Justin Breen is the CEO of the public relations firm, BrEpic Communications. He is also the author of the best selling book Epic Business: 30 Secrets to Build Your Business Exponentially and Give You the Freedom to Live the Life You Want.
Justin is hardwired to seek out and create viral thought-provoking stories that the media craves. He is an amazing consummate networker who believes in the power of introductions. He has a degree in News – Editorial Journalism from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, John Corcoran talks with Justin Breen, CEO of BrEpic Communications, about the value of building business connections and networks. They discuss Justin’s background in journalism, his reason for writing his best selling book, and why it’s beneficial for entrepreneurs to be a part of business networking groups.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- Justin Breen talks about his background in journalism and why he started his own PR firm
- How Justin’s network has changed from the time he was a journalist to now that he is an entrepreneur
- The kind of clients Justin works with and his advice how to do introductions
- Why Justin decided to join EO and Strategic Coach and how they have helped his business
- What Justin does when he meets interesting people with amazing stories who aren’t his clients
- Why Justin decided to write his book and the most valuable thing people get out of his book
- The Gallup StrengthsFinder Personality test and the benefits of learning about yourself
- The people Justin acknowledges for his achievements and why it’s important for people to have mentors
- Where to learn more and connect with Justin Breen
Resources Mentioned:
- BrEpic Communications
- Justin Breen on LinkedIn
- Epic Business: 30 Secrets to Build Your Business Exponentially and Give You the Freedom to Live the Life You Want by Justin Breen
- Fran Biderman-Gross on LinkedIn
- Drive Profit with Purpose Podcast
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
- Strategic Coach
- ProVisors
- Gallup’s StrengthsFinder Personality Test
Sponsor: Rise25
Today’s episode is sponsored by Rise25 Media, where our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners, clients, and strategic partners. We do this through our done for you business podcast solution and content marketing.
Along with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weisz, we have over 18 years of experience with B2B podcasting, which is one of the best things you can do for your business and you personally.
If you do it right, a podcast is like a “Swiss Army Knife” – it is a tool that accomplishes many things at once. It can and will lead to great ROI, great clients, referrals, strategic partnerships, and more. It is networking and business development; and it is personal and professional development which doubles as content marketing.
A podcast is the highest and best use of your time and will save you time by connecting you to higher caliber people to uplevel your network.
To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
To learn more, book a call with us here.
Check out Rise25 to learn more about our done-for-you lead generation and done-for-you podcast services.
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:14
Welcome to the Revolution, the Smart Business Revolution podcast where we ask today’s most successful entrepreneurs to share the tools and strategies they use to build relationships and connections to grow their revenue. Now, your host for the revolution, John Corcoran.
John Corcoran 0:40
All right. Welcome everyone. John Corcoran here, the host of the Smart Business Revolution podcast where I talk with CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs of all kinds of companies and organizations like YPO, EO, Activision Blizzard, Lending Tree, OpenTable, X software and many more. I’m also the co-founder of Rise25, where we help connect b2b business owners to their ideal prospects. First, before we get started, I want to give a shout out to Fran Biderman-Gross who introduced me to our guests, Justin Breen. She’s the host of the Drive Profit with Purpose podcast and definitely go check it out on iTunes. You’ll enjoy it.
And I’m excited to talk to Justin. Justin is a consummate connector. He’s someone that I connected with originally through the EO and EO Accelerator program, which we’re both involved in. He’s the CEO of the PR firm, BrEpic Communications, and author of the best selling book Epic Business: 30 Secrets to Build Your Business Exponentially and Give You the Freedom to Live the Life You Want. He’s hardwired to seek out and create viral thought provoking stories that the media craves he actually started his background in journalism, and now has a PR firm. So we’re going to talk about that transition. And as I mentioned, an amazing consummate networker who like me believes in the power of introductions, so we’ll get into his philosophy around that.
But first before we get started, you know if you’ve been listening for a while you know how passionate we are about podcasting and content marketing that up levels your network, and I am a podcasting evangelist, the last 10 years have been saying everyone should start a podcast, even because even if no one’s listening, you will derive it tremendous benefits to your life. It’s like a Swiss Army knife, a tool that accomplishes so much at once. It can, it will lead to great clients, referrals, strategic partnerships, it is networking, business development, its personal professional development, which doubles as content marketing, and we can personally help everyone to start running podcast but I can try and inspire everyone to get involved in this medium in one way or the other. Whether you’re a guest, whether you’re behind the mic on either side of the mic, I highly recommend it. So to learn more, go to rise25media.com or you can also email us at [email protected]
Alright Justin. So I’m excited to talk to you. And you know, first of all, let’s start right here. You are going out of the journalism path. You know, my father was a journalist. I You know, studied journalism in high school as editor of my high school newspaper, and you made kind of a right turn at some point, round to the 2017. decide to go from one side to the other side. What inspired that?
Justin Breen 3:16
So, John, I really appreciate you having me on this awesome podcast, I feel like you and I have very similar brains and I’m really excited to talk to you. I was a journalist for 20 years, I created my entire business model based on how PR firms annoyed me for 20 years. So everybody lasted that, especially folks at your level. But that’s why I built a global successful company in three years, but
John Corcoran 3:41
because you knew how annoying it is to be on the other side, when you get these pitches that are just completely not attuned to what you write about what you focus on. I’m sure you got plenty of them.
Justin Breen 3:54
That’s 100% correct. So as a journalist, you had hundreds of these press releases. Every single day from people you don’t know that are totally useless. And so my friend creates actual stories similar to what I did as a journalist. It becomes a link on the client’s website under news or blog. So look like a story you see in the San Francisco Chronicle or the LA Times The Chicago Tribune in the New York Times, then I take that link and pitch it to the media, locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. If the media is interested, I put them in touch with the client context. So we’re straining, business size, any location, any vertical, it’s just the person in charge of the contact has to be a visionary who looks at things as investments, not costs. Someone says What do you charge? It’s an automatic disqualifier. Those people go away pretty much immediately. And what’s left is giant, international global incubators, geniuses and constantly introducing each other for mutual gain. And the byproduct is constantly getting interested companies around the world that want to hire my firm. So business is booming, and it just keeps getting better and better and better because my network keeps growing and growing and growing every single day.
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