How to Get on the Front Cover of the NY Post for Free
Let’s be real, everyone hates cold calling. It’s uncomfortable, requires a lot of work, and most of the time nothing comes from it. You have a goal, say to get in contact with someone, anyone, from NY Post to have them write an article on your company…for free. But, the problem starts with the fact that the only NY Post employee you ‘know’ is the man who sold you your latest copy from the bodega last weekend ago…which is really no help at all.
So what do you do? You shoot from the hip. You use the internet to your advantage, and suddenly LinkedIn replaces Instagram in your life. You search around for anything that might lead you to your answer. The whole time you’re questioning if you’re using your time wisely, and you feel as if you’re life has turned into a mini-series of the Pixar movie Inside Out.
Before you know it you are 3 hours deep in a Google deep dive to locate the emails of the employees you were able to find that best fit the bill. Now it’s time to draft up the email. Be personable, but get to the point quickly. Don’t include all of the deals, but rather bring up the possibility of a call later in the week to discuss. Oh, and don’t forget to check the legitimacy of the email address. The last thing you want is for the message to bounce.
That was the hard part. Now it’s just about being persistent.
Just like anyone else, at first you check your email every 30 minutes to see if anything has come in. No, just lieu of NYT articles your grandparents forwarded to you, CVS coupons, and an email telling you your Amazon package has shipped. You’re still optimistic, maybe they bookmarked the email to come back to the following day. Half a week goes by, and you haven’t heard anything.
This is where the complacent are separated from the hustlers. To get ahead in life you have to hustle, nothing comes easy, and everything takes work (I’m starting to sound like Casey Neistat, aren’t I?) So guess what. You send out another round of emails. You switch up the approach. You look for connections you missed. Contact NYT instead. It only takes one Yes to get where you want to go… and a whole lot of Nos.
Start-ups succeed on this hustler mentality. Everyone thinks you’re going to fail. People take time out of their day to vocalize discouraging comments on your work. But when you get that call from the NY Post (https://nypost.com/2018/06/25/this-company-wants-to-rent-used-gym-clothing-to-you/), return email from Nike, a coffee meeting with an angel investor or a calendar invitation from Google, it’s all worth it.
That uncomfortable feeling goes away, and the agony of waiting is forgotten. Instead you’re solely focused on making the deal happen, and explaining your company to those who are willing to listen. It’s one thing to hear about it, but it’s another thing to live it. And yeah, you make the cover of the NY Post on a Tuesday morning, the country’s 4th most popular newspaper. Every day is different here at Routinely, besides the fact that every day we are working to make ourselves known in the public eye. And it sure as hell is hard, but it’s those who persevere that end up where they want to be.