Lucy Werner:

PR is public relations. It's everything you are doing in the public eyes. So that is how you talk to somebody at an event and end up sitting next to them and then being able to go on their podcast. People think PR is all about who and getting on the front page of a newspaper. Take a step back and actually think about what is your business objective? And where is your audience? And then tailor your PR around that rather than it being the it's just who thing.

Chris Do:

Lucy, I'm excited to talk to you today because I have to tell you something, full confession, I've had a mixed history with PR people and PR firms and agencies. I just want to put it out there, it's not gotcha journalism, but want to just tell you it's been a painful experience and I'm going through your book and your material and just, I'm having flashbacks. It's like traumatic for me.

Lucy Werner:

Oh, no.

Chris Do:

Yeah.

Lucy Werner:

Well, if it helps, I have been described once as the anti-PR PR, so you're going to be in safe hands today. I'm not going to try and up sell you anything.

Chris Do:

Yeah. Well, the reason why I wanted to have a conversation with you too was that we generally focus on marketing and branding for the podcast, and I think you're right in there with branding and marketing and PR and it's a part of the strategy that a lot of people overlook. It feels like PR comes from decades ago kind of thinking and now we can have these relationships with people on social media, but there's a lot of valid stuff that you talk about. I want to dig into that. So for people who don't know who you are, can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your backstory?

Lucy Werner:

Yeah, sure. My name is Lucy Werner, and short version, really, I'm a nobody that just helps people become somebody. Longer version, I guess when I was growing up, I used to watch Superman and I wanted to be Lois Lane, I wanted to be a journalist so bad and then I kind of lost the confidence in writing. It got knocked out of me at school. I wasn't academic enough. And then at 17 I did a work experience placement at a PR agency and I was like, oh my gosh, I just didn't know jobs like this existed. And it was for music PR at the time. This is when I was like faxing press releases and walking press coverage round to the Sony offices and that was it. My love for publicity and PR and all things kind of promotion started and two decades later, here I am now running my own PR consultancy and teaching other small business owners predominantly like creative entrepreneurs, really, how to do PR for themselves.

Chris Do:

I love that. You are not old enough to know about fax machines and Rolodexes, but you write about this. It was like something-

Lucy Werner:

I used to have a Rolodex. I did have a Rolodex.

Chris Do:

I did too. And it was the thing of beauty and I mentioned it to people, they're like "You mean Rolex?" No, I mean Rolodex. You guys heard of this thing? It's a like a artifact from the nineties I believe, right?

Lucy Werner:

Yeah. You would rotate it in all your business cards together. In fact, the first journalist that I used to phone nonstop was my first bank password because I knew his direct line so much.

Chris Do:

Okay, this is some form of outdated, antiquated technology explaining, you heard of mansplaining, now we have to literally describe to you old tech that doesn't exist.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

You'll make up a term for this, right?

Lucy Werner:

Yeah. Direct lines don't exist anymore either because we're all just on mobile.

Chris Do:

Right. Things, technologies are going away. Okay, well let's get into the serious part. I mean what a nerd. I'm just going to tell you, you're like 17. You're saying this is the most exciting thing doing music PR. Tell me more about why that was so exciting to you.

Lucy Werner:

I mean, mate, at the time, first of all, I didn't realize there were jobs where I could wear jeans and trailers to the office. So that was a revelation to me. I used to come home with bags of CDs, bags, bags. CDs are old fashioned things that we used to listen to music on. And my job was to get press along to events and to watch musicians and to watch artists. And then it was a lot of it was just grabbing articles online and hence the printing out and the faxing of things. And it was just amazing. I just didn't realize there was this way of promoting people and their sort of stories. And actually I think my love at the time was also in music. So for me I was like, oh my gosh, I'm getting to see all these musicians and meet all these musicians. But I was just there on the sidelines assisting to get what they were doing out there and it felt like a superpower.

Chris Do:

Okay. I take it back, hanging out with a bunch of musicians and writing about it and living this life and going to concerts or events and venues, that sounds pretty cool. Was that part of your job?

Lucy Werner:

Yeah, and I was like 17, I was in London so I was commuting back and forth from the tiny village I grew up in to London in the United Kingdom and our offices were in Soho, I'd spend breaks in the Sony offices hanging out with A and R people. I was just like, wow. It blew my mind that me, this tiny little person from nowhere, just from this work experience ended up keeping my placement all summer and just thinking, yeah, this is the job for me.

Chris Do:

Okay, where does this job lead you? Take us to the next major milestone in your timeline.

Lucy Werner:

So I did the university, did media culture studies and then came out and actually I didn't have the connections, I didn't have anybody in my life that was in media or communications or culture. So I had a bit of a weird kind of career path to get there. But I basically landed a job as a team assistant, basically a secretary in an advertising agency in the PR department. So then I did two years for Leo Burnett in London. It's a big global ad agency and learned loads about advertising and creatives and that's probably where my love for the creative world came from because I was sort of sat in these big open London offices seeing teams of creatives pitching for ad campaigns. And again, that was an education in itself. So that was huge.

And then I moved in-house to a luxury boutique travel company called Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And then I moved into PR agency land. And at that time I did a lot of consumer brands, but a lot of agencies as well, loads of marketing agencies, creative agencies, ad agencies. So that kind of creative theme was always there. And then in 2014 I had kind of hit this point where I was like, I am just upselling to the clients, and bringing more projects in and I'm making my CEO richer and my salary staying the same. I'm not sure I'm into this anymore. So there was that and there was also this thing that if you want to work with a PR agency, typically if you're working with a well known or reputable one, you're looking at a minimum, minimum of three to $5,000 a month. And even then you are probably the lowest payer. So you are getting the least attention.

And I was meeting all these cool entrepreneurs who had these amazing stories, but when they were starting out, they didn't have the budget to spend three grand a month telling their stories. And I basically left to work with this amazing founder and kind of jumped ship and had three months savings in the bank and was like, right, I've got three months to cover my cost of living. And was like, I've got three months to make this work or I'll go back into agency land or freelancing. And after three months I'd hired employee number two and the Wern Agency was born and the rest is history, as they say.

But actually now along the journey my husband got made redundant when I was pregnant with baby number two, so he wasn't going to qualify for pat leave. So I was like, come on in. So he started the branding and creative division and then really in the pandemic we kind of pivoted quite a lot to work on this platform hypeyourself.com. So now we really work a lot on people who have zero money and zero budget and zero clue to demystify the process. I always say the equivalent myth in PR for branding is like people think you need to start in branding with a logo and you spend most of your time trying to explain to them why you don't start with a logo. And for me in PR, the equivalent is don't start with a press release. And I have to explain to them why PR is so much more than just a press release. So there's similar kind of myths, but it's always been in the kind of creative community that I love the most because I think they've just got a, there's something in their souls that's different to everybody else.

Chris Do:

Earlier I alluded to my traumatic past with PR agencies and people and I think it's because I have this Hollywood version in my mind that's been playing from the films that I've consumed where there's this PR person who can get you anywhere and do anything and they leverage one relation for another and they're hustling and the busing and they just make stars out of normal people. Like you said, you're nobody that helps people to become a somebody, or something like that, and it doesn't work like that. Or maybe we're not at that level.

Lucy Werner:

I think it's changed. I think in the heyday a little bit with my first sort of days in advertising, there was a lot more boozy lunches and it was like who you know and who you get connected with, and social media's changed that. Anybody can reach out to a journalist on social media now. You don't need a Rolodex with their direct line anymore to hit a journalist. You can find out who's writing stories online. There's it's digital media, and also I think publicity, media relations is just one strand of PR. PR is public relations. It's everything you are doing in the public eye. So that is how you talk to somebody at an event and end up sitting next to them and then being able to go on their podcast. It is how you respond to somebody in a coffee shop when they open the door for you. You never know what opportunity is going to help you in the future.

And I think people think PR is all about who and getting on the front page of a newspaper and I'm always take a step back and actually think about what is your business objective and where is your audience? And then tailor your PR around that rather than it being the it's just who thing. And I think actually it's a mistake that a lot of CEOs come to me with, which they're like, who's on your black book? Who have you got connections with? And I'm like, what's your story? Because if your story's rubbish, it doesn't matter who I do or don't know, I'm not going to be able to place it. It doesn't matter how many favors I think I've got in the bank, it's just not going to happen.

Chris Do:

Right. Okay. So maybe this is where we shift in the conversation, and I'm going to do this in a mostly selfish way, but I'm thinking that there are going to be a lot of people who are probably in my shoes, maybe have gone through this or about to go on this journey too. So my history is that I used to run a design company. We made commercials and music videos for some of the biggest bands and brands in the world. And when we worked with PR, it was a pretty boiler plate template. They would send it out and we'd get lots of hits online, a couple of trade pubs, but we never really cracked into what I would consider least mainstream pubs for us. And it was a struggle, but I get it because oftentimes, and I think you talk about this, the press release was like, here's a project, here's something cool, please talk about us. And there was not really a human interest story that was not really good storytelling being done. I get that, accept that. So those days are behind me.

But now I run this education company, I'm trying to make a difference in the world. I'm trying to take on big education, if you will. And I think this is a story worth telling and I'm trying to do something that impacts people's lives and I'm thinking, how come I can't get any PR? I'm trying to do something good here, but help me out.

Lucy Werner:

So we going to workshop you as a live.

Chris Do:

Yeah. Let's do it.

Lucy Werner:

Okay, so let's start with, let's think of yourself like a magazine. So historically your news would've been the campaigns you worked on and now your news might be, I'm coming to do a tour in Europe in 2023. So right?

Chris Do:

Yeah.

Lucy Werner:

Then, so when you've got the magazine, you start with the news and typically like okay, the news is fun, but it's not necessarily going to generate coverage. You need a bit more. So then you've got kind of the features. So that's maybe where you are spotting a trend. So we could go, do you know what, there's kind of this new creative education momentum happening globally. Chris is one of them, here's two other people. Maybe we take Shakara, a woman, and somebody else internationally and we go, right, there's three. So it's not just me, there's a trend.

So then it starts to become a bit more interesting because we are like everybody talks about the creator economy and how much content creators can make. We're all talking about this shift towards having personal brand and digital. There's a cost of living crisis. People are having to seek out new careers. There's all these different sort of things that we can hook off. So we need to have that why now? Why is this important now? So that would be, we would look to start delving into features in your perspective and maybe somebody that combats that, maybe there's somebody really expensive that we pit you against that's actually like, actually I don't think this type of education is good. This more formulaic education that actually costs 50 grand. It takes you 10 years to complete, it's much better. We can pit you against each other, that sort of thing.

Then you have what you call the opinion or thought leadership pieces. Actually you could be penning a piece and pitching it to nationals, like maybe there's something happening in government where they're talking about education. Obviously a lot of my references are UK based because that's where I'm at. But there's quite often a lot of talk recently how small businesses are suffering in the budget or how students are coming out of university and they're not actually getting the education they need when it comes to life, like managing their finances. So it could be when there's a report or something happens in the news like that that you are going, ah, you know what, I've actually got an opinion on that. And you pitch a thought leadership article in response.

Then there's like my favorite bit, which is what I would call the equivalent of your horoscope or recipe pages, like the fun bits. So I was thinking about your personal brand and you don't give huge amounts away, but you give little bits every now and again. So you might talk about your age or I saw you, I think it was on Instagram, you shared something the other day about how your teenagers wanted to take over your account. And I was thinking, do you know what, wouldn't it be an interesting PR story if you did let your teenagers take over your business for a certain period of time as an experiment to see what happened and then reported on that? Because you don't see, you might see founder stories of founders working with children, but you don't see them doing it as a kind of social experiment to see what happens. I'm not trying to do derail your business, by the way, or give them ammunition to make this dream for themselves happen.

But it was just, it's like those little nuggets that you give out, you think that's actually really interesting, we could do something with that. And I think a good PR will sit down with you and say that idea you had is terrible or this idea is quite good, let's dig a bit more into this idea. But for you, I think it's definitely looking at upcoming news like dates, reports, budget, things that are happening in your creator economy, education space that you become the sort of voice of. And once you've done it for a while, then you become the go-to. So it's actually the hardest bit is building the momentum and getting those first relationships in place. A technique that I often use is if there's a particular theme or an area you want to own, Google. It's like your best friend. You can literally Google it and find who are the 10 journalists. They're always writing about these sort of subject matters.

Invite one of those journalists onto your podcast, check them on Twitter every day, create a Twitter list that's just those 10 journalists. Engage their content, share their articles, become somebody that's a fan of their work genuinely, and then start pitching to them. And I guess it's likening it a little bit, the pitching to journalists is a little bit when somebody blind pitches you on LinkedIn when you get a connection and they're immediately like, Hey. And if they've studied your work at all or if they're just pretending to be a super fan or if it's just a completely terrible fit. And I don't think there's any shame in cultivating a relationship as a fan, as long as it's genuine and it's not a transaction, you are actually trying to give something of benefit and with what you are doing. I think there is that bigger purpose piece that works very well. I just think you need the right music at the right time with the right person.

Chris Do:

Okay, this is exciting for me. Well, so full disclosure here, your background is in writing. Your love for writing and journalism and so I feel like you'd like to talk about writing, but for designers, the idea of writing and pitching stories, it's like ugh, it's so painful. I know I can do it but I don't want to, there's resistance that I'm feeling.

Lucy Werner:

But you don't have to write anything other than here's sort of three bullet points. Think about people who are pitching to you, right? Yeah. You've probably had some terrible pictures for people to collaborate with you.

Chris Do:

Oh yeah.

Lucy Werner:

So you tell me what makes a good pitch stand out from a bad pitch?

Chris Do:

Oh, I like this. Okay, well first I would say when you first talk to me, don't pitch me.

Lucy Werner:

Okay.

Chris Do:

And please do your homework. Know something about me. Find the common area of interest as an opening to have a conversation. I know that whenever somebody reaches out, they want something, that's natural. I'm not faulting you for wanting something, but buy me lunch first, figuratively speaking, don't just try to sleep with me on the first moment. It's just, it's too much. It's just too much. Hire me. I'm like, I don't even know who you are. Give me a job, refer me, boost my post. It's all these requests and there's no rapport being built. That's usually where it goes wrong. But then somebody will ask a question and maybe offer something to me that is helpful. I think that's a relationship that begins on the right foot.

Lucy Werner:

So do you think sometimes maybe you've had fans of yours who you've seen engaged with your content for a long time, so then if they ask, doesn't feel as awkward for you because you think, you know what, they've supported me for a long time.

Chris Do:

Absolutely. And they don't even have to ask because then I'll start noticing them. And here's I guess how my brain works, on LinkedIn, if you comment something thoughtful and you're there a lot, I will then say, why aren't I connected to you? And then I click on your profile and it looks like there's been this stale connection request. It's been sitting there because there's so many I haven't gone through. So I accept that. So the conversation begins, I'm inviting you now to have a dialogue with me.

Lucy Werner:

And then when people are pitching to you, are they sending you long pieces of praise or is it quite often just a couple of bullet points?

Chris Do:

Good, I see where you're going with this. The ones that send me blocks of copy, I don't even look at, it just shocks my system. I don't have time for this right now. It could be the most beautiful, most helpful thing that anybody's ever written. But my brain goes into complete overwhelm mode. So I want two, three words, a couple of bullet points. That's all I need.

Lucy Werner:

So how do you think you're going to pitch to a journalist?

Chris Do:

This is the trap, and then you just like, Hey, what's that over there? And it closes on my foot and I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah. But what I was going to say was, I'm in this place in my life where, and maybe many people listening to this are like great, I can go to your website and learn how to do this, right? But I'd rather just spend my money and hire somebody like you to do this for me.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

Is that crazy?

Lucy Werner:

No, that's not crazy. I think generally speaking, I think boutique agencies and freelancers are the route, or you say route, don't you? The route to go down.

Chris Do:

The route. Yes.

Lucy Werner:

The route. I think freelancers are great. I think there's a risk sometimes that an artist will only work with a PR that works with artists or a design agency only works with PRs that reps design agencies. And the problem with that is then sometimes you do get a bit siloed and you do only get the trade coverage and you're not sort of thinking out of the box. I always kind of like to straddle both the B2B world, so the trade press and the B2C, so the consumer media, because that would help me to do things differently. So that would help me to take a creative agency and put it in the front end, like in the news section.

So an example, I worked with a creative agency who had a dog in the office in those days it was revolutionary, it's obviously not now. And we did a piece of research on having pets in the office and creativity. And then that ended up in the front section of newspapers. There was another agency, a creative agency I worked with where we were talking about the clocks going back and how you lose an hour of daylight. So we started to do a piece of research that was basically saying we were losing all these hours of creativity from the clocks going back and did a sort of wired piece about that.

So I think there's these kind of news hooks that you can find. I think the pets one, it worked because it was National Pet week or something and then we had the daylight saving one. Having somebody else to bounce ideas around of general water cooler moments and chats in your office and to extract that and do it for you I think is super helpful. So I'm definitely not against agencies, I just worry that sometimes when you get an agency of a big size, you end up getting a junior put on your account who doesn't know how to pitch to a journalist or even advocate for your business.

Really your PR person should be your right hand person. They need to know how you speak, how you're going to respond, what you want to talk about, what you don't want to talk about. They at least need to have an idea. And towards the sort of end of me really working with clients, I was on WhatsApp with them all. So I'd be like, do you want to talk about this? Yes, no, right? You send me an audio note and I'll type it up and make it tidy for you. And really I was shaping their words. That's quite unusual. Most PR agencies, they're either writing something for you and then it's a risk that they didn't capture your tone of voice or it's not quite right or not even very newsworthy. But I also think you want somebody who's going to challenge you. And I think a lot of PR agencies, they just want to take the money. They didn't want to necessarily make the CEO angry by saying, yeah, do you know what? I think your opinion's a bit boring, let's do something a bit different. So it is a tricky spot for sure.

Chris Do:

Yeah. Well I imagine it that somebody will do the required research, consume a couple pieces of content and then have a couple of conversations, interview you, kind of figure out where the interesting stories might be and then guide you along that process, potentially interview you and say, look, here's the first draft, why don't you take a look at it, insert what you need. And then through a couple of rounds of that, then whatever story the pitch is ready to go out. Could it work like that?

Lucy Werner:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think I would be very nervous about working with anybody who's like, let's just do a press release and we're going to send it out to our database. That's what I call spray and pray, which is basically just spam. And actually I talk quite a lot about how I get coverage from my clients or for myself without a press release. Sometimes I've done articles where I break it down where I'm like, this is literally what I wrote in the email, observe, no press release. Because it's really right what we were saying, it's about the bullet points of interest, the quick intro and the why now bit. I think that's the bit that most people miss. This having an interesting story is one bit. But you need to be answering the question of why is that relevant to their readership now? Can they do it next week, next year? If you can give a news hook, whatever that hook is, however tenuous it is, that's always going to help.

Chris Do:

Okay, so I just want to put this out there in case somebody's listening to this like Chris, why do you need PR? You have your own channel and audience and the days of PR have evolved massively because of social. And my main motivation is to get verified on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever you can get verified because there are a lot of spam accounts that pretend to be me and they're DMing people and I don't want that. So the way I can prevent that is, according to the right requirements, is to be published by mainstream press. They are like link to us articles that verify you are who you say you are. That's my main motivation. That's the only reason, because I don't necessarily need more press. So that's why, I just want to put that out there.

Lucy Werner:

Okay. So a quick one we can do for you off the bat.

Chris Do:

Let's do it.

Lucy Werner:

I think I texted you on a Forbes contributor on Twitter a while back just after I met you. There is a Forbes contributor who writes about entrepreneurship called Jodie Cook. There's lots of contributors on Forbes, and let me tell you something about Forbes, right? The contributors have to provide a certain number of stories and they are looking for story angles. Quite often there's stuff going on with them. Jodie and I did a workshop together for free where she was talking about how she wants to be pitched to. She has a website on her website, she has a form and if you have an idea for an opinion piece or an article for her about entrepreneurship, she invites you to submit to your idea there. It's very bullet point based. So anybody who's got a bit of an idea for an article can pitch.

But she also does this other lovely thing where she uses the hashtag journo request, which is quite UK based. There is some rest of world media using it. But hashtag journo request is basically when a journalist puts out a request for information. So she will say, what was the worst piece of mentoring advice you've ever had or the best piece of mentoring advice you've ever had? And you can literally just respond to her Twitter thread and then she'll take the ones that she likes and uses it as an article.

So twice I've been featured in Forbes because of Jodie, because I've responded to her Twitter request. Three times, I've secured coverage for clients because I've used the form, even though she's my friend, I won't use her email address because she has specifically said that she likes to receive her column request through this form. And you submit an idea. That's just one. I think there's something like 25,000 Forbes contributors who talk about all different types of thing from entrepreneurship, design, creativity, you name all the different things, NFTs, blockchain, crypto, whatever your jam is, there is probably a contributor for Forbes writing about it. Find them, become friends with them, pitch to them. And that's an easy one piece for you right there for your verification.

Chris Do:

Love it. Well you write about this in the book about how you scrape magazines and things that you like and you tear sheets out and then you create a database, you're very scientific about it, their name, contact, and you said the next thing you should do is try to see if they're on Twitter because they'll most likely tell you where and how they want to be talked to. So this is the strategy that you just demonstrated right now, right?

Lucy Werner:

Most journalists will have said publicly how they want to be approached and what stories they're looking for. And that's why as well if you actually start with, but where do I want to be? So for you, you could be featured anywhere, but you might get, okay, actually there's five specific publications I want to be in. Okay, great. You've picked your five. Now which desk? Is it the news desk, is it the opinions desk? Is it the features desk? For me, one of my favorite publications is called Career Magazine. It's a modern business publication. Historically I found business publications very dry. It was LinkedIn back in the day, very kind of corporate and suit-y and Career Magazine came along and I think really shook it up. They featured a lot of startups and small businesses in creativity. They had different themes and they have the news pages, they have features pages, they have workshops, so if you've got a specific problem, they have letters, pages, they have opinion pages, they do live events. There's so many different ways.

So when somebody says to me like, oh, I want to be in Career Magazine, I'm like, great, which section? And then they'll be like, oh. And you're like, have you read it? And I think it's always that thing of definitely dream big and set goals for yourself, but before you actually can think that's going to happen for me, you need to start taking those connecting steps. The amount of times I meet entrepreneurs and they're like, I want to do a TED talk. And I'm like, cool, what on? And they're like, oh, I don't know. And I'm like, you have a message that you need to share with the world on the TEDx platform, but you're not sure what that is? And they're like, uh. I'm like think about what you want your talk to be on, then start looking for the local TEDx producers in your area and connect with them on LinkedIn. You don't start saying that you're a speaker, start showing evidence on video and that can just be on IG Lives or Facebook Lives. You don't have to start off on a main stage in the real world to demonstrate that you can speak and you've got a good perspective.

Chris Do:

Okay, very helpful. I have to ask you this question. They say that to be a good writer you have to read. I'm just curious, are you an avid magazine reader?

Lucy Werner:

Yeah, I am. I am. And that probably does stem from the childhood journalist thing in me. When I was a kid, there used to be a newspaper called The Fun Day Times. That was a supplement in the Sunday Times. And then we had a TV show over here where you could be part of the press pack. So yeah, I've always kind of enjoyed news and reading and for me I like finding the quirky stories. I like finding the weird, I don't adhere to this whole, you shouldn't watch the news because it's all terrible. I think, I don't know if it's, because I've been doing it for two decades, but I kind of have this sort of filter where I sort of flick through all of that and I'm like, oh look at this long read about somebody who bought a house and the former owner actually did some really bad things and now there's this whole piece about former haunted houses or all kinds of random stories that come out.

One of my favorite requests I've ever seen from a journalist is actually around Christmas time being like, we're looking for case studies of anybody who has a annual ritual they do every Christmas with their cat. And I just thought for some person out there, this is going to be brilliant press coverage, and it's just an unusual quirky thing. So yeah, I do love reading, but today the news is not just long form words, it's video, it's online content. So if reading is not your jam, my husband is French and severely dyslexic, so heat does not read any news, but he still gets in the sort of video bite size nuggets in different ways.

Chris Do:

Yeah, I mean I do read, I just don't think, and my consumption habits have changed a lot in that I used to subscribe to probably 20 magazines and now I subscribe to one and I don't think I'm alone in this in that print is going a certain direction and we're having the conversations online because it's more immediate. We can sit down, I like to read books too, so my familiarity with what desks you should be on doesn't register because I'm not reading in that format anymore.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah, but you think there's this tiny bit of, we all have a tiny bit of slow living in all of us as well. So it might be that we listen to records or it might be that we do journaling or it might be that we go on creative walks or something. Most of us have something about us that's slow living. And so for me, the sitting down with the magazine, it isn't just work for me. It's like my, that's like my space.

Chris Do:

No, I 100% agree with you. And if you were to look at the cases and cases of magazines that I've collected over the years and have slowly purged my wife, pulling them from my hands saying let go. It's an antiquated form because these days we're about what's happening right now, quite literally, not what happened three months ago that somebody wrote about, but I still do miss those, that slow living style of consumption and creation that I want to find those human interest stories that you talk about. That's why I appreciate the one magazine that I've subscribed to is Wired because they do go deep on a couple of things. I'm like, that is such a strange story about murder and internet and hacking and how the web figured out a problem that the police could not. There's stories through the lens of technology, so it's always kind of an interesting hook point for me.

Lucy Werner:

But see, I feel like if you went to Wired and said, you are the only magazine that I'm subscribed to, I would love to do a guest edit for you on any topics around 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 bullet points. I'm sure they'd be like, okay Chris, it's not like you're not famous enough to kind of ask those questions to those sort of publications. If anybody who hasn't got any kind of sizable following or business structure can get into magazines, then when there's somebody like you who does have a following, I think it's just pitching it in the right way.

Chris Do:

Okay. All right. That's a clue for me to figure out.

Lucy Werner:

This is your challenge.

Chris Do:

Yes.

Lucy Werner:

I think 2023 has to be the year of Chris in Wired magazine.

Chris Do:

I would love that. And one day get my check because I can't get my verification check.

Speaker 3:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Welcome back to our conversation.

Chris Do:

I love this line that you write, helping founders get famous. And your story I think started, I think you said in 2014 when you found somebody, a founder of a company that you thought, look, there's these big agencies, you got lost in a shuffle. You get somebody who was third tier writer journalists, you're not getting top shelf, and you're paying a lot for it. And so you find this niche and then you're doing this. So I'm just curious of all the different things that you do, can you just break it down for me, the different entities, what percentage of your time is consumed with each thing that you do and where are you making money from?

Lucy Werner:

Now or in 2014?

Chris Do:

No, now. Now. Not 2014.

Lucy Werner:

Now I would say my time is predominantly split on doing more of the DIY stuff and more on the support and helping people. So I typically take on a maximum of three to five clients a year. Normally it's somebody I know quite well and I like, which is also dangerous because I get really emotionally attached to it and I can't sleep at night until I've done the best job what I can do for them. It's really dangerous, but it's a really lovely, lovely place to be. But that's probably, it used to be a hundred percent of my time is just doing client work. And I would say now it's probably less than 20%. Client work is probably less than 20% of our revenue. I work a lot with universities and creative accelerators, so I do a lot of guest workshops and guest appearances. I'm a pretty big deal in these universities in London.

Chris Do:

You have to say that with your pinky in the air or something.

Lucy Werner:

No, I've actually got my cup of tea here.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah, no, and especially there's a few sort of social enterprises that I work for where they're supporting marginalized women like founders coming through. So for me, that isn't my biggest fee payer, but it's probably the work that gives me the biggest joy because there's just something really lovely about helping sort of emerging founders coming up and then giving them a piece of advice or a tip and then seeing them land a massive brand deal or a huge piece of press coverage for themselves. It's the best feeling. And then I started to dip more, I guess into the online course world and the teaching side for myself. So actually I guess my biggest pivot kind of came when my second son was born. He was actually born with four rare congenital heart defects. And so for the first seven months of his life, it was really touch and go and the small business community at that time just rallied around me and supported me.

And it just made me feel even more that the small business community was where I belonged and it's where I wanted to give back to. I think somebody set up a coffee round up for me being if Lucy was in a corporate office, people would've put money in an envelope or a jar, but she's not, she's a sole founder. So people were spending three pounds buying me a coffee and stuff, and it meant I could buy my lunch from the hospital that day and stuff. It was really super cool. So that was when I really started to go all in on the DIY side of stuff. And you know what it's like, that you are suddenly like, oh my God, there's billions of people and I need to find a way to help them but also monetize this so I can still keep the lights on and pay my bills.

So I'm still on the road to figuring that out. And along the way, I do a lot of work now with Adobe Express. I'm one of their ambassadors, which is actually how I met you because they flew me out to Adobe Max. So I'm doing a lot of content creation where I teach people via brands how to promote themselves. So it's all really linked to hyping yourself and building your brand and promoting yourself. But now there's kind of these bigger companies who are championing the underdogs and I'm getting to partner with them in that way. And so for me, there's this real beauty that for years I was like, I'm just a small person, I'm just a small fish and a big pond. I'm not famous, I don't have millions of followers, but I can still get brand opportunities, which I definitely didn't even dream of being possible for me when I started out on this road.

So yeah, for me it keeps me motivated to keep championing others because I'm like, you never know who's watching you. You never know who's on your Instagram stories. You never know. Some of the best speaker opportunities I've had has been because somebody came along to a free Zoom talk I did in the pandemic or something. So this constantly taking your small consistent steps in hyping yourself and what it is that you stand for has really kind of worked out for me now. So yeah, I'd say probably like 50% of my time now is the teaching and workshops.

Chris Do:

By my math that's only 70%.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah, so hold on. So we've got 20% agency, 50% teaching and workshops and then probably 30 is the brand partnerships.

Chris Do:

Okay.

Lucy Werner:

Brand stuff. Obviously I've had two big deals along the way. So I have, I'm with a small publisher, so I do okay on royalties, not great, but the book has also been a platform, but it's all kind of lumped in together.

Chris Do:

Yeah. I'm curious about your working with brands and being a brand ambassador. How did this come about and how do you integrate this into what you do?

Lucy Werner:

So about two and a half years ago, I was followed by a marketing person from Adobe on my Instagram. It was their personal account. I just remember thinking at the time, that's an interesting follow, and nothing much else. And then he reached out and we had an email chat and then we ended up sort of meeting online and he started to tell me that Adobe Express were bringing out this product for people who weren't necessarily designers, but to kind of make creativity accessible for everyone. And I was like, I love this because I work with my husband and I have to get him to basically create a lot of my design assets for me and that can be quite stressful on the relationship when obviously his priority is clients, not my stuff. And I'm like, yeah, but I'm the PR, I'm the face of the business, I'm the new business generator, so if I'm not communicating... So anyway, I started having a little tinker in Express and I was like, ah, he creates all my assets for me in Photoshop and InDesign, puts them in Express for me and now I can just make everything myself. So basically my whole shtick is like, I can divorce my husband now.

Chris Do:

The fool, why would he do that? Now he's made himself obsolete like the Rolodex.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah. So yeah, Adobe Express means now I can do all these branding stuff for myself and it's a bit like, I still need him. We still sit down every six months and do our brand strategy. I mean in life as well. Obviously.

Chris Do:

Father of your children, you know.

Lucy Werner:

Co-founder of the children, it would be a real pickle. It would be a pickle for sure, especially as I've just moved to France to try out living there and he's the only fluent French speaker at the moment. So yeah, I digress. So yeah, they were like, we've got this ambassador platform. One of the things that I love about it is it's super transparent. It doesn't matter if you have a million followers or a thousand followers. It's like, this is the challenge if you want to do, it's the paid for opportunity. Everybody's paid the same, you just interpret it as you want. You submit your idea and then you go and that's it. You post it, you're paid. But also Adobe Express partner with a lot of platforms that I've partnered with already in the UK. So over here there's a platform called Enterprise Nation, which again are champions, entrepreneurs coming through.

So I got to do some judging work on some, there was competition, so I always got to be a judge on that. There's been some other sort of bigger, I guess, influencers over here who've got partnerships with Express and I kind of come on as the Express ambassador to teach a workshop or really just talk about PR and personal brand, but how you can use Adobe Express to enhance that. You've probably not got to this bit of the book yet, but there's a bit where I really talk about the headshot and how important it is and the amount of founders that I've worked with where I'm like, send me a headshot and it's like the CEO's stood against the back of a toilet door or something, and then even then you're like, but just crop it, just crop the rest of it out. It's easy. And Adobe Express is great for doing something like that, that historically you would've needed a designer to sit there and cut and crop you out and now you just click remove background and you're off.

Chris Do:

Yeah, I've used it too. So it's interesting. I might be a little bit of a design snob and you're the person who's probably married to the design snob.

Lucy Werner:

Yes.

Chris Do:

And Express allows both of us to create pretty quickly on our mobile and to get really custom looks quickly. I'm also, I guess, an Adobe Express ambassador at some point too, so I just want to put that out there in case they're like, this just turned into a commercial for Adobe Express. It's not intentional.

Lucy Werner:

No.

Chris Do:

Yeah. Okay. So I just had one other quick question for you in that, well, when we bumped together in that back conference room at Adobe Max, there was a moment there where the room got really emotional.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

And I felt it, and I want to bring it up and get your perspective on it before we kind of go back to PR land here, which is somebody had said, I don't remember who it was, when they looked around the room, they were very encouraged by the diversity that was represented in the room from men, women, non-binary, queer, people of color. It was a really good room and I felt something. I got kind of choked up a little bit, just realizing that as well. I'm just curious about your thoughts on that.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah, I mean I think part of why I do do what I do is to champion people who don't necessarily get those opportunities. So for me, one of the values that I try and champion is equality and not always to the best of my own abilities because I've obviously come up from my own kind of white middle class privileged background. So I have to constantly auto correct myself all the time where I'm not getting it right. But it's really nice for me to work with a big brand who talks about creativity and accessibility for everybody. And it seems genuine. It's not, there wasn't photographs in that room, the room you are talking about, it wasn't even advertised. It was very low key, it was kind of an invite only to the ambassadors of the various programs. And yeah, you could even see when I was having separate just a Adobe Express Ambassador meetups where there was 70 of us, just the reflection of the different types of talent globally, it was so impressive.

And I think more companies need to be working with diverse talent from a kind of younger demographic. And actually even with Express, the age demographic as well, they're not just getting Gen Z, it was Gen Z, there was uni students there, but there were other people in the room who were 10, 20 years older than me as well. And that felt quite inspiring too because sometimes I think, oh gosh, am I going to start to hit my shelf life soon because I'm not this young whipper snapper coming through and I'm not a Forbes 30 under 30 and I'm those days are long gone for me. So yeah, that did feel really special and it felt really unique. And it's actually been the first time I went to any kind of live event like that, of that size since the pandemic. And I came back, I was so, my creativity muscle was so flexed when I came back, I had a gazillion ideas of things I wanted to create and produce. And I think meeting all those people definitely sort of did that.

And Toran, who was speaking, who we were sat listening to that day, who I think started to set that sort of tone is just being one of the most inspiring creatives I've ever met. And that's just, I only met him for two days at a live event. And I think that's another thing about PR in a way, it's not just about getting press, it's actually about going out there and stimulating your mind and meeting people and thinking about who do I want to collaborate with? Who do I want to be seen alongside? Who am I doing this work for? And are the brands or the magazines or the people that I'm partnering with reflecting those values?

Chris Do:

I think that's the interesting part to this. If PR is done in my mind, it counterbalances some of the negative news that's out there. I'm of that belief where I'm slowly consuming less and less news because it doesn't seem to be news. It just talks about all the bad things and things that we have no agency over. And it can lead to some form of anxiety and depression. But where you just talked about Toran, about how PR and press and journalism could highlight these great human interest stories of people that you might not have heard about that are doing remarkable things, but no one knows, and that's where I think there's some hard-hitting journalism where flying throughout the world, crawling into some unknown parts and just shining a light on somebody that is worthy of being highlighted in that way, but maybe that's a romanticized version of that. And it seems now the journalists are the gatekeepers, the people just submitting thousands and thousands of things about promoting a product, app launched, something.

Lucy Werner:

I think as the proliferation of digital media has grown, though, the opportunities for different niches online has grown too. So there are publications that literally only focus on positive news or positive stories or whatever your kind of niche is. There's this guy, he's over in the UK, he's really famous on TikTok for making train spotting coll again. And I'm like, whatever your thing is, there's other people out there who's their thing too, and there are going to be people writing about that as well.

So yeah, I just think there's still space for those credible stories to come through. It's just making sure that people actually still give it a chance and don't give up at the first hurdle. And I guess that's why for me, that's a lot of the driver of me doing what I do is reminding people, just because somebody doesn't reply to you, that doesn't mean it's a no, it just means they maybe missed it that day. And I spend most of my life getting rejected, not having responses to emails or being told no, and I just keep going.

Chris Do:

Okay, let's give people something very practical to do as we're kind of landing the plane on this. You mentioned this already, so I want to go back to it. Something that everybody who's listening to this can do today is take a look at your headshot. Let's take a look at your bio. Okay, now you mentioned the CEO standing in front of a bathroom door. What should the ideal headshot do or look like?

Lucy Werner:

So you do kind of want to get your head and shoulders like centered so you're in the middle. You don't want your head too high, you don't want to be too low down. You don't want to be looking up your chin. Yeah, this is also useful for people who are thinking about doing a video interview. I'm on my computer today so it's fine, but I notice lots of people on laptops. I'm just put it on some books, man, just center your face.

Typically most people when they get a headshot, they're just thinking about it in the portrait format. But I always recommend entrepreneurs to get a headshot in the landscape format because A, if you're featured on a blog or in a newspaper, it enhances your chance of being the lead image because we are reading newspapers in a landscape page, so they normally feature a big landscape image. Or if you're reading an article online on your computer, again, it's that landscape shot. So it's been a really good trick I've used with a lot of the founders I've worked with to always submit a landscape photograph and it helps them, if you're talking about a feature and you're like, here's five entrepreneurs we've interviewed, it's going to be the one that submits the landscape photograph that gets featured.

Chris Do:

Wow.

Lucy Werner:

So that's my kind of hack.

Chris Do:

Insider tip.

Lucy Werner:

Insider tip. You don't need to have a full body shot if you don't want to. I talk quite a lot about if you're a tailor or you work in fashion, it kind of makes sense to maybe have a few full length shots in there. But really a simple head and shoulder shot is all you kind of need. And then on your bio, I kind of try and use this sort of like A, B, C rule. And it's the same as when you are introducing yourself as well. So you start with your attention. So you say your name slowly. People get so nervous when they're being interviewed on a podcast or when they speak on stage and they say their name really fast. So I've been Lisa Werm, Laura [inaudible 00:53:49]. So you have to really pronounce it, your name, and the first thing your bio should say is your name and what it is that you do. Not a kind of marketing jargon bit, but very simple.

I'll quite often just say, I'm Lucy Werner and I'm a PR expert. I don't need to go into all the different, I do have about 20 different things. It's boring if you rattle all of that off. So after the attention, then I move into, so you got A, attention. B, your benefits, so what's the benefit from somebody from working with you or the benefits that you give to working with somebody else? And then C, so this can either be like your credentials, so how many people you've worked with, how many years experience, some awards. Or it could be a call to action, sign up to my newsletter, come to my European tour in 2023.

Chris Do:

There we go.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah, I've given you two plugs for that now.

Chris Do:

You have.

Lucy Werner:

See it's like I'm doing your PR for you already. I hope this comes out before 2023, otherwise, before the European tour. Yeah, the European tour. Do you know it's on a European tour? Yeah. You want to put your call to action or some kind of credentials on there. Try not to go over 150 words. It was lovely today that you asked me what I did since I was 17, but most people aren't really interested in reading about that on a bio. And I also think it's always worth it to think about including something a bit quirky in there, what I call showing a bit of ankle. It's not always showing all of who you are, just a little bit of your personality. Because you know when you say the word personal brand, Brits especially are like, I'm so awkward. I don't want to share my personality. I don't want to have a brand for myself. It's like you just need to show a tiny bit of, it doesn't have to be what you are eating for lunch or your children or the inside of your house.

It's just the equivalent of your horoscope or recipe pages. Think of yourself as a magazine and what are those little fun bits that help you relate to other people. It could be a TV show, like you are talking about reading, or what's your favorite book? What's your favorite TV show? And try and not put the same thing as everybody else. It's so boring when we're reading the same quotes or yeah, we're all inspired by the same people. I'm like, I really like people who champion the geeks and the niche and the bizarre, and the ones that we haven't heard of, it's so much more interesting.

Chris Do:

Let's put it all together. Let's demonstrate this with you.

Lucy Werner:

With me?

Chris Do:

I would do it, but I can't do this in real time, everybody. I just want to say that in case you're thinking, Chris, you should do it. I can't do it. Let's do it with you. Okay. So A, B, C, go.

Lucy Werner:

Okay. Hi, I'm Lucy Werner. I'm the founder of The Wern, a PR and Design consultancy. I also run hypeyourself.com, a platform for people who want to learn how to do PR and branding for themselves. I have taught hundreds of people through universities creative accelerators, and that's my credentials. And then my call to action. If you want to learn more about how to do PR for yourself, you could buy my book Hype Yourself, and if you want to learn how to do branding, I'm not the branding expert, my husband is, so we co-wrote this together. I'm the braun, he's the brain. Or follow me on Lucy Werner PR on all social media channels where generally give out a lot of advice and behind the sort of small business scenes.

Chris Do:

Where's your ankle?

Lucy Werner:

My ankle. Oh, a little bit of fun. You don't have to show a bit of ankle. You can show a bit of ankle if you want, though. I would say I've recently just done a course of domestica and they rewrote my bio and they showed a bit of ankle for me. And they actually started with like Lucy started off wanting to be a journalist, and then discovered the world of PR through a work experience placement and hasn't looked back. So that would be like my...

Chris Do:

Okay, that's a little sliver of an ankle. Just a little.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah. But that's all you need. And then people are like, oh my gosh, I wanted to be a journalist when I was growing up too. Now come and be on my TV show.

Chris Do:

Okay. I was taking notes. You did not follow your formula exactly.

Lucy Werner:

That's so not true.

Chris Do:

Well, I'm going to do it with you right now.

Lucy Werner:

Okay.

Chris Do:

I'm going to pretend to be you. Right? Watch and learn, Lucy.

Lucy Werner:

Okay.

Chris Do:

My name is Lucy Warner. I'm a PR expert. I'm a nobody that helps people become a somebody. And I've spoken and taught hundreds of people accelerators, blah, blah, blah, your credentials. And at 17 I discovered blah through this, right?

Lucy Werner:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

That's your literal exact formula. Your name.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

What you do.

Lucy Werner:

Yes.

Chris Do:

And don't get too fancy with this, and I want to ask you about this before we go.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

People often ask me, Chris, do I just describe myself as a PR expert or should I get really creative with describing myself? What is your take on that?

Lucy Werner:

I don't love it when people get creative when they try and describe themselves, especially in a bio, because it makes it really hard for people to understand what it is that you do and how it applies to them. So when I say I'm a PR expert, full stop, somebody can go, oh, do you run an agency? Do you work in house with somebody else? It leaves space for a question. But if I said, hi, I'm Lucy and I am a hype machine or something, if I'm playing on the title of my book or something, people are like, I don't know what that, I know what that is. And then they instantly might think, well, it's not for me. So I think there's room on your website or additional marketing materials to kind of do that. But I think when you are talking to the general public, you also don't know who you're in a room with.

You don't know if it's a potential client, a potential employee, a potential investor. You just don't know. So you don't want to blow it because they didn't understand what it is that you do. And actually, that's probably one of the biggest challenges in PR, is people over complicating their service and offering and trying to be clever about how they promote it. For me, there are millions of PR people that help small business owners with how to do publicity or run their own boutique consultancies, but nobody has the same personality or way of doing things like I do it. So I don't worry too much about the fact that you could Google and find other people like me out there. That's a good thing.

Chris Do:

Right.

Lucy Werner:

That means there's a demand for that. And I actually once orchestrated a panel with all of my competitive set where we did a Q&A, and then we did these round tables where people basically could have a quick fire pick your brain to get their answers to their PR challenge. And it was amazing how all these different business owners gravitated towards different people, different PR experts, because they're attracted to your personality. It's not so much your product, it's who you are.

Chris Do:

Yeah. So when it comes to your title, you want to get really creative, but if that leads to confusion versus curiosity, then you've totally screwed it up.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah. Personally, I would always lean towards the kind of keeping it as simple as poss.

Chris Do:

Same here. A lot of people try to do too much in that space and if you get what, that kind of ends it.

Lucy Werner:

And you want to be known for something. Right?

Chris Do:

Yeah.

Lucy Werner:

And it's becomes really hard to be named for something. If you are trying to create a category like big brands spend millions over decades to own a category. If you are an individual, don't break it. We can borrow from big business, don't recreate it.

Chris Do:

Yes. Okay. Lucy, out of respect for your time, I've had a wonderful time talking to you today. And she's also known as the Hype Machine, everybody. I'm just kidding. And do your friends call you the Wern?

Lucy Werner:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

They do.

Lucy Werner:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My old friend, my old old friends. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Do:

Back in the day.

Lucy Werner:

But also, it's really good for SEO.

Chris Do:

Is that right?

Lucy Werner:

Yeah.

Chris Do:

Let me tell you how bright I was. I'm like, why is it company called the Wern? I'm trying to figure it out.

Lucy Werner:

But what I like is people be like, oh, it's Lucy Werner from the Ren.

Chris Do:

Do they really?

Lucy Werner:

Yeah. Or auto captions is always like the worm. And I'm like-

Chris Do:

Oh wow.

Lucy Werner:

I don't, you know what, it's cool, but people remember it because, but quite often people think I'm just called Lucy Wern.

Chris Do:

Well, sometimes you get too clever.

Lucy Werner:

I don't mind,

Chris Do:

But it's memorable. Okay. It was a real pleasure talking to you. If people want to find out more about you, where should they go?

Lucy Werner:

Lucy Werner PR on all social media channels. I'm probably most active on Instagram and LinkedIn. And if you have any quick questions, always [inaudible 01:03:15] DM, quite often it will spark a piece of content that I want to create.

Chris Do:

Are you encouraging people to DM you on Instagram?

Lucy Werner:

If it's for a quick question, not if it's a completely redo my PR strategy for me, but actually for me, I find it really helpful because I'll see specific themes that come up and then I create content around that, that then I'll be like, Hey, I made this for the 10 of you that asked about that.

Chris Do:

Perfect. And hey, if you don't take anything else away from this episode, keep it short. Keep it brief. Bullet points, we get it. We either are going to understand or we're not and that's enough, right? Don't, don't write prose here. It's not the place for it. Thank you very much for being on the podcast.

Lucy Werner:

Thank you for having me. I'm Lucy Werner and you are listening to The Futur.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for joining us this time. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week. The Future Podcast is hosted by Chris Do, and produced by me, Greg Gunn. Thank you to Anthony Barrow for editing and mixing this episode. And thank you to Adam Sandborn for our intro music.

If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by rating and reviewing our show on Apple Podcasts. It'll help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. Have a question for Chris or me? Head over to thefutur.com/heychris, and ask away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefutur.com. You'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and creative business. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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