Susie Moore

Publicity and Media

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I met Susie Moore in Vegas at an event put on by Selena Soo, who is a publicity strategist and expert who had several different experts on her panel come and speak. Of course, they themselves are experts, and one of those was Susie. I met Susie and her wonderful husband, Heath, and as you’re going to see, she’s just a bubbly, warm, very, very caring person, but also, she’s a real expert at what she does.

Just as proof, and I’ll get into the official intro in just a sec, Susie sent me a copy of her latest book and when I saw it … She didn’t give me the copy that she had when I first met her, because she was going around and showing it to everyone. But on the cover, the first thing that I noticed was a quote from Arianna Huffington. Then on the back you’ve got another quote from James Altucher, so when you hang with those people, you’ve definitely got to know your stuff.

Watch the video, read the transcript, or listen to the audio below!

Jack: Hi, this is Jack Born. I’m the founder of Deadline Funnel and I’m here with my good friend, Susie Moore. Before we get into the conversation, let me give the official intro. Susie is a bestselling author and creator of Five Minutes to Famous, which we’ll be talking about in just a bit, as well as a coach to CEOs/founders, and advisor to tech startups. She has been featured on the Today Show, Oprah.com, Business Insider and Marie Claire, and many, many, many more. Susie, great to have you here.

Susie: Jack, it’s so awesome to be here. Thank you for having me.

Jack: Absolutely. I would love to get into some of your back-story and catch people up with what you’re doing now. Before we turned on the recording, you were talking about your book interviews and the publicity that you’re getting, but why don’t we go back to some of the story that you shared with me when I first met you in Vegas.

Susie: Yeah, absolutely. I have a corporate background. I am a corporate person. I work for myself now, but I still wear a blazer. The corporate life is something that I certainly enjoy. Being somebody who wants to create and, I’m not sure if you know the four different tendency types, so Gretchen Rubin, but being a rebel. I always just wanted to work for myself and do my own thing and really set my own agenda. When I was working full time, I was working as a sales director and that job was fine, but I knew it wasn’t really going to be my life’s work. I started side hustling as a coach. I started writing and blogging and guest posting just to attract clients to me. Then my site gave me this great opportunity to leave my full-time job in around 18 months.

Jack: That’s amazing. When you said side-hustle, I just realized I didn’t even mention what the book is. The book is called What If It Does Work Out? How a Side Hustle Can Change Your Life. I’ve really, really enjoyed reading through it. Would you agree that it’s probably targeted to someone who’s in their corporate job, looking to start their side hustle, not someone who’s deep into already running their business?

Susie: Yeah, it’s certainly not for experts. It’s certainly not for advanced people who are already truly running a business, but a lot of people do stop and start, stop and start, or they’re maybe limping along a bit in their business, and they haven’t really fully committed. If you have a dream or a vision for something else other than your job and if you don’t want to have one person being able to ruin your life, which is just your boss, then side hustles are definitely for you. They’re much more simple to start and excel in than you think.

Side hustling for me, it worked. I’ve seen it work for lots of different people. Now I’ve been in my business full-time for three years.

Jack: Awesome. You’re really well known for your ability to get publicity. Your Five Minutes to Famous, which we’ll probably talk about more in a little bit, you also teach people how to be their own publicist. Publicity … I was thinking about this before our call. I don’t know if you’ll agree or disagree, but to me, it seems like my limited understanding of what you teach people and the power of publicity is kind of similar to, in my world and what I’m familiar with, is kind of similar to possibly doing joint ventures, in the sense that you’re tapping into … It takes a while to nurture the relationship, but one good connection can really open up an entire tribe or community that otherwise you really wouldn’t have access to.

Susie: Yes, absolutely. In fact, I actually say that media is the new affiliate, if you’re willing to really give it a try. It’s an affiliate you don’t have to pay, it’s an affiliate that you get tremendous credibility and authority from, because as soon as you’re featured anywhere, if it’s Glamour or GQ or Fast Company, wherever, that brand immediately lends its credibility to you.

It allows you to charge more premium prices, it just positions you with authority with your audience, and also, of course, it’s a great way just to get exposure and free leads and to really build your brand in whatever niche you’re in. It’s really available to anybody.

Jack: Right. Are there some tips that you can share for someone who’s looking to get into publicity and getting more press and more credibility? What are some of the first things that someone wants to do?

Susie: I think the first thing that we need to do, if we want to really make publicity work for us, because we could throw lots of things out there. We can certainly test lots of things. The most important thing is just knowing who you are and what it is that you represent and what you stand for. I call it your celebrity identity.

Why do people need you? What is it that you represent? Is it freedom, is it money, is it the ability to have a great relationship, great sex? Really, it could be anything. What do you represent? Is it financial security for families? Knowing who you are and then knowing who your audience is, because you always want there to be a match. I call that your money spot.

When you match your celebrity identity with your money spot, then there’s so much potential for you to get tremendous traction with a passive audience. So not people you’re targeting or sending ads to, but the people that might not even necessarily be looking for you, who can access you.

Jack: Talk to me about Five Minutes to Famous. How did that come to be?

Susie: It came to be because a lot of people were asking me, my publicist was, and a lot of the questions I got were, “How did you get featured here? How did you write there?” The things that were just coming up for me, people were curious about. I just created a program. As you know, the best programs are always directly answering what people want, plus just creating what you want to create.

It certainly wasn’t my goal to create something surrounding guest posting specifically, and getting great exposure that way, but when you find people like your students and people in your community asking more and more how they can get a piece of what you’ve got, then I just handed it all over, like, “Here’s exactly what you do.”

I think that exposure in any business is important and you have to be okay with being visible and being seen. A lot of CEOs struggle with that, or entrepreneurs struggle with that, but it is something that over time you do get more comfortable with if you allow yourself to.

Jack: Does “Five Minutes to Famous” focus in on a certain type of publicity, like TV or podcasts, or guest posting?

Susie: Guest posting is primarily the easiest way to control the message and frequency and to really put your content out there, and allow yourself to be featured on different platforms. Even TV producers or radio producers, website editors, they’re constantly looking for the talent and information and sources. If you content is out there in terms of a blog specifically, the written word is still the most shared. That’s the best launching pad.

Jack: Very, very cool. Let’s talk about your upcoming trip to Bali. Is that a business trip?

Susie: Strictly business, no fun allowed. I think one of the best things about having an online business is the flexibility and freedom that you have. I think most people don’t take advantage of that, Jack. Depending on where you’re at in your business, if you really have this online connection, that’s all you need to do lots of different things.

I just want to take advantage of what I’ve got and sometimes it’s nice to disconnect from New York a little bit, as much as I love it here, and have time to create. It’s constantly the consuming and the people and the action, versus the quiet creation, too. I think quiet creation is where really the magic happens, so it’s important to allow space for that, too.

Jack: Right, to break away from the noise. There’s another advantage … I’m glad we’re talking about this, because there’s another advantage that I’ve found when I went on a really big trip. I think it was about two and a half years ago, I took my family to Australia. For us, we didn’t want to go just for a week. This was purely relaxation and to see as much of the country as we could. We went for six weeks. For me, I had never gone on just pure vacation for six weeks. Even though I was bringing my laptop in case it was an emergency, I really wanted to unplug. Besides, I’m completely 12 hours from you guys once I get over there.

For me, leading up to it, it was almost like doing a launch because it really forced me to say, “Okay, I’m not going to be able to do …” All these little tasks that I was holding on to, it really forced me to delegate that to my team. At the time I was bringing on some team members and it was really a great opportunity to say, “Okay, this is coming up, so here’s what we need to do. We need to put the systems in place so that everything can run without me.”

That’s something that I don’t hear a whole lot of people talking about, but I think that’s a great way for business owners and entrepreneurs to really force themselves not just to get away, like you said, and get that creative space, but also to systematize their business so things don’t run amok while they’re gone.

Susie: Yeah, it’s like a wonderful test. Like you said, like a launch, because you brace yourself and do all the things until the open period, but it’s really true. You know that you’re going to have different limitations while you’re away in terms of what you can normally do, so I’m squeezing in all sorts of things right until I leave. It’s true. It really makes you focus.

I actually love what Stephen Covey said, who wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He said, “Don’t prioritize your schedule, schedule your priorities.” For me, when I think about my life, not just this year or even the next couple of years, but my entire life, one day, if I’m lucky enough to be an old lady, I want to look back and think, high-fiving myself constantly about the things that I decided to do. I just know something like this, like going away for a long time, is probably always going to be one of those things.

Jack: Right. I completely agree. I found myself … We have a big trip coming up. I’m not going to talk about it right now, but we have another big trip coming up, so I’m using that as another opportunity to further distance myself from the day-to-day operations of the business.

In this year I found myself really time blocking segments of my day and week that I’m really holding true and I’m doing a very good job of holding true to that and blocking out time for going to the gym or spending time with family and those sorts of things, because I find that it really makes the whole rest of the week just run that much better. I’m more energized. Sometimes it’s hard because you still have that inner struggle, like, “If I didn’t go to the gym, then I could spend an extra hour writing this blog post,” but I think it’s really, really important to do.

Susie: I’m in a Mastermind with the fabulous Melyssa Griffin, who I love, who’s a great friend of mine. She has a business that hums along. She doesn’t check her emails, she has lots of systems in place, and it really allows her to do her thing. She’s a big fan of Deadline Funnel, I mean, we all are.

Again, that gives you massive freedom too, because there’s a whole massive important part of your business which is your launch but Deadline Funnel makes it evergreen, and it’s automated. Everybody knows their time’s ticking and you don’t have to constantly be reminding them physically in any way.

Jack: I can vouch for that. First of all, Melyssa is great and when I email her directly, I end up talking to someone on her team.

Susie: Yeah, you do. You have to text her if you want to talk to her.

Jack: Right.

Susie: You’ll never get her. She’s like the Queen. You can never get her.

Jack: She’s done a very good job of unplugging. Years ago, I worked for a guy named, Perry Marshall, who has been doing really, really well over the years getting publicity for his own books, so he is a marketing thought leader. When I was working for him, he really outsourced his email inbox and did a very good job.

He was the first one that I saw firsthand actually do that. He had someone on his team, Lorena, who would answer his emails. There were a very small handful of emails that she knew to pass on directly to him, but if you emailed him directly, you were talking with Lorena.

Susie: Yes. It’s fantastic. It’s really probably the most important thing that I’ve picked up from her. If somebody else can do something 80% as well as you, that can go, so you can really focus on what’s important and the next thing. That’s really your job.

There’s a great expression that I heard. I can’t remember who told me, maybe it was Jeff Walker. He said, “If you are on an airplane going somewhere, the pilot doesn’t come and bring you the coffee because he’s flying the plane”. It’s like other people who help you in other ways.

It’s important too for you to be leading your business and doing things that are going to add the most value. Emailing about a refund or emailing about a question is something that somebody else can do probably even better than you. The delegation thing is magic.

Jack: One of the things that was both liberating and also, it was a little bit of a dent to my ego when I brought on a team of coding engineers, is that they’re so much better than I am. I look at the code that they write … I can write code, I wrote the first version of AW Pro Tools, version 1.0 of Deadline Funnel, so I’m very skilled, but there are people who do it much, much better than I do.

It was a little bit of a blow to my ego, but at the same time, I love that I’m now surrounded and supported by people who share the mission, but at the same time are so much better at that aspect of the business than I am.

Susie: It does feel a bit weird. You can feel a bit displaced sometimes, when people are doing a better job than you in some areas, but I think that’s really when you’ve created something successful. Truly, you want to be able to remove yourself.

Like we’re speaking, we just got into the conversation, of being able to leave the business or if something happens. Your business being able to survive and thrive because you’ve set this great foundation up, means you can get value no matter what.

Jack: So you can go to Bali.

Susie: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, or other fabulous places. Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s something that if you can learn that as early on as possible, it really helps. Having systems in place that help you, because it’s not just people, it really is technology. Technology like Deadline Funnel, that really allows you to be hands-off and still trust and be able to excel because you know everything’s ticking along as it should.

Jack: Maybe this is a good segue. I just wanted to touch on, real briefly … You were talking about systems and automating things. I know that you’re probably not the one actually setting up Deadline Funnel for your business. It might be Heath or someone else on your team. Do you have some insights into how you guys are using it in your business right now?

Susie: We had a live launch model until a few months ago, so with live launches, we put it on our sales page and we put it on our emails, so it integrates nicely with OntraPort, which is a system that we use. We thought that maybe OntraPort would have a feature, but they don’t always. You need to find something that’s really compatible.

We use Deadline Funnel on our sales page. We’re thinking about even using it on our opt-in pages. There are so many ways you can use it. With live launches, we had it on our sales page and in the emails too. Whenever an email was received, the closed copy reader was always highlighted.

Now we’re in an Evergreen model, we’ve switched our business to Evergreen, and it’s wonderful, because people are always at different stages of the PLC, the pre-launch period, the open cart, day one, two, three, four and five depending on the product, and they’re always at different stages, depending on when they opt in, on their own schedule and sequence, and Deadline Funnel magically knows.

It just knows what to do. It knows who you are and when your time’s up. It’s fantastic because not only do I have to keep reminding people and do Facebook Lives and send out emails, but when there are emails the email countdown timer is included. When people are on the sales page the timer is always present, it’s on everything. Everything we use.

Jack: Awesome. It’s interesting. I’m writing some content, some long blog posts about getting off of launches and being able to … The key isn’t to never do a launch, but to launch when you want to, not because your business and your whole life depends on it. I see a lot of entrepreneurs who start with a launch and then that’s all they really know how to do, so they’ll just launch, launch, launch, and it gets tiring. Sounds great. You’ve gone from doing launches to being able to not rely on them as much. Now they kind of are a business booster rather than being the main thing.

Susie: It’s no secret that human nature responds very well to deadlines. They respond very, very well to … No one wants to part with money. No one’s like, “How can I spend my money today? How can I open my wallet and buy stuff?” This deadline, this scarcity, it’s critical.

I think, of course, Deadline Funnel is active in the online world, when it comes to courses, but I think it can be related to anything. Truly related to … Anyone who can ever see a timer, if it’s to buy a flight, to buy clothes … Truly, anything, to make an order on something, I think just the scope of where it can be useful hasn’t even scratched the surface there.

Jack: I remember you told me that in Vegas and I certainly hope that you’re right. Maybe I could get your help getting the word out via publicity.

Susie: Sometimes because of my tech background, I work as an advisor to different startups and CEOs and one of them was racing around. I was like, “Is there a deadline? Is there a deadline?” Without a deadline, nothing happens. Nothing happens or things happen, but they don’t happen with the same measure of success, especially within a certain period.

I think the way we can think about deadlines and how we can use them … Right now, it’s almost like we can’t keep this secret to ourselves for the online programs. It’s like there’s so much potential here. I don’t mean necessarily for meetings, but just how we consume everything, how we purchase everything.

Jack: You were talking about people not wanting to part with money, but in some ways, I know that it goes even beyond that in the sense that people, if there’s an opportunity to put off, to procrastinate their decision, it’s just so much easier to just hit the snooze button. “I’ll come back to that later.” Really, that’s one of the main reasons why deadlines work so well is because we know …

Anyone who’s honest with themselves knows that humans procrastinate and the deadline just forces people to say, “Okay, the procrastination period is over. You’re either in or you’re out.” People have already made up their mind, but they need that deadline to actually say, “Okay, I was already in, but now I’m going to actually pull the trigger.”

Susie: Yes, it helps us. I’m not a huge procrastinator because I like to take action, but when I do have deadlines, they’re useful and I know whether or not something’s going to work for me whether or not I feel the urgency. In that way, they were useful.

Jack: Before we go, and thank you so much for your time. Before we go, I want to make sure that we talk about Five Minutes to Famous because you’ve got an area on your website, I believe it’s FiveMinutesToFamous.com/workshops. Right? Workshops with an S?

Susie: Yep.

Jack: Yeah, where people can sign up and learn more about how to build their email list through publicity. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about that?

Susie: I offer free training, it’s called Overnight Rockstar, because it can be overnight. I tell you, Jack, when you are in Oprah.com or Elle or Cosmo, whatever, and you post that on Facebook, everyone thinks you’re famous, including your mother. They’re like, “Oh, now I understand what you’re doing with your life, with your laptop, wherever you’re going in the world.”

A lot of people want it, but it needs to be demystified a little. I give a free training, it’s called Overnight Rockstar, and you get it at FiveMinutesToFamous.com/workshops. There’s a whole lot of value just in that free workshop. I do make an offer at the end, I’m always clear about that, but even if you just stay for the free training, there’s lots of juicy nuggets in there that you can take action on immediately.

Jack: Is there a deadline at the end of the …

Susie: There sure is. Thanks to you, Jack.

Jack: Terrific. Susie, as always, it’s great talking with you. Always enjoy your personality and just having a great conversation with you. For anyone who’s interested in learning more about publicity, go to FiveMinutesToFamous.com/workshops and sign up. I know that it’s awesome content. Thank you so much, Susie.

Susie: Thank you so much, Jack!