From Hidden to Headline: Building Brand Authority with PR and Media with Leonard Scheiner

In this episode, Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins sits down with Leonard Scheiner, CEO of Geek Haus, to uncover the secrets of building a successful, credible brand. Leonard shares his expertise on establishing authority, attracting clients, and growing revenue by strategically positioning one’s business in the marketplace. He emphasizes the importance of trust markers, like media features and PR, which add "digital dust" to elevate an online presence. Leonard also delves into the role of budgeting in marketing, explaining how to set realistic goals and prioritize high-return investments.

A key theme is the power of automation in creating seamless client experiences and freeing up time for business owners. Leonard illustrates how systems can be set up to handle everything from onboarding to marketing follow-ups, ensuring that processes run smoothly without constant manual input. Finally, he challenges listeners to evaluate their online visibility, using a "Self-Google Challenge" to assess and enhance their public profile. Through podcast guesting and targeted PR, Leonard provides actionable steps for building a lasting digital legacy and reinforcing professional credibility.

Highlights

-Building Credibility with PR: How media features—such as being mentioned on reputable platforms—act as trust markers that build credibility. He likens it to the “Oprah Effect,” where being associated with well-known media amplifies authority.

- "Self-Google Challenge" to encourage listeners to assess their visibility and credibility online. There's value of an optimized online presence, advising listeners to leverage media features and podcast guesting to improve their digital footprint.

- Target PR for Lasting Impact: Instead of focusing PR on specific business names, build personal credibility that transcends individual ventures. By establishing a strong personal brand, professionals can carry their authority across different business roles.

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Transcript

Business Chop Episode with Leonard Scheiner

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Hello, chop, squad and friends. It's great to be with you and welcome to our new listeners. I hope that you will subscribe and become a member of the chop squad. My guest today from Geek Haus is Leonard Shiner, and they help businesses become established with credibility by getting them featured in press articles, TV and other forms of media to create their authority and trust with their clients and customers. And we'll learn more about Leonard Shiner after this message.

Welcome, Leonard, to the business. Chop.

Leonard Scheiner: Thank you, Audrey. It's a pleasure to be here.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yup awesome. Now Leonard has been helping law firms, solo attorneys, and business owners for the past decade, with a focus on developing their brand marketing for new clients and predictably growing the revenues of and their online authority for their clients.

Their firm has achieved. Geek Haus, as we mentioned earlier has achieved a 300% increase in revenue, while others have earned millions of dollars worth of new business driven from Leonard's frameworks and tactics. So, remember, we always talk about frameworks and systems people. So, I'm glad you're here today, and hopefully, you'll be able to glean from what Leonard is going to share with us. So today he's the CEO of Geek Haus, a law firm marketing agency, and that's a little different, Leonard, right?

Leonard Scheiner: A little bit different. We're usually focused on people who have professional expertise and how they package that and position themselves in the marketplace to get clients.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay, awesome. So, they're based in La. But the service area is all 50 states of the Us. So again, Leonard, thanks for being here, and let's get some questions answered.

Leonard Scheiner: I love it, Audrey. Thanks for having me once.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Done.

Leonard Scheiner: And I'm excited. Let's dive right in.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay, so let's chat 1st about some of your fun things and your accomplishments.

Leonard Scheiner: Hmm, okay, so fun things.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: 4-legged, 4-legged creature. We start there.

Leonard Scheiner: Well, I do have a 4-legged creature sometimes he makes appearances on some lives that I do. I don't think he'll make an appearance today. But the 16-pound fluffy Pomeranian, you know, doing your work every day is great as a professional. But then, you know, where do you get filled up as a person, you know, like that that relentless love? Alright. So, I get that from my pup.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay, okay. I love that. I love the Pom radiance. Had a bass in hound before. And now that I'm going to this other chapter in life. I was, you know, thinking about getting a dog again. And the palm Random was kind of at the top of the list, you know something small. Yeah.

Leonard Scheiner: Yeah.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: So.

Leonard Scheiner: Say that they're yappy, but I got lucky. I think you can find them where they don't yap. And so yeah, great dogs. I love all dogs, though.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay, yeah. My niece has one, and I had hadn't been over to see her probably since April, and he remembers me. And I'm like he's like all over me. Here is about the color of mine.

Leonard Scheiner: Love it so cute.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah, all right. Anything else. Fun that you want to. That you want to share with us. And why don't we want to get some of your accomplishments in there, too.

Leonard Scheiner: Well, I definitely am a coffee drinker. I like to say that you can do it in less time than it takes you to drink one latte or 2 or 3 lattes, so I'll take a latte sip as a as a unit of time sometimes, which is really fun but accomplishment wise. I you know I hate to boast. I hate to brag, but I feel like in settings.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: And read it for you.

Leonard Scheiner: You gotta tell people, though. Yeah, no, I'm fully there. You gotta tell people so that they understand that you are the expert. Right? You gotta lay that foundation. So, I was in house at law firms, many different law firms from litigation to divorce, to asset, protection, to estate, planning to bankruptcy to kind of every different practice area, and that gave me a lot of wherewithal about how people in all different situations need help. And that's really what motivates me to do what I do. It's kind of like a 2-step process. But I help the expert right? I help the attorney. I'll help the nutritionist. I'll help the fitness coach. The person who's packaging their knowledge.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Hmm.

Leonard Scheiner: Not really good at delivering the value of that knowledge in a marketing message. That's where I come in. So, they might be a great fitness. Coach, right? They might get people losing weight building muscle. But how does that person communicate right? How does he or she, as a fitness trainer land that message and really, specifically land the message so that they sound different from everyone else. So that's really where I've you know, found my niche and my expertise. So, I've been featured on Forbes. I've been in law firms for over a decade. I've helped Hollywood celebrities grow their brands to 6 and 7 figures. And so, all of that has crescendoed into the agency that I run today, which is Geek Haus and I really love helping our clients do just this. I love having my hands in the clay and creating something from nothing.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: That's awesome. Now, how did you come up with the name Geek Haus?

Leonard Scheiner: Well, there! There was something I learned early in my legal days is that if you're not planning to die with this business, do not put your name in it.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: And.

Leonard Scheiner: It's true, right?

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay. Okay.

Leonard Scheiner: So, if you're like a professional licensed attorney, you know you're going to put your name in it. You're probably going to have that firm forever. Right? You're not gonna then go moonlight as a something else. So, for me, I didn't want to put my name in it because it wasn't about me, it was really about the mission of it. And so, Geek Haus. The idea is that I've always been told I'm kind of like geeky and nerdy right like I wear glasses. And so, for that it was. We're all kind of geeks, right? And, Audrey, I'm sure you're a geek in in what you do in tech, right?

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah, yeah, so.

Leonard Scheiner: So, you're a geek. I'm a geek, and then we're all in Geek Haus, right? So, we're like a house of people.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: I love it, which.

Leonard Scheiner: Was really on the mission of take an attorney. Take a fitness, coach. take someone who's running an insurance practice. Take someone like that. They have the time or the want to go. Hire a marketer, a videographer, a content person, a this and that, and then they got to manage all those people, and they don't even know how to manage them, so they gotta find them, manage them, get the deliverable and they don't even know what they're doing right. It's like going out into the Atlantic with no map.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: You're right.

Leonard Scheiner: So instead, we come in and I'm usually working as the lead strategist. And I'm bridging that gap between all the techno babble and the content babble, and the KPI, this and the Roi this and all of that. and I turn it around to the client in a very easy way we're kind of converting that jargon. We're making it simple. The other side is that it's nice for the client to be able to have 1 point of contact. And then that 1 point being me or another lead go ahead and handle all the different details.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah, that's awesome. So, on that in that same vein. Then how does the business afford marketing? And have a profitable, you know, have profitable campaigns that they can actually pay themselves.

Leonard Scheiner: marketing is definitely something that should be an investment. It should not be a cost right it shouldn't be just something that comes right off the top there should be return on the investment for marketing. Does that payback period come week, one or month? One, maybe not, depends on the campaign that we're running. But when I'm looking at marketing and when I'm looking at a client's budget. the dialogue that I'm having is…can we get the results that you want with the budget that you have. And it's just a really frank conversation. If you want to get a hundred new clients and each new client X amount of dollars. It's just math, right? We know the acquisition cost. Okay, we, we need to have a budget that is reasonable to get the result right? So, it's just like gas in a car. If I had one tank of gas and I'm in Los Angeles, can I get to New York. No, it's just not possible, right? I can go locally. I can do a lot of things locally right, like that. One tank of gas is worth something. I can make it useful. But if the goal is New York definitely, not all that we need.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah, so how does so you're talking about budget, though. But how does a company know, or individual know when it's time to hire an outside company, I mean, do they have to like shed some type of ego, or just own up to, hey? I just can't do this. 

Leonard Scheiner: Well, it it's kind of a 2-part answer to that question. So, the ego part. So, the 1st part is acknowledging that you might be a great fitness person, a fit great fitness trainer. But you're not a marketer. Right? That's a different profession like you're great at Tech Audrey, but you're probably, you know you could do tech for a dental office. But you're probably not great at filling a cavity, right? So, everyone's got their lane.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Right and.

Leonard Scheiner: And so, when we tried to do it all of ourselves. it's actually detrimental to us because it takes more time. We get more frustrated. And then mentally, we're like, throw in the towel. This doesn't work, and it's like, no, no, no, wait. It's not that. It doesn't work. It just doesn't work in the way that you're trying to do it. It's like a round peg and a square hole, you know.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah.

Leonard Scheiner: So that is somewhat of the 1st part. Right? Is the business owner acknowledging. I'm not the marketing person. I don't want to wear that hat right like I do what I do. I'm service based, or you know I'm whatever it. It's not their lane. So that's the 1st part. then the second part, I think you asked is when right like, when do we know that this is time to do it?

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah.

Leonard Scheiner: So, for any business. If you don't have clients, you don't have customers, you don't have patience, you don't have a business. So, the front end of any business is getting clients and then they come in and you service them. And then that 3rd step is hopefully you retain them, or you get a review from them, right? But there's really the 3 steps getting the client serving the client and then maintaining. And so that 1st step it's the engine of the train and if you don't have a consistent flow of new clients or new customers or new patients, everything downstream starts to dwindle and so if you don't feel that you have enough flow of new clients, that's when it's time to look at marketing. And look at what other ways can you be seen? What other ways can you get in front of your ideal person?

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah, that that makes sense absolutely. So how do thinking about, you know, law firms or lawyers, and maybe solo practitioners, or we talk about insurance agents because they're great at what they do. You know that their craft so how can you know? How can they use automation to help you know, create marketing, or, you know, to have a bad experience for the clients. Once they do come through the door. 

Leonard Scheiner: I love this question because automation can help us with so much that we don't have to think about it.  I'll typically run online events, and I will sit down once and plan all the communications around that event.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay.

Leonard Scheiner: So, you know, we want so many reminders. We want so many follow ups. We want so much of this or that. I'll plan all that communication at once and then automate it so that I don't have to think about it over the next 3 weeks that we're running the event, or the next 3 months that we're doing something and the same goes true for other business owners, too. So, if you've got an onboarding process, you've got a marketing process. It. Automation is going to help you leverage your time thinking. Once, do the implementation once and then set it and forget it. That's what we like.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay. So, it's like, you're part of your business plan. You go back to it. Those if you have to revamp it. Fine. But this is your blueprint. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's awesome. I know we spoke about a marketing budget. And it's like, well. what's a good marketing budget, you know what's the is? The is it a dollar amount? And you know what's what? What should we be thinking about when we're trying to put a marketing budget together. We don't know what we're doing. Jeez.

Leonard Scheiner: Marketing as a budget is going to depend on what the goal is. Right again. It's like the if I'm in Los Angeles, and I want to get to New York. There's gonna be more than one tank of marketing gas in air quotes needed. So as far as like percentage wise, or what dollar amount would it take to get this or that? It? It's really up in the air. It it's situation specific up in the air, meaning I couldn't give a blanket answer, but like in a consultation, we know right? We're like, I was just talking with an interior designer a few weeks ago and they were like, well, you know, we could do all of this marketing, and we could spend all of this ad spend and all of this and all of that, and we don't know if that's going to resonate with who we're targeting because they're high-end clients. Are they finding people on Facebook? I don't know right? We don't know. Maybe not. So, our confidence level was at a 50% on that right, big ticket. Big ads spend.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: 50%.

Leonard Scheiner: Confidence. I don't really like that situation.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah.

Leonard Scheiner: On the other hand, we could go a different route and do cold email to the people who are going to be referring or who are going to be buying the service and guess what? There's no ad spend. It's much cheaper. We can literally look at the data of the results at every step. and when one of those comes back the gain to the business right, the revenue to the business of one of those we'll call it a unit, right? One client, one unit, one unit from that marketing channel. let's say, is worth $50,000. But from the other one remember that one. We had a low 50% confidence on one unit or one client from that way is $10,000. Okay, wait a minute. So, I'm 50% certain. I have a huge marketing outlay, and I've only got the unit coming in at 5. What? I say, 10 grand. Yeah. On this side, low budget low everything we can track it. And I get one at 50. K, okay, that's like a no brainer.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Exactly.

Leonard Scheiner: Absolutely no brainer. So, this is the type of dialogue. Where this is the budget, right? Like, it's not necessarily numbers. It's more strategically of. Okay, where can I get the most amount of juice for my squeeze? The most confidence. That's really what it boils down to. 

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay. So then, how would we? We couple that with the pr, so say, you know, I'm going back to the introduction of, you know, if you're getting people on TV or written up in articles, or, you know, getting in into different media.

Leonard Scheiner: Yeah. Well, the benefit of Media is that it has the Oprah effect. What is the Oprah effect? So, when Oprah had her show a few decades ago guests would come on there and then. Guess what? in the days and weeks following, that guest being on the show, their business, their book their whatever their promotion, was skyrocketed. And why did that happen? Well? Because Oprah, as an authority figure, shared her stage and gave some of that credibility to the guest, right? Plus, the eyeballs and all of that. 

So, when we look at PR, it's within, you know, the bubble of marketing. But PR public relations. What does that look like? It looks like getting on TV. It looks like being mentioned in articles, whether that's online or in print articles. And so, the payback period of that

is often a little bit longer. Right? Because we can do marketing. We can get a client, and it boom, boom. We see the return on pr. it's a little bit more of awareness. We're seeding the online. I call it digital dust. Right? We're getting digital. Dust out there, so that when people look for your clothing line or your fitness brand, or even just you as an individual, they come up with results. Before we started recording Audrey I mentioned, you know the best place to hide is on page 2 of Google. So, when someone Googles your name, we want you to come up and not just have it be like your Facebook and your Spokeo result. And like. Okay, they're alive.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: But.

Leonard Scheiner: I want to see Whoa. Audrey was on ABC. 7. Whoa! Audrey was on entrepreneur magazine. Whoa! Right like. Then I start getting credibility, and I'm not worried about some of the details are qualifying you as an expert. I know you're an expert. The media has said you're an expert.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: And so.

Leonard Scheiner: Now I'm more interested, and I'm more attuned to what you're saying. You know, as an advisor. If I'm a client trying to hire you. So, you asked about budget, or something like that. So, with PR and marketing. we look at them very different marketing. We should have a direct return on our investment.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: With.

Leonard Scheiner: Pr. it is not a direct response. Method. Right? I've got case study after case study of clients who have gotten their article posted on their LinkedIn and then got business back right. It was like, this is great, like my network is this is operating as it should right. But I don't want to lay the expectation that that always works like that. But where you get your juice out of your squeeze with Pr. Say you were featured in Forbes today. Then tomorrow. Can you say I was featured in Forbes? Of course.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yes.

Leonard Scheiner: What about in 3 months from now 

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah, what about.

Leonard Scheiner: 30 years from now, yes, you were still technically featured in Forbes. I had a guy that I was speaking with. He was, you know any who, so he was like. I was speaking with this gentleman, and he was telling me about one of his accolades because he was featured in a publication, and I went and I looked at that publication. Do you know, when he was featured, we're currently in 2024, he was featured in 1999.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Oh, wow!

Leonard Scheiner: He was still touting. I was featured in that Is that true? Yes. Is he welcome to do that? Yes, so PR takes a legacy standpoint and that's why I really like it from a professional point of view. Right? So, Leonard Scheiner: if you've got a business and the business gets featured then that's great. But in 5 years, what if that business doesn't exist.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah. So, I never want to do PR specifically for a business. I want to do it for the founder or the CEO. Okay. Okay.

Leonard Scheiner: Because if today I call myself Xyz marketing, and then tomorrow I call myself Geek Haus, and then the next day I call myself lnop marketing all the press that I've received for myself. I can deploy in each of those businesses because it was about me. And now I'm running the business.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yes, makes.

Leonard Scheiner: No.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yes.

Leonard Scheiner: The instant credibility comes from when someone visits a website or when they see a marketing piece, a flyer, something digital online, an ad. What have you? And you can use those Logos, right? It's an instant sign of authority.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Wow! That's awesome. We're coming towards the close. Here. Do you have some advice for us, Leonard? What nugget that you really, you know, just want to drive home.

Leonard Scheiner: I would drive home that. So you're probably listening right now, if you're listening and you're driving, don't go ahead and do this, but if you're listening, and you can go to your computer. And if you're in in chrome, open up that incognito window, if you're in safari, it's called a private window and Google yourself do a check-in do a self-assessment? Do you need to look better online.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay.

Leonard Scheiner: And if the answer is Yes. then I would encourage you Leonard Scheiner: to attend a free training that I'm hosting that I'm putting on. and it teaches you how to take your knowledge and create podcast, guest appearances, kind of just like this one. But for yourself, and in a much more concentrated way than you might think.

So, if you want the credibility, if you want the authority you want, the trust media is great, right? But we're not going to get in Forbes tomorrow. What we can do is start crawling and walking before we run. And that crawling process, where do you refine your speaking skills? How you show up. How do you? You know? What stories do I tell? How do I convey? Convey my message? All of that you're going to use it in media. But you can do it as a pod in podcast guesting and really get your feet right, get your sea legs in that way. So, if you've done the self-assessment. You've looked at yourself, and you're like, Gosh! I see my name on Google, and I've got no images and not many Rev. Results. I'm going to encourage you to attend a no cost training in order to take your knowledge and turn it into podcast guest appearances. And you can do that by going to podcast guestintensive.com, it's completely free. It's a 1-day training and it is an intensive. Don't think you're gonna come and sit back. No, no, this is not a me. Do you? Kind of thing? This is. You show up and we do it together because I'm.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Work to do. Yep.

Leonard Scheiner: I'm gonna tell you the steps step by step, podcast. Guest, intensive.com. It's what the system Audrey you mentioned systems. And I love. That is that something you talk about quite frequently, for in your practice.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yup yes.

Leonard Scheiner: We don't have a set.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Oh, go ahead! Go ahead!

Leonard Scheiner: If we don't have a system, we don't have a business.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Oh, my goodness, yeah, cause even our website is some type of system. You just don't build it, and you know, put it out there and forget it. It should be doing something that should have some kind of process. It helps. Our business. Yeah. Well, Leonard, it's been it's awesome to, you know, to have had you come, be a guest today. Podcast. Guessing people. They just talked about that right? Yeah, so definitely be following you up on social media and job squad to do the same and definitely get you get to the website and give the website again. Leonard.

Leonard Scheiner: Yep, it is podcast. Guest, intensive.com.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Podcast guests intensive.com. Okay. Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah, alright. Well, appreciate it. And we will see you next time.

Leonard Scheiner: Sounds wonderful. Thanks for having me.