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Shine On Success
Welcome to "Shine On Success," the podcast dedicated to exploring the journeys, challenges, and triumphs of today's entrepreneurs. Each episode from your host, Dionne Malush is crafted to inspire, educate, and empower you, whether you're just starting out or are a seasoned business owner.
Shine On Success
The Power of Vision: How to Build a PR Empire by Age 24
In this episode of Shine On Success, we sit down with Aidan Sowa, a 24-year-old trailblazer who’s already reshaping the world of PR and branding through his company, Velvet Voice PR. Aidan shares his incredible journey from working with MIT’s Enterprise Forum to building a successful marketing agency that leverages cutting-edge strategies like cold emails and media placements in top-tier publications.
He talks about overcoming adversity, his entrepreneurial mindset, and the importance of building a brand that lasts. From navigating challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic to securing clients millions in investments through media coverage, Aiden’s insights will leave you motivated to think bigger, dream bolder, and pursue your own entrepreneurial path. If you're ready to elevate your brand and think long-term, this episode is for you.
Connect with Aidan here:
Website: https://sowaagency.co/
Instagram: sowamarketingagency
LinkedIn: Sowa Marketing Agency
Connect with Dionne Malush
- Instagram: @dionnerealtyonepgh
- LinkedIN: /in/dionnemalush
- Website: www.dionnemalush.com
- Facebook: /dmalush
- LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/dionnemalush
Have you ever wondered how a young entrepreneur can take the digital marketing world by storm and get his clients featured in top-tier media outlets? Aiden Sowa is here to share his secrets to success. Welcome to Shine on Success. I'm your host, dionne Malish, and today we have the privilege of speaking to Aiden Sowa, the dynamic founder and CEO of Sowa Marketing Agency. Aiden's agency has become a powerhouse in the digital marketing space, known for its innovative strategies and personalized PR campaigns that have secured features in the digital marketing space. Known for its innovative strategies and personalized PR campaigns that have secured features in major outlets like Forbes, entrepreneur and Business Insider. At just 24 years old, aiden has already built a reputation for helping businesses not only thrive, but dominate in their industries. I'm so excited today. So welcome, aiden, to the show. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. Well, it's very nice to meet you. Where are you located?
Speaker 2:I'm in Rhode Island.
Speaker 1:Rhode Island. So that's, I'm in Pittsburgh, so we're not too far from each other. It's nice to meet you, and the first thing I always like to start with is this what is one thing you would like people to know about you?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean I came from. I worked at the MIT Enterprise Forum, Cambridge and recently I run a PR firm now called Velvet Voice PR. Also run a marketing agency.
Speaker 1:So that's a lot to do at a young age, and you're 24, is that correct? Yes, so tell me a little bit about how you are growing so quickly in this new business at 24 years old.
Speaker 2:I would say it's just due to our innovative marketing tactics. We specifically leverage cold email. We specifically leverage ads, very targeted ads. We do different things like capturing the email address and all contact information of anyone who visits our websites. We leverage different tactics which most people aren't using, so that's kind of giving us a slight edge over the rest.
Speaker 1:So what is the difference? So I mean, can you see that's kind of giving us a slight edge over the rest, so what is the difference? So I mean, can you say that's something you can share, Like, what do you do differently than the other PR firms that are?
Speaker 2:out. I mean, we send 100,000 emails a day, so that automatically already puts us in like the top 1%, for sure.
Speaker 1:Did you say every day, yeah. So how did you accumulate 100,000 emails?
Speaker 2:It's very easy. I mean there's a lot of different sites. I mean in the past I used different sites like D7, leadfinder. I do run a separate company which is a data company, so I already have at this point access to all of that data which we've already scraped and stuff like that, and cleaned that data. But in the past I used different sites like D7, leadfinder, apollo, et cetera.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So what inspired you to start your marketing agency?
Speaker 2:I would say the biggest thing which inspired me was well, I mean, at the time, I just wasn't really enjoying working for like someone. Like, at the time, I just I didn't really enjoy that a lot. So at some point I just realized, if I keep going down this path, I'm just gonna hate my life. So so true, though, go ahead. So I just thought to myself, how can I actually help people and not have to work for someone? And then I was doing research online came across the idea of like a marketing agency.
Speaker 2:I'd already worked for a marketing company in the past, which is like the mit enterprise from cambridge. I thought you know they were doing pretty well. They had like seven, eight people on their team and they were doing pretty well for themselves. I think I could do do it better. So that's what kind of inspired me to start. So, do you have employees? Yes, I do. I have multiple people who work on like different parts of the company, whether it be on the TV side of things, getting people to TV interviews, getting people onto radio, getting into publications like Forbes, entrepreneur, usa Today, et cetera.
Speaker 1:So what's your favorite thing to do in your business?
Speaker 2:I would say my favorite thing to do is actually showing people how to leverage, like the strategy point of view. So once it's featured, like, okay, this is how you can leverage it in terms of everything else, like Forbes entrepreneur, like how to repurpose it into social media content. That's kind of my favorite part.
Speaker 1:So are you saying that you help business owners get into Forbes? They can write in Forbes. Is that what they do?
Speaker 2:I do help people actually write in forbes, but what I'm referring to is being able to repurpose that content into social media content, like into instagram reels, into facebook reels, being able to leverage it there, being able to like leverage on the website, creating blog content based on the fact that they were featured, that type of thing. But the biggest thing I would say where people get the highest return, which is highly underestimated, is advertising. So when you leverage in creative, like an article on an ad showcasing the fact that you're featured in Forbes, those ads convert like crazy. There's like a two or three X increase in conversion just due to the fact that you've been featured. So a lot more leads and also I mean people are searching you up online actively with ads. So we've done this across like hundreds of clients and that's a way higher conversion if you're featured in the media.
Speaker 1:I love that. That makes you want to do it, because I do see what you're saying. You can take that one thing and break it down into multiple ways to advertise correct, correct, yes. I love that. So what was the moment? So you said you knew you didn't want to work for somebody else. But what moment did you think I'm going to do brand building and PR in this digital landscape where there's a lot of people doing it? So what excited you about that was one of the first things.
Speaker 2:Well, initially speaking, actually I was running a lead generation company. I worked with realtors and stuff like that, so it wasn't even like branding at the start would eventually kind of maybe transition to the branding side of things, which, during COVID business, was sort of down because there was like nobody really wanted to pay for more leads. People were afraid for the future. I was talking to people. They're like, well, how about we do this in two years? And I was like two years, I'm not going to like if we don't have any clients for two years I'm going to be out of business. Yeah, so it was. I had to basically make that transition to something which is more focused and I realized there was a real focus on brand.
Speaker 2:People cared about someone's reputation more than anything else at that time. People want to know they could trust that person. Because everything was essentially stressful. People thought the stock market was going to crash. Like so many conspiracy theories were going around and people were freaking out. They didn't know what was going to happen. Some people thought there was going to be like a great depression. So once you have that brand behind you, I realized there was a great demand for that because people understood at that time more than ever, to have a powerful brand, and that's what got me into it.
Speaker 1:I love that because I don't know what you know about me, but I had a graphic design agency prior to owning this real estate company and branding has been so important to me to do for other people. And it's literally like last year. I sat there and thought to myself I need to build my own personal brand. Now, right, because I'm about Realty One Group, gold Standard, I have an, you know, we have a partnership in insurance and mortgage, but that's not who I am. So I started looking at my own self and thinking I need to build my own brand. So for our agents and our you know, we have 200 agents in our company Building each individual brand is essentially important because, you're right, they get to know you.
Speaker 1:It doesn't even matter about the company they're with, it's about you know, I know. So you've been in business. So you're talking about COVID we're talking about four years ago. You're 24, you were 20 years old doing this during the one of the craziest. One of the craziest time in my personal life was COVID, and did you have any challenges along the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a lot of challenges during that time Because for me, like there was less revenue coming in so I was staying in an apartment which wasn't so great Like there's one apartment which I stayed at. There was like rats and stuff like that no, there was not, there was and they're like birds and stuff like that. So that was pretty crazy. And then I mean brief periods of time, so it's like I was like am I gonna be able to afford food next week? So like that was sort of stressful very stressful yeah so.
Speaker 2:But luckily I was always able to kind of grind past that. But there were several points where it was kind of uncertain. I was like, oh, I need to be able to pay bills no matter what, so how am I gonna do that? Who am I gonna reach out to? It's interesting how the brain works when you're in those types of situations. You think outside the box just a lot more at least I do personally and I was like wait has like I forgot about this guy. But like I talked to him like a year ago, let's see what he thinks, and it works out and it's like okay, that's $10,000. That can last me a while. That type of thing Especially.
Speaker 1:you know it does last a long time when you need it to right. A lot of people can blow through that very quickly, but if you're in a situation where you know you're living in a place that has rats and birds in it, you like want to get out of that right.
Speaker 1:You don't want to live like that anymore, so I'm so proud that just to say that you push through that, because that is a huge adversity and it seems to me like you have a pretty solid mindset and you do anything to study personal development.
Speaker 2:Read what do you do to keep your mind on track I would say like the number one thing I do is I set goals in terms of like what I'm looking to do, in terms of like monthly, yearly goals. I would say that's, that's pretty key. I do read a lot of books, like one of my favorite authors like reading about like Bill Gates, warren Buffett, even though I'm not even in like that investing space like I do. I have dabbled in the investing space. I've done actually pretty well because I've studied those people, but it's more so studying the mindset of successful people and how they think about things, and that, in turn, has helped me.
Speaker 1:Have you ever read the book Thinking Grow?
Speaker 2:Rich. I have, yeah, napoleon Hill.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's good. That's kind of where I study a lot of success principles. I do realize that if we had started Thinking Grow Rich in middle school, we could literally change people's lives by teaching about success, versus some of the things that public school teaches. But that's a whole, nother subject. But this is a book that I'm reading right now and I've been sharing with everyone because this book is so good. If you get a chance to get it, I think you should do it. I don't get anything for it, but I absolutely love this book. It's changing my thought patterns. Let's talk about all right. So you push through that adversity, you got through it. Now you're on the other side of it and you know. Obviously you're working hard, because this is what you do I can see.
Speaker 1:That's what you're made of.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about an in your career, in your life, and how they've helped you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean one of the people who also kind of helped me like even think about the whole branding aspect.
Speaker 2:I had a mentor who was also in the branding space, except he was doing $300,000 a month in revenue at that time and so I spent a lot of hours just on the calls with him. I spent money to be a part of that program and I spent many hours just talking to him, like weekly calls, calls, etc. That really helped me in terms of being able to improve my mindset, because it's one thing for people on the internet to be able to say like hey, you know, this is possible and stuff like that, but actually being able to like show like live stripe dashboard, like hey, this is 50 000 which I just made today, and stuff like that, it just kind of blows your mind just seeing that type of thing. And that's one of the things which really pushed me forward, I would say, because just knowing it's possible and just talking to people and realizing they're not really like super extraordinary individuals, they just happen to be able to think a little bit bigger than you do.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is profound. It's so true because there is so much opportunity. Everywhere you look, it's money, right, everything is you have to buy everything. And I drive through cities sometimes and I look around and I think it's amazing the amount of money that's sitting right here. But we have the opportunity. We all have that same opportunity. None of us gets any more time than each other, right, so we all have that opportunity. It's how we focus it and it's obviously you're doing a great job. So in your family, have you come from a successful family.
Speaker 2:I mean I would say it's a little bit like above middle class is how I would probably define it. My father previously ran a few different businesses. Yeah, he ran like. One of them was like a newspaper ish business many years ago. Then he also ran an app which was, I mean, none of the businesses were actually successful, but I got to see like one of them when I was like kind of growing younger.
Speaker 2:I was able to see some of the difficulties which he went through in terms of he was able to create a really good app, but he never was able to actually take it off the ground and get customers which is like the most important aspect and also get like investors and stuff. So I was able to learn from that like one of the most important things. Which I first did is like okay, how do I get customers? Because if you don't know there's an actual demand for things, the entire business idea just falls.
Speaker 1:I can't even imagine if I, when I talk to you 10 years from now, what it's going to be like the lessons that you've learned. So I also came from an entrepreneurial family and you know they did okay. You know they did enough to get by. And we, you know we did okay. But now, looking at it, if I could have went back 20 years and know what I know today, how I could have helped them really grow their, that's not a place where you want to live. So do you have any specific daily habits or daily routines that you do in the morning, like, is there anything you do when you get up? I know you're so young and it's a lot to ask if this is what you're doing, but I would like to know if there's anything you do to help you every day to keep on track.
Speaker 1:Because you can easily get off track, right, you just go be with your friends and hang out right and go do stuff five o'clock on a Thursday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say, kind of what I do on like a daily basis is I look at the specific KPIs which I've set for myself in terms of like outreach, in terms of like client satisfaction and being able to measure those different things. I look at them like did we hit those, did we not hit them? That type of thing. I would say that's what keeps me on track is being able to have measurable goals. It's shocking how many people do not know, for example, in sales like, what their closing rate is, how many people they're reaching out to on a daily basis, how big their list is. There's so many different variables which people do not know and I track it all and I think that's one of the big things that has helped me.
Speaker 1:So if you were talking to an entrepreneur that's, or someone that's your age, that's looking to start a business, what piece of advice would you give to someone your age?
Speaker 2:I would say the first thing is is figuring out whether there's even demand for whatever type of business you're trying to do. So, initially speaking, what I did is I called up a bunch of businesses and I was like, is this something you'd be interested in? And I talked to like 10, 15 people before I actually started that business. So, initially speaking, figuring out whether there's demand. If there is demand, then figuring out like the best way, like looking at potential competitors, seeing the best of the best, like how they're selling things, and then figuring out how do I do better than that? And then in turn, kind of reverse engineering your process. That's how I'd go about doing it.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So I heard you say a little bit about real estate. So you know I own a real estate brokerage. Is there a piece of advice you could give to a real estate agent in this market where things are shifting? It's been difficult. You know. The last two years have changed. Covid really came in, everyone was selling things without even working and now all of a sudden they have to go back to work. So is there a piece of advice you could give to our agents or anybody in here that's in the real estate world?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would probably give the typical advice, which is use HARO, which is like H-A-R dot com, which is basically, yeah, help a reporter out. It's a really good website to be able to gain some initial news coverage. Also, another one is Quoted which is qwotedcom, and those are really good ways to kind of gain some initial coverage around yourself. Another thing is social media. You want to have everything optimized. I've noticed a ton of realtors in particular do not have like their bio exactly stating what they do, you know, profile picture, straightforward, like looking ahead that type of thing and then, like you know, actually posting things of value. I've seen so many people just like posting like listings, not actually providing like value to their audience and figuring out ways to really provide the most possible value. And I've noticed that some realtors have success with Zillow, trulia, etc. It kind of goes back and forth in terms of what goes on there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a lot. There's a lot to do as a real estate agent. There's a lot of pieces and parts, but marketing and public relations is a big part of it and a lot of agents don't understand that. They, just, like you said, they're just posting the listing, post the listing, but what value is there? They're not giving value to anyone and now, with some significant changes in the industry, they have to be more valuable than ever. It's a great industry to get into, but it's not like you see on TV. It's not easy like the shows make it look. There's a lot of pieces and parts to be a real estate agent. So, all right, so we've talked about that. So let me ask you about a success story of one of your clients. Share something with me that you met a new client and you helped them become successful at whatever task.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean one of our clients. We helped her get on to like around 40 podcasts and she's now going to be able to sell her business because of the fact that we're able to get her a lot of news coverage. That was a pretty good, successful story, I would say. With one of our clients and others we've helped generate investments like upwards of, like you know, a few million dollars just because of the fact that they have like media coverage. So that's been pretty successful as well.
Speaker 1:So when getting someone on 40 podcasts, you get them on there, but you also help them market it correct.
Speaker 2:Correct. Yeah, so it's not just appearing on the podcast. The biggest thing is that's one of the number one thing which I would say which I see is people get featured the media, they get featured in podcasts and like, oh, this stuff doesn't even do anything for me. I didn't gain customers because I was on it and I was. I'm trying to explain to them. There's two different ways to look at marketing. The first is the direct response way, which is where you're putting in, let's say, $1,000 into Facebook ads and you're expecting to get back $5,000. And there's the branding thing, which is more long-term being able to have stuff appear when people search you up online so you kind of have to look at it from a long-term point of view and also being able to take that as a branding asset, share it every single place where you have it. I've seen people like actually print out their articles and put it on a canvas. That's converted to business. There's a lot of different ways. You just have to be creative about leveraging it.
Speaker 1:Is that something that you offer to clients? So if there was a really good is because I've been telling our agents that they need to do a podcast for their community, for their people, for their sphere of influence. They need to know that people will get to know you so well. So they come to you, they do a podcast and you can help them market that and out there too. Obviously you have a hundred thousand people a day that you're contacting, but you can help them in many other ways Correct.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about how do people find you. Where do they find you? On social media?
Speaker 2:You can just find me on Instagram at the Aiden Sowa. That's a pretty effective way to reach me, and also like our website, velvetvoiceprcom, filling out the contact form.
Speaker 1:That's another way to reach me how did you come up with the name velvet voice?
Speaker 2:it's just a name which I just thought of just one day in terms of like. Our logo is like speak smooth, echo loud. Yeah, so that's just how I was thinking.
Speaker 1:I was looking for something which was like that and that's how I came across so what is the biggest takeaway you would like people to take away from you today?
Speaker 2:I would say the number one thing is caring about your brand, so thinking long term with your business rather than just thinking short term with just like oh, get a sale here and there. Thinking long term, like, what type of brand am I portraying? Because the brand is going to be with you forever. Regardless of whether you're real estate or anything else, your brand's going to be with you forever.
Speaker 1:So do you have any upcoming projects or services you want to promote while you're on here, sure.
Speaker 2:I mean, we have access to like a lot of types of services like podcasts, placements, tv interviews, placements into top tier publications like Forbes, entrepreneur. Those are all things which we can guarantee placement signs.
Speaker 1:Great. I appreciate your time. I know you're very busy and I'm extremely like I feel honored to be on here with you, because it's not often that I meet someone at your age that is doing what you're doing and you're just. You're doing everything right, from the mind all the way to doing the actions right, and if you read the books, if you do the things that you're doing, you're going to be a huge success, aiden, and I am glad to say that I know you now and I appreciate you sharing everything, and your achievements are incredible. So I hope that people will reach out to you and I also would personally like to talk to you a little bit about what you're doing, and I think that for me, there's definitely something there.
Speaker 1:Aiden, thank you for sharing your journey and insights with us today. Your achievements at such a young age are truly inspiring and a testament to the power of innovative thinking and digital marketing For our listeners. Be sure to connect with Aiden and Soa Marketing Agency online to learn more about how they can help elevate your brand, and don't forget to like, subscribe and share Shine on Success with anyone you know who's looking to make their mark in the business world. If we just help one person each time, this podcast is a success.
