The Unsure Entrepreneur

The Pointman's Playbook for PR & Entrepreneurship (w/Patrick McCaully)

00:00
[Intro] You're listening to the unsure entrepreneur podcast with Roger Pierce. Whether you're scribbling business ideas on a napkin, or wrestling with this ‘should I or shouldn't I’ question, get ready to explore the realities, the risks and the rewards of entrepreneurship, as we share the stories, scars and successes of small business owners.

00:22
[Roger Pierce]
Hello, and welcome to the unsure entrepreneur podcast. I'm your host, Roger Pierce. Thanks for joining us. I'm so excited for you to meet our guests today and learn about his journey into entrepreneurship. Patrick McCauley is a seasoned PR expert and founder of appointment news creation, known for his innovative media strategies and successful PR campaigns for a diverse range of clients across North America. With a background in television news, and over 20 years of communications experience. Patrick excels in creating media coverage that stands out and believes that the best idea wins. Welcome, Patrick. Nice to see you. Thank you. Thank you for that introduction. Appreciate it. I'm so glad to have you here. And we're gonna dig into your background. First, you know, the podcast is all about helping people understand your journey into entrepreneurship. So maybe you can start by going back, what is it 21 years to when you transitioned from a journalist into entrepreneur? Can you tell us more.

[Patrick McCaully]
So there's a brief stop of PR in between, I have worked at three of the four national broadcasters in Canada, on the assignment desk, meaning that I'm the guy that was sitting there, getting really bad pitches from big agencies, a lot of uninspiring things, but ultimately decided what made it on the air and what didn't, for a lot of the national news broadcasts. I remember I had this epiphany moment, at some point when I was working one of those horrible midnight until eight in the morning shifts that it probably be smarter to be a PR person than the guy that's sending out the camera and telling the chopper where to go to get to see a fire. And it sounds a lot more exciting than it is there's a lot of boredom and council meetings. And a lot of the stuff that happens in a day in broadcast news is not terribly exciting with with with few exceptions. So I kind of said, Okay, I'm gonna get into PR because yeah, like I know exactly what the media is looking for. I have that incredible insight. And the problem with that was that PR agencies had no idea what to do with me, because I didn't have PR experience, which is the thing that they value. But it also wasn't a beginner because I'd been, you know, about five years working in broadcast. So I'm not being hyperbolic. I think I had about 120 job interviews, to get the job in public relations. And I ended up eventually getting a job at a small independent firm for about two years I worked and then I then I started pointman news creation.

[Roger Pierce]
Wow, that's quite a background. Maybe jumping ahead here now so people understand some context about what you do. And what exactly is a news creation agency, I know you've got a distinction between publicity and public relations and news creation. So can you give me some insight, for example, how you came up with some of these innovative campaigns, like the real cost of love survey, or some of the other great stuff that you've done?

[Patrick McCaully]
Primarily, I try to do things that I think are funny. So I almost think of myself as a humorous to a certain extent, my whole approach is the Trojan horse. So a lot of the time, you know, I'm working with like an insurance company, or a financial advisor or company that doesn't really have anything incredibly interesting to talk about, or say, that's going to get the media's attention. And in these times, when, you know, basically, the world is burning, the world is melting, you have to do something really different to break through. So a lot of the time the ideas just start off with somebody that I personally think is funny. Sometimes my wife has a comment on something and I expand that into a whole campaign. Like she's a very creative person as well. And this was for a company that was like a rate comparison site for credit cards and how much things cost and getting the best deals on things. And I just thought it'd be hilarious as a kind of anti Valentine's Day thing to look at how much a relationship actually costs. So we crunched numbers, we looked at it we did like $1,200 and apology flowers because you know, you're going to need that and like a new wardrobe because likely your your partner is not going to appreciate your style, crunch all those numbers together and came up to like $12,904.03 which just hilarious the rounding at the end. That was a really successful campaign and we kept doing that every year. So it was like, Oh, your relationships gonna cost you 10% More or 10% less or so the real cost of love, you know, that kind of thing.

[Roger Pierce]
I love it. That's one of my favorites. Another favorite of yours is the dump Trump Campaign. Can you give us some behind the scenes on that?

[Patrick McCaully]
So this was a guy who was on Bay Street in Toronto, had a lot of Bay Street, financial guy clients. There's a menswear store upscale menswear store, right across from Harry Rosen, actually, right on Bay Street. And he wanted to do something to get like huge visibility for the store. God, it was 2013 or something or 14. So Trump was running for president. And again, this is my own bias. I really have tried to do some anti Trump stuff. And I just thought it'd be funny to do a tie. That was an anti Trump tie. Now, in fairness to him, he had already planned to do that. But it was the perfect thing. We both kind of came up with the same idea at the same time. And it's basically it's it's a tie that had dump trucks on the front. And then like on the back part of the skinny part of the tide said dump Trump. So it's kind of like the headline railroad itself. To a certain extent it was, Are you an undercover Trump dumper.

06:05
I defy any media person in the world to not respond to that, as a humor sort of campaign. And at the time, there was a lot of people on Bay Street that thought Trump was great. They were like, Hey, I wish he was our prime minister, you know, because he's doing all these great things. This is before P gay This is before, like the nine things that he's wanted criminally for. And that one was lightning in a bottle. It was crazy. From the beginning, every Canadian outlet did something and it got into the US. on US television. I think it was 350 something media hits. And actually the client at some point said, can you make this stop? Because

06:50
I've sold all the ties within three days, $20,000 worth of ties, and like, I need to move on with my life. And I can't keep doing media interviews. So I guess that's a benchmark of success that you, you know, kind of want to have, but that was, again, sort of sort of a humor thing. But yeah, really, lightning in a bottle. works too.

[Roger Pierce]
Well, yeah. Well, that that can happen. It's a nice problem to have. But this is what's so cool about what you do. And what makes point man news creation so unique, you know, you've got this background in journalism, and you know how to create these compelling PR pitches. Can you share, like, you know how that journalism thinking helps you do your job.

[Patrick McCaully]
Now, I always call it the appropriate cynicism. I think that one of the things and there are many, that are wrong with most PR people slash agencies is that they have this fear of the media, that, Oh, my God, I can't do something funny, I can't do something interesting. I can't do something clever, I can't use alliteration, because the media is so so clever that they're not going to respond to it. And they're smarter than we are. And it's a weird thing that I've never understood because I was that guy. I know. I even do this, when I'm doing media training for people, I have a slide of me in like 1998, looking really tired. And a group photo from the Global TV set with all the anchors and everything. And I say like, you gotta get that guy who's like half asleep and has no life and is working midnight until eight in the morning, to get excited about your pitch. So it better be something interesting. It better be something that is amusing this guy, because his life probably isn't that great. He's not gonna have a lot of sleep. He's probably got like some kind of weird daytime nighttime dysmorphia thing going on. That's how you have to appeal with God, there's like hundreds, if not 1000s of pitches coming into that guy every day. Everyone thinks it's about I know a guy the globe, and he'll do a story because we're friends, no one's going to do a story because they like you. Media Relations is probably the last meritocracy in the world, you have to have the best idea. On the best day, a lot of pressure. It's very hard to do that. But you have to come up with brilliant ideas, and you have to have confidence in them. Okay, so on that note, and I've seen entrepreneurs and I've been guilty to this before in my marketing agents days of coming up with an angle thinking, Oh, the media's gonna love this. It's gonna get lots of coverage. So having seen both great and disastrous, I do pitches What advice would you give to entrepreneurs to try to stand out? The problem is, it's almost impossible for you to be objective about your own news. That's why people have like a like a FinTech solution. And they have like a new products update. And they think it's the greatest thing that's ever happened in the history of mankind. No one cares, man. No one's going to do a commercial for you unless you pay for it. That's advertising. And yes, the line between earned media and advertising has gotten very thin. But generally speaking, no one cares about your product update. No one cares

10:00
Is that you have a robust solution that blah, blah, blah, you have to do something legitimately interesting on its own and relate it back to what you do somehow. So that's the Trojan horse approach. It's like, let's do something that's independently newsworthy that the media can't ignore. That cleverly relates back to what you do as a company or a product or service.

[Roger Pierce]
Excellent point. A lot of entrepreneurs think I've got a 25% off sale. Let's get this out to the media, to which you say, and I know the line. No, that's not that's not news that's advertising. Know the difference? Can you expand on that a lot of people are confused by those differences.

[Patrick McCaully]
And it's confusing. So I'll admit that I only do earned media, because I don't think you should have to pay for it. That's one of my principles that I really insist on with clients. A lot of agencies now are doing kind of a mix of things where they'll do an earned media pitch, but they're also doing some paid, advertorial stuff in various publications. Maybe they're working with influencers, whatever. So I'm not saying that those things don't have value. I'm not saying that those aren't things that are worth doing. I'm not suggesting that earned media PR is the solution to every problem. But I think if you approach it the right way, you can absolutely get earned media. And it has the potential of being viral and getting you a lot of media coverage. So because there's the least number of media in history doing the most content, they're desperate for something interesting. If anyone listening just wants to Google like is the press release dead, I bet you can find three pages of Google results and say it is, that doesn't mean that that's true. Because media is still looking for good content, interesting stories that are delivered to them in a way that they can just cut and paste. So I could literally show you 50 examples of where I've written the press release in a certain way. That is, I mean, the magic is in the details. But that gets media attention that is kind of ready to roll. And they just basically cut and pasted into a story that becomes a national story and an online publication. And that's great. That's fantastic, as a PR person, and as a company. If this show isn't about the veracity of journalism, and the quality of journalism in Canada, then all I can say is it's great. When somebody takes your story for a press release, it's exactly how you wanted to position yourself. And they put it into a into a story. Recent example that I was doing something for a client that does mortgage training for mortgage agents, and clever turn of phrase, we call it mortgage malaise.

12:43
Alliteration is the key to the universe. So media people are generally people who appreciate words and subtleties and alliterations and stuff. So you're trying to come up with something that's catchy, to get their attention. And it was a pretty basic pitch. It was it was a poll that we did online, asking questions about people's mortgages. And we found that third of Canadians, only a third of Canadians were happy with their mortgages. And then I call it mortgage malaise. Again, people listening, if you're still googling things, Google mortgage malaise and see how many media hits come up. And how many media outlets in Canada, I got to say that in the story, because it's clever, it's kind of a cool concept that there's mortgage malaise, it's talking about a trend and a condition. And we backed it up with a survey that said that only a third of people are happy with their mortgages. And then the clients that mortgage training, people get a ton of media attention. A lot of it was really just cut and paste, you know, as I was saying, but the client got interviewed, I think, at least five times by different outlets, and then that got shared. And I think we netted out with about 150 media hits. And I actually just got an international award for that.

[Roger Pierce]
Wow, congrats. That's awesome. And so many points there for entrepreneurs to understand when they're looking to get some media coverage. The first one is work with a professional like you.

[Patrick McCaully]
Yes, you can't be objective about your own media relations. It's impossible. I can't even be objective about my own media relations. And like you said, the landscape has changed. I mean, I'm dating myself here, but I can remember faxing news releases out to the local TV and radio and I can remember cover, like reading faxes and sorting facts. But but now it's digital world. And so viral landscape changed things, doesn't it? Absolutely. News travels fast information flows quickly. It's so much opportunity to get massive media coverage for something I mean, so great example, this week, I did something for an insurance company that sells business insurance, and we did a survey on how Canadians are more willing to sue than they were five years ago. So the idea being that we're becoming more litigious, like Americans, and it's I'm in Canadian that was the big word was unknown Canadian to do this

15:00
that one yeah, like God picked up by the first one was the Toronto Sun. And then that gets blasted to every sun, website online. And then every post media publication. So I mean, like the cold water times and like the Kingston week standard, and places you haven't heard of like, the Tillsonburg humberview. Outlook, were like 100 media hits for that all of which have a link back to the company is insurance, if I can do a little plug there, from one media head, where someone really kind of cut and pasted the content of the press release, went off the press release, read the story never talked to us, which is great, like 100 media hits. So significant, significant return.

[Roger Pierce]
Brilliant. It's great to hear all these different places, picking up the news you've created. So I gotta go back 21 years, was there a pivotal moment during your time in the news industry, that influence your decision to pivot to PR and start point, man news creation?

16:04
[Patrick McCaully]
I sort of have two stories for that. One is really sad. And one is really basic, which one do you want me to tell you, whatever, what you think is most insightful? I would say generally, I realized at some point that it wasn't going to happen for me, no one goes to journalism school, and gets a job in broadcast, which is very hard. It was really hard. 21 years ago, it's harder now. But it's a very tough place to work for a lot of reasons. And

16:34
I was, you know, on the assignment desk, I got a job at some point as a researcher, actually moved back to the assignment desk so that I could do daytime interviews, so that I could get out of there, that was kind of the plan, it was very clear to me that I wasn't gonna get a break to be a reporter. For whatever reason, I probably wasn't going to get a break to be a producer. It's not a terribly highly paid position. I would call it a pretty toxic work environment, more so 21 years ago, where there's probably a little bit more political correctness. But I think it's still just a really hard place to work. Something I heard like, the first week that I worked Global TV was, this is a business for the young. And I was like, 24 years old, and I hated that. I was like, well, don't you tell me that it's a business for the young, you know, like, old man, I think that that's actually really true. I think that it's you have to have those incredible ideals, where you think that you're the keeper of the knowledge, and you have to believe in what you're doing. And there's going to be a day, if you work in a newsroom, where you actually figure out if you're an intelligent person, how the how the doughnuts are made, you know, you're going to see the advertising kind of come in. So the positive story that you do about something that's a non event, or you're going to see a political bias that you don't agree with, that's going to cause you unhappiness. And I think, once you realize that, you just, you're selling soap, but you work in a really cool place on the outside that sells soap, it's a little bit soul crushing. It sounds like the greatest job ever. So many people I know have gone through this, where can't wait to tell people at a party that you got you work at global television or CTV national news or something, because that's cool. Then you get to a point where you don't want to really tell anyone because you're embarrassed of once you know, it really works. And the compromises that people have to make in news, you're like,

18:31
Yeah, I work. You know, in television, you don't really want to talk about it. And you know, that day came other reasons to being an assignment editor, you're sending cameras to shootings and accidents and

18:45
horrible things, you know, you have to, like they say this in the first day of journalism school, you have to be willing to send a reporter to the House have parents whose four year old kid has died and asked for pictures. And I did that more than once. And I didn't want to do that anymore. So is that the catalyst to get into your own thing? I think that was the catalyst for wanting to get into PR, the catalysts for wanting to do my own thing and like, be entrepreneurial. It's funny, I kind of started what I had that like 120 job interviews, because no one was hiring me. But everyone wanted to talk to me because I was an assignment editor. I was literally the guy they were calling to make decisions. So halfway through this process, it occurs to me. Well, if they're not gonna hire me, maybe I can just get money from them for telling them how to pitch. So I started doing lunch and learns. And I think I made more from that. The couple of years that I was doing it then from my actual job in broadcasting, I charged like 1000 bucks, and I'd be like, Yeah, I'm going to tell you how to pitch and who does what and what you're doing wrong. And yeah, I'll come in and I'll do a lunch and learn. So sorry, you're not hiring me to be a PR guy. But hey, I'm going to tell you how to do PR anyway.

20:00
So that was the entrepreneurial start. And that really got me excited about it. And then I was kind of done with the agency I was working at, for a variety of reasons, felt like I hadn't learned a ton, and there wasn't really going anywhere. And there were some human rights issues that I had. Yeah, I was seeing the daylight, I had a regular life to a certain extent, and I made a lot more money, but it just didn't seem like it was what I wanted to do. And my wife calls this the bait and switch. When we first got together, I was on the third interview at a really major Canadian insurance company to be there, like head of PR, that would have been a really high paid C suite kind of job. And she thought that's what I was going to do. She was at a graphic design company that went under. She's like, Okay, well, I guess I'm going to start my own company, because she didn't have any other options. And then I came home one day, and I said, You know what, I'm gonna quit my job to at the time, I actually wanted to do a, like a, like a video company, which was incredibly unsuccessful, actually, the first venture that I did with a couple of friends from high school. And, yeah, she calls it the bait and switch because it was kind of like she thought I was going to be bringing home the paycheck. But we both kind of at the same time, jumped off a cliff together and said, yeah, we're just gonna do the entrepreneurial thing, because life is short and 911 just happened and the world is telling us, we need to be brave. And so whether that was a good idea or a bad idea, we're like a 23 year overnight success.

21:48
[Roger Pierce]
That's a whole other podcast, right? Their husband and wife entrepreneurs, working as entrepreneurs, but separately in their own businesses. I know you guys do it very well. I'm hoping to get your wife on the podcast soon. Yes.

22:03
But that's a great angle. I'll have to shelve that one for another episode. Did you raise the money for your business, Patrick, from those training and consulting sessions? Or how did you get this the seed money to get things going?

[Patrick McCaully]
What money?

22:18
Are you supposed to have money when you start a business? Of course not. Yeah, I had negligible savings, and just started the company on a whim because it really seemed like the right thing to do. One of us should have had a real job, probably, we just kind of started it without really a budget or a business plan, or much of anything other than like, we have the ability to do this. So we had to make it work somehow, bootstrapping? Yeah, there was no investment or budget, or here's $20,000 to coast, or we didn't even have a loan or anything, either. It was it was some very, some very lean years, in the beginning, just to sort of bank rants and keep going. But at some point, we invested so much emotionally in it and worked so hard on it, we just couldn't refuse to to not let it be a success. And somehow that's carried us to 2024, and arguably being a pretty good success, both of our companies.

[Roger Pierce]
And here you are, and what you said about starting off with zero or very little money is so true for a service based business. And I always preach this to entrepreneurs. You know, 75% of businesses in North America are service based. They're the less expensive option to start off than, say retail or manufacturing, which requires a lot of overhead and risk. And who's got that? It's my I love it when I hear about a service based business because you can get it going for relatively little so.

[Patrick McCaully]
Yeah, exactly. Intellectual property. Yes, you could get screwed out of your intellectual property. But the only thing is your time and your ideas. I don't have to keep fresh cakes that I have to sell every week. The prospect of opening a restaurant or having something with perishable goods or things, physical things that I have to sell is terrifying. I would never do that. It's a bigger risk.

[Roger Pierce]
So just watching our clock here, too. I want to delve a bit into what entrepreneurship means to you. Can you tell me how as being a small business owner changed you personally, and some of the lessons you've learned about yourself along the way?

24:28

[Patrick McCaully]
If I take stock of my educational history and being the guy who got kicked out of a few schools when he was good, and my mother would tell you my attitude problem. It came in handy for journalism too, but I'm not a conventional follower type. So you have to have that kind of resilience. If I really cared what everyone thought all the time, and I was a people pleaser that I don't think it would be would have been as easy to be an entrepreneur because you have to believe in what you're doing.

25:00
and your moral compass and your ability, you almost have to be profoundly confident or pretend to be. I hate the whole, fake it till you make it thing. But the truth is that you start off and I mean, I remember my first actually paid gigs it was for a cafe in Forest Hill Village in Toronto, very upscale, we had an event. And I thought it was a great idea. It was to be Canada's first wireless, free wireless village offering free internet, which kids, you can Google this but like back into 2001 was kind of a big deal. You'd had to actually pay for it. Most of the time, we had an event. And I really didn't know if I was full of crap until the first journalist got there. And then I was like, Okay, well, maybe I do know what I'm talking about. So you have to have that bravado of youth, you have to have that belief in yourself that you can do it made a lot of mistakes along the way. I've had successful things and unsuccessful things. But I think I kind of swung for the fence and said, I'm going to be that guy, and somehow got there through accomplishment and things that worked and things that didn't work. I mean, I went to journalism school, I don't know, I didn't know business principles, or how to deal with clients or really sales. Everyone thinks like, Hey, I went to university or I went to college, so I'm not going to have to do sales. That's just stupid. The world is sales. No matter who you are, no matter what you do, you're selling something. And this notion that entrepreneurs have that you're just going to be like the guy who sits in the chair like Moses, I'm dating myself, Moses, an armor and like, has profound ideas. And someone else is doing all the selling and you're just collecting a paycheck for being brilliant. That's not going to happen, man. You have to be able to sell and that's of anything, no matter what you do. If you're gonna be an entrepreneur, that's the thing that you need to understand how to do. Like our friend, Andrew Jenkins, was a used car salesman that's done him. So he's an entrepreneur, he's got his own social media company that's done him the most good probably have anything. Rotman MBA aside, I think that fundamental ability to sell that he learned when he was selling cars, is very much part of his success. That's a great piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs be prepared to sell nothing sells itself. Yeah, get a job selling anything. So yeah. Training. Yeah, I love it. And great ideas on their own still need to be carried to the customer in the form of sales. Sure. Before we wrap up, I would love to get you know, one thing you love one thing you hate about being an entrepreneur, I love that, at this point, 23 or so years in, I can say no, that's not a luxury that you have at the beginning. So you have to

28:02
work with your moral compass as much as you can to work with the best people that you can at the beginning. Now I'm in a position where I say no more than I say yes. And I'm very careful about who I work with. And, you know, I joke like people say, Who's your ideal client, I always say, like people who have money and will listen to me. But that's only partially true. Those are prerequisites as well. But they have to do something that I don't think is wrong, or abhorrent, or, I don't like their attitude about something or their political stance or whatever. So it's great to be in a position where I can try to use my powers for good, and work with people that I think are ethical and like minded, that are doing good things, or just need promotion, to try to sell something that's fundamentally a good product. So that's great. I don't know what else I would do. I've older and more cynical, and every once in a while just for fun, I try to imagine how many times I would have been fired or laid off if I'd stayed in broadcasting, Global TV went bankrupt, about 10 years after I worked there and has changed hands. And every week, you know, media is getting laid off. It's a horrible place to be. So I don't think that was my best testimony. What do you dislike? What do you warn entrepreneurs about getting bullied by clients? I mean, I don't really let it happen anymore and having for some time, part of my job is literally telling billionaires that they're wrong, because they're gonna do it more than you think. They're like, well, this is the most amazing thing that's ever happened. And we're our upgrade is, you know, and it's like, No, dude, no one cares. Sorry. I've been on a call. I had this weekly call with a billionaire. And there'd be 10 people on the phone call and no one would say anything except me and him. Like 10 People just listening. Oh my God, I hope I don't have to say anything. Please don't ask me anything. And I'm like, Guys, surely you agree

30:00
this is not the way to do this because it's not newsworthy, nothing, just like crickets. So I don't love that. I don't love someone telling me what's newsworthy. I'm not for everyone, and I try to qualify people to see if they're gonna go outside their box. But if you're not willing to do something that makes you maybe a little uncomfortable, then we probably shouldn't work together. Because you're going to have to do that in order to make it newsworthy. That's very profound. So look for a fit client fit. Make everything that you publicly put out about yourself a strong indicator of what it's like to work with you and what you're about. So I would say, my website Pointmannc.com, my job title vanquisher of vanilla, PR, pretty much all of my marketing and everything that I say in all my case studies and whatever, gives you a pretty good flavor for what your for what you're in for. So like if you're if you want to do the vanilla approach, and you want to do like the typical like, hey, what's really interesting about you and your company and your product, and let's send out a press release and see what happens. And thanks for the bag of money. Sorry, that didn't work out. I'm not your guy. I'm going to push you to an uncomfortable place because I know that's what you need to do to get media coverage. And at the end of the day, public relations is pointless. If you don't get media coverage, you can send out the best press release in the world, according to you. If it doesn't get media coverage, you failed.

[Roger Pierce]
Terrific answer. Thank you for sharing that. Well, I could talk to you all day, my friend. But that's all the time we have. I want to thank you very much. Patrick McCauley, point, man news creation for sharing your entrepreneurial journey and experiences with us. It means a lot to me and and our listeners. Before you go if someone wants to get in touch with you, how do they do that?

[Patrick McCaully]
Patrick at pointmannc.com I don't answer the phone. So send me an email.

31:59
[Roger Pierce]
I love it. And the website is again. PointMannc.com. Wonderful. Thanks again, Patrick. And to our listeners. Thank you for being here. And be sure to return for more insights from the unsure entrepreneur. Bye for now.

32:15
That's it for this episode of the onshore entrepreneur podcast.

32:19
Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss other candid conversations with small business owners. And be sure to check us out at unsure entrepreneur.com