Gary Henderson: 0:00

My name is Gary Henderson. And I built the creator studio to show you what's possible. Today's guest Kimanzi is going to talk to you all about how to get paid, to write. And I'm not talking about getting paid to write newsletters. I'm not talking about getting paid the write on some blog that nobody's ever heard of. Kimanzi he's going to share with us how to get paid. To write on websites like Forbes. So go ahead and hit the follow button on the show and let's jump right into the studio with Kimanzi. All right everybody. Welcome back into the studio. I am very excited about today. One of my biggest weaknesses is pr, but it's also one of the biggest opportunities that I think exist today. I have done brief stints of writing for other places. I wrote for Search Engine Journal for about a year and had thousands of impressions, um, very great opportunities for me as I've been on Facebook and I've been browsing around and I bumped into Kazi and I didn't know Kazi, and I kept seeing his post and I kept seeing how he was helping people. Get paid to write. I kept seeing that he was developing some new SaaS software that could help people get pr. And then I started to do a little bit of research and I found out that Kimanzi's had over 150,000 copies of his books sold. He's been on 250 podcasts and he's had articles on places like Huffington Post and Forbes, an Entrepreneur and Asman and Fox News Time Magazine, and over 60 blogs. So we're gonna spend some time today with Kazi, talking about pr, talking about the opportunities that exist as a writer to get paid to write, right? So if you're a creator and you're listening and you kinda looking for something to do and you like to write, I think we're gonna find some opportunities for you today to do that. And then we're gonna talk about some opportunities to use the power of pr, right? Using the leverage of other platforms, getting your brand out there, positioning yourself as an authority. Um, and, and sharing some opportunities that exist there. So, Kazi, welcome to the studio. How are you today?

Kimanzi Constable: 2:21

Hey, Gary, thank you so much, uh, for having me. And, uh, has anybody ever told you like, you have a great radio voice?

Gary Henderson: 2:28

Aw, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Um, I did hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of social audio and clubhouse, just hundreds of hours of, of audio as I was writing my book on clubhouse and as I was learning that platform. So it's fun. I, I may have a radio voice, but I definitely don't have a TV face.

Kimanzi Constable: 2:48

It's, that's why we write and that's why we do audio. It's all good.

Gary Henderson: 2:53

Well, thanks for coming in. I know that Discords a little different and I know that, um, you know, we're a bit different here. We've got a live audience. We've got 30 people hanging out with us today. Um, I'd love to get started just, and I was reading about you started your online business back in 2011.

Kimanzi Constable: 3:08

That's 12 years ago, like, Mm-hmm.

Gary Henderson: 3:11

Let's start there. What took you online? What was the point that said, Hey, I'm, I'm ready to start an online business?

Kimanzi Constable: 3:19

Yeah, I had a phy uh, service business in the vendor industry for 12 years, and it was a physical business, um, and it was good and it was, it was great. Um, and while I was out there doing the business every day, I discovered podcasts that I could just listen to on my phone. And so I started listening to all kinds of podcasts as a way just to kind of pass time. And I found a smart passive income with Pat Flynn, and he was talking about making money on the internet, selling information products, stuff like that. And that to me seemed like a far better option than continuing to, to do this physical business. So as I listened to him more at first, second, I thought it was a scam like most people think. And then as I listen to more, I'm like, this makes a lot of sense where I can make money selling my knowledge and my experience and package that into digital information products. So in 2011, I. Brought a short e-book about the call tales of the everyday working man and woman, what the everyday working person went through. And I'd always enjoyed writing and I used his free lead magnet, which was back then e-books, A Smart Way, his free lead magnet to put together an e-book. And I put that on the market and I was excited. Um, but the book did not sell. And that fundamentally brought me to what I do now because I, when I thought about why is this book not selling and the answer was, was pretty simple, it's not, had nothing to do with the quality of the book. Or who I was or anything like that. It was the fact that I had no audience. It was that simple. If I have no audience, I cannot sell this to anybody. So then I went on a mission over the next few years to figure out, well, how do I build an audience from zero? And how do I do it quicker? And the way that, the quickest way that I found to do that was leveraging other people's audiences. So guest posting, being interviewed on podcasts, doing public speaking, all of those different avenues, um, made me realize I could build an audience fast. And by the end of 2012, I had 20,000 e email subscribers on my email list. I'd been on a bunch of podcasts. People were buying the books and, and everything. And I was able then at the end of 2012 to sell the business that I had before and really step into this whole world of online business cuz I had built that audience.

Gary Henderson: 5:35

Wow. That's fascinating. You started and it just didn't work stopped to think about it. Right? Like, like, what's, what's wrong here? And it, it makes total sense. Like you're writing a book about, you know, tells of the everyday man and woman and like, why do we want to hear your tales of the everyday man and woman? We don't know who you are. Like, we've never heard from you. We have no clue who you are. And you started to go podcast. How did you, like just getting started, right? You wrote this, this ebook. You, you launched it, it didn't work. Great. How did you build some confidence up to go reach out to podcast? What was that pitch like? How did you position yourself?

Kimanzi Constable: 6:09

Well, I'm an entrepreneur, so I like to think that we're, um, we're very, we can be fearless at times when we're pursuing some of the things that we want. And so for me, having listened to so many podcasts, I, it, it just seemed obvious to me that if I wanted to get interviewed on a podcast myself, I had to research the podcast a little bit, see what they're about, and then come up with a specific cook that would be of interest in that podcast for his audience. So if I was gonna be on, uh, John Lee Dumas, entrepreneur on Fire, I was on episode, I Dunno, 300, like when he first started, this was like way, way, way back in the day. And I wanted to pitch him and I wanted to pitch him my story of being a, a bread man and, and, and my physical business into jumping into this whole world of entrepreneurship. Um, and so I came up with the hook. And so for me, what I saw and, and I love cold pitching, for me, what I saw is if you can come up with the right hook, That could be interesting to that podcaster as listeners, and then eventually blogs and publications. You can get in almost anywhere with the right hook.

Gary Henderson: 7:15

I think that is missed so many times. Um, we have a, we have a blog and at one point in time our blog was like really, really, really, um, really popular. It's still very popular, but not quite as much as it was. And we get cold pitches and it was just cold pitch after cold pitch after cold pitch after cold pitch. None of it was personalized. None of it had an individualized hook. None of it was interesting. It was just, and we were getting like 15 or 20 pitches a day. They were all boring. I think so many people miss taking a moment to go and do a little bit of research. I think that in a lot of people's minds, it's a quantity game and not a quality game. Um, what do you like, what's it look like to spend a few minutes and, and do that? What's your process if you, you know, you, you hear of a new podcast, you hear of something new. What's your research process look like to find your

Kimanzi Constable: 8:04

Yeah, so I will listen to an episode. I will go. To the website and see some of the show notes. Um, but more than anything, I'll think about what is the main central theme that this publication, this podcast is what it, what is it focused on? And then once I know the main central theme, how can I come up with a hook that could be interesting that, to that audience. So I, um, cold pitched Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income, one of the bigger podcasts out there. Um, and I wanted to be on his podcast and Pat. I had listened to him for years. He covers everything under the sun. One hook that I saw that he did not have was people talking about this topic, large publications, but more specifically, how could all these online entrepreneurs use large publications to build an email list to, to get new clients, to get exposure? Because while we think of the internet, like the internet marketing space and the internet world as big, what people don't realize is a place like Business Insider gets 180 million unique visitors to their publication every single month. Forbes gets 140 million unique visitors to their, to their website every single month. And if you looked at the top seven publications, you know, you can get, uh, over half a million. Uh, half a million visitors every single month, like, or, uh, 500 million visitors every single month. It's a lot, a lot of traffic. And while his audience is kind of pulling in the same place, I, my hook to him was, look, you're all your online entrepreneurs could be reaching this audience and they could be getting paid for those articles. And he is like, yeah, let's do it. Let's, let's get you on the show. So it's really thinking about what is the opportunity? If you were going to, uh, pitch, let's say you were, you wanted to be in Forbes, for example, right? Most people lead with what they do and they try to sell themselves. But Forbes doesn't care about who you are or what you do. They care about what's in it for their audience. So if instead you led with, Hey, I could help you with ai, AI is like a really big popular thing right now. Everybody's talking about ai. Companies want to know about ai. If you led with that versus who you are in trying to sell yourself, you would get inside Forbes because now you have something that their audience wants to know about. So it's really thinking about. Who you're pitching, what's their central theme and what's gonna be the hook that's gonna get their audience's attention?

Gary Henderson: 10:27

I like that a lot. I the hook, the sticking it back to your central theme, but then remembering that they have something they want, what's in it for their audience? What's, what's their KPI they're looking to hit? What's their driver? What's, what's missing? Right? How can you fulfill that? And then making sure that it's customized. So you, you started pitching, you were successful, you got interviewed on a ton of podcasts, and the business started to grow. How did you figure out that you could get paid to right

Kimanzi Constable: 10:58

Yeah, when I, when I was leveraging other people's audiences, it was podcast interviews, but it, it was also big blogs back in the day. So like in MySpace it was, it was guys like John a or, or, uh, Michael Hyatt or Jeff Goins, all these larger blogs in MySpace and around 20. 13, a lot of the larger blogs figured out that, hey, instead of just having anybody guest post on our website, like, let's just have our customers, cause they built communities, right? So it was like exclusive benefit for the community. So people like me that had built a, a career on guest plus and using their audiences were kind of out. So at that point, I figured, well, if I could code pitch some of the largest blogs in the world, why couldn't I code pitch Forbes or Business Insider or Entrepreneur? So without knowing anything that I know, I, I used the same strategy. I went to entrepreneur.com, I looked at some of the things that they were publishing. I went to their staff page. I found their digital editor. I pitched him through email and I said, look, you have a lot of coverage on X, Y, Z, but one thing you are not covering is you're not covering mo uh, modern digital marketing strategies. I'd love to write a column on that. He's like, he responded and said, okay, let's get on a call and let me see if you're a good fit. Well, We got on a call and I became one of the first 50 contributors to entrepreneur.com in 2013. Back then, they didn't have the contributor program they have now, so they were having us write three, four days a week. And then from there with that success, um, I just, I just, I was off to the races. I went after the help post. I went after Business Insider, went after Forbes. I went after all of these publications using the same strategy of finding the editor, pitching'em through email, pitching'em a, a hook that they were not already covering on the website. And I got some yeses. I got a whole lot of nos for as many yeses as I got. I probably got three or four times the amount of nos or just being ignored. But that's how I built my portfolio to where, you know, since 2013 to now, I've had over 2000 articles published in over a hundred publications. Any large one that you can name, I've probably been published in.

Gary Henderson: 13:12

Wow, that's, you know, it's fascinating. I, I believe in the power of no. And I believe in hearing no, and I believe in hearing it a lot. I honestly believe in going for no and, and shooting for the no. Because then you win every time. And if you get a yes, then that's just amazing. Um, but what kind of focus and persistence? Like 2013? I'm trying to think back. So I worked with Michael Hyatt and Company, they were clients of mine in 2017 or 2018. So I was a couple years behind you. They were clients of ours. I know your space quite well and I know that opportunity. I'm just kind of thinking back to that time because I jumped into the, the coaching, the information marketing space in 2013. So when you were writing for all these blogs, I was handling marketing for some of those blogs. So that's, that's just interesting. Sorry, just reminiscing back of my head for a second. just, you just leveraged it. You kept leveraging it to play up and use one success point to play up and get another success and play up and get another success. When did you start charging

Kimanzi Constable: 14:15

that's the good thing about the publications and why I like'em so much. They, they have always paid for articles. Um, most of them I sh I'm not gonna tell sit here and tell you all of them do, but most of the large ones you can think of your Business Insider, your Forbes, your, um, Fast company or whatever, they pay for articles. Um, what they pay is is different. So if you were to get a column, let's say you wanted to be somebody who contributed regularly every single week, you wanted to get content out there, you would go after Forbes or Ink, because those are the only two publications that accept columnist. Columnist means they'd give you access to a content management portal where you then submit articles that go to an editor at Forbes. At, uh, at, at, uh, Inc. At Business Insider, or sorry, at Forbes, when you publish articles on forbes.com and you're a columnist there, you don't have to get editor approval. You can just publish right away on forbes.com. And then Forbes and Inc specifically pay you based off of page views. So for every 1000 views you get on your articles, you get$8 and 50 cents is kind of like YouTube. Um, and, and how they work and how they pay their content creators. Um, but it's the same thing at Forbes and Inc. They pay you based off of page views. Um, now if it's not Forbes or Ink, the only two places that offer a column. They're what I call everybody else. Publications, they'll pay you per article. And those pay ranges can range anywhere from$350 to$5,000 is the most that I've seen. Um, time.com for some larger reported stories, we'll pay you$5,000 in article. Um, and then Gary, something I should mention, it's not just like written contents cuz not everybody wants to be a writer. These publications also pay for audio and video articles as well.

Gary Henderson: 16:04

Al so you can. Literally, like you can, if, if you put in the work and if you build up your, your portfolio and you, you leverage one position to get to the next, you can create content on the sites that you want to be on anyway and get paid for it and get to

Kimanzi Constable: 16:19

I say it's

Gary Henderson: 16:20

content that you wanna write

Kimanzi Constable: 16:22

strategy out there. You know, Tim Ferris talks about the, uh, 20% of effort you put in to get 80% of the results. If you are a contributor to a publication like a Business Insider or Forbes, they're going to pay you for the articles to where you can make anywhere four to five figures a month just getting paid from the publication. You're gonna get exposure to their hundred, over a hundred million people every single month, right? If you are a consultant, a coach, or a speaker, you're going to book more gigs. You're gonna have opportunity to start to come to organically, because who's reading Forbes? Who's reading, who's reading it in Business Insider, right? It's executives, it's conference organizers. It's, you know, people that wanna buy your course. So it's like an all in one strategy to sell what you do to get new opportunities, and then of course, get paid for the content.

Gary Henderson: 17:15

I think it's absolutely brilliant and I can, I mean, firsthand, anytime you get, like you, you write somewhere else, you get mentioned somewhere else. It adds instant credibility. To you. Like when I was reading and introducing you, I saw in the chat everybody was like, wow. Cuz I was like, you know, he is written articles for Huffington Post and Forbes and Entrepreneur and they're like, wow. Everywhere. Like, wow. It's just instant credibility and you're getting paid for it. It's like the best of all worlds. Um, you've, you've evolved some though. Um, I've been watching you create some new software. So why don't you talk a little bit about pr

Kimanzi Constable: 17:47

Yeah. The hardest part to me of this whole process is the actual pitching, because it's not hard to find. Opportunities to get paid for from publications. It's not hard to find their editors on Twitter. So let me give you like a very vivid example of this. Um, there's people here that are like, let's say leadership people, um, workplace culture, yada, yada, yada. And let's say you were looking for, um, you were looking for somewhere to get paid for your content here in the chat, I just put a tweet from the editor, the main editor at Fast Company, and guess what she does? She tells you, Hey, this is what I'm looking for. I'm looking for these types of articles. I'm always looking for new writers. Here's how much I pay. Here's my email address, right? So like, as far as getting paid, you could, uh, any publication that you could name, Any publication that you could name, you could go, uh, find that those publications, editors on Twitter, that's where they, um, love to hang out. Um, and they'll tell you exactly what they were looking for. Like I talked about a AI a little bit earlier, here's one of the editors at Business Insider looking for, um, some content on ai. And guess what? They'll pay you for that. So finding the opportunities is not hard. It's not hard at all. Um, the hard part is the pitching. That's where I've done this work for 12 years now. I've seen that people struggle with the pitching. What do I say in the pitch? How do I say it? Um, how often should I follow up? Like if, if I didn't have their contact information, how would I find their contact information? People struggle with that. And so I wanted to, my vision was always to create something that just took away the barrier of interest for people. And that's where PR Pitches was born, which is a software that has a database of. 150,000 media contacts. So any publication you can name is in there. It has over 2.7 million podcasts. It has 40,000 paid speaking opportunities, um, and uh, actually 200,000 paid speaking opportunities. But it's a software that has a database of close to 4 million contacts. It has all the pitch templates from my 12 years of experience of doing this work, using the pitches that actually, that are proven to work. Um, and then it has the ability to pitch through the software. So all the, the work that you would do separately, you would be able to do this all in one single place in PR pitches where you would log in, you would. See the opportunities. You have the templates and you could just be pitching with a few clicks and pitching to publications that will pay you all the ones we, we mentioned here, pitching at, paid speaking, or to be pitched to get interviewed on a podcast. I also love this software because you have the ability to add team members. So let's say you work with an assistant, or let's say you're a part of a mastermind or something that you all want to pitch together. You could add as many team members as you want to your account, and you all can get separate logins. Nobody else has seen anybody else's login. You're just sharing the number of pitches that you have each month. And so PR pitches was really born out of 12 years of doing this work and then always having to find the opportunities, find their contact information, create the pitches, follow up PR pitches, brings it all to one place, and it's the tool that I wish I had when I started doing this.

Gary Henderson: 21:14

I, I think it's, first off, I wanna say, I think it's the best way to create a tool. You had a problem, you solved the pro the problem, and now you're helping other people that have the same problem solve their problem. And it's a really, like, it's, it's a legit problem. My, my wife and I, she's in the audience, Peyton, we are reaching out to podcasts and she's like, how do I reach out? What does the pitch sound like? Who do I talk to? How do I find their contact information? Everything you just said is questions that I'm answering with her on a daily basis. I'm like, oh, well you do this. You go, like, when you started our conversation today, I'm like, you gotta go listen to a couple episodes. You gotta find the hook. You gotta find a unique angle. And then when you started talking about your software, it's like that's the next challenge she's having right now. Um, I think it's just masterful, um, like. It's not that expensive. I just looked this up. And like a personal account's, like a hundred bucks a month and professionals, like a hundred or 200 bucks a month, something like that. So,

Kimanzi Constable: 22:11

And then also the one

Gary Henderson: 22:13

of the access there, you shortcut everything.

Kimanzi Constable: 22:15

you all enjoy this

Gary Henderson: 22:16

how,

Kimanzi Constable: 22:17

um, we have training every single week for clients. That's completely free on here's how you get into publications that pay you. Here's how you book paid speaking gigs. Here's how you get interviewed on podcast. Here's step by step how you can make money within corporations. Like we have training every single week. That's free for clients,

Gary Henderson: 22:40

So you give them the, the tools, you give them the templates and you teach them what to go do. All they have to do is physically go do the work themselves. Just plug it in. That's it. What kind of results are, are people getting with this? Because I mean, you've been building your resume for a really long

Kimanzi Constable: 22:57

Uh, here's the thing

Gary Henderson: 22:58

track record. What about someone that's just

Kimanzi Constable: 23:00

You hear a name like Forbes or you hear a name like Inc. Or Business Insider, and these are really big names and the reality is, They don't care who you are, who you're connected to. You're connected to John Lee Dumas, whatever, like you did this, you did that. They actually don't even care about where you've written before either, which is a misconception for people. The only thing that an editor at a publication cares about is what is the hook for the article that you are gonna present to their audience. That's the. Only thing that they care about. So even everybody listening to this, even if you, um, never hear from me again in your life, remember that all they care about is the hook. And if you got a good hook, you can get into any publication. Because as far as who somebody's connected to, um, you're pitching editors who are not entrepreneurs. So they don't care. They're just there to do their job. They don't care if you are, um, if, if you're thinking about your, I haven't written anywhere else, how is that gonna affect me? They don't care. Because if you have written an article for another publication, it's most likely that you've worked with an editor. So they don't know if you made that article good or if the editor made that article good. So they disqualify any of your writing samples. So really the only you could get into any publication, literally any publication. With the right hook. That is it. That's what sells it. That's what wins the game with the right hook. So if you're starting off from zero today and you're like, I want to be in a Forbes, you could get into Forbes with the right hook. Now, crafting that right hook, that's going to take some work. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that is easy because there's been a lot of things covered under the sun. But to answer Carrie's question, even if you, I consider yourself a quote unquote rookie, if you just spent a little bit of time in the news, um, regarding your topic. Let's say you were a leadership person and you looked at what's going on in the news with leadership and you came up with the hook, like, you know, everybody's talking about AI being, replacing jobs and yada, yada, yada. Is there a hook around leadership and AI that you could pitch to a public? You get in almost any publication with that hook, right? So, If you can sit there and take the time to figure out what's being talked about in the news in regards to your topic, and then pitch that to a publication, that's an easy in for almost any publication. So yeah, even rookies are seeing success because all that matters is the right hooks, and we teach them how to get those right hooks. But yeah, people are booking gigs all day long.

Gary Henderson: 25:36

I think it's absolutely brilliant. If you have done something in your life and you have some experience and you have a bit of a reputation, even in your small town, wherever you live, you could jump into this program that that Kazi has. You could. Grab the software, you could learn how to do a proper pitch. You could go do your research, put the, the hook together. You could go pitch. I would imagine if you took action in probably 90 days, and I'm gonna go 90 days, I'm sure people get success in 30 days, but I would imagine like 90 days of really taking action and really going to the calls and really learning and really like reaching out. And if you don't, like, if you, if you're like, Hey, this sounds good, but I'm not gonna step into anything that Kazi has to offer. I'm just gonna go do this on my own, then I think you still go do it. I think you still go reach out and you still find your hook and you still do your pitch. You just have to do a little bit more legwork on your own. But I don't know any reason right now why someone here listening or listening to the recording of this on the podcast wouldn't take action to get some, some pr, get some free exposure, potentially get paid for the exposure. Um, I just don't know, like,

Kimanzi Constable: 26:43

Yeah. I think no matter what if, for those of you here that just don't want

Gary Henderson: 26:47

let's flip it around for a minute.

Kimanzi Constable: 26:49

even though this is a crater studio, you also could be interviewed in articles on publications. Um, if you were to look at my profiles, if you were to look at any of my profiles on a publication, what you'd see is. I don't write about myself, I write about other people all day long. That's what I do. Like I, I write fe cover other people's stories and, you know, and, and that kind of stuff. So even if you said, Hey, I don't want to do this, you also could be featured in a publication because journalists and editors, again, are always looking for great stories. And you could find those on Twitter. I'll show you a hashtag that you can use to find all kinds of good stories. So let's, you know, those of you that are like, oh, I don't, you know, I wanna sit here and write an article for this publication. You don't have to do that. You could be interviewed on a publication, a feature on a publication, using the hashtag journal request, and you're gonna see journalists and editors and contributors and everybody look into feature people and all kinds of good stuff on there. Um, so if you never wanna do it, you don't ever have to do it. Um, but if you do wanna do it, this could be another revenue stream for you. This could bring you new clients and this could bring you clients in a way in which you don't have to feel like you're kind of fighting for attention in the whole social media, online business world. This is a way for you to, to get attention and to reach new people and to make some more money. And again, the credibility of you being in this publication is just gonna skyrocket your credibility with your audience. I, I think it's a worthy pursuit. You don't need PR pitches. To be able to, um, you don't need PR pitches to be able to go after these opportunities. It's as simple as picking the publications that you wanna be in, finding their editors on Twitter, because 90% of the time their editors are telling you specifically what they're looking for and putting their contact information in those tweets and in their profile, finding those editors and sending a pitch through email that maybe says a little bit about you, but more so here's the article that I could write for your publications readers that would be of interest. And if you can nail the hook and if you can just send'em a couple paragraphs about what the article would be about. There's not a publication that you couldn't be in. And again, you don't need PR pitches, you don't need Kaman Z to do this. You could do this all on your own and you could get into these publications.

Gary Henderson: 29:09

And you said the credibility piece. And look, if any client is looking at two creators, or two coaches, or two blank. And they're determining which one do I hire? If one of them has been featured in publications that they've read or they respect, or television stations, like, that's more likely that I'm gonna choose that person than I am the person who has no accolades or no, no credibility or no, um, endorsements from third parties like that, because that's what it becomes like. I was featured on Entrepreneur. Well, that's kind of an endorsement, you know, you're there. They wouldn't have put you there if you weren't somewhat legit, but that's way better than saying, yeah, I could do this service for you and trust me, I'm great. Um, so I think the credibility piece is something that everyone needs, and I think it builds your confidence, you know, when you get published, like, I know for me, when I had like an article written about me in Ink, like I, I was excited. I was like, oh man, that's really cool. It built my, my confidence a bit. I stood up a little taller. I

Kimanzi Constable: 30:07

here's all is needed. It helps you stand out.

Gary Henderson: 30:08

looked at me a little different and I think creators always need that. It definitely, definitely does. So, You're, you're busy, you're growing. What's some of the coolest opportunities that using PR has, has opened the door

Kimanzi Constable: 30:25

Um, I, I moved out of the United States. I moved to, uh, the country of Columbia last year. And when I came here I was kind of going through some per a personal situation, like a divorce, and I was kind of started over in life and, um, I really did not feel like doing, like selling courses and doing all the online business stuff. And the way that I actually supported my life was through my publication writing. I had the columns built up at that point, and it was enough, uh, revenue coming in just with writing to where I actually spent like three, four months not touching anything on the internet and just writing these articles and I was able to support my life and, and, and to live a really good life here. So I felt like. I had always dreamed of making a full-time living as a writer, and I had accomplished that last year, and it felt like it was, it was surreal. It felt like a dream come true. But as far as opportunities go, I. I've gotten so many free trips like, Hey, for consideration of coverage, and I make it clear that there's no guaranteed coverage. Would you like to come stay at this chateau or take this flight like when I was in uh, Europe and um, The Eurostar, the, the train line was like, Hey, we'd love to have you come in first class and go from London to Paris and we'll, you know, comp you. And then they have a team waiting for me there and, and again, not for guaranteed coverage. Um, so I've gotten a lot of trips all over the world that have been comped because they want, uh, me to, to write about them in a publication. So that, that part has been pretty cool. Um, getting to interview, I interviewed the co-founder of Crumble Cookies. For those of you that are in the United States, you probably have heard of Crumble cookies. I got to interview the co-founder and ask and hear about the, the dawn of crumble cookies and how they kind of got to where they are. So that was pretty cool. I've also interviewed like the CEO of McDonald's and like a lot of, uh, large companies like that for assignments. Um, so that, that's been pretty cool. And then I've connected with. People that make money and that are entrepreneurs in ways that I would've never considered ever, like I interviewed, uh, a couple that does Sniff Spot, which is, uh, Airbnb service that lets you rent out your backyard to dog owners, um, so that you can turn your backyard into like a, a little bit of like a dog park. The dog owners rent out your backyard for a period of time. They're responsible for all the cleanup. You never have to see them, but people are making, you know,$5,000 a month renting out their backyard on sniff spot. I would, I would've, I would've never known about that. So like, I've met a lot of cool people, heard a lot of really cool stories, picking trips, made some money, and it's, it's, and it's built my business. It's been great.

Gary Henderson: 33:12

I think it's really cool that you got the freedom and the flexibility. I went through a divorce years ago and my services business provided me with that same f freedom and flexibility, and it was really needed. So I think it's cool that your writing was finally able to realize that. And those are some really cool opportunities. Um, I heard about Sniff spot and stuff like that. I also heard, I mean, if you have a pool in your backyard, you rent out your pool to pool parties. Like there's all this weird stuff now with, with using what you own to let other people use it. Um, you, you said you live in Columbia, right? What do you, what's life like for you there? Um, part of what we do is we wanna show creators what's possible and we don't necessarily believe in balance.

Kimanzi Constable: 33:49

Yeah, life

Gary Henderson: 33:49

that we work a lot and we do a

Kimanzi Constable: 33:51

really good. I'm

Gary Henderson: 33:51

but we, we also like to enjoy

Kimanzi Constable: 33:53

one of the main cities here, and the weather, they call it the city of eternal Spring. So the weather's always between like 65 and 85, uh, Fahrenheit. So the weather's always good, it's always sunny. Um, I live in an area where everything is walkable. Like I could walk to malls, I could walk to the stores, restaurants. Everything that I need is here. I have a cook and a cleaner that comes to my house every day and cooks and cleans. And with the exchange rate, um, it's$8 a day to have a cook and a cleaner here, um, to the apartment that I live in. It's beautiful. Big two bedroom, beautiful balcony. It's$850 a month. Um, and then of course the dollar goes very far here. So the cost of going out to restaurants and, and all that kind of good stuff. It's, it's incredibly cheap when you convert it from dollars to pesos. So it's, uh, It's a, it's, it's, it's a really good life here, um, that you can live. If you make that, that is if you make money in dollars and you could come here, you can have, you can get your life set up really well.

Gary Henderson: 35:03

That sounds absolutely amazing. You're working this online business. You're making the money that you could make, you're living where you want to live, you've gotta cook and a cleaner. You've got everything you want. Um,

Kimanzi Constable: 35:14

we're building a movement@purepitches.com, so

Gary Henderson: 35:17

where are you headed next? What's your, what are your goals

Kimanzi Constable: 35:18

the people that are joining and se actually sending out pitches and getting results and kind of doing this in a way to where they can get on a Forbes or an ink just by, you know, paying$97 a month, getting some pitches and they're doing it on their own without having to pay, like, some of the crazy things that I've seen in our industry, people paying$20,000 for mention in Forbes and things like that. You know, I, I, I love that people are empowered to do it on their own and to get those results. I love to see this community build to keep training people, to keep showing them what's possible, show them that there's another way. Um, and I'd love to see PR pitches become a, a household name. So that's definitely gonna continue. Um, I'm gonna continue to travel. This has been great to be here for the last year. I'm probably gonna head to Asia next, so I'll continue to explore the world and I'm continue to write, which is my first love. So get into some of my top tier publications like New York Times is number one for me. Never been published there. That's like the number one goaling for it to those goals. Living a good life, that's what's next.

Gary Henderson: 36:31

Absolutely love that. And I love the path that you've chosen for yourself as a creator because you can literally do it anywhere in the world that you want. And it sounds like you'll have some really nice connections as you travel. Um, we have one question here, um, from my wife, Peyton. She says, how would you suggest crafting a pitch? Does a pitch need to have certain characteristics or

Kimanzi Constable: 36:49

the shorter that you

Gary Henderson: 36:50

said, I struggle finding out how to

Kimanzi Constable: 36:52

um, because most people

Gary Henderson: 36:53

all the different hosts in the

Kimanzi Constable: 36:55

So the structure that I would recommend is, um, a subject line that's very short and sweet to the point. I always like to put the word pitch in the subject line because PR agencies, lots of peer agencies are pitching podcasts and publications, and they do these headlines that are like, it's like the headline of an article and those, that, those are just full of an editor's inbox. What I suggest is it's short and sweet. It could, and, and have the word a pitch in there somewhere so that they, people think that that's not what you should have, but you should have it. They prefer it that way, that it says pitch. And then in the first part, I would, uh, talk about something specific to the show. So, Hey Gary. I loved your podcast. I love that. Not only do you talk about. Creator strategy, but you also cover the personnel development aspects because without the personnel developer access, the strategy doesn't work. That's what I would say if I was pitching Gary, something to that effect. And then I would go into a little bit of who you are or the person that you're pitching is, Hey, my name is Kazi. I'm a writer, speaker, coach, consultant. I've been on Turner for the podcast. I've been at these publications, just one. Paragraph, not trying to sell yourself too hard. I'd say, I see you have you interview guests in the show? I'd like to offer myself as a guest if you, if you felt like I was a good fit, here's what I could talk about on the show. And then I would get into something very specific. Hey Gary, I could talk about how you can, creators can use large publications to make$10,000 next month. Or, Hey Gary, I could talk about how creators can book, uh, live, uh, virtual paid speaking gigs, something to that effect. So something specific to that person's podcast that also has what you do, but then also an interesting hook. Um, and what I found is with publications or podcasts, if you could attach some sort of success metric to it, um, you'll going to be more likely get accepted publications. A lot of times, like numbers or something that their audience could gravitate to podcast, there is, uh, maybe it's something that's a little bit more specific to their podcast, but if you can get that success hook in your pitch, you're going to be better off. And that whole thing could be maybe three, four paragraphs at the most so that the podcaster could scan and, and, and scan. And they're gonna make the determination, um, a lot of times based off of how strong they feel that hook is. Yeah. So if you were gonna talk about, uh, let's say a topic like leadership,

Gary Henderson: 39:25

Can you give me an example of a

Kimanzi Constable: 39:27

hard, broad topic to talk about. There's a lot of different directions you can go on leadership, but let's say you were a leadership expert. That's what you did. And let's say you've helped, you know, a, a fortune. I, I've worked with Coca-Cola and I've helped them, uh, create an inclusive culture That's a success metric of the Coca-Cola. Well, I've worked with 17 entrepreneurs and helped them break their hat. Bad habit. That's a success metric. Or I overcame this. Let's say you overcame it yourself. That's a success metric. It's the fact that you did it. It's that one little qualifier there that is something that the audience could gravitate towards. It doesn't always have to be numbers. Um, it could be something else. It could be overcoming, it could be, but a specific result that happened.

Gary Henderson: 40:22

Yeah, that makes total

Kimanzi Constable: 40:23

No. If it's three or four

Gary Henderson: 40:26

Um, any formatting tricks are you using? Using bold, are you keeping

Kimanzi Constable: 40:29

if this is like a

Gary Henderson: 40:30

white, or are

Kimanzi Constable: 40:31

this is a, this is a, a podcast pitch. If this was like a full contributor pitch, then of course you would want to have your subsections of, here's my bio section, here's some of my writing samples that you could look at. Here's the article I can write. Then you'd want to start formatting and adding bold and things like that to that. But for something that's a short and sweet podcast pitch. No.

Gary Henderson: 41:05

I think that's absolutely perfect. I, I took notes, I wrote in the chat here exactly what to do. Um, we'll get this into the show notes. Um, so everyone listening to the recording can grab that too, like, this was good. Like this is actionable. This is stuff we could all take away right now. It's stuff we can go do right now. So come on, Z. If we want to take action, what should we do? What

Kimanzi Constable: 41:26

You wanna be clear on what you want.

Gary Henderson: 41:28

general? Like if we want to now go get some pr, we want to

Kimanzi Constable: 41:31

they're

Gary Henderson: 41:31

action on what we're learning, what are our next steps

Kimanzi Constable: 41:33

featured, meaning you want somebody to write about you, well go on Twitter, look at the hashtag journal request, and also general requests with the S. Start looking for some of the calls for sources on there and respond to those and they tell you exactly how to respond to those. Sign up forrow, which is help a reporter respond to those. When you see one that looks good in your inbox, they'll send you a digest of opportunities, um, respond to those, and then you can get yourself some features. If you wanna be the one writing the articles and getting paid to write the articles, well, what publications is it? Which ones make the most sense for if you're an entrepreneur for who your clients are? Where are your clients likely to be reading? Which ones are some goal ones? Which ones do you wanna be in, but get clarity on which are the publications? Cause it's probably not everyone. What I'm going to tell you is you probably want one core publication, which would be Forbes or Inc. Because with the core publication you can write as much as you want and make as much money as you want. And then you probably want a few auxiliary publications. So those would be your business insider, your Oprah daily, your women's health, your men's whatever. It's um, cuz the column will give you the consistent money and then the other ones are just gonna kind of supplement. And for most people having a core publication and a few other ones that you write on every now and then is going to be not only enough revenue, but also it's gonna be the right amount of time if you are an entrepreneur so that you're not taking up. You're not gonna become a freelance writer like me and just write for any publication that will pay you. That's probably not what's gonna happen for most of you. But pick the publications that you want to be in. Go to their staff page, follow their editors on Twitter. Start retweeting their stuff. They don't have to know you by name. You don't have to be their best friend. But when you send that pitch, if you had any sort of name awareness, like, oh yeah, that's the person that's retweeting my stuff on Twitter. It takes a cold pitch and it makes it a little bit warmer. But follow those editors on Twitter and respond to their calls for submissions. I shared one with Julia earlier. For those of you that want to get paid to write for Fast Company, well, you should be pitching her this week. And she told you exactly what she's looking for. So you should be pitching her this week, excuse me, but find the editors, follow Bunch Twitterers, respond to their calls for submissions. Even if they didn't have the calls for a submission, you can still get their contact information, send'em an email and saying, Hey, this is the column that I could write, or this is the article that I could write about, and send them a pitch. And the worst that they can do is just ignore you. They're not gonna blacklist you. They're not gonna come, and they're not going to, to, uh, threaten you or anything like that. The worst that could happen is they'll ignore you. And if they ignore you, it's pretty simple. Just wait seven business days and follow up because they're incredibly busy. So just send a follow up at seven business days and say, Hey, do you think that this could be a hook that your audience wants? And, um, they're going to say yes. Um, and so the, the whole, what you need to do next is just take action on what you want. You wanna get featured. Uh, respond to the calls for features. If you want to have the columns, you want to get paid to write those articles. All you gotta do is you gotta, um, send them a pitch with a good hook. And then once you do that consistently, you're gonna find that you're gonna get into the publications you want to be in. And then of course, after that you have to write the articles, of course. Um, but as you do that and as you do it more, you're going to get a lot more success. But the biggest thing is to take the first step, cuz most people don't take the first step.

Gary Henderson: 45:15

Most people don't take the first step. Look Kimanzi it right there. Most of you right now, listening right now, you I'm talking to you. You're not going to take action. You heard this? You thought it was cool. You thought it was amazing. You'd love to write for Forbes. You'd love to be featured on podcasts. You'd love to be talked about, but you're not going to take action. My challenge for you today is to take action. Right. It's to take that next step for you. Whatever that next step is. That next step may be joining our community. gary.club/discord. That next step might be sending that outreach message. So you can get booked on that podcast. That next step might be writing that article. That you've needed to publish. But whatever that is for you today. I just want you to take the next step. I don't want you to wait another week. So go ahead and hit the follow button on the show. If you forgot to at the beginning of the show. We've got amazing guests coming up. Join our community. But whatever you do take that next step for you.