Here’s what we’ll cover
Today we are talking to Jules Brooke, founder of Handle Your Own PR and She’s the Boss and we’re talking about getting published, be it in magazines, newspapers or even getting yourself and your business on TV. This type of marketing is invaluable, it can give you instant credibility and instant notoriety. Jules Brooke runs a business that shows you how to handle your own PR. Gone are the days where you needed a big and expensive PR agency to handle your PR. PR marketing or public relations marketing is something that you can make happen and the best thing is it doesn’t cost you a fortune, it doesn’t have to cost you anything at all – PR is free!
We talk about the benefits of getting published and who it works best for.
Jules also debunks some of the myths that surround PR. Hint, journalists are approachable and they actually want to hear from you.
Jules also gives you some great tips to get started on your own PR for your business.
Links and Resources
- Checkout the Simply Smarter Numbers website HERE
- Checkout the Podcast HERE
- Checkout the Instagram page HERE
- Checkout Jules’ Lunches and Memberships HERE
- Checkout Jules’ Podcast HERE
- Checkout Jules’ YouTube HERE
- Checkout Jules’ Facebook Group HERE
Keep Listening!
Here’s the shownotes
Jen Waterson
I met Jules Brooke about 12 months ago, we were both speaking at an event and Jules was the final speaker of the day. It had been a long day, we had to travel home and I’ll be honest I was keen to hit the road but all of the other presenters I’d spoke to on the day told me I MUST stay and watch Jules’ presentation because she is awesome. So I stayed, I watched and I signed up to her Handle Your Own PR coaching program basically immediately!
I recall saying to Jules at the after show drinks that I felt like PR was my missing link. The thing I needed to elevate my business. I wanted the instant credibility that you get from being published. It’s one thing for me to tell the world I’d been working with business owners for 20 years but it’s a different layer of credibility when it comes from a respected third party source.
I loved my experience with Jules Brooke and her team and I loved the results I got from implementing the things she taught me. So naturally, I wanted to share Jules wisdom with all of you listening.
Welcome to the podcast Jules.
Jules Brooke
Jen thank you so much for asking me, it’s great to be here, I love talking about PR and I loved that little intro, thank you so much.
Jen Waterson
So tell us a bit about yourself Jules and your business.
Jules Brooke
I started the business almost 10 years ago I think, it was during the last GFC which I think hit in late 2008, early 2009, and I had a PR agency, I taught myself and we had grown to a reasonable size and we focused on small business, start-ups and lots of entrepreneur’s.
When the GFC hit, a lot of my clients said we can’t afford it because PR for most people is about a $10,000 minimum expenditure where you’re paying $3000 a month for 3 months. Our clients started going look I can’t afford it and I had a light bulb moment where I thought wow I know how badly the media is looking for content and I know these people have amazing businesses and loads of information they can share, why don’t I just teach people how to do it directly.
It was a bit of a moment that stayed as a side hustle with my agency being full time for about five or six years and then I went a little bit crazy and did the thing you should never do and sold my house in 2015 to put the money into the business and decided I will create what they call a PR SAS platform, what that means is you can do the whole campaign off the website. So I started that, jumped out of the agency and just started teaching people and then started doing courses.
I have been doing a few courses, one of which Jen you’ve come too, with journalists and then when Covid hit I bought everything online. It’s the best job in the world, I love it, it makes me feel great to see the smiles on people’s faces when they get published and what it can do for their businesses.
Jen Waterson
It is a really exciting feeling when you get published. I’ve been published before thanks to you and your team, I’d love to dig into that in a little more detail shortly, but you said earlier it was around $10,000 a year, back a few years ago.
Jules Brooke
I think these days it’s more like $5000 a month, but no PR company would do anything in a month, you just can’t get the traction, you need a bit of time to get stuff out to the journalists and get them to understand what it is you’ve got to offer and give you the chance to chase it.
Most PR companies would say a minimum of six months, the odd one would do for a book launch for six weeks but that’s very limited. But it can be a pretty expensive process particularly because it’s not guaranteed you’ll get coverage.
Jen Waterson
And when you look at it at being so expensive, it really does cut out a lot of smaller businesses.
Jules Brooke
It does but the weird thing is it’s actually free, if you learn how to do it, you don’t pay journalists to write a story for you, they will take your story or idea and run it for free if it’s good so I guess I had that moment where I thought it’s free marketing that people could be doing if they just learnt how to do it.
Jen Waterson
You’re just taking out that middle man, the PR agency and said okay you can do this on your own from your computer behind your desk, you can get yourself published, here is how you do it.
Jules Brooke
Yes that’s exactly what I did.
Jen Waterson
It’s exciting and as a business owner, we feel it’s really scary and difficult and almost impossible but it’s very enticing because, I know myself when I go online and look at other people’s businesses and websites, and I see that as seen in section on their websites and to me they have instant credibility with all these logos they’ve got on their website saying ‘as seen in’ various articles, newspapers, magazines, it’s exciting to see other people can do it.
I look at it from the outside and was looking it going how?
Jules Brooke
Yes how is it that the media’s found them and not found me?
Jen Waterson
Absolutely.
Jules Brooke
And how is it that they’re the same as us so why are they getting all the coverage and people realise it’s because they’re reaching out to the journalists, it’s not the other way around.
The journalists are always looking for people who can give them good story ideas and always these days looking for people that can write a complete article and can give them something they can cut and paste and put straight into their magazine or newspaper.
Jen Waterson
That’s really what you do in your higher level program you offer. So the program I went through with you guys, I consider myself to be a good writer, I can string together some words, but it is a different style and it really is something I had trouble getting my head around, is the different style they have when a journalist is putting together an article.
That was the beauty of the program you had when I enrolled in with you, we had access to our own journalists to help rewrite our words and put them into that style.
Jules Brooke
But also, the other reason is that I want to remove that fear of the journalists because we all think they’re sitting their going how dare you, who are you, who do you think you are?
But the reality is that they’re normally very shy types, they are relying on people contacting them with stories and ideas so the journalists that come to events absolutely love it, in fact I just interviewed Wendy Squires who comes to my events and she runs regular columns in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age and writes for Women’s Weekly and a whole lot of other magazines and she said to me the highlight of her year is going to my events and meeting those business owners because the stories are amazing and I think lots of journalists don’t feel very valued these days, so it’s very nice for them to be with business owners who go oh my god you’re brilliant how can you help me?
Jen Waterson
Absolutely, they’re like a Rockstar walking in the room because they’ve got the thing we want and that is the ability to change our words and make them really user friendly for the journalists we’re trying to attract.
That’s where your platform comes in and helps facilitate that, that’s the SAS platform you mentioned earlier, just takes care of the connection points, gives us the emails we need and all of the contacts we could possibly need.
Jules Brooke
And the template for the media release and that kind of thing, but I think people do think that it is hard to write that way but I hope that by the time you finished you realised it’s just a different style, a different way of writing so the two things that are hardest to do are, it’s counter-intuitive if you’re promoting your business to put your business at the bottom of the story, but that’s kind of the way it works with PR.
It’s all about your expertise and what you can share at the top, and then at the bottom if you want more information go to this website. I think also that people think you have to write a really long story, but you don’t it’s only a 500-600 words, it’s like a teaser to get people to go to your website.
The last tip that surprises people is I say write it as if you are the journalists. In my opinion we should do such and such, it would go ‘Jen, Founder of… has these tips for you about how to come out of Covid’, immediately then your information goes in and at the bottom you would write go to your website and that is the way it works. It sends people to your website.
Jen Waterson
It’s about helping people and giving them something interesting to read that is about them, not about you. There’s no point saying my opinion is this, I remember you saying at one point to us in the room is the only one who cares about your opinion is most likely your mother.
Jules Brooke
I’m a bit brutal that way but I guess I just say to people, no one really cares about your business other than you, nobody really wants to know what processes you do, they only care about themselves.
If you’re talking about your business, talk about it in the way it can help other people, and how it can help them and what tips you can give people, rather than say I have this great business and if you come join it and work with me I can help you with this and that. That doesn’t work, it’s more of an ad.
Jen Waterson
Yeah that’s right.
When we’re talking about PR Jules, what kind of businesses does it work for? You mentioned earlier Wendy Squires, they’ve got different genres and there’s other journalists you bring in that have different things they offer as well, who is it for when it comes to a business that is listening, who do you need to be to be eligible for PR?
Jules Brooke
It’s almost every business, the ones it doesn’t really work for with what I teach which is media relations, is if you’re hyper-local, so a milk bar or local hairdresser probably will find it harder because the only people you can go to are the local media which is often just the local paper in which case they couldn’t take your money, just give them a call and ask them to do a story on you.
What I would say is anyone whose got national reach, so an online business or a service that can help people nationally, I would say people that want to be thought leaders in their industry, so if you want to be known as being the best in your industry PR is definitely the way to go. Other than that, whether it’s a product or service, whether you’re targeting mums or CEOs, it really doesn’t matter.
I’ll give you an example, we worked with a guy who was a picture framer in Melbourne so a very limited story you would think but what we did was a story about how to hang your images and the best way to frame your pictures and the different types of frames and how you should apply them around the house etc. We gave it the headline, ‘are you well hung?’ and all the journalists opened it and I reckon he got around 30 articles published around lots of different media and lots of Inside Out and Home Beautiful, those kinds of things.
One of the things I would say with PR is it allows you to go to media you wouldn’t be able to advertise in. You couldn’t afford to advertise in Better Homes and Gardens and those sorts of things because it’s thousands but they’ll take your stories, or a competition or prizes, but there’s always a way.
Jen Waterson
It is interesting to see, I know you’ve helped people get onto various things, even the Today Show and The Project. There’s some big ones out there, for someone in my business, with my target market, those are not the places I would target necessarily but there is such a huge range of media out there for a huge range of businesses, so it’s about trying to identify who it is you’re targeting specifically and speaking to that person in the article and then having the connection to the outlet.
Jules Brooke
That’s right.
Can I just say Jen, you saying I don’t want to be on TV just makes me want to issue a challenge to you, because you should get on Sunrise and give people tips on what they can do coming out of the pandemic. Maybe you’re not serving people nationally but what you can do if you put it on your website and share it, you’ll immediately be seen as the person to go to for cash flow management and things, so it does great things for you even if you are only wanting to be serving a particular section.
Jen Waterson
Yeah well that’s actually interesting because particularly with Covid as it is, my one to one consulting has gone national, I’ve got clients in WA, locally, Queensland, all around the place and it is a case of sometimes having someone there saying ‘no what about…’ because you got me on Koshie’s Business Builder’s which was fantastic for me, that is a platform that I think really helps build my credibility as well. Then when you say you should be on Sunrise, perhaps I should be, maybe that’s something we need to work on Jules.
Jules Brooke
Absolutely, I reckon you could easily get on Morning TV, the thing I say to a lot of people is you think it’s really hard, it’s not, it’s just coming up with a good angle. If you have a good angle they’ll be dying to get you on. If you think TV and radio particularly are run on interviews, interviews are normally 5-10 minutes, so radio in particular has to fill 24 hours a day 7 days a week with content so they need lots and lots of interviewees, and the same with TV.
There are more people asking to be on TV but they still have the huge appetite for content and of course with the pandemic a lot of people have decided to pull back and I would argue that now is the perfect time to be building a profile out there so when people come out of the blackhole we’re all in and want to spend some money to engage a customer, then you’re the one they’re thinking of.
Jen Waterson
When you say angles Jules, what do you mean for those listening who have not had an experience with PR as to what you mean by angles?
Jules Brooke
A news worthy angle is coming up with something that the media is going to consider useful for their readers, so there’s one really easy way I talk about with people which is to take the information in your head about your industry or customers or the way people act, and offer it as advice.
I’ll give you some examples, it might be 5 things you should do before you engage a book keeper, 10 things you didn’t know about finances for small businesses, 3 common mistakes people make before they engage an accountant or 5 things you should ask your accountant before you say yes.
So that’ll just give you a small idea of the sorts of advice you can push out there. I’ve worked with people who have said, what can I do I have a garlic farm, and I’ve said well I don’t know the different between different types of garlic, I don’t know how to tell when it’s fresh, I don’t know the best ways of storing it. So there’s some examples straight away.
There was another guy who I worked with who was a window washed and he said well what can I do, and I said I don’t know if there’s some products that can make your windows streak free, whether there are good times of year to wash your windows, how to get to the upstairs window. There’s lots of questions that people will ask you and one of the ways I say it, is if you were to gout to a party and somebody says what do you do and you tell them, I bet there are the same 3 or 4 questions that come up every time around your business.
It might be when I go out and teach people how to do PR and they go what is PR? Or how hard is it or what kind of media do you go to? I can take those questions and turn them into a media release, ‘the top 5 media that you should target if you’re a small busines owner’, ‘why doing PR is not hard’, all those kind of media releases where I know people want to know the answers to those questions because they ask me whenever I go out.
That’s one of the best ways to come up with a news worthy angle when you’re writing the article yourself. If you want someone else to write the article for you, it needs to a little more controversial, you need to offer it as an exclusive meaning you only go to one newspaper at a time or one media outlet, and say would you like this story and I won’t go to anyone else until you say you want or don’t want it.
If you go to a newspaper they would probably have to write it for you which makes it difficult because there aren’t as many journalists these days but if you want to do that you have to say these are the kind of photos to take and also give them a bit of balance. In a newspaper it’s highly unlikely they will do a story just on you, they will want to know what the head of the accounting association says and maybe what one of your customers says so if you go to a newspaper, try to get a few people to talk to the journalist to give them a bit of balance.
For instance, when I launched Handle your own PR, they did a big story in the Sydney Herald and The Age but they didn’t just do a story on me, they went to the head of PR institute to say what do you think of this idea and then they went to a women who had a PR agency and asked what she thought, then they went to clients. So a journalist job is to give a rounded view with opinions of a whole lot of people not just one person.
Jen Waterson
That’s some great tips.
You can have a go at this by yourself, that’s the point of your business, to show how it is you can do it by yourself, and once you’ve got yourself published one time, it’s really amazing the confidence it gives you to go and seek it out yourself.
After being published a couple of times with you, some were big ticket items and then some were smaller, from there I had a huge amount of confidence, I was able to then approach some big companies like Business Chicks, I approached them not necessarily for an article, but we did a masterclass together, and there is no way on earth I would have approached them if I didn’t have that experience that I had with you and the confidence to go hang on a minute maybe I can get in front of these people.
Jules Brooke
You do and I think the thing is you can’t predict with PR, the strangest things happen so another women I was working with got herself onto the Weekend Today Show and into Women’s Agenda, she’s a stress management coach, and the next thing, somebody from Coles Myer group rang her and said I saw you on TV or read your article and was wondering if you would run a stress management workshops for all the women at Coles Myer group.
Extraordinary things can come out of it, I’ve done PR when I had a range of envelopes and I’ve just got it into Australian Gift Guide and the next thing three different distributors rang me and said hi I do pacific ring, rural areas can we have your envelopes and sell them? Things that you couldn’t predict will come out of PR as well.
Jen Waterson
Yeah that’s right. I also had recently Lawyers Weekly approach me and asked me to contribute to an article about particular finance topics, but that one went live and really good.
Jules Brooke
That never would’ve happened Jen if you want through a PR agency because what would’ve happened is you would’ve finished with them, they wouldn’t have got to know you in the same way and they wouldn’t have come to you so the beauty of doing PR and getting your name out there, and the journalists will start to talk amongst themselves. I don’t know if a journalist left outside one of the media outlets you had been in and went there, there’s lots of strange, weird and wonderful things that can come out of it.
Jen Waterson
I guess the thing is too, if there is a journalist out there looking for someone and they come across my name one way or another, if they get into my website and see I have been published in various other areas, it just gives them more confidence to put their hand up and say this girl must know what she’s talking about.
It works that way for me in my business but it works that way for so many other people in a huge variety of different businesses, just getting your name out there and getting that credibility.
Jules Brooke
Yeah and the other thing, I mean I’ll just tell you my funny little anecdote that I talk about PR because it’s unlike any other kind of media or marketing because of what you can do with it once you’ve been published. Everyone kind of thinks that the big aim is to be published but as you say, it’s to have something to put on your website, it’s to have clips to put on social media go woohoo we’re thrilled that the Sydney Herald or Smart Company did a story on us and it makes other people sit up and take notice as well.
You can put it out in a newsletter if you’ve got products, it’s a great way to go and arm your sales reps with it and tell them to go out and say we’re going to be in Women’s day or Herald Sun in a couple of weeks and watch them increase their orders.
It just works on lots and lots of levels.
Jen Waterson
Yeah it does and as you go through the process I noticed with the different journalists I worked with, not just with you but when we actually got to the point when I was being published in various locations, I would end up having a bit of a relationship with each of the journalists that were publishing, you mentioned Smart Company just before, I was published in Smart Company and the girl that I was emailing when we were just tweaking it, so she took an article wanted to tweak it and change a couple of things so over a period of two or three days we were emailing back and forwards and developing a relationship where she was saying if I have anything else that comes up that way I’ll definitely be in touch, would you be willing to contribute to some other different topics we might have?
You start to open up relationships and open up other doors for yourself too.
Jules Brooke
Absolutely, and journalists move around as well and all talk to each other so it’s a great way to build those relationships and keep them going and they will always come back to you. It’s just easy for them if they know you, you’re good at giving them a couple of sound bites, they’re just going to call you for those.
Jen Waterson
They know you are going to meet a deadline and the things that fall back on them and cause them stress and pressure, if you’ve got them covered it’s that much easier for them to shoot you an email and say hey how about it.
My advice to business owners out there is to look into how you can use PR in your business to elevate your profile, to using in your marketing, to put on the websites, to give yourself the creditability that you have but when it comes from an external party it’s just elevated exponentially I think.
When it comes to doing PR listen to the tips that Jules has given us, start with getting out a notepad and pen and write down a whole bunch of different angles that you think people have not come across you before, what do they want to know? Go to your clients and have those conversations with them and brainstorm it with some people who are at a client level and write all of those things down because what you think is super obvious to one person, may just not be to your ideal client.
Jules Brooke
Exactly, we’re all too close to our own topics, we all think I couldn’t do that because it would be embarrassing because everybody knows that, but they just don’t.
The other thing is keep it nice and simple, journalists are actually told to write as if there audience is a nine year old, I know that sounds really silly but there’s no benefit in going out using long jargon and industry terms, really write it down and explain as you would to a child.
Jen Waterson
That’s really helpful advice because I think sometimes we get a bit too caught up in trying to use our own words and they’re fine when we’ve got a client on board or are standing one to one having a conversation, if you’re a retailor when you’re standing face to face or on the phone to a potential client, you can have those deeper conversations but at that real base level, it’s about finding something that peaks their interest and makes them want to look a bit further or closer to what you’re doing.
Jules Brooke
Exactly.
Jen Waterson
So there you go people, there’s your tips, go out and talk to those clients, write down those various angles and have a go at writing something yourself and if you get stuck with the copy part and you’re not good at writing, and we’ll all tell ourselves we’re not good at writing, like I can string a few words together but it is a tough thing to try and perfect something in 500-600 words.
There are people out there that can help you sort that through, work with some journalists, work with Jules, you’re going to be amazed.
Jules Brooke
I don’t care how people do it, I just want people to be using PR because as you said it gives you so much creditability and does so many great things for your website, SEO, and gives you a lot of confidence so I’m 100% behind people giving it a go and finding out it’s probably not as hard as they thought it was.
Jen Waterson
And it’s free.
Jules Brooke
It’s free, exactly it’s a process. It’s like riding a bike, once you learn how to do it, you can do it for the rest of your life it’s very easy to find journalists to reach out too, it’s much harder to work out what to say to them and once you master that, it all becomes really easy.
Jen Waterson
And I think also as you eluded to earlier, just getting over the fact that journalists are not scary people who are unapproachable.
Jules Brooke
No, that’s right.
They’re lovely and a lot of them are shy, introverts, they’re writers so they get a bit bedazzled by business owners saying to them oh my god you’re amazing, they love it.
Jen Waterson
Well Jules if anybody wants to look you up, where can they find you? What’s your website handle?
Jules Brooke
The website is handleyourownpr.com.au, I’m also all over LinkedIn and have got Facebook pages and groups as well so you should be able to find me I’m the women with the pink hair if you’re not sure whether it’s me or not.
Jen Waterson
She’s immediately recognisable.
Now Jules I was about to stop but I want you to just introduce She’s The Boss because it’s something that’s really interesting and I think the listeners would be really interested so if I was hang up now I would be kicking myself for you to not let people know about She’s The Boss.
Jules Brooke
She’s The Boss started on the back of me hosting a TV show last year, I did it for a year and it was called She’s The Boss and I focused on female founders and women doing extraordinary things in business, then with Covid not only did the TV show get more and more viewers, but all of a sudden we had nothing to do and we were all trapped at home so I started running online Zoom lunches for female founders and that’s been great and we have quite a lot of people that come to us from all over the country.
It’s 12:30 every Friday online and it’s $50 a month to come to as many lunches as you like and that actually gets you a membership as well, I’ve also got a YouTube TV channel called She’s The Boss where I am interviewing extraordinary women that blow my mind, and I’m always interested in how they get to where they got too. So it’s not so much of what advice they can offer, it’s more about how in heavens name has this all happened to you.
I’ve also started a podcast, so the She’s The Boss Chats podcast is the podcast, it is all over every platform, I’ve got about 30 episodes up, each is up to an hour with an interview with an amazing female founder. I’ve got at least 75 coming for that one so it’s never going to run out. I’ve got to get you on it as well Jen.
Jen Waterson
I’d love too and I am getting onto the Friday lunches, I’ve blocked out my calendar that is something I really need to do myself as a business owner and we’re all stuck at home one way or another some more than others, you and I are both Victorians in our own various levels of lockdown, but the Friday lunches you hold, I feel as though we really missed out on that whole networking thing.
Jules Brooke
It’s funny I have a few rural women who come along and one of them is our great friend Jenn Donovan, she just says it’s so nice for me to be able to go out to the shed or office and be able to hang out with all these great women without having to plan a three hour trip and then stay the night. You can just join in, it’s deliberately very casual, it’s #noagenda, it is just a social hang out but the amount of business that’s being done is extraordinary, it is a no pressure environment and I managed to get myself a prosecco sponsor so I drink a bottle of bubbles every Friday and write off the rest of the afternoon.
The lunches are going until 3 most weeks so people are popping in and out and it’s absolutely no pressure but come and meet some extraordinary women and it’s there specifically for the women running their own businesses because we have unique challenges that other people who are employed don’t have.
It’s a very supportive and positive kind of group so everybody always feels very supported at the end of it.
Jen Waterson
Well by the time this airs I’m hoping I’ll be about four weeks in on those so I’m definitely in on that one I need it in my business life and home life to be around other women will be fantastic, I haven’t done it today because I’ve been so slack at blocking out my calendar and I have done that now so thank you so much Jules for coming on the show, I’m really happy to have had you here I’m glad we’ve been able to share my experience with what it is you do but share it in a way that we’re not trying to sell anybody into the program, it’s just about the awareness that you can do this stuff.
Have a go, thank you for coming on the show, and thanks to everyone for listening and for everybody in the world, have a wonderful week.
