Remarkable

Unlocking Potential #14: Q&A With Rob Shapiro

Garth Beyer

Rob Shapiro

I’m glad I went down the path of Journalism as well as PR. Without my passion for journalism, I may not have come across Muck Rack, and, by extension, Rob Shapiro.

Rob does what everyone linchpin needs to do: connects, creates, and crushes it.

If you’re clicking into the Unlocking Potential series for the first time, you can always go back to read the past Q&As with remarkable people here.

Without further ado, welcome, Rob!

1) What got you into entrepreneurship? (What’s your story?) Why entrepreneurship?

I’ve always liked building things – especially things that people value enough to pay for. I don’t know the exact moment I started playing with LEGOs (my mom and dad definitely do), but they were certainly my first creative outlet. I started my first “business” around 7 years old when I bought a snow cone machine from SkyMall (R.I.P) and sold cups of flavored ice at neighborhood softball tournaments. My next venture was to design and create prototypes of a combination bookmark/glasses case.  By high school, I was designing and selling t-shirts that featured our school’s basketball players in unique situations (like our starting five as the heads on Mount Rushmore). Making things and selling them to people who wanted them was not only fun, but just seemed the logical thing to do.

The real entrepreneurial bug bit me during my freshman year of college (majoring in graphic design/communications). I was heading home for Thanksgiving and tragically left my computer on my dorm room desk. Sitting at the airport, I needed something to do. So I bought the book with the coolest looking cover I could find– Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion. I finished the book in 24 hours and quickly realized I wasn’t thrilled with the direction my life was headed. I had no idea what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be, and I absolutely could have been labeled as an emotional mess. At that moment (literally Thanksgiving night), I decided to transfer schools, focus my college studies on entrepreneurship, and build out my toolbelt with business and creative skills.  I wanted to be prepared for when I found my passion (whatever that proved to be), ready to cash in on something I truly loved.

2) A quick look at your LinkedIn/Muck Rack profile shows you’ve left a lot of breadcrumbs in the startup and marketing industry.  Where do you find your motivation to keep creating, keep connecting and keep making your mark?

I have a lot of energy and passion for achieving success.  But I still haven’t figured out exactly what being successful means. That makes it easier to continue trying to find opportunities and adding new tools to my entrepreneurial toolbelt. Frankly, I don’t know if I even want to have a definition of success. I’d rather keep hustling after the unknown.

3) What are some signs of a born entrepreneur? Any skills that define a destined business owner?

A long time ago, someone told me that you either build the product or you sell it. While there is some truth to that, I think that born entrepreneurs have an inherent knack for both.

Outside of that, it’s incredibly difficult to associate a specific skill with any enormous group of incredibly unique people. However, I think one of the skills successful entrepreneurs share is the ability to delegate. Most business owners understand they can’t do it all themselves.  Finding people who bring value to their organization or project is crucial for scaling anything.

They used to say in the civil war that the laziest people became generals because they often had great ideas but weren’t able or willing to go fight in the battlefield. I don’t think that’s directly related, but it’s a short story I’ve always found ironic and fascinating.

4) What are three habits every entrepreneur must develop to be successful in business?

There are a lot of smart, talented people in this world. I think what distinguishes entrepreneurs from everyone else is the ability to work harder, faster and smarter. If you learn how to hustle first, (the other two) more habits will come.

5) What do you regularly see entrepreneurs, business owners and startups fail to see and do? Essentially, what’s preventing them from being successful?

I don’t think there is enough true dogfood-ing going on in most businesses. A lot of entrepreneurs see a market need, fill it with their product, think their job is done and that the solution will continue meeting their customer’s needs. When a product is adopted into the market and the initial problem is solved, the customer’s needs continue developing and the product should too. For continued development, it is so important to sit down with those using the products and truly understand that user’s story (why/how they’re using the tools).

I know we’re all so busy, but it’s something I think more people could dedicate time toward in their day-to-day. It’s proven to be insanely valuable for me and actually saves me time in the long run. Knowing my customer definitely helps me make better decisions more quickly.

6) Do you have a business or life motto you follow?

You never know what you’re best at and capable of until doing until you try.

I’d still like to find out if I’m a really good NASCAR driver, I’ve just never had the chance. I always love a good challenge because it’s an awesome opportunity to find out about a new skill I didn’t know I possessed or identify an area where I could be stronger.

7) For readers who are unsure what their muse is, what would you suggest they do to find it?

Learn how to be alone. It sounds a bit depressing at first, but you can learn quite a bit about yourself if you’re willing to be your own wolfpack once in a while. Don’t be afraid to eat a meal by yourself without checking your phone every few minutes. Find a time to grab a coffee and stare out the window and have some serious “me time” to let ideas and thoughts bubble up to the top of you brain. Giving those thoughts consideration, no matter how obscure, can be quite energizing and quickly can provide a spark that can start your fire.

8) What makes a business or even a public relations or branding strategy remarkable?

This is a tough question to answer, because there are a ton of remarkable strategies out there. I think a commonality between them is that they are well thought out with the eventual customer in mind. Sometimes it’s so easy to think about good ideas for a business, but if that idea doesn’t resonate with your customer, it’s not gonna provide the needed bang.

For PR strategies, I think it’s all about providing value. Our company, for example, ultimately should be providing value to both the journalist and that journalist’s audience (hopefully their customer). Whenever providing value for someone else – in any facet of their life – it’s far easier to build real relationships. Real relationships quickly translate to customers.

9) What is the best way a business owner can get coverage by the press? Could you share an example of a business that did it right and got the spotlight?

Try your very best to build real, human relationships with journalists and people that can help tell your story. It shouldn’t be terribly different than any other facet of your business. You probably try to build real relationships with your customers. Why not do the same for the people that help you communicate those very same customers?

I constantly see business owners and PR people who assume their company’s unique story is that they’ve started a business. When you’ve got a unique founder or a product that’s truly first to market, that may work. For everyone else, we need to be more creative. If your business helps connect two groups of people that otherwise wouldn’t have found each other, you may be better off sharing the details of their success stories, rather than the fact that you’ve been trying to start this business for the last X years.

10) How do you make sure the best results are always achieved in what you do?

I put a lot of emphasis on instincts and critical thought. Instincts help you make decisions quickly and on an emotional level. To balance that, thinking critically about those emotions and instincts can be a logical and rational process. With that balance, I find that I’m able to quickly assess situations, be it from previous experience or foreseeing potential future events, and justify those ideas with more traditional and rational logic.

That being said, I’ve learned a ton on this from everyone I work with at Muck Rack – specifically our co-founders Greg Galant and Lee Semel as well as our Senior Vice President, Natan Edelsburg. When I first started at the company, I too believed that I always needed to produce the absolute best/perfect results (I’m definitely part perfectionist). They were quick to push me in directions that asked for less perfection and more experimentation. Instead of searching for the best idea that I assumed would produce perfect results, I’ve learned (and still work on) creating multiple ideas with various inputs and outputs, to produce a multitude of results. It’s a rather awesome process as we often find a few ways of accomplishing goals and producing multiple “best results.”

11) I know you well enough to know you’ve got a list of ideas and projects you would like to see to fruition in the future. What’s the project you would start first if you had all the resources available for it?

You’re absolutely right, and I’m incredibly lucky to be working on the team that gets to see Muck Rack to fruition every day – something I don’t plan on stopping for a while. I am a bit of a dreamer. I am constantly coming up with different ideas, but I’d actually prefer to think about who I’m working with, rather than what I’m working on. I want to work with the best – no matter what they do.

If you absolutely made me answer this question, I’d keep doing everything that I’m doing today, and start putting together some plans for a vineyard with an awesome selection of pickles and olives. I really love pickles, olives and wine.

12) Lastly, how can people connect with you? There a place people can go to see what you’re up to? Any way readers can show their support for you? (Shameless self promotion here)

Absolutely, I’m based in New York City and always down to grab a beer or cocktail to chat about any and all ideas.

I also use the internet to build relationships with people. You’ll find my Twitter account is a bit more Muck Rack/business focused.  If you’re interested in that world, follow me at @rob_shap. If you want to get to know me as me, head over to my Instagram account.

If you’re curious about what we’re working on at Muck Rack, want to chat through your companies PR strategies and how to build better relationships with journalists online, shoot me an email at rob@sawhorsemedia.com.

Definitely do not be shy (especially if you like pickles).

 

Stay Positive & Go Create Real Value For Real Relationships

Marketing Close To Pain

Garth Beyer

Remarkable Or Pain

When someone is in pain, they’ll do anything and everything for relief, and if you’re in the business of relief, the more you can charge.

Pain is a strong word, but then again, so is need, which is exactly what marketers place themselves in a position to fulfill.

It blows my mind how any podcaster can charge $1,100 a month for a podcast webinar series. It’s crazy how much some marketing conferences cost.

Likewise, it’s never exciting to hear the burger at the airport is $15 or the beer at a hotel bar is $9 a bottle. Yet, owners and businesspeople and marketers and podcasters alike can charge that much because they are in the proximity of pain.

The marketers who invest in the podcast webinar series are in desperate need to get to the top. The starving traveller, well, is starving.

Want to charge more for your product or service? Get closer to the pain, the need.

Or… or… go to the other end, the end of desire and passion and love. The end of connection and bragging and giving.

You have two options. Sell a mediocre burger for an outrageous amount because you’re close to the pain or sell a remarkable burger for a price that matches its value (sometimes even less because it’s a burger you want people to talk about, an experience you want them to partake in, and joy you want to share).

Fortunately for you the market for remarkable is wide-open, there are people there waiting to be blown away with an experience. The market for pain, however, is crowded. Good luck getting in there.

 

Stay Positive & Yes, Fulfill A Need, But Know Which Need You’re Fulfilling First

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How To Get Clients, Customers, And New Consumers

Garth Beyer

New Client Call

What’s the first question I get asked when I tell people I freelance as a PR strategist?

“How do you get your clients?”

Outreach, new customers, more clients is so important to any businesses. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling tennis ball recycling pods or leading an architectural organization or selling cupcakes, you need an income from your actions. Where’s that money come from? People. And where do those people come from? That’s the question I’m answering.

I started out doing freelance work for friends and family. If you can’t sell to your friends then you’re either selling something that’s not remarkable or you’re selling something that you’re not passionate about. Start here because it’s the perfect indicator of whether you should continue your endeavor or not.

No one wants to do work they don’t want to do. You want to do work that isn’t really work, and for that you’ve got to be doing something you’re passionate about. I decided to only work with businesses that I am passionate about. I’ll consult with any business, but the actual product, the creation end of my work, I focus on people and businesses I believe in. Being picky works in your favor (and your clients!).

From there I meet new people, check out new businesses and get involved as much as I can with the community. I go to events that the information at flies over my head. Yesterday I was at an event talking about Microsoft360 and using cloud data. The only thing I understood from the 30 minute session was that Microsoft acquired Skype, but while I was there I met a couple of folk who I could see myself working with.

Once you have a comfortable number of clients, customers and new consumers, now it’s on you to over promise and over deliver. The best way to get more clients is to treat the ones you have now. The best way to lose clients is to be off working to find new ones.

That’s it. Easy to understand. Difficult to execute. So the work of remarkable goes.

 

Stay Positive & Anything Different Work For You?

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Digging Through Layers

Garth Beyer

Dig To The Remarkable

I’ve never heard of anyone finding gold right on the surface. Never heard of treasure, just sitting there on an island. Never heard a success story come easily. To get anything of value, there’s work, time, effort, sweat and an absolute resiliency involved.

Successful people don’t settle, they dig.

To get to an inspiring thought, a creative idea, a brilliant strategy one has to dig through the layers of fear, worry, anxiety, nervousness, resentment, and I’m sure a few other negative thought-layers I’m missing here.

Half the battle of coming up with a great PR plan or something as simple as a blog post is digging through the dirt until you find something pure enough, remarkable enough, worth sharing, doing, writing, etc,.

If we recognize that in any important decision there are mental and emotional layers we have to dig through, we can track where we are at in the process and obtain a confidence boost by knowing we’ve done the hard work of digging through our insecurities.

Another thing I’ve never heard of is our mind being empty of value once we work through the top layers of fear, doubt, and uncertainty. Nope. There’s something remarkable down there every time.

 

Stay Positive & Uncover The Remarkable

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Slow Fail, Quick Fix, Overnight Success

Garth Beyer

All organizations are prone to fail slowly, although it may not seem like it at times.

Just like the overnight success of Amanda Palmer, which is anything but an overnight success (it was a consistency of getting the little things right over a long period of time), failures appear to happen fast. One day the restaurant is there, the next day it’s not. One day the business manager is in charge of 20 employees, the next day it’s just him. But, truly, you and I know failure and success don’t happen that fast.

All agencies, organizations, businesses are bound to be cut and bruised just as we are. Are you treating the wounds of your business as you would a wound on your body? Or are you waiting (like so many now-failed businesses) until it’s time to patch the wound with a giant band-aid, a redesigned website, a new PR campaign, a new motto or “about us” page? It may seem logical to care for all wounds at once, but it’s not.

A drop in office productivity, a minor employee-client clash, one regretful tweet are cuts that need mending immediately. Even more importantly, we must view the boring things of business just as wounds that need our immediate attention.

When we begin ignoring the little things, we set ourselves up for a fail: a slow fail until the day it hits you.

You can certainly jump ahead success-wise with a broad stroke, a bold move, but to stop a slow and painful death that every organization, every person in business is susceptible to, we must make the little things a little more remarkable, we must apply, not just quick-fixes, but improvements to the banal, to the cumbersome, to the “not my problem” problems of our business.

Don’t just think “how can we fix this?” think “how can we fix this in a way that leaves a positive impression?” If we ask and answer this enough, we may just find ourselves getting referred to as an overnight success.

 

Stay Positive & Turn The Little Things Into Big Things

They Will Be Pleased, Regardless

Garth Beyer

Don't Appeal To The Mass

When you make an effort to reach the masses, to please the majority, to advertise to all, you are inevitably creating a bitter experience for some.

You see this with retail stores quite often. Owners spend their time outside of the store trying to reach the masses, and in doing so, they neglect and devalue those already in it. It’s better of them to treat and please the customers already in their store if they wish for more newcomers.

We need to recognize people will want us to build an experience for the mass. The thought process of most is that one event that calls out to a majority is better than five events that call out to smaller groups.

Writing a book that is safe, that anyone walking around the bookstore will want to pick up, seems to be the most logical thing to do, but it’s not. It’s better to write five shorter books that target a specific tribe.

You may win the lottery, you may have a successful large event, but all who attended, all who bought your book will revert back to their search for the one that makes them feel most valued, most part of a tribe.

They will eventually be pleased, regardless of the decision you make because it’s our natural inclination to find a place where we have a consistent pleasurable experience, one that connects us with like-minded people, one that all who attend or purchase can give the same answer to “People like us ______.”

We can’t please everyone at once, so why bother?

But we can please everyone over a period of time/a series of events/a number of books by recognizing the tribes people are part of and creating a remarkable experience for each of them.

Thing is, you may find out that pleasing one tribe is all you need to do. Stephen King doesn’t need to write a book specific to a bunch of tribes. All he needs is one group to please.

Anyway, if one were to measure effort, I’d say it takes about the same to appeal to the mass as it does to appeal to smaller tribes. The results, however, are different… very different.

 

Stay Positive & Different Is What You Want

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What It Takes For Ideas To Spread

Garth Beyer

Ideas That Spread

As I’m ironing out speech ideas and book ideas, I’m ruminating on the difficulty of introducing an idea that spreads.

We no longer need a book or a speech or a consultation to tell us how to solve a problem we have. Google and YouTube is there for that. If you’re searching for a “How to,” the Internet is your friend.

But the “Why do” …that might be worthy of print media or a Ted talk or a podcast.

Instead of producing something that shares a solution to someone’s problem, we have the opportunity to share something we are passionate about with someone who might not know they had a problem with their “why,” which, may in turn alter the “how to” they seek.

Our goal, then, ought to be to find those who don’t know they need help and proceed to inspire them with an idea worth spreading.

For a spreadable idea, you few things must fall into place:

1) You must be passionate about an idea that is, at minimum, different from what has been done before. The cue here is often the saying, “We’re doing things just a bit different.” For an idea to spread, there must be both a sense of security (doing things that we know already works) and a little adventure (but doing them a bit differently).

2) The audience must understand the basics of your idea, which you typically don’t need to go in depth about. Recall, Google has you covered as well as bookstores when it comes to the basics. Ideas that spread aren’t sent out to beginners, they are given as a gift to those who 1) understand the foundation of your idea already and 2) trust you. Which leads us to the third and final variable.

3) Ideas spread as quickly as the path established for them allows; that is, the relationship you have, the connection you have built determines the speed at which an idea can spread. The stronger the relationship, the easier it is for an idea to go viral. This goes further than just making a connection between you and someone in your target audience; it requires you to connect your target audience to each other, ultimately creating multiple pathways for the idea to spread.

Lastly, ideas don’t spread simply by throwing them out there. Ideas spread when they are remarkable, as in, worth making remarks about, worth talking to others about, worth sharing.

For an idea to resonate, the idea must focus on the part of doing or thinking about things differently.

 

Stay Positive & Go Spread Something Remarkable

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