In this solo episode of the Speak PR podcast, host Jim James reflects on the pivotal role of genuine passion and domain expertise in public relations. He recounts a chance encounter with Mr. Pickles, a knowledgeable sewing‑machine repairman in Bath, whose enthusiastic, hands‑on demonstration of various machines captivated both Jim and his 12‑year‑old daughter. Jim uses this anecdote to argue that the most trusted spokespeople are product or technical experts rather than CEOs or sales directors, citing a Cision survey that ranks product experts highest in credibility. He extends the lesson to other contexts, highlighting how the Bath Cats & Dogs Home and the Woodland Trust employ live‑streaming to showcase their work and maintain audience engagement during lockdowns. Jim advocates for leveraging video, user‑generated content, and frontline staff (chefs, dentists, drivers, hygiene officers) as authentic brand ambassadors. He ties these ideas to his forthcoming book, Start With Who, emphasizing that people buy from people they trust, and that cultivating passion at every touchpoint—from storefronts to factories—builds lasting loyalty. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to apply these principles in their own businesses.
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Hello. Welcome to this episode of the Speak VR Podcast. Today, I'm going to be talking about the importance of passion and what I've learned from a man who's selling sewing machines. My name is Jim James, and I am your host. I have been an entrepreneur for over 25 years now, running businesses in Asia and in Europe. And I've also been running my own agency called East West Public Relations with offices in Singapore, China, at one time also in India, and now back in the UK. And on this podcast, I like to share some thoughts and some tips and often some technologies that I've used for my own companies, but also for over 500 clients. And the lesson that I've learned today actually was when I went shopping with my daughter for a sewing machine and I was taught by one Mr. Pickles. Now, this may seem a slightly strange episode, but I'd like to talk to you about the importance of passion. And the importance of passion in public relations, because when I went today with my 12-year-old daughter to buy some fabric materials, we went to the shop here in Bath, and just inside the door there was a man fixing sewing machines and fixing a sewing machine. This chap, I thought, well, it must be the repairman, and You know, it seems a bit of a mess in the front of the shop, but actually I'm interested in sewing machines, not for myself maybe, but for my daughters and my wife. So I said, oh, that's, you know, interesting. I'm just looking at sewing machines myself. And he said, oh yes, well, you know, there are mainly 2 different types, one with a bobbin that goes into the base and the others without a bobbin and in the base. And of course, you know, they divide, sir, between those with and those without. And he started the conversation. We started the conversation based on a very simple but illustrative point of difference between sewing machines that would be sub-£200 and sewing machines that would be £250 up to indeed £7,500 for a sewing machine. Now, I'm no expert, but this chap went on to explain more and more about the different configurations of these sewing machines, and that one set of sewing machines, for example, could do 60 patterns, another could do up to 30. This particular one would sew a a hole for a button. And he proceeded to show me. And now this is in front of the store, um, surrounded by other customers, and it became, um, a whole sales demonstration. My daughter meanwhile came back, uh, with more materials, and the chap leapt up, said, oh, I think we've got some black fabric down the back of the store, and then you might want to use this one because it's longer, and this is a metallic thread, which is nice if you're making one of these quilts. And within 20 minutes of being in this store, we learned so much about, about sewing machines. But I also became, as we all did, pretty engaged in this man. And he's only about 5 foot 5, quite a heavy build looking guy, slightly balding on top. You would not have imagined this man to be the owner of a seamstress store, and it turned out that this is Mr Pickles. Mr Pickles has been open, as he explained, 5 days a week throughout the lockdown. So Mr Pickles is one of those people whose business has actually gone from good to better. And then he explained to me that you can't buy now sewing machines for love nor money because the shipping has all been curtailed coming from Asia. He said all the sewing machines come from Japan, China, and South Korea. So I'm lucky because today he's got a sale, and this sewing machine that should be £325 plus VAT is only £250 if I'd like to make, make a decision today. Meanwhile, he's spinning his bobs and making sure that the, the different patterns are being sewn on the materials, and my daughter is collecting more and more items from the store. When I came out of the store and my daughter and I were, you know, seriously engaged in the idea of buying a very expensive sewing machine, even though it wasn't what we'd gone to purchase, I asked my 12-year-old, I said, what's special about that store? And Amity, uh, that's her name, she said, you know, That man's really passionate about about sewing. She said it's really a surprise, but you know he he just knows everything. And it made me just think about in public relations terms the importance of passion in what we're talking about. And there's a a phrase around this and also around compassionate communication. Where in this particular case, Mr. Pickles and I were talking, and I said, you know, I don't really know what I'm looking for. And he said, oh, don't worry, sir. We've got lots here. I'm sure that there's something we can help you to find out what you need. When I said, we're feeling that we should get a sewing machine, he said, oh, that's great. You know, many people are looking at getting machines because they want to do work at home or to contribute to the hospital scrubs and so on. So here we were in this slightly unlikely setting, and what also struck me, of course, was that Mr. Pickles was actively doing something. He was actively working with the product that I was thinking about— well, in fact, not thinking about buying until I'd seen him doing this. So the non-verbal communication that's involved in public relations and in sales are pretty similar in a way. And asking the question then, what can we do in and around our businesses when people are coming in to both make them feel welcome, but also that their feelings and their values and their needs are legitimate, but also that we then buy into the genuine passion and knowledge that the spokesperson that we're speaking with or that we're putting forward for media work is is giving. So we then thought, well, as we moved on, took our things and said we needed to just consider the purchase, there is an issue there around the integrity of the person speaking about the product. And in that Cision survey that I mentioned a little while ago about the reputation and spokespeople, actually the most trusted spokespeople of companies the product experts and the technical people. So we normally field the MD or the CEO for spokespeople opportunities for the media, for example, or for office openings or product launches. But ironically enough, the CEOs and sales directors are actually probably the least trusted when it comes to getting the public relations message out there. And if you think about it, it's because we think that those people are going to be trying to sell us something. Whereas a technical expert, a product expert, is going to be representing the truth in an unvarnished way about that product. And this is really what Mr. Pickles was doing. He didn't seem like a salesman. He wasn't dressed like a salesman. He didn't sound like a salesman. But actually, it was his own business, and his passion and his product knowledge. Meant that he was very much a salesman. Then if we look then at our own opportunities for PR, it's worth thinking about whether we're going to put ourselves forward or whether we can put forward other people with training and with supervision and some guidance to actually articulate what the company is doing. Certainly this can be true, for example, in restaurants. We always see the chef If you think about in toothpaste commercial, it's the dentist, it's the practitioner that is brought out, for example. So then after leaving the the Emporium for for all things to do with seamstress work, we then dropped into the local pets home because we're looking at at adopting a cat. And a young woman there said, "Oh, that's great. We've started to let cats." be adopted again. She says, but you know, there's a waiting list and, um, you'll need to fill out the form. But you know, if you're interested in, in having a look, I'm live streaming through Facebook the kittens. So if you're interested, it's at the Bath Cats and Dogs Home. But they're live streaming now the, the kittens, uh, that are up for adoption because they're understanding that we may not be able to put our arms around those kittens for the next 2 weeks. But they don't want to lose the attention and the passion. And I could tell you Amity's eyes lit up when she thought about being able to sit at home and watch kittens on TV. As we know, kittens are some of the most watched videos. But in the same way that the Woodlands Trust is using a webcam in the Scottish Highlands to film in the Valkyries a kestrel, a pair of kestrels that have just given birth. So they are also using live video as a way to capture and to engage people. But what Mr. Pickles and the Cats Home and the Woodland Trust are all doing is they are showing mastery of their topic by having obvious domain expertise. They're genuine in terms of the passion that they're displaying with the products, or in this case, the animals they're working with, but they're also showing. And as we look at our public relations activities, how much of it are we relying on print or on static text? Video now is both so easy to create and to distribute, that it's really no excuse not to be putting some video somewhere into our marketing materials. Now, Mr. Pickles didn't seem to be live streaming his sewing classes. Maybe that's something that he'll be doing in the future. But if we've got products or services, and we've got knowledgeable people in our organisations who we don't necessarily traditionally think of as the spokesperson, Is there some way that we can deploy them? Is there some way that we can start to have user-generated content where it's not the CEO and the salesperson and the MD giving the company line? It's the product manager. It may be the hygiene officer. It may be the driver who then comes center stage because the person delivering the service, the person who's developed the product, is often the most credible and certainly the most knowledgeable about what it is. The CEO, the MD, or the sales director may be able to articulate the company's role in delivering that product or service, but that may not be the same, may not be the same passion and the same insight as that person who's actually involved in the making of it. So in the book that I'm working on called Start With Who, I like to think of the passion of the person that is working in and on the product or the service as being of fundamental importance because people buy people because we trust and we value people. And even my 12-year-old daughter who met Mr. Pickles just for 20 minutes came away feeling that this was the shop that she would go to, that Mr. Pickles is much more knowledgeable So loyalty starts young, but it starts with passion. So as we build our public relations, how can we demonstrate passion both in store, in facility, in factory, in restaurant, whichever facility we've got? Sometimes it's showing people what we do out front, and sometimes it's about sharing it in the way with the kittens that they're not allowed to let people in and see the kittens yet, but they can take the people there with them and do real live streaming. So, short session today about the importance of passion, and that passion and domain expertise are often held by the person doing the job, not necessarily by the person who runs the company. So I hope that I've managed to stitch this quilt of thoughts together in a way that Mr. Pickles might have been proud of. I've done it without the aid of a sewing machine, just my technology here at home. So thank you very much indeed for listening to this episode of Speak PR. I hope that you found this useful and informative, and if you have, please do give us a rating or a like, and importantly, share it with someone that you think who's running their own business and looking for ways to build their own brand. In the meantime, I wish you Great health. I wish you a profitable business and that you keep on communicating. My name is Jim James. Thank you for listening.
