• 54:01
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
feel-good stories, personal branding, PR agency, media pitching, client engagement, philanthropic clients, storytelling skills, mentorship, career transition, media exposure, social media strategy, corporate sponsorships, nonprofit support, public relations, client success
SPEAKERS
Ray Drasnin, Damon Pistulka
Damon Pistulka 00:03
All right, everyone, welcome once again, the faces of business. I am your host, Damon pistulka, and I am excited for our guest today, because we are going to be talking with nothing, no one other than Ray drasnan from purple penguin. PR, about sharing feel good stories that can change lives and build wealth. Ray, welcome to being here today.
Ray Drasnin 00:29
Damon, what a pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity to reach the audience and share what really blows me away. Turns me on and makes me feel special every single night for the last 30 plus years, I love madly what I do. I am blessed.
Damon Pistulka 00:44
Awesome, awesome. Well, that’s great. Well, Ray, we start the show out the same with everyone. We want to hear a bit about your background and how you got into what you’re doing today.
Ray Drasnin 00:59
I don’t really have an answer. I’m just kidding, I wanted to throw everyone for a dizzy it’s kind of funny, so I started developing people skills at age 13. I am sent away from Appalachia, from living in Charleston, West Virginia, to a boarding school in New England. And wow, what a rude awakening for a guy like me born in Appalachia to be hanging out with a bunch of Uber wealthy white little waspy kids whose homes are the size of my city. So I learned at that point that if you’re going to get in trouble, which my poor parents, sadly, I did, that you’re going to need to learn how to get out of trouble. So I did get out of trouble, and I finally tuned my communication skills. Sadly, they were in Dean’s committees, but by the time I left that 100 year old prep school, I was the senior class president, and I had turned what was just a bit of a Hellion life around in college, I was chosen for an internship in advertising and Damon, this stuff was magical. Now I’m getting paid for being creative. I just couldn’t believe that was that was reality. So I’m still an east coaster. It’s time to go to a major media market. I didn’t think New York I had in the I just didn’t have a New York trip in me not to work. And so I went to the second biggest media market in the nation, went to go see the Raiders play. What a waste of time that was. But I got a heck of an education, so I moved to Los Angeles. I’m hired by a PR agency, and lo and behold, this is even better than advertising. Now I’m getting paid to tell stories to the media and working with aidless celebrities and pro athletes, this was my calling, and I knew it So God gives you certain things. Everyone has their own core competencies. For me, it’s gift of Gabs, nouns and verbs. How to make communication come alive, both written and verbally. Boarding School was incredible for that. It was expected that you would be an extraordinary communicator, and that was one of the takeaways after I learned how to get my scrawny little butt out of trouble. And it made a world of difference. It’s still who I am today. I think I was in Home Depot the other day, and the guy trying to help me with the door lock says, are you in marketing? Yeah, what an obscure question, you know, when we have engagement, because, for some reason, he thought that’s the way I spoke, that’s how I communicated.
Damon Pistulka 03:28
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So when you got, when you started out, did you feel this when you started out, that you are, you are meant for this?
Ray Drasnin 03:39
Um, it blew me away. So I’m in advertising. I’m an east coaster. In advertising, you have to write billboards that are seven to 11 words. I can’t clear my throat in under 50 words. So advertising was not for me. I was too verbose. Storytelling is what the heck I am, and who I and how I was made. I sat down in that first PR agency in Los Angeles, and they said, Ray after listening to me on the phone. So PR is you create press materials and then you do phone follow ups by calling the media producers, editors, reporters, and following up on that press release. In my world, you get 30 seconds to own the assignment desk, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, there’s 10 million little piss ants like me. Is my story better than the other ones? Is my client better than the other ones? That’s your proof at time. And so I was good at that. It was a core competency. It felt empowering. They said, Ray, don’t even type. Don’t even get on the computers. You’re more than welcome to watch your little triumph. Tr, six outside at lunchtime, put your feet up on the table and pitch the media. And this is what everyone hates in my industry. Damon, yeah, you hire all these 20 and 30 year old. Happy young people excited to be in the sexy PR world, and all they want to do is type emails and write email pitches. They’re afraid. They’re trepidatious. They’re overly cautious to get on the phone and express themselves. Why? Because their head has been buried in this thing for way too long. Their communicative skills will never be yours and mine, because they don’t believe in themselves. They haven’t been pushed other than in school, and then they find a mockery of that. And you know, I remember my son coming home and going, Yeah, I go on a bike ride with my friends. We stop at Starbucks to get a water, and instead of talking about the beautiful areas here in San Diego, where I live, that we just rode our bikes through. The first thing everyone does is grab their phone and stuff it up to their face. And so, yeah, it was a pleasure to find my calling. Is the short answer
Damon Pistulka 05:51
well, and it’s really, it’s really unique for you to be able to find it that early, because most people, you know, they might go through two or three iterations of where they’re going to be, and some people go off the off the rails a long ways to find what they want to do. So that was cool.
Ray Drasnin 06:05
You know, it’s surprising. You aren’t supposed to get that aha, epiphany moment at age 13. But a little wild child. I mean, I am some West Virginia guy who can’t say my name and under like, two minutes, those kids in New Jersey and Connecticut tortured me, so I knew that could not last. So the accent went away, the skill sets came alive, and it still feels good, you know, whether I’m engaging at the grocery store with someone that I just want to say I remember I was there a few weeks ago, and it’s an elderly woman, and she looks so pulled together, and I’m picking my silly avocados, and I can’t stop myself, and I say, Excuse me, ma’am, the brim of her hat was the exact same as the cups on her sleeves. I say to her, you know what you look like? Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn back in my father’s and mother’s generation, when people used to dress up to go on the planes and look formal. She was so happy, right? You have 50 seconds in the world to make a new to make a new friend, to come up with engagement, to be able to share a thought, both people walk from that significantly happier than if I had never opened my mouth. So it continues to pay dividends. And you’re right. I see people changing who they are late in life, but they’re not passionate Damon, they’re not passionate about it. You can see in their eyes, they don’t open up wide. They’re not leaning forward all the body language tells, like in poker, that tells they’re doing it because they’re getting through a process. They’re doing it because it generates more income than the last job, but they don’t wake up in love with it. And I feel sorry for each and every one,
Damon Pistulka 07:47
yes, yes, yeah, yeah. It’s interesting how that happens. And some people, oh, some people never get it. Some people don’t think they’ll ever get it. And that’s that’s too bad too because they don’t. So you you started out. I mean, if people haven’t, they need to go out and look at your watch your TEDx video. That’s that’s pretty telling of of your your transition over time, because you started off like you said. You’re doing PR with A listers, professional sports, athletes and other people like that. But you had a you had a bit of reckoning in your in your life, and let’s talk about that a little bit.
Ray Drasnin 08:29
Okay, that’s a good place to go. That was an aha moment. So I’m in LA at the top of the Wiltern theater, theater at Wilshire and Western. I’m 20, nothing years old. It’s the 1980s you can’t even get your haircut in Los Angeles without someone doing some type of drug in front of you. I feel totally like a fish out of water. But they give me a personal secretary, and she tells me when it’s my grandmother’s birthday, and she gives me a birthday card that all I have to do is sign, and so everything seems so perfect. Oh, I’m good at new business. So now I’m not just on the phones, pitching stories. I’m going out and doing new business development, which I had to do later in life. I’ve been an entrepreneur for 40 years who makes the rain. It’s nice when the CEO has that skill set, yes, but I look at myself in the mirror one day and I realize I’ve got all these wrinkles. Well, now it’s okay, I’m old, but back then all these furrowed brows and I thought, you’re not the same guy that your parents brought you up to be. You’re not honorable and ethical. You don’t cut Win Win deals. You try and out negotiate someone because of the gift of gab. So instead of taking something God given and doing all the right things, I think I was lost in male ego, and that is the day I said, I’ve got to get out of LA. I had been there five years, and La puts an edge on you. I still pitch LA. I get ABC, NBC, CB. Yes, I speak Spanish. I lived in Spain. My mom is French. I speak French. I get international placements, pitching in three languages. I love going to LA. We’ll talk hopefully about a couple of my clients that I have just blown up in Los Angeles and then taken it further and further, more than local, more than national, more than international. And so I decided it was time to move to little surf town, San Diego. And this place is absurd. It’s perfect. Everyone has no body fat. Every day is 76 degrees and sunny. Every weather forecast is the same, late night and early morning, low clouds breaking into Sunny, SunShot, right? It’s a chamber of commerce day every day. Here, it gave me my start. So I came here. I had an earring. I spoke too quickly. I like the Dodgers, they hated me in San Diego when I came. I couldn’t be the antithesis. I was like the Antichrist. So I go to all the different PR agencies, and my mentor, who I found right away, what a blessing from above, says, Ray, I’m going to send you to Company ABC, and then I’m going to send you to company CDE. And EFG goes, How did it go? Right? Well, I don’t think I liked it. Well, good, because they didn’t like you. And it got progressively worse. And so he said, start your own agency. I’m going to be your mentor, and I promise you success. And it was like my second dad, Damon. It was the young women that used to work for me, and PR is predominantly a female engagement engaged industry. I would always tell them, you at this early age, in your early 20s, need to find, and I think it should be a female mentor that can teach you about how to walk into a boardroom, how to own your space, how to have that bubble that says I am strong, regardless of my age and regardless of my skills. And that’s what he taught me. My mentor, Dave enough for God, rest his soul. Made me far more important than I was. In the very beginning, he made me prove my mental, my mental. How good are you? Right? Then he started putting me in front of big national clients, Tropicana, orange juice that he was pitching. He gets me an opportunity to pitch. And they said, We like you better than anyone, but your agency is too small. So I learned that that was taking my taking my lumps. Well, I’m going to build my team now. We’re no longer eight people. We’re 12 people. We would build as much as the biggest agency on the West Coast. You put great people underneath you. You learn the E Myth, that book, The entrepreneurial myth in the beginning, you work in your company. Oh, I’m a publicist. Be a good publicist. Ray. Ray, write, well, type, well, pitch, well, you’re a good publicist. Then the next step, work on your company. Go up 30,000 feet and start hiring your weakness. I didn’t want to write anymore. I was too slow. I was glad I won national awards at it, but it wasn’t my core competency. So if it wasn’t me on the phone or doing new business, it was outsourced. You either make it an employee or you make it an outsource, and then you mark that outsource up 22 Yep, it was just business 101. But it was learning by fire and with the help of a mentor, wow. Damon, it blew me away. Things made sense. And when I came back to that mentor, I took copious notes. I would show them what my assignment, my action items were from the last time I met with them, I would tell them the update on that action items, and they would say, we wish we had employees that worked as hard as you. So east coasters have no issues with work ethic. East Coasters even think like a business owner. Midwesterners work like you’ve never seen, and Californians are almost impossible to hire. It’s like Wednesday. No, it’s Friday. At one o’clock. I’m out of here 502. Take care. Are you kidding? We’re working with celebrities and we’re working with pro athletes. We’re working with Rod geerick. We’re working with sexy, fun, cool, ridiculous people that have more than one TV show at a time. If you can’t go and have a snooty glass of white wine and enjoy what you’re doing, you know, don’t let the door hit you. And I did end up building a team that loved what they did, and I I hear from them, 20 years later, I’m now the head of PR at such and such, bigger more impressive than me, and that’s a beautiful thing.
Damon Pistulka 14:26
Yeah, that’s awesome. When you see people that you’ve helped as a mentor to help them develop in their careers, and them go off and do do things that are just wild and exciting. You know, what
Ray Drasnin 14:37
a cool thing to say. That is the reason I do personal branding now. So a little while ago, this is fun, the path you’re taking me down. You said, how did it start, and where did it go? What were the skills and why did you know? And why was PR different than advertising? The reality is, I did this stuff for a million years, and then about 1512, years ago, my kids are only 2020, year old, twins. Yeah. I’m about 15 now. They were eight, so 12 years ago, I realized I’m taking huge paychecks from guys that are in trouble. They are sleeping with underage people. They call me at 2am they are busted by a cop. They’re pissed off because they’re Bentley is impounded, and I have to tell them, never call me at 2am again, but yes, I’m going to get your butt out of trouble. So the next day, I have Mr. Poor guy whose Bentley was impounded and he was sleeping with someone underage, and he’s all pissed off. What do I have him doing? He’s in the oncology ward of let’s just say it was an Oakland Raider, even though I can’t say of Oakland hospital, Oakland Children’s Hospital, and he’s signing footballs for poor kids in the oncology war. I got ahead of the bad news. I was really good at that. The paychecks were absurd, and I came home and realized I was a big phony baloney. Here’s me talking to Aaron and Sophie my kids about morals and values and ethics. And by the way, you know what that is a good idea. If you can drop a link to what that TED talk is, people will see me say this in person on a stage, and I was a phony baloney. It was all about the money. Me telling kids, oh, it’s all about the morals, values and ethics. Me wanting to put my head on the pillow and feel like I was such a good old dad, even though they would say how nice your grandfather came to drop you off at elementary school, it was about learning how to rise above my skills and how to come back to how my parents brought me up.
Damon Pistulka 16:33
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I that that’s very cool that you you found your soul, so to speak, and and came back and and really shared with people and made a change, and now you went out and were able to do that change, and now you’re sharing with people now, because it, you know a lot of people that that that money’s hard to hard to walk away from, it is.
Ray Drasnin 17:00
There’s no doubt about that. You it’s showtime. You have from 2am until 6am to put together a plan, to put your team together, to get a press release written, to be able to put your favorite contacts together, because now you’re not just doing this in a vacuum. Now you’re going to people that already love you. They know you only pitch media people, that that’s my target audience. So when I’m going after new business, it’s consumers or it is a corporation. It’s oftentimes celebrities or pro athletes or whatever. When I am pitching media, it is reporters, it’s producers, it’s people on the assignment desk. I go to my favorites, they know i’ve only brought them great things. And so when it’s time for tit for tat to show favors, boom, they go, Yeah, I don’t have to give the whole story back then, and I don’t believe in that. Now, I think if I don’t give the full back story on what a situation is, I think I’m cheating the media, and I think I should be burned for that later in life. And so now it’s all about what is going on, and if there is a challenge, I’ll share with you a new client later on, if you want me to her name is Jen Drummond. She’s a 44 year old mom, a mother of seven. She has a multi million dollar financial services company. She’s stunningly beautiful. She gets in a horrid accident in 2018 they pull her out of her porch with the jaws of life. Everyone says she shouldn’t have lived. She says, I have a new lease on life, life 2.0 I am no longer going to eat the little leftovers on my seven kids. Thank you very much. Catholic world off of their plates. I am going to go to a Michelin star restaurant. I am going to live life. I am going to cart a Diem. I am going to be a role model instead of just a mother for my kids. And she now has climbed the seven second highest Summits of the biggest mountains on all seven continents. She’s flying to papal New Guinea as we speak, to climb the last one, which will count for Indonesia. She’ll be the only woman in the world who’s done this, and she’s summited four of the biggest, the very highest, peaks on all seven continents. She’s bigger than life. You think this bottle could make her sexy in the media. So I put on clients that have these stories, and hopefully I can teach some of your audience. It doesn’t have to be your special in the beginning, I know how to take people that have a good heart and are committed to philanthropy. Don’t look like Quasimodo. Know how to put nouns and verbs together. Those are the only criteria. If you’re an okay looking individual, you have a great heart, you give back cause marketing, you give back philanthropy. I can blow you up. I can make you bigger than life. I can make you generational wealth. And that was my aha about 12 years ago when I told the kids I’m not going to do this anymore, and I’m sorry. I’m a charlatan, I’m a quack, I’m a demagogue. I’m going to be the dad I need. You know you need me to be.
Damon Pistulka 19:58
Yeah, yeah. And. That’s That’s awesome. You’re able to make that switch. So let’s, let’s talk about that switch. You decided that you were going to help people that are out there doing good, making doing, making an impact, a good impact in the world, but you’re going to help them expand what they can do with your talents. Let’s talk about that a little bit, because it, I think it’s, I think it’s really cool, because you’re, you’re applying your talents in a different way. That really is, as the title says, is changing lives in a good way, and and helping everyone and make some money in the process, but you’re all helping. It’s just, it’s really cool, how it works together.
Ray Drasnin 20:40
I had no idea that this would be the avenue that I would go down. But, you know, the mirror is pretty telling either you’re sharing realities about what should happen, or you’re sharing realities about who you are and what you do. So that epiphany, that aha moment, was great, and I realized not only that, but thank you from above, it was the best hook for me to be able to pitch media. So I don’t care if you’re Elon Musk and you make more money than God, and everything you touch is golden and evil. When you screw up comments about Israel, you get to fly there and meet with the Prime Minister. He’s untouchable, right? He’s Teflon. He’s like the Teflon Dawn you can’t touch. The front cover of Time magazine is Elon’s car, a Tesla with a fake astronaut going to the real moon, and Elon’s spaceship. That’s unbelievable. That’s PR at its extraordinary top at its best. But all I cared about was that these people gave back philanthropically, and media told me, Ray that is what changes everything. I’ve been doing this so long, I was able to reach out to ABC and Fox, a couple of my friends, and go, right? Doesn’t my pitch resonate, because it doesn’t feel good, right? You’re pitching me a product. You’re preaching, pitching me a service. Your people are great. Your spokespersons are incredibly well media trained, which is what I do, to teach people how to answer no matter what the question there is, your seven soundbites, spit it out. So Damon, aren’t you really just doing a podcast to aggrandize yourself and not really sharing anything a mirror with your audience? Well, you have to know how to bridge in two seconds. You have to be able to say to the cheery little reporter who has a hidden agenda, well, you know, Janie, I’m sorry, perhaps that’s true for others in my industry, but the reality is, the stories and the people that I put on this podcast are meant to educate and meant to make the planet, make the planet a little better. I’m proud of it. I’m proud of where it’s going, and I look forward to the next year and the next year, bam, now you’re a visionary. Now you’re a soulful guy, but you got to be trained to know how to get out of that funky situation. Yeah? So I said I’m not going to put on a client unless they have strong cause marketing or they’re philanthropic. Those are the criteria. Now again, you have to be pretty good looking. You have to be articulate. Yeah, you can’t stammer your way through it. But if you’re giving back, that’s the hook that makes them not money just for their family, that gives them opportunity to be in front of the Uber wealthy, because now, because that you love, how many other daddy big bucks with wallets the size of a city. Also like animals, military the elderly, cancer patients, cancer survivors. It doesn’t matter what the cause. They come out of the woodwork, and when I stick them on every TV, when I stick them on the covers of magazine, when I place them on the front page of the Features section of the New York Times, now their story is bigger than life. Yes, I had a client last year that I got 2 million impressions for, and it made his nonprofit, his GoFundMe, $750,000 it made his his nonprofit, $5 million that’s the power of the press. Yes, he’s an unbelievable story. Everything was perfect about him. He comes up to me at the gym and says everyone’s told me about this national PR guy and that I need him. He was perfect. And so why drive a stick shift if you don’t know how to drive stick right? Why should I put on mediocre clients that don’t have gift of gap, that aren’t somewhat charming, that aren’t giving back I put on only what makes my job easy? I don’t want to work 40 hours a week. I want to have fun with kids. I want to be outside gardening. I want to do the things that turn me on, like new business, develop, find more. I have a brand new client who was sitting in jail for a month. He at in his early 20s, made $42 million then all of a sudden there’s a car accident, and he feels horrible about that, and people were injured, and he’s sitting in a jail cell. And the potential is, is that he might go to prison for six years. The reality is, he didn’t do that, and it was. His aha moment. It was his epiphany. And he said, Now I’m going to create a giving platform that makes it so easy that people will see exactly who they’re helping. You’re not going to give $200 to the United Way, and 60% of that go in the CEO’s pocket. You’re not going to give to people who survived the Hawaii fires when that whole beautiful part of their world was wiped out, because none of it’s going to get to them. Now you can say I wanted to go to Jane Doe and her two kids. I wanted to go to temporary housing. And here’s another 500 for the first week’s groceries. Yeah. So these are inspirational stories, I mean, and you can listen to me as I deliver them. They turn me on right? You can’t lie to the camera. You gotta believe in it. You gotta believe in your client base. When you started this 500 people ago, you weren’t as good. You didn’t get access to as many big shots, and you probably didn’t take them cleanly, cleverly and astutely down a path like you’re doing with me, it’s good to get better at what we do,
Damon Pistulka 26:02
isn’t it? If you when you work at it, you can get a little better, that’s for sure. And you know, the the thing that I really enjoy listening to you about this is, I imagine back to the to the years, and like you said, getting better at the craft, doing what you’re doing, building relationships people, it had to be a breath of fresh air when you started bringing feel good stories to them, because it is a different thing to be coming into the press with something we watch the press today. Everything’s negative or not everything, but there’s a lot of negative, and you are that breath, that that 10% that we don’t see enough
Ray Drasnin 26:45
of. First of all, thank you for the kind words. That is supposed to be the goal. When I write down my mission, vision statements, it is that. So watch here. Here’s an assignment for everyone that’s going to be watching the podcast now and in the future, put on the evening news. I know we all get our whatever we want through an RSS feed, and we can go online, we can find exactly what we want. But when you watch the evening news and first of all, get through the commercials, it’s hard. You’re going to find the Jews that hate the Arabs. You’re going to find the whites that hate the blacks. You’re going to find the Republicans that hate the Democrats hate Hey. And then to your point, Damon, at the very end, that 92nd to two minute and 15 second piece is the feel good and pretty perfect. Nora O’Donnell on CBS is going to tell us about eye on America, and it’s going to be about a Eagle Scout who goes and takes a bunch of friends for his Eagle Scout project and takes care of a senior woman’s front and backyard that have been left untaken care of for months. And they do it all for free, and it makes them feel good. And this elderly woman finally has pride, and she gets to come out of her house and meet her neighbors because she’s really been in hiding because her life went to heck in a hand basket. Those are feel good stories, yeah, and you’re right. They love them. No one pitches it. And I’ll tell you what makes for great PR, four things. Okay, note takers. Take your notes right now. Copious notes. Here we go. First best only and controversial. First best only and controversial. That is what’s sexy. That is what’s compelling. That is what’s newsworthy. And when you watch the evening news, no matter how laborious it is, watch pretty Nora Don O’Donnell this evening or tomorrow. Watch the feel good. It is a feel good. What a great way to tag. You don’t go see a musical production and they just leave the stage. No. Everyone stands up. Come back. Come back. I’m back. Right. I just went to see Bob Marley’s sons, all five of his sons, live in concert, doing all of their dad’s music. The whole crowd in San Diego, everyone knew every single word. Of course, it was like being in a Jamaican pot fest. But the fact is, when you’re in an environment and you can create something special, like a feel good story, then it gave me, it gave me my to do orders in terms of who the client base would be. They are going to be nice, they are going to give back, they are going to have skill sets, and I’m going to pitch them, because they’re going to continue to do it. And as I generate more income. Let’s talk about Dr Kwan Stewart in a little while, he became better and better at the game. It wasn’t just going and taking care of animals. I’ll tell you about how that escalated, how it turned him into the CNN Hero of the Year, how it made him part of Hollywood, how people started throwing cash at him. How he goes on Kelly Clarkson that I pitch laying in bed with covid, and she gives him another 10,000 cash after he makes 100,000 in cash for being CNN Hero of the Year. And you know how much he takes? None of it. He gives every cent to his prop to his nonprofit project, street vet.org, Or these are the heroes. Once you start telling them, and they start seeing that they are bigger than life, they believe it. They become bigger. They become better. And now I’m changing the world a tiny little piece, man, but yeah, you tell the world and show the people, and show your audiences, the people that are doing something a little unique, that are a little off kilter, that maybe are breaking the rules, and what a cool thing to be able to show them, because the whole world is not by drawing inside the lines. Yes, entrepreneurs break rules. Entrepreneurs find a void in the marketplace and fill it. That’s all you have to do that makes success. Yes,
Damon Pistulka 30:38
yes. Well, that’s, that’s just for a second. I want to, I want to, I want to go back into your, your client you were talking about, but I want to ask you a little more technical question, because I mean, you and I, we’re, let’s just say we’re digital immigrants, right? We, we were around before there was just everything was digital. How has that really changed the way that all this works? Because, I mean, now we don’t just have major television or radio. I mean, we’ve got everything. Now there’s a gazillion outlets you can use. Spot
Ray Drasnin 31:15
on, buddy. I was becoming a dinosaur, right? This is Old World stuff I do. This is Hollywood in the 50s, straight martinis at lunch, and old blue eyes hanging with Sammy Davis Jr, right in the Brad pack and the whole thing. They all had publicists. I’m not a PR guy. I’m a publicist. My job is to blow up people’s images, to make them bigger than life, to get accolades for them to get opportunities for them. But just last year, I realized the dinosaur syndrome was getting closer and closer, and I’m really wasn’t looking for a meteor to strike the Earth. So instead of that happening, my thought was, how do I reinvent myself? And there’s an old adage, and it says you never take your apples to market without shining them first. So I needed to put a shine, a luster on my own brand. So now I started doing PR for who for me. Oh, and now look at me. I’m talking about the insights to how to be a publicist. I’m talking about the incredible success of the client base. And I had holes. I was leaving money on the table. No one does that. That’s business. 101. So instead of outsourcing social media now PR is sexy. It’s called earned media. Now I gave you the cover of The New York Times, the LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, the times. Pic of you. You are a hero. Hundreds of 1000s of people saw you that you can’t take it and very quietly put it in the top drawer and not tell anyone you have to do what, put it on social media. So now our social media team takes Ray’s hotshot PR, sticks it into a whole marketing campaign that reflects what your brand is. So Jen Drummond, that I just told you about, the climber, the 44 year old mom, beautiful on her way to papal New Guinea, just able to get into that country after someone was kidnapped, after a chopper pilot was killed. She’s going into a country that is a level three from the State Department, but she is a woman that won’t be denied. I just sent her pitch to Kelly Clarkson and Cameron Hall today, and they’re salivating to tell that story. So here’s the way I made myself better social media, you betcha, the whole world doesn’t want the earned media. It’s not as cool as influencers. It’s not as cool as likes. Well, for Jen, she’s getting plenty of likes, but she’s not getting as much engagement. For Dr Kwan Stewart, the veterinarian. He had a brother that blew his social media up, but the more press we got, all of a sudden, you see Katherine Heigl in LA seeing the fox story about the veterinarian. She says, Oh, what a kind hearted guy. 20 minutes later, 60,000 likes. So I stopped leaving money on the table. Now we do PR earned media. Now we do social media, entire marketing campaigns, and now there’s a thread of continuity, the same messages you see in the PR, the same messages you see on TV, the same messages you seem and see in social media. Then what do I do? I pay for myself. I know how to pitch. I’ve already pitched the story. I know everything about the client. Wouldn’t it be nice if they had to pay a grand total of nothing for me? Why wouldn’t I go to corporate America with the exact same story and say, Hey, Jen Drummond, here’s what she does when she takes off and leaves her seven kids. She has a jar of Hershey’s Kisses, and there are red ones and silver ones. The red ones mean love, and that means even though I’m away from you seven kids, this is a way for you and I to engage in just a love hug. And the silver ones are for courage. Mom, do your thing. Kids, be strong. I’ll be home soon. Who would I go after? Who would I pitch very first? Hershey. 90s, right? Yeah, they’re gonna love that. It’s not me making up silliness, it’s the reality. What car did she drive that saved her life? Porsche. Why wouldn’t I be all over that? She is a flawless rock of a woman. She is just an incredibly strong individual. She works like a wild child in the gym to be a climber, she never climbed in her life. She was an athlete as a kid, a soccer star, and this and that. But now, what does she look like? She looks perfect in those type of clothes. Why wouldn’t I go after vuori? Why wouldn’t I go after Rolex, all the stuff she loves staying feminine on the top of 15,000 feet in the air. So she has a dry shampoo she uses, and she looks incredible when she does live feeds from the mountain. So now the whole thing is a package, and that goes and that’s the perfect answer to the perfect question, how do you make it better? You make it better by not leaving money on the table. You make it better by not saying, oh, raise a great publicist, but he doesn’t know. Social media. You offer it all. I don’t have to be the king of that. I just need to hire the king of that,
Damon Pistulka 36:00
yeah, yeah. And that’s, and it’s really cool how you, you’ve woven the two together, because that gives, as you said, the continuity. It expands the audience so much and really helps. So I just want to, we got a comment here from Harriet. Harry, thank you for the introduction, and this is how we got together. You said, Ray is an inspiration, brilliant, a good human. Thank you, Damon, for this great show. Well, thanks for the comment today, Harry, I’m glad you could stop by. And so let’s talk a little bit about Quan because I want to the veterinarian client of yours to go through an example, because I think this is a cool one. Let’s do it.
Ray Drasnin 36:44
Yeah, here are here’s the perfect example. This guy I meet in the gym, and everyone tells them, sorry I was divergent there for a second. And everyone tells me, You got to meet Ray raise this national publicist. He works with people like you, it’s ridiculous that you do what you do and no one really knows about it. Here’s Quan story. It all starts with a backstory. There has to be remember, we talked about a feel good and go see Norah O’Donnell. Tell us the feel good. Here’s the backstory. Quans, dad is an African American. His mother is Hispanic. Quan ran track at a national level at university. Quans dad was a wide receiver for the Rams when they were. I believe in St Louis Quang comes to me and I say, My God, you’ve got everything. Quan looks like a halfback. He’s in his early 50s. He’s got ripped ads. You know, we’re hanging out in the men’s room doing business, but, you know, in the locker room doing business, it’s, that’s where they are. I’ve gotten clients in a steam room. And so I say to him, you’ve got everything right in the world, the world of 2024 a good looking guy. Tell me about your story. Well, right? I am running track, and I talked to my track coach, and he says, In my last year of university New Mexico, Well, son, what are you going to do? And he says, I’m going to be a veterinarian. And the coach, who happens to also be African American, says, well, that’s not really what our people do. And quans responses, watch this, he does end up going to the best veterinary school in the nation. He is the only black kid in that and he is changing that right now as we speak, we’re going to find I’m going to go after corporate sponsorships. And you know what the first one’s going to be? It’s going to be to support him as he goes to predominantly black universities and inspires those young kids to believe you can be more than the athlete, that you are more than the kid. You can break a mold. So Quan ends up doing that. He gets through veterinary school. He’s got $200,000 worth of bills from what do you call that? From vet school? Yes, and he’s working in Sacramento, and he is at one of the shelters, and he is really euthanizing. He is having to put down more puppies than he is able to save. He’s frustrated. He walks into a 711 on just yet another day to get yet another $2 cup of coffee, and he steps over a homeless man who happens to have a dog there. And on his way out, he looks at the homeless gentleman, and he looks at the dog, and he says, Excuse me, sir. My name is Dr Kwan Stewart. I’m a veterinarian, and I notice your dog is in distress. I can see that your animal is really itchy and that as far as disheveled, and I’ve got something for that. Would it be okay if I come back tomorrow, same 711 that he stopped over the same guy 10 million times and brings something for your dog. He comes back tomorrow, he does bring medication for the dog, and he also brings a Subway sandwich for the gentleman, the homeless man. This is incredible. And if you take a look at Dr Kwan, K, W, a n, e, Stewart, S T, E, W, A R T, and you see his acceptance speech for last year’s 2023 CNN, Hero of the Year, he will. This story better than me? Well, maybe, no, probably. So he gives the subway sandwich to the gentleman. The gentleman tears off a little piece of crust for himself and gives the rest to the dog. And this is the way the homeless treat their pets. And so Quan, all of a sudden realizes, wait a second, I do have a calling. And he looks to the heavens, and he does get inspiration. And he says, I’m going to take care of the homeless people’s pets. And what he believed previous to that, and he calls himself on this, is that, oh, maybe the homeless aren’t deserving of pets. Oh, maybe they can’t take care of them like we can in our beautiful homes. Maybe they can’t give them the same amount of time and dedication. It’s all wrong. That’s not true. Those are all holier than thou thoughts. Uh, man, they take better care. When I go with Quan, and he does this now, and I’ll share in a few seconds, he goes to the worst hood all over California and now all over the nation. We would go to Skid Row, and those dogs were perfect. They would never bark. They would never come at you. He would come right up to these pit bulls the size of a city, put his hands behind their legs, you know, to check out what’s going on inside. And they loved him. He was the pied piper. So Quan for 12 years, told no one, no one, what he did. He took money out of his pocket. He gave vaccinations to dogs. He spent $5,000 doing surgical operations for dogs who really needed it. How incredible is that? Then this good hearted guy, buying his own medication, delivering his own medication, having the fringes, having the little black bag going out with nothing but his scrubs. Good looking guy, six foot three, just a really charming individual, and a man who was brought up beyond compare. I mean, his parents must be godlike. Would go out and take care of them, and they love him. They run up to him and the dogs again, no barking. I think last year he laughed. He posted on social media for the first time in his veterinary career, 25 years or more, some little dog nipped him. It never even been, you know, nipped by a dog. So he decides that’s what he’s going to do. And he finds me. I say to him, let’s start. And we do start. He takes me downtown. We’re both from San Diego, into the hood, and we see what it’s like. It’s during covid. He’s there hugging it out with him, not even a mask. I’m 200 yards behind, like in a hazmat suit, scared. I mean, you know, he is wearing his heart on his sleeve. He loves these people, and they love him back. No hazmat suits for him. Up Close. Hi. My name is Dr Kwan Stewart. A formal introduction. I can see you have a dog here. Would it be okay if I checked him or her out, or your litter of cats, or your parakeet, or all the other crazy snakes and stuff that he’s seen over his years. And so I saw him do this. I saw the people run up to him. I saw him save endless animals. And I thought, this is kind of incredible. What am I going to do? Here’s PR Now, here’s the time again to be note taking. What do you do? First of all, you use local hooks. He’s from San Diego, and he used to live in LA. So what am I going to do? I’m going to go after San Diego and La media. La, second biggest media market in the nation. You get la media. Wow, that’s a God like way to start your campaign. Yeah. In the first two months, I get them five covers of magazines. Use local to spark national then all and we get photo features the front cover of the LA Times, the LA Times twice in two months. First the cover of the LA Times because there’s a mayor’s initiative to take care of the homeless, and he’s there doing that the next time a two page spread on the cover of the feature sucks, and no one gets the LA Times twice in two months. You have to wait a year until they do your story again, or longer. Then here’s second PR tip. Tip, Target, national and then International. So you start with local. They’re all sheep. Media don’t want to be the first one to do it, but I would invite them to go along to skid road. They’d all meet us at a McDonald’s. We would walk from our cars to Skid Row. We had no idea who we meet. Some of them are nuts. Some of them are crazy. Some of them are coming up and being belligerent to him or me or whatever, but that certainly is the few and far between. And they would go with us. I would have 15 people from the media following him with cameras. I’d be speaking in French and English and Spanish, and it kept getting better. So that was local to spark national. Then you use print to spark broadcast. So here’s broadcast broadcasters, radio and TV. How did they do PR? I’ll tell you how they look at the major daily newspaper, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, The Times Picayune in New Orleans and they see what were the biggest stories? Well, they could only send so many camera crews to so many places, whatever is left over if you’re on the front page, man, your guy is going to get TV, because you just got him print. So you use local to spark national. You use print to spark broadcast. So by the time we went to broadcast, we had him on Jennifer Hudson. We had him on the Today Show. Here’s and he had an ongoing gig. Now, year after year, it’s clear the shelters we’re going to help all the shelter dogs. Yeah, six foot three Quan hanging out with little Al Roker and The whole NBC team and 15 puppies that need to be adopted, and they all get adopted. They’re paying on the floor. They’re humping al rokers leg. They’re just ruining the whole perfect thing. And people can’t get enough of it. I get a call after that, we get a call, and it is from, I cannot tell you the name, but it is an A list Hollywood individual, and they have their own production company. They say we have seen this guy everywhere. We want to make a major motion picture about him. So the ramifications of this are incredible. Then we decided, Okay, let’s go after international. I have a great friend at the Associated Press. She cries after him going up to San Francisco, where she is based, she does a feature on him. It goes to 134 countries, and that adds another billion billion impressions to how many we got him last year. Now he’s been local, he’s been national, he’s been International. Wouldn’t it be nice if we were smart enough to nominate him for some accolades. So we does get nominated for CNN Hero of the Year amongst 10s of 1000s of people from endless countries, all doing incredible give back to the planet things. He wins, he gets $100,000 that evening. He turns around. This is unparalleled. This never happened in the history as Anderson Cooper hands him a big old $100,000 check. He says to the other nine finalists total of NFL, I’m going to give each one of you 10,000 you’re all doing something important. You’re all doing something special. I’m going to keep 10. Each one of you keep 10. Keep on, keeping on. By the time he gets back to sleepy little surf count San Diego, the San Diego foundation loves him so much they give him back the other 90,000 and say, keep doing what you’re doing. He became a hero. He already was a hero. But when CNN calls you Hero of the Year now, media can’t get enough of it, everyone wants to do yourself. Yeah, right. And here’s what happened from him, his favorite NBA store sent them everything signed right? That’s just part of these are the benefits of using a publicist. This is the way the world can happen. And don’t think just because you have a product or you have a service, as long as you’re a doer, as long as you’re a giver, as long as you have some philanthropic outreach, any of you can be these people. Here’s what happens to him. He gets connection to Hollywood. Now he’s the Chief Veterinary Medical Officer for John Legend and Chrissy teigens brand new dog food kiss. He gets a TV commercial with Lexus. So go into the car, take your beautiful the name of his dog is Cora. Of course, he got her from a shelter. Go both of you get into the Lexus. Say 15 words and bam, there’s another opportunity. He gets movie again, the Hollywood celebrity who says, I want to make a movie about your life. We launch a book for him. He gets a beer named after him. Corporate sponsors that now throat, no kidding, no exaggeration. Hundreds of 1000s a year. Every single cent goes to his nonprofit. Yeah, donate 750 grand for the GoFundMe, 500 million for Project street vet, again, Project street vet.org, if this guy’s returns you on, go show him love. And again, he doesn’t take a penny. So that’s what it looks like. That’s what happens. You get a guy who has a good heart that has a great backstory. You get a female that was in an accident, who should have been dead on the side of the road, decides to embrace life at a whole new level. You get a guy who is sitting in a jail cell who should have gone to prison. Somehow the universe gives him a break, and he decides, I’m going to create the biggest vehicle in the world. And tattooed on his arm, instead of 42 billion, what he was making, all of the path that he was on, he put another tattoo on this arm, and it says 42 billion, and that’s how many people he wants to reach. Now it’s like Jen, Jen Drummond, by the way. Jen drummond.com, sorry to sound like a commercial, but I love these people, and you should go see them. Yeah, that’s the climber. So now he realizes his vehicle is going to make philanthropy easier. It’s going to make it better. It’s going to make it more cohesive. They’re not going to see 60s and 40 percents going to the people who should never be taking a single dime of it. These are the stories that Nora O’Donnell tell us 20 minutes ago when you talked about, Well, Ray, they must be happy when you pitch them with your silly little feel good stories, you betcha.
Damon Pistulka 49:52
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s, I love, love getting to listen to you about this ray, because. You’ve taken these people that are doing great things and help them to get the get the exposure, and help them to get the relationships and the the financial backing that they can continue to just multiply and exponentially increase that impact. It’s so cool. Thank
Ray Drasnin 50:24
you for that, Damon, it is. It does build. Oops. I’m so sorry. That’s my evil dog.
Damon Pistulka 50:30
That’s alright. They’re good. They’re great, really. Get up, then you’ll see just fine, man. I’ve got one sitting here, and I’m lucky that he hasn’t gone off already too. But it’s Oh, he’ll
Ray Drasnin 50:40
start your dog, and then the whole thing will just go to hell in a handout. Yeah, it will. You are right. I do think about what I do. I do make a difference in their lives. I help turn on people that have Uber wealth to a cause that turns them on. And that’s why, if I were to mentor or counsel anyone that listens or watches your podcast, when I know there are a gazillion of them that do it is, don’t be trepidatious. Don’t be afraid. Oh, raise people were already big. No. They were just doing something good and kind. They didn’t know they were important. They didn’t know they were bigger than life. One’s just a mom and her eight year old challenges or, Oh, well, if you’re going to have a new lease on life, then go climb Mount Everest. So she does it. The other is losing money. He’s making no money. He’s killing more dogs than saving him. Then all of a sudden, now he takes the few dollars that are left to give to a cause, and now the world rewards him for his incredible generosity and empathy and capacity to give a ridiculous way to wake up. I love being me.
Damon Pistulka 51:41
That’s awesome. Ray, well, I tell you, I just wanted to say, from the people that were listening, we it’s time for us to wrap up today. Ray, I love having you on. We’re going to have to have you back again and talking some more of these great stories, and some of these people just, just the amazing stories that that you have and the amazing people that you’re helping and and like I said, you’re you’re showing how them, how to get the exposure, how to further their cause, and their the impact that they’re making. It’s such, it’s so awesome. So thank you. Purple penguin. PR, that’s what’s the website address, so we make sure we got that. Www
Ray Drasnin 52:18
purple Penguin, P, E, N, G, U, I N, P, R, like public relations.com There we go. Case studies, by the way, people go. Take a look so we don’t have endless time. You’ll see Quan who we talked about. You’ll see Debbie fields of Mrs. Fields cookies. Yes, Rob dertic. Remember Rob dertic on TV? Fantasy, DC shoes had never hide hired a PR firm. Rob Derek used to come over to my house and go, all right, I need to have a skate park, so I take them up and down the coast of California. Brian 800 got junk. You see him on national commercials all the time, tiny little Doug flute. He should have never been in the NFL, but was bigger than life. So again, I’ve been blessed go take a look at that, and if it inspires you, send me an email, Ray at purple Penguin, pr.com, and if I can give you insights, or if I can help you, or if I can help give you a vision that takes you from A to Z. So be it. Man, that’s why I’m here.
Damon Pistulka 53:18
That’s awesome. Ray, well, thanks for being here today. I don’t and I want to thank all the listeners out there today for listening and tuning in. I saw there was a bunch of you online. That’s awesome. Thanks so much. And if you got into this late, go back to the beginning and start over. Listen to Ray. Listen to how he is helping these people make it an awesome impact in our world. Make it even more awesome with his public relations and getting them out there and getting those those people, in front of more people so they can make a bigger difference. We will be back again next week, people. Thanks so much for being here. Ray, just hang out for a moment. We’ll finish up offline. You.
