319. Why Nobody is Listening to You at Work, with Strategic PR Director, Ellie Glason

0:0019 years ago, almost to the day, I wrote a press release for Manstreaming News. It had stats, it had solutions, everything I thought mattered, and it landed with a thud. It was completely ignored. I remember that day. Do you know what the papers ran instead? I remember exactly what they ran. It was a story about a baby whose hair was too tall for her passport photo. Me and Chris, my business partner, were absolutely gutted. And I'll be honest, I spent the last like 20 years wondering what went wrong. It turns out there's an actual answer. And it's the same reason your team ignores your big announcements or maybe your investors skim past your pitch and your best ideas at work just don't land.

0:39Ellie Glason:You've committed to a new digital system. You've got a completely new databases, a counter-z system. Everything's going to be different. And you're getting everybody together to tell them about this and talk about this transformation. And basically everyone's going to have to train and it's going to take everyone double the time to do everything for about a month. and it's going to be really annoying. So is it a quest? No, we're banishing the monster. We fought the monster. So the monster is this old system that basically meant we could only do kind of half of what we could potentially do. Our guest today is Ellie Glasson, a PR consultant for founders who's placed clients everywhere from the Financial Times to the BBC.

1:20And she's about to tell us something that has nothing to do with PR and everything to do with why nobody's listening to you at work. Ellie explains there are only really seven stories in the whole of human storytelling. Every novel, every film, every legend you've ever heard, it's one of those seven. And Ellie's going to show us how to use them to get your ideas actually heard, whether that's for a journalist, your board of directors, or your own team on a Monday morning. This one is going to change how you pitch everything. think. Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

2:01My name is Leanne, I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. My name is Al, I'm a business owner. And we are here to help you simplify the science of work. Ellie Glasson runs a PR consultancy for founders. Her background's in journalism and publishing, and before she went out on her own, she spent years reading manuscripts for a living. This is where she first noticed something. The difference between writing that's polished and writing that actually connects always comes down to the same thing, the story. Today, we are stealing her playbook. Not just for press releases, for performance reviews, tan halls, return to office emails, the lot.

2:34Because if you've ever wondered why your perfectly reasonable, perfectly logical idea got completely ignored, this episode is going to explain exactly why. So after this short break, we'll find out what happens with my press release and the seven stories you need to know. Back in a sec. Joined here today by an incredible woman who I am pleased to say is now a friend. We've known you for about 18 months. I feel like I've known you all my life. Ellie Glasson, you are amazing. Tell us who you are and what you do.

3:02Ellie Glason:Well, thank you, Al. That's amazing. And I also feel like I've known you forever. I'm very happy and glad to be here. So I'm Ellie Glasson. I run a PR consultancy for founders. My background is journalism and publishing. which means that as well as placing my clients in titles such as the Financial Times and the BBC I also help them tell their stories. So you've worked with a lot of brands a lot of founders getting their story out there what do you see as the most common mistakes they make when they're trying to get their stories heard? I think that one of the biggest mistakes founders can make is not thinking about their audience when I say founders actually anyone.

3:42Ellie Glason:From an HR leader to a founder who wants to be in the telegraph. One of the key mistakes people make is not thinking about who their audience is, how their audience speaks, and how to communicate with them in a way that they will find interesting. So what you're saying is potentially that they use their own language and jargon rather than something other. No, tell me what you mean by that. You need to think about not just the language that you use. So an example of this is if you work in the tech sector and you have terminology that you use that seems really obvious to you, you obviously do not use that with consumer-facing, customer-facing communications.

4:20Ellie Glason:And this is the same as if you're talking to journalists, you know, within that sector. You really want to dial down the technical language. You want to make it, plain English is really important. And you want to think about outlets and how they write, you know, the copy that they use and the words they use. you want to match that in tone. So if you want to be in a lifestyle magazine, obviously the press release and the comms will be quite different if you want to be in a broad sheet. But also what's more important than language is thinking about what your consumers or what the public, your audience is going to find interesting.

5:00Ellie Glason:And just because you find it interesting, it really doesn't mean they will. And in fact, I'd almost go as far to say that if you find something interesting take a step back assume that no one else will and start again so when when like a million years ago when i did a press release myself for the man streaming news and i i packed it full of it was about repossession and i packed it full of stats and i packed it full of what how we fixed that problem by helping homeowners get out of debt and all this and i we were devastated because that was just totally ignored and instead the next day there was a picture it was a story about a baby whose whose hair was too tall for their passport photo we were What have we done wrong?

5:38Tell us now, 20 years later, what did we do wrong with that?

5:41Ellie Glason:So by the sounds of it, it was an information kind of brain dump. And journalists, they have hundreds. Manchester Evening News, probably thousands of emails a day. And so what they're looking for is a summary really quickly of the story of the narrative. If you go, and lots of people do this, if they've got exciting things to talk about, is they put everything possible into that press release. And the journalist will have, you know, kind of seconds to look at it and decide whether to go forward or not because they're time pressed. And they will literally go, it's not easy for them. And they will look at this picture of the baby with the tall hair and they'll think this is really straightforward and simple.

6:24Ellie Glason:I know what this is and they'll publish that. So it's really important. One of the key things about press releases is deciding what your story is in your simple kind of black and white way, because the media are quite simple. They want straightforward stories. And then you have notes to the editor at the end. You have lots of places within that release that you can put information in, but the beginning of it has to be really strong and story-led. So what I'm hearing there is that it should have been a story. I didn't write a story. Is that what I've understood about? A hundred percent, yeah. Well, all comms.

7:03Ellie Glason:Again, whatever that comms is, if it's a kind of notice to your team about things they should and shouldn't be doing, or whether it's a press release to the media, it needs to have a narrative. The story is so important for humans. I'm sure I've heard you talk something about Christopher Booker or something, or Seven, but is that something you've talked about before? Christopher Booker wrote a book called Seven Basic Plots. He analysed novels and legends and films and he identified there were seven storylines. So in all of the kind of literature, there's only seven storylines. And he thought about and wrote about the kind of the psychological meaning of each of these storylines.

7:46Ellie Glason:This is quite, it's something I've known about for years. I trained as a journalist and then I worked for 10 years in publishing before I kind of accidentally fell into PR. And so this was something that was on my radar when I was reading novels that would come in. We called them the slush pile. So people would send their manuscripts in. And you could tell really quickly if something was really well written, but didn't have a kind of strong narrative. And if it did have a strong narrative, it would have been one of these seven plot lines. So story number one is overcoming the monster. So if you were to do a press release about your business, if you have got over trials and tribulations, if things have been thrown in your way and you've overcome them, especially if there may be bigger forces, maybe kind of legislation, this is a good thing to put to the fore.

8:34Ellie Glason:Rags to Riches is another really powerful storyline. You can think about Cinderella, perhaps, but you can also think about Dragon Den's founders, the way that, for example, Gymshark was built in a garage and became this huge empire. So the media loved that. Business journalists loved that. So Rags to Riches is really important for founder storytelling. The Quest is a third storyline. It's a mission with obstacles on the way. Think about Lord of the Rings, but also think about a climate startup, a climate action startup who wants to work to decarbonize business. So that story is really appealing for the media.

9:12Ellie Glason:That kind of brand purpose story works incredibly well. You've got Voyage and Return. So you go off, think about the Odyssey. You go and you explore the world and you come back and you've learned new things. So founder burnout stories kind of adhere to this principle to some extent. or people um the pandemic was a great kind of not great but was a vehicle for this too where people changed their lives started working from home started working in different ways and then came back and reformed what they were doing so the key with all of these stories is you don't just talk about the outcome you talk about the process so how you got there and again the media find that interesting readers find that interesting um we've also got comedy which is we can all see why comedy works so well from the taming of the shrew through to Ryanair on TikTok if I can make that comparison but it gets people to relate to you you know people laughing and you don't want them laughing at you want them laughing with you but it's such a strong mechanism for emotion and on the flip side of that is you have tragedy which is the downfall story now the media obviously as founders we don't really want to talk about that however the media are always on the lookout for this so this is where kind of reputation management is really important they will jump on stories where they think people are failing so the flip side of the purpose driven like i'm on a quest and i'm doing things well talking about your kind of wider mission makes you more susceptible for the tragedy downfall narrative because the audience and you know consumers and the media are really on the lookout for inner authenticity.

10:51Ellie Glason:So that gap between kind of what you're saying and reality. So that's kind of almost like the flip side. And then you have Rebirth, which I think is probably one of the most powerful storylines. This is a person or organisation that basically almost lost everything, changed what they were doing and they were redeemed. So if this is part of your business story, your founder story, your personal story, talk about it so examples of this sort of from a brand perspective lego um almost went bust um in the early noughties and then completely reframed itself leaning into creativity and community and is now one of the world's most loved brands we've also got pamela anderson who was seen as very tabloidy and then through sort of, I suppose, careful, intentional media appearances, being in thoughtful documentaries, has recast herself or been recast as this cultural persona, person with gravitas.

11:58Ellie Glason:So this is a powerful story too. So you talked about tragedy there. Now I can see at the current time of recording Brew Dog, dog uh they were huge they were riding high and now it seems that a lot of stories about them being like oh look how bad they were run and they that's what the tragedy that's the tragedy angle is it absolutely and it's that kind of kick them while they're down mentality that we that the media and because when i say the media i kind of mean people because the media are producing what people want to read and consume you could argue against that to some extent but yeah people love that story of a failure.

12:35Ellie Glason:And think about those celebrity kind of cancellation arcs as well. Think about the royal family and Harry and Meghan. You know, there's a kind of glee to some extent where people seem to have fallen from favour and politicians too. And we kind of, you metaphorically kick them while they're down. This makes perfect sense because everything you're saying here, I'm just looking at my notes here and we've got overcoming the monster. Yeah, reform. I think personally, I'm not aligned in any way with Trump or reform or the whole like the whole Brexit thing but the campaign technically was incredible and they would did the overcome the monster I love all this this is all making sense now what I'm thinking is actually if I was to do my PR story again the story of me starting this company was I was helping people who were getting repossessed because I had gone bankrupt and had two houses repossessed now that's and I was like I almost like I created a mission we were called the homeowners advice center we were there to help homeowners who were drowning in debt and so that that i can immediately see right based on your framework i can immediately see we've got here we've got voyage in return we've got a quest uh we've got rebirth i i i was bankrupt i got my house repossessed now i'm stopping other people from doing it yeah it i almost like i feel like with your framework i could write now something that would probably get placed with your help probably get placed much more than me just putting out down a figure saying 100 000 homeowners are repossessed this year absolutely also what's important is like data is incredibly important so data-driven storytelling before i set up my consultancy for founders i worked for six years as the md of a research division for a pr agency so we were we were running research and helping to tell stories that would hit the media for for a huge variety of clients from kind of ebay through to the Met Office.

14:25Ellie Glason:And what was important was having this data because the media liked the data because that shows them a bigger picture. But then you need the human stories, the human shaped storytelling. And this is why case studies work so well. So if you are talking about, if you're working with an organization who has this data, you want case studies of the people who have been affected to bring it to life for readers. So with your story, it could have been, I probably would have gone in with your personal story and what that felt like. And then the fact that you were then on a mission to help other people.

15:00Ellie Glason:And then that's when your data would come in. So it's a combination. We often say that the kind of stats, the quantitative research is the skeleton of a story. And then the qualitative research is the flesh, which is essentially people's experiences and case studies and interviews. I love this and things starting to fall into place here again using the same example we bought a few advertorial spaces in the manchester evening and i just just basically made it look like a news story i didn't put any adverts in there just bought the space and wrote the story myself that worked really well because we were telling people a story of this is the government was the baddies because they were like not doing things were like saviors coming along that sounded to me like i was more selling our point of view than I was sort of selling our product is that is that a distinct something I need to be thinking about yeah and it's it's often quite counterintuitive for people who started a business and are focused on selling their product whatever that is whether that's sustainable shampoo or creative services and so what they want to do is talk about what they deliver but actually going back to those seven storylines what people are interested in is is kind of how you got there it's the the tension it's the emotion it's the um yeah to some extent the positioning um so i think once you broke through and you were able you bought the advertising space you were able to then have that space and tell the story in the way you wanted it worked well but the with and that's why they said that in terms of storytelling there are different platforms you have your media circle so you have your paid media which is your advertising spend you have your owned media which is your own channels where you can say that you like and then you have earned media which is pr which is um media platforms reviews etc and so it's a different you can have your story and have it have it there which would be brilliant on social channels or in an advert but the the the skill is to get someone else to be interested in your story so to do that it's a kind of sideways thing i'm going off slightly on a tangent but you have to frame your story in a way that they can understand really quickly you know you don't have that space to unpack it in the way that you do once you've got that space the product almost becomes a for editorial opportunities the product almost becomes a kind of and and finally we've got this product so what you want to show is the point of view and the problem that your product will solve I think that's probably the key thing so it's less um going back to my sustainable shampoo it's less um um i've got i've made some sustainable shampoo it's going to make your hair beautiful and it's not going to cost the earth but actually actually that sounds quite snappy it would be more more effective to say i've spent years with my dry curly hair trying to make it look amazing and i've used bottles and bottles of plastic shampoo with god knows what chemicals i'm flushing down the toilet and i got to the point i'm a mother you know i know the way that the world is going and i have this terrible dry hair and actually i thought is there something that can help my hair and not cost the earth and this is why i came up with my sustainable shampoo by positioning it like that i'm i have a point of view people have bought into me and i'm not just having to compete with the thousand other sustainable shampoos on kind of price or what my what my bottle looks like so this idea of you are selling a point of view is that kind of is is there maybe a bigger brand or something we might have heard of where they did exactly this?

18:39Ellie Glason:Dove is probably the most famous modern example that everyone talks about as a brand that went beyond the products to basically create a point of view and actually make changes with that point of view for the good. So beauty products they were producing, they then took the decision to take a much wider view and look at the beauty industry and beauty as a concept. And they critique the industry. they talked about real beauty for real women so they critiqued the way that polished images of people you know, unattainable beauty were used to sell products and they decided they wouldn't do that they also worked to kind of evaluate what beauty meant beauty on the inside as well as the outside and by doing that they became not just a seller of a product but they became a really important almost like a campaigner or an organisation that that people could see as credible and you know and caring about them the flip side of that though is that again once you cast yourself in this role of you know having this wider view so there is a kind of there is a flip side that you need to then you have standards that you have to adhere to and this isn't relevant to dub necessarily but again with the media wanting tragedy all the time they'll be looking out for any slips when you're talking about your point of view you must make it run through your organization because there is a danger that you you paint yourself in as this you know this almost perfect company and then if there's if there's a supply chain issue you then you know the tragedy kicks in and everyone wants to throw mud at you and so using the seven foundations before this would be quest wouldn't it because they're asking they're on a quest Yeah, they are.

20:29Ellie Glason:And they're asking, so they're on a quest to make, you know, to basically make beauty more authentic or make the beauty industry behave in a more authentic way and make people, consumers, feel less crap about how they look and how they, you know, how they come across. but they're also asking people to go on that quest with them and that's really important the brands that say join us you know that have a call to action that's where you really get the double whammy of engaging people and making them feel involved by using real women in their adverts you know people could connect connect and feel that they were on that journey as well i love this i love this it all comes back to those seven basic plots which is which is great so let's just talk a little bit if we can about how someone who is not looking for pr but actually looking for buy-in perhaps internally so perhaps they're in hr perhaps they're a manager or something these seven basic plots you've talked about there it sounds like they could formulate the story based on those as well even if it's not being placed in the media is that right absolutely so these are stories that people connect with so if you have it if you have a team storytelling is really important whether you're communicating internally or externally and this is true to your kind of family and friends as it is to your colleagues but if you were an HR leader who wanted to convey something really important to your team rather than doing the kind of data dump that we talked about where people kind of switch off tune out rather than maybe talking about what people should and shouldn't be doing um paint a picture so the return to office mandate rather than we need you to be here it's important that you're at your desks which feels like you're being told and then you feel like a child there probably is um probably Christopher Booker would have something to say about um the ways of telling stories and making you feel like you're part of the story.

22:31Ellie Glason:I think if you were to use the quest, if you were to use the quest story to talk about the fact that as a business, you had obstacles that you needed to overcome. And you laid that out and you talked about one of the obstacles is that sometimes the team seems quite fragmented and sometimes people can feel quite lonely and cut off. And so it was really important that people joined you on this quest to bring people together but what did they think that should happen you know bring them into that quest you know did they have ideas and they can join you on that quest by coming together every wednesday and being in the office together um and then you could keep that story going by talking about regularly talking about all the great things that were happening while people were coming together so keep that quest on going you could also maybe talk about some of the challenges, keep talking about the challenges to make sure people kept on coming in, you know, if you wanted to manipulate.

23:33Ellie Glason:But that would be better than just demanding that everyone come back in. I honestly could talk about that, those seven ideas. We need to move on to something a bit more practical. So how would I tell if my idea actually is interesting to other people? Does it have emotion? Does it have tension? Does it have nostalgia does it have relief does it have transformation basically is it interesting um and i know that's an that's probably not the best answer is your story interesting you know how do you make your story good it's got to be interesting but it really does so you need to step outside of that story there's also the pup test so i worked in my years of working um in drator driven pr one of the things we do as an agency was we would run polls um surveys for brands essentially for coverage so if you read you know kind of you know it's official eight out of ten you know cat owners it's official new research proves that cat owners are more funny and interesting than dog owners according to Perina you know cat food you know I'm making this up obviously um that type of content it's fun it's it's light-hearted it's not it's not kind of serious but it's a good way for brands to get into and organizations and founders to get into news pages.

24:47Ellie Glason:But we would be often given briefs that were really dry. So you'd have like a company that made solar panels and they want to do some research to show that Brits were desperate for solar panels. And it's like, would people talk about this down the pub? This is what we would always say when we were brainstorming. Is this something that literally you could imagine someone texting someone else about and saying, oh, did you see this? This is interesting. That's as true for kind of research-based stories as it is for your founder story, your business, your new business deal, your new product that you've launched, the fact that you've hired someone into your senior team.

25:21Ellie Glason:There are ways of making that interesting. And often that is by making it again, not really about the product or the actual thing that's happening, but what that means for the industry. So an example of this could be, you've got a story where you've bolstered your senior team. so and you are a company that um is makes experiential events and you could talk about that could be a straight announcement but you could look at data to show that this marketing spend for experiential events is this quite specific example but um is absolutely booming as people are kind of so sick and tired of digital that people actually want to go at and feel and do stuff in real life so then your story becomes you know and the fact is you're bolstering your senior team to meet this demand to be more organized to be able to structure and restructure and meet this demand suddenly it's a much more interesting story and you get case studies in let's say i'm mark zuckerberg i've got a town hall tomorrow and i and i've got a series i need i want to talk about old mark and probably new mark but old mark would just get a powerpoint and put some charts on it and start talking what you're saying there is i need to think about what's the story behind either this change or this data is that what you're saying so thinking about purpose again and which is so important and sustainability if you were an organization and you had switched to a new supplier of something that meant that your whole team was going to have to retrain oh you've changed it systems okay digital transformation your organization you've you've committed to a new digital system you've got a completely new databases accountancy system like everything's going to be different and you're getting everybody together to tell them about this and talk about this transformation and basically everyone's going to have to train and it's going to take everyone double the time to do everything for about a month and it's going to be really annoying um so is it a quest no we're we're banishing the monster we fought the monster so the monster is this old system that basically bent we could only do kind of a half of what we could potentially do we all knew it we could we were familiar with it but it would hold us back in a particular way in this theoretical example so we talk about that and when we talk about what those monsters are it's holding us back for taking on new clients it's holding us back for moving into new sectors it's holding us back compared to our competition it means that we can't start to incorporate ai into what we're doing because it's so antiquated um so literally we've got the threat of the company folding we've got the threat of people you know people having to be made redundant um but we've also got the opportunities the quest of new exciting places we could go with the company if you talk about that first that's going to feel a lot more you know people are going to engage with that they're going to feel connected they're going to be feel that they're talked to as adults as well and they'll we make them part of that quest with your might with your swords and your you know mice your computer mice you can get on board and you can help us you know by doing this training we can go to new places and we can get io to help us and everything will be quicker in six months time.

28:26So we had a recent guest who talked about during the pandemic their company was in trouble and they didn't know what to do. One of the ideas was to reduce people's salaries but of course they knew that wouldn't go down very well. So they actually put it to the organisation and said what are some of the ideas you can come up with? And funnily enough the ones which got voted the one which got the most votes was reducing everyone's salary. But they did that the right way didn't they? Because they must have used one of your seven hooks.

28:50Ellie Glason:They did. They did it exactly the right way because they well they they they they revealed the monster of the fact that they were in trouble and they talked about the quest that and they brought people into that quest you know how can we go and how can we overcome these obstacles they took i mean and you know separately and psychologically they talked to them as as as grown-ups they made them feel part of something um and people could see what was at stake. You know, how different is that from being told because of financial circumstances, you're all going to have to have 20 % less be paid less and people would be up in arms and suddenly the boss would be the monster, but they kind of united.

29:37Ellie Glason:So even that bringing people together, but then they created like an incredible rebirth story. So they were in hard times people voted they reduced their their pay um and then the company blossomed and bloomed you know and then and and you know to great success so from a pr perspective from an internal comms perspective amazing work from a pr perspective that what a great story to sell to the media of rebirth there are some people in the world who journalists just want to go to and talk to want to go and get comment from every single time what why is it that those people are so attractive to the media to the journalists these i guess we would call thought leaders so lots of people come to me um founders come to me more and more these days because founder visibility is really really important and we can talk about that in the in the kind of world of of ai search and how that's changed um and something that we talk about is thought leadership I mean, that's been around, you know, for as long as forever.

30:43Ellie Glason:But thought leadership is important. People want to be thought leaders. They want to be seen as go-to experts. And there are different ways to do this. You can go out and you can get an enormous LinkedIn following. You could be doing kind of incredible things with your voice and your actions and partnerships and events and building incredible businesses, you know, with huge numbers behind them and the media and have it, you know, wonderful, one of these seven storylines and the media will want to come to you to talk to you. That's not everyone is in that position, especially when you're trying to run a business and you're focused entirely on your business and your clients, like who has time to do those things to build themselves up.

31:27Ellie Glason:If you come to a PR person who can help you with thought leadership, it's, I call it a what we call it, a credibility ladder. So you don't go straight to thought leader just because you're working with a PR. You become an emerging voice. And that means we're working to make you seen as a trusted media source. So it's almost like a, it's not a cheat, but it's a bit of a hack. That means you don't have to spend hours and hours on LinkedIn and speak at loads of panels. So one of the ways that if I was to do this with a founder is they start to work with me. We work on their positioning, which is really important.

32:03Ellie Glason:We then work on the topics, thought leadership lanes that they can speak on and speak about. And then I will introduce these people to my media contacts. So I will say, I'm working with this person. They're great and they can talk about this, this and this if it comes up. I will also monitor the news agenda. So if there is a story, something happening with that experiential idea, if there was something, you know, that happened in that field, that sector, that a comment was needed quickly, then I'm there you know the PR is there making sure that that person is you know would get comment quickly and sending out to journalists the other thing the key thing so that journalists you know if you're doing this yourself you can introduce yourself to the media you can pitch your comment out as when the news agenda happens so it's not you talking about yourself it's you talking as an expert on things that are happening so it's having that that that confidence to not have to sell yourself but just be an expert but the key thing the biggest thing you can do so that the media rely on you is to help them and be useful so there is that there are so many in pr you have journalists well actually not in pr in the media journalists have groups facebook groups linkedin groups where they absolutely rip apart prs and founders and people who are you know who are trying to sell the stories their stories to them for doing things like saying oh would you like to interview me this has happened um and then the journalist says yes i'd like to interview you and then ghosting them like that literally happens or there'll be an interview that's set up and they'll cancel at the last minute or they'll ask this is all the mistakes you can make if you have a if you have an interview set up with a journalist and you demand to see questions in advance and won't do the interview until they have that will get you blacklisted if you you're with a journalist you get interviewed you give comment it goes live it's published and then you go back and you say look you've used can you put my my the link to my website in please they're probably not going to probably not going to talk to you again or they've got a link to your website but you go back and you say could you use this link to my website because this means i can track it.

34:14Ellie Glason:No, they will literally blacklist you and journalists literally will. So it's become a cautionary tale, this, but you basically need to treat journalists as if they're important because they are, because they are the ones who are getting your story out there and you have to respect them and their deadlines. Saying that, journalists can also ghost, famous for ghosting people and not getting back. So it's a kind of two-way street. But this is how you become a thought leader. Once you are a huge thought leader, you can counsel on journalists constantly, you know, and they'll be begging for you. But it's a, as I say, credibility ladder.

34:54Ellie Glason:And it's building yourself as someone who can be relied on and isn't trying to sell themselves as well i remember working with an md of a huge tea company and working to with them to get them onto bbc breakfast for a piece about the uk tea tea consumption because i think there'd be new stats that were out about tea dropping slightly people were drinking more coffee or so to get him out there was a huge opportunity i mean he was working for a company that was owned by a bigger subsidiary but he was the MD so what was really important to get him onto that slot was that he didn't talk about his tea company counterintuitively he was there to talk about the British tea industry and consumption habits if he'd gone there and he talked about our company's doing this or our company's doing that they probably wouldn't have invited him back I want to talk about AI in a second because we can't not talk about AI so we'll talk about that in a second but I have a feeling that a lot of people who see thought leaders or people who are in the press or appearance on media and stuff, they think of them as being very outgoing and very like, you know, sort of the opposite of an introvert.

36:10Is that true or can people who are more introverted still be the face of something?

36:16Ellie Glason:So it's actually a really interesting question. I have worked with clients sometimes that have said, my clients will tend to be founder-run businesses now and often you'll have the founder who is a spokesperson who is much more comfortable doing podcasts and panel talks and live interviews. And you have a spokesperson who says, I'm happy to be interviewed in print or online. I suppose it's coming back to the whole journalist idea. You could have the most vocal, sorry, this is me riffing, have the most vocal kind of columnist. Think about Julie Birchall back in the day, who would just write these incredibly strong and opinionated and kind of controversial columns.

36:50Ellie Glason:But then if you saw her talking, she had a tiny little voice and she was really shy. so I don't think you know I think founders can be loud and confident in writing so one of the things I've mentioned earlier is that people can be so focused on their business you know it's like that it's very difficult for them to think about how they can market themselves as a you know as a thought leader which is why they often you know work with people like me to help them it's a bit like and they can often so I a lot of my clients work in the comms industry so I work with kind of communication and creative agency founders.

37:25Ellie Glason:And they can be people who are creating the biggest, boldest campaigns for their clients, you know, that are incredibly kind of punchy and engaging. But they literally, when it comes to shining the light on themselves, they can really, you know, they can sort of panic. I think we all have that to some extent. It's very easy to shine a light on someone else it's harder to shine a light on yourself and some people can do it but a lot of brilliant business people can't and that's where they work with someone else who can help them and coach them so for example i find that a lot of um people i work with will want questions before interviews you know they'll want that and that's i can absolutely understand that because although journalists would hate it and say well no i wouldn't do that um similarly being able to read you know an interview before it's published it doesn't work for journalists but i can absolutely understand why you'd want that you you're worried about even if you know something through and through like will a question throw me um will i not be able to answer something um will they talk about something in the press release that perhaps my head wasn't all over um but also it's wanting to to know how to deal with questions that they don't want to answer so if you're doing that alone if you're going i mean there's lots of um there's lots of really good advice online as you can imagine but if you work with someone like me we practice we go through interviews we we have questions that we ask we we think about tactics you know how how you don't answer a question i personally the idea of doing a panel talk to a thousand people would i would rather i don't know how my little finger cut off that sounds awful some people are natural you know naturally want to do that if they don't you don't force them to do that but in the modern well there's lots of ways of getting your your voice and your point of view across podcasts are one of the key things that i and we'll talk about ai and pr soon but podcasts are fantastic for for founders um they are one of my main media platforms um they are incredibly important because you have a highly engaged audience um people don't tend to accidentally listen to a podcast it's not like listening to the radio where you tune in and out people tend to listen to the end and in terms of AI search they're great for proving that you are a trustworthy incredible person and also podcasts a very good way of practicing talking to camera and getting your ideas out there this is interesting because I wanted to go on to AI and I was thinking more of a can AI help me create this story but what you've just said there was searchability is that what you're saying that yeah tell me more so pr has always been something that's you know people know is important was it steve jobs who said if he had a dollar left he would spend it on pr which i always i quite like that um and but it's always been about kind of coverage it's been about reputation and kind of coverage um more and more over the last couple of years people have been coming to me to talk about visibility and visibility in terms of ai search there's coverage but there's also about creating the kind of infrastructure so that the internet can understand what you do which is where i for when because ai search is is kind of ubiquitous um and the way the reason that ai the reason that pr is important in a kind of ai age is that when ai is trawling kind of in in kind of microseconds information about you they are not just looking at what you say on your website so kind of like the days of seo being all important are gone it is looking it is putting higher emphasis on third party trusted sites so that is media titles that is podcasts that are reviews you know it it's looking for other people to say that you're great so that was the point PR has always been earned media.

41:28Ellie Glason:It's called earned because it's really hard to earn. But also it's better for you as a business owner, for someone, if you have an advert or if you have a post, you're posting, you say, my sustainable shampoo is amazing. Okay, that's interesting, but you're saying it. If you have a journalist who said, I tried 10 sustainable bottles of sustainable shampoo and this was the best, that, you know, is more powerful. If you then have a journalist say, you know, I talked to this amazing founder of the sustainable shampoo company with her really dry hair and her worries about the environment, that's even better.