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Interview Transcription
Morris: Welcome to CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories. I’m Morris from creategrowprofit.com and today I’m speaking to Lilian Sue. Her goal is to empower coaches to become global industry leaders and get up on stage to share their stories. Lillian, thank you so much for coming on my podcast today. Where are you calling in from?
Lilian: Thanks for having me, Morris. I’m calling from British Columbia, Canada.
Morris: Nice! I always like speak to people from Canada. I used to live there for a few years and go back regularly to visit my wife’s family there. Lilian, you call yourself a PR coach, is that right?
Lilian: Yes.
Morris: How did you become the coach that you are today?
Lilian: Coaching came about because I had spent several years working as a publicist. Working with my clients to help them launch campaign to get media opportunities, reviews, interviews, book them for speaking events and I had several entrepreneurs come to me and say that they really wanted to work with me but they couldn’t afford to pay for a campaign. They really wanted to know if there was anything else we could do together at the same time, I was coming across a lot of entrepreneurs and other coaches and things and people like that who kept presenting the same pattern of issues in relation to how they felt about their PR, their public relations and marketing and that is that they would come to me, and the agencies I was working with at the time, with a lot of unrealistic expectations and a lot of fear and anxiety surrounding where the money was going when it came to PR and marketing and what sort of results they were getting or not getting.
I thought there has to be a way for me to continue to work with these people and also educate and empower them to have the knowledge, the resources, the tools and the understanding to really know how to utilize PR for their businesses and how to advocate for their goals. Because a lot of them were also coming to us and going I’ve worked with publicists before, I got media interviews and other opportunities but those didn’t translate into the results that I wanted because I didn’t feel comfortable speaking up. So I thought, in becoming a coach, this would be the best way for me to educate entrepreneurs on what PR is, what it can do for them and at the same time make sure that they are able to push past their fear, their anxiety and really bring realistic expectations into any PR campaigns that they choose to do.
Morris: Yeah yeah so you started as a publicist. Let’s start from the beginning then what did you do as a publicist for these entrepreneurs before you started coaching them?
Lilian: As a publicist, I worked with my clients to develop every single aspect of a campaign so in helping them put together their media kits in helping them which you know means compiling all of their brand photos, their biographies, their videos where they’re introducing their projects all of those things, compiling the media kits. We work together to brainstorm and develop and write the pitches so the stories that they’re sending out to the actual media and then I work with them to develop the list who is it that they want to get in front of and actually share their stories with in order to get in front of the right audiences.
Once all of that is done I then manage the media relations side of things. I’m actually the one sending out the emails and acting as the bridge between the client and the media in things like scheduling the interviews and all of that. Coaching, or at least the way I coach, is split up into two different aspects. The first part of it is the mindset piece so really drilling down into the bedrock of how they feel about getting out there in public and sharing their stories, where’s the fear that’s stopping them, where’s that coming from, where’s the anxiety coming from, where’s the impostor syndrome coming from.
Digging down into the root causes of what’s triggering them to have those limiting beliefs and as a coach, I give them the personalized support, the guidance, the mantras, and the affirmations to help them push past those limiting beliefs. Then the secondary part is to work on the strategy. With the strategy, I’m guiding them. Instead of doing it for them, I’m guiding them on how to build their media kits, on how to write pitches, on how to do research for media lists and how to actually send those pitches out to the right media context while also giving them the tools, the resources and even access to my own lists to help them get started on building and launching their own PR campaigns.
So coaching for me is really about giving them the tools, the resources and helping them build the confidence with personalize support to get out there and launch their own PR campaigns.
Morris: Thank you for explaining that so detailed, Lilian. Thinking about coaches, is PR different for coaches who want to grow their coaching practice or do the same fundamentals supply?
Lilian: I believe the same fundamentals apply and I’ll tell you why. The power of PR comes down to two things storytelling and relationship building. For every coach out there, you need to build a strong relationship in order to work with your clients. That’s how you build trust with them, that’s how you build credibility with them. That relationship-building piece is the same in PR except it’s with the media and audiences.
The reason why you want to do that is because it’s virtually impossible, as much as we would love to, for all of us to connect with our clients one-on-one all the time, when we’re marketing, when we’re putting out content all of this kind of thing and the media has spent months, if not years, cultivating their reputations and their content, therefor their audiences trust them. So if you build that relationship with those right media outets, what you’re doing is you’re using their platforms as a springboard, you’re using their platforms as a shortcut to get in front of the right audiences and build trust with them.
When it comes to storytelling and I truly do believe this, every coach and every entrepreneur out there has a superpower and their super power is within their story and unlocking the superpower within their story of what inspired them to become a coach, who do they want to help, what the impact they want to make is, that’s the superpower that they use to connect with the media, to connect with audiences and ultimately to build trust and credibility with their audiences.
So the framework is the same, you know, every PR campaign needs a Media Kit, you have to know the story that you want to share with them and you have to know who you want to get in front of but how every coach and every entrepreneur does that and the superpower that you have to share within your story is going to be different depending on the coach. So to really make it work for you it’s really about learning how to customize that framework to your own superpower and to your old story.
Morris: Yes, I 100% agree with you and that is so well summarized, Lillian. The story and the relationships story and relationships and I think especially for coaching which is such a, you know, almost an intimate relationship that we build with clients. The relationship is so important and the story as well so people can connect with us on that level of story.
So you mentioned Media Kit story and list of media outlets, right? What goes into a media kid so if we imagine a you know a new coach wants to get started with PR? What would they put into their Media Kit?
Lilian: Here’s how I describe it to my clients. Media Kit in a nutshell is the complete promotional package for you and your business. So if you imagine, a pitch, the story that you have to tell in an email is just a very short introduction, the Media Kit is there to help that podcast producer, that writer, that editor fill in the blanks about who you are, both on a written level and on an audiovisual level.
So it’s going to have things like your official photos, it’s going to have things like long and short versions of your bio and when I say your bio, I don’t mean your life story but the compelling pieces of how and why you started as a coach and the milestones that you’ve hit and the celebratory fight that you’ve had in your business, all of those things go into your bio.
You want to make it easy for the media to form the basis of the interview questions they’re going to ask you and you also want to give them assets that they can use to help promote things like your interview. So in addition to photos, you might want to give them an introductory video where they hear directly from you in a you know let’s say minute long summary about what your coaching business is about and what your goals are and the impact you want to make. That’s something that they can use to share on social media let’s say ahead of your interview things like maybe a timeline of milestones that you’ve hit that you want to specifically highlight for them so that they understand who you are as a coach, who you’ve helped and the results that you’ve gotten for your clients.
The other thing might be you know maybe in a previous life before you became a coach, you do have some experience writing blog posts or doing interviews in another medium with where you were on audio or you were on video and you were speaking about certain topics, these are all things that you want to put into your Media Kit so that they have an idea of what your level of experience is and what you’re comfortable with talking about when it comes to your business, your coaching mandate, your goals and your clients.
Morris: Oh that is great! Thank you Lilian for all these examples. One objection I can imagine right away is like for a beginning coach or even you know a new solopreneur, what if they don’t have this timeline, you know with milestones and successes, do you think that is a big issue or is there a workaround?
Lilian: I think the workaround really comes back to leaning into the superpower that is your story. Because it’s true not everyone has the milestones or the highlights and not everyone’s developing those milestones or those highlights at the same time but what’s going to really set you apart, right, from another coach in the same industry is going to be your story. Because ultimately, no matter what kind of coach you are whether you’re a mindset coach, a life coach, a financial coach, a career coach whatever it is your clients want to get to know you okay? And the reason why they want to do that is because what you do is almost immaterial, how you do it and why you do it is really going to tell your audience, your clients, and the media that, “Hey, this coach’s story resonates with me they know where I’m coming from because they’ve been there themselves”.
That’s really powerful material. That is your superpower. Your story is the power to get people to trust you to build your credibility and your reputation as a good coach. That’s what you need to be leaning into so if you don’t have those milestones to start off with that show people, “Hey this is what I can do for you”, you can share your story and tell them I know what you’re going through because I’ve been there myself.
Morris: Yeah oh I really like how you said that Lilian, what you do is immaterial but how you do it and why you do it, this is what matters to your clients. That’s where they connect with you. I rephrased the last part but I think that’s what you said, right?
Lilian: Exactly, Morris. You get it. It’s really about people wanting to know more about who you are because that’s how they’ll learn to trust you and that’s what will make them want to work with you.
Morris: And now I understand why you started with the mindset and you know the fears and the anxiety because sharing who we are, right, especially through media outlets sharing our stories that can be uncomfortable to many people if not to all people with you know introverts versus extroverts and fake it till you make it all that stuff left aside, it makes total sense now that as you’re discovering the story and the superpower of a business person coach entrepreneur then right automatically the fear creeps in the anxiety creeps in, “oh like is this what I’m going to present myself now? Am I going to be that naked in front of a new and large audience?”
Lilian: Exactly! Being getting introspective and being vulnerable can really be intimidating because all of us are afraid of being judged and it’s human nature to not want to be rejected by people that we’re trying to forge connections with. So what I tell my clients when that sort of thing comes up I remind them of two things and that is that you are in control of how much you want to share, you are the one who draws the line between what is personal and what is private and how much of that you want to share in relation to your business. Why you do what you do and who you want to help.
The other part of it is that you are not in business to appeal to everyone. You want to reach out to and forge a connection with connections with and build relationships with the people who resonate with what you’re saying. So when you find the people who resonate with what you’re saying, they’re the people that matter. For everyone else, that’s just white noise.
And those are two principles that I live by for my own business because coaching, no matter what kind of coaching you’re doing, is not something that people can be dragged, kicking, and screaming into. They have to be ready and willing and open to learning to growing and to working with you as a team.
Because as I always say, as a coach, you can guide, you can support and you can provide clarity but ultimately it’s up to your client to actually take that action and to have the confidence to take that action, right? So you don’t want to appeal to the people who are never going to hear it anyway. The people that you want to speak to are the ones that resonate with what you’re saying and that actually trust in your experiences and your expertise.
Morris: Yeah that is such a vital point of marketing. You want to repel those who you don’t want to work with and in return, attract those that you do want to work with and that you know you can help the best. So unpacking the story and the superpowers, do you have some tips on how people can you know start to craft their story in a compelling way and share that story in a compelling way and in the process, uncover their superpower?
Lilian: Here’s what I tell my clients and this is something that I’ve done with my own story. For all of us, none of our entrepreneurialship journeys have been linear so the things that people really want to know about your journey and about your experiences are things like how you got started and what was the genesis of it. Where did the idea come from? Was there a person, a situation an event that inspired you to take this path? Then the other parts are things like what were your crossroads moments things like did you come up against adversity? Did you come up against a challenge where you almost felt like you wanted to quit but you had a reason why you decided to push forward? And that completely changed the trajectory of your business?
And through that, what did you learn from going through it? In my own experience, I’ve come across several crossroads moments. I had a year where I didn’t make a dollar, not $1 and I had a choice. I had a decision to make. Do I keep going along this path or do I quit, get a job somewhere, and try and find stability in other ways?
I made the decision to keep going because I knew that I hadn’t tried everything yet. That I hadn’t maximize my potential in helping people and the impact that I could make and that’s why I chose to keep going. These are the compelling things that are going to appeal to the media. That are going to appeal to potential clients because this is how they get to know who you are.
Hearing stories like this is going to tell them like my coach is somebody who is tenacious. My coach is somebody who’s overcome adversity. My coach is somebody who understands where I’m coming from because they’ve lived it themselves and they found a way out of it. Therefore, I can have confidence that they can help me.
With lived experience and I think a lot of coaches and entrepreneurs tend to downplay their own lived experiences because they somehow believe that it’s worth less because maybe they don’t have a degree in something or maybe they haven’t had 20, 25, 30 years of experience when in reality, every single coach has really powerful lived experience that helped them develop expertise to help their clients move past the roadblocks that are standing in their way.
And they can do that because they’re willing to personalize things for their clients. They’re willing to guide their clients. They’re willing to help them reach the clarity that they need to reach and that’s something that I see in my business daily. It’s really about empowering them to have the competence to embrace and celebrate their own lived experiences. Regardless of whether not they have a degree in it or they have 20 or 30 years of experience in it.
Morris: I was going to ask you about your story and then you just shared it right away. It’s such a compelling and great example and I think as I’m listening to you, what I realize is that many times we connect with other professionals like you know coaches or service providers through their story exactly as you’ve said where they demonstrate their values and how they approach things and we connect with that. And then all the rest the certifications and you know how many years experience and so on that’s kind of like a cherry on top. But we don’t connect through the degree or certifications with the person. We first and foremost connect through their lived experiences as you said.
Lilian: Absolutely! The certification certainly can help because it gives you sort of a framework on you know is what they’re saying going to hurt me or harm me or delay my progress or anything like that. But it’s really about the lived experiences and how they choose to apply those lived experiences that really can help build trust with clients.
For myself, as a coach, my number one priority is providing that personalized guidance and support. Every single one of my clients, I may have four or five clients in exactly the same industry but each one of them has different limiting beliefs. They have different goals and therefore that means they need a different strategy. So in my mind, in order to be a phenomenal coach it’s really about being able to speak to your clients and address what their needs are and provide them with that perspective that’s going to help them push past whatever it is that’s standing in their way and blocking them from moving forward and that goes for coaches that work with coaches.
I have my own mindset coach that I’ve been with for over three and a half years and I’ve always appreciated her perspective to get me to look at things a little bit differently and to provide more of that clarity that I need to continue to move forward in my business as well.
Morris: I’m glad you brought that up. I also believe that you know to become great coaches and even better coaches in general, we need to be coached too right? Although sometimes it sounds a bit weird like coaches coaching coaches but we all need to develop and we need to grow and if we want to be successful as a coach, we want to be coached as well. I really believe in that too and so thanks for bringing that up here on the episode.
So we talked about te Media Kit, the story. Thank you so much for being so clear on your tips and advice Lillian. Now the third step is contacting media outlets, do you have some examples of media outlets that you know new coaches new entrepreneurs can contact? Because I assume you can’t just go to the you know biggest media outlets from the start or maybe that’s just a limiting belief on my end.
Lilian: It comes down to two things when you’re trying to figure out who you want to get in front of. Like okay, what are your goals and where is that audience going to be spending their time? For new coaches, I would always recommend looking within their industry and within their genre. There are some fantastic websites, communities, and Facebook groups like Matchmaker.FM. Then a guest Facebook group, and even the international speakers network that can help them find outlets like podcasts and find summits to speak on as well that really focus on different topics that a lot of coaches cover.
So they look for guests that talk about healing from trauma. They look for guests talk about how to manage conflict in their careers. They look for guests that talk about how to become a better parent. Coaches in pretty much every single industry can find podcasts using these tools where those audiences are looking specifically for their expertise, for their lived experiences and for their stories that are going to help them better manage their lives and that’s usually where I would advise a new coach or someone who doesn’t have media experience to start off with because it’s much lower pressure to get on a podcast and have a genuine conversation about who you are and why you do what you do and why that matters than it is to step on a talk show stage and feel unprepared and feel like every time you get nervous that’s going to lead to calamity.
Booking a podcast first is a great way to build that rapport, build that connection with a podcast host who has experience talking to coaches in your genre and then who understands what their audiences are looking from coaches in your genre as well right? It’s a much more casual environment. It allows you to get comfortable and it allows you to gain the confidence to answer certain questions. Get that practice in and really just build those relationships one-on-one before you move up to the mainstream stages, before you move up to being interviewed in the studio, on TV, all of these different things. I always recommend that podcasts are the best way to cut your teeth and get comfortable with just having that genuine conversation and answering questions.
Morris: Wow! That is a great advice. Yeah even from my end you know even just doing the podcast and having guests on it’s beyond the conversational skills that you get to practice right like you said it’s the connections that you build to the people that you meet and you hear questions and perspectives.
You learn about so many different perspectives on what you do and that really prepares you for yeah like you say prepare you for the big stage as you said.
Lilian: Absolutely! And the other great thing too Morris, is that any coach who appears on these podcasts can take the questions that they’re asked during the interview and turn that into fantastic content for their audiences. You know, basically saying hey if you’re wondering about this when it comes to life coaching or when it comes to career coaching or financial coaching, here’s the answer and I wanted to share that because I had this great experience on a podcast where I was asked this question and I thought you know everyone else want would need to know the answer to this”.
Morris: Yeah that is a great idea and in the process of that right like you give a shout-out to the podcast and then the podcast host also appreciates that and you you just build value on all fronts.
Lilian: Exactly!
Morris: So Lillian people listening to you speak, here where can they go to start working with you or learn more about your story and your methodology?
Lilian: They can always follow me on Instagram, @liliansuecopywriterpr. That’s all one word and they can send me a message on my website at inretrospectwritingservices. I am always available to answer any questions and I’m on Instagram 5 days a week sharing strategic tips, accessible advice, and anything and everything having to do with proper building.
Morris: Perfect! I will link to both of those below the episode, is that okay?
Lilian: That’s great! Thank you.
Morris: Perfect! Lilian, thank you so much for taking the time to come on my podcast today and being so generous with sharing your tips and strategies.
Lilian: Thank you so much for having me, Morris and anytime you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d be happy to answer them and I’d be happy to come back on.
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