Bigger Isn’t Always Better: The Mindset that Landed a Feature in People Magazine

At first, I was a bit annoyed with the request. Stories about my quirky pet detective work had already appeared in several magazine and newspaper articles, including a write-up in the San Francisco Chronicle. When a reporter from a nearby small-town newspaper called and asked me if she could come out and interview me for yet another article, I was underwhelmed. I felt that an interview would take away from my precious time with the four students and search dogs that I was training. It was only a small paper for a tiny town with an insignificant circulation whose size matched my low level of enthusiasm to be interviewed for yet another go-nowhere newspaper article.

This was the summer of 2000, and I was laser-focused on my dream, which was to develop the first-ever pet detective training academy. Part of that academy would involve dogs I trained, other than my own, to track lost pets. Three years prior, I had successfully trained and used my former police search dogs to locate missing animals. Before I could further develop my academy, I needed to know whether or not I could actually train students to train their own dog to find lost pets.

Having a reporter follow me during my three-hour training session would be a distraction. I didn’t have a book to sell (at that time). My academy wasn’t fully operational, so I wasn’t ready to recruit students. My first effort at forming a nonprofit organization had failed, so I didn’t need board members or donations. I just didn’t see a significant benefit for me from this particular newspaper article. I was looking through the WIIFM mindset—the “What’s In It For Me” viewpoint that is so common in the world today. Thankfully, after giving it more thought I decided that it wouldn’t kill me to have the reporter tag along, so I agreed.

The article came out on a Monday and the reporter did a nice job. Four days later, I received a call. It was a woman who lived in that tiny town where that newspaper circulated and she loved the article. She was an editor for People Magazine and she wanted to develop a short feature about my fascinating work as a pet detective.

I was blown away by this amazing media coverage, one that I nearly passed up because initially I was focused on how it could benefit me. It was only after I decided to participate in the “tiny” newspaper article out of the “goodness of my heart” that I was rewarded with this opportunity. And not only that, but the article in People resulted in two different television show appearances on Animal Plant, being a contestant on To Tell the Truth (which was crazy fun, and that is a post in and of itself) and a feature in the supermarket tabloid The National Examiner.

I learned that just because something appears small to you doesn’t mean that it is small—it could be a mega opportunity in disguise. Most of all, don’t go through life making decisions based strictly on what is in it for you. As Maya Angelou once wrote,

“I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.”