The Real Story Behind Dauntless PR

In this NEW episode of Dauntless PR Unfiltered, Catherine Ball and I talk about The Real Story Behind Dauntless PR.

Two very different journeys, and one common goal - getting incredible voices heard 🤩🔥

Take our Media Icon Archetype Quiz that shows you the media version of you 🤩

Shows you exactly how your energy lands best in the media and how to use that to your advantage.

Click here - https://dauntlesspr.com/dauntless-pr-personality-quiz

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to Dauntless PR Unfiltered. What we're going to talk about today is the real story behind Dauntless PR. It's been a ride and a half, hasn't it, Catherine?

Speaker 0:12

Yeah. I've worked out I'm coming up to my sixth, six-year anniversary of working with you, Luana, and it's been, well, it's been a real journey, but it's been. We were saying in another conversation that it feels like it was yesterday in one sense and it feels like a lifetime in another.

Speaker 1 0:34

It really does. It's like the blink of an eye and ten lifetimes all at once.

Speaker 0:40

I genuinely can't even imagine us not knowing each other. Like I know that we obviously didn't, but like I've got to the point now, I can't kind of imagine. I'm gonna like, it's quite funny how Luana and I actually came about almost completely by chance, but I am a big believer that these things all happen for a reason. That we were on a Facebook group together, as she as lots of people were. I feel like Facebook groups were even bigger back then than they are now. Lots of people have moved on to to other platforms now. And all that was happening is people were following each other's Twitter accounts, and my Twitter account, I don't even have a Twitter account anymore, but my Twitter account at the time was at cat copywriting, and Luana went, oh, I need a copywriter. And then it's kind of a bit of a the rest is history. If I hadn't have put the word copywriting in my Twitter handle, we would not be here today. Because I started off doing like I always joke that I started off doing like odds and sods of stuff, and then I just like invented myself a job with Dauntless.

Speaker 1 1:50

That's exact, that is exactly what happened. So there was no job going. I needed some copywriting done. I contacted Catherine before I know it. Catherine is an essential part of Dauntless, she has made herself absolutely invaluable. But what happened was that I had the experience like from the front end of PR, being the one in the interviews, translating it into business and everything like that. But you were on the other end, Catherine. So when both of us came together, like you with your uh it's 26 over 26 years in journalism now, isn't it?

Speaker 2:33

But at the time it was, I don't know, I think it would have been the last 20 years back then.

Speaker 1 2:42

Yeah, yeah, it will have been, wouldn't it? Because it's 26. But you know, like having that, having our different perspectives combined was like an explosion, wasn't it?

Speaker 2:56

Yeah. And it's one, and it is one of those funny things where it's so, and it's like with anything, isn't it, where things so very narrow don't happen. So to put a bit of context, so some of you might be going, oh, six years ago, oh, I remember something that happened six years ago, COVID hit and the whole world went to shit. So the first conversation I had with Luana, she was very happy in Portugal, having a whale of a time, but I remember very like specifically us saying to each other on this call, oh, it's all a bit scary, isn't it? All this stuff that's talking about COVID. At that point, I think everyone was still in a bit of denial that it was going to be as like life-changing, world-changing as it was. We were all kind of like, oh, don't know what's happening with the news. So, oh, that's all a bit unsure. And at the time, I was doing a lot of work for a big parenting magazine in the UK. But the idea of doing like bits and pieces of extra work was like great. And then I think you ended up having to fly back in a complete like hurry back to the UK because they were about to like ground all the flights. The magazine didn't happen straight away, but was a casualty of COVID because people weren't buying print magazines. So the the brand I was working for stayed as an online thing. So suddenly I had all this like time I didn't have before, and I was like, I could see that what you were doing was amazing and your experience of being in the media, but I could also see that I had a lot of things to share from the other side that would take that to the next level because I hadn't really I had done bits and pieces of PR for people, and I had obviously, but my main experience was in journalism, but I could absolutely see that this all this stuff that I just accepted as well, this is how it is, that lots of other people didn't know that, and that knowing that would actually really help with the results, help with the strategy, help with all of that, and that we could really like mould our two experiences together, put them into like a new thing, because at the time it wasn't Daunt's PR when I first started talking to you, but we could like create something using both of our expertise, and that would just become something kind of unstoppable.

Speaker 1 5:34

It is, you know, and we all of these years we've really played to each of our strengths and each you know, and to each of our perspectives, and we always come in with like different viewpoints because we've got well, not different, you know what I mean, we've got different perspectives on things. So like you're the one who's used to having all of these pictures in your inbox. I'm used to how it feels on the other end of that, and what happens when the piece goes out, like on an emotional level, what happens, and then on a practical level, how to make all of that work.

Speaker 6:14

So oh yeah, you've definitely like I would never, I do now because of Dauntless, but I would never have thought about things like leveraging media pieces. To me, media pieces were something I was looking for, good stories, interesting things. I was looking at from a journalist perspective of what are the things that media outlets are interested in, what what are the things that readers are going to want to know, what's going to entertain them, what's going to inform them. But I didn't ever used to think about it from the point of view of how could this help somebody in their business? Whereas obviously that's something that is much more your expertise. I think we learn a lot from each other. We probably know a lot more about the other side from working with each other. But I never had to think about that. It didn't occur to me. They probably just didn't care. Like I would feature people. Obviously, I would it would be great if I wrote a piece about somebody and they had a book and then they told me, Oh, my book sales went up massively. That would be like, oh, brilliant. That I'm I'm really pleased for you. But as a journalist, that's not your concern. You're kind of like, oh, what's the next thing that's I can talk about? What's the the next interesting piece that I can do for the audience? So you're not worrying about like, oh, has this helped somebody's business? Has this giving them giving them the publicity? So it's really interesting now to me to kind of think about it from a totally different angle.

Speaker 1 7:50

Yeah, completely. And why is it, Catherine? Like, what is it? But I know that you have always known that you wanted to be a journalist, like even from a very, very young age. What is it about journalism and getting stories out there and stuff? Like, what is it about that that you knew that that's what you wanted to do from such an early age?

Speaker 8:15

Yeah, so I am one of those annoying people that literally picked something to do, and that was it. I was doing it, and I was completely relentless in doing it. Um and I kind of never realized that that's not what the normal situation was. I think you know, you tend to think of like however you do it, you're like, oh, that's that's the normal thing. So when I was really young, actually when I very, very first was teeny tiny, I wanted to be a pig farmer until I realized that you don't just keep pigs for fun. That was my and then I was like, oh, oh, oh, that's what pig farming's about. I thought it was just like I like pigs, I can just keep a load as pets. So that was like when I was about five or six. But but then when I I soon realized that I could write really well. And I'm not saying that to be arrogant, like that was just something I found super easy. And people kept sort of saying to me, Oh, you should be a writer, you should write books, things like that. But then more than that, I realized that I was incredibly curious. And Luana can attest to this. If something happens and I don't know the answer, I will not stop until I find out what's going on. I always want to know what is happening. I totally use that to my advantage sometimes. But also, I really want, I really liked the idea. So a couple of things I really liked. The idea of telling people what's going on in the world around them. So I I didn't ever like not knowing what was going on, and I also wanted to help other people know what was going on. So there was that kind of driving force of okay, what do we need to know about this? And then, like, I'll tell other people what they need to know about this. But there was also, I really, really loved people's stories. So people often think with journalism they focus purely on the writing side of it, but it's actually much more of a people-focused job than that. It's how can it's like having conversations with people and pulling out from them what their messages are, giving them a voice. So a lot of people that I would have interviewed over the years had really, really important stories to tell, and they had never told them in public, they'd never been heard or listened to. And I built up a bit of a reputation. So for the first 10 years of my career, I was working in news, so it was very much like what's going on right now. So sometimes I'd be covering, you know, crimes, court, disasters, you know, if there'd been a flood, things like that. So it was much more kind of pacey news stuff, but I did get a bit of a reputation that I could be sent to anything and I would come back with like some human interest story. So I was once sent to. She'd been trying for a baby for 16 years, had given up hope completely, found out she was pregnant, and did like 50 pregnancy tests before she believed it, and ended up doing this like really great feature with her show sharing her like miracle baby. But that was just because I'm a nosy bugger, and I was like, Oh, tell me all about this. And then I think she must have said something to me, like, oh, you know, this he'll always be like special to me because I it was such a battle to have him, and then I'd gone, oh, okay, like and have this whole conversation, and that's when I realised that that's what I really enjoyed is people and their stories and like bringing them to the world, and that's still what I do now in that I speak to our clients and I help them pull out what are their amazing stories that they've got to share. But you know, one of the first things that when I first said I wanted to be a journalist, everyone was like, Oh, it's really hard to get into. That was the stock response, and bearing in mind that there's a lot of women in journalism now, but it was still quite a male-dominated field when I first went into it. It was very kind of jobs for the boys, you know, like that kind of thing. And I just remember, I don't think I realised how relentless I was until I looked back now as a 40-something-year-old woman going, actually, for for a 15-year-old or whatever. Like, I did my first work experience on a paper at 15. I was did work experience on The Guardian at 16. I was, I did some work experience with the at the time the Guardian's like North of England correspondent who mainly worked out of a shed in his back garden in Leeds, which was just amazing. Oh. His wife had been the editor of Vogue at some, or like whether the editor or an editor, but she'd been like a high-up person at Vogue. And it was just this intoxicating, amazing world where I was like meeting all these people who their anecdotes were just off the charts. They knew famous people, they had amazing things to tell. And the more I did, the more I realized like this is the world I want to be in, like I want to do this. So I literally tested outlets to like let me come and I would go and I would do work experience, and I, you know, I did TV, I did radio. I soon realized TV was not for me after I spent about goodness knows how many hours watching them film a segment where they were literally throwing a book down onto the table and throw doing it again and again to try and get like the start of a news bulletin. And then I did my work experience. I'm gonna name drop now Sophie Rayworth, who is very famous BBC news anchor. That's who I did. I was shadowing her for ages on my work experience when she was just starting out at the BBC. Oh wow. And so, like that whole thing of even though I knew it was an amazing experience, but straight away I was like, yeah, I don't want to go into TV, I haven't got the patience for this. But but so yeah, just like went into that whole world, and the more I did, the more I realized, like I say, it was about people, their stories, sharing them with the world, but also like giving people things that would help them. So like something I used to love doing is when people would contact the newspaper with a problem and we would sort it out for them. And it wasn't something that I would be like, oh, I will sort it out. But if they if they were say living in a council house covered in mould, I would make sure that as well as covering the story about the problem, I would speak to the people and be like, come on, what are you doing? And there was that side of things. I'm not going to paint myself as some like superhero, but it was it was much more of a human experience than I think most people realise journalism is. I think people imagine that we go into it to like, I don't know, get one over on people and misquote people and have some like.

Speaker 1 16:24

People can be hilarious.

Speaker 16:27

But actually, nearly every journalist I've ever met, I mean, there's there's always going to be a few dickheads. There's there isn't everything in the world. Oh, in every, yeah. But most people I know actually really want to help their community, like share important things. If they write about a topic, you know, I I spent years as a parent in journalists because I was a parent, I had loads of kids, and I was like, God, this is hard. Like people don't people don't tell you a lot of this stuff. So I'm gonna write articles on the stuff that we should talk about, like the things that are actually gonna help people like me. Um, and I think that was a a big driving thing is what what do I what do I want to know? And if I want to know it, like other people are gonna want to know it as well.

Speaker 1 17:10

Yes, yeah. So your drive is always about like improving people's lives, and that's why, like, when you came to Dauntless, like that's where the match was, wasn't it? We both wanted to change the world in a positive way, to get positive messages out there, to give people's voices bigger platforms.

Speaker 17:34

But you've got, I I love your story, Loana, because you kind of have a totally different, whereas I was just knew what I wanted to do, not from day one, I wasn't a newborn going, I'm gonna be a journalist, but as soon as I really remember, I was like, that is it, I'm gonna do it. Whereas you had like a much more, a much different kind of journey, but one that has obviously brought brought you to knowing everything that you know now. So you needed to go through that to have that expertise.

Speaker 1 18:01

Completely, and just to like I never even considered PR, ever. Not because I ever thought, oh, PR, that isn't something I'd want to do, but because it never occurred to me. Like it just wasn't, I guess I never thought it would be possible for like I I just I just didn't get it. But when I started experiencing that world, then instantly I was like, oh my god, like this is amazing, this is exciting, I love it. And the way it happened was that I was working as an actress and I was working for an actors agency, and I was given the job for doing PR for the actors, which I absolutely loved. And I can't tell you how much I loved it, but I ended up leaving. I didn't I didn't last there long, and it was because there was a big clash of values. I was asked to do things that I wasn't comfortable with, and I'm not gonna pretend it was easy, okay, because I loved it so much. It was probably because in my background I always felt like I didn't really belong, like I was the outcast. And here I really felt like I belonged. Like it was like a bubble, like a family. I loved it so much. So it was really, really hard for me to go, no, like this isn't right for me. And when I did leave, it's not like it's not like I went, right, I'm gonna set up in PR now. I didn't. I went into the acting industry first, further into the acting industry. I set up an acting school, started delivering like all of that. But what I did naturally was throughout that time, was I just started naturally getting people onto television. So I'm probably the opposite to you, Catherine. I just love like TV. That's my main thing that I love. I'd love being on set, I don't mind the repetitive nature, like I I just love how each take becomes comes together, and I love the atmosphere on set, and I just find the whole thing so exciting. But anyway, I'd get people booked onto television, radio, all of that stuff. And of course, I was getting my own press from what I'd learned from that agency, but I excluded a few parts that I didn't align with. And I got my own TV show for that was based just on me and my acting academy at the time, and it was on local TV, you know, it was a local school, yeah, and it was like it was a mini-series that was all all about me, my philosophies. They came to film in the school, like it was just absolutely amazing, and I saw, like, I witnessed the difference that something like that can have on a business, like massively, because it wasn't just that TV show, right? I was always on TV or on the radio or in the papers doing different things. And because I remember when I set up that business, I started, I wasn't even on, I was on social media, I think, but I never used it for business. I didn't have the courage to do all of that yet. But I did run Facebook ads at the time. And I remember there was one point, and it was when a bunch of press had gone out, and my Facebook ads suddenly went from performing at one level to performing like 10 times better. And that was when everything kind of exploded, and I saw the difference that the press was making. And at the same time, I was getting the, you know, getting the clients booked here, there, and everywhere. And they were loving it. And it never occurred. This is gonna sound crazy, but it never occurred to me that what I was doing was PR. It never occurred to me, Catherine, until you came along and said, This is PR, call it PR.

Speaker 22:15

Yeah, I can't, I'm not even sure what I remember when we've had the first conversation, you very much didn't say, Oh, I'm running a PR agency, I'm doing this. It was kind of like, oh, we're doing these things for clients. And as we talked, I was kind of like, oh no, no, this this definitely is PR. Like, this is what you are. You have, I think what I love about your speech, you kind of you were doing it instinctively rather than it wasn't something that you were like, I'm gonna learn how to do this, I'm gonna do this. You were doing what came naturally to you and what was kind of instinctive, and that's the thing, and it's the the best bits about what really draw people into doing things aren't the things that can be taught. I always used to say this when I was at various points of my journalism career, I would be involved in like training reporters, and I would often that I would there would be two types of people. There would be the people who could write amazingly, but had no real people skills, didn't really have much natural curiosity, didn't really care about somebody's story. They could, they could absolutely like their spelling and grammar was amazing, and they could they could rewrite things really well, but they didn't have that skill where you could like throw them into a crowded room and they would come out with a brilliant story. And then you would have some people, obviously, the ideal is that you get people who are brilliant at both sides, but you would also get people who maybe their spelling wasn't brilliant, you know, maybe they actually were a bit clumsy in how they wrote, but they knew how to ask the right questions and get the stories and that sort of things. And I would always say, if I could get of the people I'm training, I would rather have the people who needed to be taught how to write than the people who needed to be taught how to be curious or ask questions or relate to people. You can teach good news writing, you know, you can take somebody who isn't brilliant at that and show them the tools and techniques that they need to become brilliant at that. It's very hard to take someone who has very little curiosity about anything and say, I want you to care, I want you to care about that person and what their story is. Yeah. Because that's not really something that can be taught. That's like an instinct, that's like part of you. And I think with you, Luana, you had like it were your instincts were already like leading you that way. It was just then we it was when we started Dauntless, it was like, how can we actually like refine this into like a proper thing that's gonna become well what we are today?

Speaker 1 25:02

Yeah, exactly. And something that we definitely have had in common then and still do now is our obsession with people's stories, what drives them, and the impact that that can have on the world. It's really exciting, isn't it, to think about the ripple effect that's going on each and every day. And like, do you know what? I skipped from so many jobs, I skipped from job to job, I skipped from business to business before I found the thing that I knew that I was really born for. And what hit me one day was that I'm not the messenger. Well, I am the messenger, I've got my own message, but more than that, I was the amplifier. So I couldn't figure out there were so many different things that I was so, so passionate about, but I couldn't figure out which one to go for. So I kept like dipping from one thing to another and shifting. And yeah, when it hit me, I think that's the big thing that we had in common was that shared goal of wanting to get people's stories out there for that because the ripple effect is insane. We'll never know the true impact, will we? Like of all of our clients going out there with their positive messages and that carrying on, you know, because it's not they'll never even hear from all of the people who they impacted, and the people surrounding them, generations, you know, the generations to come. It's crazy to think about.

Speaker 26:39

Well, there's so many things that you probably know because you read about it in a book or read about it in an article or heard about it, but and that will have maybe changed the way you think about something, it will have made you approach something differently, but you're never gonna go and tell every single person that. So that's what we mean by the ripple effect is that you know, there will be people that you change their lives and you know about it, and that's amazing. There'll also be all these like unseen things that you know I can still think now of you know, the first time you hear something and it really hits you that that's a relevant message for you, is it's such an important thing, and the only way that it will reach those people that you know you don't know which people are walking about the earth who really need to hear what you've got to say. You might have an idea in your head of the type of people that need to hear it, but you don't know which individual people you are going to change the lives of if they can understand what it is that you're saying. But by saying it and not just saying it in a small select group of people where there probably will be some people, but saying it on a global scale, saying it loudly, sharing that means that all those people that you wouldn't know existed otherwise can hear that and it can it can change their lives. And you know, some people will probably disagree with what you say, and that's part that's great. You know, we don't want to say things that everybody, generic messages that everybody can get on board with. We want those things that really like reach people, and I think both of us, another thing we've got in common is I think both of us have had moments where we haven't felt that we've got a voice that is being listened to or that we have the confidence. I mean, it will make people who work with me laugh, but I used to be terrified of like going on a video call, having a behind the scenes type of person, and like I the idea of like getting on and being on camera and talking to people filled me with dread. I remember doing quite a bit of like copywriting work way before Dauntless, and somebody suggested it was before Zoom was kind of a known thing, and it was when it was Skype, was the video thing. And somebody suggested I get on a Skype call with them, and I was just like, no, no, I'm not doing that. Just like cut it down. I wasn't even bothered that I probably lost work. I was just like, absolutely not, no, thank you. And now, of course, every day. I think it's very rare that there's a day that I'm not on Zoom talking to somebody and yeah, things, yeah, but you know, and you you were really shy as a child, weren't you, Loada? You like didn't, it's amazing to think of now because you're not shy at all.

Speaker 1 29:44

You didn't yeah. I mean, Pete, I think people expect me to be an extrovert as well. And I'm very much an invert introvert, like, but yeah, I was very, very shy, very socially anxious. You know, I didn't I I couldn't really speak to people who are outside of my close family friends. So it's been a huge journey to overcome that. And you know, something that was really it was really confusing as a kid because I was so I wanted to just blend in so much because I was terrified of everything and everyone. But at the same time, I I felt this pull towards the spotlight, and I didn't know what that was. So the first thing I went into was dancing, you know, because I didn't have to talk for dancing, and that was when I first started expressing myself, and it shows shows the difference like it shows the difference that teachers can make, right? Because I remember, and I think this is the first time that I probably harnessed my dauntless spirit. Okay, I think I was about 15 and there was a show, like a talent show at school, and I remember one of my friends was going on and dancing, and she didn't want to do it last minute. Um, she got scared, she didn't want to do it, she said, I'm not gonna do it, I'm not gonna do it. And I don't know where it came from, but that that shy little kid who wouldn't even say hi to anyone put her hand up and said, I'll do it. Didn't have a dance, I didn't have music, didn't have a costume, I just had this. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I have had that fuck it moment, and I just said, I'll do it. And I remember like the teachers looking at me and looking at each other like okay, so I borrowed a costume, I borrowed some music, and I got on and I made it up on the spot. And I remember that was the first time I felt truly seen, and I was I loved it, I loved it. And the reason I was saying that about teachers is because not long after that, I got caught scyving school. But I was skiving school to go to extra dance classes because I'd made a decision by then, like I this is like this is where I come alive because remember, I couldn't express myself any other way at that point. So that was my expression, that was when I came alive. And I got a caught, and I remember being being in the teacher's office, and she picked up the cut uh the phone and started dialing my parents on landlines, of course, at that time. While she while the phone was ringing, she said to me, Why did you do it? And I just said, because I want to be a dancer, so I work a Saturday job, I used my money so that I can buy some extra dance classes because that's gonna do me better than going to history. And she put the phone down and she said, Do you know what? I wanted to be a dancer as well, but I wasn't brave enough to go for it. And then she said, I saw you dancing last week. You have to go for this, and I want to cry thinking about it because it was such a huge thing at the time. I needed that validation at 15 years old. Like I didn't know who I was, I didn't, I was like scared of everyone and everything. So that was a huge thing for me. And it was the first time that I'd always felt drawn to the spotlight, but that was the first time I went, right, I'm gonna be in the spotlight.

Speaker 33:33

Yeah, absolutely. When so a little while ago, I can't what year do we do the Dauntless Book? We did a Dauntless book, and I actually said to Luana, I don't have a story. And then I had to like kick myself because one of the big things I always say to everybody is so some people will they'll be very clear on their message and what their business is doing, but they will say, Oh, I don't really have a story. And I always say to them, Yes, you do. Everybody's got a story, everybody's got something to say. And I remember saying to Lon, I don't really have a story. And then when I actually started to think about it, I mean, we all have an infinite number of stories for a start, but I actually did have one that kind of was a real driving point, but I hadn't really realized it until I actually sat and thought about it. So I think I had a point where I kind of was given more of a sense of, I guess, social justice and wanting to amplify the voices of the unheard, because right at the start of my career, like quite early on, I'd been doing it a little while, but I was quite badly like sexually harassed by a much older male journalist. I won't give away where I was working or anything like that, because I don't want him to pop up out of the shadows and and harass me again. But that time, and as I mentioned earlier, it was still very much like a boys' network, even though I actually was working under some absolutely kick-ass women. And the really sad thing, so when I eventually spoke to a more senior member of staff than me and told them what was going on, they and the women above them, they all had the same story. They all had had other men, and just to be clear as well, it wasn't a male journalist. I worked on the same outlet, it was somebody who worked for a different outlet than me, which kind of made them untouchable. Because at the time, any kind of sexual harassment things were like handled within companies. Like if somebody did something, they would get disciplinary action by their employer. Well, what happens when their employer is a different employer than you? Well, in my case, what happened is they didn't care. They were like, not our issue. He had a male boss and could not have cared less about what was happening. Went to the police about it because they buoyed me up and they said, We have women in the media have been putting up with this nonsense for years. Like we've all got a story, like a slightly different one. Maybe we've been harassed by like a counsellor that we have to like cover a lot in the paper, like a local politician, or maybe we've been harassed by someone within the same company. Everyone had like a similar but different story. Went to the police, and the police didn't want to know. They they actually said to me, You don't want to make a big thing of this, do you? This is going to be really awkward. Like, you have to like work in the same area of the media as this person. This is just going to be really awkward. And the police actively taught me out. I had a huge thing of evidence I'd pulled. And at that time, my voice was totally taken away from me because I had found the courage to speak out not only to people I worked with, I found the courage to speak out to the police, which was a big deal. I was probably like 22 at the time. So I was quite early on in being an adult, and absolutely nothing happened. If anything, the police went round and had a little word with him, and all it really did was tick him off to the fact that I'd been complaining about him. And then it got worse. He was just worse to me. And then it went from being like sexual harassment to just downright harassment, just like horrible. He'd like every time I walked into a room, oh, you've got to be careful with her, bearing in mind that we were going to things where there were lots of journalists from other different outlets, and he'd go, watch it with her. If you say anything, she'll go to the police about you. Just like that kind of thing all the time. And at the time, I kind of sucked it up and I was offered the chance to move into a different area of news than I was doing to avoid this person. And I said, no, I'm not doing that because I don't want him to feel like he's won. And in the end, as happens with these things, he kind of got his own come up and not directly because of me, but because people like that always, it always ends up, they annoy the wrong person eventually, and he is no longer working in the media, he no longer has anything. Last I saw, he's not been in that industry for a long time. And I know a lot of newspapers would not touch him with a barge pole. But that kind of unresolved, hang on a minute, I wasn't listened to, kind of drove me even more to like when things are wrong, I want to shine a light on that. I want to amplify those voices. I want to make sure that people's stories are heard and listened to and taken seriously. And lots of the people we've worked with have had their own stories of times when they've been squashed and they've been ignored or they've been abused or they've been harassed or something has happened. And it gives me a real buzz to kind of know that I am like helping them, even if they're not directly getting run over on the person that did it, but they are being heard on what they've got to say has been heard. And I think there's that big thing of that where you realise when people talk about like their purpose, it probably my purpose isn't quite what I expected it to be when I went into journalism. I probably thought, oh, it just looks quite fun. That was probably as a teenager, but actually, as it's gone, the reason I've stayed passionate about it is those moments where you go, actually, I'm getting to share this story that really matters, and that's giving somebody a voice and making sure that they're heard. And also, like the difference it made to me when the people that I confided in said, Yeah, we've had similar experiences. I felt listened to and validated. And albeit that it made me very sad that this was obviously a systemic problem in the media industry, that people were just ignoring what was happening to female journalists and they were just being treated badly and expected to put up with it because that's just the way things are, and that's what you know, you don't want to make a fuss because you might not work in this industry again, kind of mentality that people had. But that kind of feeling of, yeah, I get you, is what you get on like a different scale. When you're sharing your story, you'll reach people that will hear that and they will suddenly go, I don't feel as alone now because that person's had a similar experience to me. So sometimes telling the story of that awful thing that happened, whatever that thing is, that can help somebody who is going through that right at that moment, because then they suddenly realize that that's not the end, like there's a way through. And those kind of stories of adversity that we help people tell, I know that they are gonna not only help the person telling it, because I think it's really cathartic to tell your story and get it out there, but you're gonna be helping all sorts of people who are at different stages of their own story, who really need to hear that there's a way through it and that you can come back and be stronger than than ever and really learn those lessons from it.

unknown 41:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1 41:32

And that's what it's all about, isn't it? That's what it's all about. Getting those voices out there and creating a real impact. So we will end there for today. Well, I've really enjoyed that chat. It's been fun to reminisce about where we've come from. Any any questions, comments, you know where we are. Hello at dauntlesspr.com.