📍   Welcome back to the show. My name is Sarah Beth Herman. I'm your host here at no silver spoons. And today we are doing all of the good things on this show. Obviously you can see I have a co host today, Amy Bartko.

She is the. Founder of  chatterbox. And you're going to learn all about her and her journey here. It is such a joy when I can bring someone new on the show that you guys have never heard about before. So in just a moment, Amy is going to get a chance to tell you all about her, but what to expect on this show today.

One of the things that we talk about here at no silver. Spoons is just how life isn't handed to you. And I think your brand isn't handed to you. It's built on grit, determination, and authenticity. And Amy is here to share more about what that looks like for you as you grow your brand and take a look at it from a PR standpoint.

So welcome to the show, Amy, let us know a little bit about you.  Hi, Sarah Beth. Oh my goodness. I am so excited to be here today. Thank you again for having me. This is fantastic.  It's funny, I can measure when I've started my business based on my kids age. And so I had about 11 years ago, I started Chatterbox PR and  it's been amazing.

Awesome. So tell me a little bit about Chatterbox. What is Chatterbox PR and marketing? What would we want to know about it if somebody were to ask you?  For years  people would ask me what I do and what is Chatterbox and I'm like I do PR. But I've worked really hard, right?

And people are like what exactly is PR? And I've worked really hard at, developing an elevator pitch that lands well with people. And so I'll share that with you and your audience. So PR Chatterbox,  I'm a PR expert. I specialize in putting brands into the hands of celebrities and high end influencers.

Actually, all influencers featured in television and movies as well as top tier media.  Amazing. Holy cow. Like what a gift to have you on the show. Holy cow. I love it. Okay. So tell me, why did you do this? What, what made you decide to start chatterbox? Have you just been in PR and marketing your entire life?

And you were like, Hey, I could make money doing this. Or did it just fall into your lap? What happened that made you start this brand?   That's a great question.  My whole entire life, I've been in marketing and sales and marketing.  And about 17 years ago, again, going back to the measure, I can measure my businesses by my children.

About 17 years ago, I was approached to become a business partner with somebody that actually introduced me to the PR world and the baby and kids space for that matter. And I Worked with her in developing, building a brand and. 11 years ago, I  pivoted and started chatterbox at that time.

I dissolved that partnership and really felt like I needed to go out on my own and work my own work life balance. We're all entrepreneurs, for a reason for me, my reason is work life balance. I have two children.  I have a 17 and an 11 year old actually. My 17 year old will be 18 on March 3rd.

So all the crazy, right? Yeah.  That's always a milestone in parenting, right? It's like you get to 18. I remember when I got there with our daughter. My goodness. It's like they're adults. There are so many things  they can do. So really that's what made me. Start my own business was having that work life balance and, being able to manage my own schedule.

I love it. So did you always work in marketing? Like even before you started your business and then you were just like, okay, let's just go do this. Like I need this balance with my kids. I've got to be present for them, but I also need to make money.  my sales and marketing career in the beginning of my life was working for other corporations, and then I become a mom and,  working for   a corporate job, I was working from a, 6 a.

m. to 6 p. m. and I literally never saw my child. And so when I was approached to the business partnership that was also marketing PR. I feel like for me.   Marketing is what I was born to do. It is like my gift. We all have our zones of genius and my zone of genius is by far really helping build brand awareness, helping brands, become the go to brand. 

like I told you, I do  celebrity and influencer marketing. I've been doing influencer marketing. before that phrase was even coined. I've been doing that for about 18 years because I saw in working in the baby and kids space and with baby and kid global brands is really, you know what I work with.

 It's mostly moms that are creating these brands and they're coming up with solutions for parenting and when I would run across these products, I'm like, wow, this is making my life easier.

I feel like it could make.   Not just consumers, these influencers, their life's easier as well. And I started sending products to celebrities and influencers to help these brands grow. Like I said, before Instagram was a thing 18 years ago, they were posting on Facebook before they were even charging.

 I definitely am like in the OG influencer marketing. I was just going to say that. I'm like, you're the OG right now of marketing. And it really changed influencer marketing changed the way that brands were marketing themselves, changing the way. That products were being seen and consumers were making their decisions by having this third party, authentic, really organic, voice of the brand.

It was really powerful. Amazing. Amy, we talk a lot about the grit that comes along with work, I believe to be an entrepreneur, you've got to have grit. Like you've got to go for it.  You can't be someone who needs to be managed. You can't have someone  who needs to have someone call and check in with you every day to make sure you're doing the thing to make the business grow.

And I'm sure when you started your business. It took that grit, right? It took that, hands to the pavement. We are getting through this. Like we are gonna get this done. And so I want to talk for a little bit, your earliest years in your brand. And obviously you needed to have that balance so that you could generate revenue, take care of your family, afford to live and exist, but you also had to raise your babies.

And I think that takes such intentionality. So talk me through that. Talk me through what it looked like for you. To balance all of that and learn what that dynamic was while still growing your brand. You're trying to grow all of these brands, right? But you had to grow yours. And so talk to me a little bit about that for the next 60 seconds or so. 

 I have a friend from the corporate world that actually recently made a comment to me that entrepreneurs are lazy   I felt was a very. consulting comment entrepreneurs are everything but lazy. You are burning the candle at both ends trying to grow your brand.

And so for me I was balancing that work life, right? So I would wake up early and, do everything that I needed to do, make phone calls, do outreach, tend to my inbox. And then I would be a mom right in the middle of the day  and then when they would nap, I'd be back on and when they're up, I'm a mom again, and then, they go to bed and I'm up until midnight, just really focusing on.

Getting,  my brand known   amongst the people in the space,  the good thing is really how I started and attracting clients is attending trade shows. I would attend baby and kid trade shows. So I had that face time because in the way that today's world works. Even 17 years ago, it was on email and here I am in Phoenix, Arizona, working with global brands.

 And this was before zoom  working with these global brands and you're working nonstop. As an entrepreneur, you are working 24 7 being a mom being, at the time I was a wife, I'm no longer married. And being a friend and running my own business. I think as entrepreneurs, we are everything to everyone.

If you think about when you walk in to work, it might be your home office, you might have a shared workspace, but you walk in and first you might be the HR manager. Second, you might be the social media manager. Third, you might be the CPA. Fourth, you might be the accounts payable department.

You're everything to everyone. I don't think there's time to be lazy as an entrepreneur, right?  if there's a way for me to be lazy please tell me because even when my mind stops, I'm always like onto the next thing, right? It's okay, so what business am I going to build next?

Or how can I add this stream of revenue or this venture that I want to do? There's always so much going on, and that's. The grit you have to have. If you didn't have the grit, how would you be raising your babies? How would you be caring for your family? And I think that's what it took.

And I think your journey so perfectly aligns with this show because your grit and determination played a role in building your brand to what it is today. So let's talk for a minute.  Often I talk about like hard work on this podcast, right? And so if you were to think about. The hardest work that you had to put in, like maybe the most challenging time that you had in your career.

Like I can look back to times that were really hard for me. For example, when the massive shutdown happened, 2020, we were all freaking out. Like our businesses changed forever. Honestly, my biggest brand that I had, we lost 70 percent of our revenue in a matter of a month,  70 percent when everything opened back up, it took us four months because my biggest brand works in the dental medical space.

Obviously our offices were shut down, like what were we going to do? And then we came back and we were 150 percent bigger than we ever were before the shutdown. That took some serious determination to stick it out. Some businesses closed forever. They could never recover.

So I'm sure you've had ebbs and flows in your business. I'm sure things have gone South a little bit and then we had to grow and then we had to pivot and move and maneuver things around.  If you were to think about the most challenging time or times in your business, what would you say kept you going?

To continue to stay the route, to continue to fight through, even when business was down or even when you weren't meeting the numbers you wanted to meet as an entrepreneur, what would you say kept you going?  Honestly,  what it kept me going during those challenging times.  Is the fact that I know that I'm the expert and I know that I can get you the PR coverage, your product in front of celebrities, in the hands of influencers, featured on television and movies. I know that is what I'm good at because what I'm good at is building relationships.

That by far is my zone of genius and people have a tendency to meet me.  We just connect, right away, it's somebody said, like, when I was on Lindsay's podcast, she said, I'm just very approachable. I'm very easy to talk to. And you have to have that ability. To be good at what you do in general, but you also have to have that ability to be able to market a brand and to be able to get it into Forbes magazine or, Vogue in style featured on good morning America.

You have to have those relationships and you have to be approachable and understand.  Amazing. I think that any brand has to have that, right? It doesn't matter if you are in, yeah, baby, children's, adult. Doesn't matter what industry you're in, medical, dental. It doesn't matter where you are at, you have to be approachable.

And Amy, I can attest to the truth of exactly what you're saying, because you and I met by chance and we connected right away. Literally, I just felt like our souls aligned in some magical way that like we had to stay friends forever. I don't know. You were just awesome. So I can totally attest to that. 

And I agree. I felt the same way about you. And I just for me I like people, I like that connection and that is what makes me successful. But it's also what drives me. Amazing. So I want to shift gears for a minute. I want to talk about the determination to stay true to your vision.

So I'm sure as you've navigated the landscapes of PR and marketing, there has been pressure to conform to trends, to fit into someone else's expectations. I'm sure you've seen all of this. Just even speaking to the fact that You were making things happen long before everybody had the easy route of social media.

And I say the easy route of social media because our exposure is bigger than it's ever been.  My husband and I, we talk about when we first met, we're going to be celebrating our 20 year anniversary. And we talk about when we first met, we never sat on the couch on our phones. We never sat on the couch on a laptop. Like we just didn't. And I'm not. Trying to date myself by any means.

I'm 40, but we just didn't do those things, and now it's like you've got a laptop that sits on your lap on the couch while the TV's on and your phone's next to you and you're able to see anything you want. We can consume at an unbelievable rate, truly. And so in your world. You've had to face the pressure to conform to trends, to fit into someone else's expectations, especially because you're doing marketing and PR.

It's wild. I'm sure my question for you is, Amy, how do you stay authentic to you while it's. All changing while the landscape is constantly moving. How do you stay authentic? Like, how do you stay grounded? Do you have like SOPs written out? Do you have, like brand statements, vision statements, core values, like a team behind you, what is it that keeps you staying on track?

Because. If you hadn't all these years stayed true to what your vision is for those that work with you, you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't have lasted all of these changes in the landscape of marketing and PR.  That's a good question.  Yes, I have SOPs. Yes, I have a brand guide. But if I can just back up a little bit, one of the things I never did until about two years ago is actually market myself.

and positioned myself as the expert. Wow.   Because I felt what my job is and what clients hire me for is to build their brand. So,   I'm really focused on building my client's brand. Although I would attend trade shows and meet people, prospects for clients, I never talked about myself. 

In the media.  Wow. That's so interesting.  It's like the teacher can't be taught, it's like you were like teaching everybody, but not taking your own advice almost. I wasn't doing PR for myself, and I have changed that because the reality of it is we should all market ourselves, right?

We should all get ourselves in, the expert point of view because we start our business because we are an expert at what we do.   That's what we do. So one, and I feel like I'm getting off track from your original question, but I'll talk about that in a second.

Good chat.  For one, by positioning yourself as an expert and really leaning into that expertise, that is what's going to bring people into your You know, universe and really into your space and make you more visible  because I feel like yes, I have, all of the SOPs and I have the brand guides and I have all of those, steps that we take to.

acquire and secure the media coverage and the television, spots, but positioning yourself as the expert and putting yourself out there, which as scary as it is, I never felt comfortable doing it.  But by leaning into That is going to help bring people into your universe and bring people into it.

And your original question is, how do I stay authentic to myself? I used to feel that wasn't very authentic by leaning into my expertise. Because I felt that my authenticity really was for my brands but how are people going to know what I do? If I don't talk about what I do on social media, if I don't talk about what I do in the media for myself and by, making that small tweak and   putting myself out there. That. I feel is what is authentic to myself because I know what I'm doing. I am very good at what I do. I just have to be authentic to that and lean into that a little bit more as uncomfortable as it might be. Like I said, originally, I used to just tell people that.

I do PR. You know what, millions of people have no clue exactly what PR is. And so, by tweaking my intro and, or my elevator pitch, if you will. That really just nails it and tells people what I do.  Amy, if I was someone who was like, hey, I don't even know that I need something in PR, like how does a brand know if they need PR and marketing in the realm of what you do and what is something that you would encourage a new entrepreneur to do to.

Know what they needed. I have personally never worked with someone that managed my PR and marketing like an actual expert. I literally have a team of 28 people who manage social media for me and marketing things for me, but I don't have a PR agent, is that way above the pay grade of the average entrepreneur or does every entrepreneur. Qualify as someone who needs someone to get their stuff in the hands of these people. Talk to me about that for a minute.  Amazing question. Because the reality of it is everyone needs PR really? 

Yes, they do. So, I'm going to tell you, my secret. Okay. It's my PR formula. Okay. So, I literally call it the PR formula. It is something that I'm trademarking. So, nobody takes it. It's being trademarked.  Yes, it is being trademarked. It's in the process right now. So, to build brand awareness.  Which is what we all want, right?

Building brand awareness. You need to gain visibility to earn credibility. And then you will achieve profitability. So let me break that down for you. Okay.  Visibility is when you're featured in Forbes, you're on a podcast, you're on television, you're seen in television and movies, or you're seen by influencers and celebrities.

So that's visibility, right? Really getting your brand name out there, whether you're a product or a service-based brand, right? So, by securing those, that's what gives you credibility because we can talk about ourselves on social media. all we want, but that's us talking about ourselves. Very important.

Something we absolutely need to do to market ourselves, but that is us talking about ourselves. But by having a third party talk about you, that's where the credibility lies. If you think about it, used this analogy earlier, so I'm just going to use this one. So, if you're looking at a lipstick, okay.

And you're looking at a website or, you see a lipstick out there and this lipstick has been covered by Vogue by InStyle Kim Kardashian's wearing it, but this lipstick.  Doesn't have any of those or doesn't show that which one are you going to choose, right? You're going to be, I'm literally going to choose the one that other people have used because I think that they wouldn't use something cheap.

Those things would be featured if it was done well, if it was manufactured the right way and the right place came from the right source materials. Like I would think that it was a reliable product.  Exactly.  By those. Credibilities right by that visibility that's being seen.

That is what gives you the credibility. That's what turns into profitability. So back to your original question, does every entrepreneur need PR? The answer is yes. It doesn't matter how small you are or how big you are by having that third party credibility. That's what's going to bring consumers to you. 

 And so what I'm hearing you say is that it's not just about you talking about how great your product is. It's more so about the collaboration effort. You've got to be out there collaborating with others in some way, shape or form, and if you don't have the resources on your own to get it into the hands of these people that are influencing, you've got to work with somebody that can, and that's not a unused expense.

That's an expense that's literally going to have a. Fabulous ROI, because now you've just given yourself so much credibility. And I think it even transcends further than thinking just about getting it in the hands, having like case studies done on things you have, adding those things to your website, adding those things to your social media, like really branching yourself out there.

Now I would venture to say that the average person has no idea even what the first thing. That they could possibly do would be, truly, if I was looking at a brand new entrepreneur and they said, Sarah Beth, what is the first thing that I should do? I honestly wouldn't know what to tell them.

If it came from a PR standpoint, cause I don't work in that field. I don't know, so Amy, what's the first thing. A new entrepreneur could do if you were to give us a free carrot today, what would that be? The first thing you should do is you should set up a Google alert on your Google account, on your competitors and yourself. 

 And so why would we do that?  So when you do that, you'll get a email from Google every day and it will show you exactly  where your competitors are being featured in the news. And it will also tell you about where you are. So if your competitors are being featured in the news you should be too, right?

 It makes total sense, but I would have never told someone to go do that. So that's fabulous. Yeah. If I was to give you just one tip, that would be the tip. 

But  my carrot is Google your competitors, where are they being featured in the news?  That's a good question though. Truly. I think that it's valuable for us to think about that. I talk a lot on SEO. And so one of the things that I teach a lot of my clients is how to use.

Things like answer the public to search different things or using Uber suggest so that you can see, and you can literally put in any website into Uber suggest and see what pages are the most popular pages for that website. And then you can go make those same pages on your website with your content and then tap into the funneling SEO, because now you've taken.

The traffic essentially and made it come to you. There are so many cool things that you can do that people don't even know. And you don't have to hire anybody for it. But Amy, if I were to hire you, what is something that you would do for me that you think you've mastered?

 Tell me, what is something, what is like one of the first things you do that you are like a supreme expert at, that you would do for someone that they really couldn't do on their own? Truly you would want an expert doing this.

So this is an interesting question because,

I have really deep seated relationships with journalists that literally I have on speed dial.  This would really be like step, 10 or 15  but it's introducing you to the journalist.   we want them to know what our brand is so they can write articles about it so we can get a backlink to that and show credibility.

Is that correct? Yeah, exactly. You want the journalists to feature you, you want the journalists to talk about you. By introducing your brand and putting your brand on the radar of these journalists, And obviously the journalists that are in line with what your space is, that's super and uber important as well.

By introducing your brand to these journalists, that is what, gets you on their radar. It may not be today that they feature you. But it puts you on their radar and then you just continue doing the follow up.  One of the things that most people do incorrectly is reaching out to journalists. 

Really? Yes, for sure.  Because they just don't know what to say or what to do and they're just like trying to blanketly do it and they don't know what they're doing? Is that why? Yeah,  they do it wrong, but that's actually something I teach people how to do too. Oh. Yeah. 

Amazing. And I think all of this just kind of ties in and brings this whole theory full circle because the very first thing that you told me on this episode was that you are really great at building the relationships with people like that is what this is about. And so we've talked about a myriad of things on this first episode, just really learning what you do and how you do it.

And I think this is just a full circle moment here. The first thing you would say is, Know what's going on with your competitors. The second thing that you would do for them. It's actually step 15 probably is really reaching out to the connections you already have. And I don't know anybody that has these kinds of connections and I'm sure there are several people out there in this world that do, but you've mastered that.

You've put in the time, the energy, the effort you've put in the grit. You've had the energy towards it to forge relationships that are not only getting you results. But your client's results and then teaching them that generations beyond where they are right now are going to be successful because of what they learned from you.

And I think that's one of the most powerful things about all of this.  Absolutely. Relationships are key. I was just on yesterday, I was on a call with a couple of journalists and it was. It was about becoming a journalist, BFF, how do you do this? And,  I am on all those calls.

I am, I'm in their inbox. I'm on their social feeds they all know who I am  that's one of the things that a lot of people, don't do. They don't take the time or the effort to learn who their journalists are.

Amazing. Amy, thank you so much for being on this episode of No Silver Spoons, getting to know you, what it means to have an authentic brand and really why you created Chatterbox. I'm so excited for our listeners to tune into our next week's episode and learn even more  next week, we are going to be talking about quite a few things, but the most important is overcoming branding challenges.

I want to talk about what it means.    📍 To be introduced to a brand, someone that wants to work with you and just know that they've got a lot of challenges ahead, but you're going to help them get exactly where they need to be successful. So thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode.

If you'd like to check the show notes, you can connect with Amy on all of the social media platforms available. Check those for more information. If you want to listen to this episode one more time, you can increase the. Speed on your podcast listening station to 1. 25 or even two and get through it even faster.

Feel free to share this with a friend and we'll see you guys on the next episode.