He learned early that raw data alone doesn’t attract journalists; stories need a hook and context. By building a Rolodex of ~10,000 journalists and partnering with PR Newswire for high‑volume, discounted distribution, he provides an affordable alternative to costly newswire services.
Kennedy’s key growth hack is a “survey‑and‑trade‑association” tactic: commission niche industry surveys, get trade groups to distribute them, and issue press releases that spotlight surprising findings. The resulting resource pages earn dozens of editorial links, boost SEO, and turn thin‑content sites into recognized thought‑leaders.
He stresses targeting the right journalists, avoiding generic email blasts, and using contrarian angles to stand out—plus trusting hires, avoiding micromanagement, and constantly split‑testing processes.
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Transcription:
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Mickie Kennedy Teaser 00:00
I use it as a model to test whether that works for others, and it does. And what they would do is they would then go to a trade association for each of these little verticals, not the big one, but there's a lot of smaller ones in every industry, and say, hey, could you send this survey to your members?
In exchange, we'll put you in a press release we're issuing over PR Newswire in the coming weeks. About two-thirds of the time I found that they will.
Get the results. Focus on one or two of the biggest surprises of the survey. Make sure you're asking the meaningful questions, you know, trends.
Intro 00:33
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?
If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
Gresham Harkless 01:00
Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast, and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Mickie Kennedy. Mickie, excited to have you on the show.
Mickie Kennedy 01:08
Oh, thanks for having me.
Gresham Harkless 01:09
Yes, I'm super excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Mickie so you can hear about some of those awesome things.
And ever wonder why some businesses get featured in the media while others get ignored? And is PR just for big brands, or can small businesses use press releases to build credibility and drive real results.
Well, Mickie has spent over 25 years helping small businesses land media coverage that actually matters. And as the founder of eReleases, he's cracked the code on getting press without a big budget.
Get ready for insider PR strategies that can put your business on the map. And before preparing for this, one of the really cool things I found out about Mickie is that he writes poetry as well. So he's also located in the DMV as well as I am in the Baltimore, Maryland area, I believe.
But he has an MFA in creative writing with a focus on poetry. And he's written some books, done some awesome things. So I'm super excited to dive right in. Mickie, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
Mickie Kennedy 02:05
I am, yes.
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Gresham Harkless 02:06
Let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, let's rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started what I call your CEO Story.
Mickie Kennedy 02:13
So I finished my graduate degree in creative writing and just assumed I would go from part-time waiting tables to full-time, which I did over a summer and realized this really sucks.
My back hurt, my knees hurt, standing was probably 14-hour days. It was not a 40-hour work week. It tends to be 50, 60 hours.
I just decided I needed to pivot to a safe office job and I got hired at a telecom research startup as employee of three.
And because I had writing in my background, they said, hey, you know, write some press releases and send them out. And I did. And we sent them out by fax.
So this was like close to 30 years ago. And I realized that we were publishing data, which we'd always heard is good for PR, but we weren't really putting the context and story around the data.
And we had just published Caribbean telecom traffic to and from the United States and so it was like this was different and You know we the phones rang the cells poured in because we published these data in yearbooks and we just started selling them and I I continued to do the more story-angled press release, trying to figure out what the hook is, the story, and then back it with the data that we had.
But the data just wasn't like a table anymore. The table wasn't working. The journalists weren't going to go figure out what's interesting behind this data we needed to bring that to their attention.
And it was just really transformative for this small business and I would just felt so like wow I wish I could do this for other people and at the same time every time I would do a fact I'd get like It started out like four or five phone calls and after a while like a dozen or so phone calls.
Almost everybody said, hey, quit faxing, start emailing. And so all of a sudden I remember when I could keep the fax machine with the less than 100 numbers already in it and not have to delete it.
And so I just pull it out and hit send and just get rid of numbers over time as people convert it to email. And I thought to myself, you know, I could do this so much easier for other people through email.
And so I spent a year getting email addresses for journalists, mostly hanging out in bulletin boards, which is another bygone era of the internet. And it was a fun time, because journalists were just like, you're going to do this for free? You're going to send me leads and stories? And now journalists are like, leave me alone.
And that is the big change. I started my business with my own Rolodex of about 10,000 journalists. And over the years, I partnered with PR Newswire, so all of our releases go out nationally.
The good thing about that is in the US, it's largely a duopoly between Business Wire and PR Newswire, and both of them are very expensive.
It's over $1,700 to move a press release nationally through PR Newswire, 600 words or so. And through us, it's like about a quarter of the price of that, so it's a huge cost savings. The thing is we also commit to doing 10,000 of these a year.
So it's a lot of volume that we're sending them that we're able to leverage a really good discount, and we pass that along to small businesses and entrepreneurs.
And that is the caveat. Our customers are the customers PR Newswire doesn't want to bother reaching out to. They're looking for the corporate clients that are spending $20,000 to $50,000 a year easily, and my people are spending $1,500 a year.
So, it's been a really good partnership with them and has given us access to the newswire.
And that's fortunate because over the last, 20 some years, media databases have become pretty commonplace. So people can license a media database for 5,000 to 20,000 or more.
And what's happened is, a golf club company gets this database. They see 1300 journalists that indicate they're interested in golf and golf products.
They blast it to them, nothing happens. And then they're like, well, you know who else likes to play golf? Bankers and financial analysts. And all of a sudden.
You know, people who report on banking and financial analysts are receiving off targeted press releases that they're never going to write about. And it's like that in every industry, there's off targeting.
So, email used to be great for reaching journalists and now it's probably one of the least, effective ways to reach journalists because they've all, realized that it's a landfill in their inbox. And so a lot of them are relying on the Newswire.
And that's what makes PR Newswire and Businesswire very important, that you're at least on one of them. No need to be on both of them, because it'd just be duplicative. And they are definitely checking both of those for stories. And the wire is very pure.
You don't have the off-target stuff happening. The categories you choose get approved by the wire. And they're put in those feeds and journalists can also create exclusions and inclusions. So, you know, I might cover the fashion industry, but I don't cover ready to wear.
So if it mentions JCPenney or, you know, uh, brands that, uh, are more ready to wear type things that you can, you know, block those so that your feed is very exactly what you're looking for.
Gresham Harkless 07:33
Yeah. Absolutely. I appreciate you so much in sharing that journey. So I want to drill down a little bit more.
Could you take us through a little bit more on how you're working with and serving clients? What exactly does that process look like that someone says that, hey, I want to maybe, you know, drive my business or have more opportunities? I don't know necessarily know how to do that. How do you kind of step in and help out with that?
Mickie Kennedy 07:52
You could be the most non-newsworthy company in the world and still get media very effectively. It just takes a little bit more effort and knowing what types of releases you should focus on.
But I've seen a website years ago that I considered more of a link farm where it just ranked the top 10 of lots of different verticals. you know, architecture, software, graphic designer software, top 10 and things like that.
And it was a very thin website. And they started doing annual surveys in each of these little verticals. And, you know, and I use that as a model to test whether that works for others. And it does.
And what they would do is they would then go to a trade association for each of these little verticals, not the big one. But there's a lot of smaller ones in every industry.
And say, hey, could you send this survey to your members? In exchange, we'll put you in a press release we're issuing over PR Newswire in the coming weeks.
And about two-thirds of the time, I've found that they will. The large ones don't want to cooperate. So stick with the smaller and independent ones. And get the results.
Focus on one or two of the biggest surprises of the survey. Make sure you're asking the meaningful questions, trends that are in the industry.
You focus one or two questions on the survey, put all the questions and responses on a resource page on your website, and link to it, and you'd be shocked at the number of trade publications that will include a link to your website, to that page. And most of them have an editorial standard that they usually don't include links to websites and articles online and stuff like that.
But they usually make an exception for resource-heavy pages, and this survey would definitely qualify. And those links are great for your SEO, and it's just a great way to stand out. To the point that they don't even do the survey anymore. They stopped about two years ago doing the survey.
And every time they did the survey, they got between 14 and 24 links and articles from these trade publications and all these different verticals linking to that page.
And so what was a very thin link farm is now a bona fide brand and it's recognized and they've just established themselves with so much clout and authority. And that's what happens when you get that credibility from ongoing media.
You know, they've probably been in over seven, 800 articles at this point, and they continue to get asked every time there's a trend or something happening in these industries because they're seen as thought leaders and experts within these little verticals.
Gresham Harkless 10:26
Yeah, that's such a huge thing. And I almost wonder if this is part of like your secret sauce, which you feel kind of says you're part of makes you unique is the ability to. not follow what everybody else is doing and be willing to go against the grain or try something different.
I realize, like we said, at the heart of what we're trying to do is solve problems or do whatever it is.
So in order to do that, let's ask the people and let's compile those answers so that it's valuable to other people. So do you feel like your ability to see the forest for the trees, understand that, but also be willing to try something different?
Do you feel like that's something that's just your part of makes you unique?
Mickie Kennedy 10:59
It is. It's the one thing that AI can't replicate. I tell people, if you go to AI and ask it to write a press release, I tell everybody it's been trained on all the press releases. And I would say 97% of press releases don't generate earned media.
If you join the trends, you're going to fail. You won't stand out. There's too many people competing for that. But if you're the one person raising your hand and saying something counter to everybody else in your industry.
That is a time where they will hold you up and you stand the potential of getting published in every article on that subject because journalists, despite what you hear, like to be fair and balanced.
And if no one's giving the con side, and getting it out there, it's very difficult for them to have the other side. You make it easy for them when you're out there and you're willing to provide quotes and talk about the negative or contrarian side point on a particular issue.
Gresham Harkless 11:59
Yeah, that's such a huge thing. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.
So this could be like an App a book or a habit that you have. It might be something you mentioned already talked about, but what's something you feel like makes you more effective and efficient?
Mickie Kennedy 12:13
I split test processes in my business. So I believe in measuring everything. I used to send a shock and awe package, which I learned in this marketing mastermind when I had a new customer. You know, don't always think you know better than people.
And you're like, if someone brings something to your attention, Like, hey, I found this part of the onboarding clumsy. You can, you can split test two different processes and look at the outcome of the population of people.
As long as you're measuring it in a database, like these are the people that received this package. These are the people that received the other one.
And I just measure the results. And so I, because I'm not a business person, I don't assume anything. I just try to measure as much of the processes as I go.
Gresham Harkless 12:54
Yeah, that's such a huge thing. And so you might have already touched on this as well too, but what would you consider to be a little bit more of what I like to call a CEO nugget?
So this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I'd like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you happen to a time machine, you might tell your business self.
Mickie Kennedy 13:09
So I would say it is trust the people that you hire and don't micromanage. I got out of my way, by going home and, focusing on the marketing and all the people that were there then are still there.
That's 10 years later. And even more importantly, revenue is like at least double, maybe triple what it was then.
Cause I could focus on, I wasn't spending 20 hours a week micromanaging the little bits of language with people. And so just trust that you've hired the right people.
Put things in place to measure them. You know, you don't walk away without some kind of measuring them and seeing that they're working.
But do trust that you've hired them and focus on the business. Focus on the important stuff.
Gresham Harkless 13:55
Well, Mickey, truly appreciate that. Of course, I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.
Our goal is to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So Mickie, what does being a CEO mean to you?
Mickie Kennedy 14:06
I think for me, the CEO is the person that steers the ship. You've got to be looking big picture strategy. When you see media databases making it difficult to reach journalists by email and your businesses rely on email, what that pivot looks like. And partnering with PR Newswire was my solution for that.
And you have to look at the trends and things that are going on and bring those to partners' attentions. Years ago, I brought to PR Newswire's attention that blogs need journalist access to the database, and they were restricting it at the time.
And I showed them that in one particular case of a blogger they refused access to, had more traffic than the trade publication of that industry. And I showed them where to look at the traffic online at the time.
It was Alexis. This was a long time ago. And, they were, they were shocked and then they reversed themselves. And the fortunate thing is today they are open to influencers.
There's a guy on TikTOK called snack later who gets a new grocery snacks every week and he pulls the pictures from press releases and routinely says that's where he's getting his stuff.
They're giving access to, you know, fashion journalists, access to Instagrammers. And so I love that they are pivoting as well, and they're recognizing that where we get news is evolving, but they're still, press releases are a vital resource and a great way to reach people and to get that information in their hands.
Gresham Harkless 15:38
Absolutely. Well, Mickey, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.
And of course, how best people can get ahold of you, your team, find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.
Mickie Kennedy 15:52
I always tell people, you know, start, with my education, that free masterclass at your leases.com slash plan P L a N. is completely free and it's less than an hour long commitment.
And I think it'll open your eyes to like, wow, we can do this. And I didn't think we were newsworthy.
Don't underestimate your size or the feeling that you don't feel important in your industry.
Gresham Harkless 16:16
Yeah, absolutely. That's such a huge thing. And of course, we'll have the links and information, the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
Mickie Kennedy 16:23
Thanks, you too.
Outro 16:24
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at imceo.co. IMCEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Want to level up your business even more?
Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co. Also, check out our I Am CEO Facebook group. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.
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