Episode 35: Mickie Kennedy PR, Promotion, and Poetry

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Episode 35: Mickie Kennedy – PR, Promotion, and Poetry

In this episode, we are excited to have as our guest an expert in helping people brand themselves by the effective use of press releases. Mickie Kennedy, Founder of eReleases.com, shares with us strategies on how to get noticed in the media by the effective use of press releases.

Mickie not only knows the PR game, but he manages to create and publish his poetry. We were able to get Mickie to read a couple of his poems during the interview. If you are planning on creating some PR for your own creative projects, you will hear from a man that knows the way, but he also knows about living a creative life through his poems.

Show Notes:

Episode 35: Mickie Kennedy PR, Promotion, and Poetry

00:00:18 – 00:05:01

You know what? Let’s do a shout-out. Okay, who do you want to shout out? Well, what about those two people that listen to our podcast from Chihuahua Mexico? Yes. That’s the first time, the country of Mexico has appeared on our stats for Life Partners. We have so many other countries that listen but I think them for joining us salute to our new friends in Mexico. And I also want to say I did look up the city of Chihuahua long. They have quite a bit of an art single run down there. So this is very cool. Very cool. Everyone and here we are celebrating what people love to do creatively by giving them a voice. I’m Rod Jones and I’m in G Jones. Welcome to the Bots role podcast. We invite you to subscribe wherever you listen and we’re available virtually anywhere, you listen to podcasts, no matter what you do creatively. This is the podcast for you. And please tell your friends about the thorough podcast. Well, energy. What are we going to discuss today? Well today, we’re going to be speaking with Mickey Kennedy. He is the owner of a public relations firm and that are experts in press releases. All that’s going to be good. Yeah, you know, I might add that. What made this interview interesting, when it comes to creativity, is often happens to also be an accomplished poet. Yeah. That’s very true. Well, how about your quote? Okay, Ricky your poetry. Yeah, I bet it’s going to work with poetry. It is going to work with poetry. So, here’s the quote for this week concave a bid is Yin. And that is by TS Eliot. You know, what I’ve noticed about quotes from poets, their quotes, always seem to be like, they really hit the mark and I have to admit, I don’t I have to read a poem numerous times before I really grasped, but I don’t usually get it first time unless it’s pretty simple, right? I know, when I read your poetry. I’ll tell you that. I’ll say, you know, I have need to read this a couple of times, but then once it finally sinks in, then I really get it. Yeah, and I think a lot of people feel that way about poetry. But what’s interesting about poetry and I think this probably is true for most people is you, you will have a lot of feelings when you read them, but you can’t really wage. Your finger on it and then you’ll start to feel like you’re getting images and and, and understanding of it and it kind of has to develop and it’s not one of those things that not not all the time is Thursday, just obvious like a like a story necessarily probably a lot of that has to do at least, I think in this way, I interpret them is the words the vocabulary. Sometimes they’re very easy with our e, very sentimental. A lot of times, you know, the word love is involved. It makes you become more passionate about what you’re reading even though you don’t necessarily understand what is communicating to you. But this quote appears by TS Eliot, that’s pretty interesting. And I can, I can relate. I know I don’t always get it. I first went to that may be probably because I’m not real good at writing. Poetry. You have that gift in this household, not me. I mean I think that you do if you if you really want to develop it, I guess so, well, it’s where your interests are. That’s probably true. Yeah. Okay. So now it’s your turn Rod. We are ready for rods, motivational factor. For some reason. I thought you were going to ask me what we had for breakfast. No, but you probably would know because I believe you’re the one who fixed it honestly, and the one that gobbled it down home. Well, my motivational thought is every human being on the planet, has same twenty-four hours a day. It makes a lot of sense to use those hours wisely else. There couldn’t be a truer statement because we have the same hours 24 hours. Every single person as Nikolai Tesla. Oh good choice and he he accomplished so much. When was it we heard they had 80 trunk Falls of ideas that were locked away inventions and ideas inventions and ideas. And so if he can log, So, can you? Yeah, and, you know, obviously, you need to give yourself some time to sleep eight hours. But that leaves, how many hours to be creative.

00:05:01 – 00:10:04

I don’t know. Math is not worried. I don’t know. What is it sixteen or something like that? Probably sixteen. But just think what you can do the 16 hours. Yeah, you can you can achieve a lot. I mean, a most really successful people use those hours and unfortunately, sometimes more. They should get to get a good night’s sleep, which is critical to your thinking and being creative and being Innovative. So sleep is a big issue. It is and also using time to think and that is the one thing that some of the great thinkers of the world will set aside time to read. And also think so you need to set aside time to reflect and also read and learn. Yeah. I like to put on a headset and listen to classical music juice. And sometimes it puts me to sleep but it’s a very restful sleep, but more often than not, I just really, really good ideas. Thoughts come into my head and I really appreciate that time. It’s it’s some of the most relaxing time than I spend. I really should try to do it more often, but it’s really important. So yeah, you know, every single person of the planets, got 25 1/2 hours a day. You’re going to sleep some of it, but try to make the best out of every hour. You can make it, make it productive or make it healthy for yourself, right? Okay. I’m now I wash pick up on something, your sister and her husband said this morning when we were talking to them on the phone and that was about our podcast featuring creative people. Yeah, that was somewhat revealing because as we’ve mentioned before we celebrate what people love to do creatively, but that doesn’t necessarily mean. We only chat with artists and the like we think everybody is created in something dead. That’s so true. And you know what? Creativity is just not for people in the Arts. Like it can involve you can be creative as an athlete. You can be creative in bed. Yeah, like cooking, you can be creative and well, of course, crafting, which I have zero talent in that area for some reason. But, you know, you know, there’s so many different ways that you can be creative and even like our guests that he he has a, a press release company that, you know, he’s very good about crafting different kinds of press releases for p which requires creativity very much so very much. So yeah, I mean, business people can be very creative and they develop and come up with different kinds of products and took all the way back to showing. Like you said, Quilters, filters sewing or people that just invent things. Yeah. This is kashay. Speaking to my brother-in-law, who was on the call log. He makes Furniture beautiful Furniture. He’s got a nice Workshop that’s associated with their house. And I know he takes advantage of the hours. He has of the day to go out there and build things, and they’re really quite spectacular. And the thing about being creative that I’ve noticed, and I think that anyone who gets into their creativity, whatever it may be, is that it brings you a sense of incredible satisfaction and incredible accomplishment and a peaceful feeling and it gets rid of the anxiety in your life. So if you, if you keep making excuses and putting things in front of your creativity that you would like to get into or a lot more time to, you’ll find that you’re going to feel a lot better by yourself. Your life. You’re going to have more patience and things and everyone tolerant and have energy excitement. Yeah, and a sense of accomplishment, rather your name. And something with your hands, which is really kind of nice or if you’re just crafting, a poem that you’re riding out true. And if you can write it out longhand, I think that’s kind of a nice thing to, you know, they say that I’ve read about that, that if you’re right, or it’s really good to write out things longhand, at least, periodically, I mean, everybody’s using a computer. But it’s really important to not lose your skill of writing out things longhand because it’s very tactical and you get feedback in it. I don’t completely understand what that’s all about. But I’ve been reading about it and it’s pretty amazing. The fact that that your whole body gets when you write not just your hand is pretty interesting. So true and you know, I I think that if you feel like you’re not even creative in the tiniest bit off, I think a great way to be creative is to have a journal, make yourself a journal. In fact, we have one on our website that was by Angelina. Guess so, we had It’s a junk journal and it’s a work of art that she made. But if you just want to write in a journal, you can certainly purchase one. And then also, we were discussing about putting a journal that she can write in on our website.

00:10:04 – 00:15:06

At. Rowe podcast,. Yeah, so you can, yeah, we’re going to be having that pretty soon. So stay tuned for that. We’re really excited about it. And that way, it will help promote creativity in your life. Every morning. When you sit down, and you have your coffee tea, or whatever, you can write down in your journal, what your thoughts are for the day. And I wash also make a comment about artists. I know that artists myself included like to hear what other artists have to say. But you know, we’ve learned that you can discover so much about people that are living creatively and from people that are not in the traditional world of creative. Yeah, and create a playlist artists log. Jurors, so true. I mean, people that share their creative passion, no matter what their medium or for that matter what their occupation is seem to provide insights off that are inspirational to anyone wanting to live creatively. I know that when we get feedback on the various people that we had on the podcast, people will say to us, you know, I really enjoyed that episode and I never really thought about this or I never really thought about that or that person’s life experience is similar to mine, you know, not everybody has a Rosy life and they have wage to overcome or deal with certain things that have happened in their life that may have slowed, their creative process down, but we all learn by what other people have to say. It’s just been, it’s been very rewarding and it’s been rewarding for me. And I’m pretty sure it has been for you to n, g. I, I have to say that, you know, you may not want to hear what a guy talks wage. Regarding press releases or you may not want to hear what an opera singer has to say. But trust me, they have a lot of interesting things to say that will benefit your own life of being a creative person, you know, the comments that I’ve heard from different people that we’ve talked to is cycle. You know, I really didn’t know that, I would be interested in that. And once I started listening, it was like, oh, their life is so interesting and and I learned from this incident that they talked about in their life or this experience. So, it’s very you, you learn through communication with one another and you learn through other people’s the way they they deal with their trials in life and point. Any of the other thing I want to point out is saying how we interview people from all over the world and shove cultures. It’s really kind of special to hear their take specifically from their country. True, you know, world’s one of our the most recent one that wage. Interviewed with somebody from India and it just asking her what she had for breakfast. That was fascinating. It was fascinating and I wanted to try it immediately. Sounded really good. I know people think oh, they’re going to have that signature question or what do they have for breakfast? But we do for two reasons. Yes, we do for two reasons. One. We’re always looking for something interesting to happen right away. But the second part of that is, is it lets people have an idea of what somebody in another country is doing people from was at Sweden or other places. They have real interesting breakfast. I mean, they’re not the Southern California, bacon and eggs kind of breakfast by any stretch. Very different country by country is very different. Well, speaking of creative occupations Palm Spring on Mickey Kennedy e releases.com. Mickey, welcome to the Thoreau podcast. It’s going to be really good to speak with you today. Yes, it is. Hi Mickey. It’s good to chat with you today. I am so happy to be here. Good to have you here. And you’re calling us were talking to you from. Where are you? I’m in Baltimore County, Maryland. Oh, nice. Nice, very pretty. You know what? I’m telling people, Mickey to share with our listeners, how we found out about, you both inch, and I’ve written numerous press releases over the years and I thought I would do a little research on public relations companies. So I Googled that of course and your company ereleases popped up and after reviewing your company website and watching your video, which was really good. It was good. I discovered two things about you. You have a great PR Company, but also that you are a published poet. I found that very interesting. Yeah. Wow. I also want to add, I want to congratulate you on having excellent SEO because you came in on the top of the pile, which is a big thing these days.

00:15:06 – 00:20:03

There’s so much SE especially in that category. Right? Right, and it’s so interesting that so many talented, people that we’ve talked to manage their own, you know, companies. They also are very creative in some form, of course, cuz they’re creative people and I know they would be interested in learning how they can get more press coverage. And what do you think about that Mickey? Or you think about your landing on top of the SEO, as? Well? I think it’s an important aspect of the business. I think it helps that we’ve been in business for over twenty two years. So there’s, you know, a lot of content and a lot of people linking towards over the years and see us, it’s Authority. But, you know, at the end of the day,, we’re still fighting to get people’s attention. That press releases exist in the pr or something that a small business and entrepreneur a speaker and author, any of those people could afford and down payment. Yeah. It seems like a really good way to go really anybody that wants to let the world know that they’re alive and well and exist, right? And also I think our conversation today might help clarify, you know, what what is is about? So as a creative you will feel more comfortable, may be engaging, someone that could do that for you understanding, right? But before we move on Main, We always like to ask are guess what they had for breakfast. So what did you have this morning? I had some macadamias and that’s it. Just some Macadamia is Faith. Brought back from Hawaii and they were really good done in that great little. Can that they all seemed to come in there. So good though. Luke and I think we think we caught one once. Yeah, I think so too. That’s a good breakfast. That’s protein and that protein it’s good for you. Yeah, right. Very happy. My understanding is that the Macadamia is really high in a mega threes. As far as Jobs go. That’s a really healthy fat. Oh, yeah, it would be good for your brain. Also. Yeah. Yeah. So let’s start with what we all want to know. Is how did you get into the public relations business? Right. So I guess around 25 years ago. I was working for a telecom, start up and I was finishing up grad school at the time, and I think that I’d already done a class instead, just needed to work, my thesis submit it, but one of the things that I did is employee number three was p r, as well as marketing, and sales and the pr component was off, as taxing press releases and because we were publishing numbers and statistics a lot of journalists started to call and say, could you just email that to me so I could copy and paste it and that’s life. Bulb went off that, you know, email us so much Superior to faxing and I I mentioned it to my boss and he said you should chart a business and I spent about a year contacting journalists. And when I launched a year later I had about almost ten thousand journalists who had said. Yes, and I could send in press releases on various different subjects. Wow, that’s true. Take you had such good response, right? And then over the years, PR newswire reached out to us and said, hey, you should also send your releases through us and I pointed out that their average rate for national press releases, $1,000. And my clients are paying at the time a couple of hundred dollars, and it just would be out of their budget. And we eventually came to a win-win situation where I started schedule our releases for the next business day. So that their editorial staff, that is in place overnight, which, you know, Unfortunately, they don’t do very much, but you have to be there. They gave them something to do. So, there’s no additional labor for them. So we did try to carve it out to be a win-win between the two. So all of our releases now, go out nationally over PR newswire as well as to what the email distribution that we still have your email distribution. If I remember, right, is pretty substantial it, is we no longer house our own. No. Database. We do rely on the decision database that we have, and we did put our journalists in there. So we are still reaching them. But it just through that our plan form. Oh great. Well, then you should maximum. I’m guessing that gives you maximum coverage throughout this country and what I’m going to ask you this question, kind of getting a little ahead of ourselves a tiny bit, but I did want to ask this question before. I forget what about International? I know some of our listeners are creative people in there in all parts of the world. So maybe just quickly you could address the potential for generating internationally, right? So we do send internationally mostly the email distribution rather than the wire internationally.

00:20:03 – 00:25:03

It, it’s not our strength wage are really good at u s National and including the wire but when it comes to International we don’t get as much of a call for it. So it’s just something that we have available through the email this page. Vision, but it is fairly limited. Okay. Well, that’s good answer. It’s good to know. I was wondering, could you tell us what the biggest advantage of sending out? Press releases are the biggest Advantage is leverage. So for example, last year during the pandemic, we did a press release for a dining Bond initiative, that a small PR firm was leading and putting out. And we just did one, press release, and we sent it out, and the response was just overwhelming, 150, + places, picked it up the Wall Street Journal, Washington, Post, New York Times. All the food magazines and trade Publications. Picked it up. It was a newspapers. It went International and, and did very well internationally and it was dead. Millions of dollars. In Revenue was created through that. That went to local restaurants that were closed and gave them some Revenue at a time where they didn’t have any, and it was a very positive way. People could help their local restaurants that invite them to participate in it. And so, you know, it was a very short-lived thing but it was a very positive thing and a negative time and it was just a perfect storm and millions of dollars. In Revenue were created at a cost that would have been like two to three hundred dollars to send out through us. I did it for free. And as a courtesy, the pr firm, and it seemed like a really good but, you know, that kind of Leverage, you can’t get anywhere else. I mean, you can create a really good Google ad, but you can’t put $200 into it and get millions of dollars out. It just doesn’t happen. But that element of Leverage is one of the things for PR works extremely well, so that’s an extreme example, but it’s not unusual for people to do with Iraq campaign of 428, press releases and, you know, have spent under $3,000 and come back to us and say, Hey, you know, some of these press releases wage Do well, some of them did all the other week and determine that we generated, you know, sixty thousand dollars eighty thousand dollars. And the great thing about it is the the revenue generally continues to come back up these articles live on their, on other websites. And you know, the traffic will just continue to be there. And in addition to that, you can leverage it yourself. You can share. If you get a break in the New York Times, you could share that with your own Community, your customers, your social media. So it’s a great way to show that there’s been credibility created and that was almost an implied endorsement. But, you know, this news Outlet picked you to write an article about. Yeah, it remains Evergreen and never goes away at that point. You’d like to I’d like to congratulate you on doing such a wonderful thing for all those restaurants. I mean, we all know that it’s been very challenging for just about everybody birth. Restaurants, were hit particularly hard and the program that you put together. I mean, that’s, that’s incredible, fabulous. So wonderful. Well, I guess, you know, most every company for that matter individual artists can benefit from having a well-written press release and having a distributed properly written thoughts on that wage. I know you kind of touched on that but tell us more about that, right? So I am going to just to say that I feel a well-written, press release is a lot less important than a, well, strategic press release, and I’ve changed quite a bit. I wrote, I think eight to ten years ago, a book on writing press releases and I really believe that writing the most perfect choice released was the way to get success in. What I’ve determined is it’s not I do press releases every single day for clients that do nothing. They get no media,. I would say that’s probably the majority of their press releases that we do and and then I have customers who repeatedly get media coverage all the time and the difference isn’t dead. How well-written the press releases? It’s how strategic the press releases. For example. I have a client that just does surveys and studies because they represent lots of different Industries. They can do a study on each industry and a lot of them lately have been. How have you been to addressing? Post-pandemic? How do you see yourself transitioning? Will you be coming back to work? What does your marketing budget look like going forward? All this data within an industry is really important and people really liked it.

00:25:03 – 00:30:11

And so they do Thursday. Well, almost every press release that they do based on a survey or study generally gets between eight and fourteen articles written about them. And those are unique articles. It’s not the press release replicated on a bunch of websites, which does happen. Every time I press releases issued. But you know, these are meaningful articles that get out there to create links and traffic and you know, our huge credibility indicators to age. A particular website. And that’s what can happen with the Strategic press release. Unfortunately, a lot of the press releases I get is, you know, and has now gone from an associate director of HR to an assistant or, you know, you know, Master director, or executive director or managing director of some department. And it’s really not that took out of sight side. Maybe a couple of trade Publications in a newspaper. So I would say just email it directly to those three places and save yourself the money. If you’re going to send something over a wire and through a service like ours, really try to, you know, present yourself with the most newsworthy announcement you can do and so many people get tripped up that they just say, well I’m not newsworthy. And the example of the survey and studies is one that I have put together in some training that I have. And I’ve actually worked with local auto repair shop in New Jersey. Pennsylvania was looking to get links from Auto industry trades. They’re not important. They, they’re, they are not pillars of the automotive industry. They’re just one local auto trade shop. And what they did was, they put together a survey with some advice for me. And one of the questions that they asked, was, what’s the strangest thing? Someone left in their car, while being repaired there was just an open field where people just put stuff and they didn’t know who to send it to because they don’t know other auto repair shops. So I suggested that they reach out to a small trade Association, which they did Association life, depended, auto, repair centers, and they sent it out to their members about eight hundred of them, filled out the survey. I think having the trade Association mentioned in the press release was a win-win situation because these small trade associations. Don’t get a lot of love and attention. It was a gross way to mention them. And it also adds credibility to you that, you know, you did this survey and partnership with them. They got over. And Auto industry trade Publications writing articles about the survey. They got lots of newspapers including their local newspaper, picked it up and we weren’t actually sure they would work in the General market, but it did and it was a huge success. They were looking for links to a new website. They had put up because they’re old website was tied to the Yellow Pages was a free page. So they were hosting, I don’t know if it ended or whether they’re marketing with the Yellow Pages ended. But at some point, their website went down, they had to create a new domain, a new website, and they just were thinking. And then just a few weeks. They were ranking in their area as number one based on, you know, the fact that in the automotive industry, having a lot of Auto industry trade Publications, linking to you as soon as credibility indicator, so they just Rose to the top and that to me that, you know, that’s kind of a tough category to come up with a strategy like you did wrong. Photo industry is, I mean, it’s hard to make things really interesting there. I mean, everybody knows they need to have their car fixed and that’s about as far as they think about it. I don’t want to put you on the spot here. Brad tap into your expertise a little bit. How do you think you would crap or an idea on how you would craft a survey? That would be applicable to an artist to write down a poet, which will discuss in a little bit, I would say, is there a way that you could get ask some questions that would be relevant for them to community. So if you’re an artist, you know, how are other artists right now? Can you take their temperature, where they are right now? How was the pandemic? How did it affect your monthly hood? Has you know how, you know, is what you’re doing, changed? Because of it. Are you making more and you’re making less what are the, you know, types of of things wage? You’re utilizing. You want to, you know, ask some questions or really specific to you, but I think that so many people would be interested in this other artists communities artists, black artists trade Publications. That might exist newspapers that have art sections. A lot of them would find it. Very interesting to see how, you know, artists are doing right now and how their faith coped with the pandemic and what they see going forward. You know, what, what’s their Outlook is it positive? Is it negative? And I think that right now is a really good time for a lot of people in a lot of different age, you know, groups, like authors writers, things like that to put together a survey and send it out again.

00:30:11 – 00:35:11

You don’t have to know the people you can you know reach out to a great blog or a trade Association. Just somebody that has a community of people that would be really good to you know, send out a link to your survey and get them to participate and then it’s a really a great idea and there’s a large dog. Ways to attract lists and there are artists associations have just about every genre. You can think of how would you tie that or would you even tie that back to say a press release? What the process is announced the survey? Yes. Yes, that’s correct. And and that’s what we do in our cases. We talked about the survey that we did. You name, Wilson specifics and how large the survey was. We usually linked to a page where all the results are published because generally you might ask forty fifty questions in a survey and you can’t really give all of them attention to press release but focus on a couple of the, the really interesting questions and you can actually have a really great quote as well. So let’s say we found out that people and, you know, the visual arts gifted what they’re creating an or relying more on, let’s say online prints rather than originals and you know, then you could have a quote saying you know what, I what I believe this wage. Means is that, you know, people are becoming more comfortable interacting with people virtually and also, you know, approaching art virtually as well. And and you can have a really nice quote and it would be you as a fellow artist in there. And again, you could focus on a couple of the really cool questions that are in there. I always say, throw a quirky question or two in there. The one I mentioned with the Auto industry was the strangest things people left in the cars. That was what were Byron almost 95% because we could see yes, so interesting topic. Yeah, 95% of the coverage was the stories because almost everything they got left was a story. A boa constrictor that I left. My grandma was left in an urn and they needed to retrieve it so that they could have a memorial service in the midst of a repair. So, there was this large, a little strange things that people have done over the years and that was what peacock. Resonated with and so always try to come up with some really solid questions and, you know, maybe even take the Pulse of others. And say what would you like to know what’s going on right now with your struggles right now on the artist Community. Maybe we can get some opinions out there on it or some suggestions and things like that as well. So I think that’s great. I I really like girls attitude to it’s so funny to hear all the people who are raising things like that, you know, people people love stories. They love anything that sort of is entertaining and not if you understand that while you want to get media coverage for you. The journalist is actually a gatekeeper and deciding what content will be of interest to his audience. And so anything you can do to increase the likelihood that the audience would find. It engaging interesting titillating that’s going to do really well. And you know, if you can approach it from birth, Standpoint, it can work really well for you. So many people are just like I just want to get, you know, sell product X. I just want to announce product X and there’s really nothing that’s interesting or compelling to share what readers, you know, it’s almost like the the journalist sees those types of press. Releases says, just by an ad, you know, there’s nothing here for me to create a to create an article. Exactly. Exactly. You’re making them have to work pretty hard and they’re not and they’re getting tons of these things that are handed to them almost daily. Right? Right, right. Okay. So what is the biggest misconception about writing a press release? I think that some I think the biggest hang-up is so many people, just discount PR and just say I’m not wealthy enough. I’m not important enough to remove for to utilize PR. And the Really thing is that the people who often have the most success are the ones that are the small pack. They are completely authentic and upfront about who they are and where they are, and they’re chapter of their business. We had a client that was looking to get their story out. And he told me that they had just spent their Thanksgiving instead of eating turkey and everything like normal with a few friends and their dining putting together packages and, you know, working out of their garage as well to try to get ready for all of the orders that they had had because a lot of their stuff was geared up to before Christmas holiday and that was six years.

00:35:11 – 00:40:06

To them. And they, they were, you know, they mentioned it. Just and I said, I think that’s the story we should run with and they were embarrassed like I wouldn’t want other people to know that and I said, no, that’s the toughest or out for a few people resonate with. They find it authentic. It’s a struggle. It’s an obstacle. Everybody has growing pains and they got picked up by Inked magazine that it resumes did so, well that they got several business newspapers and magazines picked them up. But ink was the big one. And, you know, you know, just because you’re small just because you do all your important doesn’t mean that you’re not, you don’t have something that’s worthy of sharing with the world. Well, yeah, I’m sorry. That was just very entrepreneurial. I mean off your phone or in the world. They could remotes can relate to that. And they would find that I think that’s why ink and people like that picked it up because they know that that’s a more typical. That happens, more wage. Quickly than one would think? I mean, I know we’ve worked on holidays with family and everything else. I’m sure there’s probably lots of people have done that. Also. I think that so many of these corporations started out kind of in that same boat in the garage and the garage or in the back room or you know doing it over dinner. There’s just you know, you you as an entrepreneur you start somewhere. Yeah, Mickey Mouse is really good, really good thing. And another thing is journalists often like undiscovered Little Gems. They like to be seen as curators and you’re generally not going to curate a giant multi-billion-dollar company is going to be a small undiscovered, you know, start up or Indiegogo or Kickstarter or something like that. And that’s why a lot of those do really well with p r and it’s been a journalist and say, hey, this is kind of interesting and I think my audience would find it engaging. So let me write an article about it. Oh, yeah, see I can see that. Yeah, I’ve noticed that your company crafts, press releases. In fact, you talk about that on your website, pretty extensively, and it was really informative page. Any experience in writing, press releases that are applicable to people that are in the art world. I know you do corporations and I know you first start ups, but what about people, specifically, artistic people, artistic people? Yeah, we had, we had an an artist who’s in class artists. I think she was in the Washington DC area. And she did a few press releases with us. Were we wrote the press releases for her and we accompanied it with the photos of this amazing glass work. A lot of her stuff, gets sucked up for commercial use like a hotel or a signature piece, a corporate building, or something like that, and she did really with getting picked up in service. Magazines. And, you know, they did a really large spotlights of her and ask for many more pictures that they can include and, you know, that, that was one person did extremely well. I think that so many people forget, you know, multimedia is important. So if you have a video and you’re an artist or you have really good pictures, they don’t have to be like a professional pictures, but just really good pictures you want to include those when you send your release out because a lot of people will look at those and if it’s something that’s really, you know, interesting they’ll definitely you know seek you out and want to know more about your story and it is about this story and especially our room cuz they’re so visually absolutely loved it is, you know, you know what, I think it’s really interesting when you see the artists and their environment, because I know that when I look at pictures, I like to see what’s in their Studio. I like to see YouTube How they paint, where they create, where they create, what what they’re, you know, environment is and I think it’s like you said, it doesn’t have to be a formal picture. I think the the informal candid pictures far more interesting and then something that’s overly stage. Right? Right. Leads us to your debts. Question related to someone and creativity. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about your poetry. That was one of the reasons we felt that you would be an excellent guest. On. Rowe podcast, is because you write poetry. Has that been a lifelong passion for years. It has, it’s something that I’ve always done. And then I went to graduate school and get an MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry. So I really went down, well, deep. And I felt like I learned how to write and to communicate and to emotionally sort of travel through words, and I think it helped me off.

00:40:06 – 00:45:01

Career-wise. I mean I also think that, you know, some of the times new coming up with surveys and perky survey questions comes out of my creative mind because I sort of think of outside edge of predictable thought and what would be really interesting. And, you know, you know, what’s a crazy question. You could ask someone in any field that would probably elicit some really strange and often entertaining answers. See, that’s really good. Very good. Yeah. So, okay. This can lead me to ask you. Can you please read one of your poems today for us? I’m sure. Okay. So this one is called perfect recall. Are there cheers for the poet? Who stops writing a grieving? Four. Stanzas that now cease to be written the images and stories of a small town in Western Maryland. Still the trains run mostly in one time, and the commuters have begun the return to normal an old woman sets, her garbage can by the street on account of rain. And the fact, she can’t be trusted to remember to do it before. Going to sleep. A child stops at the old train museum and finds the front door. Slightly open an old man carrying a box. Removing house keys from the lock. She convinces him to let her Peak up. The stairs were in a room off to the right tracks and Countryside Meander over. Felt-covered plywood, do these few moments even exist at the poet, stops recording them? Perhaps a girl will grow up and tell the story where she was the Lone visitor in the museum. No ticket required as the man flipped switches off. Trains came to life. She says, she recognized one of the plastic children in a diorama of a park. It was her daughter Katelyn. Then. Not yet born, and she only takes this moment. Now, sometime in the future to share, she comes and close for a laugh and a hug. That’s beautiful. Very, very under flipping off or reading that for us today. It’s really interesting because you’re, you know, you’re in the business of public relations and then so for us to say that you’re also a poet. Well what you just did is you clearly proved that. You’re an excellent poet, an outstanding. So, I don’t know if I want you to write a press release, write a poem poem press release when I don’t know, but let me go. See that was, that was pretty spectacular. We both the engine. I’ve read a lot of poetry, but I, and I could really relate to that one. There’s a lot of relais De Both things that you mentioned in that, you painted a really wonderful pitcher. Yeah, when you words, tell a story and a poem, that’s really a very odd visual thing without being visual. Yeah. That’s really good. Yeah. Thank you. I know you’ve published a book on poetry, and I think you have a couple of others in the works. Could you show us about them? Yeah, so I I have a book forthcoming. I think, with the pandemic, the Publishers, you know, hasn’t given us a date cuz it was supposed to been out by now, but it’s out of jail. And I have a couple of other books that I’ve completed. I haven’t started sending them out because I kind of wanted to wait for the first book to, you know, get out there before I started sending subsequent books, but I would still write. I write quite a bit. I have, oh, during the pandemic, you know, last year and half I probably written close to two hundred and fifty, poems home. And it’s just something that I do these little challenges where I decide after a break that I’m going to try to write something every single day. It may end up being a finished home. It may just end up being bit thousand pieces of a palm, you know, one day it might be a revision of a poem that I already written, but I try to actively, right each day. I feel like I can keep that month. I’m going for about 30 days and then I feel, I need a rest. And so I write for thirty days. I take a little time off. I might do some editing during that time. And then, you know, whether it’s about a month or two months, then I get right back into it and do another 30-day Marathon. That’s so wonderful. Okay, when it comes to writing many people consider poetry page being one of the more difficult things to achieve creatively. What are your thoughts on them? I don’t know. I think that everybody as a young person has written a poem and still has that in them. And I think that there’s something that wasn’t fostered and appreciated at that time to make them comfortable, still doing that thing in life.

00:45:01 – 00:50:01

I think that so many people have beautiful words that they can put together and you know, sometimes it’s just a line or two, but I think that the potential is there and I I home That poetry will play a bigger part in our education and in society, you know, going forward cuz there’s a lot of amazing perspectives out there that are being represented palm tree, but there’s not a lot of readers. I think there’s a lot more poets than there are readers of boats. Yeah, true. That’s unfortunately. Yeah, I’m going to kind of skip this next question is because I think our listeners and I know Angie and I want you to share Mikey Mike and other Mickey Mickey. I’m sorry the other one of your okay, so this one’s a little different. It’s called Junk Drawer, a bridge, a brick, a broom, an anchor on the end of a balloon hansom cab where the horse wears, an ugly face to work with the chalky sliver of a quarter moon, a stolen car contemplates, Ford Center blocks for shoes as it adjusts. Its wipers, the star fruit at the special wage. Market goes unsold, an igloo with a new pair of wool socks, a surge of surf after the offshore Quake Sirens, Warren up tidal waves done on this time. Just a crab that hovers over sand and puts away a seagull rides. A sleep of wind white body against a stray. Blur of Sky below. A cat is held for the first time losing its Barrel ways. With each cuddle, an office coffee pot left on a warm, The Empty Glass carafe kisses until the office manager starts or fresh pot off the league of registered voters. There are no superheroes, just a group of concerned, volunteers searching for something more, a high school, football coach buys a buffalo suit two southbounders. Too big because his son will be a freshman in two years. Karma is a fast-food, apple pie a car phone charger with a short the chipped base you turn around and go home. Flowers, the sidesaddle approach a breaking, a cult fear is the Frog along, the Pond View Place into a burlap bag. The electric bill you find in last month’s magazine, offer a crate where your grandmother kept old rags, The Piano Master toils. On an old upright, while Rich amateurs by baby Grands. The would-be writer reads, another nod respects, the fact, there’s little left to understand a landfill. Awaits, another man’s Treasures. The knock and the door sound equally Hollow. Wow, I you know, our you’ve read too incredible pieces are things both included in the book and the network and the new book know, these are very recent jumped where I wrote in June and the perfect recall. I wrote just this month. So they’re, they’re just too fairly new pieces. I picked up, you have your shop. The powering houses are first, you know, earlier you mentioned job. About how when people maybe, when they were younger, had the Poetry Gene in them or the vibe and I wonder with you was there one special person that was a mentor to you. I think there were several. I think I had a great middle school teacher that encouraged me to write. I remember in high school. I had another teacher that really encouraged me off, right? Felt like something was there and then later in college. I had many great teachers that fostered the writing and I did a lot of creative writing as an undergraduate and then in graduate school, you know, some really great teachers. They’re Carolyn forche a was one of the more well-known poets that I worked with and you know, they they helped Foster this, you know with growth of me as a writer and really gave me the structure and the discipline to to continue to write explore what it is to be a bulb. Okay, that’s a pretty solid background and inspirational to. I’m going to put you a little bit on the spot again, this one in less than five. Words, what would you tell people that want to live more creatively? You could be flexible on the pipeworks, right? I would say commit to discipline. I think a lot of people whether they’re artists visual artist. I know someone who works with oil paints. I know someone here, you know, I know a lot of creative people because of my background and who I am and you know, have have experienced what they’re the years. And it’s funny because over the years some of my artist friends have stopped.

00:50:01 – 00:55:14

They’ve stopped producing and I think that there’s it’s it’s like a muscle that you have to exercise with discipline and really commit to it because it’s so easy. Once you get married and have kids to just say, I don’t have time for us anymore. So easy to say this is one thing that I just have to put on the back burner and not focus on me, and the the reality of it is if you watch wage New TV in your life. You have the time to, you know, do something else life. Other than watching TV. It could be writing. You’ve just made a choice not to so I can pull up the discipline to trade some of that time that you might spend on Tik-Tok or social media or watching TV and get back into your Chrome and spend some time there exploring. And it’s fun, how I used to rate twenty-five, thirty years ago is is really different than how I right. Now. There was a time in there that I got rid of experimental and was influenced by language poets and the junk drawer is very reminiscent of that where it’s not narrative and it’s month or image-based but you really don’t know what you’re doing other than sort of Surfing through lots of images and observations and things like that, but the language stuff wasn’t very accessible. And I’ve gone back to narrative in recent years. And I find that really refreshing because I think it also has parallels with PR people really resonate with stories. Wage is the G. Right? No one resonated with my experimental. Poetry. I enjoyed it. It was a time that I explored language and played with stuff but nobody who’ve read it wrong appreciated, it more than me. And so now I write for others and I just filled my work is a lot more fulfilling because of that, many of the people we’ve interviewed. One of the things about pursuing, any form of creativity, even if it’s, you know, baking a great cake, is it relieves anxiety? And there’s no shortage of anxiety going around. So if you like I said, take some time away from television or other maybe menial tasks. I mean, even if you’re vacuuming your house, you can think about something creative. Well, you know, the interesting thing about birth Mickey sad. And what you’re saying, Rod is that so many times we go in front of the T to relieve anxiety and it only works up to maybe a teeny weeny, but when you actually are doing something creative and you can see, you know, the result of your labor, labor tends to make you feel satisfied and less anxiety, you know, life. Like you have a satisfaction that that brings about a calmness I think are true. And even in writing poetry. Even if you’re having a hard time, coupling words together, just the mere exercise choice of doing that releases anxiety and it gives your brain a way to focus that. It doesn’t know. You’re just being stagnant, you know, watching T all the time. Yeah. Me too. You bomber run a lot with your poetry. Yeah. In the different, iterations are very like the experimental poetry because then it makes you, you know, think on a different level, right? So very cool. Okay. So now we’re going to ask you a question that we asked all of our guests and that is, if you could sit on a park bench in chat with anyone from the Past, who would it be? Let’s see. I’m not 100% certain. I can easily pick one person. I would love to talk with Shakespeare. I would love to talk to people who were like, great leaders in the past. There’s, there’s, there’s so many people, but to be a long bench. I mean, you don’t have temperature pinch. Yeah, right. It could be a snack bench and you have a whole bunch of people in there, right back to take some deep breaths. Shakespeare obviously to be Abraham blinking Shakespeare. Let’s see, some of the poets over the years links to the Hughes off. Yeah. Amiri Baraka, there’s oh, Elizabeth Bishop. There’s just so many, you know, great poets that I would just love to have a conversation with no expectation other than to enjoy their company and and maybe just see what they think about the world. If you were to pick one of those, what would be a question that you think you would ask them. I would ask them. What was one of their more favorite poems or books, that they wrote. It’s always interesting to see what someone is closest to emotionally, because often, it’s not their most famous work, the most meaningful peace to them, probably because of a personal story or, or something has a deeper resonance, then, you know, looking at their stuff and what gets anthologized over the years.

00:55:14 – 00:57:55

That’s interesting. Well, that’s, that’s very good answer me. And unfortunately, we’ve come to the time that we hate. We gotta wrap this up, but I want to thank you for being our guest today. I know that most people that we interview have probably thought about creating some sort of press release promotion. And with this interview, we hope that people learned a little bit or maybe took some of the mystery out of it, right? So do you want to suck? Yeah, that I have a free masterclass on these press release strategies. Like I mentioned the survey and steady and there’s eight of those and it’s completely free. I’m trying to my customers to watch the darn thing. It’s less than an hour. But anybody who’s considering PR that’s a great way to start and see if it gets your juices flowing about ways in which you could develop strategic choices and it’s on, he releases.com forward, slash plan plan. It’s completely free. My goal is that you take lessons from it and things that might work strategically for you. Whether you do it yourself or use a service like ours. Well, actually, we’ve recommended that to a couple people. And I told my daughter about it, who has her own company and she watched it off, right? And, and really enjoyed it. And, you know, what we’ll do is, we’ll go ahead and put that link and under the show guests tab. So that way people can click on it and visit it and maybe answer some questions wrong. And more about it as well. But perfect, but thank you for sharing your poetry with us today, Mickey and also like I was saying earlier, just want to let everyone know. If you want to know more about making an off-site. We will have the links for him under the show, guess tab on thought, Rowe, podcast. So everyone can learn more about him and connect with him on social media and apps, web site. Yes, Micky. Thank you for your time. Today is most insightful. It was a pleasure. Okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. Bye. I’m really glad you tuned in today. We hope you enjoyed the thoughts and ideas. We shared with you. We post a new podcast every week. So remember to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, so you miss an episode. So it’s bye for now from my husband rod, and I wishing everyone a great day. Off.