The Tin Shingle Blog

This morning, I was watching the Today Show at my sister-in-law's house while on a family visit. I watched a few segments that featured some products and organizational ideas (that possibly were sourced by organization experts in other small business communities like In Good Company), and I thought about Hope Lawrence at Hudson Henry Baking Co., and how her dream (as stated even on her packaging) is to have her "Good News Granola" featured on the Today Show. She's been working towards that dream and it's actually how she found Tin Shingle: she wanted to get on the Today Show, and discovered that our business membership program had the components to make that dream a reality.

After making my children's breakfast, I'd actually turned off the Today Show so that I could focus on getting them dressed and getting out the door. Moments later, Sabina, Tin Shingle's co-founder and my business partner, emailed me saying: "It happened!!"

"What happened?", I wondered. I dove into the email to learn that Kathie Lee and Hoda just aired a feature of Good News Granola as one of their Favorite Things. (It's also my favorite granola snacks that is always stocked in my cupboards...)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a glorious way to start a Monday!  Now here's something you should know: Tin Shingle is all about empowering entrepreneurs like Hope to build buzz - that's what we do, day in and day out.  We demystify PR, social and online marketing via education, motivation tools and tips so that you can be sure people hear, see and read about your business.

The founder of this granola company that was featured on the Today Show, Hope Lawrence, is a member of Tin Shingle and is especially inspiring to me because she is a mother of two boys who started her granola business so that she could build a business and raise a family. Every decision she makes is made around her family. She doesn't move as quickly as other entrepreneurs because she's on a family vacation, or picking up her son, or is baking granola. But she does it at her own pace. Sabina and I call that a "holistic business" approach, and it's one we try to live by as well. Very often, entrepreneurs in our field don't have families, and they have many more hours in the day and night to grow their business. But the pace of a entrepreneur with a family is slower, and that pace just paid off for Hope.

Hope landed this segment with persistence, patience and by following Tin Shingle's Membership Program. She used several Tin Shingle membership tools to help her get featured on the Today Show. Here is how Hope got featured on the Today Show with Kathie Lee and Hoda:

• Hope read our (free) articles in the Ask the Expert section to learn how to pitch the Today Show and Kathie Lee & Hoda 4th Hour.
• She attended our #PRTuneUps including the virtual classes about how to land a spot on a morning show.
• Hope used our community and resources to check and get feedback on her pitch to strengthen it before she sent in to the show's producers. This helped ensure her pitch was in tip top Today Show shape.
• Hope used our Media Contacts to pitch her product to the right producers.
• Hope then used strategic emails to follow up with the producers and then waited when she needed to. When she had questions she took them to our Community Forum to get thoughts from others who'd been in her position.

And really, Hope had hope for her product, created fantastic packaging, has a darn cute website, and has enough spunk and "wow factor" that her brand was a fit for the show.

We are so thrilled!

See her packaging here, which truly illustrates her belief in the power of good messages. She states her mantras, one of which is to "Ask for what you want". See the first sentence in the packaging "My dream is that this little granola company will allow me to spend my days with my boys and land a spot on the Today Show":

Done. Mission accomplished thanks to Tin Shingle's Membership Program.

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Get The Word Out About Your Business

Want smart ideas and strategies for marketing and getting the word out about your business? Tap into Tin Shingle's Membership Program and PR Center, designed for businesses owners, marketers, artists and makers who want more exposure to the awesome brands they have created and need to promote. You need clever social media strategies, PR and validation from magazines and blogs, and a supportive community to be the wind beneath your wings as you constantly put your business out there.

Tap into a membership with Tin Shingle and instantly get these awesome resources:

• Media Contact Lists: Over 3,000 names of people in the media who want to know about your brand and what you offer.
• Training in How to Pitch the Media: Yeah, that's right. You can email magazine editors and TV producers to let them know about your business. There are effective ways of doing this. Tin Shingle trains you in the best approaches. Pitch the media like a pro.
• Hashtag Cheat Sheets: Tin Shingle's super-sleuthers have cultivated a gold mine of popular hashtags you could be using to get more exposure to your posts in Instagram and Twitter.
• More PR and Marketing Tools: Tap into ways to amplify your brand. Learn more about a monthly membership with Tin Shingle here.

There is more happiness in giving. I think it is safe to say that is a time proven truth. We however live in the 21st century when people check their mobile phone up to 150 times a day!  The team at GiftSender has been motivated by these two facts and thus produced an ingenious 

way to remind, show, and remember your loved ones and friends how much you care.  

What a better way to give a gift card, then from your mobile device straight to another one.  It only takes seconds. No more searching through racks at a store, to then have to send it to the address of a friend.  Now, you can do it all from your own phone, and send it to any other smartphone instantly. How many times have you left to go shopping and realized at the register you forgot the gift card at home!? Ugh.  With this practical app, the recpient will have the gift card with them always.  You even can let them choose their own gift by sending them GiftSender Bucks.  The virtual money allows your loved one to choose which gift card means the most to him.  Some brands available are Barnes and Noble, Athleta, Lowes, and Fandango.  The end result: a smile on both faces!  

GiftSender all started in Irvine, California and continues to grow to with the app now in English and Spanish. The app is available for smart phones including the Andriod and Iphone.  This week we sat down with Barbara Alvarez, GiftSender's PR and Marketing Director, to learn more about their innovative story. 

I'll admit it.  I watched Justin Timberlake  - and the rest of the MTV Video Music Awards including the spectacle that was Miley Cyrus - while I waited with bated breath for NSYNC (a childhood crush) to reunite. I'll also admit that while I wanted to snark about him as I had done with most of the show up to that point, I couldn't.  Why?  Well to be quite honest, I thought he did a spectacular job.  He performed live, he performed flawlessly and oh my goodness can that man dance.  He was confident, his moves were tight, he owned the stage and it was almsot difficult to remember that back in the "NSYNC Era" of my life, Justin was the member that was "yours" (the t-shirt you got to wear, the one you pretended you would marry) if you didn't "call" another member fast enough.  We all remember early-days Justin: curly hair, ridiculous outfits, voice that was just leaving puberty.  He was the runt of the group and I was not going to be his pretend girlfriend. 

While explaining the intricacies of my NSYNC devotion to my befuddled fiance it dawned on me: Justin's trajectory from the stages of Star Search (which he lost by the way) to his NSYNC boy band days to his epic solo career is chock full of business lessons.  It actually served as some late night inspiraiton to me as an entrepreneur and I hope it will do the same for you today. 

Here are my favorite takeaways from the JT School of Making It:

#1 - Don't let your past failures dictate how you believe your future will be: 
If you're old enough to remember Star Search you'll know that it was MAJOR.  Justin could have lost and thought, "Man, I guess that's it. I did not get those four stars everyone covets."  But he didn't.  Instead he went on to land a role on the Mickey Mouse Club, and the rest is history.  That gal who beat him?  I don't even remember her name...

#2 - Just Because You're Not the Lead Singer in the Band Now, Doesn't Mean You'll be Back Up (or Sharing the Spotlight) Forever:
Clearly Justin wasn't the star of NSYNC when the band hit in 1995.  He was the young one, the one with the bad hair, the slightly awkward one.  You wouldn't have looked at the band and said "well that Justin, he's going to be huge someday."  But I bet Justin thought that.  And slowly he transformed into that person, and by 2000 I'd say he was well aware he had become the "lead singer" of that band.  If you ever particpate in our #TuneUps you hear me say that you must be the lead singer in your own band and be loud and proud about it if you want to make it.  Obviously that's a symbol for really claiming the spotlight without fear and owning the stage of your life and business.  If you're not there yet don't worry.  Let JT be a lesson to you...your time will come. If you...

#3 - Do Not Believe the Naysayers.  Believe Your Hype:
Remember when Justin finally went solo?  He started performing with his guitar and piano, he put himeslf out there, he left the band that had made him who he was in many ways (at least in the public's eyes), and people talked.  And it wasn't always favorable.  In fact even now, with all of his success, they still do.  People love to give their own opinion about what you do and how you do it, and the bigger you get, the more people will have opinions on it.  Despite his Grammys, Emmys and yes VMAs, peope still have "hate" for Justin.  But does he cry in the corner or throw in the fedora?  Heck no!  He believes his hype, he keeps working hard, he clearly follows his passions, and he obviously loves what he does.  Critcs me damned.  He loves it and he performs it with confidence.

#4 - He Works HARD:
No I don't hang out with Justin as he rehearses nor do I have an insider's view into his daily routine, but I can promise you that man works hard.  When I watched him dance last night (again, flawlessly) and observed him own the Barclay's center I even said it out loud, "MAN does he work hard."  Great things don't come with out it.  There is no shortcut to fabulous.  You don't put on an amazing show or turn out an amazing business with out it.  Sure you can still have fun (every step of the way), but to think that you will be epic or semi-epic or even do well enough to pay your bills and go on vacations supported by your own business, well you're just going to have to work very hard.  You have to perfect your moves, the choreography of your own business operations, train your business voice, face challenges, learn from failures...How hard will you have to work?  Why don't we let Justin (in his own words, from his Playboy interview) tell you:

“I think people sometimes don’t pay enough attention to what they do. I’ve done well, but the reason is pretty simple: I’ve worked my ass off. Anything I’ve done well has taken many, many hours of preparation. And then the trick, of course, is making that work look invisible.”

The gauntlet has been thrown down...  A challenge is underway... You are invited to join in...And the best part?  This challenge, should you choose to accept it, will better your business, your outreach strategy, and by default, your life.  Have I whet your appetite yet?  Here's the deal:

The Background:
Every week I get the awesome opportunity to speak to a live, "virtual studio audience" via the Tin Shingle #TuneUp chats.  We talk about a variety of topics depending on the day that range from entrepreneurship, small business success strategies, social media, press outreach and more.  The talks regularly combine education with motivation (an explosive combination if I do say so myself) and I regularly share personal anecdotes from my own life to illustrate my points. 

Yesterday was no different, and while I was sharing some fail-proof and fear-proof ways to create powerful relationships with the press, I discussed the necessary yet fear-evoking phone call to the press too many small businesses refuse to make.  Sure, email is easier and less scary, but when you're trying to create real, personal relationships with the press or any business contact they often require real, verbal communication.  This is even more true when your target press person or business contact isn't returning your emails for weeks or months on end.  You must make that call.  Even if you've never done it before, you're scared, you hate your phone voice, you're afraid you'll look or sound silly etc.  You must do it. 

While planning my talk about making those daunting yet necessary phone calls to business or press contacts I realized that I was being a hypocrite!  For months *I* I have been avoiding something that is scary, uknown, daunting and new to me.  I have been afraid to go to a spinning class even though deep in my heart I want to, I need to, I'm sort of obsessed with the idea and I'm sure my body (and booty) will thank me.  Yet every week I find some reason in my head not to do it.  Well no more! 

I decided that If YOU as a small business owner can conquer your fear and do something that could be a gamechanger for your business, I will do the same in my own life.  Thus the Spin Class Challenge was born...

The Challenge:
On yesterday's call I laid it out.  I am challenging you as a business owner to think of THREE places you have been avoiding calling.  Perhaps it's a magazine editor you want to share your story or product with.  Perhaps it's a retailer where you want to sell your wares.  Perhaps it's a fellow service provider you want to cross-promote with.  Perhaps it's somewhere you want to pitch yourself to as a speaker.  Name it and claim it!  Write down those three people or places who need phone calls, write down what you want to get out of that phone call (what is "the ask"), and make a plan to make those calls!  The challenge doesn't lie in the result being a success (they can say yes, no, maybe) but it lies in making the call and following up with it until you reach your end result or answer.  The making of the call is your success story.  The saying "peace out" to your fears and "Welcome!" to future opportunities is the win!

Now where does the spinning come in?  If TEN of you do this (come on, ten? I'm making this too easy) I will bravely attend my first spin class.  Scouts Honor.  Speaking of honesty, I'm expecting the same thing from you.  I can't be there with you as you make the calls but I expect you to be truthful in this challenge.  After all, lying about it hurts no one but yourself!  You send me an email detailing who you called, why you called them and what happened, and when ten of you do this, I will strap on my spinning shoes, hop on a bike and face my fear!  I will provide video proof for your pleasure.

So what are you waiting for?  Go forth and make those phone calls!  Face down your fear, give it the side-eye because it is slowing you down, and your business and life are waiting for you to leave it behind!  As I said, the gauntlet has been thrown...let's do this!