Small business owners often assume that gaining national credibility requires a massive marketing budget, but PR strategist and eReleases founder Mickie Kennedy believes the opposite is true. In today’s competitive marketplace, authority is built through trust, visibility, and strategic storytelling — not just expensive advertising. Through smart public relations, entrepreneurs can position themselves as industry experts, attract ideal clients, and earn media attention that creates long-term credibility.
In this episode, Mickie shares how small businesses can use PR to gain authority without overspending on marketing. He breaks down what makes a story newsworthy, why most press releases fail, and how entrepreneurs can leverage earned media to stand out in crowded industries. Whether you’re a founder, investor, or business owner looking to grow your influence, this conversation offers practical insights to help you expand your reach and build trust with your audience.
Episode Highlights Here:
Brett
Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward scale to billions and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want you to do is to click the subscribe button right now. I love your support. It’s incredible to see your comments, and we’re just getting started. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. Well, welcome to the build it to billions podcast where we guide successful entrepreneurs and investors on their journey from millions to billions. We believe the key to scaling and compounding your wealth and life starts every single day with the mindset and practice of stewardship over ownership and applying billionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goal is help you scale and compound your wealth and life so you can get more all give more of it away to help MVPs. My name is Brett Swarts. Each and every episode, we’re joined by some of the world’s top entrepreneurs, millionaires or billionaires, and they share their secrets, insights and wisdom with us. We can all scale up and make a bigger impact. I’m excited about our next guest. He’s out of the Maryland, Baltimore area, and he is the founder of E releases, a leading press release distribution service that helps small businesses, startups and authors gain national media exposure. With over 25 plus years in the industry, he has built e releases to bring them to bridge the gap between businesses and journalists, providing an affordable way to secure real press coverage. Please welcome the show with me. Mr. Mickey Kennedy, Mickey, how we are doing?
Mickie
good. Glad to be here.
Brett
Excellent. for listeners, getting to know you for the first time. Would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Mickie
Sure. So, I started e releases. I guess back in 1998 I was stumbled into PR working at a telecom research firm. I was employee number three, so I had to wear a lot of hats, and one of them was getting out press releases, which we were doing by fax, and I was spending an entire days ending out each release and programming the fax machine and hitting send. And not a lot was happening, and I felt like we got to figure out how to make these press releases work for us if we’re going to devote so much time to it. And I looked at trade journals and articles and realized that journalists really like a story arc. And I realized that we were providing data, but we weren’t really putting a story around it. And so, once we changed that, we started getting amazing pickup. We had just published Caribbean telecom traffic numbers, and one of them was a big outlier. I can’t remember the country. It was a minor one and not a common one, but it had more traffic than all of the others combined, and it turned out that that was the call center for which all one 900 numbers were routed. And so we shared the data, we talked about the one 900 industry, and that got picked up by the Wall Street Journal Washington Post, The Economist Financial Times and several telecom trade publications. And so, I continued to do that, and I saw a shift where people started to request that we email them instead of faxing them. And that was sort of the idea for E releases. So, we originally started by emailing press releases, and today, media databases have kind of ruined that market, and email is not a very effective way for reaching journalists. So, we’ve migrated to working with PR Newswire, which is the oldest and largest news wire in the US. And there’s largely a duopoly of press release newswires. It’s Business Wire and PR news wire. You don’t need both, but you need to be on one of them, and that’s where most journalists are actively looking for news and criteria, because
unlike your inbox, it’s very clean there. So, someone covers a particular industry, they can look at that feed, and they can even customize the feed by excluding certain keywords or making sure that stuff gets pinned that includes certain keywords. So, it’s a very clean place for them to look for news and hunt for news, and they have less time today and are asked to do even more because the budgets at newspapers aren’t what they used to be. So, it’s really the greatest place for which journalists are actually hunting for material.
Brett
Okay, got it all. Thank you so much. Mickey, that was amazing. So, by the way, to learn more about this, you guys can all go to E releases.com it’s E releases.com and to get started. So let’s start with this. Mickey, what’s the number one secret for the entrepreneur, the journalist, the business owner that wants to use your service and really get there, get their name and their product out.
Mickie
I think the first is, don’t approach it as what’s so
Brett
if you like this little short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watch the full interview, and please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody
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About Mickie Kennedy
Mickie Kennedy is the founder of eReleases, a leading press release distribution company dedicated to helping small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs gain meaningful media exposure. With more than 25 years of experience in public relations, Mickie has helped thousands of business owners increase credibility, expand their reach, and secure valuable press coverage without the high costs typically associated with large PR agencies.
Known for his practical and results-driven approach, Mickie specializes in helping businesses craft compelling stories that capture media attention and build authority in their industry. His mission is to make effective PR accessible and affordable, empowering entrepreneurs to stand out, grow their influence, and generate real business results through earned media.
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