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Today's episode of media magnet is a must listen for anyone ready to take their expertise beyond domestic media and onto the global stage. Shout out to all the Australian business owners here in my audience. You're probably familiar with source bottle, a fantastic local platform that connects journalists with expert sources for stories here in Australia and New Zealand today, we're diving into the international equivalent Help a Reporter Out, or Harrow, as it's better known. Think of Haro as the US version of sauce bottle, but on a massive global scale, just like sauce bottle, harrow allows journalists from major outlets like Fast Company entrepreneur and the New York Times to submit call outs for expert insights, which are then sent out to hundreds of 1000s of potential sources just like you from around the world. My guest is Brett farmelo, founder and CEO of featured.com and the driving force behind harrows recent revival, after a year long hiatus, harrow is back and connecting experts with journalists across the globe, opening up huge opportunities for Australian and New Zealand entrepreneurs to get featured in international media and build their reputation as industry leaders. In this conversation, Brett shares the inside story of harrows acquisition and comeback, explains how these platforms work and offers practical tips for pitching standing out and building your media profile. Whether you're new to media call outs or looking to expand your global reach, you'll walk away with actionable strategies to get noticed by journalists and grow your business through credible media exposure. Let's dive in. You
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Liz,
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hello and welcome to media magnet, the podcast for female founders and women owned businesses, startups and side hustlers who want to learn how to grow their business leveraging the media and free PR, I'm Liz Nabal, and I'm your host, personal publicist. PR, strategist and dedicated hype woman. My goal with this show is to give you a behind the scenes tour of how the media works, to break down the barriers between your business and the big mastheads, so you can see how easy it is to get featured simply by giving journalists what they want. At media magnet, you'll also get access to the top journals, editors, writers and PR people in your industry and beyond, sharing their secrets and expertise on the how, why, what and when of pitching and getting featured in the media consistently, I will share with you how to build your reputation as an industry expert so successfully, the media will be knocking down your door. When I first started in small business 12 years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had spent 15 years as a television news reporter working at several major networks in Australia, and then as a freelancer in the US and around the world. I spent years dividing my time between working long shifts on a news desk and traveling the world, chasing stories. It was unpredictable and exciting until it wasn't anymore. I decided I wanted a life where I was in charge of what happened next and where I was working to build my own empire, not someone else's. There was a lot I had to learn about running my own business, but getting media and great free PR was not one of them. I already knew what the media wanted. I knew the secret formula for what made news, and I knew how to leverage those media outlets to build my business, get more exposure and ultimately make more sales. I was featured in every major media outlet in the country, and I never spent a single cent on PR. I took that knowledge for granted until it dawned on me one day that I could teach what I knew to other businesses, let them in on the secret, and they too could build their brands with organic media and PR. Let me help you take your brand from Best Kept Secret to household name. This is media magnet, the podcast, and I'm pretty pumped to have you here.
Unknown Speaker 4:22
Hi, Brad, thanks for joining us on the podcast today. Thanks for having me. Liz, so a lot of Australians would be Australian businesses, particularly like the audience that I serve here at media magnet. On the podcast. Would know about media call out services like source bottle. But they probably, or no, maybe they might not have heard about Help a Reporter Out which is your business? Can you tell us a little bit about the business and and what you do? Sure? So Haro has been around since 2008
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it's the largest, most established network that.
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Is to connect expert sources with journalists for media stories. And so how it works is a journalist will submit a query, we'll have experts that will then receive an email newsletter three times a day with a summary of all those queries. And then sources can jump in, get connected with a journalist if they have any information to share about that story. So it's really cool we're seeing and I'm happy to jump into the backstory of health reporter out as well, because we just acquired it and have revived it. It took a year hiatus, and now it's back. Yeah, I'd love to know more about that, because when I first started
Unknown Speaker 5:38
in this business, was like around 2021 and you guys were around and then disappeared for a bit, and then came back. I'd love to hear about what that journey was like, and perhaps your background as well. Sure. Yeah. So the backstory was founded in 2008 acquired in 2010 and then operated under decisions label till 2024 was rebranded to connectively, and then connectively was discontinued in December of 24 and that's when we reached out to see if they would be interested in giving it a new home and a fresh life. And so we brought it back. We announced the acquisition, I think, in April 15, and here we are. It's officially day six of help reporter out being back, and since that revival, we've seen hundreds of queries come in from journalists that I've severely underestimated the enthusiasm that would be that the news would receive from the community of of it being back. People certainly love having the these email newsletters in their inbox, because it means free publicity, and it means that one of the, the most, the best ways for a journalist or a reporter to get connected with virtually anyone in the world. Yeah, that's so cool. I didn't realize I was so quick to the mark, because I was getting your emails, obviously, then didn't get them during that down period, and then started getting them, like, a week ago, which is when I reached out to you and said, I'm and said, I'd love to have you on the podcast. So day six. It's exciting. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. Like we've just been in in the inbox email. The mantra that we're living by over here is email by email, day by day, we're getting better. So you know, we have a large amount of sources who have subscribed and who are signed up, and entirely free on both sides, free for the journalists, free for sources. And it's a newsletter, ad supported business. And so that's how you know the business is able to be viable, awesome. And are you in? Are you from a media background? Tell us a little bit about you. Yeah. So I
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had an early experience with help reporter out. I was featured on in NASDAQ, of all places, talking about retirement planning tips as a millennial, so accounting background, so I'm a nerd with numbers and things like that. I ran a marketing agency for 10 years. I got it to rank on page one of Google for the term digital marketing company, started a digital marketing company and serviced more than 500 small businesses. Also helped the actor Hugh Jackman launch a charitable coffee company that was acquired by Keurig. And this is my fourth startup that I founded and led couple acquisitions, most of them in the media space. So yeah, having a having a good time with this one, also the the thing that led us to actually acquire help Reporter Out is a startup that I founded called featured.com and featured basically helps you get featured in the media. It very similar, connects, gives experts exposure, gives free content to publishers, and so very similar in that any publisher can request to get expert insights, and then we'll have added experts answer those queries and submit the best insights to publishers. So this is a natural extension of what we are already doing for the last three and a half years. Yeah. Cool. So you're like a serial entrepreneur. I love that American culture, that innovative culture that you guys have
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in the States, it's so cool that you can do so many, have so many different businesses and and have that kind of innovative startup culture. Yeah, well, you know, hopefully this one works, and I don't have to be a serial entrepreneur. I could be, you know, someone who could go to Australia and learn about your culture? Yeah, absolutely. So tell me a bit about Help a Reporter Out in terms of what is your database like? So if, if, if you're like, what's your sort of reach like at the moment, in terms of numbers, it's crazy. It's crazy. Like I said, it's, it's, I'm not exaggerating, when you can literally get connected with anyone in the world. Because the world. Because as a journalist, if you put your query out there in this email newsletter, it's going out to hundreds of 1000s of people, and that network effect is real. Like, I don't know what the exact number is of the network effect, but when I've seen a query go out there and they're looking for really hard to.
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By an expert, because it goes out to so many people, someone knows someone that they could forward it on to and get that that connection. So that's the real magic of the service, is that it's a sizable, engaged base of sources who want to be featured in the media, but also a very helpful community that's willing to take their network along and then help reporters out. Yeah, I love that. So I'm just going to recap for anyone who might not have used source bottle yet, where I'm assuming that everyone knows what sauce bottle is, and that they then, in turn, know what you guys do, but to kind of quantify for anyone listening who's brand new to this call out thing, basically, Brett's business is similar to an Australian business called sauce bottle, where media will come to him, let's say Forbes magazine or Marie Claire magazine or the New York Times, and say we're looking for an entrepreneur or an expert or a source of information for this story that we're working on. And then Brett's business takes that call out essentially, and blasts it to how many 1000s of people would you say you've got on your database roughly? Yeah, no, exact numbers, but it's in the hundreds of 1000s. Yeah. So huge, huge. And source bottle has a huge, obviously, a huge database. But, you know, we talked about this, you know, the US population is, like, you know, 10 times our size or something. So I can only imagine how many hundreds of 1000s of people on that list. People on that list, which is huge. So I guess harrow opens those doors for Australian entrepreneurs, which is the for the most part, the listeners to this show, they will be Australian. There's a couple of international business owners on here, but we're largely talking to an Australian, New Zealand audience. It really opens up those opportunities, doesn't it, to get featured and to build your business and build your reputation as your reputation as an industry expert? Yeah, absolutely. Like you mentioned, there's a lot of publications that use the service that are based in the United States, but I would also say it's got a global reach. In terms of publications, we see quite a few requests coming from, like our most second, second most popular country is the United Kingdom, and I think third is actually Australia and New Zealand. So there's actually a pretty sizable base of experts already using arrow in Australia, New Zealand. And we do see, you know, quite a few different submissions come come through that area. So yeah, it's a great way. I think it's about 65% of the bases in the United States. So great way to reach publications like USA Today, CNET, fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc, and many others. Yeah. Give us a little bit more of a snapshot of the kinds of media outlets that you are dealing with. Yeah. Yeah. So it, it varies. And, you know, I think that we see our probably most popular category is business and finance, along with technology. But then you also see lifestyle, Home and Garden, health care, you know, and then, just like, general type of categories and queries, so it runs the gamut. And really it's because reporters, when they're writing their stories, need expert sources to verify the information that's being featured in those articles. Oftentimes, those are professions that they don't have immediate access to, and so you'll see a lot of queries that are pretty odd and but they go out there, and ultimately, you know, it's, it's a pretty speedy connection that typically happens. And would you have any sort of advice for, I guess, anyone using it for the first time in how to kind of get that media win? So when I know with sauce bottle BEC has, you know a few tips and tricks about how quickly you should reply, the kinds of things you should be including in your you know, your pitch reply to them is that similar to Harrow? Or what kind of insight can you give this audience? I think it's pretty identical. In terms of those tips, I would probably recycle those and apply them to Help a Reporter Out. I think that the biggest tip is just respond to the stuff that you're ultimately qualified for, and that you actually that the baseline that we have is if the response helps a Reporter Out press send, if it doesn't refrain from sending like that's pretty much what you got to focus on. I would also, you know, make yourself available to connect further, but give all the information that a reporter needs to take it and to run to print. Oftentimes, these are really deadline driven type of content creators that that need a source immediately, and this is like one of the last finishing pieces on their story, they just need a good quote, so provide them the quote, provide them the contact information, provide them the attribution. Basically eliminate any need for them to go back to you, but also keep that door open in case they do need to go back verify the source our follow up for additional information. Yeah, when I spoke to Beck, which would have been a couple of years ago now, about source bottle, she we sort of talked a bit. We sort of debunked the myths of what a lot of business owners, who are otherwise known as the sources in these call out services will get these call outs and think, oh, there's probably hundreds of.
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Responses, I won't bother. What would you say to that? I'd say it's true. I would say that there is a lot of stuff that can come into a reporter's inbox, but if you truly have value, then you are valuable. So it doesn't matter about the quantity, it's more so about the quality. Yeah, so put Do you have an idea of how many like responses you're getting to a call out, or does that depend on what kind of call out it is? I think it depends on the call out, the more general, the higher the number. So I think that, you know, it doesn't matter about I mean, it does matter in terms of speed, in terms of the quality that you're submitting, but oftentimes it's, it's like, there's no it's worth submitting, I would say. And an example of this is that I put out a query myself as as a content creator, writing an article, and, you know, then I got slammed with a bunch of stuff, and two, three days went by before I was actually able to respond to some of those queries. And so the some of the best queries were the ones that came in two three days after, in addition to the ones that came in immediately. So there's a smattering of really high quality responses. But I wouldn't let time or your own mental get in the way of pressing send. You just press send. See what happens. And ultimately, you know, if you look for media wins, this is a really good way to go about it in terms of, I guess, Australian and New Zealand business owners pitching themselves or responding to call outs as sources. Do you think that that that pitch process is relevant the same way it's relevant in Australia? Or
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is there different sort of touch points about pitching to the US media
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that you would like want to share with this audience. Or does it work exactly the same way? I think it works bit in a very similar capacity, like I don't, I wouldn't over complicate it in terms of the it's it's been around since 2008 the one of the reasons why we acquired this is because it's proven in terms of product market fit and in in the simplicity of just connecting with a reporter via an email. So it's, it's really simple at its core, and I think that that's, that's why it works. So I think that, you know, for anyone that's looking to that's in Australia, and New Zealand looking to connect with us based reporters. I wouldn't over complicate it at the end of the day, if you have something useful to that adds value to the story, I think that that's all that matters. Do you think you need to have, like, a product or service that you're looking to expand into international markets with to make this service relevant? Or can it be really any kind of business? I think it could be any kind of business like, you know, for example, one of the topics that went out today for Fast Company was the rise of work patients. And so it's basically like people who are working remotely for an extended amount of time. And so that one's pretty global. Like, you could be in Australia, you could be here in Arizona, and be able to respond and say, Hey, I run this company that does x, y, z, that's, you know, helps other companies do work cations or or whatever, or you took a workation yourself, and you're able to respond to that. So I think that, you know, there's some queries that are location specific. Reporters are really good at calling that information out to limit the amount of irrelevant queries that they receive. So there's probably, you know, a lot of people that are looking for Australia based business, so I think the key is to monitor those queries respond to the ones that make sense. So you think like us based journalists, and not like they're not going to, you know, discount an Australian source necessarily just because they're based in Australia. Now, I think that one of the things that platforms like RC is a very high volume of submissions that are not relevant. That's one of our top priorities in acquiring this here, here on day six. That's why the mantra is email by email, day by day, we've got to get better. And so we've placed a huge emphasis in restoring trust in hero that requires us to fully get rid of a lot of the misinformation that goes out via via AI. Can you give any tips to, I guess, the source side, like business owners, founders and entrepreneurs, on how they should use the service effectively. And I think along the lines of what you were saying was, don't just respond to every single call out for the sake of it and make sure that you you're relevant in what you're saying. Yeah. So for any startup founder, marketer, PR agency that's looking to leverage help, reporter out some of the very first tips that that I have is to listen, first off, sign up for the service at helper reporter.com Look at all the different queries that are coming through, and learn a little bit about what journalists are actually looking for before you actually jump in and reply to everything. Then I would put.
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Proceed a little cautiously. Respond to the stuff that you're super qualified for, make a couple pitches, get those easy wins in terms of media placements, and from there, you know, I think that you can expand and get a little more confident in your outreach, but that's, that's what I always recommend, is to listen first, try to better understand how you can add value to a reporter. And then, you know, get in, where you fit in and make some relevant pitches. Yeah, cool. And so when they, when someone goes in to set themselves up for the first time as a source, can you just explain a little bit about that process and how to set themselves up for best possible outcome? Yeah, so it's really limited in terms of the the feature set that we have currently on on Harrow, you just go to helpreporter.com you put in your email address, you verify that that address, and you're set in terms of now receiving an email anywhere from one to three times a day with a morning, afternoon and evening edition that has a summary of all the journalist queries from from within that edition, and so you have to do a lot of monitoring, a lot of filtering to find the right opportunities there with featured.com if you sign up for a free featured account and you set keyword alerts through featured then you're able to effectively monitor, help reporter out, since we do cross post many of the queries over to the feature.com and just for clarity, we own both. So we own hero, we own feature.com so there's a lot of overlap and synced opportunities between the two. So that's what I would recommend, is number one, go to helpreporter.com sign up, and then number two, set up keyword alerts through feature.com to best monitor those opportunities. Awesome. And do you have any sort of stats yet? Probably not. But on what the chances of getting featured are, or is, it really does is that quite variable? Well, there's a couple of variables. We have three and a half years of data of running feature.com and I think it really just depends on a couple of things. Number one is, are you submitting everything and in which case you're gonna have a really low success rate if you're answering every question and you're not qualified for it. So that's one is sticking to your actual expertise. Number two is, what's the competitiveness of the publication here in the US? Everyone wants to be featured on, you know, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times, and those are going to be incredibly competitive. And so if you're submitting for these quote, unquote, high authority publications, those are going to typically be a little more competitive. You might see a lower success rate with that. But if you follow best practices in terms of sticking to your expertise, adding valuable perspective, then I think that it's a pretty, pretty good win rate that that you could expect. Yeah, making sure, and this is what I sort of teach inside my business to my students, is preparing them to pitch so that they're not going in cold to a service like yours and trying to respond to every single call out, even if it's not the right fit for them. So understanding kind of, you know, what is newsworthy about your business, how to pitch in a succinct way, being flexible and responding quickly when a journalist comes back to you and asks for, you know, more information on those sorts of things, and really being able to talk in a really succinct way about the topic, and being confident to to kind of share your opinion, and, you know, speak in, you know, good media grabs and those sorts of things is always really helpful. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, excellent. So anything else before we go? I think this is for my audience, possibly the first time they've sort of been introduced to this service, which is awesome. So just getting on there and getting themselves set up, is that the first thing they should do and then have a little look around and,
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you know, see what the opportunities are on the platforms? Yeah, I think that you'll be shocked by the simplicity. So there's really nothing that you could do other than sign up and get these emails and then respond to those queries. So it's an entirely email based product to help reporter
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and then feature.com is an actual platform, so you're actually able to sign up, create a profile, have that information saved. They're two very different products. So for any marketer, startup founder, agency that's looking to increase their media exposure. I'd encourage you to take a look at both, see which one fits, and double down on the stuff that works. Yeah, awesome. Thanks. Brett, well, I look forward to sort of following your journey and watching the business continue to grow and improve, because I know it's been missed by a lot of people in its when it you know, in its downtime in the last couple of years. Yeah, it's exciting. I'm excited to see where we take it, and excited to support, you know, hundreds of 1000s of people around the world, including Australia. So thanks for having me on Well, thanks, Brett. This episode of media magnet was brought to you by my signature group coaching program, the media masters Academy. You.
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The media masters Academy is a live, online, six week course taught by me and designed to teach you how to become your own publicist and give you exclusive access to pitch the country's top journalists and editors. Doors open just three times a year. Check it out at Liz nabal.com along with a ton of free resources to help you get started taking your business from Best Kept Secret to household name right now. If you love this episode of media magnet, please share it with your business buddies or on social media and tag me at at Liz underscore Nabal. And if there's a specific guest you want to hear from on the show, or a topic or question you want to know more about, please tell me so I can make sure the show stays dedicated, especially for you. You.
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