How to Get Famous (The Hidden Art of PR)
A 25-year PR master reveals how to build massive authority and get media attention—without anyone knowing you're marketing.
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How to Get Famous
Every entrepreneur, creator, and leader faces the same brutal reality.
You can have the best product, the most valuable service, or the most life-changing idea, but if no one knows you exist, you have nothing.
We live in an economy of attention. Getting it is the hardest part. Keeping it is even harder.
Most of us default to marketing. We run ads, we post on social media, we build funnels.
We push our message out, hoping someone will listen.
But what if there’s a better way? A way to pull people in, to have them seek you out, to see you as the undeniable authority in your space?
What if you could get famous without anyone knowing you’re marketing?
How to Get Famous (The Hidden Art of PR)
In this week’s episode of Finding Peak, I sat down with Mickie Kennedy, the founder of eReleases and a 25-year veteran of the Public Relations industry.
He’s the man behind the curtain for over 10,000 press releases a year, and he shared a framework for what he calls “credibility engineering.”
It’s the hidden art of PR—a system for building a brand so powerful that the media comes to you.
Connect with Mickie Kennedy
Free PR Masterclass: https://ereleases.com/plan
Website: https://eReleases.com
The Myth of the “Dead” Press Release
For years, marketers have shouted from the rooftops that “press releases are dead.”
Mickie argues the opposite: they’ve never been more effective, especially for the small businesses and creators who have been told they’re not “big enough” for PR.
The problem isn’t the tool; it’s the strategy. Most press releases are boring, self-serving, and rightfully ignored.
They fail because they don’t understand the fundamental rule of attention: you have to give value before you can ask for it.
Mickie calls it the “Pill in the Cheese” method.
A journalist’s job is to entertain or educate their audience. They are not interested in your product launch.
They are interested in a good story.
Your job is to wrap your announcement (the pill) inside a compelling narrative that serves the journalist’s goal (the cheese).
Engineering Credibility with Contrarian Authority
One of the most powerful ways to create a compelling narrative is to take a contrarian viewpoint.
Mickie explained the fascinating psychology behind this: when you argue against the prevailing consensus, people perceive you as more intelligent and authoritative—even if they disagree with you.
This isn’t about being a troll. It’s about finding a unique, defensible position that challenges the status quo.
It’s the difference between adding to the noise and becoming the signal.
This is a core component of building your RealityOS. You are defining the terms of the conversation.
Instead of playing by everyone else’s rules, you are creating your own. By taking a contrarian stance, you Position yourself as a leader, not a follower.
You force the market to react to you.
Become a Finding Peak Insider
If you want to learn how to create influence, authority, and opportunity through your personal brand…
The paid Finding Peak Substack is where we teach:
How to think before you publish
How to turn ideas into leverage
How to make content work for your business—not drain it
If you want 10x your business in 2026 by leveraging content, brand, and influence, become an Insider today.
This isn’t about becoming a creator.
It’s about becoming unavoidable.
Subscribe if influence matters.
Your Origin Story is a Weapon (Even if it’s a Lie)
People don’t connect with features and benefits; they connect with stories.
Mickie shared a shocking revelation: the famous origin story of eBay—that the founder created it to help his girlfriend sell her Pez dispenser collection—was completely fabricated by a PR firm.
Why? Because “online auction marketplace” is boring.
A geeky boyfriend solving his girlfriend’s quirky problem is a story.
This isn’t a license to lie. It’s a lesson in the power of narrative.
Your real origin story, the struggles you’ve overcome, the “why” behind your business—that’s the raw material for a story that will connect with people on an emotional level. You have to mine it, craft it, and learn to tell it.
The 17% Sales Bump from a “Brag Book”
This isn’t just about vanity metrics. Credibility engineering drives real business results.
Mickie shared a case study of a carpet company in New Jersey—a seemingly “boring” commodity business.
They ran a strategic PR campaign attacking their real enemy: big-box home improvement stores.
They got featured in over 30 publications in one year.
The real magic happened when they started bringing a binder of these press clippings—a “brag book”—to their sales consultations.
The result? A 17% increase in their closing rate.
That’s the ROI of authority. When you are seen as the expert, the conversation shifts from price to trust.
This is how you Amplify your message and Know your value, creating a moat around your business that competitors can’t cross.
Want Your Audience to Feel This Instead of Reading It?
This is why Ryan gets hired to keynote.
He doesn’t talk about content.
He shows leaders how influence → authority → leverage → opportunity.
Audiences walk away understanding:
Why attention is leverage
Why content is a leadership system
Why publishing is no longer optional
…and exactly how modern leaders leverage their personal brand into a massive opportunity.
If your team needs clarity—not motivation—Ryan Hanley delivers it.
📩 Inquire about keynotes, leadership offsites, and executive sessions.
How to Build Your Own Credibility Engine
This episode is packed with actionable frameworks you can use today:
The Industry Survey: How to get 100+ responses and become the source of data in your niche.
The Feature Article Approach: How to get featured in major publications by creating a “Top 10” list and putting yourself at #7.
The Right Way to Use AI: The specific, paragraph-by-paragraph process for using AI to write press releases that don’t sound like a robot.
This isn’t about one-off stunts.
It’s about building a system, a credibility engine that runs in the background, constantly elevating your brand and attracting new opportunities.
It’s the hidden art of getting famous.
This is the way.
Hanley
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