The mindset shift that takes you from expert to media personality

Something we’ve noticed over the years is that there’s a certain mindset shift that coaches, therapists, and experts have just before their PR really takes off.

That’s the topic journalist of 26+ years, Catherine Ball and I dig into today in our latest episode of Dauntless PR Unfiltered 🤩🔥

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_00 0:00

Welcome to Dauntless PR Unfiltered. What we're going to talk about today is the mindset shift that takes you from expert to media personality.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

So this is something I've really noticed when people start to explode in the media. And it feels like journalists can't get enough of them. They're going to them, they're inviting them back. And I think sometimes people think, well, people assume it's one of two things usually. They assume it's either lot, you know, oh, they've suddenly discovered me, I'm really lucky, or they assume it's because of something they've done, like an action was actually, it's often to do with kind of a change in attitude. So like a different outlook, a different mind mindset. And it usually is when people stop self-sabotaging, drop the control, and just open themselves up to opportunities, trust the process, and actually just go with the flow. I think that's the best way of describing it. When people start going with the flow with their media and not believing their own hype. I actually think other people get on board with you and believe your hype when you stop believing it yourself. That's one of the big things that I certainly notice in the PR industry.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

So much because there's a real shift in their energy at that point, isn't that? And that's when everything starts to happen. And some people come in with that mindset already, and they're the ones that like it all tends to happen from the start, but it is in the energy, and yeah, like it is just letting go. And it's it's reasonable, you know, that at the beginning it is gonna feel exposing and weird and uncomfortable, and it's not that those things ever stop, it's that you stop listening to your own bullshit. It really is. Um, and that's what I love about PR. You know, the main thing I love is the shift in identity that it gives you. Like you can't be in control the hosts the whole time. You have to be able to, like, your message has to keep getting refined, you have to keep improving on yourself to be able to stay in this game. And that's what that's what a lot of people don't manage.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

I think once you stop, you sort of stop sweating the small stuff and you look at the bigger picture, that's usually when people really go up a level and they start to see some real success in PR. So when you are scrutinizing, so the sort of typical things people might do that kind of hold them back is they get fixated on tiny details. So maybe it's the picture, maybe it's the job title, maybe it's exactly what angle something might be. They really want to kind of tightly control it. Once they kind of think, okay, I'm gonna be more flexible, be more versatile, I'm gonna adapt with what different audiences are interested in, and they let go of that kind of ego. I think there is an element of that humility can be a really big power because you know, journalists are human too. If they come across someone that's a bit difficult, a bit ego-driven, it kind of makes them think, want to bring you down a peg or two, if anything, they're not gonna, they might use you and then they're gonna be like, oh, but oh, they were insufferable. Or they emailed me 15 times to like check that I had the right website address. So it's some sort of thing like that. Whereas when you actually have a more collaborative approach where you get on with the person and you say, Hey, I've given you, I trust you to do a really great job. You have to say that out loud, but give that energy of it's fine. I'm gonna give you my expertise and I'm gonna let you do what you do best, what you're an expert in, which is presenting it to your audience, and I'm gonna trust in that and we're gonna get on well, and I'm not gonna let my ego get in the way of me giving great advice, me sharing my wisdom. Then usually journalists love that because you will there's so many people have got huge egos that they have to deal with every day, and it's exhausting. It's exhausting for journalists to deal with people who are picking fault in everything or believe that they are the best person to ever walk the earth. When they come across someone that is just fun, knows their stuff, chats to them, is a little bit, I don't mean humble in the sense of, oh, I'm rubbish, but like humble in that you kind of just you know, okay, I've absolutely got confidence in what I'd say as an expert. I know my stuff, but I'm not the only person that you're ever going to deal with. You're a busy person, you've got other things to do. I'm not the main character in everybody else's life. Once people nail that, I think journalists just want to come back to them again and again and again. And believe me, when I found experts in my career, when I found experts that knew their stuff and had a great mindset, you can believe I use them again and again. I they were like gold dust. You know, there's lots of people, particularly in the world of us having so much knowledge online. There's lots of people who can present themselves as experts, but those people who know this stuff inside out and are decent people who are open to opportunity are absolutely, it's probably nothing more valuable to a journalist.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

And I think that's something that's so underestimated of its importance, isn't it? Like people tend to focus on I need this many followers, or I need to make X amount of money to get featured, and it's knowing your stuff, having something of substance to say, and being easy to work with. Journalists don't have to work with people who are difficult, they don't have to. It's not like they're short of options, the complete opposite is true. So what would you do then, Catherine? What would you suggest? Let's say somebody has a piece going out, when would it be okay? Like a lot of people get get upset about their final, I wouldn't say a lot of people, but some people get upset about their final pieces if there's details that got mixed up. And I will say at this point, I've had so many pieces go out where tiny little details have been wrong. I saw somewhere that I've got five kids. I've had one where I live in Germany, and you know what? I haven't given a tiny toss about any of that because I realize that it doesn't matter, nobody cares. People aren't gonna go, oh my god, it said in the press that Luana's got five kids, but she's only got three. Like nobody cares. It doesn't matter to anything. But some people will will get upset about things like that and they'll want to email a journalist to correct, to ask to correct these things. And of course, a journalist is really busy. In what instances would it be okay for somebody to request those changes?

SPEAKER_01 7:57

So I think the key thing is to ask yourself, does it matter? And then ask yourself again, but does it really matter? Because your first thing will be, yeah, yeah, it matters. Does it really matter?

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Does it make some does it can I add one to that? Does it matter to anyone apart from me as well?

SPEAKER_01 8:12

So the things that matter, the way your name is spelt, that matters. So if they spell your name wrong, because from an SEO perspective, if people are Googling you and they've spelt your name wrong, that can be difficult. So that matters. If they say you're 45 and you're actually 44, that doesn't matter. That really doesn't matter. If they say you're 93 and you're 20, perhaps you might be like, what's happening here? But tiny differences with that kind of thing don't matter. If they get your business name wrong, again, that matters. So your business name, your website address, they are really the three things that matter. The only other things I would say could matter is if you feel that they have so badly misrepresented what you say that that's actually going to cause you real tangible problems with your business. So, say for example, you specifically said that you did not do something, and that was really important to you, and they said that you did, and it was like the polar opposite to what you were saying. If it's just a wording thing, maybe they make something sound a little bit more dramatic than you would have done yourself. Maybe it sounds a little bit harsh the way they've said it, but it's factually accurate. It's just not worth it. You can't choose their words for them. They're professional writers, you can't choose the words that they use to write about you. And this is something that people really struggle with initially. And it's a sign, usually, that people haven't necessarily been in the media a lot or got used to being in the media because they are still very much used to having their very tight control over their own words because perhaps their only real experience of being visible is their own social media, which they are completely in control of. Things like job titles, I actually think people think they matter much more than they do. If you've picked a really strange job title, even if you think it's the best thing you've ever come up with, but nobody standing at a bus stop or just in a cafe is going to know what this job title means. A journalist is likely to change it to something much simpler. That's not a mistake. That's by design. That's not, oh, they didn't listen to me, they misread my email. If you're using something you go, that is a completely unique, no one else in the world has this job title. That's a problem for them. So maybe they're going to call you a health coach, or maybe they're going to call you something simpler that encompasses what you do and makes it more recognizable to their audience. That's not something to worry about, unless, like I say, it's so wildly inaccurate that you're like, but if it's just a that's not the wording I would use, that's not how I describe myself, it's fine. But really, name, website address, business name, and general overall message, like what we're trying to say, hopefully that's that's in there and it's not completely misrepresented. If they get the number of kids you've got wrong, your age wrong, where you live wrong, I wouldn't be against kind of saying, oh, by the way, but I wouldn't get fixated on it. It doesn't make the piece not valuable because of these things. You may find that some journalists are very happy to change things, but largely they will, once they've done a piece, they've forgotten all about it, they're on to the next. They're not sitting around thinking about a piece, and they particularly don't want to go and do any hefty changes. Like, if there's a typo, this is something people do, which I would really recommend not doing. There's a typo in your piece, don't tell them that. Like, don't if it's not name your business name, if they've missed a comma off a sentence, they don't need you to get in touch, just let it go. Because all that's gonna come to them is like, oh, they're picking, they're not happy, they're fixated on things, which that's what gonna be them again. So you're gonna remember if it's a genuine, genuine mistake that's gonna be really important, then you absolutely let them know. But if it's something teeny tiny or just you use the word help, I would use the word assist, that kind of stuff. No, like forget it.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Yeah, move on. And I think a lot of the discomfort that comes with being in the media does come from the fact that people are used to using their own words, and it feels different when it's somebody else's words, even though it might be saying the same thing, just in a way that's probably more direct, they would have explained it differently, they perhaps would have given it more context or built up to it. Yeah, and it seeing it in black and white is very different to speaking something as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Yeah, it's interesting because there's a completely different dynamic than when I started in the media, because back then the only people who had their own audience were people who were already on TV, films, theatre, like those kind of celebrities. Yeah. Um, everybody else was had very limited without the media, they weren't really known about. So you didn't get people. So even they would have to have a book out that had done really well. They'd have had to be in the media, they've had to be on TV. The power dynamic was very different. So you tended not to get people as picky. I'll just I'll be blunt on Newsweb picky about because actually they recognized that the only way they were going to become known in their niche was through being known in the media. That was how it works. So there were much fewer people in every niche that would be well known to people because it was just who the media picked to feature, who the publishing companies, because remember, self-publishing is a fairly recent thing as well. You didn't used to be able to self-publish. Who was chosen by, and if I'm counting the publishing industry sort of it within the media, who was chosen by the media was who you knew existed, unless you knew them in real life. Now, people have built, you have people that haven't got media experience, but have built quite big sort of followings, and it's a trickier dynamic because there is an expectation that even though I might never have been in the media before, I expect you to know who I am. There's a different dynamic, and it's one that people working in traditional media still find grating. So it's that kind of thing. It's a tricky balance. So it's about finding how you can still do awesome things on your own social media platform, but embrace and work with and collaborate with media so that you can have the best of both worlds rather than it being a one or the other.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Yeah, that's it. Because look, the thing is about socials, isn't it? If you stop, it all stops. Media is there forever. Socials, you you end up talking to the same people over and over again. But when you are PR onto that, well, you're constantly bringing in new people who see you and you know who absorb your message and everything like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

And it just takes it to another level because people do, whether they mean to or not, take it more seriously if they see you somewhere else. So they might have been following you for ages, but then they pick up the Telegraph or the New York Times and they read about you and they suddenly go, Oh, no, this person, I follow them. And then it brings you up. They kind of go, Oh wow, you know, that they must be a really big deal. It takes it to, and even though someone who has worked in the media since like 2000 and has, you know, knows exactly how it works, I still feel like that about someone. Like, if I was to pick someone in my own life to work with me on something, and then I saw that they've been featured somewhere amazing, I would still think, oh, they're a bigger deal, even though I work within this space. So it still has huge power to be able to say, as featured in, and have these really well-known, recognizable brands. But remember, it's a two-way street. It's this thing of they're not, they're not just looking and going, oh, who is the best person in the world? It's not a kind of a snow white thing where like, who is the fairest of the world of them all? And then they're like going, well, you are absolutely the best. So you will be featured every week. No, it's who's actually going to apply to us when we get in touch, who's gonna give us what we need, who's gonna like not absolutely lose it if we make a tiny mistake in a piece about them, because you can better believe it. If you have a huge tantrum because they said you had a dog and you've got a cat, they are not gonna be like, they're amazing, we want to use them again. They're gonna be like rolling their eyes, talking to each other about it. And then they're gonna be like, oh no. And they'll call they will absolutely have nicknames for you. You would be, if you lost it up or something like that, you'd be like, dog woman or dog man, the line to everybody. You'll be like, oh, remember that person who rang up. We said that they lived in Birmingham and they actually live in Coventry and they couldn't get over it. That would absolutely become what you were remembered for.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

I don't think many people like truly think about the conversations that go on that behind the scenes in the media world. Like, when people are difficult, everyone's gonna know about it. So when people like, you know, let's say they are difficult and then they don't get media opportunities and they wonder why. Well, it's because of people who have been talking, it's that simple. And the other way around, of course, is also true. Like you get a guest who's amazing, speak, you know, a journalist speaks to somebody who just delivers in every single way. Oh, that gets around as well, doesn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

If someone ever says to me, I used to be featured in the media all the time and now none of them reply to me. My first thought is, What did you do? I don't say that's them, but I'm like, What did you do? Yeah, it might be something completely innocent. Maybe they changed expertise, maybe the people all move, but sometimes, sometimes it will be exactly what we've just been talking about. They will have thrown an absolute shit fit about something, and people will be like, it's not going to apply to this person anymore, you know, because they have you have the power to do what you want on social media, they have the power to do what they want with their outlets, and it's you know, it's a two-way street.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

That's it, that's it. So you know, for our listeners here, this is great news because I don't think we've got people who are just gonna throw a shit fit about everything listening to this. So you've already got the upper hand.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah, that's the thing. If you're a chilled out person who just goes with the flow and recognizes that everybody is human and everyone is just trying their best, like, and you are open to listening to what people are really interested in, because as well, that's another thing. Like, is what they want to hear what you want to say? Actually, try and find where do they meet? Like, I have some amazing hauls with our clients where they actually say, Do you know what? I hadn't really thought, because I'll say, Oh, this is happening in the media, like, what have you got comments on this? What do you think about this? And they'll say, actually, do you know what? I'm gonna do some content on that because I hadn't really thought about how interested people were in that topic. So then it becomes a really great way of getting clarity because they can kind of realize what are the things people want to hear, what are people interested in, and it's can be a great way of keeping your own business fresh because you are kind of keeping your finger on the pulse of what people are doing. So having that mindset of okay, I'm gonna be true to what I care about, but I'm also gonna be open, like what other people care about? Where does my expertise fit in with what other people want to hear and what's happening in the world around me and what what's topical, what's trendy, what's going on with everybody.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Yeah, and then how they deliver their message as well. Like I've lost count of the amount of clients who have come to me and they've told me that they didn't think their message needed refining. And once they started PI, it was like, whoa, it took it to a whole new level.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yeah. It's like it we we often sort of joke that it's like the personal development tool that you never realized was going to be a personal development tool. Like you go in thinking it's one thing, and you come out going, wow, I've got so many more ideas for my business. I absolutely realize that I need to simplify the way I describe this. I it has so many more benefits than simply raising your visibility, which is one of a huge benefit, but it's not the only one by a long way.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

It's a full transformation. And you know, people like tend to think about PR say quite often if they want some, you know, bigger results in their business, and then they come in and it's like I just wasn't expecting the transformation that I experienced. Like it's because the recognition that you get from other people, the way they perceive you differently, but then you start perceiving yourself differently, and it's not that they had confidence issues or anything like that. Like they know that they're awesome at the beginning, but it just takes it to a whole new level that they didn't even know existed sometimes. Oh, that's my favorite thing.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Absolutely. That's probably a great one to finish on as well, because that is such a great, a great one.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

It is, and we will be here next time. So, any comments, questions, email us on hello at dauntlesspr.com. I'll see you then.