The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The PR Playbook: The essential guide for startups, entrepreneurs and lean organizations by Ronjini Joshua

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

The PR Playbook: The essential guide for startups, entrepreneurs and lean organizations by Ronjini Joshua Amazon.com Here's a secret...You don't need to hire a PR agency for a quality PR program, you just have to understand PR. The PR Playbook is not just a book about public relations but is a workbook designed to enable any entrepreneur, marketing pro or startup CEO to understand the basic principles of working with the media and create a successful PR plan themselves.Ronjini Joshua is the founder and CEO of The Silver Telegram a PR agency serving tech startups, discussing the importance of branding at every stage of your company and the truths about the future of PR and media relations.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Monster education roller coaster with your brain. I don't know, guys. I was bored with the intro, so I just decided to stop here. Welcome to the Big Show, my family and friends.

This is always the Christmas show that loves you. It's the show that loves you but doesn't loan you money, so quit asking. I know it's almost the holidays. And no, you're not on our gift list because I don't know why. Why aren't people on our gift list? Shouldn't the whole audience be on our gift list, our Christmas card list? I'll check with management and see what's going on. Wait, management. Anyway, guys, we always have an amazing guest on the show we have another young

lady on to the show today she's gonna be sharing her journey her story and of course enlightening and giving you the ability to maybe learn some of the lessons that she's learned and how to make your business better how to make yourself better and and when you get done with her knowledge you're going to walk on water like jesus christ no i'm just kidding we like to we like to throw a lot of promises onto our clients and their car guests and let them try and figure out how am i going to teach people i don't remember this was in was this in the script anyway before we be talking we're talking with r with Rangina Joshua today and getting into some of her details of what she does. She is a CEO and founder of the Silver Telegram, a boutique PR agency focused on tech and consumer

lifestyle brands with a focus on media relations as well. She's got 20 years of experience in tech PR and her background is vested in media relations as well. She's got 20 years of experience in tech PR and her background is vested in media relations, strategy, product launches, and storytelling. We love storytelling here on the show, working with dozens of startup brands over the years. Her agency work in Silicon Valley led her work with many exciting startups across the enterprise and B2C sectors. She is the podcast host of the PR Playbook podcast in the green room podcast as well.

We have a green room. We do a virtual one at the beginning of the thing, but she's got a whole podcast on it. Wait. So that's the, that's the before podcast, the before podcast, the before the before, yeah. As well as frequent guests on other podcasts like ours. She is an experienced speaker, published author, and contributor to Forbes as well as other public articles around the practice of PR, marketing, and communications. Welcome to the show, Ranjini.

How are you? That was a very comprehensive introduction. Thank you, Chris. You wrote it or somebody, maybe the PR person wrote it. Yeah. And I think we, what is the name of your book that we need to bring up as well? It's actually the PR playbook. Okay.

The PR playbook. PR playbook. Podcast, PR playbook. Yeah. And can we find that on the Amazonian there? Always. Everything's on Amazon. So if it's not on Amazon, it doesn't exist.

Pretty much. I'm on Amazon. It's the only way I can exist, I suppose. So give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Silvertelegram.com is our website. Easy to find. On LinkedIn, you can find me. You're on Jeannie Joshua. Very easy to find. I'm probably the only one. Easy to Google. Those are the two main places. And I should probably correct the record. I kind of implied that the Green Room was about a green room, as we say in the media business. The Green Room is actually a podcast about the business of cannabis. That's right. Yeah. And it's on Amazon too as well. So I see two books that you have on Amazon. There's the Startup Guide to Create an Effective PR Plan and the PR Playbook,

The Essential Guide for Startups, Entrepreneurs, and Lean Organizations. Let's see here. I want to get the date. I think it was 2018. Wow, no. Time for an update. It's time for a, yeah, definitely version two. We always reference the date because people watch our videos now, and I think we're almost 20 years on, I think 18 years or something on YouTube.

And so they'll always write us and they'll be like, it's not a new book. It was out. And you're just like, you're watching the video 10 years later. Give us a break. Anyway, so give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your book, the PR playbook? Yeah, really, I started in PR about 20 years ago. And I went through the whole process of learning in a small agency. I went to the big agency. I went to Silicon Valley. I've done all kinds of different tech PR. That's kind of where I've always lived in that little bubble, the Silicon Valley bubble. And then in 2011, I ventured out on my own, started freelancing and established a small boutique agency. And when I was working with companies, which was actually,

we were working with startups who couldn't afford to do big agency PR. So that was the whole premise behind me going off and starting my own thing was I was seeing a lot of these startups coming to our big agency, but they weren't able to get any service because their budgets weren't big enough. And so I was like, I can help these guys. So I left and I started helping them. And that's kind of how the silver telegram started. And then while I was doing that, I found that a lot of startups and small businesses actually don't know very much about PR and what public relations is supposed to do for you, how it's supposed to build your reputation, how to measure it, how to monitor it. And so

that's when I kind of was like, huh, I should write a book about the basics of it so that people can understand the basics so that when they come to us and work with us, they already have some kind of, you know, base level knowledge of what public relations is all about. And then they can understand a little bit more of why we do the things we do, why it takes so long, why you need to do public relations campaigns for a longer period of time to establish your reputation. So it was it was really like a tool that I was using to make sure that people were well educated about public relations. And then also I was like, I could tell them how to do it themselves as well.

So that's kind of how the PR Playbook podcast is, is a lot of tips and tricks on DIY PR, doing it yourself. I mean, the biggest challenge with doing PR is having the time and effort and resources to do it. Everyone has the skill level. It's just a matter of cultivating that skill. And I thought that was a good way to kind of help startups ramp up before they come to an agency and start working with them.

That way they're a bit more prepared. Does it teach them how to analyze and pick a good PR agency? Yeah, I think we have a couple of podcasts on how to pick up the right agency for you. I always use the example of it's similar to dating. You want to make sure you have a good fit and you want to make sure the personalities match and then they understand the concepts of your company. Definitely. Definitely. And you know, PR, picking a good PR agent is like dating. I date a lot and run big dating groups, singles groups. And sometimes PR is in dating too.

That's why they use filters there on the, on the ticker. Yeah. That's a market. Those are marketing. Everyone's always more. Everyone's a brand and everyone's marketing themselves. What do you find the number one thing is that entrepreneurs and startups struggle with other than cost? Is it just understanding the business and understanding the importance of PR or what

would you gather? That's a good question. There's a few things, but I would say the first thing is understanding that it's a collaborative effort, that you actually have to do some work as well. A lot of people hire and then say, okay, go do your magic. That's actually not magic. It's work. There's no magic? No. And so we have to kind of really get them to understand that, hey, you're the expert at what you do. And we're the experts at getting you to the next step. So we need to have some inputs in order to give you some output. And I think that was like kind of one of the most initial hardest lessons to teach a startup is that you have to, there's a back and forth. You can't just dump information and then expect me to,

you know, place you in Wall Street Journal, we have to have conversations about it. Oh, the Wall Street Journal doesn't print anything you want? No, no. Oh, and the misnomer number one, calling in a favor. That's the most classic fun one. The calling in a favor? Tell us what that means. Yeah, so a lot of people go,

can't you just call in a favor and get us on Forbes? I just called Jeff Bezos. Hey, can we get a call, Poe? All right. Just can you get us on Fox? Can you call in a favor? No, it doesn't work like that. So I think that's explaining how to build a story and also explaining what the media is trying to accomplish. That's also something that's interesting that I find interesting that people don't realize that the media is actually a human trying to do their job. And so they have goals, too. Right.

Like, you know, like the goals of this podcast is to have listeners. Right. And so people, people often forget that. You got to have listeners. Otherwise, you're just sitting here talking to Mike and your mom's listening going, I raised this kid? Yeah, maybe your mom's not listening. I don't know. She doesn't.

She doesn't listen to the show. She's like, I've had enough of this kid. I raised him. Anyway, and he turned out poorly. Probably not to her blame at all. I was just dropped too many times as a child or something. I don't know. There's probably a joke there somewhere. But anyway, as we get into it, you start your agency. Tell us

kind of about starting your own agency. Was it kind of hard? Was it challenging? It's a big step to go out from working for big companies to doing your own thing. Yeah. I actually, I feel like it was like an accidental thing. It was, you know, I started as a freelancer, so I was freelance working for, for lots of, a few different companies. And then I started needing help. And then I was like, oh, okay, I'm going to grab a friend that I used to work with who needs a job now, and we're going to work together. So then I grab a friend, and then I grab an assistant. And then it kind of built accidentally like that. And that there you learn a lot of things and make a lot of mistakes when you build a business that way. When you without intention, I definitely wouldn't do that again, I would definitely do differently a second time around have a plan. But I think I was

so involved in the minutia of the actual work that I didn't realize it was happening as it was happening. And so by the time everything got really big, there were some things I had to go back and fix and go back and forth. I got audited and all kinds of crazy stuff. That's fun. It's always fun to deal with all that. But I think they should just rename the word entrepreneur to problem fixer yes you know i i because that's really all you're doing initially usually when you come up with your product fixing entrepreneurial idea it's usually

hey this whatever this is that's out in the world, this product or service doesn't work for me, but there's a way I can customize it where it'll work for me better. And it'll probably work for other people well too, right? Yeah. And as you do your business, that's all you do every day. I remember, you know, I've been running companies for most of my life since 18. And I was watching this, there's a guy on TikTok who sells private jets. He's a really, he's an older gentleman in his 60s, I imagine. And he's had a

40 years or 30 years, he's been selling planes, you know, to rich people and deals with a very exclusive clientele. And he was doing a day walk through his life on tick tock it was really cool about what he how he you know does the gym and in the middle of the day still work and you know how he how he stays alive all day which is kind of my curiosity because i'm trying to do the same it's like how do we get through this day yeah and he he said to me he said on the video something really stuck with me he goes you know i've been doing this for 60 years. I'm old. I am.

I'm doing this for 30 or 40 some odd years. He goes, the amazing thing is every day there are new problems that I have never encountered before. Because we have new technologies. We have new this, new that. Planes have changed to where they have new technologies. AI, new that, you know, planes have changed to where, you know, they have new technologies, AI, of course, different. And he's, the amazing thing is every day I'm still solving new problems, not old problems, not the usual problems.

I'm solving new problems. You know, plane can't get here to the buyer over here and the buyers over there. And, you know, he's just every day is just,'s pretty much what i do all day it's just solve problems and i'm like you know that's really what entrepreneurial is you you're just constantly playing whack-a-mole yeah problems and i used to think that was like you know people always tell me you know wait till business can be perfect and it can just be run seamlessly it's no so i don't know if you want to expand on that a little bit. Yeah, no, I mean, I think I guess if I, if I had stopped to make a plan, I probably would have overthought a lot of things. So you could go both ways, right? If you either get into it one way or

another. So I do think that just like going feet, feet first, both feet in at the same time or whatever the saying is, i think there is a kind of freedom to that because you don't know what you're jumping into so you're willing you're willing to problem solve like you're just like okay i'm just gonna go in there and do what needs it to be done and then i think that's kind of why i've been able to do this for so long so it's 14 years now that you know I know how to find the problem, attack it and get to the next step. And so I think I agree with you absolutely about what entrepreneurship is, is really problem solving. And I think it's such a great skill to have,

because you could really solve any problem in your life. If you can do that, if you can, if you can sustain a business for a certain period of time, which is hard enough on its own, then I think you have a lot of a skill set that you're cultivating. You don't even know it. And then you're like, wait a minute, I could do all this stuff. I could do almost anything at this point. I'm pretty confident with my skill base. That's one of the nice things you do learn from it. But man, there's always more to learn.

There's always more to grow like i'm still trying to hang on for dear life to understand ai and master it and apply it and stuff i'm just like i'm just like it's amazing how fast it's moving and usually most technologies i can keep up with but you know that crypto and and some of it is just wow it's just but you you have but you have to kind of figure this stuff out and master it. It's just kind of the way it is. And you have to evolve. That's the one thing that I learned too, especially in PR and marketing, because we change when the media changes, right?

Our role changes. So every few years I have to be like, okay, are we doing the right thing? Is there something else we should be doing? You know, how can we keep growing and making sure that we're meeting the needs of people that are our clients? And if you don't do that, then that's when you basically die. Like it's over. If a business isn't growing, it's dying. So there's that.

And then, you know, you've got to be innovating. I mean, if you're not eating your own lunch and innovating, even if you have to eat your own lunch, you know. I remember when they were going to put out the iPad and they realized Apple was putting out the iPad and they realized it would probably cannibalize eat their own lunch of

the Mac, Macintosh computer. They're like, either we innovate it or somebody else will. And so they went for it and it you know it turned out to be a blessing for them but you know it did affect their sales of of max but they had to take that risk and fly that because you know your competitors are innovating at the speed of light too and if you're not out beating them they're out beating you and you wake up one day and you go, oh crap,

that's bad. Let's talk about some of the services that you have here at silvertelegram.com. Launching a podcast, brand awareness, thought leadership, content development. Do you want to kind of touch on a few of those? Sure. Most of what we do is do a lot of product launches, new products that are getting out in the market, but need some visibility. So driving sales to those products. We work a lot with influencers and media to do reviews of cool new products. We've done some really cool campaigns. We've had e-bikes, STEM toys, STEM kits and toys. We've done a lot of Bluetooth audio speakers. So there's a lot of benefits to being able to do a lot of these cool products because we get to see a lot of them first right now we're working on this really cool company called aqua sprouts and

their aquaponic garden so you can garden and then also have your aquarium and it's really cool so there's a lot of cool stuff that we run into all the time doing review programs and working with the media you know people get a podcast what what's important to, or I'm sorry, launch a product. I got a few things here. Launching a product. In helping people launch products, what do you think is the most important thing? Building the story maybe out?

Helping people understand what the product is, what it means? It's usually first figuring out the competitive landscape and how you're better or first or best. That's the very first thing, because we usually have to position against, you know, somebody else or somebody that's already out there. And if they're not already out there, which sometimes people come to me and like, we don't have any competitors. Usually you do. You do have a competitor somewhere. And so then I have to dig out, okay, what is the story behind this?

Why are you first, better, best? How can we position you so that people know that they need you? Because that's another problem I come across, especially with startups, is sometimes the market fit isn't quite there or they're not very clear with that message and so messaging is also a big part of what we do to make sure that it resonates with the audience the media and then also like your customer whoever that may be market fits really important it's amazing to me how many Silicon Valley companies that I've seen that you're just like what do you what is your market fit? Who needs you? Sometimes they're so niche in trying to disrupt something that it's like, it just can't get, it just can't scale with, what would you say? It just can't enough people to make it viable,

right? And sometimes it's not just that. It's like the people that are finding these companies and starting them, they're so into the technology or they're so into the product that they can't see outside their own storyline. So there could be a bigger audience, there could be a bigger market, but they already have this narrative built. And so sometimes it's self-limiting. Those narratives are very self-limiting sometimes. I remember one time a good friend of mine who, I mean, he worked on the, on the original team of the built the iPhone. Brilliant guy.

He also did Palm phones after that. And I remember he was working on a new Silicon Valley startup that he'd gotten funding for. And you know, everybody was like, Hey, you know, he's got this experience. He's a dream team sort of a kid let's give him some money and he'll work on this new project and i remember going to meet with him and he sat me down i go okay give me give me what this is and let me tinker with it because you know i'm a reviewer we've reviewed products all of our lives we're

used to you know stepping into stuff and you know one of the measures we have is how intuitive something is for just any idiot to learn which is you know i'm at the key idiot around the office and i remember he said no no hold on yeah i have to show you how it works and i'm like no no just hand it to me let me see how far i get he said no no we have to show it and he had to spend a half an hour explaining to me how it worked it was so complicated and and he's a good friend i love him but he's he was so up in like you said his engineering brain yeah that i was sitting there just going it sounds great on paper for after a half an hour but are you gonna go i mean how are you gonna sell this product you can't spend a half an hour, but are you going to go, I mean, how are you going to sell this product? You can't spend a half an hour with every freaking customer in the world. Right. Yeah. And a half an hour is way too long. That's a long story. And so it sounds like, you know, you guys really help narrow people down,

help them get off their, you know, the other side sort of issues that they have and they, and they confuse the hell out of everybody and that way you know they can know their own story because you know if you don't know your own mission and have control of it it's a little hard to sell it to other people yeah they don't like it sometimes but it's kind of you know it has to be done because you're right i mean if if i'm having an objection towards it think about all the other people that you're going to be reaching out to, you know, and talking to.

So you got to get that feedback from somewhere. And sometimes you get teams. Like I, I had worked with the CEO one time and he had a team of yes men who were just saying yes all the time and, and letting him tell the story a certain way where it just didn't make sense. And I was like,

I think that's the story you want to tell, but it's not quite the story that the people want to hear. So, you know, so it's very important to kind of get outside of that. Sounds like politics, too, as well. Politics and PR. So they want to know what they want to hear. On your website, you've got the PR Playbook podcast. Tell us about some of the things you cover on that podcast that people can dip into your knowledge. Yeah, sure. It's a series of podcasts about basically do-it-yourself PR,

how the PR pros do it so you can learn yourself, but then also get a little bit of narrative around why PR people do the things they do, how to hire a PR agency. I also interview a lot of different marketing and SEO and lead gen experts across, I think it's like 160 episodes. We've interviewed all kinds of different people. One interview that was really cool was she was a language expert and she talked about the science of language and intention and how using words, specific words means different things and leveraging language for marketing and PR purposes. So we have all different types of things like

that, but mostly around, like I said, the PR marketing, SEO content space, where you can go and kind of get some basic practical knowledge and usually some really good takeaways of things that you could try on your own so that you can kind of get started to building your reputation or getting into a review program with your product or whatever objective you're trying to achieve. You got to know your story. You got to be able to have it concise enough to sell it and have people understand what it is. What are some other things? I noticed there's some things on the website, featured articles, case studies. Tell us about some of this work that you guys do on the site.

Of course. Yeah, if you do go to our site, you'll see that we work with all kinds of different companies from emerging startups to Fortune 500 companies. We've worked on a lot of really cool different campaigns that encompass a very wide breadth. 20 years, you know, I've been doing this for 20 years. You collect a lot of different knowledge and I've been lucky enough to do lots of different types of PR, not just like in one particular lane.

When I started doing PR, it was like right before the bubble burst and I was in tech PR and I thought like, why am I doing tech PR? I wanted to do entertainment publicity at that time. This was like out of college, I thought it was like going to be in the entertainment industry. And I went into this tech PR firm. And I started working in tech. And I just saw so much opportunity and like innovation. And the more I worked in tech, the wider the lens got, right. So at first, it was

just like really weird, techie, mobile, telecom, hardware, hardware, networking, very geeky technology. And then as I got more into it, I started doing like video games and software and, you know, chat bots. And then going into the consumer side, the consumer products, we've done e-bikes, we've done all kinds of crazy stuff. I found out, you know, through this timeframe that technology now today touches pretty much every part of your life. When I started, it wasn't like that. So I'm glad I went into technology and not entertainment, but you know what, now I'm on your podcast and I think that's kind of entertainment. So kind of bridge the gap full circle. You know, we try and make it entertaining, but you know, it's that.

Somebody thinks somebody's entertained after 16 years, 2,100 episodes, going on 17 years. If not, I don't know what they're doing. Maybe they're just watching and lurking. They're just going, he's going to hit the wall on your date now. It's good background noise. Maybe that's what it is. It's good background noise. We joke about some people using the bedroom to just, I don't know, busy themselves.

But most people, they'll tell me that they watch the videos and they're like, I don't watch the videos, Chris. I just listen. I just, I'm doing the dishes or washing the car or yeah, all that good stuff. All we care is that they listen one way or another. That's all that good stuff. All we care is that they listen one way or another. That's all that really matters. What haven't we discussed about your PR agency and some of the work that you do that maybe we should let people know about to entice them to reach out to you? Yeah, please check out the Silver Telegram. It's silvertelegram.com. You can see all the kinds of PR that we do. We work with tech companies that are looking to, like I said, launch products, establish brand reputation, thought leadership, become subject matter expertise. If you want to learn how to get on

on the podcast, we can help you do that as well. So yeah, it's basically anything reputation building. And for any brand that exists, you have to have some kind of reputation and trust. So we try to help build that trust in the way that you want to tell your story. And then of course, if you're having trouble telling your story, we help you with that narrative as well. I think public relations is such a dynamic skill to have and incorporate within your brand. I know oftentimes when people don't have the budget, that's the first thing that also gets cut. But it's also so important to have a reputation, regardless of what time of year it is, or when you're starting your business, whether you're early, whether you're, you know, a veteran industry veteran, we've worked with companies

at pretty much every stage. And it's really valuable to, you know, drive home your, your message and your mission and value. Yeah, come one, come all. If you'd like, take a look. And I'm always open for questions. I'm on LinkedIn. So I am like an open book. I talk about PR pretty much all day, every day. PR is your business. Maximizing PR potential with thought leadership. How does that really tie in? What is thought leadership defined as according to you? And how does that tie in to maximize your PR potential? Yeah. So thought leadership is a, now I call it subject matter expert, whatever the phrase is. But we've been working more and more over the last, I would

say three to four years on really having people establish themselves as experts and leaders in their particular field. And so in my field, I would be a PR expert, right? In your field, maybe you'd be like a podcasting or speaking expert. And so we try to get people to really double down on themselves because it doesn't matter whether you're working for one brand today and a different brand tomorrow, you can take that reputation with you. And so that's why we really try to get experts or CEC level executives to establish thought leadership so that people know, hey, when I see that guy, I'm going to think about podcasts all day. Or when I see that girl, I'm going to think about PR all the time. And so then you become associated with those different subject matters. And then no matter where you go, you can bring that like credibility and trust with you. And that's, that's a lot right now. I mean, people have a lot of

trust issues with the media, with everything. And, and I think building trust over time by saying something consistently in a very authentic way, people can kind of learn about who you are as a professional. And so that's why right now I've just noticed over the last three to four years is really people are more doubling down on themselves than they used to and branding themselves as experts. Yeah. Everybody's an expert in something now. I'm an expert in being an expert. What does that mean? I don't know. So give us your final thoughts as we go out, pitch people on how they can reach out to you, get to know you better, see if you're a fit, all that good stuff. Yeah. So if you are a marketer, a PR person, check out the PR Playbook

podcast. I'm sure it has something for you. If you're a startup founder or CEO, also same thing. I think it's really important to establish your brand and your message really early. That's my kind of my executive tip is to make sure that you have a very concise and focused message for your brand. And if you want to reach out, you could just email me directly run Jeannie r o n j and i at silver telegram.com or LinkedIn, DM me on LinkedIn, or I'm sure there'll be some show notes here that will have some links. So yeah, contact me anytime, and I'm here to answer questions. The links will be on thechrisfoshshow.com.

Thank you, Ranjini, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you. And folks, order the book wherever fine books are sold. It's called The PR Playbook, The Essential Guide for Startups, Entrepreneurs, and Lean Organizations. Thanks so much for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com,

4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss, chrisfoss1, the TikTok, and all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.