Michael Hummel is the founder and CEO at Establish PR. It’s a PR firm that specializes in helping Start-ups and Emerging Fund Managers to scale up their fundraising efforts by leveraging Reputation and Relationships through the power of PR.
What this means is that Michael is the guy you call BEFORE you raise capital for your next fund or startup so that you will be wildly successful with your investors in your pursuit of Making Billions.
WANT TO LEARN HOW THE BEST INVESTORS MAKE MONEY? SIGNUP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER:
https://mailchi.mp/d41cfc90bd9f/subscribe-to-newsletter
Subscribe on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTOe79EXLDsROQ0z3YLnu1QQ
Connect with Ryan Miller:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rcmiller1/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makingbillionspodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_MakingBillons
Website: pentiumcapitalpartners.com
www.accesswire.com
www.qwoted.com
www.spyfu.com
www.thestartupshortcut.com
Email Michael at intro@establishpr.com and mention Making Billions with Ryan Miller to receive a free curated list of 25 investors for you
[THE GUEST]: Michael Hummel is the founder and CEO at Establish PR. It’s a PR firm that specializes in helping Start-ups and Emerging Fund Managers to scale up their fundraising efforts by leveraging Reputation and Relationships through the power of PR.
[THE HOST]: Ryan is a Venture Capital & Angel investor in technology and energy. He achieved market-beating placement growth in his first 5 years in the industry.
Support the showDISCLAIMER: The information in every podcast episode “episode” is provided for general informational purposes only and may not reflect the current law in your jurisdiction. By listening or viewing our episodes, you understand that no information contained in the episodes should be construed as legal or financial advice from the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for legal, financial, or tax counsel on any subject matter. No listener of the episodes should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information included in, or accessible through, the episodes without seeking the appropriate legal or other professional advice on the particular facts and circumstances at issue from a lawyer, finance, tax, or other licensed person in the recipient’s state, country, or other appropriate licensing jurisdiction. No part of the show, its guests, host, content, or otherwise should be considered a solicitation for investment in any way. All views expressed in any way by guests are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the show or its host(s). The host and/or its guests may own some of the assets discussed in this or other episodes, including compensation for advertisements, sponsorships, and/or endorsements. This show is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as financial, tax, legal, or any advice whatsoever.
Michael Hummel is the founder and CEO at Establish PR. It’s a PR firm that specializes in helping Start-ups and Emerging Fund Managers to scale up their fundraising efforts by leveraging Reputation and Relationships through the power of PR.
What this means is that Michael is the guy you call BEFORE you raise capital for your next fund or startup so that you will be wildly successful with your investors in your pursuit of Making Billions.
WANT TO LEARN HOW THE BEST INVESTORS MAKE MONEY? SIGNUP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER:
https://mailchi.mp/d41cfc90bd9f/subscribe-to-newsletter
Subscribe on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTOe79EXLDsROQ0z3YLnu1QQ
Connect with Ryan Miller:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rcmiller1/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makingbillionspodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_MakingBillons
Website: pentiumcapitalpartners.com
www.accesswire.com
www.qwoted.com
www.spyfu.com
www.thestartupshortcut.com
Email Michael at intro@establishpr.com and mention Making Billions with Ryan Miller to receive a free curated list of 25 investors for you
[THE GUEST]: Michael Hummel is the founder and CEO at Establish PR. It’s a PR firm that specializes in helping Start-ups and Emerging Fund Managers to scale up their fundraising efforts by leveraging Reputation and Relationships through the power of PR.
[THE HOST]: Ryan is a Venture Capital & Angel investor in technology and energy. He achieved market-beating placement growth in his first 5 years in the industry.
Support the showDISCLAIMER: The information in every podcast episode “episode” is provided for general informational purposes only and may not reflect the current law in your jurisdiction. By listening or viewing our episodes, you understand that no information contained in the episodes should be construed as legal or financial advice from the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for legal, financial, or tax counsel on any subject matter. No listener of the episodes should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information included in, or accessible through, the episodes without seeking the appropriate legal or other professional advice on the particular facts and circumstances at issue from a lawyer, finance, tax, or other licensed person in the recipient’s state, country, or other appropriate licensing jurisdiction. No part of the show, its guests, host, content, or otherwise should be considered a solicitation for investment in any way. All views expressed in any way by guests are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the show or its host(s). The host and/or its guests may own some of the assets discussed in this or other episodes, including compensation for advertisements, sponsorships, and/or endorsements. This show is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as financial, tax, legal, or any advice whatsoever.
Ryan Miller
Hi, my name is Ryan Miller and for the past 15 years have helped hundreds of people to raise millions of dollars for their funds and for their startups. If you're serious about raising money, launching your business or taking your life to the next level, in the show will give you the answers so that you too can enjoy your pursuit of making billions. Let's get into it.
The question I get asked the most is, how do I raise capital? Well, in this week's episode, Michael Hummel and I are going to share with you some of the cheat codes to get investors to flock to you with more money in less time. Let's get into it.
Hey, welcome to another episode of making billions. I'm your host, Ryan Miller. And today I have my dear friend Michael Hummel. Michael is the founder and CEO at established PR. It's a PR firm that specializes in helping startups and emerging fund managers to scale up their fundraising efforts by leveraging reputation and relationships through the power of PR. So what this means is that Michael is the guy you call before you raise capital for your next fund or your startup so that you will be wildly successful with your investors. So Michael, welcome to the show, man.
Michael Hummel
Hey, Ryan, so glad to be here, man, big fan, really cool. Just what you have going on here at the making billions community. To be honest, when I came across the podcast, just the title got me excited. I was like, Man, I'm thinking big, I gotta, I gotta meet him. So really, really excited to be here today, and hopefully, you know, add a lot of value to the community that you'd be able to build.
Ryan Miller
Yeah, thank you very much. We've been very fortunate with the success. We're already in the top 2% in the world. And obviously, when I launched it, a lot of my friends were big fans, but they're also not surprised. They're like, Well, Brian started a podcast, I'm not surprised that that's the name. But playing big thinking big. That's the name of the game. And that's how we make it and we do it together through reputation relationships. So with that, I've I've looked you up. And I've seen many things that you're working on. But I'm just curious, how did you get started in this industry? And you know, why, why how does that apply to entrepreneurs and emerging fund managers?
Michael Hummel
Yeah, you know, it's been a journey to be to be quite honest, you know, I actually started out in the exact opposite type of a world with my entrepreneurial journey. And it all started for me when I launched a Facebook ad agency. It was like, right when that was big hype, I'm sure that you saw some of the gurus out there pushing that SMMA. I'm like, You're telling me, I'm a young kid, early, early 20s. And I'm like, You're telling me, I can charge someone a couple $1,000 a month, and just do that from home? Crazy. Crazy. So I went all in on trying to do that. And it went quite well, to say the least, you know, I grew that company really rapidly went from about zero to $100,000 a month, in just under a year, that was pretty crazy for me being early 20s, kind of going from very, very low income, job income to now having pretty much a functioning business. So that was really exciting. But I realized that my passion wasn't necessarily in media buying. So when I thought about long term growth and development with the company, it kind of was unclear to what I would be able to do. It was kind of like, am I going to be the greatest ad buyer media buyer in the world? Is that really where I'm going to excel in? And quite frankly, the answer was no, at that time, my skill sets was also just not building a team. So I decided to pivot and go into something that I feel like is a skill of mine and allowed me to grow so fast, which was outbound acquisition of clients actually growing a company. That's really where I figured out a pretty unique system. So I transitioned from running an agency to helping early stage agencies basically scale faster, I was like, Look, I grew from zero to 100 grand a month, let me show you how to add $10,000 A month MRR like that, that was like the bread and butter I helped over 1000 early stage ad agencies within a two year period to do just that went pretty well. And it was a lot of fun. And then one thing kind of led to another. And I actually had like COVID hit and it was kind of a time in my life where I'm like, what's next? Am I just going to teach agencies this this system for forever? What am I actually going to do? Again, just going back to how I got into this, that business was going pretty well. And one day I actually got featured in Yahoo Finance. And it was a friend of mine. That was NPR that he did that for me as a favor. And I was like, Oh, cool. Nice. Very great. Yep. Go ahead. Give me an article. That sounds sounds perfect. And when it happened, when the when the article came out, it was like this feeling of excitement for myself. I know sounds kind of cheesy, but I was just like, Oh, I'm a real business owner, you know, because I was still young, I was still early in the game, and boom, someone else is talking about me. So it felt good. But that was about all the thoughts that I put into it. So I posted on my Instagram, I had to take pretty long flight. It's about an eight hour flight. So I just post share it. Hopefully some people think I'm cool now great. And hopped on the plane when I landed is when I when I realized that this was something that had been overlooked. I had over 100 DMS I don't have that big of a following on social media, my family, my friends, old clients, people reached out from all over the place to essentially congratulate me ask how they could get involved. And it was just it was it was nothing that I'd ever experienced before it was kind of when I went from just direct response, spend $1 make 234 to this thing called brands and status. And I've never experienced it and I was the first time to take things further. And when I realized it was actually a big thing was in the business. I actually started making more money. So our sales team actually started bringing up the fact that in their sales calls people explicitly say when they bought that the reason they went with us versus someone else is before they bought they Googled our name. They found the article and that was enough to choose US versus a competitor. So went pretty hard into that. And yeah, it's been going pretty well since then. And yeah, that's that's kind of the come up per se, for PR,
Ryan Miller
that's such a phenomenal story that's a big story with a lot of investors is or fund managers or entrepreneurs, whatever it is, is you started and you dabbled and you figured out what you liked. And this is refinement process, and then boom, eventually it hits. And you're like, I found my thing. I'm so happy that that happened. And I know there's a lot of people listening to show that are still looking for that right now. And it came to the right place. Now, that's how you started. And so you became an expert. Now I know you're backed by some some good funds. But with that you've achieved that you've raised capital from professional investors, you've built your firm, tell me about establish, tell me about your firm? How does it work with founders and emerging fund managers? Maybe walk us through a little bit of that on how you help people raise capital through PR?
Michael Hummel
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I'll take a step back, because you know, you touched on something really important. And as one of our core principles, it's, we've gone through the raising capital process ourselves, we actually kind of hit this point as a firm, where we weren't sure how to scale to the next level, and you're like, what do we what do we do? What are we going to do? The masterminds weren't doing it for us, you know, we couldn't just find a mentor or find a company doing the same thing. We really needed some like cash infusion, some strategic help. And we found this private equity partner that was perfect. And we were able to start a conversation with them, and went through their very intense due diligence process, it took us around six, maybe eight months to basically lock it in and close the deal, they have less than a 1% acceptance rate into their portfolio that gave us this insight into what people go through when trying to raise money, whether it's for venture capital fund managers, it's not easy, right outside looking in it's doesn't doesn't seem nearly as difficult as it truly is the the steps that are involved. And, you know, we obviously had quite a lot of success with that. So we've been using those principles from actually going through it for ourselves and getting so much success for our clients to basically continue to help with that process. And what we're doing now we've worked with over 1000 Different companies, helping them get into over 10,000 Publications at this point, just as last week, we've set up nearly 100 conversations for our clients with investors to actually coordinate the conversations of investing into their startups, there's countless examples, we've probably raised nearly $100 million combined for all of the clients that have been working with us over the years. And that's a very conservative lowball number, and I'm sure we're gonna be heading out significantly more from from here on out.
Ryan Miller
I love it. And do you have any success stories of some of the clients that you're able to help in raising capital establish?
Michael Hummel
Yeah, absolutely. You know, one that's really prominent and just comes to mind is we had a client a feature on Yahoo Finance, just a simple publication. And he was just trying to raise a seed round, we didn't even reach out to investors. We didn't do any, like introductions and warm intros or anything. And an investor stumbled onto his article reached out, and they funded, they led the round for $1.5 million raised seed round just from seeing an article. And that was kind of like one of our earlier wins that showed us. Wow, PR matters a lot. Right? At the end of the day, early stage funding, especially pre Series A, what is it that an investor is buying into? It's a story? It's betting on the jockey, not on the not on the horse? Right? So it's all about how compelling how clearly can you articulate what it is that you're building? And how can you get other people to talk about what you're doing and make it exciting, right? If you think about the big companies out there that exploded almost overnight, that got funding almost without trying, it's typically because there's this FOMO in the market to where the investor sees one thing, and then it just has a spark, and things compound. And that's and that's what we do is we try and get that spark ignited through PR through more conversations and, and make the fundraising process a lot more smooth for the founder
Ryan Miller
of my friend, Brett Martin, shout out to him over at Charge Ventures, but he says FOMO he calls it FOMO fundraising. He's like, Oh, it's catnip to investors at VC guys. So that FOMO is very, very powerful. And when they feel that fear of missing out, I think PR helps to engage that moment. Like Michael has said, that is phenomenal story. So and you're absolutely right in the early stages taken for me in the in the VC space. In the beginning, there's not a lot of accompany to even dissect and invest in. And that's the part that Michael was talking about. Was he saying it's more betting on the jockey and not so much on the horse, meaning more on the founders and less on the company is what makes you close the deal. Therefore, by investing in PR, that in my opinion, and Michael, you didn't say this, but I certainly will. It's kind of like your pitch deck for you. For the jockey the jockeys, pitch deck is the PR is whatever Google search results show up. And so that's why when there's a podcast or articles, or I'm in in Forbes, and I'm on the World Economic Forum, whatever. So you see all of these accolades for a lot of founders, that is quite convincing. In fact, I had an investment that I did a couple years back, and he literally walked through like his elevator pitch. And by the end, I was like, Dude, shut up, take my money. It was amazing. So he was like, we developed this thing. We're in like five different countries already. We're just getting started. Oh, yeah. By the way, were backed by the UN, the World Bank. My partner and I were Forbes top 30 under 30. And I was like, what is happening? So is the technology sounded amazing, but it was still very early. But when I started to find out and I started to search these guys, and they're Forbes 30, under 30, and their connections to the World Bank, and all these wonderful things they're doing to alleviate poverty around the world and bring energy and all these things. It was awesome. That was what tip over the edge. And a good way to make the investment was I saw all of these things that they personally were doing. And they validated that it was it was a lot of their pitch deck, seeing that they were in Forbes, they were on these councils, and there was data online to actually find the fact that they were on the council, you can do all these wonderful things that no one ever heard of, it's not particularly helpful when you're raising capital. So I think Michael's point is do these great things, you're doing great things, whether you're emerging fund manager, venture capital, private equity, real estate doesn't matter, or a founder, you're doing all these wonderful things. But it is so important if you're going to raise money that the market knows about it. And that's where people like Michael, come in. So now that we've kind of established that PR is a really great Think of it like your pitch deck for you. And if you're early, that's what you need to focus on as well. I'm wondering if you've through your experience, you've done all these wonderful things. You've raised capital, both institutional capital, you bootstrap companies, you've done all of these things. I wonder if you can share for the rest of the show. Maybe we can talk about three things or more that you find most helpful, and not just what people should focus on. But I'm very curious on how let's talk about how let's give them some cheat codes. How, for example, how do people do press releases?
Michael Hummel
Yeah, let's let's dive into it. And I mean, you said something really important there, where it's like, what's the first thing that investor does after they have a conversation with you receiving any trouble you Google the founders, just like that, right. So I mean, probably the most simple thing that any founder any anyone listening to this could do is just talk about what they're doing with a press release a press release being the most simple, cost effective way and a guaranteed way for you to just put your name out there to tell your story in a way that will allow them to read it on their own talk a platform that that I really like, I'll give you all the deeds for everything we got, we got a few things. So let's first talk about the platform, the preferred platform is access wire, it's really cost effective. It's about $300, to purchase a press release, and to publish it and put it out online. Now, the reason access wires really great is they have partnerships with Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg, business, insider, NASDAQ, all these giant publications. And all those publications have really good relationships with Google. What's that mean? Simply, if you put yourself in a press release, and are strategic with the keywords you put into it, then you will rank when people search for you. Okay, so we'll get more into that now. So, so the most important piece about a press release is going to be the title. So the title is basically what what search engines use in order to make you findable, right. So for instance, what would be in the title, things that are very important, your full name, first name, last name, and then your company name? Why? Again, after you talk to an investor, if you've ever called approach an investor, ever, the first thing to do is Google your name. And even if your name is Ryan Miller, and there's a million of you, right? Ryan Miller Company Name, that's why it's really important to put first name, last name and the company name in there, just so you're able to have something rank. And again, it's also more legitimate because it's on one of those big public publications. So whenever you need a Yahoo, whenever you need a Business Insider, it just makes more sense. Even if people know it's a press release, it adds status, because you're in that publication. So that's probably the most important piece. Well, two pieces, I'd say, writing a press release. Does that make sense? Ryan?
Ryan Miller
Yeah, absolutely. So implementing the title is one of the most crucial parts that you found. But you also mentioned, including just good keyword searches. So those are those are really important. And then access wire is distribution platforms accesswire.com?
Michael Hummel
Yes, that's exactly right. And then they're only about 300 bucks. And one thing too important to remember about a press release is you need to have it formed as an announcement of some kind. But you know, some people are like, Oh, well, there's not that much going on with my company, it's like, yes, there is you can have a new feature come out, you can add a new team member, that's a way for you to pitch basically, their experience. That's one of the most important things when investors are looking at getting involved is talking about the team that you have. So doing a press release for any new team member that's like sea level or going to be directly building it with you. So there's always a way to think about how can we make this announcement, the most important and actually tell our story through it, rather than just doing an announcement though, we just, you know, just launched and just leaving it at that, and then no one ever sees it. Right?
Ryan Miller
Okay. So I would say dimensions to look for. You mentioned our partnerships, but also product changes, new product, old product happening and customer testimonials. There's so many dimensions in any business that there's activity going on. And as I've been told before, a great place to start is start with your heart and work your way out. So what is it that that really hits to the core of your business that is very, that demonstrates some passion or good feeling that people also can experience that passion and good feelings with either you or your company, your product, whatever that is, there's a lot that you can work on and take it from any founder or CEO. It's all heart baby. This is this is your dream. This is your baby. You're building this thing out and so you certainly like me, a proud papa, you're gonna brag about your kids. You're gonna brag about your business because your heart and soul were put into to making this thing into everything it can be. That is absolutely brilliant advice. So now once you have that press release, you can go to access wire. I know. We spoke offline a little bit and you mentioned there's a bit of a strategy and some techniques out there about leveraging that press release. So we've released it, we wrote it Great, check that box. But there's a leveraging effect. I wonder if you can talk a little bit on that on how to leverage a press release?
Michael Hummel
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I would say that there are two different ways that you can leverage the press release most. Okay? So one is going to be to use it in pitches directly to journalists, podcast hosts, whatever else. And then there's actually a tool as well that you can pair it with. But I'll start with just the simple thing. What you're able to do is with Google Shopping, right, you're gonna be able to search for, say, your industries FinTech savers, and use a FinTech product, just search for FinTech podcast or FinTech journalists, it's gonna show you dozens, if not hundreds, of people that you'd be able to contact and actually reach out to. And all you have to do is simply email or DM those individuals, the press release and tell them like, Hey, I just saw your recent episode, I just saw your latest article on similar software, we're actually you know, up and coming as well check out a recent announcement about x and no exaggeration, if all you did was that sent out 100 messages, you'd be able to get five to 10 pieces of coverage very, very easily, especially if you're working on something that's pretty exciting, which that's what makes startups so cool is everyone's typically trying to build something big, right? And the better that you can get at concisely communicating what it is that you are building that is big, in a short amount of information to those journalists, they're gonna want to talk about you, right, and showing that you have a press release to announce it adds a layer of legitimacy. And I'll be honest, some like if you were doing a podcast pitch, right, some podcasts don't even necessarily know what a press release is being that you just paid for it. Right? So you could send that out. And they would see your coverage on Yahoo, Business Insider, or whatever else. And they'll be like, Oh, my gosh, way more likely to take on you you as a startup you as a founder than someone else that doesn't have that. So it's sort of this initial layer of credibility.
Ryan Miller
I love that. So any areas that you find most helpful when leveraging that?
Michael Hummel
Yeah, absolutely. So there's this website called quoted QWOT de.com. Yes, that's exactly right. And no exaggeration. I know, people that own agencies does stay unnamed, that only use this tool to service their clients for PR, and they charge 1000s of dollars a month, it costs I believe, $100, maybe $150 a month. And what it is, is a platform that basically queues up journalists, it makes it easy for journalists, because they always need to be writing, they need new topics, they need new subject matter experts, as we call it in the industry. And they go to that site, and they look for new subject matter experts. So they will make a post, for instance, need someone to talk about, for instance, one of the big ones that happened SVB, that was a big financial thing that kind of blew up here, right. So when that happened, the amount of requests specifically around that just looking for anyone that wanted to talk about it was enormous. And these are going to be opportunities on the big ones, Forbes, Bloomberg International Business Times Daily Mail, worldwide major platforms that a journalist is just not wanting to go and find someone in their own network. So they reach out and use these tools to have experts reach out to them. Again, if you spent maybe 2030 minutes a day doing this, you would be getting more PR coverage than you would know what to do with quite frankly. So that's a really powerful way for anyone to get more organic coverage for almost free.
Ryan Miller
Phenomenal. So now you have this coverage, super cheap prize to get you and looking as great as you can. So that founder or investors can find you whether you're a fund manager, entrepreneur, or somewhere in between, you have these tools that Michael has provided, but I think I promised three. So I'm curious, maybe for the third point, how would you say that someone who's raising capital can capitalize on that media attention? Once it's happening, you get the ball rolling? How do they capitalize on that?
Michael Hummel
Yes, that's a really great question. And you know, a lot of this depends on the products industry, exactly what it is, and the platform that's going to best serve them. But any coverage that you get should be shared. sounds obvious, but you'd be so surprised how many people just get featured, and then they forget it ever exist. So putting it on your website, having a banner, posting it on your Instagram, posting it on LinkedIn, LinkedIn, for me, is probably the best platform because you have a lot of control, especially when you're raising money. So here, here's the hack. So if you are raising money of any kind, LinkedIn should be your best friend, full stop. And the reason for that is you can connect with anyone, any high net worth individual anyone, the only limit is how much time you spend trying to connect with them. And there's a ton of automation tools out there that you could use to do that. So are you familiar with Sales Navigator with LinkedIn, I'm not cool. So it's a plugin that LinkedIn has, its directly built into it. And it allows you essentially, to search for people with more filters. So rather than me just looking at Ryan Miller, and seeing 1000 of them, I would be able to Ryan Miller, you know, making billions podcasts like hosts, basically, I could do all these different layers of keywords and allows you to do very in depth searches. And what I'm getting at here is what you want to do is add all of the target market, whether that's your customer, whether that's an investor, potential investor, right, and you want them in your network. It's as if you're making followers so anyone that does not grow their LinkedIn is kind of silly, because it's so hard to get followers on almost any other platform. Whereas with LinkedIn, it's just a connection, and you almost forced them to see your stuff. Once they connect with you. They're there and even if you're the one that's trying to shake their hand out there. So what you want to do is say you just got picked up in a publication, and you're like, great, what am I? What am I doing now you just go to your LinkedIn after already, hopefully connecting to several 100, if not 1000 plus of those potential investors of those potential clients, and you'd be willing to post and say, Look, I woke up to a feature and Daily Mail woke up to a feature and the I woke up to a feature and x, right. And what that does is it's this entry, because what are investors looking for? Again, anything that separates startups from the masses? Because how many can you imagine arrived for you? How many pitches do you get how many people come to you trying to, you know, get money that you have to kind of filter, right?
Ryan Miller
A lot, no exaggeration, I average about 200 emails a day, that comes from my website at Pentium Capital Partners.com there's a thing where you can say, I'd like to talk to you and I have this business, and you fill that out comes from LinkedIn, a lot, Instagram, or like all this stuff that you're talking about when I'm at events speaking on stage, and I just got back from speaking on stage with Ed, my lead, and Jim Rogers, and all these other people, you go on stage in front of 3500 fund managers, they're all gonna hit you up for money. Hey, respect to that man is a good guy. But the point is, is that you do get hit up a lot. And those filters that I think you're talking about here, whether it's actual filters, like, Hey, man, I actually don't give out my personal phone number, or the digital filters, like on LinkedIn and Sales Navigator, I think the point is, is that you need a way to get to the signal and push away the noise so that you're more effective in what you're trying to do. And in this case, that's raised capital.
Michael Hummel
Exactly. And if you think about it, too, it's like, what is an investor looking for points of differentiation at an early stage, all that matters to get the initial conversation obviously won't take you the entire way, you can't build something terrible, we always say, you know, if you put glitter on a rock, it doesn't make a diamond. But you know, what we can do is get that initial entry. If you get that initial entry, you get so much further than the masses. And that's what people are missing is you need to get in the door. And then you can get the feedback to fix the actual business. But a lot of people just don't get in the door frequently enough or to the right people. So it just doesn't work out.
Ryan Miller
So you know, you asked me when we first met way back then you said try googling yourself. And I laughed, and I said, Well, there's this Darn, NHL, former goalie that has the same name as me. So you I don't really show up anywhere. And you mentioned there's some tools that are somewhat helpful. And you said, just Googling yourself is is a good start, it'd be like, how do you show up, because if you know how you show up, and you don't like it, guess what all your potential investors that you're working hard to get their attention, they're seeing the same thing. So either you're not there, nobody can find you, or it's pitches from you from high school chugging to 40, or whatever it might be. I mean, I'm being kind of facetious, but you just want to really want to make sure that you don't neglect this part, I think is what Michael and I are saying is saying, Don't neglect the fact that maybe you have a pitch deck that talks about your thesis and your technology. And you can geek out about all the numbers and don't know everybody's gonna be a billionaire in five years. But don't forget that part of getting raising capital is also people are confident in you. They like what they see what they hear and what they feel when you're in the room. And so and also when you're not in the room, and they're Googling you. So either way, this is important besides googling yourself and just kind of checking in, is there any other tools other than Google that you found helpful in this area to just help people to figure out how do they look? How are they showing up?
Michael Hummel
Yeah, absolutely. So one tool that we use just to like, see general search traffic, it's called SpyFu. So spy faq.com, what it basically allows you to do is type in any keyword. So you can type in your company, your full name, whatever it may be, like your first name, last name, company name, you can see search volume, you can see what else people are looking for. And you're gonna be able to see conscious like, what you look like online in general. So it gives you an analysis to have like, if they're searching for anything else. So you can even show your competitors if there's any other similar startups that will even show you that because they basically scrape your site and match you with other keywords. So it's a pretty in depth product, I think is like $9 a month. So bargain. And yeah, so that's, that's pretty great. I honestly, man, I think googling yourself is the most simple thing, best place to start. It's like if there's anything bad bury it, I'm not even saying bad. Like, as in drinking alcohol, like you said, like old college parties, like whatever it may be anything, that's not what you want as the first impression to an investor that makes PR even infinitely more important, because it's gonna be able to get on top of that stack and kind of bury that push it a little bit deeper. And if you can just delete that stuff. Of course, that's probably the easiest thing to do.
Ryan Miller
Awesome, man. Well, the bow that those are phenomenal tips, you can see why Michael has raised a ton of money, because he's got a ton of wisdom. He's the real deal and understands how to do that not only have you raised capital, but you're willing to share the secret sauce and all that. So thank you for sharing that. But before we wrap things up, is there anything else that you'd like to share with our audience? Anything at all?
Michael Hummel
Yeah, definitely. So we have a free community that we're launching, there's about a waitlist, the waitlist right now for like 300 400 people, and it should be launching in August. So this is pretty good timing. It's the startup shortcut.com. And what it is, is a free community where we're just going to give as much value as humanly possible to help people raise money because we generally, we do believe that if we enable entrepreneurs to get capital in their pockets, that creates a much more exciting future. Like I personally just think that if we can get entrepreneurs capital, the world becomes a lot better, which is kind of the underlying mission of what we do here to establish. We obviously can't help everyone Just like yourself, it's impossible. So by giving this free resource, it's a really great way for us to get founders to connect. And to provide a ridiculous amount of value at literally no cost. What you can also do is email me at intro at established pr.com. That's my company. And if you just mentioned making billions with Ryan Miller, Walker will curate a list of investors for you like 25 investors a show so that way we can just show you to reach out to if you're completely clueless right now, no worries, we'll give you 25 people to tell you even a message on how to reach out to them just based on what we've seen work really well,
Ryan Miller
man. Phenomenal. That is awesome. That's very generous of you. So make billions exclusive. That's that's Michael right there for you. So just to synthesize everything, learn how to do a press release. The second thing that Michael taught us was learn how to leverage those press releases. And finally, how to capitalize on that media attention. You do these things, and YouTube will be well on your way in your pursuit of making billions.
Wow, what a show. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Now, if you haven't done so already, be sure to leave a comment and review on new ideas and guests you want me to bring on for future episodes. Plus, why don't you head over to YouTube and see extra takes while you get to know our guests even better. And make sure to come back for our next episode where we dive even deeper into the people the process and the perspectives of both investors and founders. Until then, my friends stay hungry. Focus on your goals and keep grinding towards your dream of making billions