The Power of Storytelling in Marketing [Jack Murray]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Jack Murray, as they will be discussing modern PR and the science behind storytelling in marketing. Jack is the CEO of MediaHQ, a SaaS company of media contacts and a press release distribution platform. But not only he has also released his business book, “The Magic Slides: How to master the art of storytelling for business”, a bestseller in 3 categories in its first week from release.

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐉𝐚𝐜𝐤:  

𝑊𝑒𝑏𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒: https://www.murraystory.com/

𝐽𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝐼𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackmurrays/

 

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐢:

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢: https://marketiu.com  / https://marketiu.ro   

𝐴𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑖 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐿𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑛: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑤𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency   

𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑢 𝑜𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑚: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/  

𝐸𝑚𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑎𝑡 hello@marketiu.ro

 

𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦:

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Episode transcript: 

Andrei Tiu  
Hi, there! This is Andrei, and you are on The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest today is Jack Murray. Who is the CEO of Media HQ, a SaaS press release distribution platform that provides media contacts to marketers and media professionals. But not only. He has also released his business book, The Magic Slides: How to Master the Art of Storytelling for Business, which has become an Amazon bestseller in 3 categories in its first week from release. And today we will discuss modern PR, as well as the science behind storytelling in marketing. Jack, welcome to the show! Congrats for the book release. How are you? How's the energy on your front?

Jack Murray  
It's really good today, Andrei! The minute of we finished recording where I'm sitting right now is beside the Atlantic Ocean. And it's very cold. But the minute we finished recording, I'm getting into the ocean for a swim. So I'm very looking forward to our discussion. But I'm also very looking forward to that.

Andrei Tiu  
Crazy, like, how cold is it right there? Because I think it's like below zero degrees?

Jack Murray  
Well, yeah, the water is probably about seven degrees. So yeah, I have a lot of hot water in the tank. So I'll be having a bath when I get back up. But it's like, look, you know, it's great to see it live. And when you go into the ocean and the waves are crashing. So the high tide is in about 20 minutes, and the waves will be crashing over me. So I'm really looking forward to that.

Andrei Tiu  
Crazy man. Okay, nice. Thank you for being on the show today. We already found out an interesting fact about you, looking forward to, you know, picking your brains on PR and storytelling and everything that we just mentioned here, briefly, in the intro, because you have a wealth of experience. You know, you've been in the industry for over 15 years, you've been an entrepreneur for forever, really. So from the beginning of your career. And, you know, as we briefly discussed before the call, your family has been having this background as well. So really looking forward to hearing your thoughts, hearing your story, as well as discuss trends, and maybe tips and tricks that our audience can take away after this episode. First of all, I will let you tell us a bit more about you like: who is Jack, what's your story? What's your background? Maybe a bit about the book a bit about the company as well, as much as you'd like to share at this point.

Jack Murray  
So I would describe myself as a marketeer, an entrepreneur, and a storyteller. And as long as I can remember my family has been involved in business. And if I was to share with the audience to spark that got me involved in business and in storytelling. It's a story that my father used to tell us when we were small. And I have an older sister and a younger brother. Ireland was very poor in the 1880s. And my great grandfather was one of nine children. And they had a very small farm in the west of Ireland. And back then, the British ruling class would have had landlords that would have had small peasant farmers. And my family was to have a small farm holding, and somebody had to do something because they were going to get evicted off the land. And the chosen son was my great grandfather. And a 29 years of age, he left Ireland on a boat for New York. And he arrived into Castle Gardens in New York. And anyone who's seen that movie gangs in New York, it was that era. So like if the disease and the collar and all that didn't get you, the gangs might have gotcha. We don't really know what he got up to but he was massively successful. And he got a business idea in America for a general store. And he came back to our hometown and in 1886 he started this business and kind of bought a whole lot of property and started a milling business and started a sharp and a generator merchants and that business is still run to this day by my brother and my mother. And I suppose it was that story that got me engaged in storytelling. I studied product marketing, in university, I went to work first in a shoe company. Then I decided I want to get deeper in storytelling. And I studied journalism. I worked in political communication then as a young man. And a 30 years of age, I went out and I started my first business. I started Media HQ over 10 years ago. And quickly, I bought a business that was publishing a printed media directory for people to keep in contact with journalists. And it's kind of funny how big the SaaS industry is now. I was watching somebody recently talking about the ads on the Super Bowl, and how they were all SaaS dominated for the first time ever. And, like, we created software as a service platform over 10 years ago, before SaaS was even a thing. Because it was the best way to connect our users with up to date intelligence on journalists. And Media HQ has been a platform for well over 10 years, and has steadily grown. Has gone on an international development pathway. And simply as a product, our mission is to connect our users stories with their audiences. And that could be journalists, it could be podcasts, it could be Instagrammers. And we work as a place to find your audience and then to distribute your pitches your press releases, and to look at your results in your Analytics and to achieve your mission that way. And I suppose, you know, it was true that prison, we help loads of organisations and brands share stories on what you would call an industrial level. And it was through that this concept of the magic slice, which is, if you can imagine two circles, where one is what you want to talk about and the other is what people are interested in. Where they intersect is your magic slice. And it's your magic slice of attention. And it's that magic place where the attention of your audience is completely aligned with your intention. Their attention and your intention are matched. And that's what I wrote my book about. In addition to running Media HQ, I have a storytelling agency and I work with brands on how to find that place where the attention span of the people that they're trying to communicate with, is perfectly aligned with what they want for those people. And yeah, I love marketing. And I love the innovation space around SaaS where you can imagine something and you can build it really quickly. And you can engage with your customers and see how they react was

Andrei Tiu  
And how was like launching, you know, basically a business in a category that was just kind of forming right then? You're a bit of an early adopter. If you're one of the last to go there. What was the space 10, 15 years ago? 

Jack Murray  
It's really interesting in that, like,you'll get some technical founders and I'm not a technical founder, I'm a marketeer. I am passionate about our customers. And I am always the first customer for our product. So I'm a native public relations person, I'm a native storyteller. My instinct is to tell stories and to connect them with audiences. So you know, in one regard, I build a product for myself. And the other thing, from an early adopter point of view that I find fascinating is that we've always been a mission driven business. So our mission is to help our users connect our story with our audience. And that's agnostic of a way or a means to do it. So when I bought the business, it was a book. Right now, it's software as the service and in 10 years, I don't know what it's going to be in 10 years time. But the amazing thing about being SaaS and being mission driven, is that you find the best way to do it. And like, not withstanding the fact that I'm not technical. I am the kind of Chief, kind of creative innovation person in our company for new ideas, for new products, for new features. We have a product roadmap, and we have a North Star and like we always say at the start of every development phase, like does it achieve the mission? Does it help our users connect their story with their audience? And that's innovation and that's SaaS and I think if you're mission driven, you will find a way to fulfil your mission. And you won't get hung up on one means to deal with. Like if you look at newspapers as a physical object, there's a classic example of something they didn't really know for decades what business they were in. They thought they were in the newspaper business, but they weren't. They were in the news business or they were in the information business or the storytelling business. And they got hung up on on just one way of doing it.

Andrei Tiu  
Right now, how was your day looking like? I mean, you have the company also keynote speaker. You also have the agency for storytelling. What's your full circle of activity at the moment?

Jack Murray  
It's funny like I'm always fascinated with how Jack Darcy can run Twitter and run Stripe. I think any of us can do more than one thing. And part of my challenge on a daily basis is that I'm a trained marketeer. And a trained journalist. I like doing keynotes, I like talking on podcasts, like write books, I like cycling on my bike, I like jumping into the ocean. I like doing lots of things. And I probably have a short attention span. So like, part of my big focus is in my weekly journey, and I talk a lot about this to companies about the world post pandemic, the world is your oyster, so you can reach audiences. So we can go and we can talk to people. And the cultural barriers have fallen away. So you know, the language, the business languages, English. Now, everybody is just one other person on a Zoom call. So it could be your colleague who's four streets away, or it could be somebody in a country that's in four time zones away. And I suppose my big challenge on a weekly basis: I like the way software runs on to weekly sprints. And, you know, we have different functions from product development, to marketing, to customer success. And it's about managing those tightly. And look, the only resource that we're not getting any more of is time. And time is very valuable. And I think the challenge is to kind of respect that. But also balance. There's enough was enough time for swimming in the ocean. And there's enough time for hard work. So I also think one of the big challenges kind of post pandemic in the remote world is to you know, we try and organise our week on zones. So I would say Monday is very busy. I would say Tuesday's a time for reflection, Wednesday's very busy, Thursday morning can be a time for reflection. Thursday can be busy. And then Friday evening, Friday afternoon is the time for reflection. And I do think I do think you can build a rhythm into the week where you have busy zones, and you have time for reflection. And it's a good way to be productive as well.

Andrei Tiu  
That's a really good tip. Is this something that you are applying right now to the way that you are organising your activity? And if so, for how long have you been doing it?

Jack Murray  
Yeah, we've been doing it for over a year now. So Monday is busy, Tuesday is quiet. We don't shedule internal meetings on a Tuesday. Wednesday is meeting driven and busy. Thursday morning is quiet. Thursday afternoon is kind of sign off day. Traditionally, I don't like signing things off on a Friday, I'm not in I'm kind of a decision mode on a Thursday. And then a more reflective assessment phase on Friday. So we've a series of kind of sign offs and product developments and a whole host of things on Thursday afternoon. And then Friday, it's about you know, looking at the progress of the week, seeing what you need to do next week. And Friday afternoon is a period of you know, making sure you finish the week strong and you know, you get bits and pieces done. And as a rhythm we've been doing it over a year. And like, if you design it in a way that people aren't banging into each other, they don't bang into each other. And people will say: Oh, that's really difficult to do. It isn't really. And look, I lead the organisation. So I know if I set the tone and the tempo, the rest of them will follow.

Andrei Tiu  
Very good insights. Okay, and now going into the subject, this was very, a very nice insight for, you know, organising from a business perspective. And I think it's very nice that you noted this, because in the beginning of the year, what we felt, I mean, I can say this for our organisation as well, but also for the clients that we've been working with. Everybody was in full on mode, sometimes stressed, trying to get a lot of stuff done. But you mentioned right there reflection, which I think it's something that we should always take time to do, and can also inform better decisions or productivity, if done on a constant basis. So thank you for that. Going to the book, because I had a copy and I read a big chunk of it. I'm curious, and it's something that I think would be worth discussing now and I think it's gonna be a very nice plus to the people tuning in with us today. I would like us to explore The Six Step Magic Slice process that you mentioned. And you know, how to apply it in terms of business and where, where the stories you tell resonate perfectly with your audience.

Jack Murray  
The Six Step Magic Slice processes is about how you can do an audit on your brand or your organisation. So if there's anybody listening here now, look. SaaS is a very good platform for telling stories. So people do white papers, they do help docs, they do blogs, they do podcasts, they do them on video, they do them on audio. But how do you know that you're really achieving the objectives of your brand? And look, you know, everything is strategic, it's all about rolling a rock up the hill. So if you have a content strategy that's trying to achieve something for your business, if you put stories at the heart of it, how can you consistently do that to resonate with people and get a result? And so the six steps to it, and I mentioned the first one already. The first one is mission. If you pull your team together, and you say to them, like, why are we all here? What are we trying to achieve? People in your organisation should be able to recite your mission, like it's a prayer. And media HQ whose mission is to connect, to enable our users to connect our stories with our audience. And that's at the heart of absolutely everything we do. And your mission should be short, it should be specific, you should be able to own it, it shouldn't be overly technical, it should be understandable. And the first step in the process is to understand the mission. And like, you know, great brands like Patagonia, ethical clothing maker, can do really well. So when you know your mission, the second step along the process is to completely define your audiences. And in SaaS, we call these our target persona, buyer persona. That could be our verticals. The great marketer said, Gordon describes it in who are you for? So what are you building and who you're building it for. Be outrageously far who you're for, and you're not going to be for everyone. But before and the audience thing is about completely profiling the people you're for. I tell a story in the book about my first job working for a shoe company. And my boss was the marketing director, and he had a stack of women's magazines. And I joked with him the first day, and I said, Oh, you're reading women's magazines. And he said, there are our customers, you will soon start reading women's magazines. He said, get on it. And he said, We need to understand how they think, what they do, how they make decisions, and I'm still trying to figure out women. It'll be a lifelong journey. But he's right. It doesn't matter if you're selling yachts, if you're selling SaaS, if you're selling bicycles, if you're selling lollipops. You've got to understand the audience. So when you know your mission, and your know your audiences, then what you do is you look at the topics that you're going to be talking about. And you know, to look at the topics you're going to talk about, look at the trends in your industry, look at your core product offering, look at the knowledge base that you build around your product, and synthesise. Imagine there's a folder, and it says like my amazing stories, what would the headings in the folder be, the chapter headings and, and that's what your topics are. And when you have your mission, your audience and your topics, you can then actually say what your magic slice statement is. It's x brand, you know, is appealing to x audience through writing stories about X, Y, and Z. And it's only at that point, Andrei, when you know, your mission, you know your audiences, you know your topics, you write a statement that comprasses all that, it's only then that you actually start writing stories. And you start coming up with ideas for stories that would, would hook in. And like I give an example, like, you know, one of our magic slices is PR wisdom. And it's this notion of how can we share wisdom about public relations. And we commissioned a series recently called My Life in PR this much I know. And we go to senior PR people who are in the vertical and they might be working in houses, they might be working in an agency. And it's a simple questionnaire with 10 questions, and they fill it out, and it goes up on the blog. And the first two have been shared and been read 1000s of times on LinkedIn. It's kind of a career retrospective, and it's someone who's directly in the vertical, and they're sharing a career retrospective. And it's to that topic of PR wisdom, and it's sharing wisdom with other people and brings people into the product and the reason that we have a magic slide statement it's to be an editor. If you don't, and you know, from running this podcast, like, if you don't keep an editorial control of what you're doing, then it gets a little bit loose, then it's probably not talking to your vertical, it's not talking to your audience. And it's not really about your mission. And if you do two or three episodes like that, or two or three things, it all gets a bit fuzzy. Then it stops delivering. And if you think about the way it's done incorrectly, someone says, oh, we need something on LinkedIn, or we need a Facebook post, or we need an Instagram post. And they start at the end, they don't start at the beginning. So they're not starting at What's their purpose? Who are they talking to? What should they be talking about? They start with this, oh, we need something over here, because it's a blank page over here. It doesn't work. And the last step, then is when you have all of that done, you're constantly looking at your mission and your audiences and your topics, because the world doesn't stay locked in, and it doesn't stay static. The elements are constantly moving around. And that you revise and you edit, as per the moving plates and the moving discs.

Andrei Tiu  
So how did you discover the concept of magic slides? I think he was about seven years almost ago.

Jack Murray  
Yeah, I discovered the magic slice in that we were about to hit a really big milestone at Media HQ. So one of our users was about to share the 100,000 story on the network. And if you can imagine, in the admin backend of Media HQ, there is a live feed of the stories as they're being shared. So every day like there's hundreds and hundreds of stories shared, and we get to see them in the office, just before the journalists read them. And it was a big moment. And we were sending out a press release ourselves. And I began to kind of look at the stream of press releases. And I began to identify the people who were really good at it. And I began to see this commonality. So I had a bit of an epiphany kind of around that. And I suppose that kind of leads us nicely to like, we're talking about storytelling. And I think it's really important for the people who are watching, and for listening to the podcast, is to say, Well, why should you power your marketing or your communications with storytelling? and Andrei, it is the most powerful way to communicate. If I said to you, I can actually give you the gift of mind control. And I can actually give you kind of a full command on the brain power of the people you're trying to communicate with. And you can actually get into their brains and control their outcomes. Would you like that? And you'd say, Yeah, sure. Yeah. How do we do that? And the answer is with storytelling, and it's ostensibly about science. And if you could imagine, and I look, this is a game I've been playing for as long as I've been a marketeer over 20 years. Every opportunity, you have to communicate with your audience is a game. And every opportunity is a game where you can influence it positively, or neutrally or negatively. And storytelling is a really powerful way. Imagine you could wrap a story around anything. It could be a package, it could be arriving to a reception area, it could be receiving something physical through the post. Imagine if you put a story around everything. And the reason stories work is that stories trigger hormones, and hormones influence our brain. I tell a story in the book about this piece of research that was done in Princeton, by a professor called Yuri Hasson. And he got this graduate student to go into an MRI machine and she told this fantastical story about the night of her high school prom. She and her boyfriend had a face and he got drunk and she was driving the car and she had a slight tip in the car. And it's just this full of all of these kind of mad and interesting kind of colourful story. And they played the story, they mapped her brain waves in the MRI, she told us, and then they played the story back to 15 people. And miraculously, their brainwaves listening to the story, mirrored her brain way of telling the story there were like an absolute exact match. And it shows that if you want to control the audience, like a puppet on a string, a story is the way to do it. And like we're all addicted to Netflix, to Amazon, to Disney+, any story that's a whodunit triggers dopamine. And anything that kind of is personal and builds trust, triggers oxytocin. So if I told you something personal about myself, my life, my family swim in the sea. It builds trust. And you think you know me on a human level and it builds oxytocin. And then if I tell you something funny and you laugh, that builds endorphins, and that builds engagement. Dopamine builds focus. Oxytocin builds trust. Endorphins laughing builds engagement. And then the negative ones are cortisol, and adrenaline. And if I bore you, or if I stress you, you dial up cortisol, and adrenaline. And the way to bore and stress you is to stand in front of you with bullet points or to, like bore you just literally, if I bore you. And the way I can bore you is by kind of presenting bullet points are presenting dry factual information. And that's what lots of brands do. But once they dial up emotion and start telling stories, they start engaging people. And the mad thing is that if you present with bullet points and a PowerPoint 90% of it is forgotten within 30 seconds. If that's not the definition of the stupid thing to do, I don't know what it is. Yet, lots of people do it and lots of brands do. And it is the kind of reason that brands need to think, okay, how can I put out stories at the heart of everything we do, our origin story, how we communicate, how we hire, how we raise money, like so, you know, for going out looking for financing, or looking for VC backing or, you know, we've to tell a story to an investor. And all of it makes life easier at the heart of company.

Andrei Tiu  
I love that you brought up the sort of natural chemistry in our bodies, and how we relate to stories. We can go into the science of storytelling here, because I feel that this is a lot of it. And I would like our audience, when they finish listening to the episode to have sort of like a clearer understanding of how they can think about storytelling from a scientific point of view, for the ones out here that are more, you know, they find it easier to organise their ideas in such a way, like scientifically, to understand what this is about. I think discovery is part of it. But what other information do you think is relevant, then we can bring to this point?

Jack Murray  
Well, it's really interesting in that. Let's take people's addiction to binge watching television just as an example of science. And as we speak, I'm watching a French TV series called The Promise. It's in French, and it's subtitled. And it's about a killer who's adopting young children, and is a hunt for them. I'm just after finishing watching a German series made by German TV called Dark Woods. And that's about a murder as well. And there's a reason crime works: is that crime is about who done it. So it's about a slow reveal of a story where you find out at the very end, and a slower available story triggers dopamine. And I'll tell you a quick story to illustrate the point scientifically. And I use this story in some keynotes that I that I give. And a number of years ago, I gave a radio interview, where I was talking a little bit like I'm talking to you today about storytelling and the impact that can have in business. I came back to the office. And the reception rang and said, there's a woman on the phone. She just heard you on the radio. So I went and I answered the phone call. And she said I heard you on the radio. You're absolutely brilliant. I am the Marketing Manager for a huge corporate law firm. And we need a story strategy. It's going to be a huge project. Can you call me as soon as you can to meet us? And I thought I can come right now if you find she said, No, no, you can come tomorrow. So I arranged to meet with the following day. And she was in this huge office, Andrei, kind of big chrome steel building, in the financial district in Dublin. And I arrived into reception. And I said I'm here to meet the head of marketing. And her name was Angela. And she arrived down and she was kind of very fast moving and kind of, you know, bit out of breath and bit frantic. And she kind of sat me down and she said, No, I'm not going to this meeting. Three of our directors are going to this meeting. And she said it's a really big contract with a copy of 100,000 euros. And if you can convince them, you're going to get the job. I thought okay, this is a bit strange, but I'm going to go with it. And she said there in that meeting room down the hallway. And you go and I'll meet you afterwards. So I walked down and I looked in it was one of those meeting rooms with two glass windows on either side. And I looked in and I could see three really serious thoroughly faced man with grey suits on I thought, Ah, this is going to be terrible. And I put my hand on the door, and it was just about to go in. And just as I was about to go in, I could hear a kind of a noise behind me and then turn around. And I could see Angela coming towards me at speed, she said, there's just one thing that you need to know before you go in. Now, if I didn't tell you what that was, it'd be annoying, wouldn't it? And I'm not going to tell you, because that's dopamine. And when you dial up something where there's a reveal, and somebody really wants to know something, that's dopamine. And what happens when you deliver a story like that? People focus, they remember details, they remember all of you could go off this podcast now. And you could tell that story to that point to anyone. Next week, the week after, you'll remember all of it, and that's dopamine. And, you know, it's the same way with if you reveal something about yourself through a story, that's oxytocin, you can make somebody laugh, it tell a joke, people will remember a joke. And they'll tell it because it triggered their endorphins. And that's why storytelling, that's why the science of storytelling is really important. Because once you have that moment, you think, ah, that's what's happening. So like, the next time you're looking for a new TV series, you want to watch, you're looking for a dopamine rush, like, that's what you're looking for. It's the reason gaming is huge. It's the reason people, you know, the people binge watch TV all the time. It's the reason people gamble. They need a dopamine hit. And you can you can build that into your storytelling.

Andrei Tiu  
Very interesting, very good example, as well. Another thing that I had here in my notes, and I know that you were talking about in your book was finding your creative operating system. I like this parallel of, you know, like with the operating system. Can you tell us more about this subject? 

Jack Murray  
I suppose the net point from this is that everything comes from ideas. So and especially in like innovation, and marketing, and especially in an industry, like SaaS, everything comes from ideas. So if everything comes from ideas, being like the Irish phrase, like a busy fool, like being a busy fool is not going to produce new ideas. And your creative operating system has to be like, if the working week in Europe is 37 and a half hours, everybody needs to dedicate 10% of that, which is three and a half hours, half a day a week to creativity. So in our company, you know, we have quiet zones, as I mentioned earlier, in podcast, we have Tuesday and Thursday morning, sometime on Friday afternoon. And you know, it's probably to use a technical term, we over engineer it. So we give more of zones there for people to dip in and devote it and you tend not to and then you have to find ways to be creative. So like, post exercise is really good. I have some creative work to do this evening, I'll do it after I get out of the ocean. If that cold water doesn't dial up some hormones of some sort, there's something wrong. It could be heroin, it could be a cycle. You know, I wrote my book, I wrote a lot of it sitting in the front of my car waiting for my daughter's to finish their sports because I was kind of hiding in plain sight. There's a thing of a creativity where you know, if it's for your doing your accounting and your expenses, it's not going to work. And I think the one thing I would say to people listening in is that creativity is not a talent, you're not born with it, it's a way of operating. So you know, the more you practice creativity, the better you get. So the more you rise, the more you think the more you hone your ideas, the more time you spend at it, the better it will get. And we think that people are born creative. They're not like, you know, people who like you know, writing a book is like giving birth to a donkey like it's hard. And like you have to keep coming back and back and haunt. Nobody wrote ever wrote anything clean, crisp, amazing the first time you know, it's like as the famous sculptor said like, how did you make that piece of granite look like an elephant? He said, I just knocked away everything that didn't look like an elephant. You know, it takes time. But I suppose it is worth it. And great products, great engagement, brilliant ideas. They take time and I suppose the last thing I'll say on this is creative people are willing to fail. So writers, musicians, and in corporate culture there's a lot of people don't want to fail and companies and you'll see it sometimes they'll bring in agencies like me, bring in a creative person like me to tell their story. Because there's nobody in the bandwidth within the company. And these are big organisations. And one is that they don't believe in it, but also that they just don't want to. They don't want to be seen. And they bring in a consultant because it's okay for a consultant to fail, but they don't want somebody on the payroll to fail. And that's curious to me, and, like, investing in creativity will pay dividends. And look, I've been creative all my life, like the one thing I've a healthy fear about things, running out of ideas isn't one of them. And that's because I continually invest in myself. And to be creative, you have to invest in your body, and in your mind, and you have to do it, you have to you have to keep practising.

Andrei Tiu  
Love it. Jack, this was a great, nice way to end it on a high. But I feel this is something that we'll be here to stay. And I think it's good for people to keep as one of the final notes. Before we wrap up, because I know we're getting a bit late and the ocean is waiting out there. But we didn't touch so much on your company. And I think there was a lot of, you know, juice that we could discuss there as well. So just maybe a little intro, or a bit more details on it for the audience for the people that are running marketing departments. And they may need to, or they are looking at ways that they can leverage PR better. If you can please share a bit about who your clients are at the moment and how they may be able to use the platform best. We'll have links to it in the description as well. So guys, if you're interested, you can check it out. But Jack, just to hear it from you.

Jack Murray  
Yeah, so I suppose look, there's two things I'll talk about. One is media HQ. And the other is my storytelling agency, All Good Tails. Media HQ is a SaaS platform that helps brands, share press releases, and pitches with journalists. And if you need to get a press release out, or you need to tell your story via the media. And we traditionally work within House Communications teams, with PR agencies, and with independent PR professionals, there are our key target verticals. And the way people use this. We're a database with 1000s and 1000s of media contacts, and you log in you build lists for your key audiences, and you distribute press releases and pitches through the platform. And as I said, Look, our key verticals Our in house agencies and loan PR practitioners. We went on an international expansion in 2018. We are now represented in the media in Ireland and in the UK. And as we speak, we're working on a number of projects across Europe to roll out in other European countries partnering with other partners on the European continent to do that. And then on the other side, and this is linked in, my work with the book, I run an agency called All good Tails. And we do magic. So what's in the book, which is the magic slice, we are brought in as a team into brands to find their magic slice so that they can execute stories. And we would work with senior management teams and we would bring them through the six step process. It's outlined in the magic slice book, to help them have clarity and how they can put stories at the heart of what they do. The first step is to identify their magic slice. And the second step then is to put a plan in place and how to implement it. And implementing it can be everything from website copy, building brand newsrooms, you know stories around how you're going to hire better, how you're going to raise funding, pitch decks and all of that and kind of creating story cultures within organisations. So people who are doing work really well but know they're missing out on opportunities because they haven't captured it properly in a story. There the two offerings one is Media HQ, which is the SaaS platform, and people can read about it on mediahq.com And for all good tears then if they go to allgoodtales.com and my writing website is Murraystory.com. And they'll find me on Twitter as media Murray, our connect with me on LinkedIn as well.

Andrei Tiu  
Perfect. So guys, you have links to all these in the description of this episode if you are viewing it on YouTube. If not, it should be in the episode transcripts. Or as mentioned by Jack, You can follow his LinkedIn profile or Twitter or you know navigate from here. But we'll try to make everything as accessible as possible. So Jack, it was a great pleasure to have you on the show. Very insightful chat as well. Thank you again for sharing all the insights guys. If you want to read the full book, you can find it on Amazon. Jack congrats again for being bestselling author there in three categories in such a short time. And without further you know, until next time, feel free to share any feedback that you have with us. Jack, if you're up for it, sometimes we get questions from audience that can become episodes in themselves. So if you're up to maybe following up on our conversation today with another episode may be focused around VR or any feedback that we get from our listeners. Maybe we can organise.

Jack Murray  
 I'd love that chat. 

Andrei Tiu  
Awesome. And until next time, guys, as always, thank you for tuning in today. Thank you for sticking around. Hopefully, you found this episode insightful with some nice takeaways that you can implement in your business or review. As we were talking about the mission, values and how these are being translated into your stories. Feel free to connect with Jack. Feel free to share your feedback and until next time, wishing you all the very best of success. Speak soon. Thank you, Jack, for being here today.

Jack Murray  
Thank you