Episode 362: Odette Barry of Hack Your Own PR
In this episode, Fiona chats with Odette Barry, founder of Odette & Co and Hack Your Own PR. They discuss valuable insights into the evolving landscape of PR, emphasizing the importance of building trust and reputation. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The importance of trust and reputation in business
The power of social media connections
Understanding goals and aligning PR strategies
Importance of trust for business success
Making friends and building connections as an adult
Embracing routine to nurture connections
Accountability in pursuing uncomfortable goals
Influencing their decisions positively
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
If you zoom out, I think of PR as about winning the hearts and minds of people and changing the way they feel about you so that they're more inclined to do whatever it is that you want them to do.” I don't mean that from like, wildly manipulative. But more than if you are selling sofas, they're going to want to buy your sofas over another one. If you're a marketing consultant, people trust you to invest with you. Trust and reputation are so important in our businesses. PR is helping you build that.
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Welcome to episode 362 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today is a small business interview. This one is what you want to read if you're trying to get yourself out there a little more, get some media or look at your kind of media and PR plan for 2024. Before we get stuck into that, I wanted to of course acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the land on which I meet these people and record this podcast. That is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
I also wanted to let you know that of course it is a gifting season. People are looking for end of year gifts, Hanukkah, Christmas, all the things. If you are somebody who's seeking a gift for your business friends or maybe a partner or family member who runs a business, we do have gift vouchers available at the My Daily Business Shop. You can also just email us at hello@mydailybusiness.com and we can go through different things that we can offer you for your significant person in your life. If you want to email us again, it's just hello@mydailybusiness.com. Let's get into today's small business interview.
Today is my absolute pleasure to bring you an interview I did a little while ago with the co-founder of Launchpad and the founder and publicist behind Odette & Co. The lovely Odette Barry. Odette is a publicist, a PR mentor, and now co-founder of Launchpad and works with hundreds of small business owners teaching them the power of publicity in order to scale their business. Odette and I met on Instagram those people that you have lots of dms with and then eventually met in person. We met in person for the first time this year very briefly because Odette lives up in beautiful Byron Bay and in the hinterlands. I think she's recently just moved, but still in that sort of area. I live many kilometres away down in North Warrandyte in Melbourne. This is the power of social media.
You can meet incredible people and be social and have these friendships created in the DMS. Just another idea too, there's somebody out there that you like in terms of the business world or somebody else just in general, send them a DM, who knows where it will go. I was recently on Odette's podcast and that is called Hack Your Own PR. In there I shared my own story and the fact that I've worked in journalism before and things like how to get onto this podcast, but outside of the Hack Your Own PR, which many people have told me they listened to, and I've had so many insights because it goes through how to pitch certain media. She has experts from different podcasts and media outlets and traditional media and online and newer media, older media.
Odette also runs a mentoring group to help people understand how to pitch the media. It's part of the Hack Your Own PR course and you can find all of that information at odetteandco.com.au. She's on this mission to break down PR and to kind of take the wall down that people think is there between small businesses and the media. As somebody who's worked in the media for a long time, that is how I started my career. I did a degree in journalism and worked in newspapers.
I have a newspaper column and have written for tons of magazines around the world. I understand the absolute power that comes out of media and I think Odette and I very much agree that while social media is fantastic, if you build your entire business only on social media, you're massively missing out on leveraging a community and an audience that already exists and trusts media and media outlets.
If you are looking at trying to get your business out into the media, whether that's getting an award, whether it's getting onto podcasts, whether it's getting onto traditional media, getting a column even in some of these places or even getting onto tv, then you need to read to today's podcast. In it we talk about how Odette started her business, but also things like how she keeps motivated when she's working predominantly by herself at her home, much like I am.
She talks about things like creating connections and cultivating a group of like-minded small business owners around you and how that practically works, especially with people like Odette is a mom and how to do those things amidst the rest of your life and running a business. She also talks about tips for getting into the media. It's such a great conversation.
As I said, Odette has her own podcast, Hack Your Own PR. I just know you're going to get so much out of this convo. Just a heads up, my microphone was not working that day, I don't know why, but for some reason, it stuffed up on one day when I needed to interview three people and he's back to working now. But yet the audio on my side is not perfect. Scott, our editor, has done whatever he can to try and make it as good as possible. Thank you again Odette for coming on and here it is for your reading pleasure, my interview with Odette Barry from Odette & Co.
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Hello Odette, Welcome to the Podcast.
Thank you so much for having me.
How are you feeling about life right now?
I'm good. Do you know I just had a little break? I scheduled myself four days away in this gorgeous eco-retreat and then I scheduled to have the week following off at home just to Potter, do some gardening, do some nursing, and of course, I got tonsillitis through that week. No pottering was done. I lay in bed, read three books and had honestly the deepest rest I've ever had in my life. I've never been so excited in my business as I am posting to having horizontal time. Note to everyone out there that's feeling any kind of burnout, boredom, which I've just recently learned about or any kind of thing, take a week and lie down and do nothing.
You went away, was the time away enjoyable or were you sick then?
It was amazing. It was so lovely. I like to read several books in the four days as well. We went to this gorgeous retreat and it was just time in nature, no phone, just beautiful. Then we came home and I just had tonsillitis the day that we got back.
I think though maybe your body just needed like, maybe the universe was just knocking you over the head. Because even that pottering around may well have turned into like, “I'm going to transform my whole garden.”
I'd scheduled a hike or a walk or a catch up with a friend every day of my pottering week and I had to cancel all of them. I honestly don't think I could have achieved that level of rest, even with just those little outings scheduled. It's been a real lesson to me that actually, that's what I need to do periodically and even maybe quarterly. To just like to recalibrate.
You are reminding me. Last year I had three herniated discs and I ended up not being able to walk for about eight weeks, which was awful. I do remember probably I was also high on the opioids that they were giving me. I remember lying in bed one day thinking, “This is awesome.” Like I can't get up and do anything.
My husband has to deal with kids and I can just sit here and watch some YouTube and read books. It was like, “I never do this. I never just stay in bed all day.” It was like a couple of weeks of that. Now that you're saying it, “ I'm like, when can I schedule this into my life?” Because I'm sure you do feel super rested and rejuvenated from that.
I honestly like that often I don't book holidays because I can't be bothered.
Probably bothered to go on holiday.
No, to book the holiday.
The booking.
Like the actual booking part, like the Admin.
I love booking them. You should contact me. I'd be a travel agent in a different life. I love finding the best Airbnb. I'm good at it. Next time you go on holiday, just let me know the dates and I will find the information for you. I love doing that.
That's like my ultimate chore because I feel like with Airbnb you're like, is the host in close proximity is the place just picture cute? But outside of it, there's a tip next door. I feel like I may catastrophize every Airbnb that I look at.
I try to find where it is before they tell me the address. But also I go through every single review even if there are like 400 reviews and I will check everything and see the common themes. I'm really into Airbnb.
I might give you a couple of dates that I've got.
Just send them through. You're saying how excited you are about your business and this is a business podcast and lots of people who are reading will know all about your business because you're very good at what you do. It's called Odette & Co. But what is Odette & Co and also who was little Odette and who was she before you started Odette & Co?
Thank you. That's very kind of you to say. Also, I'm a publicist, but for the last five years specifically I've been a PR mentor. Long story short, I'll just give you the short one quickly to the top line, but PR is quite expensive for small businesses and it's expensive for big businesses as well. Typically a retainer needs to be about three months as a minimum. Normally as a minimum, you're paying $5,000 per month for a publicist to work on your behalf.
You're kind of starting at 15 to 20K and for small businesses, that is an enormous amount of money to outlay. I moved to Byron Bay from Melbourne eight years ago and when I started my business, I had this amazing business group, which I still catch up with eight years later, called the Byron Business Babes, which is so embarrassing.
Byron Business Baes. I feel like you should be like, were you on the Bays? Was that what it was called? The Byron Reality TV show?
That would be a much better calibre show than the Actual Bays. We catch up fortnightly every Friday for a chinwag and just to keep each other afloat. Basically being surrounded by small business owners, I just became aware that they are the kind of people that I love and that I want to work with and that I want to support and amplify. They're all brokers all get out and there was no way any of them could pay 20 grand for me to do their PR. It kind of sparked a bit of an idea to start teaching businesses how to do PR. I wasn't sure if it was a thing.
Originally when I started my business for the first three years it was an agency. We were doing the services on behalf of clients and all of my work came outta Sydney and Melbourne and there were no local businesses that could afford it. It was all my old networks from my career. I kind of had the seed of an idea like do people want to learn how to do PR? Is there an appetite for it? I was listening to podcasts about lead magnets at the time and I was like, “Maybe I'll just see.” I put together a seven day free PR Kickstarter. I put together the top line idea of what it might be. I did not write it like all good lead Magnets.
I put it out via social media, I put it in that like-minded drinking wine Facebook group and via my Instagram and 650 people signed up for it. I was like, I think we've got a thing in this market. That was just over five years ago that I did that. Over the last five years, I've been teaching businesses how to get out on the front foot, how to become visible in television, radio, podcast, print, mags, and digital, but also things like speaking engagements and awards and being at industry events in the right way. That little program is called Hack Your Own PR. I think just over 300 businesses have been through the program now. Pretty much every outlet in Australia has had one of the students featured in it, which is cool. Very proud of it.
Super proud. You have a podcast for people if they don't know about that. That's also called Hack Your Own PR, is that right?
The podcast was funny, I think I'd been doing the program for two or three years and everyone was like,” What's next? What can I do next?” I was like, “I've told you everything I know.” Then I realized the thing that people need is exact instructions for each outlet. The editor of Vogue or the producer from the Today Show or the project or the host of My Daily Business, having that person tell them this is what I need, this is who we talk to, this is like how to pitch your business. That's how the podcast was born. Just an easy way for people to quickly level up and go, this is my favourite podcast, this is how I'm going to pitch to them now.
I was recently on your podcast. Thank you. I had a number of clients send me DMs going, I love her podcast. It's been so helpful in getting us into this. It's super helpful. Were you always, because people think you are a publicist, you must be so extroverted and you must be so confident. Were you always like that as a person? Like even as a little kid, were you always like talking to people and getting out there and loving going to parties?
When I was a kid my parents sent me to a very expensive private school and what I wanted to be when I grew up was a truck driver.
I can imagine you have some great conversations on those, whatever they're called, like talk back thingies, the radios.
This is the thing I was like, driving seems fun. You get to drive around in Australia and see different places you get to eat junk food from service stations, which I was quite inclined towards. I was like, doughnuts, who doesn't want doughnuts on the road?
As you're talking, I'm like, “This still sounds like a really good job. Let's keep going.”
I mean, just chatting, and listening to the radio seemed like a good vibe. Things didn't plan out for me in my truck driving ambitions. I think I would have probably always described myself as somewhat of a needy extrovert. Human connection is everything to me. I've got a community group for everything. Like a run club, a yoga club, a Byron Business Baes, a book club. Like there's one for every aspect of my life. I guess that character trait is always there. But it took me a little while to get into PR. As we chatted about offline, I had my son quite young and I didn't go straight to uni fresh out of school. I went travelling and then came back and partied quite a bit. Then I ended up working for Westpac. Westpac was great.
I was working in events and sales and I got a good flexible role around being a mom, which suited my lifestyle while also getting some really good career development. But I was not sure what I wanted her to do. I had this amazing boss and he was like,” Hey Odie, we'll pay for you to go back to uni, whatever you want to do and you can work part-time around it.” He just lit the fire in me and gave me the wind to soar. Prior to that, I had terrible confidence, I didn't believe that there was a future for me that way from a career perspective. I wasn't academically oriented at school. Then I decided to go back to uni and I looked, I did a hybrid degree in social media journalism and PR was just in the degree, I was only there for the social media aspect.
I was obsessed with digital comms and I didn't know what PR was at all. Probably until halfway through my degree. But it was like, I genuinely fell into PR. It wasn't like, ”Hey, personality match, what am I good at?” But hilariously, his personality matched to it. But I've never worked in the PR party world. That's never been like a big art of mine. Having lived in Byron and most of the last eight years, all of my PR is like remote relationships with people and we periodically have campaign events for clients but that's a very small part of the PR landscape and I think for a lot of people these days as well, like they're kind of like hero events that happen less frequently now.
It's so interesting. Even when you were talking about you were studying PR, even halfway through and that is something I wanted to ask you about. Because a lot of people when they think of PR, as you said at the very start, they either think, that's so expensive, that's over there when I'm a big huge company and I've got huge amounts of money coming in. Or they think like something's gone wrong and I need a PR person to get me out of this trouble. If I'm a big company and it's like crisis management or they think PR is a huge fancy event. What is PR? Because a lot of people will think PR isn't that the same as marketing or I think a lot of people just don't understand what it is and then sometimes they're like, “Why would I need to do that?” Then it's only when you're talking about things like, I want to get on my favourite podcast that they start seeing the link. What is PR specifically for small businesses, like when you say I'm working remotely and I'm building relationships, what does it look like?
I think of PR, if you zoom out, I think of PR as about winning the hearts and minds of people and changing the way they feel about you so that they're more inclined to do whatever it is that you want them to do. I don't mean that from this wildly manipulative perspective. But more than if you're selling sofas, they're going to want to buy your sofas over another one. If you're a marketing consultant people trust you to invest with you. All of us trust and reputation are so important in our businesses. PR is helping you build that.
Traditional PR would've been the glossy mags, then getting a cover story and a print newspaper or a spot on the tally. For me, I think that it's important to look at how the world that we live in today is much more evolved. Podcasts are a big part of social media collaborations, digital events, awards and speaking engagements. It's a bit of a broader ecosystem, but when I think about what that vehicle is for small businesses, I think it's like a bit of a laddering process. A lot of people come to PR and they're like, “I want to be on the cover of Vogue.” You're like, ”Good luck with that.”
It's like a watering down of expectations and the understanding that like publicity and getting features in different opportunities, you have to start where you are and match your expectations with where you are in your journey. Sometimes we're pumped and excited about all the cool things that we've been doing, but we need to sort of like take a step back and say, “Why would anyone else care?”
PR is about being generous with what you know about what's happening in your business and what your perspectives are on things and sharing that with the world. Rather than just being like, here's my pink handbag, here's all the features of the pink handbag, here's the processes we use in our business that other business owners want to know about like how we navigate international logistics.
The reason why I'm starting this bag is because I'm really worried about climate change and we are using all upcycled materials to give them a second life. Being a bit more you are the master of storytelling, but being more generous and being open to speaking in a wider context other than just the thing we want to push.
I'm just like, “You're preaching to the choir over here.” I'm like, “Yes.” It can be so hard for people to look outside of like you said the pink bag, this is what the pink bag does, this is how we made the pink. Without thinking about what is actually of interest to people. It's like when people talk about their kids and you're like, it's fine for me to talk about my kid because I'm excited about my kid, but I don't care to know that much about what your kid's doing. It's like that sometimes with people's products or services if they're just talking about them the same way the whole time. I want to go back to when you said you had these Byron Boss bags.
I'm looking forward to the reality TV show starting soon. But you had this group of friends who are creative small business owners and you were like, they are never going to, or at that time are not going to be able to spend $20,000 and I'm going to go into teaching people a lot of people, I've had so many people book in for Ad Hoc coaching sessions recently who are in a service-based business and they are going into becoming a mentor or becoming a coach.
Was there a time when you were doing this that you thought, by doing that I'm going to lose the business that would've come in to be giving me the $20,000 or the retainer kind of work? Was there any part of you that was like, if I teach people how to do it themselves, I'm going to go out of business?
Because I think that's something that, I mean I have my answer to that, but that's something that people when they think about diversifying and having a kind of coaching or mentoring side of their business or teaching people or having like you have your course, they worry that that's going to somehow detract from the other stuff. Like them being an architect full-time or their credibility around certain things. Did you go through any of that or were you just like, “Nope, I can see there's an audience for this, I'm just going to present a helping tool for them?”
I guess one of the big drivers for me moving towards it was that I find being a publicist and having like a lot of clients stressful. Having one or two clients that I can go all in and have a really meaningful relationship with and do really good work is where I do my best work and get the best results. It's not financially sustainable for me to do that unless I'm charging 15 or 20 grand a month rather than five grand a month.
There was a necessity piece that I needed to diversify my revenue. But also for me coming at it with that, I would almost say that's a scarcity mindset to be like, this is going to cannibalize that. I think that I give so much away for free that I feel like there's always going to be people that'll never pay and that they will just take the resources that you put out there and they'll go and fly and do the cool thing without you.
There'll always be people who need a helping hand and want that mentoring and strategic guidance. Then there will always be people who want to outsource it. They don't have the bandwidth the time or the desire to do it themselves. I feel like there are enough people out there, and there are enough businesses in Australia, we have millions of businesses of different persuasions that have different budgets and different capacities and desires.
I always just think there's enough out there, you have to just trust that one also feeds the other. What I find is the biggest referrers to my business are those who have taken free resources and done it themselves and gone, I can figure it out thanks to this advice. Then they're so deeply grateful and they're the ones that refer the paying clients who need that helping hand. I think that trying to trust that there are different sorts of people that have different needs out there.
There are so many, like you said, I think it was as of 2022, 20.5 million registered businesses in Australia alone, let alone the rest of the world. There is more than enough for sure, but I think it's great that you talk that through. Because I know there's a lot of people at the moment and also with the recession, I think a lot of people are looking at their business and going, things have died down a little bit here. What else could I bring to the table in mentoring, coaching and courses is one of them. People can do your course. But if people are going to have a go at PR themselves, where do they even begin?
I think for me the beginning is making sure that your house is in order. Make sure your website, your shopfront, whatever it is that people are going to land upon is ready to convert your new audiences. You want to have a strong brand identity, beautiful aesthetic, high-quality images, and great key messaging, like just everything looks tip-top.
The last thing you want to do is attract a whole bunch of new audiences and lose their trust the second they hit your website or your social media. For me, ground zero is just making sure everything looks hot so that someone's like, “Yes, please let me have some more of this delicious stuff.” Then I think it's important to understand where you want to go, and what your goals are. Setting some key foundational things.
Is that like you are looking for new customers? Are you looking to get more speaking engagements? Are you looking at it as a trust-building exercise? Is it like creating digital buzz because that's going to affect which direction you go in? Then once you're clear on that goal, do a bit of a suss out with some of your ideal customers about where they go to do those things. When it comes to digital buzz, where do they go to get entertained or delighted when it comes to like if you are looking at reputation and building trust, it might be where do they go to find out new information?
You can mine your audiences to get the places they go for influence. Then of course also go and do your research so that you can find those locations. I think for startup founders who are maybe in the first three to five years, that's kind of that sweet spot for DIY PR. I do find some businesses that are more mature are quite happy to learn. A founder that I worked with recently, did Hack Your Own PR and scored pieces in Sydney, morning Herald, lots of her industry press the Today Show and she went on six months later to sell her business for $9.5 million.
She said a key part of that was the fact that she had built that reputation, built that trust so that investors were like, “Wow, this is a mover and shaker over here.” It doesn't matter where you are, lay those foundations and know that you can harness it. Once you're clear on your goal, it's the kind of matchmaking in those places. I would suggest three media outlets or destinations of influence wherever it might be that you can focus your energy on, if you choose any more than three, you're going to drown yourself in research and like to go super surface level in your research rather than going deep and going and getting to know where you're going.
The first piece in that puzzle is, in research, the rule for me is 10. If you want to pitch to a podcast, go and listen to 10 episodes if you want to be in numbers. If you want to be in a magazine. It's so infuriating and like that the one consistent piece of advice across every person, every editor, producer, podcast host, anyone, they will tell me, the one piece of advice is please read or listen or watch what we do before you pitch. Because they can tell the second they open that email whether you have or you haven't. It's so easy to just do it.
Even if you speed up the podcast and listen on 1.5 speed or anything just to get the tone, the energy, the topics, the themes, the sorts of guests, because then you can matchmake yourself against them and you can go, they've got most of their guests have between 5 and 20,000 followers, I've got 3000. It might be stretchy, but I could probably get there. They only have academics. Am I an academic? Maybe not.
The conversation might be out for me. Having a really good sense of where you are going will not only make your pitch sing and make your interview sing and make you a great talent, but it'll also help you disqualify outlets that you are not ready for or that aren't ever going to be a good match.
I'm just nodding along furiously here. Sorry I cut you off about that, but listen to the podcast, and read the things. There are so many great points there and I know people will be writing down notes of what you've just said, but there is a big part of putting yourself out there, which is even if you've done all the research and feel, I will contribute and I will add value to this publication or this podcast. How do people get that level of confidence?
I used to write a column for the newspaper and I had to audition for that. I remember going to this event that I had to write a column about and I called my husband in the cubicle of the toilet going, “There's no way I can do it. I cannot do it.” I cannot just walk up to people and start talking to them. Like, no. That job, which I had for about 18 months, was incredible at forcing me to get out of my comfort zone and go and talk to people. I still get nervous sometimes about pitching myself to different things.
If you're someone who's never done that and has never had to be in that situation where you're like, how do you get the confidence to put yourself out there? Especially since you've said you're a needy extrovert. If you're not an extrovert, if you're an introvert, how do you do it? How do you just press in and close your laptop down? How do you do it?
One thing that I will repeat until the cows come home, is that it's not gross to promote yourself. I think like really getting familiar with that as a personal mantra, it's not gross to promote myself, it's not gross to promote myself. In Australia, we've got tall poppy syndrome, imposter syndrome, we've got like just being a founder, which is like a world of imposter. There are so many things running against our desire to put ourselves out there, but if we don't do it, who is going to know about us?
It is so important to put yourself out there and one thing to realize is that pretty much everyone feels super, super uncomfortable. I recently spoke at an event and I cried for two weeks in the lead-up to it because I didn't want to do it so much because even as a needy extrovert I find it so unbelievably difficult putting myself out there.
I think it's like, I don't want it to be excruciatingly painful or uncomfortable for people, but just to know that it is a human response to putting yourself out there. We're so proud of our babies but we're so terrified of work whether people are going to reject us or whether our old colleagues think this or that about us. I think you just have to put your blinkers on and just trust that if you don't go all in for your business, no one is going to. Just pushing into the discomfort and knowing that if you go all in and fail, you can always start over and it's okay. You would rather have gone all in and it failed quickly than for you to go like 20% in. It's like you just hacking away at this thing that might've been a dream that could've been incredible but you didn't go all in.
The worst is if you see other people and you're like, I could've done that if I had applied for an award. Not even other people just to, because I always think of Beyonce always telling my son this Beyonce's mantra is the only person I'm competing myself with. I feel like that is also a good thing. But I know there are certain things like awards or things that I would've liked to have put myself forward and then just didn't get organized in time.
The one thing that I always say to people with this is to set up an accountability buddy for uncomfortable things. If you set yourself, you're going to like to tell yourself that you're doing it. You are sharing your big hairy, audacious goals with your business besties so that they can hold you accountable and you hold them accountable as well. It might be that you say, I want to be on three podcasts this quarter and you tell them which ones you want to be on and you check in on it and you're like, have you spent that 10 minutes this week working towards that goal? Have you followed them on Instagram? Have you left a comment on LinkedIn? Have you fired off that pitch email? Have you followed up again?
That's like you've got those people who understand what it is that you are chasing down and that they're going to push you. We did have a little chat offline before this about our cycles and I think it's really important to think about this here, that understanding if you're a female or if you, I have an ovaries womb. Think about hacking your cycle for these difficult things.
If it's the first time you're doing something and you're scared shitless and you're going to be putting yourself out there, it's the pitching part of it that's going to be the hard part when it comes to doing, it's the doing part that's going to be the hard part of it.
Map your cycle so that when you are ovulating, like you are in your fertile window, that's when you are going to be doing the difficult thing. Because you're going to be full of your most confident self when you're going to be your most sparkly and vibrant and capable of doing difficult things. Map your window so that you are pitching or you're doing your public speaking or you're doing your podcast interviews in that window of the month just at the beginning when you need that little extra like ladder up of confidence because we have that natural advantage that happens.
We also have a massive natural disadvantage for the rest of the time. It's like, “It's so insane.” I have given the same presentation at different times in my cycle and I notice how vibrant and engaging I can be when I'm in that window versus if I'm bleeding or in the lead-up and I'm just like basically a talking potato.
Many tips there when you said, I'm going to kind of try and merge two questions. One, when you said before I've got a club for everything that I'm interested in, a book club, a yoga club, and a running club. Then you also were saying I'm an extrovert and I can put myself out there. How do you make all these friends? Because I think that's another thing. I've done a couple of friendship podcast episodes and they've had so many downloads. I always get a flurry of DMS after them. We've had a psychologist talk about it. We've had authors talking about it.
This is my favourite topic ever.
I was doing a talk at a women's lunch a couple of years ago and someone asked a question and said, I feel like a loser standing up and asking this. However, you all seem to be friends on this panel. I don't feel like I have any friends. She's like, “I feel like I did my childhood stuff and now my children are getting older and now I've got actual time for friends and I haven't made any friends.” She was like, “How can I be friends? Like how can I make friends as an adult and also particularly friends with other business owners?” How have you done that in your life?
This is a question I get asked all the time.
I think also because on social media, at least you are everywhere. You're like, I'm out here with these people and here I'm, and now I'm at lunch, I feel like you've got like 10,000 friends. I wanted to ask you this question.
One thing is you have to make time for it, right? and you have to know where you are in your life stage. I'm the mom of an almost 16 year old. I'm in that luxurious life stage where I've got time for myself. Try not to compare yourself to raising toddlers to someone who's got a different set of personal circumstances. My life is stacked every single morning I catch up with a different friend for exercise. That's a really valuable part of my schedule where I can have two birds and one happy life. I don't want to say one stone.
But so like one party knowing your schedule and what you can afford in your life. But the other thing is like being open to every encounter you have with any human being more than just that moment. Whether that's you're in the coffee shop and it's the barista, or whether it's someone that you do a podcast interview with or a client, everyone is potential as a new person in your life. What I try and zoom out from is, is this person ticking all of the boxes that I need right now? Versus is that a good vibe? Do I like that vibe? That is the core requirement is a good vibe and they can be from any walk of life of any persuasion.
I invite them in. Every single person I ever meet, I'm like, ”Do you want to have a coffee? Do you want to go for a lighthouse walk? Do you want to go to the beach?” It's those core informal moments where you can invite people into your world to spend a little bit more time. Some people stick, some people never go for a walk, some people never take up the coffee. But if you put 500 offers out there, then some of them will stick.
The downside is that I've probably had more friendship departures than the average punter because ultimately you connect with lots of people and things fall apart. That is my wounding as such a heartbreak for me to have people leave my life. I feel like just keep putting the line out there and you just meet many beautiful humans. But it's kind of like I didn't learn this skill until I moved to Byron. Because I lived in Melbourne. I was like,” I don't know how to make friends.” I had like the one core group of friends that I'd had for a great period of time. When I moved to Byron it was like a program switch. You need to create a network and create friendships. I've nurtured this muscle of building connections with people.
But I think like probably what the biggest advice is lowering your standards to let more people in and not accepting people that are not kind to you or anything like that, but more that you don't have to have the same interests, have kids the same age or be at the light same life stage. Some of my nearest friends are in their sixties and seventies and some of them are in their early twenties. We can sample from different pies and have such a rich life from it.
It's interesting because when I moved here, which is not Byron, I was in North Warrandyte and then we moved out to Warrandyte and I just kept driving in and meeting people in Fitzroy and Collingwood all the time. I was like, “I need to make friends around here.” Also, I think there's an expectation sometimes. I remember when my son started prep, I just assumed I'd make all these friends with all the moms at school because that's what you hear. It was a hard year. It was the year before COVID-19, I was pregnant, had a baby halfway through, and my dad died at the end of it. I wasn't in the headspace to be like, “Let's go get a coffee straight after school drop off.”
Also, I couldn't do that because I was running a business. I was like, “He needs to be dropped off.” I need to get back and work. I ended up making a book club, which has been going on now for five years. We meet every month and we've gone away together and it's just lovely and people are constantly adding, I think we're up to like 25 people in the WhatsApp group, which is huge when it started with like five. I feel like it was awkward to put myself out there and be like. Then if I make all these friends and then if it doesn't work, I'm like the awkward one in Warrandyte.
But I think that's just fearlessly going with some things will just fade and like if a friendship doesn't work out like it's not the end of the world, but also you've still got a familiar face off like someone you can say hi to, just because it wasn't like sticky best friend material doesn't mean they can't come into your life. One other thing that I think is valuable, like making new connections, is having a routine in your life. Just a couple of months ago we moved from Byron to Bangalore, which is a 10-minute drive away, but it's changed my routine. Where I might've incidentally bumped into friends in our old place, I've missed that, like accidental conversations. I've been intentional since we moved here to go for a walk at the same time every day.
I'm not a punctual person by any stretch of the imagination, but this is important because then I'll see the same people in the cafe and the same people on the walk and those sorts of things. If you can build some like just heavy routine for just, even just for a short sprint, three-month sprint or something like that so that you see the same faces and you suddenly just have all of these like you are on a first name basis with a few people and it just starts like elevating your confidence to start pitching yourself for like some friend dates.
I love this. I see the same three people there in their sixties and seventies on my morning walk. The other day I bumped into one of the guys down at the river on another walk with a friend and I couldn't introduce him because I didn't know his name. I ended up asking him his name because I felt awkward that I couldn't introduce him on the other walk. He was like, “It's so nice you've been doing this walk for a few years.” There's a woman on the walk who we both see. He's like, “We've been doing the same walk for 20 years and it took five years before we asked each other our names.”
This is another thing that I'm terrible with names. When we moved up here, I made it a personal rule for myself that if I forgot someone's name to just asked them again. Sometimes you might ask the same person three times their name and that's okay. We're taking in so much information in our lives, all the emails, and all the social media and to forget someone's name is, it's such a gatekeeper of transformation because if you don't know their name you turn into an awkward turtle and you're like just trying to be all weird, trying to not say their name.
Whereas once you know their name you are freed up to like, get to that next level. But the same thing applies online. I would say probably in the first few years of being up here, most people that I built a relationship with, it was online because it was easier for me to be a creepy weirdo on my business account and be like, “Hi, I love your cats also cool business, tell me more.” Set up a coffee date from that online interaction rather than necessarily just going up to a random person. I've got friends all over Australia as a result of that from being that creepy weirdo online.
Someone bought a book on our website the other day and had I not been so busy, I was like, “She doesn't live that far.” I'll just deliver it by hand to their house. Then I thought, that might be a bit strange, but also she'd paid for shipping. Anyway, I sent it off. It's interesting when you see these things and you're like, “Okay.” On that note, besides the Byron Business Baes, which I just love saying. They just sound so great.
We all say BBBs because no one wants to say the name out loud because it's embarrassing.
Besides the BBBs or maybe it's them as well, who has helped you most with building this business?
That's probably hard to say. I've got the board of directors in my business. The people that I go for a walk with each week. I went for a walk with Sue who was the chief financial officer for Adidas and Country Road. She's 55, and she's got 30 years of industry experience I can just mine whilst getting hot and sweaty at the lighthouse. Chris Edwards, who's my business partner with Launchpad.
Wow, that's exciting.
On Tuesdays, I go for a walk with Chris Edwards, the owner of a media brand in Singapore. She's a publisher. She's got that full other side of the fence and from a PR perspective to just get that access. She's been so valuable in my business and helped get me into Asia as well. BBBs like Crew Chapman are monumentally helpful being an online education provider, Frankie Ratford who's the founder of Design Kids like just a ray of light and inspiration. I am honestly surrounded by so many people that when there's a problem, an opportunity, I just bounce it with these five or six people that I catch up with each week in a different spot and it gives me a different perspective and a different lens that is insanely valuable.
I want to join the BBBs but I'm down in the NW.
Well set up your NWs. I know several amazing humans in your neck.
There are so many amazing small business owners in North Warrandyte. I mean this whole area, I'm constantly meeting people or even like the school will put something on and they're like, “We want to thank these volunteers.” So many amazing people. What are you most proud of from your journey in business so far?
It's really hard to say because I feel like every day something happens and you're so proud. I don't know, there's so many things. But like if I were to think about something that's sticky for me, my cousin Morag Gamble is a permaculture education expert and she did my first round of Hack Your Own PR and as a result of that she scored two of us.
Amazing. That's my favourite column of all time.
That is like the first program because like when I first started I was like, are people going to be able to do it? Are they going to get it? And in that program, that first five people that did Hacker and PR, there were like, one had like an ABC interview for an hour another one, a featuring Peppermint Magazine, another one had a double page spread in the age and had the two of us feature and I was just like losing my when the new features landed. Because I was like, “It works, it works.”
I was so proud, to have done that and to as a publicist and have an agency, it's not unique like other people are doing it. But when I started Hack Your Own PR, I didn't know anyone who was teaching people how to do PR. I didn't even know it was a thing. I didn't know if you knew it existed. To have made something that has been a sustainable business for five years, that has produced such amazing results for many businesses and given them a platform to do it themselves. It's very like grounding and crowd-making.
It's exciting not just for that person who's being featured, but for their whole family. My dad, when I first got featured in a magazine, I was an author, like a journalist, he bought like 20 copies, and then I used to write the cover story for the RACB magazine, Royal Author. He was like, everyone at the Bowls Club was asking me,” Is that Killackey?” It was just exciting. It has such a ripple effect on the whole community if people get that thing and then just so many random. I feel like when you get featured, I mean when I was talking about being a journalist, that's one thing, but then when you're featured as the topic or the subject in an article or in some sort of media, the people that come out the woodwork, like people from school and the awareness is gigantic.
Even just like students who've done Hack Your Own PR, they message me and they're like, “Hey, that story in Mamamia generated $40,000 worth of sales.” You're just like, “That's a great outcome”.
After all of this, if people are reading and thinking, “I want to connect with her or go through her course or work with her in some way,” what is next for you and where can people best connect with you?
I'll be running Hack Your Own PR again next year, but I also have two new offerings. One is the Authority Brand program and it's kind of a level up from Hack Your Own PR in that it still got the like people the fundamentals of navigating the media landscape. We've also added in how to get published and we're working with a very well-known publisher who will be sharing the nuts and bolts of navigating that landscape. We've also got an expert in TED Talks and presentations.
How to get that TED Talk and stand on the stage, but also navigate LinkedIn because LinkedIn is such an instrumental tool for people who want to build their brand and become known as that, like a go-to person in their niche or open doors with policymakers and key decision makers or get stocked in major retailers. There's kind of a bit of a positioning piece that is well undertaken on LinkedIn. This little offering is going to kick off next year and I'm excited to do it. It feels like the next level for Hack Your Own PR.
Amazing, Where can people best connect with you?
I'm on all of the social channels, @odetteandco on Instagram or Odette Barry on LinkedIn. Or you can jump over to my website, odetteandco.com.au.
Thanks for making time for us, Odette.
Thanks for having me. It's been nothing short of a pleasure.
Okay, Bye.
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How lovely is Odette I know that many people will get help from this whether they choose to work with Odette or if they just take up some of the insights and tips. I would love to know what stood out most for you. As always, I'm going to highlight two things that stood out for me among many. The first was that Odette talked about the idea of diversifying her revenue but making it work for her. That taking on heaps and heaps of clients, one-on-one is she said it was quite stressful for her. She'd rather work and go deep with a few clients and then diversify her income by having things like the DIY and Hack Your Own PR kind of courses and programs. I love that she said there are always going to be people who will take your free content and run with it and never really pay you for anything else that they want to get from you.
Then there'll be people who want mentoring to understand how to do it themselves. Then there'll be the people who are like, “Can you just do it for me and outsource it?” She talked about how there are millions of businesses here in Australia and I know that we have a global audience for this podcast and I'm thankful for that. There are millions all over the world. There is enough. I have often heard from people who say, “You give away so much content free with your Sunday email and your podcast”, and like, “Why do you do that?” You shouldn't do that. It deters people from working with you. I have to say there are enough people out there that we always have people working with us. We're very lucky. But I also believe in sharing information and giving out great information because then you're not only helping people and you're helping the people that maybe don't have the resources to work with you just yet, but you're helping them.
You're creating that good kindness in the world, helping them get access, helping them with their businesses. Then there are going to be the people that listen and go, you are the person that I want to work with. I love that she talked about, one, the diversification of income and making it work around the lifestyle that she wants to have, but also the fact that people can get caught up in this scarcity mindset that if I do this or if I give too much away, then I'm cannibalizing my business. Or that there's not enough to go around. There are so many businesses and there are businesses starting every few minutes all around the world, every few seconds. I would imagine that people are putting up a website, creating an Instagram page, doing all the things, and all of those people need help, whether it's to work on their PR like with Odette or work on their business and strategy and systems like myself or graphic designers or copywriters or all the people that are around the periphery of a business being successful.
I love that she pointed that out. It doesn't just go for service-based businesses so often people will think, but there's already a gift shop in my area, or there's already a bookshop, or there's a cafe or an Italian pizza place or an Irish pub or a cafe that does X, Y, Z types of coffee. It's like, “Yes, there is, but there's always room for more.” There is always an audience that says, ”That was what I was looking for and it was missing from this abundance that was already out there.” I always think about it in terms of Irish pubs. I'm from an Irish background or maybe that's not obvious. Killackey is a very Irish name and I always think there are Irish pubs all over the world. I would think you'd be very hard-pressed to not find an Irish pub pretty much everywhere, in every major city, whether it's in the East or West.
There will be some sort of Irish pub of all levels of sophistication. They keep being opened. Here in Melbourne where I live, there is an abundance of cafes. We are very much known for our coffee culture. We had an incredibly big influx of immigrants from Italy and Greece and we love our coffee culture. There's always a new cafe opening and just because there are 10 other cafes on the block doesn't mean there's not space for this one. I love that she talked about that there is enough for everyone. The second thing that stood out to me was when Odette talked about the power of 10. That if you are going to pitch to a magazine, a newspaper, a podcast, or a TV show that you have listened to or read at least 10 of their episodes or 10 of their articles, the amount of people that used to pitch to me.
I don't know why, but I must still be on a bunch of emails. I used to have a column in the Sunday newspaper here in Australia, the age in Melbourne, and sometimes it would get syndicated in the Sydney Morning Herald SMH and I had that around about 2007, 2008, and I still get pitched about that. But I also used to write for cool hunting. I used to be their Australian contributor. I used to write for Sugar Rush Gallery - Monocle, Frankie Empty Fluxx, all the things. The United Arab Emirates National newspaper UAE News. I used to write a lot of their Sunday lift outs about fashion and lifestyle and a bunch of places in the UK and Japan. I still get pitched a lot and it is so obvious when they have no idea of the publication and when I used to get pitched a lot for cool hunting it was very obvious that people had never read any of their articles.
We get pitched all the time for this podcast and the amount of people that pitch and you can tell they have never listened to an episode, they don't understand how they work. It is just such a turnoff from the journalist's perspective or from the podcast host's perspective. It doesn't take long to read 10 articles, especially today so many articles are quite short. It doesn't take long to read 10 podcasts, especially if you're going for a walk or maybe listening while you're doing the laundry. Believe me, the time that you spend to do that, is going to give you such a better chance and opportunity to connect with that journalist or wherever you're pitching to than if you don't. If you just go in cold and expect that somehow your story is fantastic they should just ignore the fact that you don't know their publication or their podcast or their audience.
I 10000% believe in what she said about that. That is it for today's podcast. But if you want to connect with Odette, and I'm sure that you will, you can find out all the things that she offers, including the podcast over at odetteandco.com.au. You can also find all about her on Instagram and that is just the same for the Handle @odetteandco. You can check out the Launchpad group and Hack Your Own PR, the podcast, and all of those things will be listed in our show notes, which you'll be able to find for this particular episode at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/362. Thank you so much for reading and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.
