In this motivational episode, host Jill interviews Lilian Sue, PR Coach, Publicist, Educational Speaker and Author specializing in 1-on-1 support for creative entrepreneurs. Lilian emphasizes the importance of mindset and healthy coping mechanisms in achieving business goals.
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Transcript
Transcript
Welcome to the World Order Showcase podcast.
Today we are talking with Lilian Sue.
Lilian has kind of an interesting.
Thing that she does.
Out there and.
I'm going to.
Let her tell.
You all about it.
So tell us about it, Lilian.
Thanks for having me, Jill.
I’m a PR coach and publicist and I focus on empowering creative entrepreneurs primarily women
To push past limiting.
Beliefs of fear, anxiety, and impostor syndrome.
To gain the confidence to.
Build and launch successful PR.
Campaigns to help reach their goals in in business.
And I do this through one-on-one coaching sessions. I have a coaching program. I do workshops and webinars.
As well as campaign services to really help them learn what's or well recognize first of all, what's triggering their limiting beliefs of the fear, the stress, the anxiety, the impostor syndrome.
How to push past those limiting beliefs and build healthy coping mechanisms and then to gain the confidence to really learn all the different building blocks and the tools and resources to build those building blocks to launch PR campaigns in order to really share their stories and.
Get out there and.
And build a rapport with both media.
And global audiences to elevate their businesses to the next level.
And I started doing this because in my line of work as a publicist, I had noticed that a lot of the clients that I was interacting with and the people that would come to me for discovery calls had a lot of the same.
Mindset blocks.
There was a lot of fear surrounding getting out there and sharing their stories.
There was a lot of anxiety surrounding, you know, as an entrepreneur.
Am I going to be wasting my time, energy and money when I can't guarantee results?
Doing PR and marketing?
And then there was a lot of impostor syndrome, which came up a lot.
Because they would see a lot of fellow entrepreneurs on social media reaching milestones, getting results, and they compared their journeys a.
Lot and because of that.
They felt like frauds.
They felt like impostors, and all of this would accumulate in.
Preventing them from moving forward with growing their businesses, it would lead to in their personal lives a lot of additional anxiety stress.
They're not sleeping well, they're not eating well, they're really coming at it from a place of.
So a lot of what I do is really focused on mindset because my philosophy is, is you don't have a strong mindset and you don't have the coping mechanisms that are going to help you push past these blocks when they come up, you're always going to be stuck.
It doesn't matter how good the strategy.
You build is.
It's never going to go anywhere, because if you're coming at it from a place of fear, all you're going to do is sabotage yourself and sabotage anything you try to do.
I couldn't agree more. That's.
When you attract people that are just like.
You and they're living in fear, too, and those aren't really your ideal clients.
No, absolutely not.
Do you?
Do you have like?
A quick tip for people in terms of like.
Well, let me ask.
You this what?
What modalities do you use?
To help them with their mindset.
I tend to lean.
Into what I use a lot for myself and my own mindset work.
So that's things like affirmations and mantras, guided meditation and also self hypnosis.
Is really helpful.
One of the things that I found that works for me.
That I haven't necessarily talked to clients about is EFT, so tapping to really while I'm seeing those affirmations to really sort of.
Get it to sink in and I use.
You know, I promote a lot of this to my clients because I know how it works for me, right?
And I.
Know how it helps?
Reinforce things when I get triggered by, you know.
Stress, anxiety, fear.
Like I allow myself to sit with it for a little bit.
Recognize it for what it is and where it's coming from.
Why I've been triggered and then I said, you know, now I have these coping mechanisms and.
These tools to help me.
Push past that in order to keep moving forward.
And I think what really makes what?
I do unique.
Is because I understand where my clients are going.
So many of my clients come to me and they say, you know, why can't I let my project or my books speak for me?
It should be about the work it.
It shouldn't really be about who I am and about me.
And I lived that way for the over a decade.
You know, I spent so much time relying on things like testimonials and case studies, and I said.
You know that.
Gives people an idea of what I do.
It should be enough and it took me a long time to realize.
Wait a minute.
That tells people what I do, which.
In the big scheme of things, doesn't.
Really matter because there's a lot of people.
That do what I.
Do what it doesn't tell them is.
What they can expect from working with me or who I am as a person, and why that matters.
So when I started sharing my story, the people that it resonated with, it started coming to me and we started having these conversations about.
Just the fear of.
Getting out there, the fear of being judged, the fear of being rejected or dismissed and.
Playing small because we fear the unknown because there are no guarantees and I say to my clients.
When you are running a business, you're running a brand and you're wanting to make an impact.
A positive impact with what it is.
That you do.
The worst thing you can do is allow your comfort zone to allow you into a place of complacency because complacency is the death of growth and the more complacent.
To become the more.
You become and you're not.
Reaching your goals, you're not making the impact you want to make, so I think for me, what really makes my journey unique and how I work with clients unique is because I'm with them every step of the way.
And as I'm giving them these tools and these resources, these are tools and resources I use on a daily basis, right?
So it's not like.
I am promoting something that I've never used.
It's not like I'm promoting something that I don't do myself.
I'm right there with them.
When you talk about complacency, what does that look?
Like to you?
Going on Autopilot, not recognizing and really appreciating the abundance of what we have and showing gratitude for how far you've come and what you've learned and the people that have helped you get there and always sort of.
Focusing on.
Not your growth, but.
Chasing things in the wrong way.
I mean, I've been there as well, coming at it from a mindset of scarcity and fear and desperation means that you tend to latch onto things that worked for other people.
Your mindset becomes instead of thinking about you and your goals, it becomes well, that worked for so and so.
It should probably.
Work for me as well.
And you get scattershot direction just into.
You know, I'm not thinking about growing the right way.
I'm not thinking about.
What am I actually doing?
I'm just kind of going through the motions because other people or other experts have said this is the way you absolutely have to do things and I'm not taking agency into myself on what am I actually doing that's making a positive impact.
They're being complacent and just.
Taking what someone else has said as gospel and doing exactly the same thing as everybody else because it's.
Worked for everyone.
Else and what I do with my clients and what I do with myself is really focusing on.
What do I need to do for me?
What do I need to do for my?
Business how am I?
Tailoring it to reach what it is that I want to.
Do because ultimately.
Complacency leads to.
You're not growing, you're stagnating.
Sometimes you'll get and.
Eventually that will lead it breeds things like resentment.
When you're comparing yourself to other people, and when you do that, then it becomes a game of.
You're beating yourself up.
You're not showing yourself kindness.
You are saying things like why am I not reaching those milestones within this time frame?
Why is my progress not the same as someone else’s?
Rather than really focusing on?
Their own journey. So
It is a lifelong process and I tell my clients that the difficulty in this journey in terms of how you are approaching business, approaching business and approaching marketing is that yes, there are no guarantees, but these reward is how are you learning and growing?
What are the different?
Methodologies and ways that you are diversifying.
Building relationships, sharing your story, and really learning.
What works for you?
And embracing that owning those decisions instead of feeling like you are being pressured to do something because some expert told you to.
That's one thing I will never do, I say to my clients.
This is the.
Framework and what we're going to do with this framework is take these pieces.
And tailor it specifically to what it is you want to do.
Because that's the only way that it can work.
I don't sell.
Guarantees I don't sell blanket solutions and say that it you know this will.
Work for you if you do it this way, I say, here's the framework and in order for it to work for you.
This is how we have to customize it, tailor it and make it specific.
To your goals.
That's very interesting.
I know you've worked in a lot of different.
I guess you'd call them fields doing PR work and one of.
Them had to.
Be horror movies, yeah.
Tell us how.
You got started with that and a little.
Bit about your experience there.
It's interesting because initially I had.
Actually started my business doing social media strategy and campaign execution.
And also writing copies, so doing copy for websites print collateral, some radio ads, that kind of thing.
And I had entrepreneurs come to me and say, you know, it's PR something to do because I need somebody to write my news release for me and I got tired of telling people no.
So I thought.
Hey, you know, why not?
Try this out. Let's see.
What it turns out to be?
Let's see if I like it.
Let's see if I enjoy it.
Let's see.
If I can.
Make a positive impact here.
So I cut my teeth, initially interning and then subcontracting for an agency that had satellite offices in LA and New York as well as here in Vancouver and through that.
I got to experience working in fashion and beauty, sports and fitness and indie film and television was one of the sectors that we had clients in.
So through that I was doing campaigns for clients that had movies that were going to the Toronto International Film Festival as an example.
And I really started to enjoy it because surprisingly, I really started to get into the genre of psychological horror, even as a fan.
So because of that, I later branched out on my own and started doing.
Film and television projects with my own clients and really built a.
I guess foundation of working with film makers and TV producers and things like that and helping them.
Build their reputations on the festival circuit.
I had a client who had a short horror film and she was doing a panel.
At San Diego Comic Con.
And she said to me, hey, I know this is last minute, but yeah, since I'm going to Comic Con, can we do a short like, week long campaign just to remind folks that, hey, I'm, I'm going there.
So I did the campaign for 10 days, reaching out to my media contacts.
You know, these are.
Bloggers, reviewers, podcasters, just overall fans of the genre.
And because of that, that campaign and the notice that she was going to Comic Con actually put it over the edge and landed her a streaming deal with the shutter, which is a genre specific international streaming platform.
And it was a non exclusive deal for two years that we landed because.
Of that.
I love indie film.
It's incredibly rewarding just to see the types of results that my clients can get, and it's my goal to help them continue through that education and empowerment and also working with them hands on and directly to really get their projects out there, land those distribution.
Wheels get more eyeballs on their projects and hopefully you know, sell them to distributors as well so that they can make more money and just continue creating great projects.
That it's really interesting.
So when it comes to PR, what?
What does that really entail?
I mean.
I know that sounds like a weird question but.
In a nutshell, PR comes down to storytelling and relationship.
Because basically what it is where it the power of it comes from and what makes it different from e-mail and social media.
Now, with e-mail and social media, you're basically relying on yourself to create that content.
To get that, get out there and meet people, and the hope is, is that if you build enough of an.
Audience with e-mail subscribers and with your social media audience.
They will share your content for you and that's how you build an audience.
That's how you get more customers for your business.
With PR.
You figure out, first of all what your story is and when I say story, I'm not just talking about, you know, this is what my project is about XYZ.
I always encourage my clients to dig a little bit deeper, get introspective and really get comfortable with the idea of talking about their entrepreneurship.
So why did you get started?
How did you get started?
Who inspired you?
What motivates you?
What's the impact?
You want to make.
Why did you create this project and when you have a solid story to tell, then it's about figuring.
So who would you want to share that with?
Who do you want to get in front of?
Who is your ideal target audience and the reason why you want to do that using PR?
Is because #1.
When you build these relationships with these media outlets.
Whether it's a writer, a podcaster or recorder, a magazine, a major television news station.
You are.
Leveraging the relationships you're building with them to get in front of their audiences, and because these platforms have spent months, if not years, cultivating trust and credibility with their audiences as they're building their reputations, you appearing on these platforms.
Is a way for that trust and that credibility to transfer to you and your brand and your story so their audiences will see you.
In an interview on a podcaster, see you in studio and be like ohh they're featured on you know the show that I watch or this podcast.
I listen to.
Maybe they're worth checking out.
Maybe I should follow them, maybe.
I should look into.
What they do, and maybe I'll buy from them.
And on top of that, the reason why it's so powerful is because these platforms are creating this high quality, trustworthy, reputable content on your behalf.
You don't have to do it.
They're doing it for you.
And that elevates your content strategy to the next level because now you are sharing content that these platforms have created for you and it's not just you continually tuning your own board.
It's people with end platforms with reputations and clout behind them that are supporting you and.
Amplifying your message and the last thing.
That makes it really powerful is the.
Fact the fact of the matter is, is that none of us as entrepreneurs.
Have the time, the energy or the money to connect with each customer one-on-one. It's in.
So PR is kind of that shortcut that will help you springboard using these media platforms, springboard towards building genuine connections and a rapport with your audiences by appearing on these platforms, doing events.
Is the same thing anytime you do.
A virtual panel.
Anytime you appear live on stage to.
Do a Q.
And A or even if you are participating in a conference as a vendor and you're selling your products on the exhibition floor, you are using that event as that springboard platform to get you in front of these.
Audience members and these customers that you wouldn't otherwise have access to if you were just relying on social media and e-mail.
Wow, that was a lot.
Really fascinating.
And the difference between PR and social media.
That was always.
A little fuzzy for me.
So how would one?
Actually break into the PR venue versus.
Like just social media.
I think we all do social media because it's the thing we know, but.
PR is kind of.
A different animal.
And to me, it's really interesting.
I'm and I don't know how.
You get.
On that path.
It comes down to again really solidifying what your story is and getting comfortable with sharing it.
So not only do you have to figure out what your story is getting comfortable with, it is really about getting introspective with what your beliefs are around it.
What are your subconscious thoughts?
What are your mindset blocks in terms of the fears and the anxieties that may be preventing you from moving forward with sharing it and?
Adopting these healthy coping mechanisms to work for you in terms of, like I said, the affirmations, the mantras, meditations, self hypnosis, even EFT and tapping.
So once you do that, then you're able to.
Position yourself and plan out your goals.
So you have your story.
It's like, OK, what are the goals that?
I have with.
It, and I'm not talking about like I hear this from a lot of entrepreneurs who say I want more.
Hey, that's fantastic.
Everyone wants more sales.
The thing is.
Is that's not specific enough and there's no time.
Frame to it to give you to.
That will give you something to work towards.
So if sales is your goal, what are the ways you can diversify reaching that?
Do you want to do events?
Do you want to establish yourself as an expert in your field?
If that's the case.
Are you looking to do work like conduct workshops?
Are you looking to be featured on the panels?
How many of those types of events, those associations, those conferences, can you?
Go after in a three month to six month period.
So now you have a goal to work towards that will help you gain more sales or build a reputation as a thought leader.
Now that you do, now that you have that, then it's a matter of, OK, I have my goal now.
It's figuring out who among these people do I want.
To get in front of.
Because not every conference is created equal, not every association is created equal and not all of them are focused on who your target audience is.
If, for example, you want to reach out to.
Women in business, female entrepreneurs, and you want to build a reputation amongst them as someone who is knowledgeable in the field of.
Life coaching and life coaching as it pertains to mental health issues in particular.
So then you look at.
What associations?
What podcasts?
What media outlets out there are catered towards entrepreneurship for women?
What about mental health issues in relation to women?
So you these are kind of the areas that you can do outreach to, but you can only do that and figure that out.
To build a strategy to reach those because you have your goals already of this is how I want to increase sales or this is how I want to build my reputation as a thought leader.
So it really is kind of a multi step process and it takes time.
And some of the entrepreneurs that have come to me have often.
Expressed concerns over how much time it's going to take.
You know they're looking for.
Ballpark figures on how many hours I would spend on something like this and.
I say to.
Well, I can't give you an exact figure because that's different for.
Every single person.
Someone who has.
Their goals, ready to go?
Who can build the story pitches and the media kits in order to send to these contacts that they have.
Is going to be a lot farther along and it won't take them as long as someone who has a lot of fear and anxiety surrounding getting out there because they have more to work through before actually building the building blocks of a strategy.
And I also say to them that it's, you know.
It looks overwhelming and it looks big and scary when you're thinking about building a strategy.
But the fact of the matter is, is I would never tell you that you have to chain yourself to the computer for, you know, 20 hours a week in order to get things done.
If you only have an hour a week, take that hour, sit down, you know.
Brainstorm your story.
Really look at.
Sit with yourself and even start journaling out on you know what are my fears and anxieties and what's stressing me out about getting out there and sharing my story further along on the process.
You can do the same thing with what your goals are, and brainstorming who you want to get in front of to Share your story in order to meet those goals.
You don't have to take 30-40 hours a week to really make an impact on this. You can do it incrementally and even just take an hour a week to make that take that step forward. Make that progress.
The whole drip.
A drip bull.
A rock or a mountain.
Given enough time.
And it's just like it's the consistency over the big chunks of time that sometimes people just don't have that.
When they're getting started, they want they want.
They need to do something on the side.
So, when it comes to your coaching, I know you do a lot of mindset work, but what what's the end result that people get from working with you?
They not only.
Feel empowered and confident to move forward.
They also have tools and resources to move forward with doing things like creating their own media pitches, developing the media kit, creating their media list and actually learning how to manage a campaign and.
Build those relationships.
So, it's not just about giving them tools and resources to.
Push past mindset blocks and build healthy coping mechanisms, but it's also about giving them tools and resources to.
Create tangible assets that they can take with them moving forward.
So, every so that when they have that knowledge on how to build a media kit, they don't have to do it from.
Scratch again, this is just something that they can take with them on other campaigns or other ideas, and to keep the momentum.
And as you mentioned the.
Consistency going with getting their stories out there.
So coaching clients who come to me for coaching, it's really a twofold thing.
So, the mindset.
Piece is something that they can take.
Into other aspects of their business as well as their personal lives.
But the business side is also about learning how to develop these tangible assets that they can take with them to develop further campaigns and further strategies down the road to keep the momentum going and keep their projects top of mind.
With key audiences, because one thing I always tell them is.
Your audience from six months ago is not going to stay stagnant.
You want it to grow, you want it to change, and subsequently, what that means is someone who discovers you and your Business Today.
Will not have known what you've been doing the last six months or the last year or the last couple years, so it's important to develop that consistency to get in front of them in ways that.
Honor your energy. Prioritize. You know how you're feeling and prioritize self-care in a way that you can keep that consistency going so that you're not burning yourself up after a.
Couple of weeks.
And that is a great danger for many coaches out there, like trying to do everything themselves, and they're very scattered.
What's the one thing that you want to?
Leave this audience with what's your one bit of advice.
I would say.
That when it.
Comes to PR.
Anyone who's looking to start the best thing.
You can do.
Sit down and ask your.
Why do I want to do this?
Am I prepared to share these different parts of my story, keeping in mind, and this is something that I've spoken about a lot in podcasts on recently, that there is a line between what's personal and what's private.
And that you control the parts of your story that you want to share when you get out there.
And this is something that I really emphasize in my upcoming nonfiction PR book that I'm writing as well.
This is my first book that I've ever written.
And I focus on these aspects, particularly on mindset.
Because I recognized that there weren't books out there that focused on that when it came to PR and marketing and that so many of the books also catered towards corporate companies and fellow publicists that work in corporate communications, crisis communication or government relations.
So, this book.
Is really about.
Closing the gap.
For entrepreneurs and giving them the tools, the resources and the real world examples to help them push forward.
On developing stronger mindsets, solidifying their goals and building these strategies to make these goals and basically.
For anyone looking to start out, it's really something that allows you to sit down with it.
Refer back to it and always helps you answer the question.
Why do I want?
To do this.
Am I prepared to do this if I'm not prepared?
What are the things that are stopping me from moving forward and how am I going to move past them rather than staying stuck, staying stagnant and not growing my brand the way I want to?
It's really interesting.
The connection between mindset and PR.
It's a unique.
Perspective to me and I really appreciate you sharing all of this with us today.
It's been very fascinating to me.
So, Lilian, how can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about what you're doing and?
How you can help them?
They can always reach me on Instagram at Lilian Sue copywriter, PR.
That's all.
One word.
I'm also on LinkedIn.
Just Lilian Sue. They can check out my website at inretrospectwritingservices.com and send me an e-mail as well through my website.
I'm always available to help or answer any questions any.
That has.
That's awesome.
Thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your information and the connection between mindset and PR and how PR works.
It's been really helpful.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thanks for having me.
And again, if there's anyone that.
Has any questions?
I'm always available to help.