96 An Inventor Reinvents Free Publicity To Drive Business Buzz

Entrepreneur and PR For Anyone Founder Christina Daves shares all she learned as an inventor about how to generate FREE business buzz across media. Learn how she got her company CastMedic on The Today Show, won Steve Harvey’s Top Inventor competition and boosted her social media following to more than 75,000.

Melinda Wittstock:         Christina, welcome to Wings.

Christina Daves:               Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s wonderful to have you on and I’m always interested to talk about PR, because it’s something that so many women struggle with, just whether it’s in a meeting, putting up our hands and speaking, or let alone really developing the thought leadership that’s so important now for founders and CEOs and business owners. So, what was the inspiration or what was the motivation for you to take on this PR role and help so many people get their PR right?

Christina Daves:               Well, I had to. It was a matter of desperation. I had actually invented a product, and I did everything. I did the business plan. I did focus groups. Everybody loved it. On paper, it was perfect. Everything was going to be great and I launched my product, and what I never thought of … Oh, and my product is fashion accessories for medical devices, and specifically we started with medical boots, the big ugly boots, you know, when you break your foot or sprain your ankle. They don’t put you in casts any more; they put you in those boots. And they’re awful.

So, I was like, “Okay, we’re going to do a fashion line for this.” So, everybody loved it, everything was great. The problem was it didn’t exist before. It was not on the market. So, when you create a product like this, it was a whole new space in the marketplace. So, I had to educate people that they “needed” to decorate their medical boots. And I made some poor hire’s and burned a lot of money that I didn’t get any results with. So, at the end of the day when the products came in, I had no money left. I couldn’t afford advertising; I couldn’t afford a PR firm. So, I basically went to the library, went on Google, and figured out everything I could about free publicity, because if I could get my product out there to hundreds of thousands, millions of people, they would see it and then it would be kind of a word of mouth thing.

And that’s what I did. In my first year of business, I was in 50 media outlets. I won Steve Harvey’s Top Inventor competition. So, I just, you know, when you do something like that, you get millions of eyes on your business, and they’re syndicated, so you get it several times over. And I just realized how much publicity can really explode your business, and it’s free, which is amazing. But then I joke, my phone kept ringing off the hook from all my entrepreneurial friends like in the DC area. They’re like, “Christina, I need to pick your brain. Can I take you to breakfast? Can I take you to lunch?” I’m like, “I can’t do anymore meals out; I’ve got to run my business.”

So, I ended up starting another business, PR for Anyone, where I could on a broader scale help more people learn how to do this, because once I figured out the system, it works. And the people who use the system, it works for them, too, and it’s really not that hard. And social media and access to journalists, anybody can have success getting publicity.

Melinda Wittstock:         So, take us through just a, kind of like a thumbnail of how that system works, because goodness, everybody loves, I mean free publicity sounds great, you know? So, what are some of the steps to be able to achieve that?

Christina Daves:               I call it my Get Famous formula. It’s a three-step process. You need to be newsworthy, you need to create a great hook, and you need to find the right journalist. So, being newsworthy is, you know, and everybody wants to say, “Oh, hey. I’m Christina Daves and this is what I do and this is fabulous,” but that’s not appealing to a journalist. Think about the things you read and you watch on TV. So, what’s something that you can turn your business into something that’s valuable, that’s valuable to their audience. And there are things you can use, like the nontraditional calendar, and especially local journalists love this. So, you think of IHOP, on National Pancake Day. Well, what can you tie your business to?

So, I, for the first time was on Fox in DC, I pitched, and this really does exist, National Healthy Foot Month. And I got on Fox. So, look through those. And you know, you can just Google it. You’ll find it all over the Internet. But pick something to tie your business to that’s funny, that made you laugh and it was fun. And do something like that, because that’s … and you’ll see now that they use those calendars a lot on the news, and it’s just intriguing. One of my favorite ones was a cup cakery who, and it wasn’t National Cupcake Day, but they launched their maple bacon cupcake on National Bacon Day. That’s smart.

So, outside of the box thinking, that’s always what I teach. It’s always just think a little bit, do something that, every cup cakery in your town is going to pitch National Cupcake Day. So, you know, they’re only going to pick one. So, do something like that and you stand out.

Melinda Wittstock:         So, you can either invent your own day or look at the calendar for these days that already exist and figure out a way to tie it to your business. And I find that that works in social media as well for looking at trending hashtags and things like that. And same principle, I guess.

Christina Daves:               Exactly. Right. That’s the stuff you can use for content, too, but it makes great media pitches, and if you have something visual and fun that’s good on TV, like I had the boots and the products and the cupcake, they were decorating cupcakes. Pitch that for television. So, that’s newsworthy, and then creating a great hook. That’s the most important thing, because the hook is your subject line. And you know, as I know, if I was gone from my computer for the entire day and came back, I’d probably have 500 emails. It gives me hives when I’m on a plane that doesn’t have Wi-Fi.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Christina Daves:               Well, imagine a journalist who’s getting pitched 500, 1000 times a day. So, what can you do to stand out? And that’s that subject line. It’s got to be something that makes them want to open that email. Don’t just say, “Oh, here’s a story pitch.” Give them something really juicy that then they’re like, “Ooh, I want to learn more.” And some times, I had a client who her hook was so good they used it on the cover of First for Women magazine.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wow. So, what was the hook?

Christina Daves:               I knew you were going to ask me that. Hold on. She’s a doctor of naturopathy. It’s “Sure Cure for the Wired and Tired”.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. That’s just so lovely ’cause it’s alliterative. Yeah.

Christina Daves:               So, the journalist was like, “Oh, what is that?” And of course, that magazine, that’s the kind of stuff that intrigues them. So, yeah, her actual hook made the cover. And that’s a great place to get used to what hooks are. Think of, when you’re in a grocery store, where are the magazines? Right there. It’s the impulse purchase and you’re impulse purchasing based on the hooks on the front of the magazine.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. So, like those headlines, if you will, I mean, I am a recovering journalist and everything you’re saying is resonating with me from the journalistic side as well, because I remember way, way back in the day and I was a correspondent on the Times of London, and I would get pitched like thousands of times a day with stuff, or people would call me while I was on deadline for an event that was like three weeks away and I would literally, I don’t know. You were on deadline, so you would just have to hang up on them. It’s so… it was kind of awkward, right? But you always needed great content. You always needed something that was just a little bit different, something that would stand out.

So, I guess knowing really the needs of the journalist is important as well, right?

Christina Daves:               That’s really important. You need to research your media outlet before you pitch them, and make it so irresistible. I always say: if you want to be in Real Simple magazine, they love 30-day challenges. Give them a 30-day challenge. You know, really know what they do. If you want to be on your morning show, and I talk about this. I have a regular segment on ABC in DC. Had I pitched that segment to my NBC station, they would’ve been like, “What is she talking about? We don’t have a morning show like this. We would never cover …”, like I do products, things that have been invented by people.

But my NBC doesn’t have a show like that. So, make sure that you know what they do, what they cover, and then think about the anchor that it would work with, like if you’re talking about television. And when you pitch, say, give them the visuals. “Oh, I can see Melinda and I sitting on the blue couch and we would have this here, we would have a little table,” and you can even do that and make it that easy for them.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. That was a big thing for me, is people who pitched me and made it easy for me, obviously, right? That’s just human nature. But also understood, say, that props in this case, this is going back a while, right, but for the newspaper, it was really important for the journalist to have an exclusive, something that nobody else had. Journalists also needed lots of evergreen content, always looking for new and to stand out. So, what is going to enhance, I guess the reputation of the journalist within their magazine, newspaper, online, their blog, their TV show, whatever.

Christina Daves:               Yeah, and it’s funny, I’ve gotten to be good friends with a former anchor in our local market and she was telling me it used to be, and you would know this from when you were there, it used to be “if it bleeds, it leads”.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Christina Daves:               Gory, awful. Well, now it’s “if it’s shareable, it’s airable”.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, I love that. “If it’s shareable, it’s airable”. Well, that’s so true, too, because now journalists are increasingly being measured by how many-

Christina Daves:               Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         … how many likes, how many follows. Their social media following is important because they can, with a big following, they can send people back to the web page, to the channel, all of that. So, it’s like a big gigantic feedback loop. So, do you recommend that business owners start to develop relationships on social media?

Christina Daves:               Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         With journalists? Yeah.

Christina Daves:               Yeah. And that’s, the last one is find the right journalist. And for your local paper, your local anything, it’s super easy. Type it into Google. “Who writes about real estate for the Sun Gazette”? But yes, absolutely, before you pitch start, and it’s funny, that’s how I got on Fox. I had happened to be up late one night and the anchor ran this really cool story. When the Dollar Shave Club first came out, they had just launched, and it was the best video and she did the best segment on them. So, I just tweeted at her. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I love that.” And she tweeted me back and said, “Hey, if you ever know of a product that would fit in my segment, let me know.” I’m like, “Well, a matter of fact, I do. [crosstalk 00:19:44] myself.”

But we are now friends to the point of I could text her right now. She’s in my phone and she would text me right back. So, I built a relationship with her over the years and a lot of what I did, now I was on her show, I was on Fox, but I gave her probably 10 stories in two years that she loved, because I really got to know her and I knew so when I would meet people, she loved entrepreneurial stories about women. So, if I met somebody at an event or something, I’d be like, “Oh, I might be able to get you on TV if you’re interested.” And just helping people out, but that’s why I said build, go on social media, share their work. Talk about it. Comment. They will start to recognize you.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. This is some advice that we give people in my company, Verifeed, that it really is not so much about selling or pushing, or “Me, me, me, me, me, me,” on social, it’s more about how can I help you, and that’s true of consumers, customers, and it’s also particularly true of journalists, right? So, asking them a question of like, “Hey, how can I help you,” or “That was really amazing,” or just developing that relationship of trust.

[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]If you can become valuable to a journalist, they will welcome you into their tribe. #WingsPodcast #WomeninBusiness @prforanyone[/tweet_box]

Christina Daves:               Exactly. And value, that’s really important. If you can become valuable to a journalist, like I happen to be with this one, they will welcome you into their tribe. ‘Cause just remember it used to be there were a couple channels on TV, you had like one newspaper, a handful of magazines. Now, with the Internet, it’s 24/7, 365. So, if you can provide good information and feed them other stories, it will help you immensely with that journalist.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is so true. So, going back a little bit in time, so you have this product, you’ve got this like fashionable kind of footwear, and take me through all the different things you did and what was the difference by the year end, what did it actually translate into in terms of sales and the ROI of all this free publicity?

Christina Daves:               Well, the biggest one was the Steve Harvey Show; that was six figures. I was so far in debt and just literally at rock bottom, and I’ll tell you a funny story, it was April of that year and I was on the verge of being on Shark Tank. I had been through the interview process and the video process, and the producers loved me and, I joke, Mark Barnett approved me, but I’m sure it was his team. There’s this whole process and the last step is ABC Sony. And this was season two, and season one they had somebody who had an accessory for a regular boot, like a cowboy boot. And they thought it was too similar, even though this was a medical boot. And I cried for an entire weekend.

And through my tears, I’m like, “But I know there’s something better coming around the corner. I know it, I know it.” But I was a mess. And I had five months of nothing. I was pitching; I was sending things out. I was calling doctors’ offices. It was five months of solid no, and I remember this so vividly. I sat at my computer, it was a Tuesday night and I really, and it’s okay to cry guys. Enough said.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s a release. It’s a release. It’s good. It lets it all out, yeah.

Christina Daves:               I’m looking at my computer and I’m crying and I’m like, “What else can I do?” I had been working nonstop for five months, 24/7, “Nothing is panning out, what am I going to do?” And Wednesday morning I got the email from the Steve Harvey show. And that changed everything.

Melinda Wittstock:         Now, this is, Christina, this is so important and thank you for sharing this because I think all too often, people give up too early, that at any of those moments in that five months, you could’ve easily have said, or someone could have convinced you, like a friend or a loved one, family member could’ve said, “Maybe this isn’t the right thing for you.” And you might’ve said, “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” But you didn’t. So, what was the difference? What made you keep going?

Christina Daves:               That’s just my personality type. I’m not one to walk away. People who know me will tell you that it’s passion and perseverance. Like, those would be the two adjectives to describe me. But I didn’t want to fail. Like I just, it wasn’t going to happen. And again, not fail, but I just didn’t want to lose everything we had put into it, and my husband believed in it. I’m just like, “I’ve got to make this work.” And I believed, I really did believe I had a great product, or I have a great product.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, so what’s interesting and that you can really hear in your voice is the passion. We talk a lot about, on this podcast, that if you create a business that you are not in love with, that you’re not really passionate about, it’s almost impossible to get through those really tough times, ’cause those tough times are going to happen, all too often what looks great on paper doesn’t manifest the way you think or you, say tech startup, you raise a million bucks, but you actually needed five. ‘Cause things take longer than you think. Or you have cash flow, there’s so many different things that can go wrong, so many things that can happen beyond your control.

And so, if you don’t have that passion, it’s hard to persevere.

Christina Daves:               Right. And that’s why I said at the beginning, when you’re down and it’s bad, you grab ahold of that passion that got you to start it. ‘Cause there was a reason you started a business and it takes a lot to start a business. There are people who have ideas and do stuff, but to actually follow through, kudos to everybody on the podcast. That says a lot about you that you’re willing to take the risk and you’re willing to do it. That means you’ve got to be passionate about it or you would have never started it.

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly. And also just not letting perfectionism gets in the way. To be an entrepreneur, a successful one, it’s really important to just start. And just keep going. Kara Goldin, the CEO of Hint Water who was episode two on this podcast, “You’ve got to you know, really build the plane as you’re flying it,” direct quote.

Christina Daves:               I love that. My business mentor said to me years ago, and it has stuck with me forever, he said, “Perfect inaction will get you nowhere, but imperfect action is what you need to do.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes, that’s right. Because also, the other thing, too, and I know you know this, but this is so important to talk about and particularly I’m curious how your clients, and how you advised your clients around this, but when you’re creating a product, you have a hypothesis about who’s going to buy that product and why they’re going to buy it, and what price point they’re going to pay, and how many you’re going to sell and all these sorts of things. But it’s just a hypothesis, and once you get out there in the market, you’re going to learn a lot from your customers, and your customers are actually going to make your product better than you could on your own.

And yet I see a lot of women, this perfectionism thing that a lot of us have stop us from getting out into the market soon enough, so how do you advise your clients from a PR standpoint about when is too early and when is too late.

Christina Daves:               And I have a very interesting story about that. So, I am passionate and I am not a patient person. So, I knew my product was coming in February, ’cause it was being manufactured and it was going to be delivered. So, in December, I started pitching to media, thinking, “Oh, this is so great.” Well, I only had prototype pictures. I didn’t have the real product in yet. This was just stuff that we had designed and kind of made up.

So, I sent it out there and Refinery 29, which is one of the top fashion blogs, like huge following, the woman did an article and she said, “Christina has a great idea, but her designs are Michaels meets tween.” And it was like a kick in the stomach. And she was right. I should have never sent, the pictures really were awful. They really were that. But I got the last laugh, because with Google Analytics, I could tell where my sales came from, and just because she didn’t like the product didn’t mean that her readers didn’t like the product. So, I ended up selling a ton. I sold over $10,000 from that one blog post, and my product ranges from $7 to $24.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, that’s amazing.

Christina Daves:               Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         So, that’s that old adage that like no publicity is bad publicity.

Christina Daves:               Right. Exactly. This was, and to this day, knock on wood everywhere, that’s the only bad publicity I’ve ever gotten, which was completely my fault for sending that out in the first place. But lesson learned for people doing that. Make sure that what you put out there is what you want people to see. And too early, I wouldn’t do something six months out, you know unless you’re writing, even a book, I wouldn’t do six months out. You can get people on a wait list, “You’ll be the first to know,” but six months is a bit long.

A month before you could start really hyping, especially on social media, teasing, create buzz, create a wait list, that kind of thing. But not too much more than that. People lose interest. We don’t have the time frame anymore. It’s funny, I’m doing a webinar with a really big company and the webinar’s in three weeks and they’re already promoting it now. And I said, “What is your retention rate for that?” I don’t think anyone’s, like I promote mine three days before and that’s it. And I get lots of people on there, because we just have short attention spans now.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. That’s so important. I mean, ’cause you’ve got to be able to, once you start that kind of social media buzz thing, you’ve got to be able to deliver. If you’re just buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz and nothing, after a while, you’re just training your audience that you’re not going to have anything. Just on some sort of psychological level, right? You’ve got to deliver.

Christina Daves:               Right. Absolutely. So, don’t do it too far in advance and don’t wait until after. You definitely want to start generating some buzz and getting people excited about it.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. And so, who, what is some of the issues that you have? Say when you’re working with female founders in particular, what are some of the things that you find that we do … well, let’s just say we could do better when it comes to PR or any of these aspects around getting the word out or whatever?

Christina Daves:               I think you said it at the beginning. I think women, it’s hard for them to grab the megaphone and say, “Hey, here I am. Check me out.” And there are so many studies that they’ll talk about a man and a woman applying for the same job and the woman won’t apply until she checks off every box that’s required, where a man will check off half of them and be like, “I’ll wing the rest, I’ll be fine.” Just, we’re perfectionists and we’re not used to saying, “Hey, check this out.” But you have to do it, because if you don’t do it, somebody else is going to do it in your same space, and they’re going to get the attention.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is so true. Do you think that women some times are afraid of, I don’t know, really succeeding loudly? Some people call it the tall poppy syndrome, like that’s, “Oh, wow, maybe I’ll outshine my husband or partner, or my girlfriends won’t like me.” There’s some sort of inner fear there on some sort of mindset level where we fear we won’t be liked if we succeed, it’s some sort of strange thing. I don’t really know where that comes from, but I do see it manifest in that way. How to get out of our way, like in our own heads.

Christina Daves:               Right. And it is, and I struggle with that. I’ll be honest with you. I live in suburbia, my kids grew up here. Now I’m on TV every month and it’s kind of weird when people, like they tease me, they’re like, “Oh, can we have your autograph? You’re famous now.” I’m like, “Oh, no, I’m still same old me, same old mom who did play groups 15 years ago.”

But it is, it’s kind of like I get really embarrassed by it, and I shouldn’t. I should be like, “Oh my gosh, I love it. It’s so fun. This is like one of my favorite parts of my job.” But I do hide back a little bit. So that’s, yeah, I think, I agree with that and I don’t know how, maybe like I said, this whole new movement of everything and women being empowered, it should be fine to say, “Yeah, I’m a great business woman. I run a really good business and I help people have success, and I love what I do. And that’s okay.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, this is one of my motivations for doing this podcast to begin with, because I think women succeed in silence. I’ve had women on who are curing cancer, doing these amazing things, and they have like 10 Twitter followers and it’s like, “Wait a minute, come on, there’s something wrong here.” So, really giving us all permission to lift each other up I think is part of it for women as well, so if we’re all in this together saying, “Hey, look what Christina’s doing. It’s amazing,” or “Look at Kara Goldin at Hint,” or, right? Or you know, Payal Kadakia at ClassPass or whoever.

That’s really important, but also really standing up and affirming women when they do talk about themselves, and not being catty about that, being actually really genuinely supportive of that. So, that’s kind of one of the things, one of the missions for Wings, literally, like let’s all take flight in that sense.

So, going back, what were you like as a kid? Did you know that you were entrepreneurial as a kid?

Christina Daves:               No, it’s funny; we were just talking about this the other night. No, I was a latchkey kid from nine years old on. So, I couldn’t play sports ’cause I couldn’t get rides to anything. We didn’t have money. So, if I wanted to go to college … Well, first of all my parents, I’m first generation Americans. They didn’t even know how to send me to college. So, I had to figure all that out myself. I had to pay my way through college. All my money was pulled in my senior year. I had like Pell Grants and things like that, so I took 24 hours and graduated early, ’cause I didn’t have any money, and I actually was all set. I was going to go into international business. I had a job in Germany all ready to go and my father was diagnosed with stage four cancer. And this is before Face Time and before cell phones, anything like that.

So, I decided not to go and he passed away pretty quickly after that, but then I couldn’t go. I was a mess and my family was a mess. So, that’s where the entrepreneurial journey started. I started working for a friend who had a real estate company just ’cause he offered me a job and said, “Go get your real estate license.” Then a guy that was there had a side business doing event planning, and it was two guys, and they said, “We want to do this full time and we really need some girl power. We’d love for you to come with us.”

So, that’s how it started. I did event planning and I love to tell the story. We booked the Dave Matthews Band two weeks before they were on the radio, so I’d like to say that I discovered them.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s awesome.

Christina Daves:               But no, so it was kind of, I’m the epitome of the accidental entrepreneur. Never, I wasn’t the kid selling lemonade on the corner. I don’t have a big backstory like that. It was right after college, what happened in my personal life just, and then that was it. Then I just went and worked for somebody and learned his business and started my own business and it’s just I owned a retail store with a friend of mine for 10 years. It’s just once you get the bug, that’s it.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s difficult to go back once you do have that bug, because there’s so much freedom around this. I don’t even know, I mean, honestly, I don’t think I’ve had a job since I was in my early 20s on The London Times, and even that wasn’t really a job, because you’re only as good, like every day was different as a journalist.

Christina Daves:               Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         So, I don’t even … even though as a TV anchor I worked within these large companies like ABC or the BBC, but even that was very intra-preneurial, in a way.

Christina Daves:               Yeah, I could see that.

Melinda Wittstock:         But going back, and what’s interesting about how the origin stories of so many entrepreneurs is yeah, some of them have entrepreneurial parents. Some of them were like the kid with the business at an early age, like I had some really weird side hustle where I went around at age five with my black lab and knocked on people’s doors to get them to prepay for this show I was putting on. ‘Cause I was a figure skater, ballet, and all this sort of stuff. So, I had this whole show architected.

But I think more than that, it’s the mindset, the resilience, the fact that you were a latchkey kid means that you’ve got to kind of find a way. You had to find a way to get into college. You had to find a way through all these different adverse circumstances I guess, right? To be able to find your way through, life wasn’t easy. And I think when life isn’t easy, you’re more likely, well … I mean, it could go either way for you. You can either figure out and become an entrepreneur, or you end up, I don’t know, settling and living someone else’s life.

Christina Daves:               Right. Right. Exactly. And maybe that was, you know. I had to make dinner for myself. So, maybe that was the start of that, that independence of being able to know you’re okay, and to know that you’re not going to fail. Tomorrow’s another day and you’ll figure it out and try something different, make it work.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. That’s wonderful. So, when you’re working with folks on PR, and I’m curious about this, is the PR just the PR, or is it something internal to them, their sort of inner mindset when you’re working with your clients, how much of that do you have to do?

Christina Daves:               It’s funny. We actually just recently renamed everything, the Get Famous formula, ’cause I think everybody wants to be just a little bit famous. Just a little, I mean, I think we all have that, you know you don’t have to be [inaudible 00:39:10] on the Today show, like that kind of famous, but just in your industry, just to be known, that you know, “It’s okay, oh yeah, you should call Christina Daves. She really knows what she’s talking about when it comes to do it yourself publicity.”

Just to be a little famous in your industry, people like that. They want that.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, I think it’s really important, too, because of the stats on employment. Something like 40% of the United States will be gig workers, that is people going side hustle to side hustle, or freelance gig to freelance gig by 2020. So, that’s less than two years away, 40%. And all of those people need to be thought leaders in some way, or need to have social profiles, or need to be hanging their shingle in a way that stands out. So, it’s becoming important not just for business leaders, but really for everybody.

Christina Daves:               You have to stand out. You have to, everybody that I work with, free training, paid training, whatever. People are going to Google you. People are going to check you out. You’ve got to have something. You’ve got to have a good LinkedIn profile. You’ve got to have a website. You have to check out. And I love the story; I pitched to have a meeting with the president of a credit union, a $40 billion credit union, ’cause I had this grand idea of how we were going to work together. And I emailed him on a Monday and he emailed me right back and said, “Can you be at my office on Friday?”

So, I go to the penthouse office that overlooks Washington DC and he walks into his office and he says, “Do you know what happens when you Google you?” I do, thank you. 14 pages of Google. And that’s all from free publicity, from building this, it’s all organic SEO, but I get meetings because of that. That’s why this is so important. You’ve got to check out, no matter what you do. If you’re a gig worker, or like what you do, what I do. You’ve got to have something online so you check out, so people want to work with you over somebody else.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is so true. So, Christina, how can people find you and work with you?

Christina Daves:               So, ChristinaDaves.com. And if you go there, you’ll get a pop up, only the first time you ever go, but my PR challenge is on there, and I challenge all of you to join it. Or you can go to YourPRChallenge.com and sign up. It’s 10 days. It’s super easy. The videos are really short. The people in the challenge, someone’s been in The Wall Street Journal already, lots and lots of local papers. A travel agent who took the challenge is now a regular on her morning show doing travel episodes. So, just from what they learned in there.

So, just to get yourself out there and to get comfortable with all the stuff we’re talking about. I hope you will take the challenge, and that website will take you to all my other stuff and you can connect with me on any of my websites, and let me know what I can do to help.

Melinda Wittstock:         Awesome. I’ll take the challenge.

Christina Daves:               Good. Please do.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. Let’s all take the challenge. That sounds great. Thank you so much. That’s very generous. And I am so grateful for you for taking the time today to put on the proverbial wings and fly, help all our sisters soar. Thank you so much, Christina.

Christina Daves:               Thank you, Melinda.

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