something else. Um, and then just kind of, I would say start that way. All right. Well, if they want us, if they want to accelerate time and they wanted to work with you, how do they find you? Um, you can find me on Instagram or really any social media at Ulysses or my website, influenceandpress.com. Okay, cool. Well, dude, thanks for coming by. A very enlightening talk. God, it's been a long day already.

Enlightening talk about PR. So glad to see you, dude. Thanks for coming in. You're welcome anytime you want to come back through. I appreciate it. Thank you. Guys, we'll see you next week again with another awesome episode of Escaping the Drift.

See you next time. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review. Give us a share.

Do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.