Doug Richard's School for Startups » public relations

Practical Q&A With Doug Richard: Mentoring, Recruiting & Seeing Opportunities

Nancy Fulton Mazur — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:51:59 +0000

At a recent Start Here: Starting & Growing a Successful Business event held in London, we received the following questions . . .

On your first business venture, what was the most challenging thing to deal with? – Shanta

Well, it is hard to pick a “most challenging thing”. Generally, it was a great experience in the sense that I learned an incredible amount and the little team I and my brother Ken assembled did some amazing things. At the time I would have said “cash flow” was our biggest hassle. Later, due to the pressures of running a very high speed, large number of large transactions tech business, I would have said our biggest challenge was interpersonal issues related to working with family and friends for a long period of time.
Now I’d say the true problem was there was no “mentor” we could turn to who could help us plan and transition from one business model to another correctly. That’s one of the reasons I’m starting the School for Startups Mentoring Club…

When you have a business that’s running very fast and with significant intensity, switching over to a business model that leverages all your existing assets but starts generating passive wealth is like trying to having a high speed train switch tracks. If its not a very carefully considered transition, it is going to be traumatic.

Q: When asking the question ‘are you on a mission?’, Doug mentioned that if you wanted to ‘save the world’ great, do so, but maybe it’s not a business. I would like to know what he considers a suitable definition of what a business is. And further, what a successful business was. – Tom

Don’t get me wrong, please feel free to save the world. Goodness knows there’s a lot to do. And, saving the world can be a business. Social enterprises are designed to make self sustaining solutions to some of the world’s big problems. But . . . a desire to save the world and filing the paperwork to start an enterprise does not a business make. An activity can only be called a business if it makes makes enough money to pay its bills. Really, if it is to be capable of growth, it has to turn a profit which can be used to fund that growth.

What is the best way to recruit new people? – Pietro

Recruit people to do what? Work for your business? Well, money can get you some great people . . . I suspect you are asking how do you recruit the right people for your startup when you don’t have lots of money. And the answer is to have a great business model that you can pitch very well, and a reasonably friendly, honest, straight-forward, practical and pragmatic personality so people want to work for you.

You touched on how gaps in the market are thrown at us every day, but we rarely are set up to spot them. Are you able to expand on this a little? How do we train ourselves or become more open to seeing sources for ideas? – Ross

What I love about entrepreneurs is they see problems as opportunities. So spotting the gaps is pretty easy really. Look for what’s wrong and start thinking of ways to fix it. If you never have food in the house because you never have time to go shopping, chances are you’d pay a bit of a premium for a business that would just deliver groceries the way other businesses deliver pizza. If you’re tired of having your family descend on your house every Christmas, so you get stuck doing all the cooking and cleaning, chances are you know what someone wants in a “Self-Catered Christmas Get Away” that you could tell your family to join you on instead. Every problem is a business waiting to happen . . . Deciding which business you care enough to design and build is always the tricky thing.

Low Cost Fast Growth Marketing Roundup

Mark Boyd — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:18:30 +0000

Last Thursday afternoon, University College London’s Centre for Entrepreneurship and business interaction, UCL Advances, welcomed the School for Startups team, led by Doug. The topic of the day was Low Cost Fast Growth Marketing and entrepreneurs from both UCL and from around the UK, braved the London weather to attend our event. The aim was to expand their knowledge and toss ideas across the table about how to improve their marketing both on the web and offline.

The plush surroundings of the executive suite at UCL’s Engineering Front Building was the perfect place for an intimate chat about the latest changes in social media, PR, blogging, video and developments in SEO. This event was also a pilot for a series of regular S4Stv events our team are currently busy planning away.

Among the variety of budding entrepreneurs brimming with clever business ideas were charities, travel innovators, business trainers, videographers, renewable energy processors and clothing makers.

First up to introduce his company was Chester Mojay-Sinclare. Chester’s business, Alive and Giving is a comparison site for charities. Its aim is to empower people to donate knowledgeably and overcome one of the more modern phenomenons known as ‘chugging’ or charity mugging. By giving us more knowledge about how various charities compare, Chester believes we will be more inclined to donate and go on to help these causes. Chester raised some interesting discussion points with Doug, including how charities can get exposure on the web, and what incentives they can provide.

With holiday season just a couple of months away, one entrepreneur all set to capitalise on travel is Sally Broom. Sally has been promoting her unique creation aimed at holiday goers called Tripbod. The site lets anyone who is planning a trip, to hire locals as guides, full of useful and unique knowledge about their destination. The rates of hire are highly affordable compared to a typical travel broker and through the guides, travellers can get to explore parts of a country they never would otherwise be exposed to. Sally gave a perfect pitch for our S4Stv audience and her discussion with Doug highlighted numerous tips on how to access her audience and drive people to the site.

Rounding up the live event, were two UCL engineering innovators. The first Dr. Charlie Dunnill, explained how his company, H2-NRG has developed a way of storing renewable energy in the form of H2. Dunnill believes the prototype has applications in domestic power such as heating, but is also keen to explore how his idea could be further developed to apply to large scale energy storage and deployment.

The second UCL innovator was Dr. Brad Backus, of Audio3 who has designed and manufactured a clever device that capitalises on new regulations that apply to those exposed to loud sounds at work. The device called soundBADGE gives users a visual indicator of the duration and intensity of sounds accumulated throughout the day. It’s used by factory workers, people who work in clubs and bars as well as performing musicians, to protect their hearing in these types of environments.

Doug was especially on form during the evening S4Stv broadcast, wearing a specially created cardigan from Amanda Ruiz of Peruvian Knitwear, who commented that her sales have increased since becoming a regular attendee at S4S events. Attendees commented that the afternoon delivered lots of useful tips and insights into low cost marketing routes with plenty of take home messages for the day.

You can see these all of these entrepreneur’s pitches and their discussions with Doug on our S4Stv stream being uploaded to our site very shortly.

We hope to see you at our next event and of course online with S4Stv. To discuss this event and message fellow entrepreneurs, register here and head to our forums.

An Entrepreneurs Guide to Understanding Why We Buy What We Buy. Understanding Consumers.

Doug Richard — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:21:43 +0000

by Doug Richard, Founder of School for Startups

Anyone who has ever watched me on the Den, or at one of my S4S Surgeries, knows that I have certain questions that I expect entrepreneurs to be able to answer. Who are you? What does your company do? Who are your customers? What problem are you solving for them? How does your product meet their needs? How will your customers find your product and buy it? Who will sell it? Who will deliver it? It is surprising how many people never get past the first two questions.

From these questions it may seem that I think customers routinely make well considered and rational choices about the products and services they buy, that I’m asking these questions because I think these are the questions that customers ask.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m under no illusion that Burberry coats are purchased by people who have done a careful study of all competing overcoats and have, upon long reflection, decided Burberry is the appropriate choice. In fact, I know customers almost never ask these questions. Burberry, like Coca Cola, is a brand that has successfully imbued itself with a promise to the wearer that anyone who sees them wearing Burberry or drinking Coke will understand that they are the sort of people who wear Burberry and drink Coke and all that that implies; whatever that, indeed, implies.

Chances are good that you buy the breakfast food your mother used to make you when you were a kid. You buy shoes based on what you think looks “fashionable” rather than comfort or sturdiness. You choose what car to drive, what day care to send your kids to, and what home to purchase for reasons just as ephemeral and poorly understood. In a sense, a good product that meets a real need is just the opening ante for an entrepreneur. It’s the very least you need. When I ask these questions, I’m confirming that an entrepreneur knows he has a customer, that he’s knows his customers needs, expectations, his buying habits and the competition.

Knowing the customer inside out is almost more important than having a good product. In fact . . . having a good product is occasionally completely optional . . .

In 1928, George Washington Hill, President of the American Tobacco Association, hired the The “Father of Public Relations” Edward Bernays, to make women start smoking cigarettes. There was, in the 20′s, a considerable taboo against women smoking. It was thought to be vulgar and manly(perhaps a bit redundant). Edward Bernays contacted a bunch of débutantes who were scheduled to march in the 1929 Easter Parade in New York City. He asked them to carry cigarettes sequestered on their person and, at a signal from him, to light up during the parade. He told them they were making a statement about the equality of women and their right to be like men. He said they had as much right to smoke as a man. Their cigarettes were “torches of freedom.” Bernays told the newspapers that suffragettes were planning to infiltrate the parade to make a statement about the equality of women. The rest is history. Everything went as planned and woman began to smoke by the millions.

Even more extraordinary, anyone who felt strongly about the equality of women was co-opted into Bernays invidious plan and felt compelled to support womens’ right to smoke! We now know that cigarettes are one of the most harmful products of the modern era. But at the time, that was neither here nor there. And the story seems peculiarly Machiavellian in hindsight.

But we live in a world that has inherited the extraordinary shift to a consuming public that buys in large part on desire rather than need. Bernays understood that our sense of self is in part made up through the eyes of others around us. We become the sum of how we are perceived. And our subconscious response is to adorn ourselves with brands that signal to everyone else how they should see us, so we in turn can see ourselves the same way. Bernays was a master at assigning to products values whether it was notions of equality tied to cigarettes or independence to cars.

An entrepreneur may start with a great idea based on a remarkable insight, he may produce truly exceptional products, but it is paramount that he know his customer’s needs, his buying habits, his expectations, how he sees himself and why he buys what he buys. He must be able to explain, and hopefully demonstrate, why the customer will buy.

I believe we can do well and good. But I am very conscious of that fact that it is very common for people to innocently wrap their products with values that may enhance or limit their products’ appeal.

For more insight into why people buy things, and the practitioners whose work built the world in which we live, look up the work of Edward Bernays online (http://www.bookrags.com/biography/edward-l-bernays/). He worked his strange brand of magic for more than 60 years for some of the worlds largest and most profitable businesses. There’s a great deal you can learn from his work. For more information about School for Startups, our classes, our online TV station and our other resources, visit www.schoolforstartups.co.uk.

Welcome to S4Stv!

Doug Richard — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:27:44 +0000

Today is the day when we charge ahead and try out our new School for Startups service, S4Stv. This afternoon at 6PM we will be broadcasting live across the web from the Conference Centre at the British Library in front of an audience of a couple of hundred people.

This will come at the end of an afternoon-long live event where we will have been doing a deep-dive on Public Relations and Search Engine Marketing. But don’t worry if you miss the event, we will be releasing 2 x 30 minute shows over the coming month capturing the heart of the day. They will be available on the S4Stv site at SchoolforStartups.co.uk.

In fact, in the next few weeks you will see us making quite a few changes beginning with a whole new website that let’s us really drive alot of new material out very quickly. We will also be launching an ambitious event seminar around the country, new partnerships, and a flood of on-demand shows, short clips, podcasts, editorials, how-to’s and of course our live web-streamed surgeries where we try to help young companies in real time on stage.

How to Turn PR into cold hard cash sales (advice for consumer businesses)

Doug Richard — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:28:58 +0000

Many people fundamentally mis-understand the power of Public Relations.

A few weeks ago I touched on the notion that a press release is not always for the press; that sometimes it is more useful as an SEO tool.

But public relations is not really about press releases at all. It is about relationships and stories.

I don’t know how many times I have had arguments with new entrepreneneurs about the foolishness of hiring a dedicated PR person internally. Oh I understand the motivation: the person will work full-time on the company’s account, they will reall get to know the product, it’s alot cheaper etc. etc.

But this mi-understands why we hire PR people in the first place: it is to gain access to their access. By having multiple accounts they have multiple reasons to engage their circle of journalists. The journalists themselves won’t necessarily know why they’re calling because it may be from a current customer or a new one. But it permits the PR person to remain fresh and to keep the relationships fresh. Equally, they can gain access for a new, small company on the back of their prior relationships with older more established clients.

But equally, they have other key advantages. If you choose the right one, you are not merely getting someone who delivers your latest story to a select group of journalists, they may bring much much more to the table. The greatest PR folk of all time invented great stories. They created the conditions, events, moments, or confrontations that were inherently newsworthy. It is an all too rare talent and most people cannot do it effectively.

Great PR people are also very commercial and understand that, in some publications, the opportunity exists to create direct selling opportunities. In fact one of the best practitioners of the art will be joining me this Friday afternoon at the British Library to come up on stage and talk about how she has repeatedly been able to get consumer products, especially kid’s products, including web-sites where no product was involved; full pages and even magazine covers dedicated to selling her clients’ products.

She and her team are one of the top consumer facing teams in the country and, as part of my effort to expand entrepreneurs thinking about how PR can be strategic and far more creative, she is going to tell all at my advanced seminar on marketing. It starts at 1PM at the British Library (here’s the link: http://s4sfastgrowthmarketing.eventbrite.com) and it has some other kick-ass guests and our first ever live web broadcast at the end (but more about that later.)

So if you are interested in PR, if you want to understand how you can use it to get page space for no money, if you want to hear from the best consumer PR artist in the UK, come Friday.

Doug

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to SEO Through Press Releases

Doug Richard — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:06:12 +0000

Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew and the master of spin

Every entrepreneur has read articles advocating the use of press releases to build business. We are always told to write a very targeted press release, send it to a carefully selected set of writers, editors and radio hosts, and hope they reprint it or find a way to mention your product or service on the air.

These days that advice has gaping holes in it. It does not address a profound change in the way the publishing industry has changed or the new way in which most people find the things they buy.

Pay Attention, This is (mildly) Technical . . .

Marketing is no longer about interrupting people while they are being entertained or informed. TV ads, newspaper ads, radio ads are all interruptions. Marketing is more and more about interception. Grabbing people on their way to the product or service they are looking for.

Good marketing is about getting the right product or service in front of the people who will want to buy that product. A 2006 Media Consumption Study indicated that 54% of Europeans use the internet every week, and 45% are online every day. 78% of European internet users shop online. US internet demographics are in line with these figures. So if you have a product or a service you want to sell, a whole bunch of your customers online. Search engines, like Google.com and Yahoo.com, are where most people who start searching for products and services look first. So if you want to intercept your potential customer you need to be on top of the organic search engine rankings. The secret here is that the press release is no longer a release for the press…

Here is my step by step method to use the press release to move your product or service up the search engines rankings exactly where your customers will look to find them. (We’ll talk about other things you can do some other day)

How to…

First, as always, identify ten search phrases that your customers will probably enter when they are ready to buy your products or services. Things like “London Travel” or “iPhone SMS Applet” are good examples.

Write a press release about your product, your service or your company. It must be newsworthy. If you’ve won an award, or donated something to a local charity, or hired someone new, you have something to write about.

Make sure at least one link in the press release points to your website.

Give your press release a title. The very best titles will pair your product or service with the name of something or someone your target market will find interesting. For example: “London Travel Company Donates One Million Pounds to the Prince Trust” or if you don’t happen to have a million quid sitting around “iPhone Applet Sends Groups SMS Messages to All Phones Free”.

Submit your press release through an Internet Press Release service that gives news to news.google.com and news.yahoo.com. Many services submit to these news services, including www.prweb.com. (There are others that specialize in the UK) These services have human editors which determine newsworthiness, so writing spam and calling it a press release is not an option.

Wash.Rinse. Repeat.

Repeat this process 1-3 times a week for six months to ensure you have great placement on the search engines for the keywords you care the most about.

Why does this work?

Hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs use the RSS Feeds to post news articles from news.yahoo.com, news.google.com and other news aggregators for their users to read. This a free, passive way for these sites to get fresh content so their website doesn’t go stale when they don’t have time to update it.

These RSS feeds are configured to search for search terms like “Prince Charles”, “London Travel” “iPhone Applet” or “SMS Messages”. So if your press releases contain these terms it gets picked up by those sites. (Check out: http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?answer=40796&ctx=sibling)

Millions of users set up “agents” that forward links to news articles with specific terms as well. News articles with these terms get forwarded to users who may forward the message to others. (Check out: http://www.google.com/alerts?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22london+travel%22&t=1&source=news&cd=2)

Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Alta Vista determine where your page appears in the listings based upon how many other pages link to them. So running fifty to a hundred press releases in a year that create thousands or tens of thousands of links is a very fast way to build a long term “home” for your website at the top of almost all search engines for the keywords you care the most about.

Press Releases for the Press Are Still Important

Writing a small number of press releases that you send directly to writers, editors and radio hosts has value in that a recommendation coming from a trusted source has a great deal of value. But, even these professionals will search Google and Yahoo to learn more about you. Appearing high in any keyword search for your type of product or service increases your perceived status.