Transcript:
This transcript is generated by AI, apologies for any mistakes
Pippa Goulden (00:00)
Hello and welcome back to the Get Known Private Podcast.
In episode one, we looked at what PR actually is, why you're probably already doing it without realizing it and why PR and building authority matters more in 2026 now than ever before. In episode two, we introduced my Get Known Authority ecosystem, the three pillar framework that builds authority within your business and what that looks like in practice. Now today, we are getting practical because knowing the framework is one thing,
but knowing what you want to get known for, what opportunities are right for your business, how to find them and how to actually pitch yourself and send the fucking email, that's what this episode is all about. Before you pitch a single thing, I want you to get clear on two really important things because without these, your PR will always feel ad hoc, random, like you're throwing things at the wall and hoping that something sticks. The first one is your business objectives.
what are you actually trying to achieve right now? More clients, higher price point, getting known in a specific industry, building a speaking career, raising investment. Your PR should be actively working towards your business goals, not just generating press coverage for its own sake. And this is something that businesses of all sizes get wrong. They add their PR on as a kind of addition to their marketing tactics to amplify their marketing.
when actually PR should sit at the core of what you're trying to achieve in your business. Because a business that's trying to raise investment is gonna have a really different PR approach to a female founder who is looking to bring in more clients, for example. Your target audience is the second thing that I really want you to deep dive into. Who are you trying to reach? Where do they hang out? What do they read, watch, listen to? What are they influenced by? What would make them trust you?
to buy from you.
And when you put those two things together, your business objectives plus your target audience, you get your PR strategy. Now I'm not talking about a 75 page PowerPoint document that we used to do in my agency days, the thought of which gives me shivers. I'm talking about a PR plan, a simple plan that will help you focus, it will help you to make sure that the PR you're doing is actually gonna shift the dial for you and it will save you time in the long run.
But before we even get to the PR strategy, there's something else that I want you to really think about, and that is your positioning. It is so important. Getting clear on what you want to get known for. This isn't just a thing for new businesses. I've worked with six and seven bigger business owners, who haven't nailed their positioning. They find that really difficult. Established, successful, brilliant founders.
who've built incredible businesses and still struggle to articulate clearly and confidently what they want to be known for. And that leads to a problem because it means that it's really hard for you to go on podcasts and talk about things. It's hard for you to pitch yourself for press because you haven't homed in on those things, that expertise, the areas that you want to get known for. So if this is something that you find difficult, just know you're not behind, you're not doing anything wrong. This is just the work that we need to be doing.
that leads us towards the pitching and towards securing the right PR opportunities for your business. It matters so much because until you're really clear on what you wanna get known for, everything else is harder. Your pitches feel vague, your content feels scattered, your opportunities feel random rather than strategic. And this is something I see a lot with the people that I work with, that once the penny drops and they've really nailed their positioning,
so many other areas of their business become clearer as well. I've had people rewrite their websites or even add on additional revenue streams into their business because that clarity around your positioning opens up so many opportunities for you within your business. I had a client, a really established founder, well known in her world, who kept getting asked to go on podcasts and she said no, not because she didn't want to do them.
but not because she was even scared of them, but because she didn't really know what she wanted to talk about. She didn't feel clear enough on her positioning to be able to show up and own it. And once we actually got really clear on the things that she did want to get known for and the topics and the areas that she was able to talk about with her expertise and her background and all those different sums of the parts of her experience to date.
She was then able to confidently go on those podcasts and have the discussions and have the conversations and feel like she was able to own those conversations. That positioning uncertainty is one of the most common things that I work through with my one-to-one accelerator clients. And when we crack it, when they get really clear on what they stand for and what they want to get known for, everything else falls into place. The pitches get easier, the opportunities get clearer, the content has a thread running through it.
Often people start with content first for socials, for example, but actually your positioning should be the core place where you start from. Your content is a byproduct of what you want to get known for rather than the other way around. And I promise you, if you do this work, you will find your LinkedIn, your Instagram, your emails will all become a lot easier because you are really clear on that positioning piece. So before you go any further, I want you to have a think, ask yourself honestly,
If a podcast host asked you right now what you want to talk about or what you would go on their podcast to discuss, what would you say? If a journalist asks you what makes you different from the 50 other experts in your space, could you answer in one compelling sentence? And if the answer is no, or it feels a bit wobbly, or you're unsure, then that's a really good starting point. It's absolutely okay, but that is the work to do before the pitching.
And this is also where your internal authority comes back in because in the process of creating your internal authority, you're really thinking about your framework, your unique methodology, your point of view, your thought leadership. It's often what clarifies your positioning. The doing and the thinking happen together. So I would really encourage you to jump into that as a starting point. Once you're clear on your positioning and your strategy, finding the right opportunities becomes so much easier because you know what you're looking for.
I want to talk you through my approach. So finding the right opportunities. People often stop here because they think, it's too difficult. I don't know who to pitch to. I promise you this work is not rocket science. I'd encourage you to put your detective hat on. Research where your target audience actually is. What publications do they read? And it's not necessarily even what they read. It's what they're influenced by. Is Red Magazine gonna make them go, ⁓ she's been in Red Magazine. That's good.
What podcasts do they listen to? What events do they attend? What communities are they part of? Buy the magazines, download the podcasts, read them, listen to them, get to know them before you pitch. When I was editing my publication, I used to get pictures from people who had clearly never read a single issue. Pitching things completely irrelevant to our audience. It was so obvious immediately, and that would be an instant no. I would find it so frustrating.
The founders who we featured were the ones who'd done their homework, who would say, I read your piece on X last week, or I saw that you featured this brand and thought you might be interested in mine. And I think your readers would find this genuinely interesting because, those specifics get attention from the journalist. The next thing is to look at where a line people are showing up.
find experts and founders in adjacent spaces who are brilliant at getting themselves out there. So for me, for example, it might be an expert in SEO or a ad specialist, for example. If I look at which podcast they've been featured on, which press they've been featured in, it's highly likely that they're gonna be interested in a PR expert talking about PR for founders. So have a look where people aligned to you are being featured.
Which podcast have they guested on? What stages are they speaking out? It's a brilliant shortcut to building your PR hit list. Ask your audience, just ask them directly. What podcast do you listen to? What publications do you read? What events have you been to recently? The answers will sometimes surprise you and lead you directly to the opportunities for you. So I want you to start building your PR list, publications you wanna be featured in.
Why don't you start doing it three publications, three podcasts, three events you want to speak at, three networks you want to get known in. That's your focus. You don't have to do everything all in one go. In fact, I really recommend you don't because it can feel far too overwhelming. But just start small and build from there. Work through things systematically. That is the best approach with this work.
Now you know where you want to be, the next question is what are you actually going to say? So I want to tell you a story about my bad back. I have had a bad back for years. Recently it got so bad though it was stopping me from doing the things I love, going to the gym, seeing my friends. We'd hang out at group classes in the gym together. I'd been to osteos, local physios, I tried lots of things but nothing was getting to the root of it. So I thought I need to sort this out now, it's stopping me from...
you know, doing the things that I'm really enjoying. So I asked for recommendations in a Facebook group I've been in for a while to do with health and fitness. And someone's name came up a couple of times who was recommended, a pelvic health specialist. And they encouraged me to kind of have a look into her. So I went to her Instagram, nice content. She clearly knew her stuff, but it was really surface level as it is with eight second reels.
and it wasn't enough for me to be convinced to buy from her. So I went looking for more. I found her YouTube channel. I listened to a couple of those. I listened to her on two different podcasts where she went really deep on exactly the problem that I was dealing with. I found articles that she'd been featured in and within about 20 minutes, 30 minutes of doing my research, I knew that I was happy to invest in what she was offering. I bought her course, didn't book a discovery call. I jumped straight in because
all of that work building that trust and authority that she'd done convinced me that it was worth a go. And that is exactly what your potential clients are doing when they find you. They see you somewhere, they're curious, they go looking for more. And what they find or don't find often will determine whether they buy. So what actually makes you PR-able? Okay, your story.
And when I'm talking about story, I'm not talking about random things that happened to you when you were 25 that aren't relevant to your business. I'm talking
parts that are inextricably linked to your business. Why you started, what you've been through, the perspective that only you have because of the path you've taken. I don't want you to go out there talking about stories that aren't relevant, but if you have stories that you are happy to talk about, boundaries are the most important thing with this work.
only put out there what you are happy to talk about. But a really good example of this is one of my DIY PR members had a business that she started that helped women with postnatal anxiety because of her own experience with postnatal anxiety. So she was able to get a really lovely interview in Grazia during maternal mental health week or month, whichever one it is, about her story, which led her to build her business. Do you see how that links inextricably?
Me talking about that, unless it really linked to my business, wouldn't be something that I would recommend. Your expertise. What do you know that others don't? What questions do you get asked all the time? What are you seeing in your industry that nobody is talking about? Again, a good example of this that I mentioned is my whole authority over visibility thing.
it would have been much easier for me to jump on the visibility bandwagon that everyone's on at the moment. But I know in my heart of hearts that visibility isn't enough, being seen isn't enough, you need to build authority. And so I stuck my head above the parapet. I've been talking about authority when everyone else was talking about visibility, but it's paying off because people are starting to see that they actually need to do more than just showing up on stories or turning up at a networking event. So for me, it was...
something that I kind of had to put my stake in the ground in. So I want you to have a think, what is it within your expertise and your business that helps you to stand out? Your perspective, your point of view, your opinions, the things that you believe might go against the grain. We don't want vanilla. We don't want everyone to be saying the same things. We want perspective. And that is really important when you're pitching to journalists, when you're pitching to podcast hosts, they're not looking for you to be saying the same thing as everyone else.
The other thing to bear in mind is your results, the transformations you create with your work, your proof that your approach works. Those stories are so powerful. And your timing, what's happening in the world right now that connects to what you do, timely angles get featured, generic pitches less so. So is there stuff going on relating to the news agenda or legislation
trends and things going on within your industry, within your world, within the wider news agenda opportunities for you to respond to, to react to, to pitch to journalists, to show them what you're seeing within the world that you're working in.
so I thought it'd be useful for me to give you some real examples because I think hearing about this work across different types of businesses makes it feel much more achievable. So Priya has been in my DIY PR membership for years. She is a product business founder. She makes beautiful home accessories from pre-love sarees.
She's a product business and you might think PR is for service businesses, for experts, for people with something to say, but Priya totally understands that behind her products was a brilliant story. Her grandmother taught her to sew, she works with a women's cooperative in India, her products are sustainable, meaningful, beautiful, and she is so good at telling those stories of dining up and dining down, the different stories depending on the opportunities, consistently and strategically.
She's pitched her products absolutely. She's had amazing product press coverage, but she's also pitched herself, her story, her why, her perspectives on sustainable fashion and slow living, the fact that her granny inspired her business. There's so many lovely layers to her story. And the result is she's had the most incredible press coverage. She's been stocked in John Lewis as a result of the press coverage she's got.
Her products were featured in the John Lewis Christmas campaign and that didn't happen by accident It's happened because she built her profile told her story made herself and her business impossible to ignore One of my members as well got a feature in the Daily Telegraph a really good strategic piece about her business her expertise What they were doing within her business she amplified it. She shared it. She referenced it. She let people know about it
but actually a producer at BBC Morning Live read the telegraph and then she ended up on national television talking about her business. That is the compound effect in action. One strategic piece of press amplified properly, opening a door that she didn't even know existed. There is a bit of magic that happens with this PR and you can't always predict it. You can't write it into a strategy document, but it is so amazing and incredible when it happens. And it's just about making sure that you are
in the right places where the right people are gonna see and hear about your businesses in ways that you just wouldn't get discovered through Instagram. And that's when I say amplification is the piece most people forget. You don't just get the coverage, you make that work really hard for yourself. Carly is one of my members who's done amazing work on building her authority. She's got a podcast, she gets consistent...
thought leadership content, she's made herself discoverable across multiple channels, she is a fitness expert, and now when something relevant happens that's relating to her area of fitness and midlife women, journalists get in touch with her because they know that she's a reliable go-to source. She's made herself discoverable, she's positioned herself so clearly and consistently as the go-to expert in her space that when the moment comes she's already there.
That's the goal, that's the authority ecosystem working. So you know your positioning, you know your strategy, you know your hit list, you know what makes you PR-able, now you actually need to pitch, you need to send the fucking email. You're not asking for a favor. It's really important that you remember that you are offering value to someone else's audience. When I was editing my publication, I used to get pitches from, especially from small business owners, that started with,
you know, sorry to bother you, I've got this small business. You can tell the energy of somebody who's not quite backing themselves. You don't need to apologize. We have journalists come into my DOIPR membership all the time and say, we want to hear from small business owners, from founders, from experts like you, because you are the ones innovating. You're the ones with the expertise. The journalists don't have the expertise. They need you to help them write their features.
They can't fill the pages without people like you. So tell them what you've got. Let's look at what a good pitch is. It's short and to the point. They do not need your whole life story. It's bespoke. Show you've done your research. Make sure it's not copy and paste. Make sure it's not sounding like it's written by AI.
Think about their audience. I always say forget your own agenda. This is not about you. This is not an advert for your business, right? Read magazines, understand how people are featured. What's in it for their readers or listeners or attendees? What do they really want to know about? Be very clear on the angle or angles. What are you specifically pitching? Be really specific, not vague.
Make your pitch easy to read. I recommend bullet points, really short paragraphs, a subject line that makes them want to open it and then send it. This is the key to doing this work. Not the overthinking, not the redrafting it 17 times, not letting it sit in your drafts folder until you're ready to send it. Send the fucking email because that pitch sitting in your drafts is doing absolutely nothing for your business.
And then I do also recommend a follow-up. Most people send one pitch and hear nothing and give up. A polite follow-up a week or two later is completely acceptable. Keep going. It takes effort, this work, but when it happens, when it works, it is so worth it. So in episode four, we're gonna tackle the thing that stops most founders from doing everything I've just talked about, the mindset, the voice in your head that says, yet, not me, I'm not ready yet, I'll wait until...
That is what we're dealing with next. And if you want to do this work with me, the positioning, the strategy, the PR lists, the pitching, that's exactly what my one-to-one accelerator is for. We build all of it together specifically for your business with me in your corner, making sure it actually happens. The link to book a discovery call is in the show notes. I would love to chat to you. Alternatively, I have my DIY PR membership. If you are ready to hit the ground running and you want to do this work by yourself with the umbrella support of the membership.
giving you the knowledge and the confidence to go out and do it. So all the links are in the show notes, but I will see you for episode four.
