Getting coverage on the right blogs
Activating our networks to create buzz on Facebook, Twitter, and email
We knew that if we did this, we would be listed in Kickstarter’s Popular Projects sections, which is how you get people who are browsing Kickstarter to check out and back your project.
Find Relevant Bloggers Using Google Images
Start by looking at who covered Kickstarter projects similar to yours. You can do this by using a simple Google Images hack. If you drag and drop any image file into the search bar at images.google.com, you’ll be shown every website that has ever posted that image. Pretty cool, huh?
Here’s the process your VA will use:
Find 10 Kickstarter projects similar to yours, and for each, do the following:Right-click and save-to-desktop 2 to 3 images.
Drag and drop each image file from your desktop into the Google Images search bar.
Review blogs listed on the results page to see which might be relevant to your project.
Fill out the following fields in a Media List spreadsheet which you create: publication, URL, first and last name of the writer, and links to relevant posts by that writer.
You now have dozens of blogs that have a high probability of relevance, all neatly organized in a spreadsheet. Your VA can find more sites like the ones in your media list by searching SimilarSites.com.
Research Site Traffic on SimilarWeb.com or Alexa.com
Bigger is not always better, but it is helpful to know the size of each blog’s readership. Have your VA research how many unique monthly visitors each blog has and add that data to your spreadsheet.
TF: I personally use the SimilarWeb Chrome extension.
Identify Relationships on Facebook
This may be the most important part of your PR efforts. For us, 8 out of 10 valuable blog posts resulted from relationships. When we pitched a blogger without a relationship, less than 1% even responded. With introductions, our success rate was over 50%.
How do you identify relationships? Facebook. Have your VA log in to your Facebook account, search for bloggers in your media list, and add mutual friends to your spreadsheet. You can also search on professional networks like LinkedIn.
Use the Right Tools
TextExpander allows you to paste any saved message—whether it’s a phone number or a two-page email—into any document or text field, simply by typing an abbreviation. This is extremely helpful for repetitive outreach. It’s a must-have app that probably saved us 1 to 2 hours a day in typing.
One tool that we did not use, but should have, is Boomerang, a Gmail plug-in that allows you to schedule emails. We crafted emails to our influencers and in-the-know friends the day of our launch, using TextExpander, then slightly customized each one. What we should have done is written and saved these personalized emails a few days before we launched. That way, we could have scheduled them to be automatically sent by Boomerang the second we launched. This would have freed up many valuable hours on launch day.
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TF: For perhaps 10 additional tips, as well as a half dozen email templates that Soma used for their PR outreach and launch (this alone could save you more than 100 hours), visit fourhourworkweek.com/kickstarter
“Occasionally, a good idea comes to you first, if you’re lucky. Usually, it only comes after a lot of bad ideas.”
Spirit animal: Otter
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Alex Blumberg
Alex Blumberg (TW: @abexlumberg, gimletmedia.com) is CEO and co-founder of Gimlet Media, makers of Reply All, StartUp, Mystery Show, and many other blockbuster podcasts. He is an award-winning radio journalist. Prior to Gimlet, he was a producer for This American Life and the co-founder of Planet Money. I featured Alex twice on my podcast, first as an interview, then second in an excerpt from his 21-lesson CreativeLive course, Power Your Podcast with Storytelling.
Why is an audio storyteller in Wealthy? Remember what I wrote in How to Use This Book (page xix): Questions are your pickaxes. Good questions are what open people up, open new doors, and create opportunities.
In General—Ask the Dumb Question Everyone Else Is Afraid to Ask
“Often, there’s a very basic, very dumb question at the center of a story that no one’s asking. One of the biggest stories I ever did, ‘The Giant Pool of Money,’ was predicated on just such a dumb question: ‘Why are the banks loaning money to people who can’t possibly pay it back?’ Asking the right dumb question is often the smartest thing you can do.”
(Malcolm Gladwell also discusses this on page 573.)
In Particular—Use the Right Questions and Prompts
For Alex, good “tape” (interviews) must have stories as a primary ingredient, not uninformative yes-or-no answers. How does Alex elicit what he would call “authentic moments of emotion”? How do you get people to recount? To naturally tell funny stories? How do you make their lines memorable—concrete and specific—not abstract and general? Alex has spent more than 20 years thinking about this and testing different approaches.
Alex generally tries to cover three bases: setting (e.g., where, when, who, what), emotions, and details. Here are some specific phrases that he uses, which I’ve borrowed, and you’ll notice that pseudo-commands are sometimes more effective than questions:
Prompts to Elicit Stories (Most Interviewers Are Weak at This)
“Tell me about a time when . . .”
“Tell me about the day [or moment or time] when . . .”
“Tell me the story of . . . [how you came to major in X, how you met so-and-so, etc.]”
“Tell me about the day you realized ___ . . . ”
“What were the steps that got you to ___ ?”
“Describe the conversation when . . .”
TF: I often use the last with people who, at some point, were considering leaving a job to start a company. I’ll say, “Describe the conversation when you first mentioned to your wife/husband that you wanted to drop this lucrative career in X and start your own company.” It has never failed to get a good story.
Follow-Up Questions When Something Interesting Comes Up, Perhaps in Passing
“How did that make you feel?”
“What do you make of that?”
TF: I will often say, “Explain that a bit more . . .” or “What did you learn from that?”
General-Use Fishing Lures
“If the old you could see the new you, what would the new you say?”
“You seem very confident now. Was that always the case?”
“If you had to describe the debate in your head about [X decision or event], how would you describe it?”
TF: I often adapt the last to something like “When you do X [or “When Y happened to you”], what does your internal self-talk sound like? What do you say to yourself?”
Some of Alex’s Tools
Field Recording
Audio-Technica AT8035 shotgun microphone
TASCAM DR-100mkII recorder
Sony MDR-7506 headphones
XLR cable(s)
Software
Avid Pro Tools for editing
Chartbeat for analytics
The Podcast Gear I Use
Since I’m constantly asked about my podcast gear setup, and I think everyone should try starting a podcast at least once for the learning, this chapter delivers the goods.
Audio can be infinitely complex, but you can keep it simple. As Morgan Spurlock (page 221) might say, “Once you get fancy, fancy gets broken.” My suggestion is to start with recording phone interviews via Skype. It allows you to test-drive podcasting extremely cheaply, and it allows you to cheat: to refer to questions, notes, and cheat sheets in Evernote or another program while speaking. It takes the pressure off. In-person interviews are much harder to set up, harder to do well, and technically easier to screw up.
Be
low is my “minimum effective dose” for producing a podcast that won’t get laughed off the Internet. I still use all of these tools. For clickable links to all, visit fourhourworkweek.com/podcastgear
In-Person Interviews
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Zoom H6 6-track portable recorder: For in-person recording, I use the H6 with simple stage mics (below). For recording 2- to 4-person interviews, it’s better than the older H4n model. Pro tip: ALWAYS put in new batteries for every important interview. I use simple earbuds for sound checks.
Shure SM58-LC cardioid vocal microphone: Thanks to Bryan Callen (page 483) for introducing me to these. I’ve tried all sorts of fancy lavalier mics, booms, etc. For the money, nothing beats these old-school stage mics for in-person podcasting. You could throw them against a wall and they’d probably be fine. Some people use mic stands to hold them, but I do not. I prefer to have guests hold them, as they’re less likely to lean away. Sound levels (volume) are therefore more consistent, requiring less fussing in post-production.
XLR 3-pin microphone cable (6 feet): To connect the Shure SM58-LC microphone to the H6 Zoom recorder. Don’t cut corners here. In my limited experience, if anything is going to go wrong (and undetected until too late), it’ll be a loose fitting on one of these.
Bluecell 5-pack of microphone windscreen foam covers: These minimize the clicks, pops, and other noises picked up from vocals, as well as background noises and actual wind. Brand doesn’t matter much here.
Phone/Skype Interviews
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Ecamm Call Recorder for Skype: This is used for recording “phoners” via Skype. I haven’t found any software that blows me away, but this gets the job done. I’ve used it for more than 50% of my podcast interviews. Zencastr also gets good reviews but sometimes requires a lot of hard drive space on the part of your interviewee.
Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB cardioid dynamic USB/XLR microphone: This is my go-to travel mic for all phone interviews. It can also be used for recording intros, sponsor reads, etc., with QuickTime. I often mail guests this mic via Amazon Prime if they need one, as it has the best bang-for-the-buck value I’ve found. Be sure to use a foam ball windscreen or “pop filter.”
Yellowtec iXm: I use this mic for last-minute travel recording and post-production intros. It is an amazing all-in-one mic, which allows you to record without a Zoom or laptop. It automatically corrects levels and—quite frankly—produces the best audio of all the various mics I own. I use it for my intros (“Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferris Show . . .”) and sponsor reads, which I record separately from the interviews. If I’m traveling but *might* need a mic, I stick this in my backpack. This bad boy is pricey, but I love the quality and convenience.
Post-Production and Editing
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Whatever: I edited perhaps 20 of my first 30 episodes using GarageBand, despite disliking it. Why? Because I could learn it quickly, and it forced me to keep the podcast format dead simple. Fancy nonsense wasn’t possible for a Luddite like me, nor for the software, and that’s what I wanted: a positive constraint. If GarageBand appears too amateur for your first 1 to 3 episodes, I’d bet money 99% of you will quit by episode 5. Most would-be podcasters quit because they get overwhelmed with gear and editing. Much like Joe Rogan, I decided to record and publish entire conversations (minimizing post-production), not solely highlights.
Keep it simple: Here are a few options my editors/engineers have used: Audacity (free), Ableton, Sound Studio, and Hindenburg. If I were to learn another piece of editing software, I would likely choose Hindenburg.
Auphonic: I often use Auphonic.com to finalize and polish my podcasts after editing on the above. It’s a web-based audio post-production mastering tool, designed to help you improve the overall audio quality of your podcast.
Things I Don’t Use
To date, I have not used any pre-amps, mixers, or other hardware. It would marginally improve things, but I haven’t found the additional complexity, added luggage, and risk of mechanical failure worth it.
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Ed Catmull
Ed Catmull (TW: @edcatmull, pixar.com) is, along with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios. He is current president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Ed has received five Academy Awards and has contributed to many important developments in computer graphics as a computer scientist. He is the author of Creativity, Inc., which Forbes has written, “. . . just might be the best business book ever written.”
Little-Known Fact
In 1995, also the last year that Calvin and Hobbes ran, I bought my first stock—Pixar.
We All Begin with Suck
“We had to [start over internally] with Toy Story 2. We had to do it with Ratatouille . . . [since] all our films, to begin with, suck.”
TIM: “Why do you say that? Just that the rough draft is always really rough?”
ED: “This is the big misconception that people have, that [in the beginning] a new film is the baby version of the final film, when in fact the final film bears no relationship to what you started off with. What we’ve found is that the first version always sucks. I don’t mean this because I’m self-effacing or that we’re modest about it. I mean it in the sense that they really do suck.”
The Incredible Strategic and Predictive Power of Steve Jobs
“We went public one week after [Toy Story] went out. . . . Steve Jobs’s logic was that while he wanted us to go public—and he had some reasons for it which we were skeptical of, to be honest—he wanted to do it after the film came out to demonstrate for people that, in fact, a new art form was being born, and that was worth investing in. . . .”
TIM: “This is an itch that I have to scratch, but what were his reasons for the IPO that people were skeptical of?”
ED: “We’re now making the first film. To then become a public company, for the rest of us, because none of us had ever even been in a public company, let alone knowing what it means, [we thought]: This could be a major distraction. . . . There was the view of ‘Let’s make some films and prove our worth and get that under our belt before we go public,’ but Steve had a different logic. He said, ‘Right now, we have a three-picture deal with Disney.’ The financial [profit-sharing] terms of the deal, while they were as good as we could have gotten under the circumstances, once we [became] a successful company, then our share of the profits was actually pretty small.
“So Steve wanted to renegotiate the deal, and all of us had a very good relationship with Disney. But Steve said at the end of 3 years, if we then split off as a separate company and we’re no longer with Disney, we will be their worst nightmare, because they will have helped launch a successful competitor. . . . All of this is before it happened, so we’re guessing what’s going to happen. But this is Steve prognosticating, because he now believes the film is going to be a big success.
“So he said, ‘What will happen is, as soon as the film is out, Michael Eisner will realize that he’s helped create a competitor, so he will want to renegotiate, and if we renegotiate, then what we want is to be 50/50 partners.’
“I should say right there, that’s a different Steve than years before, where Steve sort of shot for the fences and tried to get almost everything for himself. He now has reached the point where he said that is not a good place to be. A good place to be is a 50/50 partnership. It’s like a good standing. It’s a high road to take. But if we’re 50/50 partners, it also means that we have to put up half the money. Well, Pixar doesn’t have any money.”
TIM: “Right. You need a war chest.”
ED: “So we needed a war chest. So if we go public, we will get a war chest. Then, when we renegotiate, we can come in and go for the kind of deal which is a 50/50 deal. So the film came out, and within a few months, Steve got the call from Michael Eisner saying let’s renegotiate. So Steve says, ‘Okay, we want it to be 50/50.’
All of that happened as Steve predicted it would. For me, it was rather amazing. Wow, he completely called it correctly.”
If You Can’t Read It, Try Listening to It
“My brain works differently. It turns out I am unable to read poetry. . . . Reading poetry, within a few seconds, shuts my brain down.
“All of this came about because there was a new translation of The Iliad, by Robert Fagles, and it was in verse form. The thing is, I couldn’t read it. So this woman at a dinner said: ‘Don’t read it, listen to it.’ I bought the tape and I listened to it, and I found I was completely enthralled. I was surprised by the fact that the story was orally transmitted 2,800 years ago in a different language to a different culture. It was meant for oral transmission, of course, because it had that rhythm to it.”
Favorite Lectures from the Teaching Company
For several years, Ed listened to Teaching Company lectures every day during his commute:
“They’ve got them on economics, Shakespeare, and so forth. The thing that had the greatest impact on me was the whole suite of world history. . . . Although, I must admit there was one that was around the time of King Henry VIII, the Tudors and the Stuarts. I was so blown away with that that as soon as I listened to it, I listened to it again.”
To Become an Artist, Learn to See
Ed wanted to be an animator in high school and did well in art. Near his freshman year of college, however, he didn’t see a path to the level required to be a Disney animator, so he switched to physics. Many people think this is incongruous and unrelated. He disagrees:
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