In this dynamic episode of The One Small Change Podcast, host Yvonne McCoy welcomes Rob Lange - The Expert Expert, who demystifies how entrepreneurs and small businesses can leverage press and media as powerful, accessible, and free marketing tools. Drawing from decades of experience with high-profile clients, our guest shares transformative moments that highlight the tangible benefits of media exposure. The conversation uncovers common misconceptions, explains effective strategies for crafting media-friendly stories, and offers practical first steps for any business owner ready to get noticed—without spending a dime on advertising.

Guest Bio

Rob Lange, known as The Expert Expert, has nearly 40 years of experience helping entertainers, entrepreneurs, and business owners structure and elevate the business side of their creative ventures. Having worked with industry legends like Richard Simmons, Suze Orman, Robert Kiyosaki, Orville Redenbacher, and Michael Jordan, Rob specializes in harnessing the press and media as business assets. Through coaching, courses, and hands-on guidance, he empowers clients to secure meaningful media exposure, build lasting credibility, and stand out in their industries—all using systems and approaches he’s refined over decades.

Chapters:

00:00 "Media as a Business Tool"

03:40 Last-Minute Celebrity for Kmart Event

08:00 Expanding Media Landscape

10:36 Press Release Screening Process

13:35 "Crafting Messages for Media Success"

17:09 The Power of Media Presence

21:11 Media Accessibility for Entrepreneurs

25:07 "Free Press Media Marketing Guide"

27:06 "Long-Form Media Evolution"

30:11 "Embrace Change: Stay Curious"

Quote from the Guest:

“Press and media is something that's available to all businesses. It doesn't matter what you do. I have yet in almost 39 years found a business that we haven't been able to help or hasn't been able to utilize this… once you learn how to do it, it's a forever skill that you can do over and over as often as you want.”

Link:

To claim your gift of The Expert’s Guide To Press & Media Marketing & Promotion visit https://pages.theexpertexpert.com/specialreport?sa=sa00380038654eb1dee30aa2e1f716418c5d8831d7

Welcome to the One Small Change. I am so thrilled that you've taken the

time out of your schedule to join me on this journey of exploration and

transformation. And I'm your host, Yvonne McCoy, and I bring almost 30 years

of entrepreneurial experience. And I have a passion for

discovering growth through the power of seemingly one, seemingly small

change. And sometimes I can even say it correctly. But

anyway, this week I want to share somebody new with you

who's going to share a small, unexpected or

insignificant decision that sparked a remarkable

transformation in their life, whether personal or

professional. And today we're going to be talking to

somebody who's talking about something totally different than I've ever talked

about before. And it's Robert Lang. Robert, thank

you so much for joining me. I am so excited to have you on the

program. You are talking about an area that I know nothing about.

And I know. And as an entrepreneur, I should know more and

tribes should know more about this,

about what you do and why you what change

happened that made you better at what you do than most people? That's a great

question. Well, first of all, thank you. Thank you for having me here. It's great

to be here. And I think this is

a topic and a component of business that

gets overlooked and not talked about enough. So I think this is fantastic that you're

bringing it to the fore. Most people worldwide know me as the

expert expert. Very few people know me by my name. So if the name

doesn't sound familiar, that's why the expert expert is something I have been doing

almost 40 years. And it started with

entertainers. And I worked with a lot of entertainers. My background was in

entertainment. And entertainers

are among the worst business people you'd ever meet. They're

very creative types. They love the performance, but they're just lousy at the business.

So they needed somebody to structure the business behind what they did. And

that's what I did, is I helped originally entertainers, now all kinds of

entrepreneurs and business owners create the business behind their skills,

talents and abilities. And I became known

for working with some real famous people, famous experts

Richard Simmons and Susie Orman, rich dad, poor dad, Robert

Kiyosaki, Orville Redenbacher, Michael Jordan and so many others.

And that kind of put me on the map with a lot of people because

the premise that we use for all of this is one of the

components of my expert system, which is using the press and media.

Most people don't think of the press and media as a

business tool. They just think of it as something that we watch or listen to

or read or consume, but they don't think of it in the sense of a

business tool. So my one thing as I. I

talk about in my, my speeches, my talks,

is I found myself in a very

weird situation where I was on the

air one day doing my radio show, and a lady called me and

said, you're the only person. I'm in a pickle and. And you're the only

person that can help me out. And I, you know,

we hear all kinds of weird things from different listeners, and they're all so

fascinating. But this one seemed to be truly in a crisis situation.

And so my producer took her name and number and I called her back after

I got off the air. And long story short, I did

a lot of celebrity interviews on my radio show. And she. It was also

known by my listeners that I owned an entertainment agency,

our hometown. And this lady was from the regional office of

Kmart in the Midwest. And they were

grand opening for a Kmart store. This was two days before the grand

opening. They had Loretta Lynn, country superstar, scheduled to

appear, and she had to cancel. So here they had only had

48 hours to let people know about the cancellation and come up with another celebrity

to fill in. So she called me. I just had a couple of

celebrities on my show that day. She said, is there any way you could get

them or somebody else to come out here and appear? Could you host the event

and produce it for us? She was just all over, very

disheveled. And I said, okay, well, let's, let's do this. Let me make a

few calls. Long story short is I was able to find a couple of celebrities,

but because we only had 48 hours, there was no time to do major

advertising. So I talked to my program

director and we put it on our radio station. And I

contacted other TV and radio personnel I knew in my market.

And they all said, sure, let's do this to help. This was a

big department store back in the day called Kmart. And

they were. When a Kmart opened in a community, it was kind of a big

deal. It did a lot for the economy and employment. And so they said, let's

all support this. And the lady tells me, she

said, we're expecting a few hundred people and my bosses are flying

in from corporate offices. And she was just shaking in her

boots. And I said, well, we'll do everything we can to make this a top

notch thing. Long story short, we promoted it for 48 hours.

I did all kinds of press and media interviews. To promote it.

And over 3,000 people showed up. It was a

fantastic success. The

Kmart people and the bosses loved it. The audience

loved it. The celebrities that I had, which were from a soap opera at the

time, All My Children loved it. I loved it. My agency loved

it. And it led to Kmart calling

me the next Monday, asking me if I would do all of their grand openings.

And I did that for the next eight years. And I used press and media

in everything I did. And even though I was in

radio, I didn't understand the draw of press and

media on a public level till I did that event

and then subsequent events after that. And then

our story got picked up by ap, which is the

Associated Press newswire. That means that they picked it

up and they ran it in outlets all across the country. And

so a few days later, I get a phone call, and it was from Oprah.

And she said, oh, my gosh. I'm a big All My Children fan. I've been

following what you do. I want to do a show with you and your

celebrities, but my studio isn't big enough to hold all the people

you've been drawing, so we want to do it from a suburban shopping

mall and so on and so forth. And

it just was amazing. Thousand, maybe 10,000 people showed

up for that. And what it did is it showed me the power of pressing

media as a business tool and a marketing and promotional resource.

And it's something that I then adapted to all of my businesses

back then. The agency, our radio station, you know, just so many

different things. And I was. Because of the Oprah thing, we went

nationwide really quick. This is before the Internet.

And so I was getting business from all over the country asking

me how to do this. And so I've been doing press and media

marketing and promotion for entrepreneurs and small businesses ever since.

Okay. So, like I said, this is. This is

the path that I have never been down before at all. And so

we are starting with some of the most basic questions.

So the first question that comes to my mind is, I

mean, people have said to me at different times, you

should do press releases. But it seemed like,

you know, it's kind of like the paper may pick it up or they may

not pick it up. I. Right. I mean, that's about all I know

about. Okay. And the second

layer to that is, with newspapers on

the decline, you know, the smaller, you know, hometown

newspapers are going out of business and that kind of stuff,

is it still as viable as it was when you started

doing it? Absolutely. Actually, it's

more viable today than ever before in the sense that

there are more media outlets than ever before.

We have the six major ones, the tv, radio, now

podcast, and then magazines, newspaper and online media.

Those are the ones most people are familiar with and aware of. But then

when you get beyond that, there's so many

specialty media that you may not even be aware

of that weren't around a decade or two ago. You know, there

is media for almost everything. There's knitting media,

there's Afghan media, there's, there's, you know,

scrapbooking media. I had a trucker

client that was a cross the road trucker, and

he created a course for truckers because young truckers weren't understanding

what a lot of the older truckers knew. And he took out an ad in

USA Today that I think cost $12,800 or something like that.

Didn't get a single inquiry. And somebody, he was so

bummed because he just blew $12,800. Somebody told

him about me and they connected him with me

and we work together. And like I said, you know, you're trying to

go for mainstream media and maybe the thing to do is start with

specialty media and then you can branch out. Much to

our surprise, there's a lot of trucker media. There were five

trucker magazines. There was a trucker radio network that had country

radio stations, rock, classic rock, gospel, all geared for

across the road truckers. And there was trucker television

networks that were used at all these truck stops around the country. So

we quickly got him in my program and I kind of coached

him a little bit. And he just. Now he's doing great. I think

he sold like over 250 courses already. And it's just

phenomenal because of the power of the press and media. So I think the

miss the problem is there's a lot of misconceptions.

And one of them is all you need to do is go online, get a

blank press release, fill it out, and then send it to the media

and they'll be knocking down your door to do an interview. And that, that

is so far from the truth.

Yes, it could happen. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. You know,

I mean, but in reality, that's not how it works. The media

works a very, very specific way. They have their own language,

their own system, and their own format that they work within. And

if you don't submit things in that, it's almost

I tell the station the story. I had a radio station and we used to

get two. This is in the day of faxes, okay, fax, broadcast,

faxing, we used to get 250 to 300

press releases a day. And they'd come in and

right next to our fax machine was a big 55 gallon

garbage can. And we would look at the fax and we would know within

the first half, second to a second, whether it was something we would be

interested in or not. And if not, we'd throw it right in the garbage. And

out of 250 or 300 today, only seven or eight of them

would we actually keep. Because if you look at the press release,

and even if it's a great topic, if it's not

formatted and media friendly as we call it, somebody at that

media outlet has to rewrite and reformulate the whole thing. And it

may take an hour or two of time. So the

first part of that is press releases. There's nine different

kinds of press releases. Most people don't understand that. And you got to have

the right one for the right job, and then you've got to know how to

create it and craft it and what to do with it. So there's a little

more to it than just that. And that's only one way to reach the

media is press releases. Now, there's other ways as well. All right,

you've said a couple of things I want to make sure that

I highlight. Okay, so for

those of us that know nothing and think of like press

releases and stuff as being just, you know, on the, the

big newspapers and stuff, that

probably it, you know, it's that that concept of being a big

fish in a small pond versus being a small fish in a big

pond for specialty outlets that

you will appeal to, you have a much better chance

of, one, hitting your audience, two, having

somebody pick it up. So did I get that right

in part? Yeah, I think that's right. In concept, the big thing is

most people, when they contact the media, they do it. So

almost from an ad perspective, an advertisement perspective,

this is my business. This is what we do. And you know that.

And the thing is, is

that's not newsworthy. That's. That's. They might turn that over to the

sales department and they may have an account executive contact you to buy an

ad. But what we, what we're talking about is taking your

business message and crafting it in a way

that it's a media story, a story that the media wants

to pick up first. Let me clarify. When I say press and media, I'm not

talking about pr. I'm not talking About a blurb or a mention.

What I'm talking about are full length feature

stories on you and your business, usually with photos,

often front page. And

this is dedicated to you and what you do

from a newsworthy angle or hook.

And there are. That's one of the talents in my course

and my coaching is teaching people how to craft their message

for the media. For example, speakers are used to

crafting their message for the stage. They don't think

of it for the media. And

one of the things I teach in my signature program

is as I started this with

entertainers for entertainers. Now for business owners, there

are three different presentations or performances we

need to do. One of those is the one we do from the stage when

we're presenting and selling in our business and making an offer.

Another one is the one you do when you're talking to somebody, whether it's on

the phone, whether it's in a networking or

business group, something to generate business sales or relationships.

There's a different presentation or performance you use for that.

And then the third one is the press

and media performance or presentation we do. And that's

crafted for that target audience, not for

JV partners or other businesses, not for

prospects or lead gen for clients that you're trying to get or

customers, but for the media. And it's kind of a skill

and ability that you have to learn how to adapt your message

to the media when with the right hook and the right

elements in place that make it media friendly. That was kind of the

second thing that I was going to say is

one of the things that I learned.

Whether you're writing a grant, whether you're talking or whatever is

kind of the first thing is what is the purpose of what you're doing

and who is your audience. Importantly, what's in it

for them? Right. You know, I mean, I mean,

I find even when people are doing their introductions and stuff, they're

going, I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this and it's

all about them. And I'm gonna buy from you. I don't care.

Yeah, yeah. What can you do for me? What are you gonna do for me?

Right. And so that's. That's exactly what you're saying.

Yeah. You know, why, why is my story

going to be helpful to your station or the people that are

listening? How is it going to help them? What is the information that I'm going

to get out there that's going to make people go, oh my God, this

station is wonderful because they're giving Me this kind of information

that's making me, the station, more of an expert in their,

you know, in their community. So I think that that

is, I mean, that is a good lesson not only for, you know, if

you're doing media, but just if you're talking to anybody. Absolutely.

It's kind of like if you're talking to school children, you're not going to give

them the, you know. Right.

Yeah. All right, so I'm smarter already.

There you go. Well, you got to remember this to what you just

said. The media, and so are we as

business owners, but to a different degree. The media is very

protective of their audience. They, they know their audience.

Their advertisers have to appeal to their audience. And if

they put something on their airwaves or in their pages, it's got to

be something that they feel is

representative to their audience. It's something that they want and they

feel that would fit with their station, their format, their

publication, their audience. The second thing is, you got to remember the

media is many things at once. It's informative,

it's educational, it's influential, it's persuasive,

it's entertaining, and it is

very powerful and credible. And when you appear

in the media, that credibility and positioning kind

of includes you. You're now part of that.

And that's one of the greatest benefits that I received early on was

realizing that that

credibility kind of spills over onto us and

you gain instant credibility because of it. And you've got to remember the other

benefits for why to do press and media. Some people do it for

greater exposure, to reach a larger, loyal audience,

for credibility, for positioning, to build a

lead generation, to build a mailing list or an emailing list

to separate yourself from the competition in your niche market or industry. I

just had a dry cleaner I worked with that said, hey, my clientele

is only in a 5 to 7 mile radius, but I have 5 other

dry cleaners in that area. I gotta do something, stand out from

the pack and to rise above that. And he used press and

media in a way. He took my course and then I think he actually

took a short coaching package because

he was having trouble with just what we were talking about of, okay, I know

what I do like the back of my hand, but I'm not sure how to

adapt that so that the media would be interested or that it would be. It

wouldn't just be a blatant advertisement for my thing.

And so I worked with him for a short period of

time and he got it the Light bulb went off. I could see that he

was making sense of it. And you got to remember, what I'm doing does not

include any immediate buys. No ad spends. You don't

ever spend a penny once you learn how to do it, it's a forever skill

that you can do over and over as often as you want. So I've got

people that are getting 10, $20,000 in press and

media coverage on their first time out, you know, much to

their surprise. And then once that happens, then they start thinking of those

terms, you know. So. All right,

I could keep, you know, talking to you for a long

time because, like, this is. This is a. A big hole that

I. So if you were talking to

people, what would. Like, three things that

people could, you know, take away from this talk that they could.

They could start to use or at least start thinking about it differently. Sure,

sure. Well, the first thing is

that press and media is something that's available to all businesses. It doesn't

matter what you do. I have yet in 38, almost 39 years,

found a business that we haven't been able to help or hasn't been able to

utilize this. You've got to think of it not as the

TV or radio station or magazine or newspaper that you read or watch,

but as a business resource that's available to you for free once

you learn how to do it. Right. So that's the first thing, I think the

people wrapping themselves around that. There's so many times that you'll watch

TV and see somebody on a feature or a segment of a

morning show and say, oh, gosh, that could be. Should be me. I'd love to

be on there talking about my business. Well, that's possible when you learn how to

do it. So that's the first thing. The second thing is

you have to understand how the media works, how the press and

media operates. The press and media,

to make a long story short, and I get into this in my course, was

created to tell a story. There was a train

crash and the

railroad wanted to put a certain story out there rather than

have people come investigate it and maybe twist it to something else.

So they created the press release and a press conference

where they told their story, and that's what people took as gospel, and it

ran from there. So the point is, they've always been very

specific about how they want information and how they package

information. Another misconception is that it's only

available to big companies, people that spend a lot of money as advertisers or

celebrities. And that's not true in reality.

I get people say all the time, well I'm just starting my business so I

don't think they'd be interested in me. And that's so not true.

No, you might not get on the Today show tomorrow, but like you say, you've

got your own newspapers, you've got your own TV and radio

stations and the media has certain topics

that are very business friendly

that if you can tie in or you fall in one of those categories. They

love women in business. They love the local entrepreneur

or business owner that does fine, that's doing well. They like

anything that's senior

prevention, like fraud or scam preventions, any consumer

advocacy or awareness. They like health and wellness. They like self

empowerment, they like women in business. I don't know if I said that

one. There's so many different things that they like.

So if you can adapt your message to those or if you cover

two or more, though I'm a local entrepreneur, that's a businesswoman in health and

wellness. My gosh, you've got three, three things on your, you know, in

your advantage right away then there are certain times of

the year that the press and media is looking for certain

themes. For example, we're coming up on the fall now

before, in just a few weeks it's going to be holiday

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday.

Right after the first of the year, it's going to be okay, New Year's

resolution starting anew. Let's all kind of take inventory

of ourselves and make this a great. So you've got that, you know, then you

got Valentine's Day and so on and so forth. You got the spring

holidays, you got spring cleaning. I tapped that dry cleaner

into this whole spring cleaning thing and we had a major

campaign we created around that that the press and media just loved. And

there's things, you know, vacation season, back to school. There's. There's just

certain elements throughout the year that you can tap

into. So it's really understanding the press and media on a

deeper level as then how that can pertain to your business. I mean, one of

the things that you just said that I say to my clients all the time

is I want you to create an annual

calendar. And I'm not talking about strategy and stuff like that.

Just like every time you go, oh, I should have done something for

that. Yeah, that's this, right, that on

your calendar for, you know, a month to six weeks earlier,

right? So that you can actually do something about it. So

for instance, I Know that everybody is

in January going to be, you know, I'm really thinking about how to

have a good year, I'm going to lose weight or whatever. Right. My

philosophy is to say to them in November, why wait

to January when you can hit January at

full speed? Right. And the other thing with

press and media is one of the things we teach too is

you have to work on their timetables, magazines especially

for the January edition to come out. Their cutoff for that might

be September 30th, that's their deadline. So they've got that

time to publish. So you've got to work on the timetables of the press and

media as well. So that kind of helps keep you accountable to what

you're talking about, where you create a year round schedule or plan of

attack. All right, I hate to do this, but we

are running out of time to keep

talking to you. This is fabulous

because I don't want people to walk away without that. I mean, I, I, I

personally have walked away with a couple of great ideas. It's

about your gift. Well, one of the things I,

I talk about this a lot and a lot of people are like, oh my

gosh, you really have me thinking. I never thought of pressing media that

way. I never knew as a business tool and I certainly didn't know it was

free once you learn how to do it. Because this can save, you know, so

much marketing. You're spending money and you don't know if it's going to work or

not or you're going to get a return. So what I did is I created

a special report which is called Getting Started

with Press and Media. And it's kind of an introduction to press and media marketing

and promotion, how I can adapt to your business, businesses of

all sizes, a little bit more background, some

examples and just much

more to help you get familiar than what we could get into here. And I've

got that available on my website, which is the expert,

expert.com and when you go to it,

there's a big red badge with a camera lady there

that says get your free report here. And you get that and it'll be emailed

to you right away. And then if,

if your interest is piqued and you can start seeing

a lot of people's wheels will start turning and saying, oh, I, I want

this to be me. This needs to be part of my business. Then I show

you ways that we can work together. You can find more

information about my course and training and coaching and all kinds of stuff.

You take my Breath away. Okay, let me see if I can

stump you. When was the last time you did something new for the first time?

Something new for the first time? Well, I will tell

you two quick

things. I was in radio for 25 years. Got out of radio,

couldn't listen to radio. I just distanced myself from it. Somebody came

to me and said, you got to check out this new thing called podcasting. And

I did, and it was terrible. Anybody that could record

on their computer all of a sudden was a podcaster. And as bad as

the hosts were, the guests were even worse. And now

it's one of my favorite types of media. It has grown, it's matured, it's become

a legitimate type of media. But what I like about it, like we're

doing right here, is it's long form media. It's so much oppressive

media. You might only have a three or seven minute segment or

something where you have to speak in sound bites and make sure you get everything

in. This is a longer form thing where we can tell stories, we can give

some background, we can do so much more. So that on a big

scale, the two big things were when Oprah called

and we got on there. The second time I went on Oprah was

with the Internet, and when she was big Oprah that we now know,

and we're talking just like you or I, and you don't realize that

she's got 26 million viewers and 21 or 23

countries watching, and people from all over the world came

in. So that was a big boost. And that surprised the heck out of me.

Podcasting and what it's become today has been another

great thing that's really excited. And then I

gotta say, adding AI into

this whole mix. Some people have asked me, is that part of your course or

training now? And it is becoming. It's not

replacing anything, but it's again, using it as a

tool to aid in what we're doing. It's been

quite exciting. So I think that's probably the most. Recent thing, and that

is a whole different podcast. It is.

All right, guys, here's the commercial. If you haven't done this yet, please

be sure to subscribe and share and engage in this podcast

on social media. And again, the reason I do this

is I want to supercharge your business through connection. I

want to introduce you to people that maybe you haven't had a chance

to meet yet, and that will change the way you think and fuel

your. Your growth and your impact. So I hope you will continue to join me.

On the one small change so that we can make changes in the world and

have a bold vis and discover innovative

possibilities and things that we never thought were possible, like

having a media presence. Okay, Rob, what are your last

words of wisdom for us? Well,

I just encourage everybody not to be

intimidated or afraid or. So many people get

stuck at getting started. And that can be for

beginners starting out, but it can also be for experienced people

and their approach or attitude towards something new. And

my biggest word is advice is

don't let that fear override. Confidence always prevails.

Confidence will get you to the goal line. Fear is an obstacle

that you have to overcome. And I tell this with all my press and media

students, is you'll be amazed at what happens when you do this.

And once they get that first round of media, they're. They're like, oh, my gosh,

we got to do more of this. So believe in yourself, remain

committed, and don't fear fear. What

you want to do is strive with confidence.

Oh, my God, this has been great. I can't believe that we have

to finish this. But my last words, as always,

is, remember, change can be simple, but it's not always easy.

It requires courage, resilience, and a willingness to step outside your

comfort zone. And so I want you to continue to join me for the one

small change so that you can do some of these things again, so that you

can come up with some innovative possibilities. And until the next time,

I encourage you to stay curious. Rob, thank you

so much. This has been fantastic. Thank you.