Small budget, big buzz: Jasmin Hyde’s PR playbook for soloists

When I speak to small business owners, the most successful know how to lean into what they're good at and get help for all that other stuff. Speaking of help, IKEA Business Network is a free loyalty program that gives businesses access to dedicated support from IKEA experts, plus discounts and offers. Storage, layout, furniture, you've got a workspace design challenge, they've got a tailored solution for you. IKEA Business Network account holders even get a free one hour chat with an interior designer and discounted interior design services, think mood boards, 3D renders and curated shopping lists. Help is here. Join now. It's free. aikia.com.au/business Hello and welcome to Flying Solar, the podcast for Solarists and small business owners. I'm your host Cess Vazby and thank you for joining me today. Now, running a small business often means wearing all of the hats. And for a lot of Solarists, PR and communications, well that can feel like one of the trickiest parts to get right. You know, where do you even start? What's actually worse your time? How do you tell your story in a way that gets cut through? All the questions and hopefully we're going to get some of those answers today because I guess to someone who's built a business around PR and communications, Jasmine Hiders, the founder of Hide and Seek, it's a strategic comms agency that works with purpose-led brands. That's businesses that are trying to do good, not just do business. And I think Jasmine didn't land here by accident. She's built a career in communicating working across media, storytelling, brand strategy, before launching her own business hide and seek to help businesses find their voice. So today we're going to get into what PR really means for Solarists and small business owners. How to build your visibility without a really big budget and the things that you can do right now to get your message out there. Jasmine, thank you for joining me on the show. Great to have you. Thanks Cess, for being here. Looking forward to it. Awesome, maybe let's start with the beginning and get a little bit of background on you. What led you into the world of communication and storytelling in the first place? Yeah, it wasn't an orthodox career pathway for myself. Funnily enough, when I was in grade, I think eight or something, I did want to be a journalist. So there was always that hunger for storytelling and sort of creative content production. But when I left school, I worked in a pharmacy as a procurement manager. So definitely pretty far from communications as far as jobs go. And from there I worked in casinos as a blackjack dealer and a backer at dealer and Darwin and Melbourne. And then I went to our MIT to study advertising. And I tried that out. It wasn't really my thing. I just didn't have that sort of passion for it. So I went back to casinos work and then I sort of came across public relations and looked into it. And it seems like a pretty cool mix of creativity and analytical skills. And so I studied that at RMIT, finished the course, got in the internship with an awesome boutique agency in Melbourne, got my first job with them and the rest is history. So that's how I landed in that career. It definitely wasn't your traditional sort of school university PR job pathway. Yeah, I know. Not my long shot. But I think working in intense environments like the VIP room of Cranca Sino, for example, working in those sort of intense environments and customer management and customer service and those kinds of roles, especially people who work in like busy retail are so much respectful because it is all part of the job when it comes to PR. And so that's what you're dealing with a lot of a stakeholders, the deadlines are not always in your favor. You know, working in the media says, sorry, I think there's variety of roles. I've sort of played a part in maybe it's resilience. I don't know if that's the right word. So you mentioned you you had really good training ground working with a boutique agency. What made you decide that you wanted to go out on your own? First of all, and it was working across awesome projects in the arts and festivals, restaurants and galleries. And it was a great career springboard and then COVID happened. And so those industries weren't really thriving for a couple of years in Melbourne. So there was a bit of a pivot on my side to work with not for profits at another agency, also in Melbourne. And that's where I really got the taste for purpose driven PR. And I realized that with consumer and lifestyle PR, you're still building, you're still helping build dreams and visions of the people leading those projects or all those spaces. But when you can really directly tie PR with organisations that exist to make the world a better place, it's pretty cool. So the rest of the career sort of focused around that. And then I bet about a year and a half ago, I thought, yeah, be cool to sort of build something with that focus and taking on what I've seen in terms of what works in the industry, what doesn't work in the industry and thought, I'm going to start hide and seek and the name is sort of an obvious choice given my surname. A great play on words though, excellent choice. So what, what was the actual push to, you know, back yourself and go out on your own them because PRs are pretty busy space already. What made you think, yep, I've found the right nation, this purpose led businesses is what I'm going to focus on and why I'm going to start my own thing. Yeah, I think my story is a sort of common one among small business owners, growing businesses because it wasn't 100% intended to be an agency. It was a brand that I was sort of owning as I did freelance consultant work. And there was always the, maybe it will scale, maybe it will grow, let's see, but it was really, and I think again, COVID has a role in this. COVID changed the way we think about work and it changed the way we sort of set out our own boundaries as opposed. And so for me, it was thinking there are benefits to continuing the career trajectory, but hey, maybe I can give it a go, go on on my own, start a brand, see what happens. And for me, it was about, I guess autonomy, choosing to work with good people, good brands, just being able to, I guess, take those learnings and build something that would align with those beliefs. So you've kind of had to build your brand as well, like obviously there's your own reputation, which has helped with building the brand. But this is probably something that's quite interesting for the soloist out there because I think a lot of solo business and small businesses think PR is just for big grants. Yes, but really, it's not why, why should business be thinking about PR? 100% and I'm so biased when I say it is, but PR was one of the first things we did building the brand. So now there's a few levers. So, you know, we've got experts looking at SEO, for example, we've got sort of paid meta ads going out. We've got a range of, you know, channels to get the brand stories out there, but PR was one of the first things we did. And obviously it's like, I'm probably the easiest lineup ever had because there was no approval time because I was writing the content and I did do myself, but even before, you know, the growth period, I sort of knew the importance of starting that compounding early because I've seen it work. I've seen it work for us, and most people who've worked agency site or even in house in comms teams could say the same. The sooner you start, the sooner you'll see media recognition, sort of, Jane was coming to you for opinion, you'll see other companies saying, I'm saying you everywhere lately, and it sort of compounds from there, but when you start, you have to start from somewhere like everyone does, but I think the big misconception is that, as you said, it's for big companies with huge budgets, but you don't need to be a million dollar business to start with PR. And actually the smart, the most effective or the smartest PR for small businesses sometimes is those niche trade publications or it's found a commentary, so you don't need a big audience, you just need the right one. So what does PR look like then for a soloist or micro business? Yeah, it definitely depends on the sector and the founders story. I can share an example when I've worked with a founder in the past, they've run a digital marketing agency, and that's not a story that most media would touch on its own, but they come from India, they build something from scratch and brand new market in Australia, they had deep frustrations with how the industry was failing its clients. And it actually became a story for the AFR, for account of fair, and a bunch of other outlets about scams in the digital marketing sector, because it's something that sort of everyone was sort of talking about, but didn't really know what was happening on how it was impacting other small business owners who just don't have the budget for that. Then it also became once with sort of hinged around an industry issue, it became a migration story. And what it takes to start over a new country, so the hurdles, the hardships, so it can look like your personal story or it can look at industry topics, it can look at predictions or a lot of the time it's tangible advice for audiences, practical tips. So it definitely depends on the stories. But. I would say we have a lot of founders coming to us with they think they have nothing to say or nothing to tell because they're really in and they have that misconception that PRs for people with five sports people at a company and a whole comms team to prep them. But in reality, they actually usually have too much and the problem is knowing where to start. So yeah, it can feel sort of boring to them because they can be so deep in their sector and their expertise that they don't know that what they have to say could be gold to someone else because they're just used to saying it all the time. Yeah. Yeah. So where would someone like that start? What's the process that you take them through to help them identify what's the juicy bit of that story? Yeah. So sometimes it's an audit or review like give us all you've got, give us all your boring stuff, lift up wood and we'll tell you what could actually be gold for the media or for your target audience or it could be a discovery session. So sitting down with them, putting our journalists hats on, we've got ex-journos on the team. So putting their journalists hats on and uncovering the gold and sort of giving them a bit of a push sometimes so not to be too safe because we want to see how bold we can be to get the media's attention in a way that's going to get the right story across. So yeah, those discovery sessions can be absolutely invaluable. I mean, you could get 12 to 24 months worth of stories out of those sometimes because they've got so much to say and they don't realise it. Thank you for sitting on gold. Yeah. So how important is it to have a really clear brand story then? Yeah, I would say with PR, you have to be ready to talk about what you solve while you're different and the proof you've got to back that up. So you don't need it to be perfect, you don't need to wait till, yeah, there sort of is no perfect time to start PR and I think that translates across many aspects of being a soloist, but yeah, get clear on what you actually solve for and then what proof you have. And so if you can't really articulate that and that should be the PR person's job to help you articulate that in a good way with a bit of media training, but PR won't save you. So it's always like story first, media second. And what do you find makes a story newsworthy? So the three key elements usually are strong hook, of course, so whether it's timely or tiny to the current new cycle, so strong hook case studies or proof points, data and clear spokesperson or sound bites. Sorry, if it's you know a written article, you've got punchy quotes in there or if it's a TV or radio interview, you've got a strong spokesperson with a plea point of view, they can get their points across in a punch UA. And if they've never done any PR before, what would you suggest they focus on, you know, before they front the cameras or they speak to a journalist? Yeah, so we usually run through that in our briefing sessions and some of the key things we get across are just have three messages that you want to get across. So just have three sort of key messages that you want to get across and don't deviate from those too much. Think about the audience that's listening, I guess, so make sure that it's really tangible advice for the people. I guess the media, the journalist that's interviewing you is sort of that the person in between. So don't always think that you're only talking to them. It's about what's going to be broadcast beyond that point. And a strong call to action. What do you want people to do? What do you want the interview to achieve and whether you want to send people? And what about a business owner? I don't have the money to hire a PR person. How would you suggest that they approach pitching to media? Yeah, I mean, this is why I started a hide and seek because there's a bit of a gap. So we, there's a sort of disconnect sometimes between what brands and companies think journalists one and then there can be a gap between what PR professionals knowing what journalists need. So I think if a soloist doesn't quite have budget for PR and they're wanting to pitch media themselves, good on them. It's a very sort of good way to go about it, especially at the start as you're just getting sort of that leverage that you need. Just definitely research the sort of one or one basics of PR. So that's making sure that your pitch is not an ad for your brand. So making sure that it's story first, making sure that it's going to the right person and it is still on that beat, for example. So don't sort of believe every media database that's out there. Make sure you've done your due diligence and your research that it's the right contact because I think the people sometimes have forgotten that PR stands for public relations. And so if you're putting an ad out, it's not really going to relate to the public. And the journalist is part of that public. So make sure that something that A, the journalist is going to relate to or whoever you're pitching and B, the people, if it gets picked up, amazing. And then making sure that the audience also relate to it. So always thinking, would I care if I read this? If it wasn't your pitch and it got in the newspaper or online and you read it, would you care? And be honest with yourself because that's who's reading it, people. Yeah. Yeah. So oftentimes the pitchers can be really salesy if I'm getting something perhaps from someone who's just approaching me themselves. So it's often a big sales sale on a tour and that instantly is like, well, what's the story? Exactly. And if you're going to do that, you should explore paid ads or digital marketing or you know, because there's a place for that. So there's a, there's a place for brand-led content, but with public relations. So while marketing is saying, you know, this is good or we're good, public relations is getting that third party credibility of getting people to say they're good or, or, I mean, that sounds so transactional, but it's getting people invested in your story. It's getting you're nailing out there and at the end of the day, if you're not doing that in a way that's going to be organically getting in front of the right people in the right way, it's just not going to work. Sorry, you're 100% right. So like it's got to be a story-led. It's going to, a good story is like catnip for journalists because if you've got everything sort of on a platter that they need to make that a good story, you're going to be in a pretty good place. But it contrastsly, like if it's, um, if it's an ad or something that's overly promotional or salesy, it's just going to, it's not going to fly. It's not going to fly. Yeah. Well, about if I'm a small business owner and I am really lack the confidence to be talking about myself and my, and my business or my brand, how do I stop beating myself up and start feeling good about speaking about what I do and what my business does? It's so common. It's so, so common. I think people with amazing ideas and amazing businesses have a bit of that, you know, fear factor or they feel like it's credent to be speaking about the business. And it's, now we're going into the age of AI. Well, we're very much in the age of AI. It's really important for brands to have a human representative. So if you're the founder and you're not comfortable putting your face next to the brand and speaking about it in a consistent way and showing up consistently to represent it, it's a good idea to have someone that will. So whether that's an ambassador or your first hire, it's very good idea to put a human to the brand. So what, what about AI since we've raised the ugly head? There is, I can't tell you how many AI slop pictures come my way these days. It's like they're interchangeable with. So what would you say to a business owner that's thinking about using AI to kind of streamline their marketing and AI process? Their PR process, I should say? Yeah, I mean, and there's no industry that's been untouched by AI, especially to me, especially in, especially industries that predominantly focused around written content, like medium. So I spoke with someone about a year ago on AI and it was sort of my advice was to make sure that content is AI polished rather than AI led, which I would still stand by, but the interesting part is that AI has advanced so much that in a way, if you do think about the tools you've got on hand to bring an insurer and to be a soundboard for strategy or to sort of shape the top and then you're still very much involved right through to execution, it's okay for that to be the case. So I wouldn't always say that content shouldn't be AI led in a way. The key thing for business owners to be aware of is that you, it's just like if you had a new sort of staff member in the business and you didn't know how to breathe them, because you hadn't done it before and you let them run with everything, it's the same with AI. So if you can't do it without AI, you shouldn't be using AI to do it, because you won't know when it's done a bad job and you won't know when to end it. Yeah. So if you've never done it with that AI, don't use AI for it, learn first, use AI to make that process faster. There's some awesome tools coming out, you know, it's moving so fast every week there's something new to play with. So it's a really exciting time for everyone that can be using it in their business. At the same time, there's a lot of recent complications, a lot of policy discussion about how do we approach this at the same time, because it's so new to us and it's only been mainstream for a couple of years now. But it's a really exciting time for solo business owners, either that have gone out on their own or they're considering starting our business because there are tools to sort of help with that that didn't before. Yeah, absolutely for productivity and and creating agents to help them streamline tasks. Absolutely. I think it's super beneficial for small business and soloists. What about in terms of comms? How do you make sure when you're so busy running your business that any comms you're putting are actually consistent and keeping the tone of your brand and your voice and everything as it should? As it should. For small business owners, yeah, obviously if you've got a PI agency on retainer, that's a good way to make sure. But for small business owners who are doing their own comms, this could be, I guess going back to the AI point, so create a tone of voice Bible. Have a brand Bible, sort of. So put the data into an asset that says, "Hey, this is what the business is about. This is how we should sound. These are how, if you've got multiple spokespeople, like these are the tone. For these quotes, this is how we want the business to be represented. These are the key areas we can speak to. These are ones we stay away from. And if you're about to put content out, run it through AI, give it that cheat sheet and say, "Does this match up?" Or, "Does it need?" If you've got someone helping out with your content, yeah, that little sort of those guidelines can be a good way to make sure that everything's going to be consistent. So that's a way that AI can speed up things these days. Yeah. And what about for yourself, you work with a lot of purpose, driven brands, obviously communicating their impact as a big part of what you probably do with them. How do you make sure those stories get across really clearly and, you know, like we're packed green washing and now I think we're getting to the new thing is a bit purpose washing in a way. Brands are claiming they do stuff and then, you know, they get caught out when actually they're not doing it. So how can number one, how can businesses avoid the risk of purpose washing in number two? How do you really communicate that Europe business that's purpose led without it feeling like, you know, you're a saint or telling other people off because they're not doing it right? Yeah, exactly. It can be a fine line. I think with, especially for small businesses, but any businesses that are either not for profit or just existing for purpose, it's really important to in this landscape where there's so much scrutiny around, yeah, green washing, it's important to have that proof before you start speaking on issues. So if you've got a sort of target also speaking to how you're going to achieve that or if you're claiming to have, you know, removed X amount of emissions or developed a new technology that's going to innovate a category, how you'll be asked. So don't pitch yourself or don't have a PR professional pitch you into a media interview unless you've got those proof points ready to speak to and if it doesn't come up and there's a way to sort of weave them in naturally, that's great as well because you're bringing the proof to the conversation, but yeah, we're no longer, I don't know if we ever were, but we're no longer, we're far from a world where you can just make claims and not expect it to be scrutinised. The other side is green hushing. So I was recently at a talk where there's a danger of green hushing. So brands, this is where your question says goes too far on the other side and brands are too scared to talk about what the great impact they are having because they're not confident in those conversations to stand by the actual impact they really are having on the ground because they don't want to be lumped in with the green washing claims. So that's where businesses that are doing great things aren't getting the recognition that they might deserve because of green hushing and that sort of contributes to I think a lack of confidence in areas such as such as the climate and social impact where you're finding its warnings. So yeah, yeah, it's a tricky one, but there's a way there's a way to do it. What about PR for reputation management because PR is not only about shouting out the good things, sometimes it's up to PR to rescue a brand from a bad situation as well. So can we talk a little bit about that meme? Yeah, so inadvertently, hard and seek was the perfect name. I didn't mean it to be. You're bang on, like sometimes you want to hide from the media, sometimes you want to seek it. So there you've got your reputation management or crisis management versus your proactive PR or visibility building. The role that PR plays in reputation management is pretty key because pretty often actually over my career of seeing brands look for reputation management or risk containment and they've never done proactive PR before. It can be really hard to do that because they, the media doesn't know them for a bar of soap. So if you've sort of been getting your name out there and you're sharing your opinions, your story, speaking on key industry topics, doesn't have to be every month. Even if it's a few times throughout the year, you're not a nobody and if something goes wrong, you're in a way better position to claim your stake and say actually this is how it was and you can tell the true story. But if you're coming out as a basically a stranger because you haven't done any PR and you're saying, oh no, that was twisted the wrong way. It's just who are people going to believe? So yeah, and it's not just that it can never work like that. If you've never done PR and you do need reputation management, you're better off entering the conversation rather than having someone control it for you. So you can take control of your own narrative, especially if you've been misconstrued or there's more to the story. One of the benefits of having proactive PR sort of out there already is that when it hits the fan, it can be easier to contain. So PR can play a huge role in reputation management as saying. Yeah, definitely get yourself on the front foot if something goes wrong rather than back in a way from it. Absolutely. Are there any common mistakes that you see business owners making when they approach engaging with a PR for the first time? Yes, good question. Yes, I think the most common could be mistaking it for marketing or advertising, expecting similar results to marketing or advertising, coming to us and sort of being unclear about PR's role. That's our job as PR consultants to educate on the role that PR can have. I think often that doesn't happen. And so business owners come into the projects, expecting something and it's not really differentiated, but that should be our job as an industry to educate people on the role of PR. And that the common mistake is on the business owners side is pushing through anyway, not really sort of letting that land and then expecting different results. So going forward with PR, then expecting outcomes that marketing or advertising will have. Whereas PR, it's sort of underneath various levers. So it's going to support sales, it's going to support marketing, it's going to support advertising, it's going to support culture even internally in an organisation. So it's going to support various levers. But if you try to market and use the same sort of scorecard as you would for a paid campaign, it's tricky because it's different. It's done differently. It's a different role. I always ask, and I don't think there's a clear answer. What depends which institution you're talking to, but is public relations a profession or an art? Because some of the story is telling that to make it work, it sort of falls into the art landscape. And so, yeah. So is it fair to say you wish more small business owners knew that PR was not marketing? It's not sales. I mean, yes, if they also understand that the good benefits that will also come with it, but yes, it would make life a little easier, but it's always part of that journey. It's always part of that journey. And you know, four to five months in, they get a lease or even sooner. Like it, once you see it working in the way, it sort of is so different on the inside to marketing. It 100% usually clicks, but sometimes it's like diving into that journey, seeing how we're seeing it, the impact it will have on your business. And then it sort of becomes more obvious. But yeah, I mean, obviously, it all sits under the same communications umbrella where you go marketing ads. So I think we've probably got time for one last question. Maybe what's a quick PR tip you want to give to a solo business owner right now that's wanting to promote their business? Don't be scared of it not being perfect. And you probably have more to say than you think. And if you've never done PR before and you're running a small business, the impact can be pretty transformative as it compounds. So I would say jump in, give it a go. Awesome. Thank you so much, Jasmine. Thank you for joining us today. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It's been good. Fantastic. And now if PR has felt a bit out of reach, well then hopefully this chat has made it seem much more doable. And if you want to learn more about Jasmine and her work at Hiden's Seek, well, we'll drop the details in the show notes. And thank you everyone for listening. Hopefully you enjoyed the episode. Make sure you follow us and subscribe to Flying Solo wherever you get your podcast from. See you next time. Bye. [MUSIC]