Pitching Your Way to Success: Secrets from a PR Expert

I think that's the interesting part to this if PR's done right in my mind it counter balances 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 you see 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 out there that's not gotcha journalism but I 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 etc for me oh no well yeah if it helps I'm 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 sell you anything 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 in PR and it's a part of the strategy that a lot of people Overlook it feels like PR comes from like 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 yeah sure say my name is Lucy Verna and short fashion really I'm a nobody that just helps people become somebody longer version um I guess when I was growing up I used to watch Superman and I wanted to be Lois Lane like I wanted to be a journalist so bad and then um 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 working press coverage round to the Sony officers 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 I love that you are not old enough to know about fax machines and rolodexes but you're right about this I did have a Rota decks my friends it was it was the thing of beauty and I mentioned it to people like you mean Rolex no I mean Rolodex you guys heard of this thing yeah it's like a artifact from the 90s I believe right yeah yeah you would roll you would rotate it and all your business cards again in fact the first journalist that I used to phone non-stop was like my first bank password because I knew his his direct line so much okay this is some form of like outdated Antiquated technology explaining you heard of mansplaining now we have to literally describe to You full attack that doesn't exist yeah you'll make up a term for this right yeah direct lines don't exist anymore either because we're all just on mobile right things Technologies are going away okay well let's get into the serious part I mean what a nerd I'm just gonna 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 I mean May at the time first of all I didn't realize there were jobs where you could wear jeans and trainers to the office so that was a revelation to me um I used to come home with like bags of CDs like bags bags CDs old-fashioned things that we used to listen to music on um and I you know my job was to get press along to events and to watch musicians and to watch artists and then it was kind of like a lot of it was just grabbing articles online and hence the printing out and the fact the faxing of things um and it was just amazing I just didn't realize there was this way of promoting people and their sort of stories and and actually I think like my love at the time was also in music so for me I was like oh my gosh like I'm getting to see all these musicians and meet all these musicians and and I but I was just there on sort of the sidelines assisting to to get what their they were doing out there and it felt like a superpower 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 yeah and I was like 17 I was in London so I was commuting like back and forth from like the the Tiny Village I grew up into London in the in the United Kingdom and we our offices were in SoHo I'd spend like breaks in like the Sony offices hanging out with anr people I was just like wow like it just it blew my mind that me this tiny little person from nowhere just from this work experience I ended up keeping my placement all summer and just thinking like yeah this is this is the job for me okay where does this job lead you take us to the next major milestone in your timeline so I did did the university did media and 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 to get there but I basically landed a job as a team assistant so basically a secretary um 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 um and learn loads about advertising and creatives and that's probably where my love for sort of the creative world came from because I was sort of sat in these big open London offices seeing teams of creatives like pitching for ad campaigns and again like that was an education in itself so that was huge and then I moved in-house um to a boot a luxury Boutique travel company called Mr and Mrs Smith and then I moved into PR agency land um 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 was always there and then in 2014 I had kind of hit this point where I was like I'm just upselling to the clients and bringing more projects in and I'm making my CEO richer and my salary is staying the same I'm not sure I'm into this anymore um 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 like a minimum minimum of like three to five thousand dollars a month and even then you're probably the lowest payer so you're 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 um with this amazing founder and kind of jump ship and had three months Savings in the bank and was like right I've got you know three months to cover my cost of living I 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 like employee number two and the Wern agency was born um and the rest is history as they say but actually now like um you know along the journey my husband got made redundant when I was pregnant with baby number twos he wasn't going to qualify for Pat leave so I was like come on in so he started like The Branding and created Division and then really in the pandemic we kind of pivoted quite a lot um to work on this platform hypeyourself.com so now we really work a lot on people who have zero money um and zero budget and zero clue to demystify the process um I always say the equivalent myth in PR for like 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 the 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 um so there's similar kind of myths there um but it's always been in the kind of the creative community that I love the most because I think they've just got a so there's something in their souls that's different to everybody else 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 they leverage one relation for another and they're hustling and bustling and they just make stars out of normal people like you said you're nobody that helps people to become a somebody right or something like that and it doesn't work like that and or maybe we're not at that level I think it's changed I think um you know in the Heyday a little bit like with my first little days in advertising there was a lot more like boozy lunches and it was like who you know and who he connected with and social media has changed that like 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 you know 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 um you know how you respond to somebody in a coffee shop when they open the door for you like you never know what opportunity is going to help you in the future and I think people think PR is all about who you know and getting on the front page of a newspaper and I'm always like you take a step back and actually think about like what is your business objective and where is your audience and then tailor your PR around that rather than it being there it's just who you know thing and I think actually it's a lot it's a mistake that a lot of CEOs come to me is which they're like you know who's on your black book who have you got connections with and I'm like what's your story because if your story is rubbish it doesn't matter who I do or don't know I'm not going to be able to place it it does doesn't matter how how many favors I think I've got in the bank it's just not going to happen right okay so maybe this is where we shift in the conversation and I'm gonna do this in a mostly selfish way but I'm thinking that they're going to be a lot of people who are probably in my shoes maybe I've gone through this or about to go on this journey too 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 like a pretty boilerplate 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 the press release was like here's a project or something cool please talk about us and there was not really a human interest story that was not a really good storytelling being done I get that except that so those days are behind me but now I run his 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 the 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 so we're gonna Workshop view as as a live okay so let's start with let's think of yourself like a magazine right so historically um your news would have been the campaigns you worked on and now your news might be I'm coming to do a tour in Europe in 2023 say right then so when you've got the magazine you start with the news and typically like okay like they need is fun but it's not necessarily going to generate coverage um you need a bit more so then you've got kind of like the features so that's maybe where you're spotting a trend so we could go do you know what there's kind of this new create native education momentum happening globally Chris is one of them here's two other people maybe we 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're like everybody talks about the Creator economy and how much content creators can make we're all talking about the 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 like why now like why is this important now so that would be a kind of we would sort of 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 could pit you against each other that sort of thing then you have like what you call like 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 um obviously a lot of my references are UK based because that's where where I'm at but there's all there's quite often a lot of talk like recently how small businesses are suffering in the budget or um 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're going ah do 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 um your personal brand and you don't give huge amounts away but you give little bits every now and again so um you know you might talk about your age or you I saw you I think it was on Instagram you showed 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 their children but you don't see them doing it as a kind of social experiment to see what happens um 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 where 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 or this idea is quite good let's dig a bit more into this idea um but for you it's 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 become the sort of the voice of and once you've done it for a while then you become the go-to so it's actually the hardest bit as building the momentum and getting those first relationships in in place um 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 that are always writing about these sort of subject matters invite one of those journalists onto your podcast you know check them on Twitter every day create a Twitter list it's just those 10 journalists engage their content share their articles become you know 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 like when somebody blind pitches you on LinkedIn you know when you get a connection and they're immediately like hey Bob and you know 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 like cultivating a relationship as a fan as long as it's genuine and it's not a transaction like you're actually trying to give something of benefit and with what you're doing I think there is that bigger purpose piece that works very well I just think you need the right new tick at the right time with the right person okay this is exciting for me well you know so I you know 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 or the idea of writing and pitching stories is like ah it's so painful I know I can do it but I don't want to this resistance that I'm feeling but you're not you didn't have to write anything other than his sort of three bullet points like if think about people who are pitching to you right like you've probably had some terrible pictures for people to collaborate with you so you tell me like what makes a good pitch stand out from a bad pitch oh I like this okay well first I would say when you first talk to me don't pitch me okay and 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 you know buy me lunch first like figuratively speaking don't just try to sleep with me on the first one it's too much it's just too much like hire me I'm like I don't even know who you are give me a job refer me uh boost my post it's all these requests and there's no Rapport being built that 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 like a relationship that begins on the right foot so do you think sometimes maybe you've had fans of yours who you've seen engage 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 they've supported me for a long time absolutely and they don't even have to ask because then I'll start noticing them and here's here's how my brain works on LinkedIn if you comment something thoughtful and you're there a lot I will then say like why don't 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 that's been sitting there because there's so many I haven't gone through so I accept that so the the conversation begins I'm inviting you now to have a dialogue with me 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 good I see we're getting and we're going with this the ones that send me blocks to copy I I don't even look at it just shocks my system like 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 [Music] you think you're gonna pitch to a journalist this is the Trap and then you're just like hey what's that over there and it closes on my foot I'm like oh okay yeah but what I was going to say was I'm in this place in my life where 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 yeah is that crazy no that's not crazy um I think Germany speaking I think Boutique agencies and Freelancers are the root or you say route doing the route to go down the route yes the route um I think Freelancers are great um 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 it you do get a bit siled and you do only get the trade coverage and you're not sort of thinking out of the books um I always kind of like to straddle like both like the B2B world to the trade press and and the b2c so the consumer media um because that would help me to do things differently so that would help me to take like a creative agency and put it in the front end like in the new section um so like an example I work 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 um having pets in the office and creativity and then that ended up in the front section of these papers um there was another agent a creative agency I worked with where we were talking about the clocks going back um and how you like lose an hour of of daylight of daylight so we started to do a piece of research that was basically saying like 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 like news hooks that you could find I think the pets when it worked because it was like National Pet Week or something then we had the daylight saving one having somebody else to bounce ideas around of like General like water cooler moments and chats in your office and to extract that and do it for you I think is super helpful um so I'm definitely not against agencies I just worry that when 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 um advocate for your business like really your PR person should be like 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 um they at least need to have an idea and and towards the sort of end of me really 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 date and I'll type it up and make it tidy for you and really I was shaping their words that's quite unusual like most PR agencies they're either like writing something for you and then it's a risk that they don't capture your tone of voice so it's not not quite right or not even very newsworthy um 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 don'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 let's do something a bit different it's a tricky spot for sure 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 the whatever Story the pitch is ready to go out yeah could it work like that yeah 100 and I think um 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 like spray and pray which is like basically just Spam um and actually I talk quite a lot about how I get coverage from my clients or for myself without a press release um sometimes like I've done like articles where I break it down I'm like this is literally what I wrote in the email observe no press release because it's it's really right what we were saying it's about the bullet points of interest the quick intro like and the why now bit I think that's the bit that most people miss this having an interesting story is one bit but it's you need to be answering the question of why is that relevant to their readership now like 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 gonna help okay so I 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 in the days of PR or have have evolved massively because of social right my main motivation is to get verified on Instagram LinkedIn uh 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 right so that's why I just want to put that out there okay so we a quick one that we can do for you off the bat and there is I think I tagged you um on a Forbes contributor on Twitter a while back just after I met you um there is a Forbes contributor who writes about entrepreneurship called JD cook there's lots of contributors on Forbes and let me tell you something about Forbes right um the contributors have to provide a certain number of stories and they are looking for story angles um quite often there's stuff going on with them Jody and I did a workshop together for free where she was talking about how she wants to be pitched too 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 um 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 um 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 Jody 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 her um column request through this form and you submit an idea like that's that's just one I think there's something like 25 000 Forbes contributors who talk about all different types of things from entrepreneurship design creativity you know 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 love it well you 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 these 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 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 he if you actually start with but where do I want to be so for you like you could be featured anywhere but you might get okay actually like this there's five specific Publications I want to be in okay great you've picked your five now which desk like is it the news desk is it the opinions desk is it the features desk um for me like one of my favorite Publications um is called Courier magazine it's a modern business publication historically I found business Publications very dry it was like LinkedIn back in the day like very kind of corporate and um and Courier 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 they have the news Pages they have features Pages they have workshops so if you've got a specific problem um they have letters Pages they have opinion Pages they do live events um there's so many different ways so when somebody says to me like oh I want to be in Korean magazine I'm like great which section and then they'll be like oh uh and you're like have you read it have you read it and I think it's always that thing of um definitely dream big and set goals for yourself but before you know before you actually can think that's going to happen for me you need to start taking those connecting steps um you know the amount of times I meet entrepreneurs and they're like I want to do a TED Talk and I'm like cool we're on and then oh I don't I don't know 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 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 know start saying that you're a speaker start showing evidence on on video and that can just be on you know IG lives or Facebook lives it doesn't you don't have to start off on a main stage in in the real world um to demonstrate that you can speak and you've got a good perspective okay very helpful I have to ask you this question they see that to be a good writer you have to read I'm just curious are you an avid magazine reader I like that probably does stem from like the childhood journalist thing in me like when I was a kid there used to be a newspaper called the fun day times that was a supplement in the Sunday Times um and then we had like a TV show over here where you could be part of like the Press pack um so yeah I've always kind of enjoyed news and um news and and reading and for me I like I like finding the quirky stories like I like finding the weird I don't adhere to this whole like you shouldn't watch the news because it's all terrible like I think I don't know if it's because I've been doing it for like 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 um or like you know like all kinds of sort of random stories that that come out um 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 reunion at Christmas that they um sorry an 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 um 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 like my husband is French and severely dyslexic so he does not read any news but he still gets his in his in the sort of video bite-sized nuggets in different ways yeah I mean I do read I just don't think and I use 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 and 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 deaths you should be on it doesn't register because I'm not reading in that format anymore yeah yeah but don't you think there's this tiny bit of like 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 like creative walks or something like most of us have something about us at slow living and so for me they're sitting down with the magazine it's not just it isn't just work for me it's like my that's like Myspace 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 saying let go it's a it's an Antiquated form because um these days were about like what's happening right now quite literally not what happened three months ago that somebody wrote about but I still do miss those uh 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 that is such a strange story about murder and internet and hacking and how the web figured out a problem the police could not their lenses always stories through that um through the uh there's stories through the lens of technology so it's always kind of an interesting hook point for me but see I feel like if you went to Wyatt and said you're the only magazine I'm subscribed to I would love to like do a guest edit for you on any topics around one two three four five bullet points I'm sure they'd be like okay Chris like it's not like you're not like famous enough to kind of ask those questions to those sort of Publications you know like if if anybody who hasn't got any kind of sizable following or business structure to get into magazines then when there's somebody like you who does have a following I think it's it's just pitching it in the right way okay all right is it your challenge I think 2023 has to be the year of Chris in Wired Magazine I would love that and and one day get my check because I can't get my verification yeah that's all I wanted for really okay okay I I love this line that you're right helping Founders get famous and your story I think started I think you said in 2014 when when you found somebody a founder of a company then you thought look there's these big agencies you got lost in a shuffle you get somebody who's like third tier writer journalist 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 you where you make your money from 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 then I I can't sleep at night until I've done the best job but I can do for them it's really dangerous um but it's a really lovely lovely place to be um 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 percent client work is probably like less than 20 of our Revenue um I work a lot with universities and creative accelerators so I do a lot of guest workshops um and guest um guest appearances [Laughter] um you know I'm a pretty big deal in these universities in London um say that with your pinky in the air or something I've actually got my cup of tea here okay yeah um no um and especially kind of um there's a few of um social Enterprises that I work for where they're supporting marginalized women um like Founders coming through so for me um that isn't you know my biggest fee player 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 or advice or a tip and then seeing them land like a massive brand deal or a huge piece of press coverage themselves it's like it's the best feeling um and then I started to kind of like dip more I guess into like the online course worlds and the and the teaching side for myself so actually I guess my biggest pivot kind of came um 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 um 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 kind of give back to like I think somebody set up like a a coffee like round up for me being like if Lucy was in a corporate office people would have put money in an envelope or a jar but she's not she's like a sole founder so they people were like you know spending three pounds like buy me a coffee and stuff and it meant I could buy my like lunch from the hospital that day and stuff it was it was really super cool so that was kind of when I really kind of started to go all in on the the DIY cider stuff um and you know what it's like that you're suddenly like oh my God there's billions of people and I need to like find a way to help them but also you know monetize this so I can still keep the lights on and and pay my pay my bills so I'm still kind of on the road to figuring that out and and along the way um I do a lot of work now with like Adobe Express I make one of their ambassadors which is actually how I met you because they flew me out to um Adobe Max um so I'm doing a lot of kind 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 like 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 in a big pond I'm not famous I don't have millions of followers um 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 um so yeah it's 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 like some of the best um speaker opportunities I've had has been because somebody came along to like a free Zoom talk I did in the pandemic or something um so this constantly like taking your small consistent steps in hyping yourself and what it is that you stand for um has really kind of worked out worked out for me now um so yeah I'd say probably like 50 of my time now is the teaching and workshops by my math that's only 70 yeah so hold on so we got like 20 agency 50 teaching and workshops and then yeah probably 30s the brand Partnerships okay like brand yeah brand stuff and then I guess in that in the in that um I obviously I've got I've had two book deals along the way so I I have I'm with a small publisher so I I do okay on royalties like not great um but you know the book has also been a platform um but it's all kind of like lumped in together yeah I'm curious about your working with Brands and being on a brand ambassador how did this come about and how do you integrate this into what you do and a half years ago I was followed by a marketing person from Adobe on my Instagram it was their personal account so I was like I'm not gonna be like hey it was I just remember thinking at the time that's an interesting follow and nothing much else and then he reached out um and we had an email um 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 um 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 I'm the pr I'm the face of the business I'm the new business generator so if I'm not communicating um so anyway I started like having a little Tinker on Express and I was like ah he creates all my assets to me in Photoshop and InDesign puts them in Express for me and now I can just make everything myself so I basically am the whole my whole stick is like I can divorce my husband now they're cool why would he do that because I haven't made himself obsolete like the Rolodex yeah Adobe Express means like now I can do all these branding stuff myself and it's a bit like I don't think it I still need I still need him like we still sit down every six months and do our like brand strategy I mean in life as well obviously um follow your children co-founders the children it would be a real pickup a pickle and France to living there and they're an only fluent French speaker at the moment so yeah I digress um so yeah uh they were like we've got this Ambassador platform one of the things 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 it's the paid for opportunity everybody's paid the same you just interpret it as you want you submit your idea and then like you go and that's it you posted your page um 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 um which against our Champions like entrepreneurs coming through so I got to do some judging work on some um like it was a there was a competition so I was got to be like a judge on on that um there's been some other sort of bigger I guess influences over here who've got Partnerships with Express and I kind of come on as the express ambassador to let teach a workshop or really just talk about like PR and personal brand but how you can use Adobe Express to enhance that um like 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 like worked with where I'm like send me a headshot and it's like the CEOs like stood against the back of a toilet door or something and and then even then you're like but just crop it just crop the rub just crop the rest of it out it's easy um and Adobe Express is like great for doing something like that historically you would have needed a designer to sit there and cut and crop you out and you know now you just click remove background and you're off yeah I've used it too so it's interesting I I might be a little bit of a design snob and you're the person who's probably married to the design snob yes right Express allows both of us to create pretty quickly on our mobile and 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 no yeah okay so I just had one other quick question with uh for you in that well when we bump together in that back conference room at Adobe Max there was a moment there where the room got really emotional yeah and I felt it and I want to bring it up and get your perspective on it before we kind of go back to like 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 I was represented in the room from Men Women non-binary queer uh people of color it was a really good room and I felt something I I got kind of choked up a little bit just realizing that as well I'm just curious about your thoughts on that yeah I mean I I think part of why I I do do what I do is is to try and Champion people who don't necessarily get those opportunities so for me you know kind of one of the values that I try and Champion is um you know equality and not always to the best of my own abilities because I've obviously come up from like my own kind of like white middle class privileged background so I have to constantly auto correct myself all the time where I'm not like getting it right but it's really nice for me to to work with a big brand who talks about and creativity and accessibility for everybody and it seems genuine it's not there there wasn't photographs in that room like the room you're talking about it wasn't even advertised it was very low-key it was kind of like an invite only to the ambassadors um of of the pro of the various programs and yeah you could even see like when I was having separate just 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 from a kind of younger demographic and actually even with um Express the age demographic as well they're not just getting gen Z they were there was you know it was Genesis uni students there but there were other people in the roomia who were like 10 20 years older than me as well and that felt quite inspiring too because sometimes I think oh gosh like 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 you know I'm not a Forbes 30 under 30 and um you know and that those days are long gone for me um so yeah that um 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 um I was so like my career to the team muscles so flexed when I came back I had a gazillion ideas of things I wanted to create and produce um and I think meeting all those people definitely definitely sort of you know did that and like tauren who was speaking who um we were listening to that day who I think kind of started to set the that sort of tone is just being like one of the most inspiring creators I've ever met and that's just you know I only met him for like two days at a live event and I think that's another thing about PR in a way it's not just about getting pressed 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 I I think that's the interesting part to this if PR's done right 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 torn about how PR in 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 or 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 of thousands of things about promoting a product app launch something I think as um the proliferation of digital media has grown night the opportunities for different niches online has grown too so there are Publications that literally only focus on positive news or positive stories um or you know whatever your kind of Niche is you know whether it's um you know there's this guy in he's over in the UK he's like really famous on Tick Tock for making Trainspotting cool again and I'm like you know whatever your thing is there's other people out there who's that's their thing too and they're gonna be people writing about that as as well so um 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 there is that's a lot of the driver of me doing what I do is like reminding people like 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 like my I spend most of my life getting rejected like not having responses to emails or being told no and I just keep going okay let's give people something very practical to do as we're kind of Landing the plane on this um 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 so if you are watching this on tube or other video platforms I'm just sort of adjusting myself on the screen here you adjusted your voice too when you said that so against a teaching voice hello um you do kind of want to get your show your head and shoulders like scented 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 licking up your chin um this is also useful for people who are thinking about doing a video interview like you know I'm on my computer today so it's fine but I noticed lots of people on laptops I'm just like put it on some books man you just sent to your send to your face typically most people when they get a head shot 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 and you know like 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 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 so that's my that's my kind of hack inside a tip um you don't need to have like a full body shot if you don't want to like I I talk quite a lot about you know if 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 like a simple Head and Shoulder shot is all you kind of need and then on your bio um I kind of try and use this sort of like ABC Rule and it's the same as when you're introducing yourself as well so you start with like 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 worm Laura so you know you have to really pronounce it your name um and say 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 you know very simple like I'll quite often just say I'm Lucy Werner and I'm a PR expert like I don't need to go into all the different you know I do about 20 different things it's boring if you rattle I'll put that off um so after they're kind of um the attention then I move into like so you've got a attention B your benefits so what's the what's the benefit from somebody from working with you or the benefits that you give to working with somebody else um and then C so this can either be that your credentials say 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 there we go yeah I've given you two plugs for that now you have see it's like I'm doing your PR for you already I hope this comes out before 2023 otherwise but before the European tour the European tour do you know he's on a European top um yeah you want to put your call to action or some kind of credentials on there try not to go over 150 words like 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 on a bio um and I also think it's always worth it to think about including something a bit quirky in there like the you know what I call showing a bit of ankle it's not always about showing all of who you are just like a little bit of your personality I thought you said showing a little bit of your uncle that's what my uncle got to do it that is creepy and weird but you know it's a bit awkward because lots of people might not even have an uncle so that would be very inappropriate no just a bit of ankle because like you know when you say the word personal brand Brits especially are like oh I'm so awkward I don't want to share my personality uh I don't want to have a brand for myself um it's like don't you just need to show a tiny bit of it doesn't have to be what you're eating for lunch or your children or the inside of your house it's just the equivalent of your horoscope or recipe Pages like think of yourself as a magazine and what are those little fun bits that help you relate to other people like it could be a TV show like you're talking about reading or you know like 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 the same quotes or yeah we're all inspired by the same people I'm like I really like people who Champion like the Geeks and the niche and the and the bizarre and the ones that we haven't heard of it's so much more interesting let's put it all together let's demonstrate this with you with me I would do it but I can't do this in real time everybody I just want to see if you're thinking Chris you should do it I can't do it let's do it with you okay so ABC go okay hi I'm Lucy weather I'm the founder of the Wern a PR and Design consultancy I also run hype yourself.com a platform for people who want to learn how to do PR and branding for themselves I have to hundreds of people through universities creative accelerators and that's 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 help 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 here's the he's the bra and I'm no I'm the brawn he's the brain uh or follow me on Lucy word appear on all social media channels where I generally give out a lot of advice and behind the sort of small business scenes where's your ankle my ankle oh a little bit of fun so sometimes somebody I've recently just done a course of domestica and they rewrote my bio and they showed a bit of ankle for me so they so they actually Twisted on you they forced my ankle out um and they actually started with um like Lucy started off wanting to be a journalist um and then discovered the world of PR through a work experience placement and hasn't looked back so that would be like my oh okay that's showing smaller of an ankle just a little do the tongue yeah but that's all you need and then people and then people like oh my gosh I wanted to be a journalist when I was growing up too now come and be on my TV show okay I was taking notes you did not follow your formula exactly well I'm gonna do it with you right now okay I want to pretend to be you right watch and learn Lucy okay my name is Lucy Werner I'm a PR expert I help I'm a nobody that helps people become a somebody and I've spoken and taught hundreds of people accelerated blah blah blah your credentials and at 17 I discovered blah through this right yeah that's your literal exact formula your name yeah what you do yeah get too fancy with this and I want to ask you about this before we go yeah people often ask me Chris uh do I just describe myself as a PR expert or should I get really creative with describing myself what is your take on that go ahead tell us what you really think uh 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 like do you run an agency do you work in-house for somebody else do you take at least space for a question but if I said hi I'm Lucy Werner and I am a hype machine or you know something if I'm playing on the title of my book or something people like I don't know what that I don't know what that is and then they it's you might think well it's not for me um so I think I think there's room on your website or additional marketing materials to kind of do that but I think when you're 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 would 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 how they promote it like 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 like 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 like this that's a good thing like that's it that means there's a demand for that um and I actually once orchestrated a panel with all of my competitive search um where we did like a q a and then we did like these um these round tables where people basically could have a quick fire like pick your brain to get their answers to their PR Challenge and it was amazing how all these different business owners gravitated towards different like different people different PR experts because they're attracted to your personality it's not so much your product it's who you are 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 yeah I I would personally I would always lean lean towards the kind of keeping it as simple as possible same here a lot of people try to do too much in in that space and if you get like what that kind of ends it and you want to be known for something right and it becomes really hard to be known for something if you're trying to create a category like big Brands spend Millions over decades to own a category if you're an individual don't break it like we can borrow from Big Business don't recreate it yes okay Lucy out of respect for your time I've had a wonderful time talking to you today and uh she's also known as the hype machine everybody I'm just kidding and do your friends call you the worn yeah they do yeah yeah my old friend like my yeah my other old friends yeah yeah back in the day but also it's really good for SEO is that right yeah it's really how bright I was I'm like why is she where's a company called the one I'm trying to figure it out but what I like is people be like oh it's Lucy Werner from the Wren oh did they really yeah or Auto captions is always like the worm and I'm like wow I know you know what like it's it's cool but people remember it because but quite often people think I'm just called Lucy one well sometimes you get too clever I don't mind 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 Lucid social media channels um I probably most active on Instagram and Linkedin um and if you have any quick questions always feel today um quite often it will spark a piece of content I want to create are you encouraging people to DM you on Instagram if it's for a quick question not if it's a like completely redo my PR strategy for me but it 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 perfect and hey if you don't take anything else away from this episode keep it short keep it brief bullet points every week at it we either are gonna understand or we're not and that's enough right don't don't write Pros here it's not the place for it thank you very much for being on the podcast thank you for having me foreign