How I ended up on TV with Karren Brady

This is a story all about how, my life got flipped, turned upside down, take 1 little second, just sit right there, and I will tell you how I met Karren and got on the Air. 

Get strapped in, flick the kettle on! We are going on a journey to show you how I got the call up from the vice chairman of West Ham United - Karren Brady.

Picture the scene, it's 2016, David Cameron has just announced the European Referendum (Great decision Dave), Leicester City have won the Premier League and Uptown Funk isn't an annoying song YET ...While this was all taking place, I was working out how to get my face out there into the corporate world. It wasn't easy, but this is how I did it.

It wasn't by hiring a PR Agency and I don't have any media training, I just looked up how to put together a press release and then I went for it! I put in all the info that I thought my local newspapers would be interested in.

Once I had put together my press release, I went onto the local newspapers online. I used the search function on the site to find any previous articles written about bin collections. Under the articles were the names of the journalists who had created them. Sometimes they had a link to their email address, other times I searched the land of Twitter so I could reach out to them there.

Then all I did was CLICK SEND!

Before I carry on…HERE'S MY QUICK TIPS FOR A COMPELLING PRESS RELEASE

• Create an intriguing headline that will capture the attention of the journalist (The journalist will probably receive around 50 Press Releases a day).
• Include your business logo & a couple of quality high resolution images (Local newspapers are strapped for both time and money. Make their life easier by having the images ready with no need for a photographer to be sent – More chance of the newspapers picking up your story).
• Include some quotes that add to the story. Imagine what questions the journalists would ask if they were to interview you.
• If you aren’t a strong writer then hire a copywriter to write for you, as a poorly written piece may not give out the right story to the journalist. If it’s someone with a background in journalism, then even better!

Within the next 48 hours, a couple of the journalists had called me. After having a chinwag, one of the local journalists told me that bin collections were one of their hot topics, so to quote them ‘We get more clicks & comments about bin collections & pot holes then we do about anything else’

This worked for me, but there are a few websites that specialise in helping you get media mentions. They aren’t all free and I’ve not personally tried or tested them, but they may come in handy for you. Here’s FIVE, click the links to take a look at how they might help you.

• Help A Reporter Out
• Muck Rack
• Media Kitty
• ProfNet
• Source Bottle

One of the journalists I spoke to worked for the Bolton News and liked what I was aiming to do and what I was about, so they decided to print the Busy Bins story in their paper, this then caused a snowball effect. I didn’t know this at the time but there was a casting agent who lived in London, they had family in Bolton and was visiting them over the weekend. They were having a browse of the Bolton News and managed to stumble upon my story and were on the hunt for entrepreneurs, so it was a little bit of luck that the casting agent noticed the article.

The Regional Newspaper the MEN also picked up my story and ran with it. Being spotted in the MEN opened some real avenues for me and the business. After being in the MEN, this led to the Daily Mail and then onto Radio 5 Live, BBC Radio Manchester, BBC Radio Leeds and BBC Radio Essex. Once I hadn’t made a fool of myself on the radio, that is when the TV crews came calling. ITV News and BBC news wanted to run a short story on my services, and I appeared on there. Then I managed to get a little prime time slot on Good Morning Britain. Once I had been around the TV Channels, BBC News surprisingly asked me to come back on at a later date to speak about politics; it was the general election coming up and they wanted to chat to young entrepreneurs. (Who knew it, a binman talking about politics).

After I fought back the nerves and managed to regurgitate some form of sentences on TV, the casting agent I mentioned before got in touch with me and pitched to me about Karren B (Baroness Karren Brady of Knightsbridge to you) and their idea of following small businesses around for a year, to see how they progress and manage in 12 months. The show ‘Give it a Year’ on ITV was viewed by over 2 million people! I was quite nervous about it all, but now that I look back I can honestly say that it was one of the best business decisions I made. Just to be able to get my story out there and to help people put a face to my business really helped our progression and customer base. I know it seems like all this happened quickly, but this all took place over the space of 2 years.

This is my quick story on how I ended up on TV with star of the Apprentice: Karren Brady. My advice...pester your local journalists, you don't know where that first little piece of PR could lead you. I have noted down some items below that I feel newspapers are always looking for…which you can hopefully use to base your story around if you are looking for some news coverage. I hope you enjoyed.

Our favourite Karren Brady, actually came back to pay us a visit again a few years back, although, this time she didn't seem that interested and was very flat!!! See if you can spot why on the video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91MQHQPvf9M 

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