Today, we're diving into the world of press releases and media relations with Mickie Kennedy, the founder and president of eReleases. Celebrating 25 years in the business, Mickie has witnessed the evolution of the press release industry firsthand.

Join us as we explore the differences between traditional newswires and article-based newswires, uncover the secrets behind creating newsworthy press releases, and learn why an amazing quote can make all the difference in captivating journalists. Mickie will share invaluable tips for small businesses on how to gain national media attention and build strong relationships with local media outlets. Plus, we’ll touch on the challenges of modern media landscapes and the importance of a unique selling proposition in your pitches.

Whether you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, or coach, get ready to take notes—Mickie’s insights could transform how you approach media relations. And don't forget, Mickie’s rainbow glasses aren't just a style statement—they're a symbol of his colorful and impactful career.

Stay tuned for an enlightening conversation!

In this episode you will learn:

• The differences between traditional newswires like Business Wire and PR Newswire, and article-based newswires such as the Associated Press and Reuters
• How building relationships with local media is crucial for small businesses to gain visibility and credibility.
• The importance of focusing on the story behind your data to make your press releases newsworthy and engaging for journalists.
• Strategies for small businesses to build lasting relationships with local media by regularly reaching out with captivating pitches and maintaining persistence.
• Mickie’s insights on book marketing, especially for self-published and smaller authors

You can reach Mickie at: eReleases2@gmail.com

Website: https://www.ereleases.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/publicity/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ereleases.press.release.distribution

A little about me: 

I began my career as a teacher, was a corporate trainer for many years, and then found my niche training & supporting business owners, entrepreneurs & sales professionals to network at a world-class level. My passion is working with motivated people, who are coachable and who want to build their businesses through relationship marketing and networking (online & offline). I help my clients create retention strategies, grow through referrals, and create loyal customers by staying connected. 

In appreciation for being here, I have a couple of items for you: 

A LinkedIn Checklist for setting up your fully optimized Profile:  

An opportunity to test drive the Follow Up system I recommend by taking the  

3 Card Sampler—you won’t regret it.   

Connect with me: 

http://JanicePorter.com 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/janiceporter/ 

https://www.facebook.com/janiceporter1 

Thanks for listening! 

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's

episode of relationships rule. My guest this week is Mickey

Kennedy who's coming to us from Baltimore County. And he is the

founder and president of E releases this, the small

business leader for press release distribution, now

celebrating 25 years in business. Congratulations,

Mickey. Thank you. He is an expert at helping small business

increase their visibility and credibility. And he's here today

to share some valuable insights all around that. So welcome to

the show.

Thanks for having me.

My pleasure. And I have to start, and I know I'm

sure other people have done this with you before. But I have to

start with the glasses because I love them. So we have the

rainbow effect here. For those of us of course, my audience

can't see you. But they will see an image of you on the podcast

with the rainbow glasses. They're fantastic. But it made

me think, actually, before I go there, I found a picture of you

on your website. They're not there. No. It's an old picture.

You need to change it right? Yeah,

I started wearing them in pride three

years ago. And then people gave me a hard time because they

really liked them. And then I think that two years ago, I put

them on for pride. And I just decided to keep them on. So

well. I wondered if it actually had anything to

do with your branding at all, or whether it was just a statement

about you know, about? lb? LB, I shouldn't say that it should

just say pride, because then I can't I can't remember them all.

But anyway. So

I don't know, I think it started out as just

wearing them for pride. And then it just became something that

people liked about me and something people looked forward

to. And people would say, Do you have a headshot with the

glasses? And I'm like, okay, so it was very obvious that people

really liked the glasses. So it's like, this is going to be

my thing. So

they're fun. They're, they're totally fine.

I've interviewed a guy from the Maritimes, in Canada, one of the

Maritime Provinces, I think he's from Nova Scotia, I can't

remember. And he is a marketer. And he talks about standing out

from the crowd, and he wears this yellow jacket with tulips

all over it with a red tulip on it. And then he's got one the

opposite. It's like, yeah, standing out from the crowd. And

you can definitely remember that for sure. So, okay. My audience

is small business owners, entrepreneurs, some like

Realtors nor mortgage brokers, that kind of thing. And coaches,

consultants, and we're all like small business owners. And so

I'm trying to get my head around. Do I need a peel a press

release? Do Why do I need one? What would I need one for?

Right?

So potentially, you could? So

I'm open to it. I just want to know, why do I need

one? Right?

So it depends if national media attention is

important to you. And for some businesses, it's not like if

you're a local mortgage broker or something like that, PR and

media could be valuable for you. But you're probably looking at

local media. And my service, e releases are big value is the

national distribution. Okay, that's good. So, okay, so I do

tell people that for local media, you are the best person

to get it. The thing is, if you think about it, in most local

markets, there's probably less than a dozen people that would

cover you, you know, at your local paper, you know, find out

who covers your industry, that reporter and reach out to them

get their email address it, you know, have people say, Oh, can

you do that, and I'm like, these are not celebrities, these are

members of your community, they should be accessible for you to

pitch them. And if you if their email addresses on their website

or easily locatable, you can just call and say, Hey, I'm

trying to get this person's email address, because I'd like

to pitch them on a local story. And that's completely

reasonable. They'll either give it to you or patch you through

that person. But just start building your local Rolodex. If

you happen to be lucky enough to have a business newspaper or

business magazine, and in the Baltimore market, we're lucky

enough to have both. Again, find out what writer would probably

cover your industry or covers at most regularly get their email

address. And and then you know, maybe consider TV and radio are

their segments occasionally that spotlight local businesses. We

say hey, they did that with a chiropractor, but I can envision

be as a dry cleaner, or a mortgage broker in a different

light. So call and ask for the booker or producer of that

segment. And you do have to distinguish in some markets,

whether you saw it on the morning news or the evening

news, just be as specific as you can. And they'll, they'll

usually put you in touch with that person, or give you that

email address. And, you know, other things are, you know, are

their specialty magazines or newspapers that might be

appropriate. We have Baltimore magazine, which is, you know,

mostly for consumers. So it's not appropriate for b2b. But,

you know, if you're a business, that's your clients are made

above just regular people and not businesses, then perhaps

some of those could be a good fit. And then, you know, look at

like, neighborhood weekly papers that are given away, a lot of

people overlook those, and they are so focused on advertising,

that content is an afterthought. So if you approach them with a

story, and even if you come up with a ready made article for

them, they would really like that. And I've had many clients

say, Hey, I took your recommendation, and pitch them a

monthly column. And they really wanted a weekly column. Of

course, they do, they want the free content, but I stood firm,

and they agreed to do give me a monthly column, I get to mention

my business works really well, I've got a dentist who did this.

I've got a couple of people in fitness, they talk about

nutrition, and exercise and things you can do around the

house to stay fit. But you know, also people in therapy, you

know, practices, where they provide mental health things

they can do, like monthly check ins, you know, like how, you

know, maybe as we get closer to June, they do a column about

people who are planning for weddings and all the stress

that's related with that same thing with end of the holidays.

And so, you know, these are opportunities for you. And all

you have to do is, you know, build that Rolodex want, stay on

top of it, you know, because people leave relationships,

right. And then, and then just reach out to them and just

introduce yourself, you know, that you're a member of the

community, and what you feel that they might want to cover

today. You know, it could be something that's trending in

your industry. I'd mentioned dry cleaners before, and going green

and getting away from chemicals and stuff like that you could

talk about, hey, I'd love to share with you something that we

did recently, it was a huge investment, but it's so much

better for both the environment and individuals, you know, just

sort of, you know, make your pitch. If you do have some

candid photos, feel free to attach one or two of those. If

you have a ready made, quote, you know, put that in there,

because a journalist can build an article around an amazing

quote. And, you know, the first thing people ask us, Well,

Vicki, what's an amazing quote, and it can be, you know, how

beautiful it was that you wrote it, you know, like, I'm a poet,

so maybe I'm a wordsmith, but it doesn't have to be, you know, a

quote can also be amazing, just because how well you condensed

and really made that sentence so tight, that if they were to

paraphrase it, it would be a loss, you know, and so just

really spent a little bit of time on a great quote, quotes

are probably one of the most overlooked things in press

releases. And here, you're not including a press release,

you're just writing a few sentences of a pitch, but put an

amazing quote in there. And often, you may get the interest

of local media, local media is a little hard to break into, but

it pays off because generally, if you do this, say every other

month, or at the minimum quarterly, you know, brainstorm,

keep an eye on competitors and other cities. That's a great way

because you see somebody in another city that is covered in

your industry on a hot button item. You can, you know, don't

tell them, Hey, I saw this in another city, or another

journalist wrote about this person, but you say, Hey, I've

noticed in my industry that people are really paying

attention to whatever the focus of the story was it I would love

to talk to you. That's why I, you know, a local business and

your community would fit perfectly. Here's an amazing

quote, here's my contact information. Here's a link to my

website, whatever collateral you want to include, maybe a photo

or two, and send it off. Now, I've had people who've done this

and they've gone nine months and nothing's happened. And then all

of a sudden, something happens within the year and often it's

not what you pitched. But it's them reaching out to you under

deadline saying, I'm working on a story on XY and Z, I thought

that you would be a perfect example to put in there, could I

get a quote from you, and you're like, Sure. And, and the reason

that you came to their attention is, you've reached out to him a

few times, you're on their radar, they weren't, you know,

inspired by anything you'd sent to that point. But now they have

a need for you. And as that happens, it happens more

regularly in the Baltimore market, I see in the Baltimore

Sun, the same company that gets plugged into articles two or

three times a year one might be about HR, you know, talking

about the trend of people doing hybrid and trying to, you know,

establish a workplace culture, how difficult that is. So

they're talking to the HR person at this ad agency. And then

later, they talk about, you know, creative things that

people do to give back to the community. And they talk about

their program, where people are allowed to do certain amount of

days per year, where they work out in the community, and it's

counted towards work inside there. And they just get plugged

in, because they're a go to, and they know that the people will

give an amazing quote, every time they'll do candid shots,

they make it very easy to work with the media. And, you know,

whenever the media is under deadline, they just reach out to

them, because they know that they can get what they need very

quickly. And it'll be of a quality content. And so those

are the types of relationships you work on, I say the first

year is the hardest. And usually after that, it gets a lot

easier. The exception being those weekly neighborhood

papers, those are usually very easy to, you know, get columns.

And if you have ready made articles, they love that as

well. We call it as features, as opposed to a press release. They

really are looking to copy and paste. It's just to have

something to look like there's content with all the ads and

those things. But the thing is people read them, there are

people who look at the ads, they look at the offers the coupons,

whatever it might be in those. And so it can be a great way to

sort of get recognition in your neighborhood. If you have a

vibrant neighborhood and you're part of it. So I you know, I

tell people, local media, go out there, get it yourself. It

really is one of those things. That seems like a lot of work.

But it isn't, because like I said, once you break it down,

it's not a lot of people.

Yeah, that's there are a lot of there were a

lot of nuggets in everything that you said there. And but

what I found, what I have found is I remember like years ago,

when I was getting started in working for myself, and I was a

professional organizer for about three years. And I was involved

with the Chamber of Commerce at the time, and the local

newspaper was more vibrant than it certainly is now today. And

it was easy to get articles in there. And they'd have pictures

of me and we talked about being organized in your office or your

home office. And that was that was just from knowing the people

in the community. Today, it feels so different. Because

number one, as I said, the newspaper the local newspapers

are ones gone and the other ones disgusting. Now, it's not really

much in it. But you know, to your point that they're looking

for things. And then the other thing is that everybody's

online. So does that fit? Well, your business is called E

releases, right? So you do things online, right? And that's

how you distribute things so many so much more easily today.

So I think that what you just said makes total sense for

entrepreneurs, solopreneurs. And people like that. I remember an

it I don't know why I got into their emails, but I did. But

there's an organization I think it's called Hero. Is it, harrow

harrow

out? Is that still happening? It

is. I think it's mostly paid though, I think

there still might be a free, there still might be a free

component. But what I have found is it doesn't work as well as it

used to used to be a secret. And what happens is the journalist

says, I'm working on a story. And I would love to speak to

someone who is a, I don't know, a consultant and beauty or you

pick something and all of a sudden you're like, ooh, and you

write in and you tell them about you and why you'd be perfect for

them to do and it used to work because it would be like you

know, 4050 people competing for one spot. And you know, if you

were media ready, and you could fire off a really well written

pitch. You stood a good chance of being picked up. I hear of

journalists today saying aye. Aye. To get to three 400 people

competing for one spot, and that just makes it really, really

unlikely that you're going to stand out enough. Now, if you

believe that you have a strong, unique selling proposition, and

you are very distinct or unique, then maybe you could rise to the

top more often than not, but for most people I'm finding, it just

doesn't have the magic that it used to.

Like so many things. So that means that we

have to be more creative and do things in a different way.

Right. So what makes your company stand out in that

regard?

So I think for us, the big thing is that,

number one, every distribution that we do is a national

distribution over PR Newswire. In the US, there's two news

wires a press releases. Its PR Newswire and Business Wire. And

so it's largely a duopoly, there was a third player who tried and

tried to get market share. But here's the problem. Journalists

are busy. And they're always under deadline. And they have

the situation where they can go fish into ponds, and get like 90

some percent of all the releases that are important. And so then

this third player says, Hey, come Come here, too. And they're

like, Ah, I don't have the time. I don't have the energy. I like

it would just to be honest, I'd like it if there was one. So

they they just haven't been able to make inroads with

journalists, like Business Wire and PR Newswire. But what they

did is a pivot, where they said, Hey, we meet all the SEC see

disclosures, you know, getting you on MarketWatch getting you

on Yahoo Finance, getting you on certain places. And so they've

gone to these publicly traded companies, many of them smaller

and saying, Hey, you don't even want to journalists looking

through your numbers. Just use us. We're a lot cheaper than

Business Wire and PR Newswire and so that that's their pivot.

But outside of that, people probably know of other news

wires, like the Associated Press, Reuters, Dow Jones, those

are not wires of press releases, those are wires of articles

they've written. So for example, the Baltimore Sun in my

backyard, if there's breaking news at 6pm, like the Supreme

Court came out with a late ruling, rather than the

journalist who reports they're at the Baltimore Sun has already

gone home for the day, they can just license that article that

was written by the Associated Press, they know the Associated

Press, you know, all these places produce really good

content. So they can just use that article and not have to use

the labor of someone or pull them out of their, their their

home life and able to get something done. So a lot of

people do rely on those types of wires. They don't run press

releases, but they do accept press releases. And again, if

they're inspired enough, and you could possibly get them to turn

that into an article that they've written. That is rare.

But it's not impossible, it does happen. But that's pretty much

the landscape. Despite that, if you go to Google and type in

press release, you'll probably see another 30 companies with

wire in their names. They're not real news wires. A lot of them

are syndicators of press releases. And that's what it's

called when the press release appears on Yahoo Finance and

market watch and a bunch of these financial websites as well

as other little websites. The thing to know is that's usually

part of SEC compliance, meeting some disclosures and things like

that. But very few people see that, you know, you're not going

to no one's typing a stock ticker in for you, because

you're a private company. So you know, the fact you're on one

section of Yahoo Finance doesn't really mean anything. Very few

people are going to read it, no journalists are going to see it.

And so that's not very important. So there is a lot of,

you know, mis communication in the industry. People come to us

and say, Hey, why would I pay you guys four or $500 to move a

release? When I can go to XYZ wire for $59? So I'm like, well

with us, you go out through PR Newswire and they charge

$1,600 600 Word Press release through us. It's about a third

of the price of what you would pay directly with PR Newswire.

And with these other, you know, XYZ wire or whatever it is, you

don't reach journalists at all. And so there's never the

opportunity for an article to be written. That being said, I

would say that the majority of people who use the $59 service

and a $1,600 PR Newswire have a very similar result in that

nothing happens. They might have the sense though, they will

definitely have the syndicated releases that appear on those

little websites, but they both probably will get no earned

media. And that's because most press releases don't result in

earned media. Most people look at press releases that everyone

else is doing. And they write it and they send it out and nothing

happens, you know, my, the most popular release we get an E

releases is a new hire. And it's usually not an executive, you

know, a new director or President or Vice President, you

know, really important person. And it's also usually not an

industry veteran that people know. And so for that reason,

that people who would be interested is very small. This

is a case where you take that person's picture, you write a

few lines about, you know, their story, you don't need a whole

press release, send it to your local paper, maybe send it to

the local business, magazine or newspaper, and then pick a

couple of trade publications, often those that have like on

the move section, and send it directly to them. Because

outside of that, it's very unlikely anyone else is going to

cover it. And it's not worth spending money to go on the wire

for that. The second most popular release I get is a

product launch, press release. And in theory, that could be

newsworthy, but most of the time we get, here's our new product,

here's the list of features, here's a page to learn more and

buy it. And at the end of the day, journalists are

storytellers, and they like a story arc. And they basically

have to protect their biggest asset, which is their audience.

And so they have to decide is this important enough to that it

will really educate or entertain, or ideally, both to

their audience, and a list of features probably isn't gonna

rise anywhere close enough to interest their audience. So you

know, the thing that you can do is to inject the elements to

make a great story, you have that for

a second, stop there for a second, because I

want to ask you, so if somebody has that need, they've created a

new product, or they have a new product launch, or whatever, and

they come to you. And they've got this laundry list, like you

just described, and you say, this isn't going to cut it, do

you guys then rewrite it for them. So

we, if you come to our website, and upload a

release and schedule it, and you've written it like that, we

just distribute it, right, I used to go back to them and say,

Hey, I make this recommendation. And about a third of the time

they cancel their order. And, and would write a bad review

saying I'm trying to upsell them. So I don't unless they

come to us and say you're not

creating, then you're just the, the vehicle for

them to

for most clients, we do offer writing.

And if someone approaches us and ask us to take a look at their

release, we'll do that. Whether you use us or not, you're always

welcome to send a Release to us, and allow our editors one to two

business days to review it and get back to you with some tips

and advice. And it may be to completely rewrite it. And in

which case, we'll check in generally give you some notes as

to what to incorporate into it. But I find that just people who

have already made press release, and that's often how people find

us, they go online, they they do a search saying I've got a

release, I'm looking at where to send it, they come to us they

upload it they date, schedule it, and then again, not much

happens. So after the sale, I then try to educate people

because I find it doesn't work to educate them in the

beginning. Because they just want to send that release out.

Well, and

yet that's kind of a license to print money.

Right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I felt that you you're a heart centered person

and that, but you just answered the question. So you wait until

maybe they call and say hey, nothing happened or that you

found it interesting, that client interesting enough for

the presser that you knew you could help them. So you give

them that opportunity to work with you.

Right, we actually follow up by email, and

we actually follow up with new customers with ideas for their

next release that are a bit more newsworthy. Now

it's is that a team of people that does that,

or is that you know,

is not me, it is a team of people. We have 65

editors, one managing editor and assistant, some freelancers as

well. And as a team, we work to get it done. And we do sort of

help out each other and try to provide the customer service.

The one thing I don't have in the business is salespeople. My

customers don't want to talk to a salesperson. They want to talk

to an editor and I just find that editors couldn't provide

better ethical customer service than a salesperson and, and all

my people are empowered to tell someone if they just don't feel

like we're a good fit. Because I don't want to take money from a

small business. If it doesn't look like we'd be able to help

them. Wow.

Yes, that's that just sort of, I think I missed

the boat originally on that, that people just they use the

service, you're not necessarily creating the press release for

them. But you do have that opportunity when to work with

you that way.

Yeah. And another thing I have is a free

masterclass where I try to teach anybody who will listen, people

on podcast, as well as my clients, the types of releases

that were because like I said, you know, 90, some percent

don't, but the small numbers of people who do have releases that

work, they are patterns and similarities. And so I put

together, it's an hour long video masterclass, that goes

through the types of releases that people should consider. And

if anyone's interested to you, releases.com/plan, PLA n, I

don't charge anything for it. Because I really just want

people to do more meaningful press releases, because I know

if they follow this, some of them are a little involved. But

there's a great reward for those. But at the end of the

day, if you follow these, you're going to have more hits than

misses, because these are the types of releases that

journalists are engaging with, and finding high value and being

able to build good stories with. That's

very generous. That's great. So that's on your

website. I'll put that in the show notes as well. I want to

shift gears a little bit before we wrap up, because I know we've

got a few minutes yet but you said and I also saw in your in

your one sheet that you're a poet. Yeah. And did you study

poetry in university?

I did. I actually pursued a Masters of

Fine Arts and Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry. And

I that's I graduated 27 years ago. And my career plan was to

wait tables and write poetry. And I did that for a summer

after I graduated. And I tell you, my my feet never stopped

hurting, my back never stopped hurting. I felt so

psychologically wiped after every eight to 10 hour shift. I

didn't read or write anything. So at the end of that summer, I

said, I need to pivot to a safe office job. But I didn't call it

pivot, because that wasn't a word thing. But I do I need to

define something. So a basketball player, I got hired

to the telecom research firm in DC as employee number three. And

because I had writing on my resume, even though it was

creative, they said write press releases and figure that out.

And I sent out releases with our data in it, and nothing

happened. And then I realized that the journalists are

interested in the story behind the data. So I would look for

anomalies in our data to find out why that was, report that

story. And the first time I did that, it was like there was a

Caribbean country that had more inbound and outbound traffic to

the United States than all the other Caribbean countries

combined. And I was like, why is this I researched it. And I

found it as because that was the call center for one 900 numbers,

which were popular 27 years ago. And so I put that together as a

story oriented press release. I started out that release got

picked up by the Economist Financial Times, Washington

Post, Wall Street Journal, and three telecom trade

publications. And they just thought I was a god there at

that little telecom research firm. And so I did that again

and again. And I didn't get as many hits with the subsequent

ones. But I consistently got hits, because I was finding the

stories and getting them out there. And one that was

meaningful was patterns where we'd see growth in certain non

industrialized countries over a period of years, and then all of

a sudden, you'd see huge swings and strong economic growth. And

that one got picked up. And we got so many orders from hedge

funds, investment firms, and before that every single order

that we got for our research reports was from telecom

companies. And so it just opened us up to a whole new customer

base that we didn't even realize was there and we find value in

it. Well, hopefully

you had it, you got a raise.

I did really well there. I loved it. When I

started the company didn't know how to price their data and it

was literally $600 a year, a ticket, a physical book. Now

it's a license that starts at $30,000 a year per person. Yeah.

And so they really recognize the value today but It was a fun

time to work and I learned a heck of a lot. I'm sure you

did. Okay, back to poetry for a second. So, tell

me who your favorite poet is.

Oh, there's so many of them that I just love.

But I think right now, Diane Seuss. I just love everything

she writes. And she wrote a book recently modern poetry that's

just phenomenal. Okay,

what about the classics? Um,

let's see. Sylvia Plath. And Elizabeth

Bishop are two of my favorites.

I don't know Elizabeth Bishop, but Sylvia

Plath very dark. Very, very, yeah.

And Elizabeth Bishop is she she's very strong.

She's got one, I think called the fish that I just really

love. It's just a great poem.

Do you still write,

so I quit. I didn't write. But I was running

my own company and building out after the telecom startup. But I

started writing about five or six years ago. And this past

Friday, I signed a contract to have my first book published in

February of 2026.

Fantastic, congratulations. Thank you. So

do you write short poems? Do you write long poems? Do you write

story type poems?

So I've write very narrative poems. For the

most part, I have written some that are kind of lyrical. But

most of them are narrative. And they tend to be small. There's

some that are two pages, but most all of them are under a

page.

You know, it's funny, I know this is a complete

sidetrack from your business. But I was just fascinated and

curious about the poetry and then it reminded me that the

other day I was trying to entice my granddaughter who's going to

be five next week. Two, I told her, like, I have a lot of books

up in my cupboard here that were from my kids, right? And I saved

the ones I love. And there's two books there that I've that I'm

waiting to, you know, lure her into. One of them is a a Milne's

poems, when we were very young, and when we were five or

something, anyway, Emile, and the second one is Shel

Silverstein. And, and, of course, they're just so great in

terms of kids poems. And, but there's no real pictures in the

book or anything. So it's like, how are you going to get a kid

to? It's probably the rhyme or the, you know, finding one that

like I I could talk about James James Morrison, Morrison,

whether it be George Dupree, who love to go down to the city,

although he was only three and that's like, a Milan poem that I

remember when I was a kid, right? So it's interesting to

see how I'm gonna get her to find a love of of those

are there is one that has sketches in it. That's

just an adorable book called The Bat poet by Randall Jarrell. I

don't know that one that that is illustrated by Maurice Sendak.

But that's not typical Sendak. It's very just nature oriented

for the most part, but it's a very adorable book that I think

a young child would appreciate. Okay, I'll check it out. Thank

you. So before we wrap up, I want to just ask you

a question that I love to ask some of my guests. Not always,

but I feel like wanting to ask you this question. So my

favorite word is curiosity. And I want to know if you think that

curiosity is innate, or learned, and the second part of the

question is, what are you most curious about these days?

So I'm not sure whether it's learned or innate,

I know that I have an insatiable curiosity. I you know, just go

down rabbit holes and try to learn as much as I can. Right

now, I have a you know, that book coming out a long time. But

also I do press releases. So I wanted to learn about a lot

about book marketing. So I bought 40, Kindle, book

marketing books, I've, I've plowed through 11 of them in the

past two weeks, and I'm just trying to learn as much as I can

about book marketing and how, you know, different people

approach it, and see whether I might be able to utilize it, you

know, for myself. It's also you know, also whether I might be

able to offer something of value to to people who come to us as

authors, because we do get a lot of authors and E releases. And

it used to always be self published until about 10 years

ago. And then we started getting traditionally published authors.

And it seems like even you know, the big companies are saying,

hey, you know, we don't do marketing unless you're really

big, and so you're on your own, and so I do see a need for

people to have access to book marketing options that are out

there. So that that's the big thing that I'm passionate about

at the moment. That's

exciting. Thank you. Thank you for that. So one

last question. If you could give me your favorite or best piece

of advice around your business for my audience, and you've

given us a lot of actual, actually a lot of hit hints and

tips around what to do, but your your, your pet phrase, perhaps

your pet piece of advice.

I think that you know, don't don't feel that

you're too small to matter to the media. Journalists love to

be seen as curators. And you'll often find that they put the

spotlight on a small business, more likely than a larger

company. Of course, they have to cover the big companies in

particular industries. But they love to spotlight the small

businesses because their audience gives the most love to

journalist and accolades. When they profile a new tool or

resource from someone they've never heard of before. So many

times, being small and unknown is an advantage because

journalists love to put the spotlight on those types of

businesses.

That's great advice. Thank you. Thank you for

being here today. It was a lot of fun to talk to you. And I

learned a lot. And I wish you well with your book on your

poetry book. And, again, thank you to my audience for being

here. If you like what you heard, please, I will put

Mickey's information in the show notes please check out his

company and his services and in case you want a press release

and have it sent out to the National Blood Services, I guess

I would call it Yes. So thank you again and remember to stay

connected and be remembered