Episode 033 - Your Vibe Is Your Tribe

While recording today's episode, our guest said, "Your vibe attracts your tribe." And that is exactly what we want to talk about today, is the vibe that you're putting out online through social media, through your website, through your blog, and through all different points of media. How do you build that reputation and how important is that reputation to the brand that you are building? We're talking about public relations, PR, and being able to have the brand that you want. And that's what we're going to talk about. So let's get started. Hey, welcome to this episode. It's episode number 33 of the Content Amplification Podcast. We're back again, season 3, and today we have Tracy Lamoree, who is a PR Wonder. From her bio, I'm not going to read it all, but she'll tell you a lot more about what it is that she's been up to and give you some great take-home nuggets. And as always, Jodi is with us.

Hello everyone.

So Tracy, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show today.

Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

Now, I'm not— like I said in the opening, I'm not going to go and read through the whole bio and everything like that. I'm going to give you the opportunity to really Tell us in a short bit what it is that you do.

Yeah, so essentially, I'm an international award-winning publicist. And what that means is I work with everybody from creatives to celebrities to small and medium-sized businesses. And the way I put it, PR, it's not about spin doctoring or anything. It's about elevating and celebrating the amazing things that other people are doing. So, pointing a spotlight on on the good work that other people are doing across industries, basically helping them become celebrities.

Elevate and celebrate. I love that. I love it.

It just came to me in a podcast when I was literally talking about how I'm not— it's not about, you know, spin doctoring or putting lipstick on a pig or anything. And that just— it's like, it really is just elevating and celebrating. Ever since then, I've been using it as like, it's perfect, right? That's what I do.

For sure. For sure. So what, what got you into this line of work?

Oh, that's the question. So I can try to answer that in a short— the encapsulated version is I was a 20-something activist along with my husband, Dave Parkinson. We were in sales and marketing, you know, for paid jobs, entry level. And in our part, you know, other than that, we were activists with hearts of, you know, justice. And we ended up hearing about a case of— this was when we were 29, 28 years old in 1998. We heard about a case of a man named Jimmy Dennis who was falsely accused, wrongly convicted, on death row in Pennsylvania. At that point, he'd been there for 7 years, and now he's— then he was was ultimately there for 25 years before he was ultimately released in 2017. But between those two dates, from 1998 to 2017, we basically started, founded, and ran a campaign that we call Justice for Jimmy International Media Campaign, which is what taught me— taught my husband how to make a web page and taught me how to write a press release. Literally, I learned how to write a press release on the Alta Vista, which you're too young to remember, but it was pre-Google.

Um, I do remember Alta Vista.

There you go, the Alta Vista. And, um, so that's how I learned to press release. And ultimately, you know, it was— it took us on a journey of many years, which led to myself and my husband being on everything from literally with no media experience— CNN, Court TV, MSNBC, A&E— talking about justice, talking about Jimmy Dennis and the death penalty and all that kind of stuff. Ultimately, he was released in 2017. A few years before that happened, I literally had a light bulb moment. Um, and you know, it wasn't just his case. It was— I ended up using those skills for advocacy when I, you know, volunteered for a political campaign here in Canada. Um, I'll write the press release. The what? Now. So I was always the one to do that and get successful media attention on whatever I was involved with. So it suddenly hit me, you know, when I was 41, that, hey, I don't have to make 20 calls an hour for something I don't care about anymore. Hi, this is Tracy calling from something I really don't care about. You know, that was my day, 25, just to make the money. Like most people, your day job, you don't really, you know, you're just waiting for it to be over and then you can go do stuff you care about. And the stuff I cared about was all that activist stuff. But anyway, it hit me when I was 41, that I could develop a business or at least be a freelancer was my first thought. Doing for just getting media attention for people because I realized what I've learned to do, you know, very easily to me, it's easy. I understand how media works, how to reach out to them, what to say, all that is a mystery to most people. And certainly for entrepreneurs and executives, the more I've been doing podcasts, I've done nearly 200 over the last 8 months, is, is learning that it's the difference between advertorial versus editorial is something that most entrepreneurs don't understand. And that's what keeps you out of the newsroom. So you have to understand how to approach newsrooms and then, you know, some tools to do that and also what not to approach them with, or you might burn bridges before you build them. So basically now I've not just do the PR, but I also am globally teaching people about why they should build their brand and teaching people in things like marketing, uh, some tips from the publicist tool belt basically that they can use to either develop their own reputation for thought leadership or further serve their clients.

Wow! It sounds like quite a journey.

Kind of crazy. Hard to answer that one in a short, you know.

Now, I want to kind of focus in on the idea of, you know, you mentioned building the brand and reputation. And you know, I mean, social media has been around for several years. And you know, a lot of businesses are trying to to build their brand. But then, there's the people behind the business who may be out there doing things that aren't as ideal as the brand would want. What do you think is very important for our listeners to know who are business owners about building your brand and how you portray your own image out there?

So, especially in a year like this that's been increasingly problematic for some people who don't understand that, that they can literally, you know, do great harm to the brands they've built, whether their personal brand or their business brand, based on something they don't even know they're doing it, you know, sharing the wrong meme, not without, or, or, you know, and I don't mean like, I'm not talking about unfairly being canceled. I mean, you need to know what you're doing. You, it's on you to understand. Cause sometimes you'll be like, oh, quick, I'll share a quick thing, or this seems right to me, or whatever. You may not realize that you're, you know, commenting on something you really don't know about, or you may have, there may be layers and layers to something that you just saw a quick meme about and thought was funny, or But the way people perceive it might be very different than the way you've meant it. Because I've certainly like found myself thinking less of people that I previously thought a lot more of just based on some of the stuff that they shared on social media. And I thought to myself, maybe they don't even really understand where that comes from or what the meaning is behind that. Or maybe they're— but you need to because you can really fall into, you know, you could spend years developing something and then you can fall, you can literally destroy it for what? For what? Because you wanted to be a smartass. You wanted to, you know what I mean? So know what you're doing. Understand it's not, you know, we don't all know everything. And if you don't, you know, it might be better not to comment if you really don't understand, or, you know, if you're surface. You might be getting yourself into a whole shitload of trouble that you might deserve, and you don't want to go there, you know. And that could be the same for other things, not even necessarily about, about, you know, racism or politics or something obvious. It just, you know, just consider what you're putting out there because you're representing something more than yourself. And even just when you're representing yourself.

I have a question for you. I'm wondering what the most common mistake you, uh, you see in people's PR efforts, or even just your clients?

That's a really good question. You mean how they intend to deal with the media and then doing something wrong? I have to coach them a lot on one of the things is editorial versus advertorial. It's really hard for entrepreneurs to get their head around. So one good example of that is, so we get— I don't know if you guys are familiar with HARO. People should write it down if they're not, help a reporter out. It's a great actionable tool. After this podcast, go and check it out. It's where reporters— it's like the opposite of a press release. It's where reporters under deadline from everything from the New Yorker, New York Times, NBC, Reader's Digest, Beyond, you know, Fortune— under deadline, they're looking for experts to fit their stories. And so, I get it, you get a query. Like, for example, I had one that was a client in the home building space, kind of an innovative disruptor. And so, the media, it was Reader's Digest looking for a quote, just a simple thing like looking for experts contractors or designers or whatever, who can talk about the difficulties that people have in designing bathrooms and kitchens, for example. That was the question. And so I said to them, they're looking for, you know, you do an expert to talk about the difficulty in designing bathrooms and kitchens so they can just enter it into their thing. Well, instead he was like, oh, he basically said, oh, well, it's really hard to, you know, design bathrooms and kitchen. People get into a lot of trouble with it. So what you should do is contact my company. Here's my company. Well, that's obviously not what Reader's Digest is looking for. Right. So, um, I was trying, sorry, I was trying to explain what they're looking for is no way you would get your company into that is your answer should be people have a lot of trouble with renovations these days. Um, these are 5 issues that they have with bathroom renovations. Here's a couple of ways to avoid those issues, says Bob from Bob's Home Repair. That's it. And the mention of your company is Bob's Home Repair because that's your calling card. That's why you're the expert. That will get in there. That's all that's going to get in there, but that's all you need. Now you've been quoted as an expert in Reader's Digest or Rolling Stone or whatever. So very often they really have trouble even after we talk about it for an hour, you know, like understanding that it's, that's not a news story or like another situation where we had, um, we, the Client, it was a, they were doing a great charitable thing for thousands of schools all over the UK and giving these schools something they actually needed because of COVID Even I got caught up in that for a minute thinking, oh, that's a good story. And I wrote it out like a straight story and I sent it out. Not one pickup. I'm like, what the heck? That's a national story. Why not one pickup? So that I had to go back to my message and read it again. Like I'm the news editor. Okay. I'm reading this with fresh eyes, not like my client, not like I wrote it. And then I realized, I laughed at myself right after I read it because I'm going, I talk about this all the time, editorial versus advertorial. And then when I read it, I went, look at that. What is this at heart? This is a story. This is a company telling me, the editor, about the awesome things they've done. What's that again? That's an ad. Regardless of whether it was a news, like, you know, a good thing or current to the news or, you know, so it doesn't mean they can't get in. It means you take the strategy. So I said, okay, hold on. Sorry about that. Refail, fail. Let me do a rework. And the way I reworked that to make it work to get it in was that I said, okay, so now what's the problem that you were trying to solve? It was regarding COVID and kids and schools. And, you know, so here's the problem. What we need to do instead of having you as a company coming in and talk about how you're solving this problem, isn't that awesome? We need to have an expert who has nothing to do with you, who's not there to talk about your company, talk about the problem. So I pitched this story with this expert who's not related to your company talking about the problem. And then we present this could be for an article too, 3 different, like if I was writing an article, it's a better way to say it. So I have a, I'll write an article about the problem instead of making it a profile of my client and their business, which nobody's going to pick up. I write an article with the problem. I interview an expert. I quote the expert. Then I find 2 other guys who do something to do with the problem that sort of solve it, but have nothing to do with my client that are not a competitor of my client. So say my client's giving them a cookie. They might be giving them a, you know, um, a book, you know what I mean? Like, they both solve the problem, you know what I mean? Whatever, you know what I'm saying, right? So, then I have an article about a problem with an expert and a couple people that are coming in to solve that problem. My client's only one of them. So, it's no longer an advertorial piece about that client. It's a news story about a problem. He's a person quoted. So, that's how you do that.

That's great advice. That's great advice. And some things that I see a lot of times is a business would then take on what would be perceived as a feel-good action or a charity type event because they feel this is going to get them more business, which in my opinion, and I think in yours from what I heard you say, is kind of the wrong approach, right? You know, and they want to be featured in it because they think it's going to make them, you know, a higher spotlight in the community and get more business. But if somebody wants to do something or is doing something without that kind of hidden agenda to grow their business because they actually truly believe in that cause, What would you tell them would be the best approach to go about kind of promoting that action out there without coming across as sales action?

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's ways you can do it. Like I would say, write a piece for Medium. Medium, a lot of people don't realize is not Huffington Post. You can just literally write an article, put a picture and write an article. If you're a good writer, do a series of them. They may be picked. If they are picked up, they could be picked you know, get a huge readership that you don't know, similar to what a magazine— but there's no editor blocking what you're writing. You're able to present what you want. So it's a really good entry level for people that want to start developing their thought leadership, putting it somewhere where people can see it. It's not just a blog. A lot of people have that perception that it's an article, you know, so it's stronger than having a blog. Um, that's one way, you know, and just— and actually talk from the heart about what you're doing. Maybe focus more on the issue than on your business and what you're doing. Get there and be a part, you know what I mean? See, be a passionate individual talking about this problem and why you feel called on, you know, as a human to solve it. And then you can maybe bring in some of, you know, and because I'm that, you know, because I'm the head of Lamori Media, what I could do to solve it, like, you know, to my skills, I would write a free press release. I help them out with this. I help them with the media. I, you know, yours might be, you might be doing something different, but whatever it is that you're doing, yeah, like talk about it. And I wouldn't say it doesn't bring, like, it is good because, you know, your local, um, you know, your local weekly that is mandated to do— to talk about community issues and stuff. They may do an article on just like a more, you know, like a sort of hybrid. It's more— it's more like— it's like— because community papers, they're taught— they're there to talk about— like, I don't mean the daily, I mean, you know, your weekly times, your weekly whatever. They're there to talk about the community and to support the people in the community and stuff.

So Excellent. So, Jodi, do you have a question?

When it comes to blogs, what do you think are some things that people should avoid talking about?

I guess, you know, it would depend on your audience and where you think. I would say, you know, and who you are. I mean, an activist might be willing to go somewhere that a small business person may not want to go. So if your heart is really to get into an issue, then there's no problem talking about it. You know, again, if you know what you're doing, but if you just want to, if it's, if you know, like be careful with issues that are controversial, if you don't want to devote a lot of time to it. And if you're not willing to stand up and be like, this absolutely is where me and my company stand on it. And you know, whatever. And so I wouldn't say there's a no. I mean, I talk about the death penalty because that's where I came from, you know, with this work. And that's controversial to some people. Right. But the people who are going to be, who aren't going to, who are going to think, oh, I don't want to work with her because she has that opinion. They probably wouldn't be a good fit to work with me. Anyway, not because I won't work with someone with a different opinion, but because they won't work with someone with a different opinion, or they don't like my style, or they don't, you know, it's not going to be— I can't serve everybody and I shouldn't. So, you know, your vibe attracts your tribe. It happens in, in everything, right?

So I love that, the vibe, your vibe attracts your tribe.

I've heard that before and it's true in business too. Like, I didn't make that up, but it's true and it's definitely true in business too. So don't be afraid of the people that you're, you know, you may turn off. I mean, without— I mean, I'm talking being crazy, but I mean, like, be yourself. Don't be worried about, oh, well, 'Well, they may not hire me if I have bright red hair.' Well, you know what? Some people will find that attractive, or some people will find that, 'Hey, you're bold and you didn't say—' It doesn't— whatever bothers some person won't bother somebody else. And so, the people will, you know, I never hear from the people that choose not to hire me. Sure, there's a bunch of them. Never heard from them. I hear from the ones who message me, and there's a whole bunch of them that are attracted to what I say and how my vibe is and whatever else. So, you know, be— as long as you're acting with honesty and integrity and being genuine and all that, then be yourself. If you're not, then you need to work on those things. I'm not going to tell you to be yourself like that. Work on those things. Be better. Be a better version of yourself. But as long as you're honest and genuine, and then that's all you need to really worry about. Just do a good job and people will respond to it.

One thing that we talk to clients about is bringing your personality across in your marketing. While you have a business, a brand, let's say, Joe's Shoe Repair. We'll use it as a fictitious business. You know, everybody would know that business is— that's where you go and get your shoes, you know, fixed. And that's the outcome. That's what they do. But getting to know who Joe is and that personality about when you come through the door, what he's like, you know. And Joe decides that he's gonna, you know, go on his social media account and he's gonna start to, you know, post, but he doesn't know what to post about. Now, we pitch the idea that let's get your personality across. Let's show what what you enjoy, what you're like, what that feeling is that's important to that. And then on the other side is how important is it to be aware of what your personal accounts are like out there, right? Because you got your business accounts that everybody's— you're pushing for people to follow you and get to know you there.

Oh, your personal socials and stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And I have just— I mean, me, I have no separation between business life and anything anymore. My original Twitter was called Tracy Goddess. Way before I was a publicist, just for fun. My husband literally called it that. And then, you know, a bunch of people started following me from media and everything. So now I, we have a new one now for Lamori Media, but Tracy Goddess is still the founder of Lamori Media. And I still share all my media, but it's a silly old, you know, but everything else, Tracy Lamori PR Media, it's got all my personal stuff. It's got my dog, you know, daughter being pregnant, my business stuff and all that. Only one client has ever said to me, do you think that we should separate that? Maybe it should be separated. Only one out of like 1,000 clients. You know, and I'm like, nah, if it bugs you, maybe we'll talk about it. But like, really, you know, if you meet me, you know what, you're talking to activist Tracy about the Jimmy Dennis case, you're talking about PR Tracy, you're talking about hiring me, you're talking about me on a podcast, it's all the same Tracy, you know. And I had a potential client was worried about, like, he's got a book coming out where he talks about his spiritual side and his brand, you know, his past and, you know, whatever else. And then meanwhile, he's building a brand similar to like you guys, but helping I help people tell their stories and build their— so he's got an entrepreneur story and then he thinks they're two different stories. He wants to promote both, but he's like, how can I do that? Won't people be confused? And I'm like, I don't know what the other publicists are telling you, but you know, hell no, you're a person. Be genuine. You're— what you're thinking when you're thinking that way is you're thinking about how should I look if I'm doing this? How should I act? What will people expect from the author of this? What will people expect? From the entrepreneur. What you're doing there is you're not going to be comfortable with what you're doing and also you're not being genuine. So I just say to him, listen, stop not being genuine. He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, think about it. You are a person. You are all of those things. Yes, obviously we're not going to mix the messages when you're talking to one audience. You're talking about that. But it's not like, you know, you don't hide that. That's just who you are. That's all part of who you are when you get up on a stage. That's who you are. That's who you are. That's who you are. So it's like if I was to get up on a stage, Trace is here to talk about PR and media, but I— well, if you ask me where I came from, I'm just going to be like, oh, well, we're not talking about death penalty or anything like that here today. We're talking about branding. You know, that would be not genuine. You see what I mean?

So absolutely, for sure. Yeah, I, uh, I have a question that kind of changing the direction, but when it comes to our business and our clients, we are very technology heavy since this whole COVID outbreak, but even well before that. So I'm just wondering, do you have any tech technology tools that you often recommend to clients, whether that be software or even any apps or anything like that?

So not really to clients. There's a few really good PR tools that I'm only starting to implement now. There are some great, like, you know, $10,000 a year PR tools, you know, that kind of automate and make everything that we do that much easier, you know. But actually, I haven't really used them so far. I, because, you know, when you start a pro, it is hard to change because I, I have my list of, of not clients, sorry, all my media lists and all my content that I've developed over 10 years. And I, I know where I go and what I do. And to stop and implement and put those all into a software, and I haven't done yet, but I should because they have all kinds of— so, so far I haven't, like, you know, I, I'm still a solo, I'm almost, I mean, I'm incorporated now, but I still behave like a solopreneur, you know. I'm still like, everything is in my head and everything So now we're in the year where we're trying to like actively do it so everything can be duplicated, not just in here, but that other people can open up that computer and see that, you know, so those are the, that's the, you know, process that we're doing in our backend. But in terms of for clients, not so much for mostly for clients, it's just, you know, unless it's something like if they're trying to start a podcast or something, then I'm looking, you know, but generally it's, it's more just, I'm just getting information from them and connecting them and, you know, but on my side, I need to start utilizing. Internally, those technical and those softwares and those— there's new things all the time that we just have been going on our own and just, you know, because we're successful on our own, so we haven't looked at them. But now we're like, you know, when you turn around, look, holy, there's all kinds of new things over the last 5 years probably, or in the last 2 years even that I probably haven't even looked at that would make my job easier. Not make my job better or my results better for clients, because if that was the case, I would already be on it. But, you know, probably make my backend easier and more easier to flow. Absolutely.

Now, we only got a couple minutes left and I want to talk about your upcoming book, Get Repped. Tell us about that. How did that project come about and why did you decide to write that book?

Yeah, well, I always wanted to be a writer but I thought it'd be fiction or something first. But I was working as a publicist for, you know, one of the people that actually had me when I was a freelancer was Lou Bayer from Civility Experts. And she became a— her book, The 30% Solution, which is basically about how civility in the workplace helps your bottom line, 30% retention of employees, retention of customers, all that kind of thing. And we made it a business bestseller. She hired me as a publicist on Amazon, and together we made it a business bestseller. She credited me with that. And she said, then she started a publishing company and she's got about 15, 20, probably 40 books now, all in, not just by her, but by other people. In soft skills. So anything office but soft skills related. And she said to me, well, you know what, PR would fit. You need to write the book on PR. Like she literally said, write the book about how you do your magic. And I was like, okay. And that was 3 years ago. I'm so busy doing it. I barely ever was writing it. And then now in COVID, I'm finally like, okay. So I've been committing myself to doing like a chapter here, chapter there. I went back and added a few things, some of the kind of things we've talked about, like about reputation management. You know, and going off and how you can also ruin a highly, you know, well-developed reputation in a New York minute. And so I added some chapters like that. So we're looking at early summer, hopefully now, but its audience is entrepreneurs and executives, essentially, though really that's who they asked me to gear it towards, but it's really for anybody who wants to crack media. It's, you know, it really just teaches you with the perspective of, you know, building your brand as an entrepreneur, but I also. Just talk about, you know, media. And there's also an ending part because I also speak to a lot of marketing people. So the three-quarters of it is aimed at the entrepreneur or whoever wants to get their message out. And then the back end, the last, you know, couple chapters is about, would you like, you know, would you, are you interested in being a publicist? Let me tell you how, because I didn't go to school for this for 5 years. And I'll tell you, universities will tell you it's a 4-year course, but I don't know what the heck. I mean, I'm sure they're learning some great Snapchat or new stuff or whatever in there, or The only thing I can imagine that they would learn in there that I don't know is, you know, how to write a big, you know, how marketing campaigns, you have the big campaign planning out before. We don't really do that in PR because it's like the strategic, but it's a lot of what pops up too and what opportunities we find. So I don't know how to write a big, you know, this is what, you know, big marketing, blah, blah. I'm just like, okay, here's the contract. Send me your bio tomorrow. I'm gonna send you a one-pager the next day. I'm gonna start sending it to media. And guess what? Two days after that, you're gonna start getting a bunch of interviews. You're gonna be really happy. Happy and profiles and whatever. And so I've been asked to speak to, you know, some students of public relations now. And I'm joking that I want to say like, it's at the university. What I'm— my first thing is gonna be, so I guess I can't say why are you here? Because whenever they graduate, they come in, they call me, they don't have any contacts. They know how to write a press release. But really, I say just do it. If you're a good writer, if you're good at people management, get a clients, show them what you can do, reach out to media, just figure it out.

Great advice. Great advice. Well, Tracy, thank you so much for sharing your message with us today. Thank you. I'm sure we could talk for hours on this and there's many different rabbit holes we can go down.

And I'm always babbling. I could babble forever. So, you know, you've got to cut it at some point.

So, your website is lamoriamedia.com. We'll put it in the notes of the show. And we'll keep our eyes peeled for the book coming out. As you say, when was it?

Early summer should be. And also, if anybody is interested in working with me, I do work internationally anywhere in the English-speaking world. And literally one of the most famous people right now in the world is a lady who cleans, organizes closets for a living. So really anybody with an expertise, there's media for you. So if you think this is interesting, things. I mean, you check it out.

Give me a call. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you.