Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today, we have Lilian Sue. Lilian, welcome.
Hi Thomas, thanks for having me.
It is my pleasure. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure. I am a long time publicist and PR coach and I focus primarily on helping creative entrepreneurs build healthy PR mindsets and create the building blocks of a successful PR strategy. How I do this is through my comprehensive product suite? So I offer PR coaching sessions, individual sessions as well as a full on program where I work with creative entrepreneurs, helping them bust through mindset blocks, answer burning PR questions and just give them the resources that they need to sort of move forward. I also do this through my new PR course which I created as a hybrid PR course that leads them through step by step, every aspect of building a PR campaign, everything from brainstorming story ideas and building a media kit, to actually learning how to get comfortable with interviews and also learning how to repurpose their press coverage to gain more engagement with audiences.
And I call it a hybrid PR course because I also offer coaching sessions within the PR course for certain sections of the course and they can always book one with me whenever they get stuck or they’re having mindset issues, things like that. And then lastly I also offer clients campaign services where I’m more hands on and I work with them to build comprehensive campaigns and with their input in order to launch successful strategies for all their different projects. So you mentioned that at least you were in PR in relation to doing it as a service. Are you only coaching now or do you do PR as well? For like, on behalf of companies? For example, I also do the campaigns as well, but primarily because a lot of my crying tell our creative entrepreneurs solo preneurs, I tend to focus a lot on the coaching and the course side primarily because from my clientele that’s a little bit more affordable for them, but I do campaign services as well for clients that feel like they don’t have a lot of time or would rather have a publicist be a little bit more hands on.
So if you’re covering stuff like mindset in relation to PR, I would imagine that probably means that there’s some sticking points, or maybe some preconceptions that people have regarding the topic. Do you mind going into what those might be sure? Yeah, there’s a lot of myths and misconceptions about PR that people come in with things like they come to me with no experience, no foundation and say that they want to be featured on the Tonight Show or on Oprah, because they believe they have this misconception that bigger is always better, larger audiences means more sales, and I have to tell them that actually having a larger audience doesn’t always mean that that audience is going to be the right audience, and with the landscape being as competitive as it is, you really want to reach the right audience of people that are going to want to by your services, review your books, watch your films, whatever it is.
And just because a high-profile media outlet has a larger audience doesn’t mean that audience is always the right people. The other part of it is that quite a few prospective clients that have had previous experience with PR will come to me and say that in the middle they have waning motivations, because it does take time to build the building blocks of a PR campaign. You have to move to build a media kit, your story ideas, your story pitches before you actually even get to sending out any of those emails. So sometimes they’ll come to me and say things like, you know, I’m losing motivation in the middle. How do I deal with that? Can I skip steps to make it go faster? Because I’m losing that motivation, and I have to say to them, no, that’s not how it works. You only ever see success with a campaign like this depending on the amount of work you choose to put into.
So if you skip steps, what could end up happening is someone may ask you for a media kit, and you don’t have one because you’ve skipped that, right? So it’s really important in order to combat things like that feelings of being overwhelmed feelings of waning motivation, even difficulties with things like I’ve had other creative entrepreneurs come to me and say that they’ve done interviews, but nothing has come of it. And I said, you know, the key there is to make sure that you have consistency when you’re actually getting the peace out there, because if you’re not sharing it, the media outlets not sharing it, then it’s like you didn’t do it at all, because no one knows it happened, right. Um, so I always tell them that the key to battling these things is always to remember a what are your goals for this campaign, what do you want to do with this project ideally?
And that’s short-term goals and long-term goals, and at the same time, take it step by step, you know, just because there’s so many different options out there, you know, you can pitch podcasts, you can pitch print publications magazines, that doesn’t mean that you have to start off big right away, and it also doesn’t mean that you feel restricted or confined, pick a direction start there and once you get comfortable you can expand right? I think the reason why so many entrepreneurs come to me and they end up feeling overwhelmed is because they feel like it’s a huge undertaking and they don’t know where to start and my philosophy when I counsel them with this has always been start small step building, incremental steps when you’re building a campaign, but also have an idea of what are your goals, what do you want to achieve?
When do you want to achieve them? And then take the little steps that you need to move towards that? Because the other thing is is that unlike advertising or other forms of marketing, where it’s sort of depending on how much money you put into it, I tell them that PR is flexible in the sense that it’s really up to you on how much time you want to take with it, and it’s the kind of thing that you can start building even before your book is finished, your film is finished, your new product is ready for launch because the pieces that you build for it. So, your media kit your story ideas, your media list, those will stay with you, you never have to build them from scratch again, just update them occasionally. So these are things that you can do leading up to a launch, even if it’s six months out, so that you can get that part of it out of the way and then not have to worry about it when you know, your project is ready to go, just come back to the goals for a second, presumably that helps with perseverance, because if you can see that you’re, you know, meeting micro goals on the path to the macro goal that will help, but what does a typical goal look like if you could generally sit so that people are aware of what that could or should be typical goal could be anything from, I want to book a certain conference in order to talk about this product or this project in three months or I want to have this amount of sales in a year.
Right? So then that is your overall goals you break it down into, okay, in order to reach that, what should I be doing with NPR? Well then it’s a matter of how do you want to diversify your avenues to reach those goals? Because there are there are a lot of different ways you could do that. Usually when I talk to clients about this, I always encourage them to diversify their campaigns. So they’re not just relying on podcast interviews, they’re not just relying on blog reviews. You’re also looking at how can I build my reputation in order to get accepted when I apply for this conference. So I encourage them to do things like what about Thought Leadership? Have you thought about creating guest articles to post on these different blogs in these different websites that will help you build your reputation as an industry and genre expert, right, in order to get you know, because they can’t when it comes to anything, whether you’re going for a review, whether you’re going for an interview, whether you’re applying to speak at a conference, they get so many requests all the time, what’s going to make you stand out is how you choose to position yourself and how you position yourself also really focuses on mindset, because it’s not just about how you want other people to see you and to see your brand, it’s also how you see yourself and how do those two things connect with each other, how do you position yourself the correct way, so that you’re presenting your brand the right way and people know that oh if jane smith applies for this conference, she’s this kind of entrepreneur, she can speak on these topics and therefore we should book her for this.
It’s interesting because I have wondered previously about, for example, writing on medium or writing for Forbes or something, whether people get a return from that, but you just highlighted that it may be the case that that’s not even the goal, the goal actually might just be for you no authority, essentially, just like anything in the world of PR building the thought leadership piece, you know, that takes time as well. Just publishing on medium or on Forbes once is not going to get you where you need to go, it’s all about building that foundation consistently and sharing your insights, your experiences, your knowledge with your target audience on these different sites in order to get out there and the other portion of the consistency piece that I mentioned earlier when it comes to any sort of press coverage or guest articles is the consistency in promoting it, and I think where a lot of entrepreneurs tend to go wrong with that is that they think just sharing the link a few times is going to be enough.
Well, no, because audiences absorb things in different ways, there’s going to be people that like to read more people that like to watch things more people that like to listen to things more. So the more that you take that one piece and you repurpose it in text, images, audio and video, the more you’re going to reach different members of that audience that is going to remember you putting that piece out and they’re going to engage with it because it’s memorable, so that’s the other piece of the two is getting consistent with writing the guest articles, getting consistent with doing the pitching and getting consistent with the promotion of the pieces when they do go live, you mentioned that you work with solopreneurs and if it’s a campaign for example, it might be, should we say, intimidating to start, which I’m sure your course would help with, but if it’s do you sort of notice anything or are aware of anything where you could say, you know, if people just did this, this really simple thing, it would be better than doing, you know, nothing at all, which is what a lot of people tend to do, does anything spring to mind their No, I think if there’s anything simple about PR if I was to break it down into its essence, and if someone came to me and said, how do I get started?
I think one of the easiest things that people can do, and this applies to marketing across the board is to really focus on what your goals are, um, I don’t think people do that enough. I can ask them questions. Like if you put out a book as an example, your intention is to not put out that book and have nobody read it. Right? So, if you know the answer to that question, if the answer to that question is no, then how do you build that readership? What are your goals to build that readership? I think really that’s probably the clearest thing to me, is that a lot of the people that come to me have very, very vague notions of what their goals are, of what their endgame is, they have very, very vague notions also about who they are and what they do. Because what I challenge a lot of clients to do.
Yeah. Whether they are working with me on a campaign, whether I’m coaching them, whether they’re going through my course is when you start off on a campaign, you really have to dig deep and focus on not just what you do, but why you do what you do and how you do it. Because in in in today’s day and age, there are thousands of people that could say they do what you do, but what is going to make you stand out no matter what aspect it is that that you’re doing is like in terms of getting interviews, getting reviews, applying for conferences, writing guest articles, whatever it is, it’s how you do it and why you do it because that’s what makes you unique. And I don’t think enough people spend enough time really digging down deep in thinking about that because they spend so much time working on getting their projects out and then once it’s out there like oh I have to have to move to the next one.
Well then, six months later, you’re sitting there wondering why sales aren’t where they should be. You know, you’re not getting the brand awareness or engagement in terms of where you want it to be. And I think it’s because they don’t spend enough time thinking that what they do and how they do it is unique. I think we are conditioned unfortunately, going into anything creative, going into anything business to think that we have to follow what everyone else is doing for marketing because it’s worked for everybody else. It’s the industry standard, therefore we need to follow it because that’s the way it’s always been done and they don’t spend enough time thinking about, what is it that I do that makes it unique. What is it about my process that people are going to want to learn about in a thought, leadership, peace, what sort of knowledge can I pass on to people?
And when you don’t focus on that, and you don’t focus on your goals, you end up spending a lot of time and energy on marketing, on advertising, even on PR not possibly getting the results that you want, because you’re not really digging down into who you are, why you do what you do. So when people, the media, they receive a pitch or they receive a request from you or something to them, it just looks generic, it just looks like anything else that, you know, hundreds of other people before you have sent them, and that’s not what you want. I find that if there’s two common threads that the people that come to me always have, it’s that they have vague notions of what their goals are, and they’re not entirely comfortable exploring why they do what they do and how they do it, because it forces them to get introspective, and it forces them to dig deep into these pieces that they can then share with the media with the general public and with the industry, you mentioned the book.
So if someone had a book and what their goals might be, if you had a book right now, then you just finished it and it was promotion time. What would your goals be and how would you go about doing that? I would really want to diversify both my engagement and my distribution strategy. So for me professionally, I would be looking at how to diversify distribution. So areas like I’m not just going to sell on amazon, I’m going to branch out and get into indie bookstores. Okay, to do that, focus on that area. What do I need to do? What did these bookstores need to know about me about my book, about my sales in order to make it enticing for them to not only carry my book but give me an opportunity to do live author science. So that’s one area of distribution. An area of PR okay, I want to get interviews, what’s the most logical way to go about doing that when the areas I could pitch you are so vast, let’s say it’s a horror novel, I’m going to go genre specific because I know these guys cover this genre and therefore it would increase the likelihood of them wanting to interview me wanting to review my book.
So I’m going to focus on genre specific media for now to build a strong foundation for a PR campaign, book boxes for distribution. How do I go about catching the attention of people who are running books, book box subscription companies to carry my book? What are some of the ways that I could do research into that in terms of what they’re looking for. Is there an application process I have to go through if there are festivals and conventions coming up? Okay. How do I go about researching? What’s coming up in the calendar year and into next year that I might be interested in applying for? What’s the application process? So it’s really about the two different streams, distribution and PR promotion and melding those together because there are opportunities with some of the distribution because of course you’re going to be selling those books in the bookstores and at the festivals and conventions to also have a PR component to them.
A lot of those will do interviews, a lot of those will do reviews. How do I capitalise on that? But it’s all like for me I would start off with picking a direction to go so that I could build on it incrementally and not feel overwhelmed with all these different options, all these different choices and generally feeling disorganised on where it is that I want to go because when you have a plan, even a two-pronged plan of distribution and public relations, it’s much easier to kind of break it down into okay from there. Where do I want to focus on for say the next month? This is all I’m going to be focusing on and then once you hopefully get a foothold in there, what’s next.? And I think that a lot of people just lack that foresight into planning because they feel like it’s so overwhelming because there is so much choice and they just don’t always necessarily know where to turn for help or personal life support because while there are a lot of course is out there that can teach you different aspects, they often feel like they aren’t getting their questions answered, they’re not getting solutions that are tailored to their unique project to their unique situation, which is why that’s another reason why I went into coaching because it was a way for me to really drill down specifically into what a particular client’s needs are compared to another client, even if they happen to be in the same industry, you find that there are rewarding the coaching, it’s been great to be able to get on calls with my clients and to help them bus pass mindset blocks, help them brainstorm in particular, because usually what happens is when I get on a coaching call with someone there, they’re stuck, they’re stuck when it comes to ideas, they’re stuck with how to move forward and I love being able to just sit there and say them, okay, I hear you based on what you’ve told me, this is where I think you’re at and this is what I would suggest to get out of it and they always are so appreciative because I’ve helped them get the ball rolling again, I’ve helped them get unstuck I’ve given them ideas and resources to move forward, which is also part of my coaching and they know that they can always come to me if they have specific questions if they want to brainstorm again on further ideas or even helped build out a strategy based on what’s best for their business.
Have you got a favourite example that you’d like to share it all? Sure, yeah, there’s a podcaster that was a coaching client of mine, she actually signed up for my eight week comprehensive coaching program and every single week we would hop on a weekly coaching call and what her goal was at the time was that she wanted to expand her podcasting business and instead of focusing on where the wind was blowing at the time and helping like actually building podcast for other people, She wanted to teach people how to build their own podcast and she had already had a foundation of running workshops and things for that, but she wasn’t really sure how to get the word out about a full on podcast coaching program. So I started working with her and I said, okay, first off because this is personal, you’re going to be working with people in groups, What they’re going to buy into with this program is you, your experience, your knowledge, your personality.
So for the first couple of sessions, all we did was focus on who are you, why are you a podcaster, what is it that you get out of it that you find really rewarding, that you want other people to learn from you on it. And from there we moved into building out her media kit, you know, assets that people would want to share on social media when it comes to her getting interviews. We talked about her social media strategy on how she wants to get the information out about her podcasting program. And I really helped her focus down on, look, it can’t be generic, it has to be specific, think about the value that you’re giving these prospective students of yours. What is it that you want them to, you know, tell them, what are you teaching them in the program? What’s the transformation and the results they can expect.
And at the same time allow them to connect with you to talk to and tell them about your experiences, podcasting, some of the mistakes and the lessons that you’ve made and that you’ve learned that you want to help them avoid by building this program. And at the end of every session, I always used to tell her, hey, you can always send me questions on Instagram. You can always send me an email. I will, you know, send you resources for this coaching call that you can build on. And at the end of every call, she would always tell me lily and I feel so much better. Now there’s so much more clarity to what it is that I’m doing and it’s really helping to be able to hop on every week with you and talk this through. Otherwise she said I’d be stuck, I’d be in stasis, I’d be, I wouldn’t know where to move forward, and I always told her, hey, this this is what I’m here for. If you have any questions to always send them to me and to me, that was a really rewarding experience for us both, because she was getting ideas, the knowledge and the expertise to help her move forward, and for me, I was able to learn more from her on what she needed on a weekly basis.
Coaching is great in the sense that it is very tailored. It’s very individualistic. You can have sort of the general framework of what clients can expect from you when they come in to do coaching with you. But when it comes to actually booking a session, it’s always about figuring out where people are at. So at the beginning of every session, whether it’s a solo session, whether it’s part of my coaching program, I sit down with my clients and I always go, okay, tell me what’s going on, tell me where you’re at, and from there, I tailor the program to really meet their needs, because there’s some clients that need more of that social media piece, in addition to PR there’s other clients that are focusing more on the distribution side of things on top of PR so looking more into that.
So, it’s one of the reasons why I decided to add it on to my product suite is because I really wanted to be there on a personal level for people to really help them through what they were going through. And although there’s definitely a general framework to PR I think what a lot of the other agencies and even solo practitioners are missing is the fact that they don’t always have that personalised element when you’re doing campaigns, particularly if you are used to doing campaigns in a particular genre, it can kind of get on autopilot sometimes, because you have the same list, you’re going through, sort of the same motions to write up a story pitch, but with coaching, it really pushes me out of my comfort zone and kind of forces me to really work with people on what is it going, what’s actually going to work for you versus what’s actually going to work for someone else?
You mentioned the podcast example, given that it’s a moderately new media. Have you got any thoughts on podcasting and how it relates to what you do? I think it’s a great way to help people get the word out about what it is that they do, and, you know, events that they have going on, in part because it’s a much lower barrier then a lot of other media outlets. I don’t know exactly how it is in the UK, but certainly in Canada here in Canada and the US in the last 7-8 years, we have seen our mainstream media shrink quite a bit. So what has happened is that in the midst of all the layoffs, the buyouts in the early retirements, you have newsrooms now that are short staffed. You have one person doing the job of three people, so consequently that’s had a huge impact on the world of PR where, where you might have been able to get coverage particularly in and I’ve noticed it in arts and entertainment, I’ve noticed it in food and beverage, I’ve noticed it in travel, tourism, You might have been able to get coverage say 10 years ago because they had the people.
Now, it’s become much harder and much more competitive to get noticed by mainstream media, particularly if you have no foundation, you’ve never done any PR at all because those areas have shrunk and with the rise of podcast, it’s a much lower barrier to apply on a podcast to talk about to give your opinion, your insights on things to talk about. new projects that you have going on also because there’s so many, there’re thousands of podcasts all over the world focusing on several different subjects that pretty much anyone can applied to be featured on. Certainly with the higher profile the podcast or the more episodes of podcasts gets under its belt.
Both the person who is applying to be a guest and the podcaster similarly have to develop frameworks in order to discover if they’re a good fit. Right? That’s why you have the application forms. That’s why guests have to send in tailored emails about what their experiences like. But for people that are just starting out podcasting, you could pretty much create a podcast about anything and have your friends on to give their opinions and everything. And certainly there’s a lot of podcasts out there that do that exclusively, even when it comes to personal interest, like true crime or whatever else. And that I think for me when I encourage clients to start thinking about building a strategy that’s often where I steer them to look first this podcast, because there are a lot of smaller ones that are willing to have people who are just starting out on their and the more of those that you do, the more you can get comfortable with doing interviews, the more you can get comfortable with booking interviews and it gives you more experience to continue to move on to more of the higher profile ones.
I really think that it’s been a boon at least from my industry to have them because we have another avenue that is much more accessible now. Then your mainstream media of print, radio and television these days that can allow people to also gain international reach, Where it was much harder to do. You know, even 15 years ago, you were really depending on okay, if I’m a filmmaker from the US going into the UK. I have to have a reason to pitch The Guardian well now if you had a film you could pitch a horror podcast that just happens to be UK based, that would review your film and interview you, whereas, you know, 15 years ago you couldn’t do that. So I really do feel like it in general, it’s very much been a boon from my industry and certainly from my clients that are looking at building PR strategies.
Also speaks to your point about thinking about what niche and the bigger is not always better if you can particularly pick a particular area podcast like you say, can specialise in that particular area, which is bound to be beneficial, I guess. Absolutely. What was it like to create the course? That was really interesting? I called my course the attraction blueprint because it is a blueprint of how to build all the different building blocks of a successful PR strategy, I broke it down into 12 chapters, 33 lessons and I really had to think about, Okay, if I was to say teach a course in person to people that had no knowledge of PR whatsoever. no foundation, what are the different aspects that I would want them to know. So I really had to go back and start off by building a framework, and I started off by building a framework by even, you know, just educating people on what PR actually is number one for the first chapter of the court or first lesson of the course, And then number two, asking them some pretty pointed questions about whether or not they were ready for PR because if they weren’t ready for PR and there was no point in taking the rest of the course, but in order for them to figure that out, I actually had a lesson where I walk them through it.
And in building the course, I also had to look at what sort of formats would speak to most people. I did a lot of market research, I put out a survey for my newsletter subscribers and just ask them, what’s your learning style, what appeals to you the most. And based on that research ended up, you know, building a course of with video slide shows with templates with industry examples and pairing that with the personalised coaching too. Really give them not just an in depth look on how to build each part of a PR strategy, everything from brainstorming there, story ideas to building a media kit, to building a media contact database, but also giving them industry examples. So they could have an idea of, okay, if I’m going to get creative with this, what’s working for other people in my industry.
Really sort of giving them the step by step guidelines instructions on how to build each one of those pieces and then giving them the option to actually come to me for guidance if they got stuck on brainstorming their brand stories, because that’s a question that I’ve gotten from a lot of clients who are like, if I’m talking about who I am and what inspired me to create this project, how far back do I go, right, how much information do I put into this? What do I leave out of it? And I always tell them, you know, there’s always inspiration for why you choose to do something, so that’s where you should focus on it, right? There’s, there’s no, there’s no need for them to know your entire work history. If you were like, you worked in 9-5 for 15 years before becoming an entrepreneur. Until you made that leap, like, what was that situation surrounding you making that leap?
Like they don’t need to know about the 10 years beforehand, but I always tell them that when they’re building this, when they’re brainstorming this, they’re brainstorming their brand stories, they’re brainstorming their project stories, working on their media kits, having more is always better than not having enough because it’s much easier to take out certain pieces and leave them for other campaigns than it is to add if you don’t have enough because then you’re adding pressure on yourself, you are feeling like, you know, you’re in the middle of a campaign and you just have to go back and fiddle around with things, which takes more time. So that’s why I always encourage them throughout the course to that this is self-paced, that you can take your time to build out all of these different pieces because you have time, there’s no deadline On building a PR campaign unless you put one on.
So if you have a new product that’s releasing in six months and you want to have, uh, interviews and reviews and media coverage when it comes out, then you’re building the campaign on a six-month timeline. But that’s a timeline that you choose to impose. There’s no timeline that the industry or that a publicist you work with is going to impose on you with that you mentioned in the course, it does say about whether it’s right for you, is there a, like, typical person or particular business who is best suited to this really goes back to the mindset piece Thomas, because the best people, and who are ready for PR and this is what I actually told a prospective client I was on a discovery call with, because he actually asked me point blank, what are you looking for, And I said in a client, he said yes, and I said, okay, regardless of if somebody signs up to take my course, they sign up to do coaching with me or they sign up to do a campaign with me what I want out of a great client who’s going to get the most out of this, who’s going to get the most out of the course out of coaching or out of working with me in a campaign is somebody who is going to have A pretty clear definition of what their goals are.
No one there could be some leeway there, but they have a pretty good idea of what they want, they just need help getting there and need help building the steps to getting there, but at the same time they are also willing to be hands on, they’re willing to give me their input, they’re willing to try out different things. Even if they know there’s no guarantee because that’s the other thing that I really stress with PR is that in my line of war there are no guarantees of results. However, when you do get results, there’s also no guarantee of where they may come from. So getting the person that walks into work with me has to get rid of those misconceptions of like, oh, I absolutely need to be on the BBC when you have no experience and no foundation and you don’t even have a proper pitch ready.
Your positioning is not ready to go. So they need to get rid of that, the person that will get the most out of it is the person that, you know, wants to explore how to position themselves and their projects the right way, and who is willing to try different things and to learn from it and to understand that there is no one path to get to that result when it comes to PR that they’re the most rewarding path you can take is one that you choose to diversify with all these different areas. and I’ve certainly met my fair share of amazing entrepreneurs who really have their finger on the pulse that, you know, this is what I want to do, and I’m curious about exploring all of these other ideas and I’m willing to try those out. My problem is I need help getting there, like, I’m not sure where to look, or I’m not sure how to get started, but I’m also willing to be hands on and give my input where it’s needed, because I always tell them as well that even if I’m doing a campaign for you, ultimately, it is your name, your brand, and your reputation that’s on the line, and this campaign is only going to be successful, depending on how much work we both put into it, so I can’t move forward if you’re not willing to work with me here.
So it’s really crucial that, you know, the people that get into this, it really is about mindset and about being ready for it, Has anyone come to you and say like, make me famous, Oh sure it’s happened Thomas, I’ve been in this business almost 10 years now and that has happened a lot you know, there’s a lot of people that have said, hey, I’ve got no experience with this, I’ve never been on camera, I’ve never done an interview, but I would love it if you could get, you know, have me do the talk show circuit in the U. S. And I have to sit them down and go look PR is not a miracle worker and you’re also stepping into an arena that’s really competitive. anybody who ends up on these high-profile media outlets ends up there because they’ve already spent years building a foundation.
It is very, very rare for you to get a Hail Mary pass to go viral with whatever it is that you’re doing and then end up on high-profile media owns because of that. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen, but NPR we don’t bank on that happening because it is so rare, we would rather you spend time building up your foundation the right way and actually reaching out to the right people in order to continue to incrementally move up two High profile and of course there’s people that will then say then I don’t want to spend the money, you know, I would rather spend the money for advertising to see results and I go, you know, that’s fine. PR is not for you. but a huge part of what I do with my content, with my social media, all of that stuff is all about educating people, it’s about adding value to all the actionable tips and strategies that I give people and also busting down those misconceptions and those myths about PR so that they have a better understanding of if you are thinking about moving into this arena, this is what you can expect.
I realised after our conversation that the tables have turned a little bit, because now I’m going to ask you about your goals, it’s me asking you, rather than the other way around. So what are your goals? I would love to have just really help enough creative entrepreneurs build successful PR campaigns that will help them become global industry experts, global industry leaders, because there’s so many people that doubt themselves, there’s so many people that believe they don’t have the potential to do that. I want to be able to reach out to them and say, hey, you know, you do have the potential, it’s all about positioning that properly. It’s all about finding that I want to be able ideally to help hundreds of creative entrepreneurs find that and continue to build on it. I think my business philosophy has really been like that proverb, where he talks about when you teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.
That’s why I do what I do, is to be able to impart the knowledge, the mindset, the proper resources and skills to creative entrepreneurs so that they can continue to take this into every project. They do every product, they launch all of those things. and I really want to be able to have that positive impact on them and to help them reach their fullest potential, because too often I see people curtailing their own potential, it’s no one else doing it towards them or for them, it’s the fact that they themselves with their mindset, they come out of it saying, oh I can’t compete or oh I can’t get that interview the way someone else got because you know, I don’t feel comfortable or oh, you know, I can’t do this because it’s too overwhelming and my job as a PR coach is to help bust them out of that when they’re ready because they’re tired of doing the same things over and over again and not seeing the results that they want the answer.
Um Is there anything that you would like to mention, which I haven’t asked you about today regarding the topic of PR just that I think at the end of the day, people should really remember that it is not scary when you take it step by step and day by day, when you break it down into its essence of these are my individual goals that I want, how can I get there And what is it that I’m doing so far? That isn’t helping me get to where it is that I need to go. And I think that’s the thing that’s really key is that nothing is overwhelming. Nothing has to be scary if you break it down to bite-size chunks and that’s really what I would want people to take away from it, is that as long as you have an idea of what your goals are and an idea of where you’d like to go, even if you feel like you need help getting there, That is a start Lillian, where is the best place for people to find you?
I’m definitely really active on Instagram. My handle there is liliansuecopywriterpr all one word, no spaces. So I’m really active on there. They can find me on Twitter as well @lsue23. They can always catch me on email, lillian@inretrospectwritingservices.com. And you know, any questions they have, I’m always responsive on social media as well as through email if they want to know more about PR coaching or my course or just any questions in relation to PR, I’m always here to help.
All right, well thank you very much for your time today. You’ve been a great guest.
I appreciate it, Thomas. Thank you for having me.