We talk to Yitzi Weiner about relationship equity and the power and value of creativity.
Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the LA business podcast, a form for business owners and senior executives to share the experiences about the elements that drive their success.
Your host is Robert Brill, CEO of Brillmedia.co an Inc 500 company. Delivering the power of hyperlocal advertising. Robert writes for Forbes, Inc and Ad trade publications. Our goal is to bring you the stories about successes and failures of people who are making big things happen in marketing, entrepreneurship, and management.
Robert Brill: [00:00:37] Welcome to another episode of the LA Business Podcast, today our guest is Yitzi Wiener editor in chief of Authority Magazine, and CEO of Thought Leader Incubator. Thanks for being with us Yitzi.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:00:48] Hey Robert, it’s a delight and a pleasure.
Robert Brill: [00:00:52] So we’ve known each other for a few years now and I have to say, you’ve just, you’ve been such a great person in the PR and marketing world, and you’ve personally done so much for me and given me access to your readers and I am so incredibly grateful for that. Tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got started with Authority Magazine, how we got here to 2020, where you’re in a suit and tie looking dapper. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:01:24] Sure. I grew up in Los Angeles, California, and I eventually migrated to the East coast, in high school. I went to Baltimore, with the intent of going to medical school and becoming an oncologist but during that transition period, I shifted gears actually, and I decided to become an ordained rabbi. So, I got Smith ordination and I was a teaching rabbi for about 15 years. I had a job in the Boston area, you know, I got married, I had a family in the meantime.
Robert Brill: [00:02:14] You have, like what, five kids?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:02:17] I’m very blessed that I have seven children. I have six girls and one boy. Yeah, I’m very blessed. People often ask me why so much of my writing is about women leaders, and I often say that I have six daughters and it’s my intent to be able to have my daughters grow up in a world that’s, you know, that’s a little more improved than ours. So I’m very invested in women’s empowerment.
I was in the Boston area for about nine years and then I moved back to Baltimore and, being a rabbi is a wonderful job, but it isn’t always very lucrative. So I decided that I was going to have to start a business. Initially, I started a PR business. So most people who are in the PR field usually start out as a journalist, and then after they tap out journalism, they join the PR world, I actually had the opposite, the adverse migration. I started out in PR and then I had a friend who invited me to become a contributor at Huffington post. And when I was writing there for about a year.
And then you may have noticed, this may have happened to you, but Huffington Post closed down their contributor program. So I was kind of left in the lurch and, you know, I was really enjoying the writing. I was really enjoying what I was doing, but that was that.
But I had all this relationship equity and all these relationships with publicists that were pitching me different clients. I mean, I realized even though I wasn’t really with Huffington Post, I had all those relationships and with my wife’s encouragement, and I really think it was the best idea, she says, you know, why don’t you start your own using those relationships.
I started with Authority Magazine in 2018. I was very blessed because I already had relations with publicists that were featuring very prominent leaders and sports figures. I was able to book some really good interviews and then that kind of like snowballed, once other people see other people that are prominent leaders, the magazine started getting, you know, Tons and tons and tons of pitches. And now we’re very blessed that we’re one of the Medium’s largest publications. I think we probably published like 50 articles a
Robert Brill: [00:04:49] day.
I’ve heard that, you know, like money magazine, for example, they publish like 10 a day. How are you publishing 50 a day? The core for this podcast you’d see is really like, we want to learn. We want to give other business owners and entrepreneurs ideas about how they can grow and scale their businesses. And really the way we do that is we hear the stories of our guests and we all get ideas. And just so you know, like I started this podcast because that’s my mission. I’m on the mission to grow and scale my business. And so like when you started. Authority Magazine. How did you gain traction? Like how did you get to a point where you had viewership and readership and what’s your business model, by the way? I don’t even know that.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:05:39] Sure, sure. Excellent Question. So let’s talk about how to gain traction and then we can talk about the business mode. Which one should I
Robert Brill: [00:05:53] answer first?
How did you build the business?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:05:59] Sure. Growth was really in two aspects. So we had the front of the shop, so to speak the masthead is Authority Magazine, that’s what people see, that’s what kind of allows us to reach out to the entire world. So that grew really rapidly. And I think it was because number one, at the beginning, we decided that it wasn’t only going to be a focus on the writing, it was also going to have a very strong visual component. It wasn’t enough to be an interesting story, but it’s just, you look beautiful and look polished, and the whole presentation should be a pleasant experience that attracted a person.
I got that idea from a biography about Steve jobs. I’m sure many have, and that was Steve jobs as one of his insights was that he said that he wants to have a typography class and that typography class in college had inspired him to inform the whole aesthetic of Apple and him. It wasn’t just about the look, but it was about the user experience.
Robert Brill: [00:07:08] I really liked that if I could jump in, you know, that’s really interesting because one of the things that I didn’t realize was happening until you just said it was, my version of that was I had a job at a company called Eisenberg group in Pasadena, it was influencer marketing stuff, but they’re fundamentally a design firm. To the point where my presentations couldn’t even be reviewed if I didn’t have the right fonts on the presentation,
Yitzi Wiener: [00:07:34] I was like, oh this is nuts.
Robert Brill: [00:07:36] But Eric Eisenberg, he’s a creative genius. And so I started understanding the power and value of creativity that I was looking at my whole life. I just didn’t see it. So I love that. That’s really interesting. So what was your version of that?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:07:54] Sure, sure, sure. So the truth is I really skipped this part, but I’m also a trained graphic designer and a trained web designer. So I wasn’t just bringing my editorial experience with it, but I was also bringing my design aesthetic. That idea, it was really striking to me by seeing the biography of Steve jobs, which is that we have to focus not only on the product, but on the experience, the way you just feel when they’re reading it. So if it looks good, it’s intuitive, it’s easy to navigate. It says pleasant experience. People will come back.
More than others. You know, I found other very, very prominent publications really, but they’re so hard to navigate and they take forever to load and it’s just like, it’s almost a pain. I don’t want to read it on the site. I’d rather read it on like a Google news or, or a Mac, my windows newsreader, because the actual site is so cocky.
So that was one thing that we focused on, but I don’t think that was enough. I don’t think that will be enough to drive the group.
Robert Brill: [00:08:59] The content has to be there too.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:09:01] I think I was very blessed. I was once asked, ‘is success based on luck or is it skill? And of course it is a combination of both, but to me, my real lucky break was the fact that I started at Huffington Post, if I would have started like today out of the blue it would be very difficult to get traction because people wouldn’t take me seriously.
At least in my experience, people took me seriously because I already had those relationships with publicists and I already had that track record. I already had that portfolio that led me to like piggyback off that and dovetail off that. So that was like really a blessing. It was really a stroke of luck that I was invited to be the writer. So I guess number two is that I had this really large bank of relationships.
you may know this, but I had like a Slack group of like almost 4,000 publicists that I’ve worked with. They’re there in the Slack group and as we get more pitches, more join and this allows me to, into one Avenue story () reached out to the publicist and know the pitch to their clients. So, we’re beginning that home of those relationships with publicists that are like gatekeepers to prominent leaders that allow us to get the really good clients and eventually some good features. And eventually that helped to grow the business.
But that’s from the editorial side, from the actual writing side. The media in general is struggling because the business model has always been advertising and now basically people block ads, they block banner ads or block ads on websites, so all the advertising money has gone to Facebook and Google. Everybody has been struggling with different models. In fact, in Baltimore here, the Baltimore sun is becoming a nonprofit organization, they’re doing fundraisers, maybe not unlike NPR, where basically they see themselves as a nonprofit, social impact business where they’re trying to bring transparency to government and society.
But the point is that media in general is really struggling. So this is our business model. This is what we do. We have a small staff, we have five people, five paid members on the staff. We have the 30 full time writers that are assistants. We maybe have more than that, but they’re occasional. So our business model is that we have a program in addition to authority magazine, we have a program called the thought leader incubator. It’s kind of like a training boot camp for leaders to become contributors, to become, you know, quasi journalists and they get all the benefits, the perks that come with being a journalist. When you’re a journalist, you get to talk to exciting people, you get invited to prominent events, you get your name in the news. There are certain benefits that come with making sure you have certain access.
So what we do is, we have like a boot camp. We train leaders to become a contributor. We started with Authority Magazine and then we will train them to syndicate their content to other platforms. So basically we have a bank of people that are business leaders, but they’re looking to share their thorough leadership and we help these leaders to create content, cause we have a whole team behind you to help assemble the content. () And then, and then with all the content, once you have, you know, you don’t have to deal with going to get a calm. And he turned that into a book. ()
Yeah, we have many clients that’re kind of into books, and once you have a book, then once you’re doing interviews already like this, you could turn that into a podcast or doing interviews with leaders on our own podcast, and then once you do that, once you have that visibility, that robust digital profile we’ll help pitch them. So once they have the content, once they have a book, once they’re on podcasts, you help pitch them to do like a Ted talk or join the speaker circuit. So the idea is it’s an organic progression of, from, from being a content creator to, to an author, to do a podcaster or to a speaker. And that starts with being a frequent daily contributor.
Robert Brill: [00:13:24] So if I want to learn more about the thought leader incubator, like what, what is exactly the program, are there videos? Is there a video training, give us an explanation of that.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:13:37] The main thing is that it’s really trial by fire in the sense that, you know, like the way that in the Hungarian Navy, the way they taught people how to swim was to throw them into the water and they would learn how to swim. So the point is that we help people jump right in. So the training comes in the form of a weekly call with my clients and we give them guidance. We are constantly emailing, but the main thing is the actual writing.
So my clients focus on doing interviews, for example, they’ll do a little creative content series around their area of expertise. So I’ll give an example, I have a client, Wendy. Her focus is in empowering women in STEM. So basically, we have a series on inspirational women in STEM and we wrote a list of questions that are what I call ‘story containers’ a question that drives a story. Like when you can ask a question, that’s kind of a one-line answer, you can also ask a question that draws out a certain good, quick, really open ended questions that really elicit good conversation.
So let’s make list of questions that are story containers. Then we create a source request. So I’ve got a forI put it out into my Slack group, which has all these publicists and then they’ll pitch the clients, ask to put it in, you know, we’re in this group, this publicist group is our group. So I put it there and to put it out on harrow, or other sites that are similar to heroin that are kind of gathering points for different publishers and different publicists to pitch content. So I put it in all these different places and then usually in a series, we’ll get about 300 pitches to be included in the series.
And then me and Wendy will go through the list, see who we want to include and then we’ll email them all the questions. So we’re interviewing them over the email basically, and then they’ll respond and all that comes back goes into one of these portals, like a feed, and then we have the raw contents. Then our team goes through it and does the slight editing and they format and put the pictures together. And then that turns into an article. So Wendy’s contribution is basically her questions.
Some of my clients, not all of them, but some of them with my guidance. They’ll introduce the article, their own independent thought and leadership and now he’s like at the center of all these interesting prominent leaders, and he will get to release an article every single day, with an interesting interview with a prominent leader.
Robert Brill: [00:16:41] So does the article live on authority magazine?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:16:44] Yeah so it starts at authority magazine, and then we have a syndication partnership with thrive global and with entrepreneur. You also have a similar relationship, a little different, but similar with, with BuzzFeed. So the easiest one for us is thrive global, we have a very strong relationship with editors there like Rebecca Miller, and other ones are a little more strict than we have, they were more selective, but the basic idea is that under our tool age, she’s able to create this content and then we’re able to syndicate it in different forms.
It gets repurposed slightly. We’re able to syndicate it in different networks this way, everyone benefited this way, the interviewee gets us exposure, and they’re getting very good PR and then the interviewer with their question, they are able to get that exposure by having their name get out there and they’re able to make those connections. And their bio is on the bottom of the article, so that allows them to get that exposure.
Robert Brill: [00:17:57] So Wendy’s your client in this thought, leader, incubator, right? This is fascinating to me. What is her business goal?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:18:10] Sure, so different clients have different goals. In her case, her goal is primarily just to get her name out, since she started, she probably has like 500 articles. For example, if you had to be doing regular PR, you hire a publicist, so you pay $5,000 and maybe you’ll get five or 10 media hits a month. During this program, she’s able to get almost 60 because you will do like almost 30 interviews a month. Once it gets syndicated in places, it can be on more than 60 articles. So each month you are able to get 60 media hits and she’s able to control the frequency and control the narrative because she’s a contributor. The main difference is that it’s not about Wendy, but she’s able to get the benefit of her name getting out there. But there’s also tutelage, you know, guiding her to create that content.
Robert Brill: [00:19:13] So let’s talk about that a little further. Right? So Wendy might have a goal of being the dominant name around STEM education for women, right? So that’s a long term opportunity, there’s also the search engine optimization benefit. Do these publications provide a link back to Wendy as the author back to like her website.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:19:42] They do, but I think the main value comes from the fact that her name is in the headline, her name is in the sub headline, so many different vertical headlines. So, even if there wasn’t a link, which there is, it would still be fine for that. And also the fact that companies like, like Intel and HP and Facebook and Google, maybe not the CEO, but some of the women leaders there, and we’ll encourage people to read published articles on their own websites to share with their newsletter so she gets that tangential exposure.
Robert Brill: [00:20:35] She’s hosting the party, right? Like she’s the person that’s associated with this, with this form of this particular type of knowledge.
And she becomes the expert just by defacto, because even if nothing is linking back to her site or very few links are. In the search results. You’re eventually gonna, if you do your research, you’re eventually going to hear, you’re going to keep seeing her name associated with this and there’s the default. Okay. She’s the expert on this stuff.
I could also, sorry. I could also see like all these additional conversations that she’s having with these business leaders also puts her in a really valuable position further in trenching, her as the gatekeeper.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:21:11] Right. A hundred percent. But what I found is that, so when he was invited to many different prominent conference tech conferences as to cover, cover the events and that she was flown in there and wined and dined at these events, and she would speak to these, you know, to the speakers, the headliners of events, and that normally would be difficult to access those people.
But, but now she is, she is the journalist covering. And so she really isn’t. She really is an expert. She really has a lot this year. This gives her opportunities more opportunities that you wouldn’t be able to otherwise access.
Robert Brill: [00:21:43] So how long do you think for the person, an average person, an average Wendy?
Like Wendy might be the exception and she does really well. And there’s the people on the other side who are kind of like the results aren’t as fast.
What type of, what do you like when, when someone goes into this program, what do you, what do you kind of like promise them and what, like minimum what’s the result that they can expect?
And what’s the timeframe for that result.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:22:12] Sure. It’s an excellent question. So it really depends on what your goal is. So, so I’ll give you an example, this program works best with people that are, that are, that are selling knowledge. They’re selling their thought leadership. If you, if I once had a client that was there, we’re selling an app.
And they thought maybe if they’re having their app alumni articles though, that they’ll sell well, that didn’t really convert. Well, there wasn’t, there weren’t many downloads of this app from the articles and that’s because this person’s expertise, the person’s articles, the content they’re sharing, where it’s about building up the person’s knowledge it isn’t about selling you an app.
So I, I found that works better if the person is they want, they want to be, they have a service. So, you know they’re a lawyer, they’re an accountant. They’re a marketer. They want it, they want to be a thought leader in tech or, you know, reforming education.
S that could be basically, they want to present their knowledge. So it works best. This was those verticals. So that’s number one. It will look for somebody who’s in retail and want to sell a product that doesn’t work as well. We’re spending with a service. And so number two, it really depends on the goal.
So I do have some clients, their goal, their main goal is simply just to create content. All they care about is just basically this is, this is a way, a cheaper way than that. Hiring their own, their own, writer for their, for their, their company. This is a way to create. Create contents, that, that they could use on their own website or their own platforms.
So I work, some clients, all they care about is the content. They don’t care at all about that. Anything more than that, but others, like let’s, let’s say Wendy, in this case, her goal is to become a leader. So she she’s writing. She printed, she writing a book now with all the individual, turning that into a book for, to want to become a proudest speaker.
So she should have done it for about eight months and, you know, And yes, it’s really come a long way. So to answer the question, the long winded answer, it really depends on the goals. If your goal is simply getting your name out there, let mean do that in the first month. If your goal is to make relationships, we did it right away.
If the goal is to, if your goal is however, to get invited to conferences, to give talks, if your goal is to see an increase in sales, then they go after they have to do longer.
Robert Brill: [00:24:21] And how much I’m like, how do you charge for this program?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:24:25] Sure. So we have different tiers. like the, the most expensive tier is 5,000 a month and the middle one is 3000 and then, the introductory level is of 2000 a month.
And the way you say it is it, can you see it in terms of the value they’re getting? So, you know, again, I came from a PR world, you know, when you hire publish SPR paying 5,000 a month for publicists and they can’t guarantee anything and you can’t control the narrative, you mean maybe you’ll get f5 or 10 hits.
So with this program that entry level is far cheaper than that. And you can get much more, again, it’s not a regular PR. It’s not, you know, it won’t be a value, but it’s a way that you could, it’s what I call authority PR. It’s a way to, to build your authority by creating content by interfacing with prominent leaders in your industry, or talk to people that could be advantageous to your business goals. So, yeah, so those are the prices.
Robert Brill: [00:25:21] You know, what’s interesting about that and I’m coming at this from the perspective of paid media, the, the way, and I think this is like such a nice add on which is you take the best content that Wendy creates and you simply run ads against it, like precision targeting to the people you want to reach. The article that is the right article, that references Wendy. And now you, and I’m talking about like anywhere from 200 to a thousand dollars a month. And that’s why I, like, I just saw an ad yesterday for a band I don’t Nighthawk, I think is a band is the band.
And they were like, Hey, we love this great review. Thanks for the great review. They referenced some writer in a music publication. Which is a great way of amplifying the testimonial that someone else is talking about you or whatever the case might be. Fascinating stuff that is such a cool model.
So, what does the world look like for you over the next one to two years? Is it you’re going to continue to scale this business? Like what, what are your goals? Like, what do you want to accomplish over the next few years of your life? Like you have the aspirations to be like, Wait, what are your aspirations?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:26:38] Sure. it’s a good question. So I would like, I would like, Authority Magazine to be, to be almost like a LinkedIn in the sense that it’s a place where if you are, you know, not LinkedIn like in social network, but it’s a place, if you are a leader you’re expected to have a profile and authority ranks.
And as a site, it’s like, it’s kind of thing that you do to it’s like, it’s like a rite of passage to be a leader. You know, you’re, it’s a place that you get, you get your, you provide with our mannerisms, you know, like, like not everyone wants to get verified and you know, this blue check is, it’s like a thing that you pass through to be seen as a leader.
It’s a way it’s a way to share. If you’re a thought leader, this is the soap box that you want to get on to share, share with the world. That’s what I hope to be, get our goals and to break news. Our goal is to be able to give leaders a platform, to be able to share really interesting value-added information with the public in a way that’s visually appealing.
That’s compelling, you know, that’s, that’s interesting. So that, that’s what, that’s my vision. And I’m very blessed that. It was because, because, you know, I work closely with, with we’re working Medium and Medium is very high domain authority. So when a person does get interviewed with the Authority Magazine and it comes, it’s like among the top search results for their name.
So I’m very blessed that, you know, like I said, I was the person look up a person’s name and see their LinkedIn profile. And then you see their Authority Magazine profile. Even with, with very prominent leaders, our, our, our interviews are among the highest the top results. So that’s what I hope to see and to reach that.
So I’ve been very blessed that we have a syndication partnership with, with entrepreneur and with thrive. I would love to be able to extend that. I would love to know if it has any real listeners or if you have relationships with other managing editors. I love to be able to introduce this, what we’re doing to other editors to.
For example, we do with entrepreneurs every week. We share our content with, with editors there, and then they share the content with us and then we share each other’s content. That way we’re able to each group will our readership.
Robert Brill: [00:28:39] Can you tell me more about, like about Medium? Okay. I know the publication.
I know. I don’t like. But I never really, and I still don’t really understand the distinction between Medium and I understand that Authority Magazine is a separate publication and it’s a brand and it’s yours, but how does it work with, with Medium? I know there’s a paid version of Medium and a non-paid version of Medium.
Like I never really understood that.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:29:08] Sure, sure. So, yes. So it was started by one of the co founders of, of Twitter. Twitter was Twitter. His premise is to be able to share very short. Short form content, you know, Mediums. I mean, it was kinda like in response to that, we were able to pull out the sheer law firm.
So Medium is, is really the publisher. It’s I should see it more like, like WordPress. It was like WordPress Medium. Isn’t like Forbes. Forbes is a, is a magazine, but media is more like a WordPress where they’re creating the credit ecosystem at which people can create websites. So Medium is a good ecosystem.
Those people can create content. Now anyone can make a Medium page. They make their own Medium page, but the truth is though that people may not, you know, it doesn’t really have the visibility. So within, within med they have their different publication. They have their own officially sponsored publications.
Think that those are like on the top mass set of med like things called the zero and Gen.
Robert Brill: [00:30:08] Now I see Elemental, Gen, Zuora.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:30:11] Those are Mediums publications. Those are the Medium has a paid editorial staff and they basically, those are different, their own publications that they push.
Then within the ecosystem you can create a publication. For example, the way I found out about it was when I actually sent the email and I didn’t think I would get response. So sent an email to Arean in Huffington. After she left Huffington Post, asked her if I could be a contributor at thrive.
And she responded surprisingly, she was than with her own email. And she said, sure we love it, you know, we would love for you to join. So at that point, Thrive was primarily on Medium. And so here’s we use with the Medium and then Thrive was, it was a Medium publication. Eventually they might get it to their own site.
But when I started with Thrive, it was, it was a Medium that’s really how I became familiar with the platform. So, yeah. So, so that’s your question. Medium it’s really like an ecosystem. They have their own publications and then they host other publications and then people can create their own page.
So. Authority Magazine is different than the fact that because we have, we have a large viewership and also we have we’re, we’re doing very prominent people. It gets like our articles get, get very high domain authority and it’s basically they find the search results, which doesn’t happen to be personalized on the, our Medium page and also gets seen by the prominent people.
Robert Brill: [00:31:40] So what, when, so let’s expand on that. I’m looking at the Authority. So the website. So if I search for Authority Magazine, or if I type, what, if I type in Authoritymagazine.com does it go to Medium?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:31:54] If you type Authority Magazine it’ll come up Authority Magazine right away.
Robert Brill: [00:31:58] Authority Magazine. Yeah. So search for authority magazine.
What is your, I guess, you know, when I’m thinking about SEO and I’m not an SEO expert, it’s not what I know how to do generally, but I’ve learned a little bit about it building my own site. And I’m actually ranking for some really interesting viewers that are like valuable to our business. And I’m like low key surprise that all my own with like a little bit of guidance from people that I’ve met, I’ve been able to make it work.
But like, I always thought, like it’s better to have access to your own domain and to own that and to build it up over the course of years. And I’m like, and I’m fascinated by the fact that that how much emphasis you’re placing on Medium.
Like, do you do you think you, your, your access to domain authority and, and viewability has been, has been faster because you’re on Medium and it would have been a slower run. If you would have done it on your own domain.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:33:03] It’s an excellent question. So I think, the answer is that I think you’re right. Normally you want to do your own thing, but, I think because we created a publication that had a lot of views right from the beginning. So our domain authority is 96. just in a perspective, like I think Forbes has like 93 maybe.
So that’s because Medium has an extremely high domain authority. Wikipedia is a hundred. That’s like the highest you can get. So, so Medium’s doing authority is extremely high. And so if I was starting from scratch, if I was starting, if I would be, it will be dot com. You know, wouldn’t not in 20 years when I get to 96.
So, so for me, if me, so that’s what the question is. I think normally you’re right. But in this case it was like a confluence of fortuitous factors that made me decide that, you know, this is somebody I should focus on. That’s why I focus only on Medium.
Robert Brill: [00:33:58] I totally, I totally hear what you’re saying.
That’s fascinating. So, and for the foreseeable future, you’re going to keep, you’re going to keep you keep the Medium as your domain.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:34:09] Yeah. In fact recently it was maybe about a month ago, maybe a little more. I was asked to do a call with one of the principals at Medium and they sat and she said, they said, do you ever plan to leave us leave Medium?
And I said, I so very happy to me. It sounded like they were like, you know, they were concerned that as people grow, they leave. I said, no, I’m really happy. And as long as things, things stayed where they are in terms of its it’s, traffic results, I’d like to stay.
Robert Brill: [00:34:38] So I’m on HRS. I’m looking at Medium.com/authority magazine.
And what I’m seeing is 59,000 back links to your site. To your, to your page, to your site, about 4,000 referring domains, you’re ranking for 49,000 keywords and you have about, yeah. I mean, this is so incredible. Do you, do you think that a lot of your, do you think that, your, the fact that you publish so much content is I imagine that has to be helpful for you.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:35:16] Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s helpful. It’s helpful in, several ways. So number one, you know, I don’t have it, we don’t advertise this. This is own inherent advertising. You know, the whole idea is that we’re sharing Honda with the public. So we’re showing people how to do that. So the more we produce more, more, we’re able to reach out more.
We are reaching out. Yeah, a hundred percent basically we’re creating a lot of accountants and, and, and because our, our focus is on feature interviews. So the content that screen, it is no, it’s not difficult to not difficult. It’s not time consuming to create a lot of content that way.
Robert Brill: [00:35:53] Well, and I mean, it’s a virtuous cycle, right? You’re, you’re giving people who normally don’t have access to press, an opportunity to get seen and heard, which is extremely powerful. And then secondly, those people are leaking back and sharing with all their friends and family and in professional contacts, it’s a virtuous cycle.
You also host the party and you’re the cool kid on the block because parents aren’t home and you’re going a massive party. It’s the high school model, right?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:36:24] Sure, sure. The way I see it, I see it as like, I see it working yet. Like I said, exactly. We are. We’re like, okay. We’re like a soapbox. We’re like the megaphone, given giving leaders a good meadow megaphone with prompts.
See if, if you give someone a blank page, say, share your thought leadership. They don’t know where to start, but when you start with, okay, we’re doing a topic on, you know, on the five ways that we’re going to rebuild it in the postcode economy, we’re doing a series on in five and five is to do, to become a thought leader, give them prompts and questions.
People can respond to the question so that it kind of empowers everyone to open up, to be able to share, to share.
Robert Brill: [00:36:58] Amazing. So how can people find, Thought Leader Incubator?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:37:05] Yeah, I think if you just Google it and if you Google Thought Leader Incubator, it comes up right away. It’s also on the about page of a Authority Magazine.
Robert Brill: [00:37:15] Before we finish up, Yitzi I’m a foodie. I like eating really great food. What, tell me, you said you’re in Boston right?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:37:26] Now. I’m in Baltimore, but I lived in Boston for nine years.
Robert Brill: [00:37:29] In Baltimore. What do you like to eat in Baltimore? I’ve never been there. What’s good food.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:37:33] You mean like restaurants?
Robert Brill: [00:37:34] Whatever comes up, maybe you like home cooking, maybe like restaurant, whatever is good.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:37:43] Yeah. I’m very blessed. As I mentioned, I’m married. I have seven children, so my wife and my oldest daughter. No, actually my two oldest daughters, they love to cook. So no, we dinner together.
I’m very blessed. Every, every night we eat dinner together, 5.30 whole family sits together. So I think my favorite food is probably my wife’s. Eggplant Parmesan, but it’s really, it should, is there anything that’s anything that’s home cooked? Yeah.
Robert Brill: [00:38:15] I love that. Okay, so you see, how do you want people to reach out to you, after this, after this podcast?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:38:25] So it kind, it really so kind of you Robert, Yeah, so my, you can reach me on LinkedIn. That’s easy, or my emails [email protected] co not com authoritymag.co
Or you could, yeah, if you Google me also, it comes up.
Robert Brill: [00:38:42] You rank.
Yitzi Wiener: [00:38:44] I think if you go to the word, Yitzi I think it comes up.
Robert Brill: [00:38:50] Yitzi Weiner thank you so much. I think this has been totally illuminating. I love this. The interesting thing, you know, like I wanted to be a journalist. There’s a part of me. Like, I, I kinda like failed at it.
Like I was in high school and I was like, okay, I’m going to be, I was in journalism class for like a month and a half. And then. I don’t know what happened in high school. And I find myself not there anymore. Like I must’ve messed up somehow. And, or I just, maybe didn’t like it. But what I find as a business owner is that like, like we’re almost like scientists in a way.
Like we’re always doing research. And the best research, the insights that we have that we see on these campaigns, we bubble up and that’s the information that passes on into new campaigns and refines our process, right? It allows us to build new products and services. Now, when we think about journalism, journalists do a lot of that, their research they’re the experts on a particular topic, whether it be a city or a knowledge based topic or whatever.
Sports, whatever the case might be. And it’s not surprising to me that these are the people who get on stage talking about stuff, because even though they’re not doing the thing, they’re not playing sports, or they’re not a practitioner of whatever they’ve done so much research they know about it. I just, I just think that’s interesting.
It’s an interesting model to me, to see journalism becoming a critical part of how business owners get exposure. It’s, it’s different. Like it’s new. I don’t think this thing existed 10 years ago. Like this type of model, right?
Yitzi Wiener: [00:40:20] A hundred percent. I think that, I think it’s because what we define as journalism has expanded, initially it probably when you go to school journalism, we, we think of as someone who’s a beat reporter, who’s breaking news.
You know, who’s talking to, you know, talking to people, breaking news. But that, but that’s one particular genre of news. You know, that those are the top stories, but there’s so much other content that there has to be written and that doesn’t require the same, doesn’t always require the same tools that that breaking news does.
So like, if your goal is to, you know, want to be a journalist sharing lifestyle information. So you, all you have to do is just interview a, a wellness expert or interview a doctor, you know, and just interview a sports star. You don’t have to be an athlete interview, a sports star. So, you know, race, you, you don’t have to break news.
So the point, so I think, you know, our, our media consumption has, has evolved and therefore the requirements being the kind of the. Yeah. The requirements being journal journalists have opened up.
Robert Brill: [00:41:28] It’s fascinating. And I know there’s yeah. Okay. We’ll leave it at that. Thank you so much. It says this was fantastic.
I appreciate your time here. Thank you for listening to this episode of the LA business podcast. If you like what we’re doing on this podcast, please consider subscribing on Apple or Google play. Leaving a five star review. And sharing with your friends. If you have any questions, comments, or recommendations for a guest you’d like to hear on this podcast, please email me Robert@ Brillmedia co.
Thank you. Have a fantastic day.
