IAM585- Marketing Partner Helps Businesses Tell Their Story

Bob has spent the past 12 + years as a public relations and marketing professional, telling the stories of hundreds of clients within entertainment and other top industries. As a motivated entrepreneur, he has owned and been aligned with multiple growth phase startups, in addition to working for established brands.

Bob has developed a focus on storytelling, helping clients push their key offerings to the media and locking critical press to help their business thrive. As a marketing partner, he offers clients a broad range of services including press releases, copywriting, marketing strategy, event management and so much more.
He spent many years touring full-time in the band Scars of Tomorrow signed to Victory Records and currently plays for the Southern California band Fake Figures.

Bob also owns the publishing catalog Gas Can Music, which is a collection of hundreds of tracks in multiple genres including rock, indie, and hip-hop. Since 2011, music has been and will continue to be licensed across multiple channels in film, TV, video games, and web platforms.

About Bradley Public Relations and Marketing:

We are a boutique Public Relations + Marketing agency with clients in creative industries including hospitality, lifestyle, and entertainment. With decades of collective experience, our team has had the incredible opportunity to work with clients that range from household names to brands that are the next buzzed-about concept.

• CEO Hack: High-performance planner
• CEO Nugget: Take that moment and reflect on how things will serve you and your clients
• CEO Defined: Being responsible for the destiny of your business

Website: http://www.bradleypublicity.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bobpublicity/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradleypublicity/

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today, I have Bob Bradley of Bradley Public Relations and Marketing.

Bob, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Bob Bradley 0:40

Thank you, Gresh. Appreciate it.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

Yeah, I'm super excited to have you on. What I want to do is just read a little bit more about Bob so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

Bob has spent the past 12-plus years as a public relations and marketing professional, telling the stories of hundreds of clients within entertainment and other top industries. As a motivated entrepreneur, he has owned and been aligned with multiple growth phase startups.

In addition to working for established brands, Bob has developed a focus on storytelling helping clients push their key offerings to the media and blocking critical press to help their businesses thrive. Bob also owns the publishing catalog, gas cam music, which is a collection of hundreds of tracks and multiple genres, including rock candy and hip hop. Since 2011, music has been and will continue to be licensed across multiple channels and film, TV, video games, and web platforms.

Bob, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Bob Bradley 1:33

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 1:35

Awesome. Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I just wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to get started with your business

Bob Bradley 1:42

Absolutely, actually started off as a professional, I use that loosely, musician, and used to tour everywhere and play every venue under the sun. When that phase of my life came to a close, I had to make a decision on whether I would keep going with music, go get a job, you know, shuffling papers, or go into the music industry. So I chose that. I didn't know what I was going to do in music, but thankfully, a couple of great companies early on took interest in my enthusiasm and I went to work for the labels. At the label Fearless Records, one of them put me to work doing what they called New Media and I had no idea what that meant.

In a nutshell, that's basically online publicity. But as things are transitioning from majority print media, newspapers, magazines, all that. Then there's the internet, and it's like, wow, you can promote music on the internet as well. They didn't really have a name for it. And this is, you know, MySpace is still a fresh, hot thing. It's like it, but it's just all PR now but it was the first chance I had to really like to sink my teeth into some really cool music and promote it on the internet and just basically have jumping into the fire kind of experience learning how to do it.

I had a couple of great mentors so I just took that and just kept doing it because it was kind of cool, you know?

Gresham Harkless 3:15

No, that's, that's definitely awesome, especially to hear how you know you're ahead of the curve or the trend or not even trend, it's just the way things are changing. You were able to kind of work in that space before it was even able to kind of be defined and had a name to it sounds like,

Bob Bradley 3:31

Totally, it's just sometimes you don't know what you're doing until you kind of in retrospect, and you're like, Oh, I just wanted a career in PR, but I didn't know what it was at the time. I'm not gonna lie.

Gresham Harkless 3:44

Yeah, it's funny you say that because I think Steve Jobs has his commencement speech where he talks about being able to connect the dots and you can't connect the dots going forward. A lot of times you have to look back on your life, and then all the bats start to make sense of how they're connected.

Bob Bradley 3:58

Yeah, I mean, if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, you know, there's very much a straight path to that if you have an inkling as a kid, that's awesome. But for a lot of industries, you know, especially creative industries, there's no set path and you know, I'm sure there are in certain ways, but with PR, sometimes you just fall into it.

Gresham Harkless 4:22

Yeah, and I think all these industries, especially if they're in just about every industry are connected in some form, shape, or fashion by technology, it has the room and opportunity to kind of be disrupted and changed.

Bob Bradley 4:35

Oh, absolutely. It's it's definitely evolving. And the medium is changing and it's an industry based, of contacts and relationships and it has an element of sales to it. So you just have to really be mindful of people's needs and how they prefer to be connected with and everyone's overwhelmed. Everyone has a lot of technology, you know, that they're working with and with any industry that you want to thrive And you know, even with PR, it's like, you just have to be kind of mindful of how you're dealing with people.

Gresham Harkless 5:06

Yeah, absolutely. So I know I read a little bit in your bio, but I want to drill down a little bit deeper. Could you take us through, Bradley public relations? Tell us a little bit about how you're working with your clients. And, how exactly that that process work?

Bob Bradley 5:21

Yeah, absolutely. So with anything, PR, you know, sometimes clients know how it works. Other times, they have to be walked through how it will benefit them, and to kind of educate them on how it will benefit them. So PR is under the wing of marketing. It's not the same thing as traditional marketing, where you're buying bus stop ads, and buying ads, and newspapers and magazines, because it's kind of paid. You know, that's gonna be very expensive. It's necessary for a lot of businesses, but PR is something that at least for what I do, and the majority of the time, it's earned media, which means I'm not paying anybody to feature my clients in that newspaper or magazine or blog.

This is something that the writer, the journalists, the editor, whatever you want to call that certain person is interested in what the thing that I'm pitching them. So most businesses could benefit from PR in one way or another. So they realize the value of this, and they need this for their business. So they would come to someone like me and say, Bob, can you help drum up a plan? You know, what is my story? Why is my brand important? Maybe it's not interesting to them. But having that third-person view and analysis, I can kind of audit what they have going on to see if it's even worth doing PR for them because I'm not going to waste anybody's time. And what it would be that would benefit them and capture the interest of the media the most, you know what I mean?

So, you know, it could be as a restaurant or an artist, or, you know, an engineering firm, it's like, everyone has a different story that makes them interesting, but you kind of have to pull it out of them and decide as a team, what is it that we're going to push that people read about that would they would care about. Sometimes it can be very formal, like b2b communications, other times it lifestyle brands, where you're reading about it on bustle, and in LA Times, and it's so interesting and so creative, but there's definitely something you could pull out of almost anybody, but you just need that right person who thinks that way to, like, collaborate on that?

Gresham Harkless 7:27

Yeah, that makes so much sense, then, definitely, you know, appreciate you for drilling down on that, because I think so many times, and I think I find that with a lot of like business problems, is sometimes because you're so close to it is really hard to kind of step away and be able to come up with that solution. But just as you're saying, with PR, like, a lot of times you're going through, you're just doing your business, and you don't realize like, you don't really think why you're doing your business, your story and things like that. And a lot of times as you said, you need that third party, that person that, you know, has the expertise as you guys do, in doing that, to be able to kind of pull that out of you and put you in the best light possible.

Bob Bradley 8:02

Exactly. And it's I mean, there's a lot of benefits besides selling more stuff, or more streams, or, you know, selling more food, but it's a good feeling. For one, you know, I'm not gonna lie PR a lot of times is validation for what you do getting knowledge meant, but it's how you leverage it, you know, 10, newspaper write-ups in a couple of magazines and 20 blogs, it's like, well, what are you going to do with that?

You know, how are you going to promote that? Can you leverage that to get more B2B deals for your business? You know, can you promote that on social media and attract more attention to what you're doing? So everyone leverages it and uses it in different ways. But, you know, PR is very important. And it's a part of a bigger piece of your success, but it's absolutely something that's necessary.

Gresham Harkless 8:50

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I always say the name of the game is visibility so you can have the best product or service and do or create the best widget in the world. But if nobody knows about it, then only you and I guess your family and friends will be using it.

Bob Bradley 9:05

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 9:08

Awesome. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. It can be for you personally or for your business. Well, what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Bob Bradley 9:17

That's a really good question. I would say how deep I dig with my clients. It's not a template-based relationship or client structure. You know, I treat every client almost like I'm starting from scratch. And, you know, it's maybe it's serving to me, maybe it's not, but it seems to work where I put on my own Think Tank session with the client and it's like, what is it going to be that best helps this client get from A to B or to get from to the 40 or, you know, 40-yard line in their career and they barely just got the ball kicked.

You know? It's like How do you help them move along because what you do for one client isn't always going to work for the other, even if it's in the same industry, because their story, what their product is what their mantra, what they're all about is always going to be different from one client to the next. And I think that caring about that and really doing a deep dive shows when you're pitching the client to the media because then they kept, they can capture that because these people get hundreds of pitches a day sometimes.

And I think what I pitch to these people stands out because it's unique. And it's got a sense that I care about what I'm pitching. So, I mean, that being said, I'm very thankful I get to pick and choose the people that I work with. And through a very good network of former clients and friends and businesses, you know, a lot of the work gets to come to me, and that's really cool. But that takes a long time to get to that. And it's probably because of the secret sauce and just great relationships and making sure I do the right thing and give the clients a great result at the end of any campaign.

So if I give them a coverage book, which is basically just a wrap-up of all the cool stuff that I got for them, they're just like, wow, this is amazing, like, has metrics and everything. And you really helped my business so much. And, you know, people that are happy with that kind of result, they tell other people, right, and you want that kind of result and not like oh man, I really need the money, I just need to like, get this done, do the bare minimum, because then you'll never get any more work. And you have to just, I mean, you always have to hustle. But it just makes your job a lot easier to front load a lot of hard work, you know?

Gresham Harkless 11:43

Exactly. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app or book or habit that you have, well, what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Bob Bradley 11:55

Um, but that's a really deep question. I'm looking at my bag here, this high-performance planner, which has been very helpful, I think it's a Brendon Bouchard kind of a weekly, monthly. You know, has goals and different ways for you to make it. I basically like to time block. That's one thing that's very important, whether you make like a checklist, you know, assign amount of time that you're allowed to spend on that, say that said project, but also have your week kind of planned out.

That's like a hack that a lot of people probably don't tap into, because it's like, every day, I'm sure for a lot of creative people and a lot of entrepreneurs, it's almost panic mode based off of like, what do I need to get done to survive.

Gresham Harkless 12:43

Awesome, I absolutely appreciate that. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So it could be like a word of wisdom or piece of advice around PR or some other business. But something you might tell a younger client, a newer client, or maybe even your younger business self.

Bob Bradley 13:00

I would say that my younger self would work on pacing reactions to how I do business. So you know, because there are things that can be very much a great thing that happens to you, and they're gonna be things that can frustrate you. Whether it's good or bad, always take that breath, always take that moment to reflect like, how is this going to serve me as an entrepreneur and for my client, and for what I'm about to do if it's an email or a phone call, you know, put good energy into your response, whether it's good or bad.

But think about it, you know, to stop and think about every step and every task that you're going to do and measure how it's going to serve your career.

Gresham Harkless 13:48

Absolutely, it makes so much sense. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different, quote and quote, CEOs on this show. So Bob, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Bob Bradley 14:01

I would say it's being ultimately responsible for the destiny of your business and being front and center. But don't be nervous about it.

Gresham Harkless 14:12

Appreciate that definition and that perspective. I appreciate your time even more. What I want to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and then of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Bob Bradley 14:27

Of course, Gresh I want to thank you again for having me on the show. As a reminder, my name is Bob Bradley, and owner of Bradley Public Relations and Marketing. We work with a lot of great clients in entertainment and different industries, including food and restaurants.

The best way to get a hold of me personally and on social media is just mrbobbradley. Whether it's Instagram or Facebook, and my website for my businesses, bradleypublicity.com

Gresham Harkless 14:56

Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Bob. Then we will make sure to have those links and information in the show notes as well so that everybody can follow up with you and click through and connect with you as well. But again, appreciate your time and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 15:11

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE And leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless.

Thank you for listening.

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