Even during the worst of times, tenacity (and more) can see entrepreneurs through

The pandemic created opportunities for inventor-entrepreneurs Kym Gold and Anthony Peraino, who both showed adaptability.

BY ALYSON DUTCH

Economic downturns. The pandemic. There will always be reasons we are afraid to go after our dreams.

But after working with startups for most of my 30-year career, I can tell you: They are all excuses.

Sorry for a little tough love, but you need to hear this.

If you are going to start a business, learn to adapt and find your way around outside factors that appear to be obstacles. Many times in history, businesses won—including the 1929 stock market crash.

The No. 1 quality of a successful inventor-entrepreneur is relentless tenacity.

One of my favorite quotes about this came from Calvin Coolidge: “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

I’ve shortened it to this: “Privilege will not. Education will not. Money will not. Tenacity will.”

Don’t fear fear

Welcoming fear into our lives and learning to feel it is also key. Fears can seem very real, but for them to subside we must move through them—let them be felt.

Moving through emotions like this is another especially important skill for entrepreneurs to master. If we deflect it, it will only persist. Roosevelt said it so well: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Adaptability is another crucial quality. It can create a deep education process that will benefit every part of your life.

Adaptability is the one quality intrinsic to every living being that made us to who we are today. It is at the crux of evolution. Animals adapted to different environments and over time grew legs, wings, teeth and claws to protect them from predators.

Since the moment we were born, we have learned to adapt to our environments. As babies, we cried when we needed food or love and learned how to get what we needed without language. These urges are so strong that as we mature into adults, we become clear reactions of what we got/didn’t get as infants.

Many of us have witnessed the blustery person who walks into a restaurant and grouses loudly when he or she doesn’t get a preferred table. These people are used to pouting and demanding, turning into adults who are clear reflections of their past based on how they adapted—or didn’t.

Living examples

A couple examples of how tenacity, accepting fear, and adaptability can overcome adverse circumstances such as this pandemic:

Kym Gold, the cofounder of True Religion jeans (Inventors Digest January 2021 cover story), hatched a home brand called Style Union Home for the first time in her fashion career at the beginning of 2020. Though she was waist-high in product development and ready to launch in March, COVID-19 had other ideas.

Instead of quitting, she put her head down and focused more deeply than ever on product mix, perfecting the messaging and graphics for a great website. She took risks, hiring a marketing team to lay the foundation that she would need when it ended.

In terms of messaging, she discovered that what she was doing was more germane than ever because the world was at home and looking to beautify environments. The company is thriving.

No amount of planning could have produced that result, but her ability to adapt, be present and tenacious won.

Anthony Peraino had just heavily invested in quite a bit of marketing for his luxury skincare brand, CIREM, when the pandemic hit. One might imagine that attempting to sell a luxury beauty product at a time when people were losing their jobs and were threatened by the coronavirus was a death knell for a company like this. But no!

Peraino was one of the first entrepreneurs I saw pivot quickly by creating a hand sanitizer. As the company’s marketing agency, we at Brown + Dutch created a campaign to get that product, along with samples of his luxury skincare, into the hands of nurses in the five main hospitals in the company’s native Los Angeles. We built publicity and social media around it. The company not only survived but thrived.

Imagine how many companies pivoted to create masks, plastic partitions for retail, and how the grocery and take-out business exploded. Zoom’s business increased by 355 percent.

Entrepreneur is not a title you get because you start a business; it is an earned experience that’s heavily weighted on how hard you push, adapt and take responsibility for your success.

Heed Emerson

Speaking of self-responsibility, I have a recommendation. Read the classic essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance.”

Emerson is thought of as a poet, but he also was a deep and powerfully wise philosopher whose words in that essay ring through my being every single day.

Being an entrepreneur will be a massive proving ground for you. I’ve seen thousands of product ideas come across my desk. It’s never the product that makes for a success but the people behind it.

So when you see obstacles, you need to learn to build the muscle that says: “How can I make this into lemonade?”

To max out coverage for your invention, understand what PR is—and isn’t

Humans are followers. They need to see that someone else is doing or saying something before they notice it—let alone buy it. The press is the same.

BY ALYSON DUTCH

I can’t tell you how many times our PR company has received calls from a company that is a month away from a launch—or, worse yet, just launched and needing a publicity campaign.

PR is often the first marketing method used for a product or service launch because it is so far-reaching, the objective reportage sets a credibility tone, and it can be very inexpensive. In the world of marketing methods, publicity also happens to be the No. 2 form of any marketing (word of mouth is No. 1).

Publicity can be many things, but a feature that makes it particularly valuable is the art of persuading media to report about something objectively without bias or payment. A good publicist will shape stories around a product and choose the right press that is seen, heard or listened to by your customer.

What publicity is not: Publicists are often highly skilled storytellers who have relationships with reporters. Those relationships, however, do not usurp the necessity of a newsworthy story.

What is a story?

Talking about what a company does, makes or how it made something red that was blue in the past is not a story. If a company is the first to market to solve a problem, that may be newsworthy. A story is finding a trend or way that this product is solving a problem that is already covered by the media.

Match trends with stories

Publicity takes time. At first, a good publicist will research your company and industry and pick out trends in the marketplace that match.

For a global meeting conference software that has a dropdown menu for 100-plus languages, one story is about global business challenges. There may also be a story about how the founders who are immigrants brought their international knowledge to the marketplace.

Other stories are based around their business: Who are their clients that appeal to reporters being pitched? Are their clients such impressive names that it’s surprising they became clients in the first year of business? If yes, that’s definitely a very important story.

The next thing a publicist will do is write press kit materials that present the story in a way he or she knows the media will understand. In most cases, this writing is very different from corporate writing. It’s not written in jargon and vernacular; it’s written in a way that tells a story.

Using the same example above, KUDO (featured elsewhere in this month’s Inventors Digest) is a company that brings together thousands of interpreters who speak hundreds of languages with the videoconference dropdown menu software mentioned earlier.

There are some incredible stories behind the development of this software that are rare and interesting. The company’s cofounders have been the main figures that make interpretation happen in some of the biggest global meetings in the world. One of them was a chief interpreter for the United Nations!

These are the stories a publicist needs to tell.

Counterintuitive factors

More about timing: When a product or service is new, the more innovative it is, the longer it often takes to get the media to notice.

It also takes longer to get traction for a customer. This seems counterintuitive, but trust me on this.

Humans are followers. They need to see that someone else is doing or saying something before they notice it—let alone buy it.

The press is the same. (This is even more illogical because in essence, news is, well, new. Trust me on this as well.)

A publicist is there to make noise. Without this, it’s like having a party and forgetting to send invitations. Who can you expect to show up?

A good publicist will shape different stories and send them to the same reporters many times, often before a reporter will finally say: “Hmmm, that’s interesting. I’ve been seeing your press releases and pitches. I finally have something in my news cycle that’s a fit.”

I call this the “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of this” syndrome.

The PR timeline

So, at what point should you hire a publicist?

One should hire six months before a launch. If your product is in a known industry and something that has a big celebrity/VIP/killer client track record attached —making it far easier to get media coverage—three months will suffice.

You should plan for publicity to actually land when the product is available to buy. This is ideally 3-6 months after the pitching begins.

The first month of a publicity engagement is usually spent writing materials such as fact sheets, historical backgrounders, executive bios, timelines, creation of infographics and press releases.

Press releases are important. If a PR outlet tells you that press releases are dead, do not make the hire. If you do, don’t expect that organization to be able to get your company publicized in a way that matches what you need for your business.

A publicist will write the materials and then go back and forth with the client for approvals and polish. If you’re lucky, this might be three weeks.

Then the first press release goes out to lists the publicist thoughtfully prepares to match a company’s business goals. The pitching begins, which is the lion’s share of effort a publicist expends every day.

A talented publicist will shape these stories for every single reporter to whom he or she delivers a pitch. You may think that a tech story is just for tech reporters, but the way a tech reporter at the Wall Street Journal reports varies from the way Business Insider or the Associated Press reports.

Always make sure you have rock-solid agreements about what you expect in that time, in writing. This is where relationships really are necessary.

Numerous components go into satisfaction on both sides of the deal involving your invention or product

A good publicist will set forth an action plan with a very specific list of tactics upon which both parties agree.

BY ALYSON DUTCH

Public relations, one of many marketing methodologies a startup can use to launch a product, is often the first and least-expensive choice for the most exposure.

For inventors who have decided to build their own brands, there’s so much to learn about creating a company that is sustainable and profitable. Chief among them is hiring, and the art of checking expectations of those you hire.

Our PR company works with so many different kinds of people and varied products. For those who are new to hiring a PR agency, we’ve learned to become very flexible in providing services that mean something to each client. Being in the service business, we’ve learned that the expectations of each customer are very different.

To a publicity professional, PR means something very specific:   getting a product or service reported about in the media that is read, seen or heard by your particular customer. There are other things that a publicist, PR firm or public relations person will do to create awareness, but getting “placements” in the media is the defining service.

Achieving the right fit

I bring up the subject of expectations because PR seems to be one of those amorphous activities that some may describe as “free advertising” or simply “getting awareness.”

Some clients are only interested in being on TV; some are interested in entrepreneurial profiles only; some are interested in product reviews only. Some may wish for awards or speaking opportunities.

These are all activities that a publicist provides for a client, but a good publicist will choose what kind of publicity will help move the needle for your business.

For example, if you have invented a new consultancy service, entrepreneurial profiles would be best to demonstrate your ability to consult. If you have a product that is sold to 12-16-year-olds, TikTok would be a good place to create awareness and would be chosen over another social platform such as Facebook that appeals to a much older audience.

If you have a product and a big celebrity attached to it, as our company recently had for a product with Shaquille O’Neal, you can expect the national morning show producers to take the story. Alternatively, if you have a medical device product with no clinical trials, no doctor or a celebrity attached, those same producers will not book you.

Publicity is an effort-driven marketing method. You should expect that your publicist gets you placements in places that mean something to your business. This should be spelled out in detail in advance, so you know what to expect and the PR outfit is held accountable.

Ask for proven tactics

Your publicist should do a deep dive into your customer profile first, then create press lists that match. He or she should also engineer press releases and pitches that appeal to the reporters whose attention they want to get. The lion’s share of what a publicist does is a constant pitching to reporters that makes the best sense for your product or service.

A good publicist will also set forth an action plan with a very specific list of tactics upon which both parties agree.

Market your invention through PR that ties in to current events

Great publicists will always be looking for things in the news that make your product or invention reportable. 

BY ALYSON DUTCH

Many people know that a lumberjack is a fashion inspiration for men’s flannel shirts, and the flapjack is a Sunday morning favorite with a good cup ’o Joe. But if you’re an entrepreneur and you’ve never heard of a newsjack, it’s worth exploring.

In April, the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences graced the film “Sound of Metal” with six Oscar nominations. The movie, about a rock ‘n’ roll drummer who loses his hearing, was a reason to connect Fardad Zabetian’s (Inventors Digest cover story, April 2021) multilingual SaaS KUDO videoconferencing that features a drop-down menu of 147 sign languages to news stories after the Oscar telecast.

So before the Sunday cultural celebration, our company prepared a pitch featuring a list of “did you know” factoids about how many Americans and global citizens are deaf, how many sign languages there are in the world, and how KUDO was helping to change the face of global business for deaf people. We sent it to all the journalists who write about global business and to the entertainment press we knew would be covering the Oscars.

What happened?

One of the reporters I know who does entertainment reporting for the Los Angeles NBC-TV station wrote back, thanking us for facts he could use in his pre- and post-Oscar reporting. He then introduced me to Marlee Marlin’s executive producer. For those of you who don’t know, she’s a famous deaf actress who was on the Oscar telecast signing for all the “Sound of Metal” nominations.

It turned out that KUDO was looking for a community leader to expand its sign language services, so we were pleased to connect the company with Marlee.

That’s called a newsjack!

Commercial vs. newsworthy

Newsjacking.com defines the process as “the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story so you and your ideas get noticed.” In 2017, newsjacking was one of Oxford Dictionaries’  “Words of the Year.”

Good newsjacking begins with understanding what’s newsworthy—and what’s not.

A product is a commercial entity, something the press will not naturally report about because it is, well, not a story.

To a reporter, a product is something that should be marketed with advertising (read: banner ads, TV, radio, influencer buys—placements that are guaranteed because you pay for them). But when you find something in the news as a tie-in, that is when your product becomes relevant and reportable in an unbiased, objective way.

If you do not have a budget for a PR agency, learning how to do this is probably some of the best advice I could give you. If you have budgeted for an agency, now you know how to interview to find the right one. Great publicists will always be looking for things in the news that make your product or invention reportable.

Keep up with the news

Here’s another example.

For a company called Beam (formerly Envision Solar, led by November 2019 Inventors Digest cover subject Desmond Wheatley, which makes solar-powered EV chargers), one of the most important pieces of marketing now is the fact that the Biden Administration is focused on clean energy initiatives. In fact, the White House has been specifically and publicly talking about supporting EV charging technology.

When Beam connects its product to this initiative, every bit of marketing it does—from sales to publicity—is provided with the borrowed credibility of presidential preference. For the press, Beam’s products are suddenly natural to include in its reporting.

Now, that is powerful (pardon the pun).

As product launch specialists, our company works with entrepreneurs. For the companies we introduce to our little black book of reporters through a matchmaking service we call Consumer Product Events, we help them to newsjack their products before we make those introductions.

The best way to find newsjacks is, of course, to read the news. The larger story it is, the better chance you have of tying it together in a way that’s truly newsworthy.

What if you don’t fit?

What if your product does not fit into these larger news stories?

Start looking for holidays, and what I call “months du jour.” Examples of this might be that you make ties or cufflinks, which are traditional Father’s Day gifts, so June Dad’s Day gift guides make it newsworthy.

If you make sparkling wine, champagne, Italian prosecco or a brachetto, New Year’s celebrations are the No. 1 newsworthy time for that type of product, followed by Christmas and Thanksgiving.

It may be that you make a handmade luxury ceramic pet dish, so National Pet Month in May is a time to be looking for publicity. You sweeten the publicity angle with anything cause-related, so if you connect your pet dish product to the Guide Dog Foundation to raise money for it, as Kym Gold (January 2021 Inventors Digest cover) of Style Union Home did, you’re off to a great start!

Another way to create a newsjack is to look for studies, trends and statistics that make it relevant.

For a client who made a product called Pillpanion that organized pills for elderly people, our company suggested that she find statistics about the dangers of elderly people accidentally overmedicating. We bolstered that story by finding statistics about how many older people there are in the United States and how overwhelming of an issue it could become.

Maybe the best way to know whether something is newsworthy is to notice what is being talked about—which includes hashtags on social media.

Newsjacking is an important skill to master. Learn it. Do it. Become an instant master publicist.

Despite the technological innovations of the past 20 years and living in a time now unimaginable without the internet, public relations (PR) has not aged. Rather, it has been supercharged. How we consume information has changed so radically, so why has PR remained a mainstay marketing method?

The answer will likely surprise anyone under the age of 25 who mostly never knew a world without “online” being a thing. Some in the publicity community may not agree with me, noting the onslaught of non-biased editorial being replaced with biased paid media, yet I bring an illuminating realization — and some history.

First, let me define PR. It can be many things, but its very essence is when a third party expresses a non-biased opinion, such as a reporter through a media outlet or any regular person in a Google or Yelp review.

In 2002, when the internet was just a blip on our radar and we were dazzled by AOL chat rooms, a book called The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR trumpeted that big brands like Starbucks, Wal-Mart and Red Bull exploded without the use of any paid advertising. Bill Gates famously quipped: “If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on PR.” The Pew Research Center also released “The Role of the Internet,” announcing that 80% of Americans only had 3 years of internet experience. Ha, can you imagine?

The internet was dawning as a news source when George Bush Jr. was elected to his second term. That same Pew research report noted “the internet was perhaps a more valuable means of gathering political information” (than traditional media), with 85% of Americans getting political information on television, 40% from newspapers, 15% on radio, 3% in magazines and, hilariously, the internet as a source was listed as “N/A.”

That year, I was running a business on dial-up. We had easily procured a 4-letter URL and email was still so novel that I remember feeling guilty about spending so many hours of my business day using it. Today 59.5% of the global population is online, and in 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that 8 in 10 get their news on a mobile device, 68% from TV, 50% on radio and 32% in print publications (newspapers and magazines). For me, now, email is my main source of business communication and is quickly being replaced by social.

The way I see technology is like a boat, a fast, streamlined, clandestine, smart and gorgeous one; it’s just another tool we have to reach consumers. Marketers need to not be blinded by the shiniest new bauble tech but uber focused on generating something I call the “oh yeah, I’ve heard of that” response. Learning how to create this is explained by human biology and can be seen this very minute in any online reviews from Google, LinkedIn, Yelp and other online communities.

Consumers buy things after others they respect signal that it’s an accepted thing. “Repetition of message” or “signaling theory” is needed to get a customer through the awareness cycle to purchase. Have you ever noticed when you see something new that it seems to pop up everywhere around you? Today, this has been replicated into an advertising product used online called “retargeting,” but it’s simply your brain’s perception of the frequency of something that’s been there all along called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. This means one needs to be exposed to something before being convinced it’s something good to buy. You may argue that pay-per-click sales get a consumer to purchase after the first exposure, but allow me to continue to explain the reason why I believe humans pull the trigger on getting out their credit card.

Biologically, we are social animals with an intrinsic fear of rejection and spend a lot of energy looking for approval — an unconscious reflex. This is a boon for marketers to understand and shows you how PR just up-leveled your reputation with a great Google review, inclusion on a stranger’s Pinterest board or mention of something on a friend’s Instagram feed. This, paired with media reporting about you can perk up consumers’ ears and get them closer to the purchasing finish line. Do you remember last week when your friend told you all about that extra crunchy, umami spicy mayo and tuna roll at the local sushi bar? That, too, is PR and the best marketing that a sushi bar could ever hope for.

Our evolutionary roots explain why influencers have become a thing, the impossible-to-ignore attraction of social media and why anything online has a viral potential that never existed in history. As described in the Stanford study “The Science of What Makes People Care,” “people engage and consume information that affirms their identities and aligns with their deeply held values and worldview; (we) avoid or reject information that challenges or threatens (us).”

Culture is an even quicker change agent and explains the lure of social media and why we are influenced in this way. Some researchers have been studying how culture is now a stronger driver than our genetics. In a 2021 study at the University of Maine, authors noted that factors like conformity, social identity, shared norms and institutions are at the heart of group-oriented cultural evolution.

The biggest change in the PR industry has been the blurring of lines between what is an objective, editorial opinion and a paid subjective expression, but this matters only for certain customers. The breaking down of these “church and state” silos has been debated for a long time (with this history from the Center of Journalism and Ethics being particularly interesting “Breaking Down the Wall”).

This forces one to wonder: Who is influencing you? Does it come from objectivity or prejudice? The bigger question now is: Does it matter, and to whom does it matter?

For a Baby Boomer, they can sense the difference between non-biased editorial versus someone being paid to say something nice. Generation Alpha has no problem with buying products from someone who was paid to say something. The only question marketers should be asking themselves is: Who is my customer and whose opinion matters most to them? 

I consider myself an optimist. After all, if I have the choice to ruminate on anything, why not make it something forward-facing? There are plenty who want to focus on, fight and lament the past, but there is so much to create, so I choose to look to the future.

Every business leader faces this choice daily, and from my perspective, leaders should prioritize optimism not only for themselves but also for their entire team.

As the child of a Holocaust survivor and Lithuanians forced by Russians onto cattle trains to Siberia in winter, I grew up hearing a lot about hardship. Yet, my family came to America and earned PhDs, started businesses, bought real estate, created entirely new realities and one even became a Hollywood actress. To me, that’s motivation that I can use in my business every day.

As often as possible, I pull myself out of the muck of the minute and look at things from a 10,000-foot perspective. I believe this is not only a coping technique but also a necessity to evolve and help a business grow. The biggest shakeups in our lives are the moments from which some of the best things hatch; we either learn from them or go down the rabbit hole of fear. We have a choice, and no one can do it for us. Staying optimistic is an inside job.

The pandemic was one of those shakeups and gave rise to what some have called the “Covid-preneur,” as new business applications “hit historic highs” in 2020 in the U.S., the World Economic Forum reported. In July 2020 alone, there were more than 550,000 new business applications filed, a 95% increase from the same time a year before, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. To me, that is half a million courageous people stepping into a new reality of taking full responsibility for their success or failure and not relying on someone else to give them a job.

When starting or leading a business during challenging times, entrepreneurs need to keep their eyes on the horizon. I’ve found it’s also critical to keep the company of those who are better, smarter and faster than ourselves. For me, this meant using the pandemic downtime to earn a mini MBA. I also got my business certified by an organization that brings together women-run suppliers with enterprise businesses that are mandated to hire a certain percentage of minority-owned products and services. Those environments were a bastion of inspiration, and a majority of the entrepreneurs I encountered were pivoting to meet the needs of the pandemic. No one was standing still.

For example, one female engineer I met recently noticed a technology gap in the manufacturing industry, so she created a piece of tech to help fill that gap. Her concept was so brilliant that her solution was acquired by a multi-billion-dollar industrial company within a year. Another entrepreneur I encountered was an immigrant aiming to solve multilingual challenges of global business by bringing together interpreters on a video-type platform. This person created gig work for those interpreters, who might have otherwise been out of work while global travel was at a standstill.

Examples like this show me that many entrepreneurs are filled with more moxie than the average bear — and they are consistently fueled with gargantuan amounts of tenacity. From my perspective, a key ingredient for tapping into this moxie and tenacity is optimism.

Embracing An Optimistic Mindset

I applaud the people who are starting and leading their own businesses right now and am driven by the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who in his famed essay “Self-Reliance” said: “Man is his own star; and the soul that can render an honest and a perfect man commands all light, all influence, all fate; nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts, our angels are, or good or ill, our fatal shadows that walk by us still.”

Being an optimist is not just an attitude; it’s a key skill to sharpen if you want to create a legacy and, in the meantime, create fulfillment for yourself and your team. To develop more optimism in your organization, start by watching your thoughts. If you find yourself ruminating about issues, shift your focus to the potential exciting opportunities that are coming your way.

Express gratitude as well. I find that the only way to truly embrace an optimistic mindset is by focusing on being thankful for all the good things in your life and business. It works.

This gratitude should also extend toward your employees. Your team can never get enough encouragement. Don’t hold back, and tell them when they’ve done a great job. Take them to lunch, send gift certificates for coffee and don’t forget their birthdays and work anniversaries. In other words, go out of your way to rally the troops. When an employee has a win, no matter how small, share it with the team so everyone can help bolster a job well done.

Finally, look at your struggles as steps toward your evolution. I believe that’s how life and business works — and why adaptation is king.