In the past three years, I’ve convinced journalists from The New York Times (three times), The Washington Post (three times), The Los Angles Times (twice) and many other well known newspapers, magazines and online publications to write about my clients.

I’ve also persuaded producers from MSNBC, CNN, Fox Business Network, NBC Nightly News and a number of other cable channels, streaming platforms, radio stations and podcasts to interview my clients on the air.

This is the process I used, and continue to use, to get my clients into the news (click here to jump straight to the case studies).

The Interview

The first step I take after signing up a client is to conduct a phone interview. By the end of the call, I want to be so proficient in the client’s business that I could write an article about it.

During the interview, I often ask clients to reveal sensitive information, including how much money their business generates. Though I won’t share this information with journalists (without the client’s explicit permission), it helps me frame the pitch I’ll be sending out.

As I interview clients, I type-up/transcribe what they say, which allows me to insert their most compelling and insightful insights into my pitches. Some of my most successful campaigns were the result of quotes transcribed from interviews (see examples in the case studies at the bottom).

Transcribing an interview can be challenging if you haven’t done it before. You need to be able to ask questions, pay attention to the answers, and engage in a back-and-forth conversation while typing or writing almost everything the client says. My transcriptions are riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, but I can usually decipher the notes when I write my pitches.