I believe there are more opportunities than ever.
It's just that they're more diffuse and that
it requires a shitload more legwork and research
and like infiltrating these little corners of
the internet. I interview a lot of people in
AI and generally what I'm hearing is that 2026
is the year of disillusionment. That on the source
side of things, the stat that we have seen is
that 21 % of all pitches are 100 % AI generated.
The one -on -one personal relationships. are
going to matter so much more because everyone
can be whoever they want at scale now thanks
to AI. So being a real human has a premium. Welcome
to Under Embargo, the podcast that says the quiet
part out loud about PR, communications, and the
chaos in between. Hosted by two of LinkedIn's
most connected comms pros, Becca Chambers, a
no BS corporate comms exec with raging ADHD,
and Pari Hedrick, founder of tech PR firm Crackle
PR. This show brings it all. Real talk, sharp
insights, and the kind of industry truths they
don't put in press releases. No fluff, no filters,
no f***s given. This is Under Embargo. Let's
get into it. Welcome back to another episode
of Under Embargo. I'm Becca, CMO at Scale Venture
Partners, and as always, joined by my trusty
co -host, Perry Hedrick, founder of Crackle PR.
Today, we have a very interesting guest who recently
has made him a hero probably to many in the PR
and journalism worlds. Brett Farmilow is the
founder and CEO of Featured .com and the recent
savior of HARO, Help a Reporter Out, and regular
contributor to Inc. and Fast Company on the intersection
of AI and the workplace, which we will get into.
But first, welcome to the show. We're happy to
have you here. Welcome. Thanks for having me.
Awesome. I guess let's just start with tell us
about Featured .com and how HARO fits in and
what... all of that looks like right now since
our audience is definitely interested totally
totally i ran a marketing agency for 10 years
we had 500 small business clients and the hardest
problem that they had was getting featured in
the media and so we created a platform that allowed
them to share their expertise basically answer
questions that were about their business and
then put those insights into articles that got
published on on different outlets and so Sold
the agency at the end of 21, went all in on featured
as a platform. And then last year we ended up
acquiring Help Reporter out, bringing it back.
It had been founded in 2008, got rebranded over
to Connectively and pushed away from its original
email format into a platform. And then that got
discontinued because it didn't work. So we bought
it, we brought it back. And now people, like
you said, are pretty happy that three times a
day there's some journalist requests that land
in their inbox. That's awesome. Can you talk
about how, so featured and Harrow, how do they
interact with one another? Which is which? Can
you just walk through that a little bit? Yeah,
I think the cleanest way to think about it is,
well, first of all, Harrow, three times a day
email. that has journalist requests. Featured
is a platform that has not only HARO requests,
but exclusive opportunities through Featured
and aggregated opportunities that we source from
Substack, from X, from LinkedIn. And so basically
Featured is kind of this powerful platform. It's
like HARO in a platform with all these other
different opportunities. So the challenges are
people don't have enough time to essentially
look and find all the relevant media opportunities.
Feature will learn what your expertise is. It'll
identify those opportunities and then bring it
right into your inbox so you could just act on
that and have a good ROI on your time. That's
awesome. Can I ask something? Are your clients
mostly agencies or are they mostly in -house
people? Yeah, it's mainly agencies, in -house
marketing teams, and then do -it -yourself small
business owners that want to bypass using an
agency. So directly from my team, I queried my
team at Crackle because I said that you were
going to be coming on and they had a bunch of
questions. And I candidly don't use the tools
myself because I'm a little removed from the
day to day grind. So if I botch the delivery
of the question, just know that it came from
a real person who does the job. What was the
process like in rebuilding Harrow post decision
in particular was a question from one of the
people. Yeah, that's a great question because
the thing that I've heard frequently of why HARO
was even discontinued in the first place was
an erosion of quality and trust. And so basically,
because it's an email format, it's so accessible
to so many people. And so that basically just
allows anyone to email the journalist directly.
And that was causing a lot of issues from the
journalist side, a lot of spam, a lot of AI,
things like that. And basically, from my understanding,
the resources weren't devoted to maintain that
quality and trust. And so the very first thing
that we did was... aim to restore that. So a
couple of examples, every single pitch that gets
sent through HARO or featured is checked for
AI. So we'll do AI detection so that if it's
100 % AI generated, a journalist has a decision
to opt out of receiving that message. So that's
one example. Can I stop you there quickly? Yeah.
How confident are we with the sort of designation
of 100 % AI? You know what I mean? Like that's
always the sticky wicket, isn't it? Is it AI?
Isn't it? How do you feel? How confident are
you in those designations, I guess? The AI detection
partner that we use is called Pangram. If you
go to pangram .com, the tagline there is AI detection
that actually works. And I think that in our
experience, that has been true. So in terms of
confidence level, I think that everyone's got
their own AI detection tool. We've got ours,
but it's at least a signal. that allows those
journalists to now say, OK, like, let me look
at this from a closer lens, because ultimately
journalists are tasked with is this a real insight
from a real person? Like, let's start there.
And so a lot of what we had to do was figure
out, OK, this is first person get a blue checkmark.
Can we verify that they actually work at the
company that they that they claim to, that they
have the credentials to back up what they're
actually sharing? So. Making that connection
between expert sources and journalists has a
lot of intricacies behind the scenes. How are
you getting the journalists on board? So bringing
Help A Reporter Out back was like flipping a
light switch. Because it was founded in 2008,
almost every journalist, PR professional that's
been in the industry has heard about Help A Reporter
Out. And so when we brought it back... It was
crazy. I remember the Friday before we were going
to bring it back, we wanted to just test that
the deployment of the website would actually
work. And it was like a Friday afternoon at 4
p .m. And Harrow had been offline for like 18
months. And within three minutes, we had 10 new
signups. of just people who were doing referral
traffic on like a Friday afternoon. And so I
think that, you know, it's a really, really well
-known brand. It's one that's built up a lot
of trust with journalists because they've been
able to get connected with different sources.
And that's what makes makes the network really,
really unique and special. So I have another
I'm going to go to my little mailbag here of
staffer questions from. One person, they said,
how are you guys competing with Quoted or other
new platforms on the scene? Can you talk a little
bit about that? Totally. I think that Help Reporter
Out is the largest expert network where journalists
can source from. So because it's email -based,
because it's free for all, it's got a different
monetization model. So it's supported by newsletter
ads where Quoted and Featured both sell subscriptions.
So I think that that's one key difference is
that Anyone can show up and share their expertise
on Help a Reporter Out. Featured, a little different
because we own and operate HARO, so you get early
access to HARO queries. One of the things with
HARO, because it's email -based, we send out
emails every five hours. And so there's a delay
between when a journalist submits and when it
actually gets featured in the newsletter. So
as soon as we approve it, it's live on featured.
That's one of the key differences. I think that
illustrates that a little bit. Got it. And Becca,
I have a bunch of questions. I don't want to
cut you off. Go ahead. All right. I just want
to back up a little bit to the AI piece of this,
because obviously everybody's staring down the
zeitgeist of AI and what it means to our jobs.
And there's existential dread related to it and
AI slop and blah, blah, blah. What would you
say the percentage of journalists, in your view,
What percentage of these journalists actually
even entertain any of these AI pitches? In other
words, once they know it's AI, do they just categorically
dismiss it? Is the overwhelming majority of the
journalists in your mix, do they just say, screw
anything AI, I want humans only? Or are people
beginning to be like, well, there's such a volume
of this stuff coming that at some point I have
to acquiesce and start reading some of this shit?
I think there's two camps. There's the camp that
cares and the camp that doesn't. The camp that
doesn't is... doing their job past the initial
AI pitch. So they care most about getting connected
with the right source. And so it doesn't matter
if that pitch is AI generated or not. If it's
the right source, the journalist is going to
do their job. They're going to schedule a Zoom
call. They're going to get in an interview. They're
going to get to verify the source and get what
they need for their story. So I think that you're
seeing that. where very rarely is someone just
going to copy -paste, put into whatever got sent
in their inbox into a story without any verification.
And so I think that you're seeing more of an
adoption and an openness to AI as we go along,
as it becomes more of the norm. But there's definitely
two camps, and there's definitely, you know,
sometimes journalists are handcuffed in the sense
that their publication puts their own requirements
on it. So I think that it's becoming more of
the norm. If you had to handicap it, would you
say something like, I don't know, 70 % are still
kind of old school and want real human interaction,
while 30 % are now becoming open to the AI piece,
or I don't want to put words in your mouth. What
are you seeing? I need to get the, now you got
me curious about what the actual stat is, because
- I feel like that would go on fire on LinkedIn,
if you had that actual number, that people would
go ballistic for that. We do have a filter that
allows journalists to check that says no AI responses.
That's not checked by default. So I'm going to
have to do some stats and verification on it.
What I will say is that on the source side of
things, the stat that we have seen is that 21
% of all pitches are 100 % AI generated. So that's
what we're seeing on our platform side. That's
why we had to restore a lot of the quality and
trust is because a lot of people will set up
automations to detect and then automatically
send something through AI. I would venture to
say that... it probably mirrors that a little
bit on the journalist side where maybe it's like
60 40 if i had to guess like 60 are not cool
with it yeah 40 are and it's getting closer to
50 50 as as we go along that actually lends itself
well to just kind of the general question of
how do you how has getting media coverage changed
in the last three years? Because clearly there's
been a massive shift and we're moving into a
new direction. So what are you seeing trend -wise?
Yeah, I'm seeing that with NPR, AI is being embraced.
It has huge gains for people in the profession.
And at the same time, it's drastically shifting
media entirely. So the places where people want
to be featured, are on podcasts, on social platforms,
on someone's Substack. It's getting very fragmented
by channel, and it's no longer, oh, I just want
to be featured in Inc. and Fast Company and these
national outlets. So it's influence is shifting
quite a bit as AI is dramatically changing what
that market looks like. Do you think influence
is shifting away from organizations into individual
people brands? Like, you know, do you talk about
Substack and podcasts and things like that? I
think it goes back to creators because the thing
that is kind of lacking in the world is trust.
And, you know, that's what people as individuals
have. And so I think that you're seeing attention
go towards individuals because of trust, because
of accessibility, because of some of the economics.
Like, how many times do I have to click? I don't
want this pop up. on a media site anymore. So
I think that just the user experience is more
intuitive as well. And so time and attention
is really scarce. What's the proper economic
model that has the best user experience? And
you're seeing audience flow in that direction.
I know AI, we keep coming back to it, and it's
probably exhausting because that's probably what
most people want to talk about most of the time.
But when we talk about journalists and we talk
about PR, I'm still a bit of a purist. I use
the tools. I use them for some ideation. I use
them sometimes if I'm like, God damn it, I can't
figure out an ending for this. Can you give me
some ideas? I use it, but it's not the primary
thing that I use. And my team doesn't primarily
use it to write pitches. We don't write press
releases with it. We might put outlines together.
pretty pure still and i know that the vast majority
of journalists are also still fairly pure they
have to you know begrudgingly they they deal
with because they have to there's such a volume
of it is it your opinion and i know you have
to be careful about how you couch this because
you try to serve all audiences here but like
is it your opinion that that ai is like a commodity
and over time the human voice the human writing
the human pitches will become a premium. And
I asked that question against the backdrop of
all of these hires and all these major brands
of people paying like 350 K to bring on head
of content, 300, you know, $50 ,000 to bring
their editorial director on. Like, I think I
see a lot of people getting hired in very, very
important jobs who are human beings to make sure
that the machines are not running amok. What
do you think? Give me that 350K job. There's
a bunch of them. They're everywhere. They're
hiring human beings to oversee this shit. And
those people used to get paid crappy in these
companies, right? Like those are the underpaid
people. And now it's like, just dollar, dollar
bills. I guess to put it another way, are you
worried about the commoditization of AI writ
large and how it might sort of take down the
value of platforms like yours because it becomes
so overwhelmed with slop? I guess that's ultimately
the question behind the question. Yeah, I'm not
too concerned about it because ultimately readers
will reject slop. If you're in an experimentation
phase with it, you're going to have publications
that are going to open their doors up and then
probably pretty quickly close those doors because
that 350k a year person is going to see that
it's not working. And they need to have a detour.
So where I'm seeing PR adopt AI is as a thinking
partner. It's not the place that's generating
the ideas. It's that the person in the job has
gotten it to 80 % of the way there. AI could
come in to make sure essentially that you are
not missing anything, get it to 90%, and then
allow the human in the loop to take it to 100.
So I'm not too worried about... AI slop at scale
because readers will reject it before it gets
there and at the same time I'm actually more
of an optimist to think that I'm on this podcast
I've already created some different content there's
a lot of stuff out there that I personally can
use to better train myself on a knowledge base
and then if time is my biggest constraint and
I want to share more knowledge I want to have
more thought leadership AI can actually take
a lot of what I've done and connect to different
sources to now help me unlock more new knowledge.
So I do think AI can advance with the right data
sets and the right structured workflows sitting
on top of it. And I think that's probably the
exciting part that we could lean more into. Yeah,
fascinating. Becca, I don't want to keep barreling
away, but so my next question is, do you ever
use your own platform to generate publicity for
yourself? Like, do you eat your own dog food
when it comes to getting opportunities for your
company? On both sides. I freaking love it. It's
like my favorite thing to do. So I contribute
articles to Inc. and to Fast Company, primarily
on AI coverage. And for that, I go to Harrow.
I put out a Harrow with my story and I get hundreds
of pitches. I get connected to some of the most,
the smartest, most insightful, innovative people
in the world. And I write an article and it's
really, really cool. On Featured, I use that
as my vehicle to identify relevant media opportunities
and then give me a suggested draft that I could
take over the finish line. So I'm not scanning
Featured and refreshing the browser all day,
every day. I'll get an email when there's a relevant
opportunity that's like, hey, Brett, here's one.
Here's what we think you should say. And then
I'll edit it and then submit it. And that's a
ton of fun to get Featured as a source. yeah
well that's that's good that i don't know if
you've done anything with this but if you haven't
you should consider doing like a case study how
you actually use your stuff because it's like
the whole uh what was it the hair club president
for men guy back in the days like i'm not only
a hair club member i'm also a client it's kind
of good uh a good proof case i guess yeah absolutely
i might have to put out the infomercial i mean
throwback nostalgia is in right now but here
You said that 2026 will likely be the year of
AI disillusionment. Say more. Yeah, I think that
that's so I interview a lot of people in AI.
And generally what I'm hearing is is that that
2026 is the year of disillusionment, mainly because
the shock and gains that you're going to see
within models will be more subtle. It's not going
to be such a jump from. GPT 3 .5 to 4 to 5. So
I think a lot of what the models have built is
fantastic. And now we're kind of like, how do
we get to that last mile? And it's already ingested
the entire web. Like the last mile is now in
experts' heads. And so that's a little bit more
of a slower process where... Where is a model
not good? Okay, let's go find 200 experts that
specialize in that area. Let's go create a bunch
of raw data. Let's better train these models.
It just gets slower. The gains get slower. And
we're also fatigued. Like a lot of people are
just fatigued after multiple years of hearing
how great it is. And then you're like, you know,
on LinkedIn, you see someone's post about how
great what they've done in AI is. And it's like,
all right, give me something else. Like, what
else do we got here? So I think that both things
just start to balance out. The projections of
AI models just get a little bit slower. The fatigue
gets greater and we start to level off and it
all starts to kind of set in. I will say there
are moments of surprise and delight still that
I'm like, as an example, I recently used nano
banana, like the image thing on Gemini. I was
like, Holy Jesus, this is so advanced. It's so
easy to use compared to all the other stuff I
had done. So like every now and then there's
like this Eureka thing. And I, and yes, obviously
I'm now I'm with Taylor Smith, Taylor Swift on
Instagram. I'm like, you know, I'm making all
these pictures of myself. I love these little,
these little surprise and delight moments, but
I think to your point, those are going to be
fewer and far between as A, all the platforms
are kind of on par for the most part. Like all
the conversations I'm seeing are like, well,
I deleted chat GPT in favor of cloud, all right?
Perplexity I use instead of X. Like they're almost
kind of interchangeable at this point. So I think
there is that fatigue and people are kind of
now immersed in the world instead of just shocked
out of their goddamn mind every time they like
hear an AI story. But I think that's part of
why like the... individual trust creator trust
communities like why that matters so much more
now is like we're all just like drowning in like
all of these new tools or options for tools or
ways to do things and the fatigue is real and
the fomo is real so it's like how do we even
start where do we go and i think knowing that
you know if i say i use x y and z tool and i
tell my friend they're like great i'll start
there at least right and i feel the same way
if somebody says to me I'm using this and I chose
it over the 97 other options because of why it
like helps me start to do something that I'm
feeling like I can't even start to touch because
there's too many options. I feel like that's
part of why the like individual taste, trust,
whatever metric is going to become way more important
because we're just overloaded. There's just too
much stuff. And I kind of welcome a slowdown
because then maybe we can catch up a little bit.
Yeah, absolutely. And on the flip side of that,
too, I do think that as much as 2026 might be
the year of disillusionment, I also don't know
if you guys remember this. In 2006, Time came
out with the person of the year. Do you remember
who the person of the year was? Yeah, we were
all the person of the year. Was that what it
was? Everyone was. It was so cheesy. Yeah, it
was the tooth. Yeah, the magazine cover was a
mirror. And the person was you. And like, if
we're going to name the AI company of the year
in 2026, I actually think that 20 years later,
that that magazine cover is like turning the
mirror on a lot of companies, because I feel
like a lot of companies are now an AI company.
Like SaaS is AI, you know, services has AI components.
I think that's also kind of the theme as we look
ahead is like 2026, as much as we're going to
get fatigued by AI. Well, wasn't the most recent
Time magazine cover AI as person of the year?
And it had all the AI people on that. I didn't
see it. I mean, it had all the people from like
NVIDIA to, you know, everybody that is like anybody
in AI was sitting on that big iconic picture
up on the Empire State Building. transitions
are hard right like we are in the middle of like
a massive shift and it's always this like push
and pull of like i don't know over promising
over correcting you know there's just i don't
know nobody likes not nobody most people don't
like having to change in a massive way and i
think you know five years from now god only knows
what that's gonna look like but at least we will
have been like farther along in it that we can
expect something right now we're just in this
kind of wild west free -for -all that you know
we haven't experienced in 25 years yeah totally
and i you know just closing off this like i think
that that's actually what has made the resurrection
of of harrow unique like it's an email tool all
right like and you're connecting with another
person and that's kind of like a rare corner
of the web today like where can you do that that's
exactly what i thought when i was thinking about
that harrow is back as an email tool it's like
we're we've come full circle right like we've
gone back to the very beginning of how you used
to reach people digitally like so freaking cool
and the one -on -one personal relationships are
going to matter so much more because everyone
can be whoever they want at scale now thanks
to ai so being a real human has a premium so
a couple of interesting thoughts i think and
then like questions around it is like if college
kids asked me two three years ago like should
i consider a career in pr i was kind of inclined
to say like i don't know man i think you i think
you might not want to because i think i feel
like ai is just going to eat all of our jobs
um full stop so i would think about other things
maybe becoming an electrician or a plumber or
something or something that ai can't steal um
because all the signs were pointing negatively
toward ai gobbling us up now in the intervening
months and years ai has kind of thrown pr a bouquet
in the sense that llms heavily prioritize earned
media and their citations when people are looking
for products and services at the point of need
so somebody's like hey well what's the best crm
software what's the best security software cloud
and they ask you know any of these llms Earn
media is what is cited in those responses. And
so therefore, it's basically, if not completely
taking over traditional SEO, then it's 100 percent
eating part of its lunch. So PR has kind of gotten
that bouquet in the sense that now guess who's
relevant as shit again? It's the PR people that
hook these stories up with the reporters to get
the earn media that LLM cite. Now, having said
that, reporters are fewer and far between. Washington
Post just laid off one third of their staff yesterday.
How do you how do I reconcile when I'm talking
about the opportunity that AI has thrown us with
LLMs using earned media as a citation with a
dwindling amount of reporters and journalists
to cover the shit that we need them to cite?
Have you thought about that? And like, what does
that mean for your platform moving forward as
reporters kind of wither on the vine? Yeah, I
think that it just comes back to the stuff they
were talking about earlier. Like, OK. So one
interesting thing that I did when we acquired
HARO was I wanted to talk and interview with
over 100 journalists who had used it. Same thing
on the source side. When I got on these Zoom
calls with journalists, like the thing that I've
learned very quickly was that they have about
eight sources of income. I would have to ask
them like, hey. Like, how are you earning a living?
Like, what are you doing? And they would name
off their writing for five different publications.
They've got a sub stack that they're doing. They've
got consulting hours. They've got this course.
They're doing a lot. All right. So the tracking
a journalist, their beat tracking with where
they write like that is really, really tough.
That is a constantly moving thing. At the same
time, like. there's influence in different places.
So what is a journalist in 2026? Like, is it
a creator? Is it a, someone who writes articles?
And so I think that for PR, this just opens up
a lot of opportunity on who do you want to connect
your clients with? Where, what channels are right
for them? What are the end destinations? So I
think that like, that's another bouquet for PR.
This is going to be even harder for companies
to figure out of like, How do I promote my business?
How do I build visibility with customers? That's
a very hard thing that's going to get increasingly
harder for companies. Yeah, everybody thinks
they know PR, but they're not going to be able
to figure that part out. And so just to follow
up on that, what I've been telling myself is
that. I believe there are more opportunities
than ever. It's just that they're more diffuse
and that it requires a shitload more legwork
and research and infiltrating these little corners
of the internet that didn't really amount to
much. You have to be in way more places to reach
the same number of people as before. Yes, but
in aggregate, you can still get that halo effect
and maybe even bigger, but it's a hell of a lot
more work, which to your point, may be even better
for PR. Anyway, it's a fascinating topic. I feel
like that is something I want to write about
actually soon on LinkedIn. All right. Definitely
agree. Sorry. I was just going to make a little
shift into besides AI and PR journalism world,
what else do you do? I drive a minivan with three
kids. That's about it. I relate to that. That's
all I got time for is family. keeping track of
AI within the PR and journalism world and trying
to grow a startup. Yeah, totally. How many people
work at the company? We've got seven of us. And
I would just say that, like, the thing that I've
noticed pretty frequently, like, I sympathize
with the media and, you know, people who work
in media. But Perry, to your point, like, I sympathize
with a lot of the college students coming out.
And a lot of the people in early stages of their
careers, because every PR agency owner that I've
spoken with has been like, look, you know, we
should employ probably another two, three people
on staff. But because AI has been such an effective
job to increase the efficiencies of our existing
team, like we've been able to unlock so much
more so much more productivity. I think the same
is true for us, like the software engineers that
we have on on staff are like. look coding is
no longer the bottleneck we have a 10x gain where
ai creates the code we review the code because
we've been software developers for 10 15 years
we know that what's good and what's not and we
put it in the prod and that is like very, very
crazy to think that you could run, you know,
startups supporting hundreds of thousands of
users with a team of seven. Well, headcount used
to be a badge of honor, right? Like the tech
company is like, we plan to increase headcount
by X. You know, everybody's like, yes, those
guys are on fire. And now it's looked at kind
of like, what are these guys doing? They're fucking
up. They're hiring people. You should be reducing
people, getting way more efficient. So that's
been in my view. having worked in tech for years
and years has been the biggest swing is that
we are always talking about how these guys are
growing like wildfire and now it's like ah look
at those guys they don't get it they don't get
they should be you know reducing their head count
by a third totally i have said it before and
i'll say it again though i think the biggest
hurdle to ai adoption for like the normies in
roles like ours is giving people the time to
go experiment and f it up and try and fail and
spend the money that they need on the uh credits
and blah blah blah because that's part of learning
right is like just trying and i think when everyone's
grinding away at their job and they know how
to do things the old way they don't have the
time to go learn a new tool so like is imperative
on like leaders and organizations and whatever
to say okay if we expect you to use these tools
and do more with them It's not just like, here's
a training once in a while. It's like dedicate
four hours a week to building something. And
if you build something cool, share it with the
team. And, you know, how do you kind of democratize
AI learning so it doesn't have to just be like,
I'm going to an AI class because that isn't the
same thing. Yeah, it sounds a little boring with
the going to an AI class. And I think that, you
know, AI tools do a really good job of. For us,
one of the biggest startup hacks that we've ever
had is sign up for startup programs with NVIDIA,
with Microsoft, with AWS. That gave us over $500
,000 of AI credits. For startups, all these model
builders and providers have these credits that
you could utilize so you can mess up and you
can figure out what works in your workflows and
what doesn't. That to me has been a huge unlock
for us over the last couple of years. So a hundred
percent go, go test it. I think the widely cited
stat that kind of has a misleading headline is
how many failures there are of AI prototypes
at the enterprise level. Like, would you want
a reverse of that with a 90 % success rate? Probably
not because they're probably not pushing the
boundaries of what it could do. So I think that,
yeah, there's a lot of room for messing up and
seeing what the limitations are so that you can.
know uh where the boundaries actually exist so
speaking of an unlock and limitations and all
that what what's featured in particular what
um what's the one thing that you guys are can't
do yet but you're aspiring to do is they're like
man if we could only do this thing or these two
things we would be on fire or is that is that
giving away a roadmap like i don't want you to
no we want a position featured as a pr assistant
So look at all the different things, all the
different workflows that exist within PR. Finding
a journalist, identifying a relevant HARO query
and responding with a good pitch. These are things
that you can have an assistant get to 90 % of
the way there and then have the human in the
loop so that you can have that 10x efficiency
within PR. So for us, it's a matter of we feel
like we have... really unique proprietary data
with what's coming through, help a reporter out.
We know what kind of workflows exist within our
customers. I think that now you could get it
into a more usable, friendly user interface that
allows to have those 10x productivity gains.
And that's what we're working towards. I think
that's a really exciting future. Have you connected
with the people that are working on Honeyjar?
Are you aware of them? You should just take a
quick note about Honey Jar, because while they
haven't really revealed what they've done yet,
they have some pretty big investments from like
former bigwigs at Anderson Horowitz. But they're
looking at specific to PR and comms, creating
like some kind of ecosystem of all these tools
that I think are going to be interesting to you.
And I've signed up for their free thing. I haven't
gotten it yet, like their early beta stuff. But
you should just be aware of them, I think, because
I think they're talking in similar ways that
you're talking about here, which, hey. Yeah,
no, I appreciate the tip. You should take a look.
It's a small comms world. And frankly, I'm just
glad that there are tools being developed that
are like for us. It just always felt like we
were such an afterthought. And I think AI brings
this whole world of comms. reporting and comms
automation and stuff that just didn't exist before.
And nobody cared about us because we were such
a small and low budget cohort. I still don't
think anybody's really nailed the reporting piece.
No one's nailed it, but at least we have the
ability as individuals to not spend $80 ,000
on a tool and get some kind of data, which didn't
exist for a lot of us before. It was just a black
box. Yeah, yeah. I think that's right. Should
I go to my questions? I mean, I think it's time.
I'm going to go to my questions. So we're going
to shift into, I ask the same questions of all
of our guests because it's nice to get a perspective.
And then Perry comes in with insanity, but mine
are just normal questions. That's not that crazy.
Okay. You get to erase one corporate buzzword
from existence. What is it? AI? How do we talk
about AI without saying AI? I don't know. I don't
know. But at least for a day, can we just maybe
eliminate that from maybe agents? I don't know.
Like all the things that are revolving around
the AI word cloud. You just need a break. Something.
I don't know. It's like what you write about
and what you talk about, but you're like, but
not today. We're going to take a day off. A little
fatigued. Okay, next question. You are about
to walk on stage to give a presentation to 50
,000 people, screaming fans, if you will. What
music do you walk out on the stage to? Probably
Journey. Specific Journey song? Any of them.
I mean... Something. I mean, I feel like for
50 ,000 people, you need to pick something pretty
mainstream that appeases the crowd. And Journey's
got product market fit with that. I was going
to ask, are you a Journey fan or is this about
the audience? This was answering the question.
So, yeah, I think I'm not rocking out to Journey,
but you got to please the people. OK. All right.
You know, I like Journey. I don't like I'm not
putting Journey on in my car, but like. you know
i'm not changing the channel if it comes on the
radio right i'm one of them it's going to warm
warm people up so and everybody knows all the
journey songs because like it's just part of
the ether um okay next question if you had to
give a ted talk on anything but ai or journalism
or pr com stuff what would it be you know i gave
a tedx talk a while back It was about a cross
-country journey that myself and three friends
took in an RV interviewing people about their
career paths. And it highlighted a couple of
the best stories that we got from the road. And
one of the best stories that we got was from
a fainting goat farmer and how baby fainting
goats don't faint and how, as an entrepreneur,
you need to essentially block the adrenaline
that could paralyze you to continue to... take
actions and keep moving. So probably be a repeat
of that. Like, quite honestly, baby fainting
goats, as cheesy as it sounds, is like very core
to being a founder. Dude, that sounds awesome.
Is there a video? I'm interested. Of this? There
is a very grainy video. I gave a TEDx talk before
TEDx was cool. So yeah, it was like somewhere
buried in 2010. Man, I feel like we gotta go.
2010, really? I think it was probably 2010, 2011,
somewhere around there. Dang, that sounds cool.
And you should totally reprise that because that
sounds very interesting. I would watch that.
My last question, if you could, you only get
to use one emoji for the rest of your life. Which
one? Or none? I'm not, yeah, I'm not an emoji
guy. So maybe just a thumbs up. Going with the
standard. I'll take it. That's fine. And emojis
are so like out of style now, but it makes me
so sad. Like AI ruined. I'm all into emojis.
People probably read my stuff and they're like,
this guy needs to calm the hell down with his
emojis. I know. Whatever. That's cool. We're
old. It is what it is. Perry, over to you, sir.
Okay. All right. This could go either way, actually.
I wouldn't be surprised if you answered either
way. I always have a money related question.
Like, okay, you can get, someone's going to give
you $50 million right now. 50 million. That's
F you money. Walk away, do whatever you want
the rest of your life. But to take that money,
you can only brush your teeth using your fingers
and hand soap for the rest of your life. Do you
take the money and use fingers and hand soap
for the rest of your life to brush your teeth?
No, keep working, go earn it. You're not taking
the money? Okay, that's interesting as hell.
I have a question. Do you have to brush your
teeth or can you just be nasty and never brush
your teeth? I mean, you can do that. I think
I would brush my teeth with my fingers and soap.
Me too. 50 mil? If it was like two mil? I thought
you would have said brush your teeth with fingers
and soap because you can do a fair job with that.
Let your fingernails grow a little bit and get
in there. It would not be pleasant. Yeah. Maybe
you can take that 50 million and like if you
don't have the restrictions, like can you invest
or can you like create a new technique with some
of that cash? I'm afraid not. You have to brush
your teeth with your fingers and soap. OK. Yeah.
You know, gross. All right. So I'm going to ask
you the other one because we haven't done this
this season. Becca is you. how does it work again
with the hiccups and the, Oh my gosh. Yeah. Can
you remember? Yeah. Which one would you choose?
It's just a either or. You have to have hiccups
or you have to cut off your own pinky, but hiccups
for six months straight around the clock. You
can't get rid of them. Sleeping, eating, all
the things, hiccuping. Around the clock. Or you
can cut your pinky off and immediately get rid
of the hiccups, but it's only six months. How
much of the pinky? No, you have to do one or
the other. Like the whole pinky? The whole pinky,
yeah. Gone. I'll go hiccups. Yeah, me too. Guess
what Becca's choosing? Going with the pinky.
So many people, and actually a lot of women would
just cut their pinky off, which is surprising
as hell. Yeah. I feel like there's no way in
hell that I would want... to live the rest of
my life like this. I don't think men have experienced
the level of like body discomfort that women
have. So we know what happens when you live in
a sustained state of like, you know. I just feel
like maybe you could, over the course of the
six months with hiccups, maybe get involved in
some medical studies. Maybe make it into a more,
like, promotable story for yourself. Like, this
guy can't get rid of the hiccups. And then when
he does, finally, after six months, oh, my gosh.
You would be an instant TikTok star, honestly.
Like, the person who can't stop hiccuping. Yeah,
versus cutting the pinky off. Like, no one wants
that. It's not a great story. But six months
can't cure. And every problem is an opportunity.
I get you. I feel you. Valid point. No one has
ever put the positive spin on this question.
And I am actually impressed that you PR'd the
question. Could you imagine doing that? Can you
imagine doing an interview like you do have the
hiccups and you're like on local TV podcast?
No. And like, I mean, the host would be trying
to hold it together to be like to you without
interrupting. And you're just like, yes, it sucks
to have them, but I don't even want to be around
someone else that has them. They drive me insane.
Yeah. Well, all right. With that, I'm going to
ask. Because I like to ask everybody, Brett,
do you have anything that you would like our
guests to know or that you would like to share
or direct us to, to find more about you or Featured?
Yeah, sure. I mean, I'd love for anyone to sign
up for Featured .com. I would love for you to
sign up for Help A Reporter out too. Just enter
in your email address at helpareporter .com and
then feel free to, if you're a LinkedIn person,
I use LinkedIn. So feel free to connect with
me there. But yeah, I appreciate you both having
me on the show. Yeah. Awesome. It was great having
you. And I know that my team in particular is
going to be interested in listening to this one.
And happy to meet you. Thank you. Yeah. Enjoy
the Super Bowl out in the Bay. Yeah. Go Pats.