Daria Tsvenger on How to Get National Media Attention | PoP 482

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Daria Tsvenger on How to Get National Media Attention | PoP 482

Have you done the groundwork to get yourself out there? Are you open to being vulnerable with your audience? How can you use small regional media coverage to get you noticed nationally?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks to Daria Tsvenger about getting national media attention.

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Meet Daria Tsvenger

Daria Tsvenger is a Forbes-featured mindset expert and founder of a self-discovery program “The Dream Sprint”. Her work has helped hundreds of people tap into the power of the brain to gain clarity and turn their dreams into reality.

Daria shared her expertise on TV shows such as “Good Morning LA-LA-LAND”, “Simulation” and the major publications like “Vogue”, “ThriveGlobal” and “Forbes”. She is also a mentor at a top world accelerator “500 Startups”, where she helps entrepreneurs manage stress, increase confidence, and supercharge productivity. More than 30,000 passionate leaders are following Daria’s work.

Visit Daria’s website, connect on Instagram and Facebook.

In This Podcast

Summary

  • The steps to get regional media attention
  • Pitching yourself to larger organizations
  • Sharing stories
  • Ideal clients
  • The mindsets and research Daria draws on to help people shift
  • Pushing into the next phase when you feel stuck

The steps to get regional media attention

It’s all about putting the priority of the journalist and the priority of the situation on our planet first, and then your desire to spread the word second.

Example – How Joe can get more media attention for his book that he is launching next year:

● Start with friends and family – Publishers require some of the book sales to be from your own marketing activities.
● Send out a blast to podcast subscribers – record a podcast asking for help. Ask listeners if they have any connections to the media.
● Understand what’s going on in the world – pitch topics that are helpful and don’t only promote your agenda.

Pitching yourself to larger organizations

It’s a healthy balance of pitching yourself and waiting to see if they pick up on you. Sometimes when we want something really bad, there’s no chance that we’ll get it but when the internal tension in our mind is released, things start to show up. Daria didn’t pitch for the big media hits, it was a series of serendipitous events. It was her practicing what she preaches and knowing how to get things that seem hard to get without much effort or struggle. This is her work, she teaches people how to achieve goals with ease.

Sharing stories

Evolution has made it that we want to listen to stories. We want to know if there’s a tiger in the jungle or some danger that’s out there. If someone got away from danger, they then come back to the campfire and they tell us that. Our campfire, that bright shining light, now is a screen oftentimes, or social media or Netflix, but we still go to stories to kind of help our brains feel safe again.

In order to best position yourself for opportunities, you have to do the groundwork. Be very vocal on the channels that you control. Post on Instagram, share your voice and share your stories. People will remember something that touched them emotionally so don’t just try to teach them something. Be vulnerable because that is what builds your brand. When you tell a story, there’s neuro mirroring that happens. There’s more empathy and connection between you and your audience.

Ideal clients

The main thing about Daria’s work is that it is 100% based on accountability. If people in her programs don’t submit their work on time, they are deleted from the program forever. Her ideal clients are people who:

  1. Want to start their own ventures and know what they want but for some reason, the actions are not there – Daria helps them to break through their cognitive errors and gain the confidence to act.
  2. Are figuring out their next career move.
  3. Whose lives look perfect on Instagram but they feel stuck internally – Daria helps them regain enthusiasm for real life.
  4. Who love personal development.

The mindsets and research Daria draws on to help people shift

  • Brain development through evolution.
  • Why our brains react the way they do.
  • Understanding what is and making peace with that.
  • Limiting beliefs and fears.

Pushing into the next phase when you feel stuck

  1. Become aware of what you don’t want.
  2. Define what you do want.
  3. Look around to see which people/situations/circumstances inspire you or make you feel envious.
  4. Remove negativity from the envy and inspiration, leaving you with a pure insight of your desires.

Gain clarity and finally start pursuing your dreams and making things happen. With JOY! Get this FREE 10-day course:

Books mentioned in this episode

Useful Links:

Meet Joe Sanok

private practice consultant

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

Thanks For Listening!

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Podcast Transcription

[JOE]:
From the moment you say to yourself, I want to start a private practice, until you hit six figures, Next Level Practice is for you. It can be so confusing to know where to spend your time and your energy, what things you actually need to get your practice going, and what things really can wait till later. And whether you’re growing a telehealth practice or an in-person practice, the SEO, the blogging, getting the right clients, and knowing what to do can be so darn confusing. Well, that’s why we started Next Level Practice. Next Level Practice is a membership community of over 400 clinicians just like you who are starting and growing their practice. We have three or four live events every month, we talk about what’s working, you get to go into a small group of eight people or so to really hash through what it takes to grow a private practice. You get an accountability partner and access to over 30 eCourses. Also, we bring in experts every single month that you can pick their brains to know exactly what to do next. If you’re looking to be most effective with your time and your money, Next Level Practice is for you. We have a cohort opening on August 24th. Now these only open a couple times a year, so you’re gonna want to get in. You can sign up to get all of the invites over at practiceofthepractice.com/invite if you want to be a part of this cohort. I would love to help you continue to grow your practice or to start a new one. Again, that’s practiceofthepractice.com/invite.

This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 482. Have you ever wanted national media attention? Maybe to level up your practice, or to look better? Or maybe you want to write a book, or do public speaking when we can go back on stages again. No matter the reason, national media attention is one of the biggest things that has helped me level up. We’re gonna talk today all about how to get national media attention. How you do it, what you do, how I’ve been featured in a bunch of different things, and Daria is going to teach you exactly how to do that. So without any further ado, I give you Daria.

Today on the Practice of the Practice podcast, we have Daria Tsvenger. Daria is a Forbes featured mindset expert and founder of a self discovery program, The Dream Sprint. Her work has helped hundreds of people tap into the power of their brain to gain clarity and turn their dreams into reality. Daria shares her expertise on TV shows such as Good Morning Lala Land, Simulation, and the major publications like Vogue, Thrive Global, and Forbes. Daria, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[DARIA]:
Hi, Joe. Thanks for having me.

[JOE]:
Yeah, I am so excited to have you here. We were just talking before we got rolling about some of your background and how when you started your business, you had a lot of media connections and branding background. Why don’t you just start with tell us a little bit about how you got to this point in your career? Maybe the last few years as you’ve shifted into this career and then we’ll go from there.

[DARIA]:
Yeah, of course. Normally I’m telling my story from like, my psychological background, like, how I was depressed and then what I did about it and stuff like that. But today I want to focus on the business aspect of that because as practitioners, as people who are helping the world, we all have to nail the business. And unfortunately, there are not a lot of people who will be you know, like your full time producer, so you have to produce yourself.

The way I started, I actually started blindly. I knew that I want to be in this space, but I don’t have a formal education in this space. So I started to pursue certifications and things like that. But I thought that I want to be involved in real, first class research. So what I did, I created a nonprofit called Brain Power Hub, and then I started to invite Stanford professors – which I was really inspired by, and I lived in San Francisco, so it was accessible too – to give public talks. And this is how I got involved in the research project and acquired literal top world mentors. But at the beginning, I didn’t have an idea that I, you know, would be public speaking too, and sharing my story openly. I was just doing this out of my pure curiosity and pure passion for the subject. And this got me the first exposure to people who are literally leading this industry. And after that, I started to realize that I have a lot of experience and a lot of information to share, and especially information which I applied in my life and which really helped me. And I started to think, okay, what would be the best way for me to get the word out? And this simple thought inspired me to, first of all, understand that media is something that creates authority. So if you are able to establish good contacts with the media, your authority will immediately rise. And I started to think, what would be an interest of American media to write about, like, Russian immigrant girl who came to the US not so long ago and decided she wants to pursue this space. And of course, I started just to ask my friends and to openly ask like, okay, guys, I really want to spread the word about my work like, is there anybody who can help with this?

So the first lesson is that vulnerability and then asking for help, and not just having your idea that you want to have more exposure to yourself, helps a lot. Because in the majority of cases, people really want to help. And at that point, when I started to have these thoughts, I already had maybe like 3000 people on my email list. Those were people who attended my events. So I always collected, of course, the mail registrations from the events that I organized for this Brain Power Hub community. So I just sent this newsletter, like, hi, guys, you know what I’m doing, you know, like, I’m contributing to this space, this is what I want to do. Do you have any connections in the media who would be interested in this story? And this got me to some kind of like smaller types of exposure, like little articles here and there, little interviews. But once you acquire kind of like this minimum level of exposure from kind of like easier to get publications, podcasts, and everything like that, the bigger fish starts to pay attention, because what the bigger fish does, they go through existing media sources and stories, and then they choose to whom they want to connect. So you can’t have no exposure at all and then go pitch Forbes and they, oh, sure, let’s do it. It never works this way. You gradually work your way through, and this is how essentially, I got into publications.

And of course also really important thing, when you are marketing yourself, please do not forget to provide first class service and first class product because otherwise, it’s all for nothing. I see in the industry that many people just pay too much attention to this like external exposure things, and thinking that it would literally like help them a lot, but forgetting about the product and about serving the clients, so it should be a healthy balance. Because when you direct people towards your sources, and if they’re not satisfied, like you pretty much wasted your efforts in the publicity space, if it makes sense.

[JOE]:
Man, I am so glad that you’re on the show, because I feel like there’s so much opportunity right now for people to get media exposure, and they don’t know how to do it. So let’s go back to that idea of looking at either local media or regional media. So, for example, I’m writing this book through HarperCollins. It’s going to launch spring 2021. There’s lots of say, therapists that have private practices. If I wanted to get more media, what are some of those first steps that I would take to really get more regional media first, to eventually get larger media?

[DARIA]:
Yeah. Oh, marketing books, it’s a beast of its own. I was just noticing my friends launching their books. And of course, like your publisher, they require some amount of book sales from your side and from your marketing activities. And I think in this case, the best way you can do it’s always start with friends and family. Literally send out a blast to your podcast subscribers, literally record one podcast and ask like, guys, do you have any connections to the media? I’m serving you for a while already. So I would like to ask you, not for a favor, but I would like to ask for help. And you will be amazed how willing are people to help.

So of course, the warmer thing, it’s the first step. And only after that you can go cold, but also semi cold. Yeah. And of course in order to pitch something to the media, like what’s important is not only your connection, your warm connection, but also the accuracy of the story. So for example, we are in the middle of anti racist movement, and it’s just not ethical to pitch something else. It’s just not ethical. And so we should be really, as people who want to amplify their message and who want to influence this world for the best with their work, they should be very, very having the thumb on the pulse, and understanding what’s going on in the world, and pitch topics which are helping – not which only promoting your agenda, but which are helping. For example, sometimes I would give an interview and I would never mention even what I do, you know what I mean? So it’s all about putting the priority of the journalist and the priority of the situation on our planet first, and then your desire to spread the word second.

[JOE]:
Yeah, I think that’s so important to start with, things that are genuinely going to help people, and whether it’s a podcast, or an email, or social media post, or pitching the media, we frequently talk here about first you want to fall in love with the pain and the people before you pitch the product. And so the idea is that, you know, people are going through pain, and then they’re looking for a transformation. When you buy groceries, you’re going to get hungry at some point, and you want good food, that’s the pain. And then the transformation is, you’re not hungry anymore. You have good food. And so even when we make small buying decisions like that, it’s still based on that pain to transformation process. And so having that top of mind with the media is so important, because I think then, you’re able to say, here’s the problem I see in the world, and then here’s a few solutions and here’s a few bullet points that can help you.

________________________________________

[JOE]:
If you’re like me, sometimes you bootstrap things a little bit too long. You watch YouTube videos for hours and hours and you know the answer is just out there. If you are sick of bootstrapping it, and you want a little bit of help, but you still want to save some money, make sure that you join Next Level Practice. Next Level Practice is our membership community. It is, for over 400 people, one of the best things that they do every single month to grow their practice. We have eCourses, we have small groups, we make a logo for you, and we bring in experts every single month that help you get to the next level. So if you want your practice to get to the next level, and you’re starting and growing it, Next Level Practice is opening on August 24th. We want you to join this next cohort. To get all the information head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/invite and you will get an invitation from me to join this community. You’ll get access to all of these courses and all of these amazing people. So again, head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/invite and join Next Level Practice today.

________________________________________

[JOE]:
So, Daria, once you get a few media spotlights regionally, what are ways to then kind of pitch yourself to a larger organization, or do you just kind of wait to see if they pick up on you?

[DARIA]:
Ah, actually it’s a healthy balance. And this is how I’m using my work and what I teach full time because I basically teach people how to achieve goals with ease. And the main thing sometimes when we want something really bad, there is a zero chance that we will get it. And only once our internal tension in our mind is released, things start to showing up in your life. And literally, the big media hits, I didn’t pitch for them. I didn’t. It was just a series of serendipitous connections – or not even connections – of serendipitous events that eventually these outlets were interested in me and reaching out to me. And I’m not telling this to brag or something that I’m unique. We are all unique and we all deserve proper awareness about our work because we are all healers and practitioners and helping people live this life from the place of love, not from the place of fear. So I think, like for me, it’s literally me practicing what I preach and knowing how to get things which seems maybe impossible, or too hard to get, but actually getting there without much effort to struggle, if it makes sense.

[JOE]:
Yeah, I think that there is something kind of counterintuitive about that, of not feeling like I need to have this one media spot otherwise I’m going to feel like a failure, or putting so much emotional energy into it. But with that said, like how can people best position themselves to have those opportunities?

[DARIA]:
So do your groundwork and the ground work is to first of all, be very vocal on channels that you control. Yes. So write posts on media, become a guest contributor like on Thrive Global, or mindbodygreen, or any other platforms that you like or where your target audience is. Yeah. Post on Instagram. So just share your voice and share your stories not only like, oh, let me teach you something. Yes, share your story. Because after a one hour lecture with theory and a bunch of facts, people will remember on this something that touched them emotionally. Yeah. So for example, I have this signature workshop about like, productivity and fear and I teach it at corporations and startups and stuff like that. And then in this one hour workshop, I have one minute video of literally a news excerpt from a video about deer in the headlights. And deer in the headlights is literally you see a deer, a big animal, in the middle of the road, and this animal can’t move because of fear. And so from this whole workshop, I do a lot of service, people, the first thing that people recall is this emotion, touchy story. So do not forget to share your stories to be vulnerable. Because this is what builds your brand, not things that you learned in school.

[JOE]:
Yeah, that’s so important. I don’t remember which book it was from, but they were talking about neuro mirroring and how when you tell a story, the part of your brain that lights up as you’re telling the story is the same part of the brain that the audience lights up in their brain as well. And so there’s this neuro mirroring that happens. So there’s more empathy, there’s more connection. I mean, evolution has made it that we want to listen to stories, we want to know if there’s a tiger in the jungle or some danger that’s out there. If someone got away from a danger, they then come back to the campfire and they tell us that. Our campfire, that bright shining light, now is a screen oftentimes, or social media, or Netflix, but we still go to stories to kind of help our brains feel safe again. And so I love that you’re stressing ‘story’ as one of the core kind of components.

I want to shift gears away from just the media and hear a little bit more about, you know, as you’re teaching people, to have had access to all of these researchers, take us through who your ideal client is that you work with and people at at your live events, and then maybe we can talk about what the big takeaways might be.

[DARIA]:
Oh, yeah, for sure. I have five ideal clients. Not [unclear] one, but they may feel differently. So, first batch is people who want to start their own ventures and they know that they want, but for some reason, the actions are not there and they feel like they’re procrastinating, and they’re wondering, like, is there something wrong with me? And they start to blame themselves. So I help these people to like break through their cognitive errors – this is how I call them – identify them, and then finally gain confidence to act. And the main thing in my work that my work is hundred percent based on accountability. So actually people who are going through my programs – and also I think it’s a good really business tactic too, because people who go through my programs, they have deadlines to learn the theory and listen to my examples, and then submit their work. And if they submit their work on time, they get feedback. If not, they’re deleted from the program forever.

[JOE]:
Wow. That’s brutal. I love it.

[DARIA]:
And because this is brutal, because this is unique, and this is how people feel that, oh my god, this is something that puts my brain in the same conditions like in school, and we are trained in school by, you know, punishment and reward. So, I base this program, not even this program, but like execution and facilitation of my programs, on this specific feature of our mind, that we must be put into constraints and only in this condition, we can do the work without procrastination or without an illusion of learning, which happens all the time.

[JOE]:
Wow. So what kind of things do people typically get done when they’re working in your program?

[DARIA]:
They are figuring out their next career moves. They are getting confidence and starting their ventures. They are sometimes people you know, in this weird position – and they also my ideal clients – their life is perfect on Instagram, like, you literally you can say that this person just nailed it, but they feel stuck internally and inside themselves, they feel really bad and they just don’t know what to do, and they just spend their whole time on Instagram getting this fake dopamine in forms of life certifications and stuff like that. So I help these people to regain this enthusiasm for real life.

And another batch are actually people who just love personal development or you know, these personal development junkies who love to be in an educational process the whole time. So these people, I tend to notice that they gradually jump from one program to another. And this really helps them. This is, you know, like, when some people like listen to the music, and they would listen to music every single day. So for some people, personal development content and challenges and self discovery, kind of like the music to the ears.

[JOE]:
Yeah, yeah. So what are some maybe mindsets or some research you draw from that help people experience those shifts?

[DARIA]:
Yeah, for sure. Of course, we touch a lot on how our brain was developing evolutionary. And [unclear] this chunk of work, I learned from my mentor, Dr. Loretta Breuning, she’s the author of Happy Brain Chemicals and Tame Your Anxiety, as well she’s professor at Berkeley, and we are learning why our brain has the reactions it has, and this gives people peace with themselves. So the first thing that you want to do when you are starting to discover more about yourself is to understand what is, and to make peace with that. Because if you have this vicious circle of understanding what doesn’t work, and then blaming yourself that this doesn’t work, it’s not a good start, and you can’t get anywhere with this type of mindset. Yeah, this is the first chunk.

The second chunk we are going through, of course, limiting beliefs and fears. Those are two big umbrella terms. And under these two umbrella terms, people are facing the biggest demons in their lives. Because literally, sometimes when you hear people say, oh, I think that this is the truth. I think this is the truth. Actually, there is no truth. This is just a subjective truth for you, or for me. That’s it, there is no other truth. There is no basically super objective truth because everything can be explainable, and what I actually… my husband always laughs at me because I can explain every single person, whatever, like, even if they do the worst things in the world, believe me, in their mind, it’s all logical and it all makes sense. And if they do horrible things, it just comes from internal pain and anger and they deserve our compassion and not just you know, bringing these people even more down.

[JOE]:
I’d love to, just in the next few minutes, maybe go through if someone’s feeling stuck right now as to what to do next for whether it’s their private practice, their big idea, their podcast, would be a couple of quick tips that you would give them to really kind of push them into that next phase.

[DARIA]:
Of course, The first step is to become aware of what you don’t want. What it is right now that you absolutely don’t want. And from that, you go to the next step and then you define what do you want, okay? Because sometimes people know what they don’t want, but they don’t know what they want. And this journey actually takes several steps and when people are stuck, it’s normally they just don’t know what they want. And the best tip you can do is to look around yourself and to see which people or situations or circumstances cause you to feel envious or inspired. Because basically envy and inspiration, they give the one inside the same and only inside that, okay, this is something that other people have, and you want to have it too, and this is totally fine. This is totally normal. So once you acknowledge your envy and inspiration, you remove negativity from that. Yes. And then you have the pure insight of your desires.

[JOE]:
Wow. Well, so Daria, if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

[DARIA]:
Actually, this idea just popped into my mind. I am an angel investor in this company, it’s called WellSet. And basically, it’s – I think you would be really interested to collaborate with them, by the way – it’s the first platform, like, digital platform for practitioners so they can market themselves and they can connect to clients on this platform. It’s like, I don’t know, mindbodygreen for practitioners. And I would encourage you to, if you want to get the word out, I would encourage you to register there, it’s free. And I would also encourage you just to serve yourself first because sometimes practitioners, they forget about themselves, and they just try to serve and serve other people. But we must remember, as people who are helping other people, that we should put this mask on ourselves first, yes, before saving a person which is in front of us.

[JOE]:
Daria, if people want to connect with your work, where’s the best place for them to go?

[DARIA]:
My website, it’s thedreamsprint.com, or my Instagram, it’s my first name underscore last name.

[JOE]:
Awesome, and we’ll have links to that in the show notes. Daria, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[DARIA]:
Of course. Thank you so much, Joe.

[JOE]:
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you take action around getting national media attention. It’s just one of those things that when you’re getting it, it’s so much easier to launch whatever you’re doing, and to listen to your fans, to listen to your audience, and to have them say, here’s the natural next step in what I want to do. It’s so important to make sure that you’re listening to your audience, and getting national media attention is one way to do that.

Also, I want to make sure that if you have a practice that’s not yet at six figures, that you join Next Level Practice. Next Level Practice is opening on August 24th, so that’s in just a couple days. Now, Next Level Practice, you get over 30 ecourses. Every month, we have an expert that comes in – Ask the Expert. And you get to ask these people who often are $500 to $1,000 an hour. My friends that come in and they say, hey, this is what you need to do. And then you get to ask them a whole bunch of questions. We do all sorts of things like our what’s working, and we have lots of promos that will help you save money on all sorts of things. For like 99 bucks a month, I mean, that’s one counseling session, you are going to learn so many things in this. So head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/invite, doors are gonna close a week from today and you’re gonna want to jump in as quick as you can, because oftentimes they sell out. So again, that’s practiceofthepractice.com/invite. Thanks so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing day.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music; we really like it. This podcast is designed to provide accurate, authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.