HOW TO BUILD INSTANT AUTHORITY & GROW YOUR BUSINESS (2025 METHOD) || NIC ABELIAN || EPISODE 056

So we started in 2020 and we did a lot of other things. So we did like paid media management. We've tried so many different advertising venues. You know, even going back to my last company, which was Home Improvement Energy, like local service here in LA. At that company, we did Facebook ads, billboards, bus ads, mailers, almost anything you could think of. And I helped grow that company to 35 million a year. One of the best things that we invested in was PR. When starting out there zero and thinking about, okay, what actually helped me in my past companies grow and scale. And one of the best investments was, you know, getting those As Seen On logos, building our credibility, setting us apart from the competition, and being able to charge more and stop competing on price. PR makes a big, big difference, right? And in your opinion, why is personal branding so important? So I want to go two ways with this. Yes, personal brand is important. What do most people usually get wrong about personal branding in European? Yeah, so a lot of people, they think, you know, for example, with PR, a lot of people dug up featured in, let's say, Forbes, and they won't really do much with it. You know, they kind of look at it as like a vanity trophy that they, you know, put on their shelf, but it's... The code to winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. Today, we actually have a very amazing guest. We're right now still in the Golden State of California and in the city of Angel, Los Angeles. As you can see, this beautiful studio, skyscrapers, Staples Center, LeBron James, Laker Nation, Hollywood, yes, yes, yes. And without further ado, if you guys are interested in upscaling your business and trying to get the best PR and marketing firm in 2025, this is the episode for you. I have a guest today who's very, very good at helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses, feature in magazine outlets such as Forbes and many others that we're gonna be discussing in this episode today. If you're curious in growing your brand, growing your business, getting social media presence, getting that boost and growth and also getting recognized internationally and also nationally, of course, again, this is the episode for you. So without further ado, I have the CEO and founder of another zero. I have Nick in the studio. Welcome brother, how you doing? Awesome, thank you so much for having me. That was amazing intro. So my name is Nicholas Zabelian. I'm the founder of another zero. Over the past year, we've probably helped over 5,000 businesses, entrepreneurs, coaches, get featured in the news and grow their bottom line. And it's how we've become the number one rated marketing agency, SEO service and public relations firm across all businesses on TrustPilot. And I'm excited to get into everything. Now I'm curious, now the reason I was saying that some of my viewers might like the approach of how I'm gonna be doing this thing. Some might not, but it's one of those things where I wanna really ask a lot about like personally for me and of course for people that are out there that maybe in the similar situation that I am currently right now where there is growth, it's steady, it's slow, it's consistent, it's organic, it's amazing. But it's at the point it's like now trying to get that reach. I think I'm handsome enough to be in the Forbes magazine for the most part. I'd like to think that at least, but I wanna try and get into these strategies. Why is, when did you start your company? So we started in 2020 and we did a lot of other things. So we did like paid media management. We've tried so many different advertising venues. And even going back to my last company, which was a Home Improvement Energy, like local service here in LA, at that company we did Facebook ads, billboards, bus ads, mailers, almost anything you could think of. And I helped grow that company to 35 million a year. And a lot of, one of the best things that we invested in was PR. So when starting out there's zero and thinking about, okay, what actually helped me in my past companies grow and scale? And one of the best investments was, getting those As Seen On logos, building our credibility, setting us apart from the competition and being able to charge more and stop competing on price. Because when you look nowadays with how the internet is and AI, it's very easy to start a business, but it's very hard to stand out. So that's what we help do with businesses. Okay, and I think it's so important right now because I look at a lot of like trendy in industries, it's usually the few people that do stand out. Like right now the YouTubers are taking off and you see people like I show speed, he's racing somebody every single day. But in my mind I'm like, I'm telling you there has to be some sort of PR like behind it and trying to get him the right races for him to blow up and cause he's out there with the FIFA president and all these different stuff. And in my mind I'm like, man, like PR makes a big, big difference, right? And in your opinion, why is personal branding so important? So I want to go two ways with this because I think for most people it's very different than how it is for like actual speed or these big brands that already have huge followings. But the entrepreneur that's just starting out that maybe doesn't even have their first client or they're just starting to get a few clients, for them it's so important because it shows that they're credible to deliver on what they're promising. So when you're first starting out, when you talk to a client, do they trust you and do they believe that you're actually gonna deliver? And PR and personal branding is so important in that because it shows that you are actually an expert in what you're doing, they should listen to you and you can deliver on whatever you're gonna do. On the other side, when you already have personal brand, you know, like speed and the way he's doing it, it's so important because once you get to that level, it's almost, it's very hard to keep growing through paid advertising, but it's very easy to do strategic partnerships with, let's say FIFA and FIFA and speed, they're kind of trading their audiences and growing together that way. So it's through strategic partnerships that allow them to grow like the next step. But personal branding is so important. It's how, if you look at the Rock, McGregor, Kylie Jenner, Haley Beaver, they've all grown billion dollar businesses almost overnight and let's say for McGregor, Whiskey or the Rock, Tequila, like these are companies that they probably don't, they're not even experts in maybe, but through their personal brand, they were able to leverage that and grow it into a billion dollar company. So that's how personal branding is so important. I actually like that example you made because it's so true, because in my mind I'm like, I don't think even speed and then folks are paying paid ad because that's at the point, but my thing is, just to add on that, because I feel like, yes, personal branding is important. What do most people usually get wrong about personal branding in your opinion? Yeah, so a lot of people, they think, for example, with PR, a lot of people they'll go featured in let's say Forbes and they won't really do much with it. They kind of look at it as like a vanity trophy that they put on their shelf, but it's such a powerful tool that if leveraged correctly, it does so much more. So what people do wrong a lot is they'll get these features, they won't do much with it. And the same thing happens with reviews and testimonials and other great things that their company might have, those assets and they don't know how to leverage it. So what we try to do is, once our customers are featured in the news, once we get them that press, that asset is something that they can use forever. It's something that they should have on their website, on their ads, and when someone's waiting on the phone, let's say they have a law firm and it's the on hold recording, it should even mention like, oh, did you know so-and-so was featured in Forbes for the best lawyer in Los Angeles. Things like that are ways to leverage the feature to make it go 10 times, 100 times further. So a lot of times what people get wrong is they'll get it and they won't do much with it. They think it's gonna be a magic bullet that changes everything, but it can if you use it right, if you leverage it. Yeah, no, that's perfect. Which kind of segues to this, because I know you probably have experienced this thing. I mean, I travel a lot, but one of the things I've noticed is that I usually like, like when I travel somewhere, maybe stop at a small town and go to like a local food place. And so between Idaho and Utah, I was traveling so much, and in between them, like border state, there was like gas station, but next to this gas station, there was a place that sold the most delicious burgers I've ever had in my entire life. But at the same time, like my go-to from Hungary, like at night, it's like, oh my gosh, let me get a quick Big Mac or like in an hour, double, double animal style. It's a brand that's right there, which the question I'm going to with this, there's people out there that have a great product, they have a great service that they're offering, but they actually have no audience and they have like no branding whatsoever. If somebody were to approach you with absolutely zero, and like nobody even knows them, what's the first thing that your company or you guys would do to fix that? Yeah, so that's such a great point because I'll get to the question, but just to add on to your point, those hidden gems, those companies, those restaurants that are like nobody knows about, but they're so good at what they do, it's the opposite of what you want to be when you have a business. You don't want to be a hidden gem. You want to be under the spotlight right in front of your target demographic, exactly where they are, where they're shopping, whether it's Amazon, Facebook, in a retail shop, like where they're walking, you want to be front and center in front of your target demographic and you don't want to be a hidden gem. And that's all because, and Alex Formosi says it really well once he said, best known typically beats best. And that's so true because like you said, even though that burger is better, you just automatically think of in and out and you're used to it and you see it when you're driving, it's conveniently right on the exit every single time. So it's very, very important to actually promote yourself, get in front of people, get your product out there, your service out there. And the way we do it is, when companies are first starting out, again, like I said, it's so hard to differentiate from the competition. So we try to highlight what sets them apart. It's not about just advertising, but it's about finding what actually sets them apart from the competition and why they're qualified to deliver that. And then once we figure that out, we figure out their message, we write an article about them, make sure it's SEO optimized because nowadays, everything's online, so you want to make sure it indexes, you want to make sure the AI is picking it up, chat you BT picks it up, GROC, all of the AIs are indexing it and picking it up as well. And then we will get it featured in a news outlet of their choice, hopefully, we try to target their demographic as much as possible. So we'll even adjust the article based off of, we're targeting women, we'll write it a certain way. Okay. And do it that way. That's perfect. And then what would you separate, or what separates you guys from other PR firms? So we work very differently from traditional PR firms. The way it has been and how I was a customer of PR beforehand, like when my past company was, and most firms are like this, you go to their website, there's no price, there's no guarantee, you don't really know what you're getting, but there's a book of call, like Cal and Lee link over there. So let's pick a link. Yeah, it's always, you know, a book of call, get on a call with our sales rep, you know, they're obviously going to try to sell $3,000, $5,000 a month retainer. It's not very transparent what you get and they don't really guarantee much. Okay. So I, as a consumer, I hate getting on calls just to see what the price is, just to, you know, see what I'm even getting. And then, you know, I, you know, it's probably a good sales rep. He's not going to, you know, he's going to overcome my objections. It's going to take my time. We're going to go back and forth, whether it's a good fit or not. It's just going to take a lot of my time throughout the day, you know, even if it's 30 minutes, I have to schedule it, make time for it. So I kind of flipped it. No sales calls. You know, we cut that commission out. We don't need to pay a sales rep thousands of dollars to sell $10,000 retainer. That way we're able to sell a lot more, get bulk pricing that we can pass down to our clients and, you know, just make it how I would want it to be if I was a customer. You know, I know exactly what I'm getting. There's a guarantee if I don't get it, there's social proof hundreds of reviews. We've been featured in hundreds of outlets and there's no, you know, sales call or high pressure pitch involved. Okay. Now that's perfect. Now onto the KG, you know, PR stunt thing. This is like now I'm in your office, you interviewing me and trying to figure out like where my goals are. The only problem I'm having personally for myself, I'm at the trajectory where it's like four, five hours of sleep a day. I'm so passionate. I love what I do. I like researching the guests I get in. I read about them. I see what podcasts they're in. It's exciting. And like I said, I have Google ad campaigns, like many of the subs that are right there, but I've seen it from Google maps or whatever it may be. We're doing a lot of like stuff like that. We promoting like crazy on Instagram collaborations, all the guests all accepting collabed, like from FBI special agents to like top real estate people. Like, you know, but my thing is, because I know I'm so like dedicated at what I'm doing right now. By the time this episode is out, I'll probably be on like 40 K subs. I still feel like I'm having such quality guests, such great conversations. And I'm a little impatient with like the growth I'm kind of getting, because I'm like, can you not see the guests that are coming on the show? Can you not see the conversation we're having? Like, why is it not out there? Why is it not like, you know, 100 K? What's the first thing you would do in my situation? Like what, because that's my goal, but it's not necessarily the 100 K figure, but it's like that plaque creates credibility. Now to the point where it's, you know, it attracts bigger clients to try and come in, vice versa, brand deals, endorsement and all that kind of thing. You know, it's not like the number of subs, but it's like it represents success in my perspective. Now, what's the first like step we're doing in my situation? Yeah, so on the PR side of it, that's, I think that's something that should be on every like entrepreneurs like to do list, but you do it once and then you can, again, you leverage up forever. So I would just start, we get some features, which we'll do it like this episode, I'll definitely get it, push it out into a bunch of different outlets. And then that is something that you leverage, you know, and you're, when you're trying to pitch a guest to come on or an endorse sponsorship, whatever it is, it's, oh yeah, like our podcast was featured in X, Y and Z. We've had this guest on, this guest on, you know, we've grown this much and so on, so time. So it's highlighting all of those accolades, putting it in a clear message, like, you know, showcasing it on your Instagram, your YouTube, your social medias. And then again, it's like, we'll definitely get those features, like we'll get those done, that's no problem. And then it's just about leveraging it. And after that point, it's what we kind of talked about earlier, you know, the clipping, the getting the content out there, you know, getting those short reels out to direct them to the podcast and subscribe. And then how we talked about the connections with like speed and how he does it with FIFA. You're basically doing the same thing with your guests. So every time you get a guest, you're leveraging their audience and vice versa. And that's, I think you're doing everything right. I think PR is just something to check off the to-do list and then not worry about again. And then that way you could leverage it for getting bigger guests, getting bigger sponsorships and growing. No, I like that. I liked it a lot. And I think, yeah, and I think that, you know, PR's public relations is such a big thing because also the reason for my goal with the 100K thing is the fact that I'm gonna be starting a different live show. I studied economics and I wanna try and do something a bit more in like financing. And I saw some of the stuff in like business weeks and Fox business and I'm like, gosh, then once I get that thing, like I can imagine myself just discussing like, let's say, if something happened with the federal chair, like Jerome Powell did like an interest rate. It's something I'm also, I have a passion for and I wanna be able to discuss as well. But then I saw there's multiple different things that you guys like do, which I was extremely impressed by, business weeks, Fox, all this different stuff. My thing is how did you get those connections? If you don't mind me asking. Yeah, so it took a lot of time and it's just reaching out to these outlets, trying to see what they're looking for, making deals with them to see, okay, if we hit the criteria that you're looking for in an article in a news story, what do you need from us to get this done? And then, or finding writers or journalists at these outlets and then seeing what they're looking for. And then that way we're able to offer those to our clients and we'll shape the article in a way where we know that that's what the news outlet's looking for. To make it newsworthy, to make it worth something that they wanna publish. And we're constantly, I mean, we're always adding more outlets and that's just, again, it takes time of reaching out, building those connections and then adding that to our list, which is like a never ending process. And one thing I wanna let the viewers even know, this already takes away all the stress of them trying to figure out how they're gonna try and get that exposure as well. And that's the beauty of having a firm that does it because now all you gotta do is focus on you, your brand and what you currently doing and everything has been taken aside. And I think that's one thing I've realized with the more successful people become and the more prestigious and or like the more established they become, that's what I'm looking for. They start realizing that convenience and time is very, very important and it's very precious. So by paying something that is an expert in a certain field, it already deals with that rather than you trying to focus. Cause right now, like I said, it's nice and it's amazing. I can probably take myself to 100K, but from 100 to a million, that's when you have to be able to utilize something that's a bit more professional, profound and you can just focus on like doing the interview as well. I think it's important people to understand cause convenience is everything, you know what I'm saying? Cause you pay for people to do the shortcut that you would not be able to figure out unless you would do it yourself. So I appreciate that. What's the psychology behind press coverage and like why does it instantly increase someone's perceived value? So you're basically like piggybacking off of the credibility of a third party outlet that people already recognize. So something that, you know, a brand that they grew for years and years and people all recognize now you're kind of taking a little bit of that credibility and tying it to your brand. So again, it's similar to how the rock and McGregor did it, something they've built for years and then, you know, proper 12, like used McGregor's branding to go into whatever, $600 million billion company, whatever it was, but that's basically how it works. Awesome. And you also help people to jump on bigger podcasts and stuff like that. So not yet. So right now- Well, code winning is one, we'll talk about that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Help them jump. And I think we have some pretty big clients that I think with your audience could learn a lot from and would be great guests, which we'll talk about. That's what I'm trying to, I'm saying for both. I'm saying getting the clients to jump on my podcast, but also vice versa where like, yeah, yeah, like that's exactly that. I think it's so much of knowledge. Who watches the news no more? Like I'll be driving, it's funny, I'm driving back right now. I'm gonna listen to another podcast while trying to listen to my tomorrow's one that's gonna get released. Like I can't remember when last I watched the news. Besides election night, probably that's the last time you know you watch the news. Podcasting is, that's how the president got elected as well because you know, you jumped in the Jor- because people are listening, people are engaging, people are understanding. That's where the world has shifted, you know, because people have become like the media today. You know, you don't sit in a watch seat and Fox News no more. Sometimes you do, but like, yeah. Yeah, it's very rare. It's like election, like I feel like TV's people just watch news very rarely and then sports. It's like live sports. That's pretty much it. And that's the thing too. Like a lot of people get wrong with like PR. It's, I wouldn't use PR. It's not necessarily a marketing to get leads or clients, but it's a authority builder to help you get the leads and the clients through your marketing and everything else that you're doing. So like you said, nobody watches the news really anymore. Like it's so much smaller than before, but everyone Googles a company before they work with them or a product or they look for their reviews or they look for, they search that company, that person, that company, whatever it is. And when they look on Google and they see articles from Forbes or USA News or New York Weekly or whatever that is saying that that person is an expert at what they do where that product is actually great. Exactly. That is something that they do see. So that's even better than, you know, being on a live TV show because nobody is really watching that. But when someone is searching you and they see those things, it's just so powerful to get that conversion to actually convince them to buy. That's fair. And it's the same thing like with me. If I watch like a TV, cause I did an internship like in Bloomberg in New York. So like whenever like there's anything with the federal rates and like stuff like that, I'll tune in for a good like 30 minutes an hour as well. It's something that interests me. But at the same time, if I say I was featured in Bloomberg or like US News or stuff like that, they're like, okay, credibility is like, oh my gosh, okay, maybe he knows what they can start talking about. Cause at the end of the day, that's why like, if I need to get something, what's the first thing I think of? I think we'll go to Walmart and get something, but it's a brand they've built. There may be something out there better, but I just trusted a bit more because it's something that's just built that much credibility that they don't even have to do advertising at this point. So that's the level. I think PR can probably take people. Maybe you might need a bit more advertiser, but like it builds credibility. It's leveraged. You're leveraging somebody else's credibility in their brand. So it's, you know, again, like you said, it's a shortcut. It's a quicker way to get there, quicker way to build trust versus, you know, doing it the long way and you know, posting for years and years, which is good too, but this is a much quicker way to do it for most entrepreneurs. And I think that's my personal opinion. Often say, yeah, people say, keep posting, keep posting, keep posting. But if you do the exact same thing and expect different results, sometimes it's a, that's the definition of what insanity is. You know, you have to go out there. You have to continue building the connections, collaborations and stuff because yeah. And I think that sometimes it's misleading when the Homo Z's and stuff, and I like him. I think it's one is such a great business lead in marketing, but I think that you need to tell people to do more than just post, you know, yes, consistency is important, but you have to do something different and try and get new reach and then you build. Cause I've seen some guy like stuck on maybe like a hundred followers and posting like four, five times it, which it's not, it's not a bad thing. You're still going to be on the explore pages, but with how the algorithm is going right now for you to really stand out, you're going to have to do a bit more than just the basic stuff. Would you agree on that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I mean, I've experienced that too. It's like the Gary V, like Alex Hermozzi, like post every day, make organic content, you know, just post, post, post, but that works. It definitely works, but it takes a long time to build up. You know, it's like, I'm sure your first few episodes, I mean, you had Andy Elliott, I think first, right? So that's a big jumpstart, but for most podcasts, you know, the first 10, 20, 30, whoever, you know, whatever that number is of episodes, it takes a while to build up. And then suddenly now it starts rolling, but it takes a while to build that up with organic posts and social media posts. So advertising, PR, it's a way to leverage and get there a lot quicker. And then how does another zero stay ahead with the trends, especially within cooperation of AI and the marketing landscape just changing at such a rapid pace? How are you guys like keeping up with that? Yeah, so we, I mean, we work with so many customers and at this point, we've probably worked with clients across over 30 different countries. And over a hundred industries. So we're able to see what's working within our clients' businesses. And we kind of tailored that to continue to improve whatever we're offering to make it better for all of our clients. Because we're able to see like, okay, like this was working really well, this campaign worked really well. Let's take, let's see what worked, let's put it together and like, let's make sure we implement this for all of our clients moving forward. So we're able to see everything in real time that way. And then secondly, like we do, we use PR ourselves. You know, we're always getting more features and we're always advertising. We probably test, we probably do a hundred tests a week across like creatives for Facebook ads, ad copy, headlines, demographic audience tests. And when you're doing like paid advertising like that through Facebook, it's very easy to see what's actually working and what's not very quickly. Even on a day-to-day basis, like, okay, we just launched a campaign. Like tomorrow, like let's see how it's working. We're able to analyze the data and see like, okay, this is working now, this isn't working. So that's how we're kind of staying in front of it. And then with AI, I mean, that's so important, like to incorporate in everything that we do, especially for our clients because like recently, like we've put a big focus on getting our clients articles indexed as far as like chat to BT and the AI see it. Because I think we're gonna slowly move towards people search just asking chat to BT about a company or asking about, you know, whatever AI they use, like about this person or about this product and seeing what chat to BT says. So getting it indexed early on right now before, you know, everyone starts doing it is kind of giving us a head start. So it's very easy for us to get our clients like picked up by the AI already. Man, that's amazing. Oh, I had another question I wanted to ask. Do you guys still do like billboards? And cause I have a dream. Oh, that's not a lot. Martin Luther, Martin Luther KG. But I wanted to figure out like time square and stuff. Like, do you guys have that connection and stuff like that? Cause as soon as I touch a hundred K or like one meal, I want like, I don't know, like cause I said, I wanted my friends, I saw them in a time square thing. I think I've seen, and then there's also on a NASDAQ as well. You know, do you guys have that form of? Yeah. So we do, we do that too. Let me rephrase. We don't really offer that, but we do have those connections. So like we could get it done. But what we are like really focused on is like the online articles. Cause like we, I could offer so many things to the clients that will work, but I think this is like the easiest, like quickest win that every business and entrepreneur should do. But we'll definitely get you on like time square billboard. Yeah. So it's one of those things where you have it. It's like, you don't want it the whole day. Cause I can imagine how much like it costs, but it's one of those things where it's like a portrait, like something that's such a credibility, you kind of save us your pen story. And then you know what I'm saying? It's, it's, it's, yeah, but I agree with you. Another thing is Wikipedia. I know I didn't like touch on that earlier, but like Wikipedia and like, how can people, cause I think it's such a big thing. When I start seeing somebody that I'm researching and on Wikipedia, I'm like, okay, all right. Yeah. You're someone, you know what I'm saying? Do you guys also help clients with stuff like that? Yeah. So Wikipedia and Google knowledge panels. So on the side where you see whenever you search someone and they have their image and like their age and information that way, that's Google knowledge panel. They kind of work hand to hand, but yeah, we do both of those as well. Gosh dang bro. I'm already sold on this thing. You know what I'm saying? I'm sold already. Yeah. I'm trying to think. There's a lot of personal ones I wanted. That's a time square one, all the different things. I, the reason why I do like when you spoke about like the online presence is because people are all researching because that's when SEO comes in. Cause you know what? It's so crazy. Every time I go to like an Airbnb hotel, first thing I do, I'm revealing my secrets right now. Don't judge me. I don't think I'm obsessed with myself. I'm not. I'm just trying to test the water. So I go in the hotel, I type, go to YouTube and I type in code. Oh, and I see how many times before I have type in code before it's like code of winning. And it's been getting better at first. It was like code two. And then I put a W. It was like, it wasn't my showing up, but like my hotel right now. I typed in code two without like logging in and then I type in the W that was winning. But what I want is like, you know, when Pitbull gave that whole thing, it was like when you type in Pitbull, the rapper shows up rather than the dog. Like my goal is when I type in code and just the T, it shows code to winning on the search bar. So I think that takes time. That's where SEO comes in. For somebody out there that doesn't know SEOs, someone that's just going to be new and media or try and build their personal brand, can you kind of like give a definition of what SEO is? Yeah, absolutely. So SEO, like you said, it takes time. You know, there's a lot of firms that'll promise big things for SEO and they'll charge, I've seen 30,000 a month, 10,000 a month, like huge retainers. And so the thing with SEO, it's very hard to see what's actually being done and see results. So there's like entrepreneurs, I usually tell them like be careful when you're working with the SEO agency because it's very easy for them to tell you like, oh yeah, we're doing all of this work. We're creating these backlinks. We're doing this, that, this, that, but it takes time, it takes time. And then they kind of drag it out for six months until the entrepreneur like fires them. And they didn't really do anything. Like that's their whole business model. It's like, let's see how long we could drag this out and how much money we could get out of this entrepreneur. So SEO, I think entrepreneurs, like that's something you have to kind of do on your own. I agree. Not as far as like link building, but you know, something very simple. Like when you get a five star review, just take a screenshot of that, transcribe, like write the text of that review in the caption, post it on your X, post it on your Instagram, post it on your website, post it on, you know, everywhere that you could post it, put it on Reddit, put it everywhere that Google could kind of trace it. And you know, it can say like code to winning reviews. And you know, Google's seeing that on Reddit, Google's seeing that on not just YouTube, but Instagram and Twitter and all of these other platforms. And that's how you're gonna build those SEO keywords up for code to winning, let's say, or whatever business it is. So it just, it takes time and it takes a lot of posting. But if you see any of my pages, it's like we get all of our reviews, like we put them on every single platform. Like we wanna leverage every single one, we wanna make sure we utilize that for SEO and credibility as much as possible. And that, again, that takes time. No, solid man, that's super solid. And you've obviously built a brand, you've built a team, you've built a company right now. What would you say is then the hardest part about building a service-based business? So with that, it's very important to have a good team. Like I really believe systems are very important, but when you get to a certain point, it's how good is your team, how can they handle everything where you can trust them to do the things that you don't need to do so then you can focus on getting more clients and scaling. So it's very important for having a good team. And that goes to like, you have to take care of your team, take care of the people that are on your team. If they're worried about their pay or they're worried about making ends meet or their job or whatever it is, how can they actually deliver to your clients? You know, like you have to make, like I truly believe like you have to make it their life easy so then they can make your clients life easy. So when, you know, my team, I'm always thinking like, you know, how can I take extra steps out of their tasks or their day? How can I give them the tools to make their job easier? So then again, they could give better care to our clients. Solid, solid. And you watch football, European football? Not too much, more basketball. What's your basketball team? Celtics. Oh, the interview is done, bro. I don't want to. I will say right now. I was waiting for it. Bro, you can't say that right next to crypto.com arena. That's an abomination. I know. I know. Oh, no, thank goodness Jason Tating didn't win, but that's a story for another day. But the reason I was going to talk about this thing, you probably, you know David Beckham, right? Yeah, yeah. Obviously owner of InterMiami, but before then like football was always such a grass shoot, aggressive, like an electrifying sport. Being in South Africa, we used to watch games because we have the same time zone as like England and stuff in Europe. And so David Beckham, I feel like was the beginning of like PR in football. Like a good looking guy. And then, you know, hair styles would change up. Mo Hawke, and then he has long hair and all the different stuff. And I'm looking back at then, not only did he have a good team, but he literally gave heat to instructions and like trying to like build a brand, to build this thing. He was Adidas. He wasn't like the most gifted, like they were way better players than what he was. But you started seeing in the next one, like after that era, that's the Cristiano Ronaldo and the Messi era. And you know, Ronaldo's brand is everything. He can post one thing, it's gonna sell like the next day. You know what I'm saying? To somebody out there right now, wanting to start with another zero, what form of like guarantee, I know it's hard to really guarantee everything today, but what could you let them know about what they're gonna gain from another zero? So the way we work, we work with so many different news outlets and they're always making changes. They're always updating their websites or changing their prices, things like that. So we try not to guarantee anything on that side of it, just cause we can't control the news outlets. They're always changing, but we can't control what we do. So we try to, you know, we deliver articles within 24 hours. We make sure that we're transparent throughout the entire process with the client. We make sure we, you know, conduct SEO research and research into the company and their competitors. We try to make sure we tailor everything to actually highlight their company. And then if we can't deliver it because the news outlet changed the policy or whatever it is that they changed on us, you know, 100% money back guarantee, like no questions asked. Like if we can't deliver it, nobody should pay. And we truly believe that. And if we can't find, you know, an alternative that they prefer, you know, a lot of times we'll upgrade clients to a bigger outlet or a bigger package just because we couldn't deliver on the one that they purchased initially. So as far as hardcore deliverable, like that's what we do. As far as like ROI bottom line, like we make sure to give the client all the tools they need to take advantage of the future. So we'll give them the, like a custom Asinobaner, social media kit, HTML code to add it to their website. We'll give them a full guide on showing them how they could, you know, scripts on how they could seamlessly integrate that feature mentioned into their sales pitch, into their scripts on the phone, added to their ads, added to their landing page. So we will show them like 50 different ways that they could leverage this feature. And if you do that, like, it's almost guaranteed that you're gonna see an improvement, like in conversion rates, in marketing, in sales, in recruiting, you know, a lot of our clients too, they use these to, you know, get investors into their company. And it just helps open so many doors. So that's what we try to help our clients with. That's solid, man. And the $97 is that like a, that's obviously the beginning start, but that's still a good price. It's an old break, $97. You can go do dash right now. And then by the end of like, you can get 97 and start putting that to it. You know what I'm saying? So I think 97 is a bargain, man. And obviously, if you don't mind me asking, what does 97 at least get you? Yeah, great question. So the 97, that includes us doing the research, SEO, everything that I mentioned, the 97 includes. So we'll research the client, do SEO research right at 800 to a thousand word article on the client's business. They get to choose the outlet that they want out of, I think we have over 60 different options right now. And we're always adding more, but they get to choose the outlet. They get the custom as seen on banner, the social media kit, the maximizing PR guide that we give to everyone with the scripts and the, you know, different ways to utilize it. That's all included in the 97 promotion. So we really believe on delivering right away and over delivering. And then, you know, if we do that, which we have been, I think that's why we've seen such great growth because clients are gonna wanna come back and do more, because we've already gave them such a big win. That's smart, man. And then obviously, when you say they choose the outlet, they can choose Forbes, Newsweek, and all the different stuff. So the outlets, the list is always changing. We try to have at least like 60 great options, 50, whatever it is. Pretty much everything that shows up on our ad or our landing page is things that they could choose from. Again, they're always changing their policies. So maybe one or two, we might have to swap out, but yeah, like USA News, New York Weekly, Women's Insider, Men's Insider, like CEO times, Business Weekly, like all of these outlets, they could choose from whichever one they want. And we'll also help them. We think with your target demographic and the timing of the trends right now, if we hit this news outlet with your product or service, I think it could do really well. So we'll help them and consult with them on that as well. But yeah, they could choose from over 60 options. All of them index, come with do follow back links for SEO. And then we make sure that they get that as seen on banner, they could throw on everywhere as well. Why aren't people doing this? This is a no brainer. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people are doing it, but yeah, I mean, it's something that, like I think every entrepreneur should be doing it. Like it's the first thing that I did for my house companies once I did it the first time and saw the results. But it's such a no brainer. It's like when you're doing, you're making your logo look nice, get the credibility, put on your website, make it look nice with that as well, you know, build the trust. So the reason I'm bringing that up as well. So my first 1000 subscribers, how it was done, I printed out a pamphlet of like my podcast. This was way before I even got Andy Elliott there. I just wanted to kind of like drop it out there. And then what I did, like over hundreds and hundreds, I spent about like two months door dashing and with my QR code there. And I told people like, listen, don't tip me or anything. What I want you to do is I want you to scan the QR code and I want you to subscribe to my channel. I did that, which was very creative. And I liked it because people, and I was giving it to everybody because I talk to everyone because I'm just my sales background. So whether it's somebody working at McDonald's, whether it's somebody I'm dropping something, whether it's a photo door dash that's waiting for the thing. So I was always giving out, I had to give out at least between like 20 to 50 a day, but I'm not gonna see 50 customers because you're knocking on. So you give it to as many and it started growing. And then I was like, oh, that's amazing. It's amazing. But then you realize there's obviously a spot a way to do it, but it's a nice kick boosting. But my also concern with that is the fact that people were subbing, but they weren't watching. So they were doing out of love. So it's like, listen, eventually, cause I got monetized super quick after my third episode of the Navy Seal veteran guy. But my thing is people were not watching. So I was getting a great sub organic count, but like with the watch hours are super low. So it's that, you see, that's when marketing comes in. That's where getting to the right audience that would like the thing that you're giving people that like business, people that like building personal brand, people that like to market, people that want to get out there as well. And I think that's one thing I've realized about like marketing, because I feel like, yes, I'm getting all the right stuff. And every time I get a different guess, I'm like, my mind blows. I'm like, well, why have I not done that all this time? You know, it's just crazy. Can you add a bit more again on PR, anything that you may have left out? Nothing for PR, but I want to add like the marketing thing is you hit it on like right on marketing is so important. It's like, I think the number one mistake that businesses make is that they don't market enough. They don't promote enough, especially when they're just starting out. So a lot of times people will, you know, when they're just starting business, they'll worry about their logo, their website, their Instagram page, their packaging, their product. Like they worry about a hundred things. They spend, you know, weeks. And I've made this mistake so many times myself. Making sure everything is perfect before going to market, before actually advertising and getting in front of customers, only to see that no one really wants that specific service or that product. You know, there really isn't a market for it or a need for it. So the way I started to do it after learning that painful lesson, and I've helped so many people launch businesses this way too, and we've seen great results, but it's start with advertising. Okay, so start with the ad. And it's very simple. Like what I'll do now is I'll get a simple image with a call out at the top, like, hey, business owners, in the middle, put whatever the service is, for example, monthly bookkeeping. And at the bottom, I'll put the price to $300 a month. And I'll launch that simple one picture ad on Instagram or Facebook ads, you know, spend the $100 and see if people actually want it. You know, do people want $300 a month bookkeeping? And if I'm getting leads for $5, and I've actually had a friend that I helped do this for monthly bookkeeping, so he was getting leads for around $6 to $8 for a $300 a month service. And now we know, okay, this is something worth building out. It's something people are interested in, versus, you know, building something out and then realizing no one wants it. So the good thing about this too, even better than finding something that does work, is finding the things that didn't work, and you just save six months of, you know, potential time and thousands of dollars. Because now with a hundred bucks and one day is worth the work, you already know no one is interested in a hundred dollar, whatever it is that you're selling. So I think starting with ads is super important. And I also noticed on my ads, I actually different, you know, like, my least engagement app is Facebook. It's maybe because I have like my aunt, my grandma, and like it's just like a thing you had a while ago. It's not becoming as obsolete as my space, not really, but like I'm just thinking like how Facebook ads, I heard is the most like effective way. I haven't even tried it yet. Like would you say in terms of like how they do search engines and stuff, do you think it's a good way of how to get reach as well? Because my Instagram, my reach is good there. Like I've boost every now and then, I'll promote a few things. Like I'm obviously YouTube as well, but Facebook is just, I just log on every now and then because I just automatically do, but I think I need to do better at that in terms of advertising. How would you say it's a very effective way? Yeah, Facebook, I love Facebook. Facebook and Instagram ads are like my favorite thing to my favorite way. So even when I passed company, we were doing 35 million a year and that was like, we did bus ads, billboards, mailers, everything you could think of. And one of the biggest things that we, and Facebook and Instagram obviously, but one of the biggest like improvements that we made was just cutting everything else out and just focusing on Facebook. And that really like led us scale a lot. And Facebook is how we do all of our advertising right now. And we use PR to help Facebook with getting those conversions. So all of our ads have our, as seen on logos, our landing page has it. But yeah, Facebook is super important. I wouldn't. So I know you said you boost posts on Instagram. For most types of business, boosting posts, just for the listeners, like don't boost your posts on Instagram. If you're actually like trying to sell a product or service. Why? It's not effective at all. So the boosting is it's just for like getting likes and engagement and getting in front of people, but it's not built for conversions and getting actual sales or leads. Interesting. So Facebook, Facebook knows what type of people just view content, what type of people fill out their information, which people actually purchase. So if you based off of whatever your goal is on Facebook, like through ads manager, if you put it for sales or if you put it for leads, Facebook is going to show it to the right people that are most likely to fill out a lead form or most likely to go to your website, actually put their credit card in and purchase. So boosting for most businesses, and a podcast is different, like you're trying to get more, get in front of more people, get more viewers. But when you actually have a service or you're trying to get leads or you're trying to get sales, boosting is like, I've never seen it actually give a ROI. So it's not good at all. Just a tip for most people. No, I'm glad. So now that you opened up the can of worms. So the reason why, well, not the boosting part, I 100% agree with that. It's helped in terms of subs and stuff like that. But I'm saying the reason why that 100K subs was like the goal is it's the fact that when rebuilding a brand new studio in downtown Salt Lake, and then renting out, like doing memberships of people that want to try and rent out in the studios and stuff like that. And then also doing a consultant for those that want to try and start a podcast and stuff like that. You have to have been somewhere and you have to have a goal that you reached. Now you can actually teach it. Does that make sense? And so it's all these different stuff. And obviously the PR, that's great for that. But that's where I was trying to like, kind of also get at, because I feel I've heard you and many people speak about the importance of Facebook marketing and how great it's been. I just haven't utilized as much. And do you guys do it? Or do you give people the guide to do their Facebook stuff like that? So we do it for ourselves. And then we, so we work with a lot of agencies as well that resell our services. So SEO agencies and marketing agencies. And the reason they use us is because they get to get those, you know, As Seen On logos, which immediately helps Facebook ads. Like if you're advertising on Facebook, one of the easiest ways to increase conversions is, you know, put those As Seen On logos on the ad, put it on the landing page. And it's such a simple, like takes two seconds to add. And right away you see an increase in conversions. But as far as like us doing it for our clients, we don't do that right now. Maybe that's something down the line, but we do do it for ourselves and use PR to kind of hypercharge our Facebook ads and make them convert a lot better. And then do you guys have a discord or telegram for clients or is that 97? Is that a retainer or a monthly thing? That's a one-time investment. What? If you have not, I'm leaving that in the description section, build your brand, one-time fee, no brainer. Yeah. I spent that in food yesterday. I went to a nice buffet, by the way, but like, no, that's sad. Oh, what? But what about like people that constantly want PR? I'm one of those. I don't necessarily just want to one time. I want constant stuff. I don't want to jump on this thing. Like I said, once I end up launching that live show, I'm going to be getting a few guests that are in finance. We're going to be breaking down like current events and stuff like that. You know what I'm saying? But it's one of those things where I want constant reach because the problem sometimes that people get, they have a goal, 100k subs. And then plateau begins. I'm like, no way. That's the beginning. That's when like you fuel up the engine and you keep going because momentum is everything. You know what I'm saying? So now do you have like other memberships and stuff like that? Yeah. So we have a subscribe and save option. That's 20% off. So $77 a month. And again, that includes everything. We write an article every month, send you the list of outlets to choose from, again, do our research. If we hit a certain demographic last month, we'll try to tailor it to a new demographic and new keywords the next month. So that's an ongoing plan that we have. And then we have other plans that we could tailor if the customer is looking for a specific outlet or specific thing that they want to launch or whatever it is. We'll see what works best for them. But yeah, the $97 is just a one-time investment. I really, we genuinely care about delivering and over delivering. And I obsess over this. So every day I'm trying to think, OK, how can we deliver more value? How can we give our clients, how can we deliver quicker, make sure they get better results, give them the tools to the cheat sheets and the guides and the scripts and templates that they could right away implement this into their business? Because I know that if we help them, they're going to want to come back for more business. So I think that's why we've been able to grow so quickly, even on TrustPilot, and get, we average, probably three, five star reviews a day, two or three a day. Bamba clot. Yeah. So it's, and that for me is more fulfilling than seeing like a sale. Like when I see a five star review and how we help the small business owner or a coach or an author sell their book or whatever it is, get their message out there. It's a really good feeling. And that's what we're trying to do, like make sure we help these small business owners and hopefully not add to their tool list, but take things off of it. Dude, absolute no brainer. Absolute no brainer. Well, then what would you say is like a big myth or misconception with people about featuring in a top tier publication? So one thing that, I mean, it's been like this for years. And most people think like, OK, this is only for celebrities or public companies or businesses with millions of dollars in sales or hundreds of employees. So a lot of people think it's all that because it has been for so long. For years and years, it was only available to those companies that had those connections and were willing to spend so much like thousands and even millions of dollars on PR campaigns. But now everything is changing with how online businesses are and the news outlets and AI. And now we're able to offer it to small business owners that like that burger shop that is doing something really great. And maybe they're not focused on PR or advertising because that's not their specialty, but they're really good at making burgers or they're really good at delivering services to their clients. So we want to, like you said, it's a cheat code of hiring someone that has already figured out and we do that for them so that they can focus on doing what they do best, which is delivering to their clients. Awesome. And then would you say you currently right now have a model to implement somebody from no presence, social media presence, to recognized, to extremely well known, to Alex Hermosi? Too soon to say. But I know there's, I don't want a yes or no answer, but like would you at least say you have the tools or you have the trajectory to get those tools to get people there? So I think some people don't want that. Some people, I really think they don't necessarily want. It depends on what they want. I want to be on Forbes cover. I want to be that cover in the latest stage. I want that stuff, but it's that credibility that I crave more than anything, more than the cloud chasing. Doesn't make sense. I want to say listen, listen, I was here. I need you in the podcast. This is what happens. You know what I'm saying? It's that kind of thing. Yeah, you want to establish yourself as the expert in whatever you're talking about. I know you said economics and finance and you want to talk more about that in the future. And it's, you know, why am I qualified to talk about these things and why should people listen to me about these things? And that's where the credibility like, oh yeah, Forbes cover. Listen that, that's where the credibility comes. As far as helping, you know, businesses at different levels or entrepreneurs, in the beginning, like getting to Alex Hermosi takes a lot of time. Building that brand, it's not something that you can get overnight at that level. But we can very quickly deliver, you know, articles and top outlets that give people the credibility that they can use in their ads and their websites and their scripts and things like that. So getting to Alex Hermosi level, that takes time. And ultimately that comes down to, you know, are you genuinely delivering a good service to your customers? Because, you know, you can have every feature in the world. You know, you could be featured in Forbes, but if you have one star rating on Yelp, you know, you're rated one star as on Yelp or TrustPilot, it doesn't really matter much. You know, if you genuinely don't help your clients, you don't deliver a good service, then, you know, you could be featured anywhere and it really isn't going to make that much of a difference because you're not actually great at what you do or deliver something good to your clients. So I want to, like, we try to do it so, you know, our clients, like, focus on what you're good at, like, deliver a good product to your customers, deliver a good service, and we'll highlight those great things that you're good at that set you apart from the competition and put it in the news and get it in front of your target demographic. Awesome. And then what's the next big shift for PR? So I think with PR and the way AI is going, I think PR is completely going to change over the next few years because this is probably one of the last few, like, windows of being able to get featured in these news outlets so easily. Once AI starts, like, AI content, and it's already starting, once AI starts taking over, like, all the content online, like, people are just putting out just junk content through AI, these news outlets, I think, are going to get really much more strict on what they're publishing, what they're allowed to publish, and it's going to be much harder for people to get into them because other people ruined it through, you know, bad content or bad, you know, using AI to mess with Google's algorithm or whatever it is, or news outlets, like, these news outlets or they're using deep fakes to make fake things do scams, so these news outlets are going to get a lot more strict on, like, okay, like, we need to make sure this person is not a scam or a deep fake or just the AI person, like, are they actually a real person? Do they actually have a real company? Do they actually serve their clients and deliver on their promises? And I think that is going to increase their prices because they're going to have to be so diligent about, like, they have to go through so much more. So I think their prices are going to get a lot more. It's going to get a lot harder for, you know, small businesses that don't have much presence to get into it initially. So I think it's really important right now for people, like, you invest in it one time, use it forever. And, like, once you're invested, I mean, once you're featured, it helps you get future features. That's a, like, tongue twister, but it's, you know, it's absolutely true. Like, for example, like, we were featured in a few outlets and then Forbes picked us up naturally. Like, we didn't reach out to them. We didn't even know about it until, like, I think I saw it two weeks after it was published. Like, oh, like we were in Forbes and I was just searching our name on Google and I see an article pop up and it's like, you know, top five businesses to look out for in 2024, I think it was, whatever it was. And it was like, chat, GPT, American Airlines, a couple other ones and then us. And it was, like, I didn't even know about it. So getting these features, it leads to more features and it builds your credibility that now other news outlets want to feature you because they see, oh yeah, you've been here and here. We can trust you. You're obviously an expert. So now they kind of piggyback on that. Dude, that's amazing stuff, man. And as we conclude right now, winning is a code to winning. I often feel like it's important for people to understand the importance of winning in their life and in their business and whatever they're doing as well. However, the term winning is so different for each and every single guest and I often ask them towards the end because it's the code to winning insights that you need today to seize the world tomorrow. In your definition, what does the term winning mean? Winning, I think it's, might sound cliche, but it's like persevering through the problems. Like, especially as an entrepreneur, it's like constant fires that pop up. Especially over the past year, like when you're really scaling, you see so many things that just come up that you think, okay, this changes everything. Like we need to figure it out. And a lot of companies though, and they fail, but when you get those obstacles or those things that are inevitable to come for every business, it's about figuring it out, persevering through it. And then I think that is the winning part. Like it has to be hard. And then that's what makes it worthwhile and what it actually means. Like, okay, I figured it out and I ended up getting past that thing that I thought was gonna cripple our company or was gonna make us bankrupt. Love that, love that so much. If you could look at this camera here and let our viewers know whether they can get ahold of you if they wanna be able to get featured, like your website, your social media, can you take DM, just let us know as well, please. Yeah, so you can find us at anotherzero.com. That's just spelled out Z-E-R-O. I'm on Instagram, Nick Abelian, N-I-C, okay. But if you are watching this, DM me C-T-W or Code to Winning, mention Code to Winning or KG, and I'll make sure we get you some bonuses and extra stuff to take care of listeners for this podcast. And of course, subscribe to KG and I think it's awesome what you're doing. Awesome stuff. The Code to Winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. You better click at the link below, $97 and no brainer. Enjoy. Pop.