If you want to raise your visibility by being interviewed on TV or by print journalists, this is the episode for you. Join us to learn more!
Annie Scranton is the founder and president of Pace Public Relations. Annie and her team focus solely on media relations, getting their clients placements on traditional news outlets on TV, radio, print, and digital. On any given day, Pace PR has multiple clients on national TV, which isn’t easy to do. Acting as a guest booker for major media networks like CNN, FOX News, CNBC, MSNBC, and ABC, Annie’s brand of public relations combines her unique understanding of behind - the - scenes TV and her unparalleled list of contacts. In this episode, Annie shares how she was able to go from trial to triumph and rebuild after a setback, her secret sauce to getting her clients booked on TV with media coverage to build their brands, and what a personal brand is and why it’s important to have one.
Who should be on TV?
Annie says that it takes a telegenic person to be on TV, and what she means is someone who comes to life on camera. Even in TV news, someone’s performance element is almost as important as what they actually say. It takes substance and an interesting point of view to be a good guest. If you hold opinions that match with 99% of the population, then it’s harder to get booked on TV, but a counterintuitive perspective or unique point of view will get you booked faster. How you relate to viewers is important because TV doesn’t offer many second chances. That first TV interview is vitally important because the competition is fierce. In appearing on any TV show, you have to put in the work to understand the brand and ask how you can fit into that conversation. It takes reframing your thinking to understand the tone and learn what’s important to the producers.
Why public relations?
A layoff from one show at age 28 led Annie to launch a job search that changed her life. A publicist offered her a job if she could get his client booked on a national TV show, which she accomplished in about five minutes. Annie calls this her lightbulb moment of recognizing her special currency in understanding the networks and how they operate, along with the necessary high - quality connections to people in the business by building her brand.
Going all in
Even though she still worked at a TV network for a time, Annie kept doing PR work on the side. It became so busy that she couldn’t do both jobs well, so she used her nest egg to take the leap of faith and start her own business out of her studio apartment, with her phone and computer. She slowly added more staff members as her business grew organically.
What is PR?
The specialty of Annie’s company is media relations, which means she helps her clients get featured in the media, including TV, radio and podcasts, and interviews for newspapers, magazines, and websites. PR is figuring out what is interesting about a client’s business, product, or brand, and how those qualities can be made relatable to a producer, editor, or journalist. Another critical component is that the client has to be interesting to the readers or viewers. Those placements are beneficial to the clients in growing their business, raising money, and booking speaking engagements.
Personal branding
Everyone can benefit from personal branding because there is more competition than ever before. Whatever your industry, there are many others with whom you’re competing for business. You must be able to articulate what sets you apart as unique and the best choice. More success will follow, and you’ll have a more fulfilling career and more happiness. Distinguishing and differentiating yourself is essential in today’s world, especially for women, because women don’t usually advocate for themselves as strongly and confidently as men do.
Dealing with jealousy
Annie’s viewpoint is that if someone is competitive and jealous of you, that’s on them. You need to conduct yourself with dignity, respect, and fairness, and nothing else matters. Haters and backstabbers will always exist, but you have to have faith in yourself, your work, and your values. Annie explains how she helps clients better understand themselves and their brand to build the confidence they need to survive and thrive.
How you pitch yourself
Pitching yourself means presenting a solution that interests others. In pitching yourself to the media, you can provide them with an interesting angle or story idea that gives a solution to their daily task and deadline. In pitching yourself for a promotion, highlight the benefits to the company so that you become a solution to a problem. Present how you what you’re asking for will affect the company’s bottom line, along with being useful and helpful. Annie explains how the pitching process has changed during the coronavirus pandemic.
Stand out from the noise
Annie stresses the need to know your audience. Right now, every pitch needs to tie into the pandemic or the general election to be relevant to cable news. The luxury lifestyle retail space is still relevant in certain places, but can still be tied to the pandemic if you pivot to more of a thought leader capacity. A thought leader is an expert in their industry who has insights into trends and forecasts. Thought leaders also point out strong examples and lessons to be learned. They are able to contextualize what they have learned, so it’s interesting, useful, and helpful to others in that space.
Highlights of this episode:
Resources mentioned:
Find Annie on Twitter: @AnnieScranton
The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris
Fem Five:
Favorite book to recommend for women? “The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris”
Favorite self - care hack? ”Meditation every morning and working out whenever possible.”
Best piece of advice and who gave it to you? “My mom made me believe that I could do and be anything I wanted.”
Female CEO or thought leader you’re into right now? ”Gloria Steinem, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Hillary Clinton, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.”
One piece of advice you’d give your five years younger self? “Don’t stress as much. It’s not worth it. LIve your life with authenticity and integrity. Things will work out.”
Have you felt like you have a big idea to share but don’t know how to communicate your message in a clear and impactful way? My guest has much wisdom to share. Join us!
Dolores Hirschmann is an internationally recognized strategist, clarity coach, TEDx organizer, speaker, and author. She is also the host of her own YouTube channel, Clarity TV. In this episode, Dolores shares how she is able to guide her clients to clarity to define their core idea and reach their next level of growth, the secret to transforming fear into bravery, and why purpose is a daunting word, and there is a better way to think about it.
Clarity of life’s work
Dolores works mainly with service business owners who want to serve the world with clarity and purpose. She asks four specific questions: What academic puzzle pieces do you have? What would you do for free all day long? What is a problem that the world has? How are other people attempting to solve that problem? It’s at the intersection of the answers to these four questions that you’ll find your life’s work.
The practical side of purpose
Some people are gifted with the purpose of unveiling the brilliance in others, being a mirror for those who have lost their spark. Many of us get lost as we build our lives with puzzle pieces, and we get stuck. In the practical aspect, Dolores reminds women what they are becoming, and that where they are is simply a place on that path to becoming. It’s each person’s challenge to be powered by their purpose, independent of the situation around them. Dolores shares a story of a client discovering purpose and anchoring in the being of who she is.
Stepping into your capacity
We sometimes get stuck in a lack of trust mentality because we feel that we can’t handle the consequences if something goes wrong. There are core beliefs that will allow us to delegate control. Going through the 2020 pandemic has helped each of us understand our resiliency and our capacity for survival in new ways. Connecting with that strength allows us to let go in delegating tasks. Another core belief is that if we aren’t involved, something won’t be done well. We feel that everything is in our control, and the opposite of that is the belief that our capacity is limited when we feel disconnected from the world.
Divine timing
Dolores has learned to trust that the puzzle pieces of her calendar will all fall into place. Numerous times she has seen meetings or events have to be rescheduled in ways that work out better than the original intent. Now, Dolores smiles when something reschedules itself, and she never gets upset about it. She says it feels like the universe has her back in the way divine timing seems to work things out. Divine timing and delegation are totally connected in that you can trust that things will fall into place.
Intentional bravery
We can leverage our fear and transform it into intentional bravery. Fear is what keeps us from taking the action that is in front of us. Dolores uses the analogy of the saboteur and the snowflake in how some truth is present in every fear that seeks to sabotage us. We have to allow fear to play its role in protecting us as we move forward to take action. Her work focuses on the steps of clarity, action, and impact. Clarity alone is nothing if it isn’t followed by action and impact.
The secret to a good TED talk
Dolores instructs her clients to find the right TED Talk for them, and the next step is not talking about what you do, but what you stand for. She advises clients to talk about the bigger essence of the work they do. There are two parts to a great TED Talk: the work the speaker has done to extrapolate the bigger idea behind their work, and the way it’s beautifully communicated.
Highlights of this episode:
Resources mentioned:
www.mastersinclarity.com Check out the free resources on Dolores’ website.
www.nextfem.com Find Dolores’ free gift of a clarity call.
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Fem Five:
Favorite book to recommend for women? “Untamed by Glennon Doyle”
Favorite self - care hack? ”Outdoor anything at least once a day.”
Best piece of advice and who gave it to you? “When I was learning to drive, my therapist told me not to worry and that I could drive at the speed I wanted because no one would use their car to push me to go faster.”
Female CEO or thought leader you’re into right now? ”Elizabeth Gilbert”
One piece of advice you’d give your five years younger self? “Just play. Don’t sweat it. It’s just a puzzle piece.”
Today’s show introduces you to someone who blends her passions perfectly into the artwork that has become her creative outlet. Her story and her life’s work are inspiring on many levels. Join us to learn more.
Stephanie Bell May is a world-renowned artist and leader in her transformational work called The Art Experience. Stephanie discovered her passion for art as a young girl growing up in Mexico City, where the museums are flooded with a rich history of early and mid - 20th century artists with strong political motives, like Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Tina Modotti, and Rufino Tamayo. These masters strongly influenced Stephanie’s vision and played out in her early work. Following years of public exhibition and recognition, she pursued a new visual path where she began to explore issues of female equality and human rights. In this episode, Stephanie and I talk about how her upbringing in Mexico and her studies in Buddhism and psychology shaped both her early work and her projects today. We also discuss the wild inflection point that transformed her and led to the creation of The Art Experience, and how her own marriage led to the awareness of cultural expectations of her as a woman and the knowing of her own soul in its truest form.
Freedom
Freedom can mean many different things; the meaning is derived from how cultures value it, and this concept is the overriding theme in Stephanie’s observation and expression. She explains how freedom of expression shows who we are, intellectual freedom gives us opportunities to explore ideas and educate ourselves, and spiritual freedom relates to how we view our existence. Freedom in a different sense means how we find our true selves without social constraints. Stephanie explains that the peace found within that freedom is everything; there is no higher achievement in life.
You can’t un - wild yourself
Once you know your wild, you can’t go back to being restrained. We are born as an incredible self that is constantly being left behind as we grow and allow society’s constraints to shape us. We are told to speak and act in certain ways that are acceptable within social norms, especially as women. We’ve been told to be less than our true sexual self and less than our true expressive self, along with being quieter, less demanding, and more accepting of the way things are. Stephanie explains how this un - wilding leads to an unspoken unhappiness that many women feel within their lives.
The ugly truth
When we don’t align with society’s norm, we feel that we either have to rebel or suppress ourselves and conform. It’s a dilemma that we each face. We have to remember our pure self and understand the value of our real, authentic, wild self. Stephanie shares how she and her husband checked all the boxes and hit all the markers for success in life, yet they realized that they weren’t happy and were tired of pretending. Stephanie found herself wanting more than the traditional role of wife and mother, and her husband felt the same way regarding his suppressed homosexuality.
No more pretending
One day, Stephanie’s husband went on a trip and fell into cataclysmic love with another man. Stephanie later observed how they loved each other and never wanted to be apart. She knew their relationship was right, even though it was hard for her to let go of the facade of ideal life and family that they had carefully crafted together. Being gay was her husband’s worst nightmare, and she saw the struggle, trying to help him survive and be happy and fulfilled. Even though she looked at him as her partner and the father of her children, fear and anxiety set in as she faced the questions about why they weren’t the couple that everyone thought they were.
Handling the chaos
Because her children were still young, Stephanie had to carry on in front of neighbors, friends, and teachers without anyone knowing what was going on inside. Cataclysmic changes were occurring as she entered a time of spiritual, emotional, and mental gymnastics to get to a point of stability. She learned to meditate and use yoga, exercise, and therapy to save herself. It took a dramatic, life - changing moment for her to realize that she had the answers and peace within herself. It was a rebirth and a surrender that became the starting point to remembering who she is as a person.
Freedom as a sexual being
With her newfound freedom in giving up social constraints, Stephanie decided to experiment with sexuality to find her real, original self. She explored a new way of being by reading books and learning about receiving instead of always giving. Learning to ask for what she wanted and needed in all aspects of life had a healing effect on her soul. Freedom came to Stephanie to explore life and expression in all planes of her life.
The evolution of art
A complete evolution occurred in Stephanie’s art as her regular life was changing and evolving. She found her voice as an artist in a bold, new way. She threw off social constraints in her art just as she threw them off concerning the expectations in her personal life. As she slowed down the creative process, she found more beauty and fulfillment in the creation of her art. Finding the line between successful art and unsuccessful art, which she attributes to her study of Buddhism, helped her understand creativity in a new way.
The role of art for women
Art goes hand - in - hand with creativity, creation, giving birth, and womanhood. It’s all connected, and sexuality is the driving force behind all that we create. Making art becomes an incredible adventure. After all that Stephanie has gone through, her art became the expression of feminine roles, oppression, finding herself, and returning to her wild.
Highlights of this episode:
Resources mentioned:
Stephanie’s website: www.bellmayart.com
Find Stephanie on Instagram: @SBellMay
Visit www.nextfem.com to find out more about Stephanie’s BOGO offer on in - person or Zoom art retreats.
Infidel: My Life by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Fem Five:
Favorite book to recommend for women? “Infidel: My Life by Ayaan Hirsi Ali”
Favorite self - care hack? “Swimming in the ocean on a daily basis.”
Best piece of advice and who gave it to you? “A Buddhist therapist said that emotions are like waves; just as easily as they come, they go.”
Female CEO or thought leader you’re into right now? ”AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and other prominent female world leaders”
One piece of advice you’d give your five years younger self? “Feel the guilt, but keep going.”