Living The Red Life - PR Secrets & Owning Your Online Reputation with Cesar Hernandez

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

How do you build brand credibility and online authority as you grow your business in new areas? And how can you do this using PR? Cesar Hernandez is the CEO of the top tech PR and Lobbying firm in the US, Omni Public, and he's been opening doors for Rudy recently in the Tampa Bay area.Does it actually matter what people say and think about you online these days, or can you just run ads and sell products? How do we not just control our own narrative, but amplify it too for maximum effect in a sea of SEO content? Are you Googling yourself to see what's out there about you?Cesar is a PR powerhouse, elucidating the importance of building media relationships that you can then leverage for the right story, rather than just pushing out press releases and expecting to gain traction. The importance of shaping your story, and accumulating what is effectively an online resume, cannot be underestimated in the face of a media outlet that might choose to harp on one bad review.Learn how to control your digital assets, create organic content that includes a Call To Action, and try your own PR campaign by offering yourself up as the expert in your field in this fascinating episode of Living The Red Life that will help you open doors you never thought possible. It's Wonderland baby, come on in! "Your brand is gonna consistently follow you. And if you don't tell that narrative, the media will dominate that narrative for you, because of the SEO juice (high domain rankings)." ~ Cesar HernandezIn This Episode:The power of owning your narrative online (in the face of traditional media)How to develop relationships with journalists (rather than pitching stories)Are you Googling yourself? Generating a good reputation online over timeHow to command and control your digital assetsOffering yourself up as the expert in your field when generating local PRWhat is the step you need to take to break into national media? How do you choose the right PR agency to work with? Connect with Cesar Hernandez:Website - https://omnipublic.global/LinkedIn - Cesar R. Hernandez | LinkedInInstagram - Cesar R. Hernandez (@cesarhernandezprime) • Instagram photos and videosConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/rudymawer/Instagram - www.instagram.com/rudymawerlifeFacebook -

And here's the kicker, media is hyper-connected. So say a publisher likes you, likes your story, they'll text their friend, hey, we just ran this story, maybe you should do another story, but let's put it on MSNBC, right? The relationship carries it through, they magnify it on social media,

but then they magnify it through their actual relationships. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Hello and welcome. Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life.

I'm excited today. We are going to dive into the world of PR, some branding, how to build credibility, how to build authority. And I have my dear friend on here that helps me do exactly that. So what is going on? Welcome. Thanks for joining us. Rudy, what's going on? Good, sir. It's always a pleasure to be speaking to you. So just to give you guys, my audience, a bit of a catch up, we grew, obviously I've been online for many years. We, about two years ago, went all in on the office side. So actually in the last two years, we grew two offices,

Tampa, Miami, and actually next month, we opened a London office. And until that point, I did not care about anything local. I was like, I'm traveling the world. I'm an entrepreneur, a nomad. I traveled the world for two years. And then when we started going local, I'm like, actually, I want to become more famous here because there's a lot of connections here. It helped. I built up to 50 employees in office. So I want to build a reputation here to help me get more employees, more events, getting more doors. And that's obviously how we got connected because you're obviously in Tampa and you've helped me start building those local connections in all of

Tampa and now in Miami. And obviously you have a vast PR background and you've done it for many years, not just local, but obviously worldwide and around the whole US. So maybe it'd be good just to have a quick one minute intro on how you got here and now what you're doing in terms of the PR and branding world. Yeah, absolutely. So 30,000 for level, right? Cesar Hernandez, founder of Omni Public. We're a full suite public affairs government relations firm that specializes in introducing new concepts and ideas into the marketplace that we navigate media, government and industry. So just very fancy way of saying that I'm a publicist, but I'm also a lobbyist.

I've been fortunate enough to work with companies such as Tesla, Uber, Hyperloop, BirdRide, Ford, Porsche. At this point in my career, over 250 public officials, startups, and executives. And I'm obsessed with it. I'm obsessed with shifting public opinion and shifting media and overall positive sentiment for the objectives of my clients. And I've been doing this for about 15 years now. And it wasn't until I had a conversation with Shubh where I started thinking about scaling my knowledge. Sure. So let's ask that first question. Does it actually matter what people really say and think about you online that much these days? Or can you just run ads and sell products?

Yeah, it absolutely matters, right? Your brand, you know, is better than anybody else, is going to consistently follow you. And if you don't tell that narrative, the media will dominate that narrative for you because of the SEO juice, right? High domain rankings. So you may have outstanding social media content, right? But say the Daily Mail, which is like pseudo tabloid, writes a negative piece, it's going to be very difficult to take that down and to do reverse SEO.

So branding is everything, right? Think about the difference between like if a Rui Maurer puts out a product versus someone who's brand spanking you, right? Your brand actually carries you. So you always got to be mindful as to like if i'm focused on my brand what is the media's perception of me right is it positive is it negative and if it's negative how can i neutralize it so that i can control the narrative of my brand and my searchability so i love that how does it a lot of people are watching this and i've realized that right over years and

years that and you know it's kind of they say uh watching this and I've realized that right over the years and years and you know, it's kind of, they say, I think Warren Buffett says though, hey, the one thing you can never take away is like your name, right? And what people say about you. And really what I think most people understand by that is, oh, just, you know, be a good person.

Don't rip anyone off, be good in business and you'll be okay. But it's actually not that case. That's part of it, obviously. But what you actually have to do is work hard to amplify what people say about you, right? Because yes, obviously you don't want anyone saying anything bad, but you also want to work hard

that when people hear your name, everyone jumps on and goes, oh my God, that guy, wow. Versus being very neutral where they're like, oh yeah God, that guy, wow. Versus being very neutral, where they're like, oh yeah, I know that person. Yeah, seems a cool dude, right? Versus wow, that person's the best. Oh my God, how'd you know them? Oh my God, they're amazing, right? So changing that perception is so important, especially in most of our industries, which are very small industries, right? The internet marketing and social media world is very clicky. It's very small. So I think you've got a CPR, like you said, as like controlling the narrative, super great way

of saying it, but also amplifying the narrative. So how can we, you know, help our listeners today? How can they amplify the narrative? So one good thing is number one, I'm a big proponent of pitching a relationship, not a story. What does that mean? Right? If you pitch a relationship with a reporter or a journalist, don't force them to write about you. Try to cultivate a relationship where the byproduct becomes stories. Because here's what happens. Say you sit down with the publisher or president of a business journal, right? And you say, I don't have a story, but how can I submit my expertise into what you're working on? Right? The byproduct, because I'm going to get a story down the line, but what ends up happening is now say they write about me or the company, then they can go on their channels.

And since there's a relationship, they can share it widely. And here's a kicker. Media is hyper connected. So say a publisher likes you, likes your story. They'll text their friend. Hey, we just ran this story. Maybe you should do another story, but let's put it on MSNBC, right? The relationship carries it through.

They magnify it on social media, but then they magnify it through their actual relationships, right? So oftentimes people put up a press release on a wire and they get all these like reshares. It's not real because what you want is an organic piece that an actual reporter is going to write and can share with other reporters. And that domain ranking is going to be superbly high. And so the way to magnify it is picture the relationship. When you get a story, ask them to magnify it through social media and to share with their colleagues. Yeah, I love that. And I often do this activity with my members. And I think we did it when we did it live together.

I say, Google yourself, right? Because what you don't realize is even if you're not networking in local rooms and blah, blah, blah, even if you're a beginner, you think this doesn't matter about you. The second you run ads, the second you try and sell a product online, especially when it's high ticket, i.e. a lot of money, people are Googling you, right? They're going to your Instagram, they're going to Google. So that is really like an extended sales page nowadays. So you've got to make sure that's all squared away. And most of you, right, if you're listening to this now, Google yourself because it won't be that pretty, right? It'll be a bunch of random stuff or

nothing, which is even worse because if you're charging five grand for a coaching program or whatever you're selling, if I Google you and I don't see anything, I'm probably not buying it. So I like to leverage PR to, like you say, I want to control the narrative and I actually want to paint the narrative how I want it to be to actually improve the buying journey, which especially when you get to my level and you're spending millions on ads and you're working with celebrities. And, you know, we actually just became business partners

with Les Brown, very famous motivational speaker and his right-hand kind of COO and partner that's behind the scenes that does all this legal and everything. You know, when I first met him and spoke to him, he goes, I just spent the last week Googling you, researching you, looking at all your bad reviews, all your complaints, all your testimonials, all your achievements. And, you know, he said, you've done a great job.

You're very successful. And obviously you have a few complaints from customers that maybe didn't do the work or show up or whatever, but you've done a ton of great stuff. So you've got to realize, and you can't go in four years time and say, oh, now I want to be successful in this big speaker or whatever. I'm going to fix this because it takes years, right? Like it's something you should invest in now, because then when you have that Les Brown

moment, as an example, like I did where they're betting you, right? Or any of the celebrities I work with, you can't just go away and fix that in a week you're going to improve it a lot with people like you obviously that's your job but over time you want to build that like a resume or a portfolio well would you agree or any comments on that yeah this is my comment is yes to all the things and right now we are we've reached a level in our society that no one else in the entire conversation of human history is at. And here it is. We can produce our own content, right? Whereas previously, the press dominated what someone can say about you right and so what you just said was like look i read everything the good and the bad and maybe there was somebody that showed up and it was because

they didn't do the work but i guarantee you they probably read that right through a google review through the rebuttals right whereas if that if that didn't exist, the media would have just said, hey, look, there's one bad actor doesn't like Rudy Maurer and then they're going to harp on that. Whereas now it's like, hey, there's one bad actor, but here's all these Google reviews.

Here was our rebuttals. And on top of that, here's a layer of Rudy's content and followers and people that are engaging with him. So they're going to overwhelmingly neutralize what any negative commentary or negative sentiment would happen because it would overshadow. So now people have like this big body of work from which to make

a judgment or a case. And in your case, it worked out, right? Yep. Yep. Love that. So how, give us three simple steps for people listening that are like, okay, I need to get, start getting going with all this PR and branding and all this sort of stuff. Because, you know, obviously when you start as an entrepreneur, you're doing 101 things, right? So give us three simple steps that these people listening, you know, the people that are maybe under a million in revenue, small team, or just them, maybe an assistant, how can they start doing

this without crazy agencies, crazy fees, hundreds of hours invested? Cool. I mean, I would say number one, you have to command and own your digital assets, right? And here's what I mean. Find your domain name, right? So jangdo.com, purchase it, put a landing site on it, put your bio, hyperlinks to social media. Also open up a ton of social media, open up a Pinterest, a Twitter, a Crunchbase, a LinkedIn, right? Every single social media that you have. And the reason is because you want to tie that IP address to your name on Google. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of

value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return. What I would love is for you to subscribe and leave a review. The reviews and the subscription grows the podcast. It allows me to bring you even better guests. It allows me to invest even more time and money into this podcast to bring you the latest and greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business, and giving you all the tools, the mindset hacks, the knowledge, and the environment you need to be successful. So do me a favor, if you've got any amount of value from today's episode so far, or any previous episode,

or any of the content I've done, it would mean the world to me if you hit a five-star review, give us your feedback on the show, the episodes, and subscribe and download. Plus, if you do that and send me a screenshot on Instagram, at RudyMoreLife, I will send you a bunch of my free training, marketing courses, sales courses worth $499. Yes, $500 worth of courses for a simple 30-second review. It would mean the world to me. Send me that screenshot. I would love for you to leave that review and I would appreciate

it very, very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome. So let's get back into the episode. I appreciate you guys and let's dive back in. So if something bad was to happen, you'll see all the, let's say of negative press comes, it has to compete with the existing domain rankings of all your social media and your landing page. And so you're starting to control your digital assets. So that's the first thing. Number two is you want to begin to create content. And I don't mean like it doesn't have to be like, you know, something that you would produce, but LinkedIn newsletters, right? Reels on Instagram, right? Things that are organic to you and to your audience. And within that, you want to have a call to action, right? So be able to grab their information, whether it's

emails or phone numbers, right? And here's why. Because number three, try your own PR campaign, right? And this is what you would do. Reach out to the local journalists in your city that are doing something adjacent to your industry and offer yourself up as an expert, right? Once they, you offer yourself up as an expert, don't pitch a story and say, Hey, I actually want to have you on a morning show. Fantastic. You get on the morning show, you tell your followers that you have all their emails. Hey, I'm about to be on this morning show. And then they go on, they click, they see you on the morning show, and then you drop content on your social media with a call to action. So now you use the credibility with your followers.

They reshared it. You magnify what you've been able to do. And then now you're collecting all that information and data and you rinse and repeat and you point them in the direction of your call to action, whether it's to purchase a widget or whether it's to follow your brand for more content. And that's, you don't need an agency

to do that, right? That's like, you can do that right now. Love that. So yeah, I mean, we talked about owning all your socials, working on that page, want to Google, getting some free PR locally.

What about, you know, if they want to step it up a little, some easy ways, like some of the, you know, the Forbes councils and all those things, or getting on local TV, you know, like, obviously, it's not as premium as a real organic, you know, piece. But what would you say are like that next step where they want to invest a little money, but they don't want to go crazy but adds a bit of authority so i would say that the next step that you would want to do is if you want to try to get in break into uh national media right here's here's a tip that publicists use look at say if you want to get it published in the New York Times, right? Everybody's sending emails, cover me, cover me, cover me, cover me. Look at the most influential individual that you

want to write about you, right? And then do two things. Number one, see which social media has the lowest form of engagement for that individual. And typically eight times out of 10, it'll be LinkedIn. Shoot them a LinkedIn DM, not on IG if they have 3 million followers, right? Not on Twitter if they have 2 million followers, their team is going to get that. But LinkedIn, if it's not a lot of following, that means their team is engaged with that. They're seeing a lot more often, DM them, right? Now, when you DM them, this is what you're going to say, invite them over to your platform. Hey, I have a Twitter space where I'm talking about what you're working on. So now you'll have the most credible journalist

in your arena coming into your space, discussing your industry, right. And now what happens is you can still get the moniker as seen in the wall street journal, because I had a journalist on Twitter space from the wall street journal, having a dialogue with us. And then they're going to give you their, their personal email. Right. So when you're, you're, you're dialoguing with them, say, Hey, share with me your email. Cause I want to get connected with you. And if I have any other story ideas, I'll shoot it over to you. So first find them where there's going to be less traction, provide value to them by inviting them over to your platform, and then engage on a personal email. Because if you're going to, if you're asking them for their media email it gets

bombarded by publicists all day long right and now you rinse and repeat with say five to ten of the most dominant journalists within your industry and then what essentially is going to start happening is you'll command the media attention through these relationships that's actually what tim ferris did with his whole ideology of a thousand true fans is he found the other most dominant journalist created a relationship and now he's able to like just dominate anything that he puts out nice give me give me a couple more of the secrets so i'm before i move on so like you've got the that harrow right those sites some of those other sites where you know these solo

entrepreneurs they don't have the press budget to work with people like you until they do you know hopefully one day they will where else can they have their assistant or themselves start looking and start pitching yeah so you can always reach out to harrow the challenge with harrow's when you're answering those queries it might take an entire day and they may not write about you. And they're typically just like a sentence or like a quote from you. Right. So you could do that as a gift for SEO. But what I would what I would recommend is here's a here's a quick secret is locally.

Right. There's maybe five TV stations and they all have an info desk. Right. right there's maybe five tv stations and they all have an info desk right now if you have some kind of announcement you want to you want to schedule it to go out to those info desks at around 6 7 a.m right if you schedule it go 6 7 a.m at nine o'clock they go into their editorial meetings so at 8 30 you call them and you're going to say hey did you get this press release that i sent out right and they're going to say yes or no they're going to and you're going to say, hey, did you get this press release that I sent out? Right. And they're going to say yes or no. They're going to be they're going to be rushing you all.

You know, we got this going on. Like, look, did you get the release? Yes or no. They're going to say, yes, we did. We're interested. We're going into editorial meeting at nine. Some are going to say, actually, I didn't get it. It's a lie. But they want to see if you're actually going to go and resend this.

So it's the top of their inbox. Right now, nine o'clock happens nine to ten o'clock. They have their planning meetings. You call them at 10 Oh two. Hey, are you interested in doing it? Actually? It's a slow day. Can you interview today? That's local nationally. There's only about eight to 10 dominant national booking producers, right? You do the exact same thing, but you do it the day before you look at what's trending on Twitter. And if, if it's adjacent to like what you're working on your expertise, you send it out to the booking producers at 7.00 AM and you do the exact same thing that you would do for local, but you would do it nationally. And then you send them, you

don't send them a press release. You send them what's called a pundit advisory that says, Hey, I'm Rudy Maurer. Here's my bio. I'm an expert in XYZ. This is what's trending. And I can speak on XYZ was trending. You call them. Hey, did you get our press release about, about this pundit? Yes, we did. We're going into our editorial meeting at nine. You call them again at 10 or two and I'll say, Hey, is Rudy available today at three o'clock to go live on Cheddar? You can hire an EA to do that every day, right? Simple. Or you can hire an agency, but all we're going to do is maybe prep you and we'll get there. We'll get there a lot quicker. But those are kind of like tips and tricks that I'm kind of letting you in on from these different PR firms, different promises. Obviously, you've kind of come into this industry, but you've been in PR a long time before. So what is,

you know, how does someone, if they're looking at it and they're getting pitched, oh, you can get picked, you can get on blah, blah, blah here, blah, blah, blah here. Hey, this is our retainer. How do you pick a good agency or how do you pick the right you know people to work with you on your pr side yeah so uh this is what i'll recommend if you're looking for an agency first of all agencies are specific like i'm really good with entrepreneurs and um tech yeah that is my forte it's my arena i'd say i couldn't do others but i'm good at that. So you want an agency that's niche because they have an expertise and the relationships to dig deep into that, right? Business press, tech press, entrepreneurs, business side of things like that is what

we specialize in. And also we do a little bit political, right? But that's more on like the lobbying and on the policy side. So you want to speak to PR agencies that have a book of business within your arena because they have those relationships. So that's the first thing. The second thing, when you're talking to them, are they willing to go month to month? Right. Because if you go month to month, that means that what's happening is I'm taking the risk off of you and putting it on my team, right? So the way that we build our proposals, we go month to month, but up to six months, right? And if I don't deliver within that given month, I'll issue your money back or I won't charge you. Now, typically, if you've been doing it for a long time, you know that you can reach into your relationships and you can deliver X amount of publications because you have that relationship.

If they use words like, oh, we're going to have a discovery call. We're going to see who covers it. That's a red flag, right? It should be, I have an editor that's going to cover you that does X, Y, Z because I have a relationship, right? And the next thing you want to ask for is you want to ask for client referrals, right? And you want to ask for screenshots of their latest national press that they delivered, right? So a good agency is delivering millions and millions of dollars a week in earned press. So they should be able to dig, hey, here's five days ago, Fox Business has just reached

out to me. Here's three days ago, the Wall Street Journal. If they're saying, hey, six months ago, I got somebody on Forbes. It's like, how often does that happen? Right. I just got a client on Forbes last week. Right. I can send you the hyperlink.

Here's the engagement. Here's me speaking to the reporter. Right. So a good agency is going to produce that and say, absolutely, this is what we've been able to do. I'll be able to do that. I'll de-risk you, put the risk on that agency. So you're really buying in in some ways you want to look and buy into their connections, right? Like, hey, you've spent 10 years building these connections.

I want to buy into those to leverage some of those, for example. So, but I'm brokering a relationship that I've cultivated over 10, 15, 20 years for my clients. Yeah, love that. Great. So just in closing, if someone wants to learn more about you or learn some PR tips, or over time, you know, if they're growing and they want to hand it off and kind of, you know, just work with you to do some of that PR for them, where do they find you? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can, you can email me at ch at Omni public.global that's O M N I P U B L I C.global or hit me up on LinkedIn, Cesar Hernandez or Instagram Cesar Hernandez prime. I don't have to memorialize anything, especially if you're working with Rudy

for me to give just good advice and then kind of take it from there. I love it. And final comment on the whole PR branding game. What would you say to someone building their brand online now? You have an opportunity like none other in the course of human history

to produce your own content, to dominate the media landscape. To give you an example, you can now dominate mainstream media and emerging media. So imagine you commanding media within YouTube, Twitter spaces, LinkedIn Lives, IG, content, and now now I dominated with mainstream media and you bring those two together and you essentially become just this tremendous voice. It's good and bad because we have a following, you can neutralize it. Or if somebody does have a following over you, they'll destroy you. So you have to start considering these things if you're a serious entrepreneur from now. Love it.

All right. Well, that is a wrap. Thank you so much for coming on and breaking down this crazy world of PR. I learned a lot of this over the last, I think I learned a lot of this over the last probably seven years. I spent a lot of money, a lot of failed effort, a lot of this over the last probably seven years i spent a lot of money a lot of failed effort a lot of failed time so i really appreciate all the advice i know my members will and listeners will because it's a scary game but it's a game you should start to build even if

you're not that big right now um obviously you're around to support them and i know you'll come in uh to do a live for our mastermind members and break this down in more depth too, which I'm super excited for. But thank you for coming on and everyone listening. Get started on this. I promise you, you'll be really glad you did in a few years when you're more famous, more well-known, when people Google you, they want to work with you. You're getting speaker opportunities on TV, on the news. It will change the game of business for you and it will make your parents proud too. Until next time, guys, keep living the red life. Caesar, thank you. I'll see you

very soon. Take care, everyone. And I'll see you next week. Thank you.