Carol Driver Podcast Transcript

Melody Moore [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Secret Resume podcast, hosted by me, Melody Moore. In this podcast, we explore the people, places and experiences that have shaped my guests, those which have influenced who they are as people and where they are in their work life today, or as I like to call it, their secret resume. Before we dive in, I want to tell you about something that I’m really excited about, about which is our being free membership. We’re developing an online community which is designed for people who are interested in personal growth. If you’re navigating career transitions, maybe feeling stuck or burnt out, or simply seeking more meaning in your life, then this is for you. Membership gives you access to a range of resources, a supportive community and monthly group coaching calls. It will allow you to explore what free freedom means to you on your own terms. Head to www.liberareconsulting.co.uk being free to join the Waitlist.

Melody Moore [00:01:04]:
My guest today is Carol Driver. Carol, welcome. Really thrilled to have you here with your beautiful pink neon sign in the background which says make the headlines. Carol, tell us a bit about yourself.

Carol Driver [00:01:16]:
Hello and thank you for inviting me to be here today. I’m really excited to speak to you. So I am a national newspaper and magazine journalist. I’ve been a journalist for more than 25 years and I also run Carol Driver PR and I help entrepreneurs get into the national press on a consistent basis.

Melody Moore [00:01:38]:
Fantastic. And we will dive in later into what is PR and why should we all be paying attention and focusing on it in our businesses. But let’s start right back much earlier in your career and sort of how, you know, it kind of leads up to, how did you even get into PR in the first place? But you were a journalist, you started your. Well, you’re still a journalist, but you started your career purely in journalism and you got offered a promotion quite early in your career to quite a good role. So do you want to talk to.

Carol Driver [00:02:13]:
Us a bit about that? So, prior to studying journalism, I’d had a lot of jobs. I found that I got bored very easily and when I stumbled across a multimedia journalism course to study at university, and I thought, yeah, that’s interesting. I’d always been good at English, so I kind of thought, oh, perhaps they go hand in hand. And ever since doing my course in journalism and graduating, it’s been the one thing that has captivated me and grasped my attention because it’s working with people and helping them to share their stories. So I started out on a local newspaper in Billericki in Essex, called the Essex Career, where I worked for about six years in the end. And I was, you know, my first job, I was a reporter. I was paid probably about nine grand, I think a year. It was nothing.

Carol Driver [00:03:08]:
And, you know, you’re out on the beat covering cats stuck up trees and doing vox pops on streets about bus fare, price increases and all things like that. You know, sort of cutting your teeth. And I’ve been there.

Melody Moore [00:03:19]:
Carol, what does vox pop? Oh, okay, but what does it mean? I’ve heard it before and I don’t actually know what it means.

Carol Driver [00:03:25]:
So I think it’s Latin for a longer word that I won’t pronounce. But it basically means voice of the people. So when you go and vox pop somebody, you’re, you know, we used to go on out onto the street with a digital recorder back then and a camera and take their photo and get their thoughts. So it’s, yeah, voice of the people, really. Just like a small survey, I guess.

Melody Moore [00:03:46]:
I did not know that. There you go. Sorry, carry on.

Carol Driver [00:03:52]:
And then the editor left. And look, it was a local, a small local independent paper. And that obviously being only nine grand a year, they didn’t have particularly great budget. So they, they were looking in house first before advertising the position. And I guess I was super keen. And they said to me, would you, would you want to work as the editor? And I told my friend who worked there and he was like, no, of course you wouldn’t want that position. I was like, no, of course I would want that position. You know, I was always quite, I don’t know, sort of quite into progress in my career.

Carol Driver [00:04:25]:
And so I thought, why not? It’s a challenge. Let’s see what happens. And I worked there for, yeah, probably another four years or so. Relaunched the paper, redesigned it, brought on my new team. You know, I was very young and inexperienced, but people loved the paper. So, you know, it was a great, it was great way we had editorial freedom. We weren’t governed by a big company or anything like that. The reporters who I took on really, you know, loved what they did.

Carol Driver [00:04:56]:
And it was a great time. We kind of felt like we were part of a really small movement, just bucking the trend and doing things a bit differently. Bringing sort of national stories to a local level, picking up real issues that people were concerned about. One of the things I wanted to introduce there, but we did, it didn’t happen in the end, was a business section. But I wanted the business section to be all about the stories behind the entrepreneurs. So this was 25 years ago, and even then I thought that’s the part that I’m most interested in. But yeah, that didn’t happen. But I just progressed in my career.

Carol Driver [00:05:35]:
I, you know, it was, it was scary originally to make that change, especially when you’re so embedded in a company, you know, sort of comfortable. But for me, I wanted to know what was next. And yeah, I met. So I decided to launch a travel section in the newspaper and got invited on this press trip to Turks and Caicos when I was about, I don’t know, 27 years. And I met a great journalist there who I’m still in touch with and he’s former lawyer, you know, was quite high up at the Daily Mail and the Express and we just got on so well and he put my name forward to one of the chief subs at the Daily Mail.

Melody Moore [00:06:18]:
And the chief sub is.

Carol Driver [00:06:20]:
Right. So the sub editors, which sadly are a dying breed, are the, is sort of the backbone of a newspaper. So where the reporters go out and find the stories and write the stories, a sub editor is behind the scenes improving your story, fact checking your story, making sure it’s legally sound, making sure it fits to a word count, making sure the story is whole in its entirety so that they’re really like, you know, a huge, very highly skilled safety blanket. But you know, where newspapers budgets and magazine budgets are smaller and smaller now, it’s, it is something that’s kind of dying out.

Melody Moore [00:07:00]:
And what’s replacing them?

Carol Driver [00:07:03]:
Nothing. Nothing. No, you know, sort of stressed out editors are replacing them. Most newspapers have legal teams and copy will be run before a lawyer if it’s potentially contentious or defamatory or anything like that. But yeah, for a lot of publications there’s nothing, there’s, there’s no, there’s nothing in between.

Melody Moore [00:07:25]:
Interesting.

Carol Driver [00:07:26]:
Damned.

Melody Moore [00:07:28]:
Just before and just before you go in onto that role, I’m really interested in you as this young 25 year old. You know. Why, why do you think the, that, that boss, what did they see in you? Do you think that thought, oh, she’s young but she can do this, this role? What, what do you think they spotted in you?

Carol Driver [00:07:52]:
That’s a really good question actually. And there was probably at that age, it was the potential, but also, you know, the, the dedication. I kind of wanted to do things my way and I, I was not a stranger to working hard. I would throw myself into things. You know, back then we would start early, we would finish late. You know, I, I ended up working sometimes seven days a week. But I loved, I loved what I did and I still love what I do. So, yeah, perhaps it was all of those things rolled into one.

Carol Driver [00:08:34]:
Perhaps there was just a spark of potential. Yeah. Otherwise I. Yeah, I think that’s probably it.

Melody Moore [00:08:43]:
And do you think the potent. What I’m curious about is, I suppose, the difference between being a journalist, what makes a good journalist and what makes a good editor. Because I’m guessing they’re not necessarily the same thing.

Carol Driver [00:08:56]:
No, they’re totally different. I think for a, for an editor position you need to have the whole vision in mind. So you are staff managing, you’re project managing. You have to work out what that publication is, how you want it to all fit together, how that resonates with a reader. You have to be able to strategize that. You know, at the end of the day you want copies to shift. You know, you, you can have the best motive in the world, but if no one picks it up and nobody reads it, then you know, it’s, it is pointless. So, yeah, they’re very different roles.

Carol Driver [00:09:30]:
I, I could really spot a story. I was great at sub editing. You know, my reporters would come to me and go, oh, I’ve just written all this and I’m sure there’s a story there and I could look at it and go, yeah, look, that’s your angle, that’s your headline. And I could just see it like, I don’t know, I just loved all those elements of it as well. Yeah, I loved the writing, I loved going and finding stories and interviewing people, but I really liked having that overall vision and being able to step back and look at it as a whole with loads of different categories and boxes and headlines with a direction and an aim in mind. And I think just to bring it to now, that’s how I work with my clients now, is that I see that vision and those goals and it’s very multi layered because when I’m speaking to somebody, and I’ve said this before, but I think in headlines and I think about story elements that I know will be of interest to editors and I think I’ve done it for so long that it almost becomes second nature and like a gut instinct in terms of when it’s a good story, you just know. So yeah, I think it was all of those elements as well that I can think in that, in that way as well as, you know, going out and finding stories.

Melody Moore [00:10:49]:
Yeah, let’s come back to that because I think there is something interesting there, isn’t there, about those skills and those skills of an entrepreneur and understanding your audience. And you know, I think that’s really interesting but let’s come back to it. Let’s talk then about. So you were on this press trip, you met someone who was a lawyer and a journalist. What, what impact did they have on your life?

Carol Driver [00:11:12]:
So I think they just opened up, opened up the industry a little bit to me. You know, it was on this local paper and we’re all doing well and it’s great and, but I always knew I want, I was looking for that next step and you know, I sort of confided in him, told him, you know, where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do and he said, look, let me have a chat. I know they’re looking, you know, they would bring on, so the sub editors would bring on freelancers to do, you know, casual shifts, 3pm till 10pm and he said I’ll, I’ll put you forward. So they, they got me in for a few shifts and I’d work of an evening and I really enjoyed it and I worked alongside some incredible people. Don’t get me wrong. I was, I was sort of just a freelance casual sub editor. So I wasn’t involved in, you know, the bigger kind of picture. I was just assigned stories.

Carol Driver [00:12:07]:
But it really allowed me to hone my skills and learn from the chiefs up there and be able to kind of, you know, put together a story that, that picked a reader’s interest that was there in its entirety and told a complete story. Then there was a training scheme. So the Daily Mail offers a training traineeship which is basically learning all the basics of journalism with on the job experience. And they said to me, look, do you want to go and do this? It means that you can progress. And I was like, yeah, sure, you know, happy to do that. So that’s when I was up in how for a while, while still editing the local paper, doing this full time training course. So it was, it was really, really full on. And after that all the journalists went to regional publications to do their placements.

Carol Driver [00:12:59]:
But I was offered a placement at London Light which was a free based in the Daily Mail offices. It was owned by then Associate, Associate Press I believe that’s what they were called then. And they, the editor there just said, oh look, just come off the trainee scheme, I’ll give you a job. So I was like, okay, fine. So you know, within a week of working there I was made staff and full time. So that was really good. And I was subbing for them, so sub editing. I was in charge of like the letters page and subbing stories and it Just gave me an insight into the dynamics of the newsroom and how stories worked and really being able to tell a story concisely.

Melody Moore [00:13:39]:
And were you still doing the local newspaper as well at the same time?

Carol Driver [00:13:44]:
I had two full time jobs so I would leave my house at 4 5, I would be up at 5, leave my house by 530 ish to get to High Street Kensington for half 7am, do a day there. They allowed me to go home between 3 and 3:30 because I’d finished all my work. I sometimes just wouldn’t have a break and then I’d be back for the editor job in Billericki for around about half four and I’d work there till about eight, nine p.m. and then I’d work there Saturdays and Sundays as well.

Melody Moore [00:14:17]:
Wow. Did you not burn out?

Carol Driver [00:14:20]:
Yeah, I did. I’m not gonna lie. I was, you know, I was exhausted. I felt, you know, absolutely terrible and I think what I had a problem with was letting go.

Melody Moore [00:14:35]:
I was just gonna ask you that.

Carol Driver [00:14:37]:
Yeah. And I. Because it was mine. I mean it never was and it never is, but I think at that young age, you think, wow, I’ve created this, I’ve put so much time and effort and it was a bit of a safety net and doing everything else that I was doing was quite unknown. And you know, there’s always that imposter syndrome in the background, especially at that age. Am I good enough? Have I got the right skills? All these things and the local newspaper job was like safe for me. And in the end I thought, no, I, I can’t do both. I have to, I have to just go where I, I don’t know what will happen.

Carol Driver [00:15:16]:
And I remember that being a really hard decision for me to make. It was, I was just fraught with, you know, is this going to, I mean, at the time you just think, is this going to be the worst decision of my life? And you know, I, I couldn’t see the bigger picture. And of course it was the best decision I ever made. And hardest, the hardest decisions always are. And so yeah, I gave up my, my local paper, which was quite freeing actually.

Melody Moore [00:15:43]:
It’s funny, isn’t it, how we get caught into a belief about something and don’t realise how it’s. Actually, there’s a real positive as well, the other side of it. You must have had no social life or anything though, when you were, when you were doing both jobs.

Carol Driver [00:15:57]:
Yeah, I probably didn’t go out, didn’t work Friday night. So I still went out Friday night, Saturday night, Saturday but yeah, I just. I just really loved what I did. And even when I gave up that job or left that job, so I was just at London Light, I would still do shifts at the Daily Mail, evening shifts there. And I remember being offered a production job on the Evening Standard and I didn’t want to go down that route of production because that was what is production. Yeah. So that’s the design of the newspaper because I could use the programmes. Obviously, being a local newspaper, I used to design it, design the pages, come up with the fonts, all things like that.

Carol Driver [00:16:38]:
So I had those skills as well, which reporters just wouldn’t have had because they wouldn’t have been required to do that. But I’d learned all of those.

Melody Moore [00:16:46]:
So, yeah, I think that’s really interesting, isn’t it, that you did. So I had a similar experience in my career. I worked for a small organisation first, small consultancy first. And you get to do so much more. You have to do so much more.

Carol Driver [00:17:03]:
Yeah.

Melody Moore [00:17:04]:
And therefore you learn a different skill set to. If you work for a big organisation where it tends to be narrow and you go up a particular funnel.

Carol Driver [00:17:17]:
Yeah, exactly. And so a lot of my prior to journalism, a lot of my jobs were in sales. You know, I was always quite good at that sort of element and I did lots of training, but it didn’t really. I didn’t find it fulfilling for me, you know, going out on, I did door to door sales, I sold gym memberships, I was, you know, doing lots of different things. But then when I went into newspapers, I had those skill sets and a local newspaper. I also that if I came up with an idea for a supplement, sometimes I would sell the advertising to local businesses and I was good at that as well. But. And actually that though those multi skilled, you know, those skills that run alongside journalism actually helped me to secure positions as I sort of worked my way up.

Carol Driver [00:18:08]:
You know, remember I worked for a publication called TNT magazine and I was, you know, I started out as editor and worked my way up to editorial director. But one of the, one of the kind of elements that sealed the deal was that I had that sales background because magazines need to make revenue in order to survive. So the fact that I had, you know, coexisted with a sales team and actually worked very well with a sales team was a huge sort of selling point because most editorial and sales teams, it used to be a them and us kind of scenario.

Melody Moore [00:18:46]:
Yes, yes. I remember a long time ago working with. I was on a course and I met some people from the Guardian and they were really struggling with this idea of, you know, paid for advertising in their supplements and what have you. And it was a real struggle for them to. To, you know, to be thinking about designing something that. And having, I guess, the influence, a stronger influence of so something that was more of a partnership rather than someone placing an advert in there. And they were having a real emotional struggle around what the implication. I mean, it was quite a long time ago now, so things I think are very different and anyone in journalism these days has probably just had to suck it up and accept that that’s the way the world is.

Melody Moore [00:19:38]:
But at the time it was quite a new thing. And yeah, they were really struggling emotionally with this idea of advertisers having a stronger influence on the content of what they were producing.

Carol Driver [00:19:57]:
Yeah. And I think, look, so long as it’s aligned with the. So long as it’s aligned with the publication’s overall strategy and that it’s clearly marked, you know, so that the reader knows that that’s paid for content, that there has to be ways of doing that because publications need to survive. So, yeah, I think there, there are, especially now, there are ways of doing that, but it’s in keeping with that publication.

Melody Moore [00:20:27]:
Can you say a bit more about that? Clearly marked because, you know, in the world of influencers and. And I quite often see things and think this looks like it’s an advert, but it’s not. It doesn’t say it is. But do you think people are held to account enough in terms of that? Making it clear when something is sponsored or previously sponsored? I think that’s always a grey area, isn’t it, where they may have done a sponsored ad, you know, a month or two ago, but they’re still using that product and talking about that product.

Carol Driver [00:21:06]:
Yeah, I think there are guidelines from the Advertising Standards Agency. I know, you know, publications are governed in terms of making sure something said promotional or advertising or advertising feature, just so the reader is aware. And I think that there are hashtags now that influencers will have to use to make sure their content. But I mean, who’s governing thousands upon thousands of influencers and hundreds of thousands of posts. But I guess, you know, that’s a really tricky one to kind of call. And I guess a lot of us need to sort of make up our own minds if we see a post like that and we know that that influencer has an affiliation with that brand is just to kind of bear that in mind and it comes down to, you know, know, sort of fake news Stories that we had, you know, that were an AI that we’re learning more and more about and it’s, it’s just to always make sure we just do a little bit of fact cheque. Don’t just take that surface, initial comment or post as exactly as things are. I think, you know, sort of just look into it as you would with anything else.

Carol Driver [00:22:20]:
If you were buying course or programme or working one to one with somebody, you wouldn’t, you know, just click buy straight away. You’d want to know about them, whether they’re a right fit for you and do that research.

Melody Moore [00:22:32]:
Good advice. Thank you. Right, so we’re. You’re at London Light. What happens after that? You get it sounds to me. Have you ever had an interview in your life? Because it sounds to me like you’ve just been offered these different opportunities as you go along.

Carol Driver [00:22:48]:
They were all interviews. They were all interviews.

Melody Moore [00:22:51]:
Yeah.

Carol Driver [00:22:52]:
I had to sit interviews for all of them. Yeah. So, yeah, perhaps I’m making it sound. So I just walked in the door. But no, they were all interview processes and I, I would just apply. So. So after London Light, this is a hazy kind of memory, but I, I went to Mail Online, I believe was the next stepping stone and I. They said, you want to come and do some shifts at Mail Online? So that was a, you know, it was the same company and Mail Online back then was, I think I went to it when it was a beta site.

Carol Driver [00:23:28]:
So there was about one, one team, one desk filled with people in the Daily Mail offices and it was very much, well, that’s never going to succeed. And I worked on the news desk there and it was really, you know, I, I’m really productive and I work really fast and I enjoy a high turnover of dopamine hits and stories to work on. And Matt online, you know, you, you’d be working on eight, 10 stories a day, reworking them, reworking agency copy, coming up with headlines, bringing in all the pictures. And there was something that I really enjoyed about doing that. It was a really high pressure environment. You know, if there was breaking news, you had to get a story live within 5 minutes and add to it. And that came with its own challenges. But I was, you know, they asked if I wanted to work my way up to be news editor, night news editor, which I did not because the Shift started at 5pm and worked till 2am and I did my fair share of those as well.

Carol Driver [00:24:30]:
And then they introduced the 1am shift, 1am until 10am or 9am and so I did all of Those, you know, for the 1am shift. I remember being the only person in the office thinking, oh my God, I hope nothing major happens. You know, it’s just me and the cleaners to kind of get this site up and running. But then I worked on the showbiz desk, I worked on the international news desk and you were really kind of put whereas and where you were needed. And then that’s when I left. After about a year or so I left to go to TNT magazine and I stayed there for a couple of years and then where did I go after TNT magazines? So TNT magazine I really enjoyed. This was a magazine in London for expensive pats, so Australians, Kiwis, South Africans who were over in London and they wanted me to redesign the magazine, oversee the website and they had offices in Australia as well. So I got to travel a lot and I did a bit of speaking and really enjoyed all those elements.

Carol Driver [00:25:29]:
And then after TNT magazine, I went freelance. So I was still doing the magazine on a freelance basis and I worked as digital director for Bluffer’s Guides, which was a publishing company which was a little bit left field, but I thought, oh, you know, give it a try. So I ended up.

Melody Moore [00:25:50]:
What made you go freelance in the first place?

Carol Driver [00:25:54]:
I think I just wanted to kind of broaden my horizons and I thought I’d never been freelance before. I’d always been staff and I, I thought perhaps that would be a good stage in my career to, to write for a few other publications, get a few other publications sort of under my belt and, and just try different things as well. So, yeah, I don’t sit still for too, too long. So, yeah, then I worked for, for Bluffer’s Guides, which was great, gave me an insight into all things digital, SEOs and analytics and reporting and things like that. And then I did some shifts for Mail Online. The then travel editor said, do you want to come do some shifts looking for, you know, just casual shifts? I said, yeah, I haven’t been in the office for a year or a couple, maybe a couple of years by then, perhaps even a bit longer. And I remember walking back through the revolving doors of Derry street and going up the escalators and just, you know, it’s the familiar place and it’s the familiar environment. I’d also done some shifts at the Sunday Times travel magazine as well.

Carol Driver [00:27:07]:
You know, I’d been doing travel writing at the same time. I’d actually gone around the world in between that time as well and, and done travel writing by myself, which was great. And so, yeah, Worked at Sunday Times travel magazine, which was a, you know, very slow pace. You know, I was working on one story a day, subbing it and then the next day I came in for my shift and it was the same story and it just didn’t work for, I think once you’ve been in that fast paced environment, anything else just didn’t, didn’t quite work. So yeah, went back and did some shifts on the travel desk and the travel editor said, oh, just to let you know, I’m pregnant, so I’ll be going on mat leave too and I think you should apply for the job. And I remember actually, actually I’m going to just cut back. So my first day I’m coming down the escalators for my lunch break and I thought I’d like the travel editor’s job and then went for my lunch, came back. As I walked back, the travel editor then said to me, by the way, I’m pregnant, I think you should apply for the job.

Melody Moore [00:28:18]:
And I was like, wow, that’s, that’s very quick manifestation.

Carol Driver [00:28:24]:
I would really like this job. And it was the managing editor. So I had an interview and again, this was. She liked the fact that I had that sales background because they were looking then to commercialise what they were doing. And this was the very early days of bringing that commercialization element to the channels. There was another amazing journalist, Sarah Gordon, travel journalist, and she had been working at Mail Online. So they said, okay, we’re going to give it to both of you because we feel that you both bring different skill sets. And so we both started.

Carol Driver [00:28:59]:
We were co editors of the travel section and we took the channel from about a million hits a month to a million hits a day.

Melody Moore [00:29:08]:
Wow.

Carol Driver [00:29:09]:
About three months just by, you know, just strategy, figuring stuff out, sheer determination, just drive and yeah, change intact and all the things that I love and enjoy doing. And it was, it was great. We were sort of off radar as well.

Melody Moore [00:29:32]:
Tell me the difference between print journalism and online journalism. Is there a big difference? I’m really curious.

Carol Driver [00:29:42]:
So I guess the big difference is that we were publishing straight away. So you’d come up with a store, you know, you’d spot a story, you’d write the story, then you’d hit live and that story was live straight away. Whereas in newspapers, you know, daily newspaper, you’re collating and curating the news stories ready for the next day. But on a, on a daily website, we were publishing sometimes within 20 minutes, half an hour. And you could see the, we had access to real time analytics so we were always, you know, monitoring that to see which stories were doing well, and we were looking to increase the channel’s hits. So we would be really mindful of that strategy. And you can, you can shift with online. If you’re.

Carol Driver [00:30:33]:
If your stories aren’t sort of hitting the mark with readers, you can then change tact and you can bring in other types of stories that then potentially would do well. So you’ve got. You’ve got that immediate reaction from editors. And we had figured out, you know, for us, as a Travel Channel or ManOnline, if our stories made the main homepage, which is where most people go to for men online, they go direct to the homepage. You know, I remember the first story that got a million hits and the first time a travel story was the main banner on the homepage, or it was the splash, like the main story on the homepage, and it just sent our figures, you know, through the roof. And so we created this strategy. It wasn’t there before. And we really worked that to increase the channel’s exposure.

Carol Driver [00:31:27]:
And it worked, I guess, with a.

Melody Moore [00:31:30]:
Print magazine or newspaper, you can’t really tell which bits people are reading, I guess, unless you go and ask them. Whereas with online journalism, you have that, as you say, instant feedback loop.

Carol Driver [00:31:48]:
Yeah, exactly. I mean, magazines would always, you know, they’ll keep the same. They’ll keep analytics in terms of which magazines are selling well, who was on the COVID what cover lines they have on the COVID And you’ll see some of those same celebrities repeated. You’ll see some of those same cover lines repeated because they know that that was a good issue. And there’s sort of, you know, the reasoning behind why that is. And same for newspapers. They’ll know what. Which days sell more, which supplements are in those newspapers.

Carol Driver [00:32:17]:
So obviously there’s still.

Melody Moore [00:32:19]:
But it’s a whole. It’s a whole addition.

Carol Driver [00:32:25]:
Yeah.

Melody Moore [00:32:25]:
Whereas you are able to tell on an individual.

Carol Driver [00:32:29]:
Yep.

Melody Moore [00:32:30]:
Article. The success of it.

Carol Driver [00:32:32]:
Exactly. So, yeah, that. That’s what I enjoyed as well, being able to see those figures in real time, see the types of stories that readers wanted to read and making sure we worked really closely with the editor as well. So, for example, if there was, you know, like a really bad news day in quotes where everything is quite heavy, he would say, you know, as light as possible. So that that homepage would have a mix of stories. So it wasn’t seemingly sort of doom and gloom running throughout it. So, you know, and that’s helped me even today to think, right, okay, I’ve got all these stories to pitch. Let’s see what the news agenda is doing today.

Carol Driver [00:33:19]:
And let’s see which of those would kind of be more of interest, you know, on a day like today compared to sort of another news agenda day.

Melody Moore [00:33:32]:
Okay. And you went from that to female, is that right? Not directly.

Carol Driver [00:33:43]:
After the success of Travel, the managing editor said, okay, we’re launching the commercial team of Mail Online, the editorial side. And they wanted us to sort of temporarily launch that and come up with structures and procedures. So this was the beginning of sort of the. The sponsored content online, the native articles. So it was myself again, Sarah Gordon, and another team member. And we were working really closely with the sales team and looking after global brands such as Disney, Pepsi, BBC in America. And they would spend their budget on advertising, but also on native articles. And native articles were articles that we knew readers would want to read from an organic story point of view.

Carol Driver [00:34:42]:
So as journalists, we were creating these ideas for these brands based on what it was that they were launching, whether it was a new TV show or a, you know, new beer or whatever it was that we would come up with story ideas that we as editors would have commissioned anyway, but then launching them as native stories, and we. This was the first for MailOnline. So, you know, these stories would be paid for, they would be clearly marked as sponsored, but that they would be guaranteed a certain amount of hits. So they would be on a certain position on the homepage until they had reached that sort of hit rate.

Melody Moore [00:35:24]:
So it’s not like, rather than the advertiser coming to you and saying, I want this, it sounded like it’s more collaborative, that they’re saying, we want this outcome. And you’re saying, well, this type of story does well. And that’s. So it’s like a collaboration between you.

Carol Driver [00:35:38]:
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it was very clear, it was made very clear from the commercial team that, you know, these ideas were coming from the editors on the Mail Online already. So we already knew what would work well and how it would work. And so they, you know, the client clients were really guided by us in terms of having those skills and knowledge to what readers wanted to read. So, yeah, it was a. It was a collaborative approach to this. But all of these sort of skill sets, you know, I still use these today. So this is how I work with my PR clients now.

Carol Driver [00:36:19]:
I will draw out their expertise, but I will create headlines and story ideas that I know will work well for editors as well. So, yeah, all kind of. All kind of links up.

Melody Moore [00:36:33]:
So you Then go to female. Is that right? And that’s your last role before you leave and set up on your own in a different way to being a freelance journalist?

Carol Driver [00:36:48]:
Yes, yes, yes. I was at female for about four years. I was asked to be made editor. Initially I said no thanks, I don’t want that massive role, looking after a vast range of topics. I think it was the third best channel. Third, you know, best in terms of traffic channel on mail online, if memory serves me correct. And I thought, wow, that is, that is huge. And then they said, okay, well just, you know, we, we need an editor.

Carol Driver [00:37:19]:
Could you sit in for a while and just look after it? And I was like, okay, fine. And then obviously one thing leads to another. Exactly. You end up running it. But you know, I had such a brilliant team and all of my team have gone on to incredible publications and do amazing things. You know, it was hard work. I, I loved it, I absolutely loved it. You know, running a team of 10, 12, 13, 14 people a day, producing up to 40 stories a day, commissioning stories, making sure the strategy is right there for growth, making sure the, the stories of real, you know, quality kind of stories or fun stories, light hearted stories where need be.

Carol Driver [00:38:10]:
And the team I had was amazing and all had different skill sets and you really needed to hit the ground running. You know, you needed to come in in the morning, pitch your ideas by about half past eight and then just crack on and get those stories live. And then as and when other stories came up, either filed by agencies or breaking sort of news stories that were relevant to female, you’d, I’d be then assigning those other stories. So it was a lot to juggle. Really high pressured as well. But yeah, through, through real hard work we, we turn that channel from I think that was two and a half million hits a day to up to 15 million hits a day over the years. And then I had my daughter and I went on mat leave and I came back sort of part time for a year and they wanted me to go back full time and I just thought, you know, leaving my house at half past five every day and getting back at, you know, sort of 6:00, 7:00, sometimes even later. I just never see my daughter.

Carol Driver [00:39:19]:
Okay, right, I’m, I’m going to do something different. And I’d already built up quite a lot of good contacts anyway. I was doing sort of little bits of freelance work already and some consultancy work. So I just said, okay, right, I’m going to go freelance. But what I did do was Set up initially a business called make the Headlines. Sign in the background says make the Headlines. And this was, I wanted to help more women share their stories in the media because I know the impact that that can have. You know, if you’ve got a really sensitive story, a really personal story, often there are thousands of women who are going through or been through or about to go through the same sort of thing.

Carol Driver [00:40:07]:
And just reading those stories can be really helpful and really beneficial. So I wanted to create a sort of safe space. And with another journalist called Tiffany Wallace, we set up make the Headlines, which basically we, we work really closely with our case studies, we tell them what to expect, we give them a final read back of their story, which wasn’t something that was, you know, sort of offered all the time. And also if there was payment to be made, we would pay them even before we had been paid. So probably not a great business model, but it sat right with me in terms of, you know, the, what I felt was a priority to me. And we still run that business. So make the Headlines still. We, you know, place people’s stories in national newspapers and magazines, onlines and we’ve worked with some incredible women who have, you know, shared really, really personal stories as well as sort of fun and light hearted ones as well.

Melody Moore [00:41:11]:
What stops people wanting to share their stories that I think, as you know, we’ve talked about how people are afraid to do that. What’s stopping them? What are people’s fears around it?

Carol Driver [00:41:28]:
Yeah, so often I’ve worked with loads of women, I’ve worked with loads of women who want to share their stories but are worried about what will happen, you know, and I’ve worked with really personal stories. So I always speak to my case studies as we’re speaking here now, I’m really black and white to work with and I, you know, we’ll just explain to them at the end of the day it’s their decision and often what comes up is that there’s some sort of critical voice in their head that is saying if, if you share this, you know, people will think badly of you or you will get trolled or, you know, and, and often I, I do ask them, you know, who, whose voice is that? And often it can be, you know, parent or somebody they grew up with sort of putting that block on, on them progressing and you know, and progressing, I mean, in terms of if they’re an entrepreneur and they’ve got a personal story to share and progress in their business and their visibility and I understand, you know, I totally get Those fears, We all have those fears. But I think for some people, they think sharing their story is, is something, and actually I, I say to my clients, my case studies, if you’ve got a story to share, don’t feel as though you’re sharing it for you as like a, a vanity project. Remember what your goal is and how that sharing that story can help reach the people who you want to reach. It’s for their benefit that you’re sharing your story because we resonate with people’s personal stories. Also. There is a way to share your story. You know, you, it has to be a story.

Carol Driver [00:43:24]:
It has to have those elements that make it unusual, that make it not something that we read every day. There has to be something that makes it stand out. But equally you don’t have to share absolutely every single element. You know, we can, if you feel really vulnerable about sharing something in particular, we can see if the story works without it. And again, I will just be really black and white with my case studies and say, no, we need, you know, for it to work, we would need that. Or no, actually, fine, I think we can, I don’t think it’s relevant to your story. There’s enough there without it. So, yeah, I think, I think it’s often that that potential of something negative will happen from me telling people my, my life experience.

Melody Moore [00:44:15]:
Yeah, I think you’re right that a lot of us, particularly women have been brought up to not show off. And people are weirdly afraid of being judged by the people they know more than complete strangers. You know, I’ve certainly heard people say that, you know, I don’t want the people I know to read this, but the thought of a stranger reading it is fine. So yeah, absolutely. There’s something in us about, about getting over that, that be seen or not and not hurt or, you know, don’t, don’t be a show off. Yeah. Thing that I picked up, I’ve had.

Carol Driver [00:44:58]:
Clients who have or case studies who have seen their story and freaked out because it’s the, you know, I, I do a read back with my clients, there’s no surprises. But once they’ve seen it, you know, I remember one woman in particular who was on the phone to me saying, can we take it down? You know, I’ve changed my mind. And I said, look, this is to see your story can sometimes feel really overwhelming, especially the personal story. I said, look, take some deep breaths. I said, the story’s there now, but tomorrow we’re all going to be talking about something else. And you know, it, some people can have that initial reaction and, and she took that on board. And then, you know, I spoke to the next day and she, she said, yeah, you’re, you’re right. You know, it was just all her fears sort of coming together at that point.

Carol Driver [00:45:59]:
And, and she was absolutely fine with it. You know, it, it allowed her, because it was part of her business as well, it allowed her to say that she had been seen in national press and, you know, all the kind of credibility and trust that comes with that as well. So it was beneficial to her in the end. But we all, you know, we’re all human. I’m human as well. And we, we might have these stumbling blocks and I guess as my role, you know, I’ve been a journalist for a long time, I’m not a counsellor, but I do say to people at the beginning of a call, look, this might feel like counselling because we’re going to go back, we’re going to go back into your childhood to see what’s relevant to today. And I have people burst into tears quite often on the phone. To me, I have people burst into tears when I read their story back to them, because to hear their story and how much they’ve achieved and them knowing what they’ve overcome can be really emotional.

Carol Driver [00:46:58]:
And I love it. You know, when I get a message or a text from somebody, just say, you know, somebody I’ve worked with, just saying, I’m really proud of my story and thank you for being there. Because my support for my case studies doesn’t just stop, you know, they’re on my WhatsApp. You know, I had a story a couple of weeks ago when it was the Labour government’s new prison early release scheme. And this woman had been abused by her stepdad as a child really badly. And after her mother had died, when this woman was an adult, she then sought justice, fought for years to get her stepfather eventually jailed, only for him to be released sort of 19 months later as part of the Labour scheme. And I worked with her, helped her to share her story. It actually was the main story on Mail Online.

Carol Driver [00:47:52]:
It was the same splash. So about a couple of months ago. And I was on WhatsApp to her the whole time, you know, are you okay? How are you feeling? You know, and just offering that sort of support, you know, yeah, I’m helping you to do that. But also I’m a person as well, so I like to know that my case studies are okay. And there was another woman as well, who I helped her share her Story her son who, who has special needs and autism. They had gone to see Pink in concert and they were told they needed to sit down and she said, you know, my son can’t sit down for this duration. We were supposed to have special access and that’s not been allowed. And the security guards basically said, well, you sit down or you leave.

Carol Driver [00:48:38]:
And she said, well, we’re going to have to leave because he cannot sit down for that length of time. She put a post on Facebook and I was, you know, LinkedIn to that and I worked really closely with her to help her share that story. And that went absolutely bonkers. Melanline picked it up, Sun Mirror, and then it just grew bigger than, than me, bigger than all of us. And it was, you know, published in Australia, in the States, it just went absolutely bonkers. But I was on the phone to her quite often throughout that process. You know, Pink’s manager got in touch with me, got in touch with her, wanted to offer her free tickets and I said, look, it’s, it’s entirely up to you. Take the tickets.

Carol Driver [00:49:21]:
I said, or, you know, see this as a way to further this conversation, because this story has gone so viral for a reason. You know, it’s, it’s a conversation starter and it has then potential to change mindsets in the way that things are done. She pushed back and said, I, you know, I want to have ongoing conversations. And they said that they were open to that. They took her and her son up to Pink’s next concert, put them up for the night, and then Pink came to meet them as well, which was great for her, great for her son, so, you know, brilliant. But, but these stories have huge potential. The. The things that affect us in day to day life can, can be the things that need to change as well.

Carol Driver [00:50:04]:
And by shining a spotlight on these stories, personal stories, it can change thought processes and it can change behaviours. And this is how we, you know, one of the ways that we get societal change is by talking about all the different things that affect us.

Melody Moore [00:50:23]:
So tell me how you then moved from the make the headlines into pr and what’s the difference between. Between the two things?

Carol Driver [00:50:31]:
Yeah. So I kind of realised that I could use my skill set to help entrepreneurs to raise their profile in the press on a consistent basis. And I worked with. My first client was actually, she’s still my client, Susie Hassler. She’s a fashion stylist. And I knew that, I knew that she had great stories, I knew I could get her in the press. So the difference really Between PR and journalism, not the whole difference, but to break it really down to kind of one element is I’m either paid, I have an organic story with a case study and I’m paid by the publication to write that story or for PR clients, I’m paid by the client to come up with their PR strategy, to work out story ideas, to pitch those story ideas to newspapers and magazines and to work with those newspapers and magazines to help them to write it or to, you know, to give them a story to use. So I’m paid by the client either way I make it very clear to my editors which hat I have on.

Carol Driver [00:51:40]:
I will say this is a PR client or you know, this is a case study journalist led story. And so yeah, I, I spotted Susie and I thought I know you have huge potential. We’d had a chat on the phone and I said look, most publications have their go to kind of fashion stylist already and I feel like there’s longevity here. I feel like I could, I could, we could do stories every single month that would raise your profile. And she said okay, great, let’s go for it. And I did. And within a month she had been on pretty much most national newspaper sites. I was getting her into magazines and I thought, okay, right, this is, you know, another element to my business.

Carol Driver [00:52:24]:
I don’t like to have all my eggs in one basket. I think to, for me being able to kind of shift when I see patterns and behaviours changing like newspapers and magazines getting smaller. So it was good for me in terms of being an entrepreneur to have another, another kind of string to my bow to offer. That still, still kind of complemented all my, you know, what I like to do and all my skill sets. So from Susie then I, I was approached, I work quite closely with in particular one PR agency, but a couple of others as well. And they will, they bring me on board to manage and their clients but sort of as a white label so under their sort of company name. So I work, I’ve worked with them for about six years working on national brands, startups and doing, doing the same kind of thing. So, but in the background I, you know, I’m building my own client base and then yeah, got sort of introduced to the online world just over a year ago I think maybe a bit, bit longer than that.

Melody Moore [00:53:37]:
And that was funny if you mentioned Susie. I’ve actually done a personal shop with Susie so I know her, which is really funny. Yeah, she’s great, absolutely brilliant. I’ve been, I’d been following her for Years before I actually went and had a personal shot with her. So that’s. It’s such a small world, isn’t it?

Carol Driver [00:53:56]:
Such a small world. And she’s just lovely, as I say. Yeah, we worked together for ages and then Covid struck and then we’ve been working together probably for nearly a year. I’ve just secured her a magazine, a regular magazine column which is two pages, which is all her sort of amazing and stuff. So, yeah, really good.

Melody Moore [00:54:14]:
Amazing. And then. So Lisa Johnson again is somebody who we have in common. Both connected to her in different ways. She’s been quite influential on you in terms of your offers and what you, you know, what you do in your business. So tell me a bit about that.

Carol Driver [00:54:31]:
Yeah, of course. So I initially started doing, as most people do during Lisa’s one to many course course. Haven’t actually finished it, but don’t, don’t tell her that. And then I did a strategy day at her house, I think that was last Christmas actually. And we just, you know, she’s so personal, so down to earth. And we ended up having a chat about what I did and what she does and sort of said, you know, is there a way to work together? And yeah, decided that this year I would, we’d work together on her PR on a 12 month basis. And then I’ve been part of her top tier destination inspiration group which is filled with incredible entrepreneurs who are looking to scale their businesses. And so for Susie’s pr, we had, you know, sorry for Lisa’s pr.

Carol Driver [00:55:30]:
Obviously, Lisa has been in the press multiple times before and so for me it was figuring out what areas Lisa could talk about that hadn’t been spoken about so much before and also how we positioned her. So we decided that to sort of call her money and wealth expert would be a good way to go. So initially I started pitching her story idea to my contacts. Had interest from Man Online, from the Son, I think from the Mirror as well, then the Telegraph. I pitched her story how she had had money mindset training and her children had two and the Telegraph were really keen on that and it just so happened that they were launching their new business Money podcast. So Lisa was one of the first entrepreneurs to be featured on that. And yeah, every step of the way it’s been about looking at how I can be reactive to opportunities that are coming in. So editors of national publications will often come to me to see what stories I’ve got, what case studies I’m working with and also what proactive PR I could do for Lisa.

Carol Driver [00:56:47]:
So Most of these story ideas are ones that I’ve created for her. Then I’ve gone and proactively pitched them to my clients. And I also, I met with the editor of Female, and I pitched Lisa as a regular columnist, looking at different elements of money and mindset and how people could make money and sort of the challenges behind that. And she really liked that idea. So Lisa’s been writing for them on a monthly basis as well. So, yeah, that was part of the overall strategy. It was looking what was there already, looking at where Lisa wanted to go and figuring out the steps on how to get there.

Melody Moore [00:57:26]:
So what would your advice be to entrepreneurs around pr? What do they need to be thinking about? What should they be doing? Because it’s another visibility channel, right? Isn’t it? Most people think of social media as being their sole visibility channel, but PR is another one. So what would your advice be? Be?

Carol Driver [00:57:49]:
Yeah. So pr, you know, each of these publications has huge audiences, so being able to, to come up with story ideas and that resonate with people means that your name, your stories will be read by so many people. And I’ve just seen it open doors and opportunities that, that sometimes you don’t expect as well. Seeing people get agents from this, from, from pr, from and book deals and columns and increase their followings by huge amounts. So the things to think about is a, it’s never too early to start thinking about pr. Even if you don’t, then go, right, I’m going to work with an agent and I’ve only just launched my business. There are steps that you can take. So always be mindful that eventually, you know, every business needs to be visible.

Carol Driver [00:58:51]:
So eventually doing some sort of PR and traditional PR in the press and newspapers, magazines will be of benefit to your business. So making sure you have all the elements there that a journalist might be interested in are really crucial. So in those, even in those beginning days of your business, take photos. You know, if you’re coming up with a new product idea, for example, or sort of a subscription box, and you’re, you’re boxing them on your kitchen table with your mum, just take some photographs, you know, do, do a couple of diary entries of what it was like, keep, keep a note of your first big client and how much it was. All journalists for stories. All journalists will need a timeline of events and that’s how we build our stories. So bear that in mind as well and make sure you keep an eye on your figures. If you get any VIP customers, then ask them, you know, are you happy for me to include you in any PR that I do, ask them to do a post and then, you know, screenshot the post.

Carol Driver [00:59:56]:
So you’re, you’re building up this sort of portfolio of evidence almost of the story behind your business. And I think that’s really important because I’ve spoken to so many entrepreneurs and they say, oh, I just didn’t bother taking any photos in the early days. And I’ve seen stories fall down, great stories fall down because they don’t have the right imagery.

Melody Moore [01:00:22]:
I had that exact thing. I have just a hobby blog, literally. I’ve had it for years of my crafts and cooking and all sorts of hobbies that I have. And that blog has been around for way longer than my business website and it gets quite a lot of traffic to it and somebody had obviously seen something I’d posted on there from a magazine, a well known craft magazine, and they reached out to me but just the quality of my image wasn’t strong enough. You know, they’d like, really liked what I’d created and it’s one of the most popular blog posts that I have still. But yeah, they couldn’t put it in the magazine because the imagery wasn’t, you know, it was fine for a blog post, but it wasn’t fine for. I would have had to go and recreate the whole thing, which was not going to happen. But yeah, that’s exactly what happened to me.

Carol Driver [01:01:16]:
And it’s such a shame because you know that that could have done great things for you. It could have made a lovely story for them. And I think, always bear in mind, you know, for online stories you need at least 10 really good images, more than that, if possible. So. And those, those images need to show your journey. I don’t like using the word journey, but to show you the pathway to success or whatever it is in terms of your story, they need to show the key points. If there’s a point that makes it into the headline and there’s no photo, then it just doesn’t work as a headline or a story because there’s no visual to kind of match.

Melody Moore [01:02:00]:
Yeah, no, it was a good lesson. Well, I’m saying it was a good lesson for me. I’m still terrible at taking photos and videoing things when I do them, it’s. Yeah, I’m not in, I think the younger generation that will be different because they photo, video, everything. But that’s not been my, you know, it’s not my style or experience. So.

Carol Driver [01:02:26]:
Great.

Melody Moore [01:02:28]:
Anything else you want to share any before I’m going To ask you my regular questions, actually. But anything else on PR that you want to share with the audience before I dive into my regular questions?

Carol Driver [01:02:43]:
Just a few other things that you can do to be press ready, which set you apart from other people because obviously journalists get so many pitches. I get hundreds of pitches. If you’re a staffer, you’re getting, you know, thousands of pitches and you won’t read them all. So one of the things you can do is have your media bio written. I do offer this service, but you can write it yourself. Yourself. And this is, you know, mine’s a two page document that just pulls out all the best bits of your story. And often I see requests coming in from journalists and they say, please attach your media bio.

Carol Driver [01:03:15]:
So it allows you to come across as press ready, that you understand the sort of process. And you know, you, you’re showing that you have that knowledge as well. And just to reiterate about the images, just create a Google Drive folder and keep all your images in there. Make sure that they’re captioned when they were taken, who’s in them with any professional shots. Make sure that you ask the photographer when you’re, you know, going for your shoot if you have the rights to share them in the media. All these things just mean that if a journalist says yes to a story idea that you’ve pitched that the wheels will turn much faster. Yeah. And you’ll be able to make the headlines faster as well.

Melody Moore [01:03:58]:
Yeah. I’d not thought about that. Google Drive of images. You shared your image for this with me on a Google Drive. I was like, that’s such a good idea. But what you just said there is really interesting as well. So make sure it’s properly tagged and you have a mixture then of professional images and I don’t know what the other word is, but images that are taken by you or your, you know, family or friends have taken of you that are good ones. Yeah, yeah.

Carol Driver [01:04:25]:
So we call them collects or I’ll just say that they’re a candid photo. So selfies, you know, because everybody has a phone now that there are some publications that don’t want just professional shots. They want, you know, they want the reality behind it. Don’t get me wrong, lots of. There are magazines that would like to, you know, the professional high resolution shots and some magazines will only take those types of images. But for onlines and potentially newspapers as well, having those candid behind the scenes, sort of organic photos as well are really important.

Melody Moore [01:05:02]:
I know was another question I wanted to ask you which was around broadsheets versus tabloids. I don’t know if that’s a question, but, you know, do people have a, you know, are certain stories better suited to different publications? I’m guessing yes. What’s. Just share your thoughts on that.

Carol Driver [01:05:21]:
Yeah. So of course, you know, each publication will have a different kind of readership. So first of all, ask yourself, is your story, and this is what I have to. Is your story relevant to a Times reader? Is it relevant to a Telegraph reader? Is it relevant to a Daily Mail reader, some reader? And I think, yes, there are lots of people who have preconceived ideas about the tabloids. There might be various political issues which, you know, that’s absolutely fine. And I’ve worked with, you know, people who just don’t want to be in certain publications and that’s fine. I come from a tabloidy background, so I would always advise to look at the overall reach of these publications because ultimately you want to reach lots of people. If you just have in mind, say, for example, the glossy high end magazines and the broadsheet newspapers, they’ll only feature you once and then where are you going to go for your PR in terms of the tabloids and especially onlines, they’ve got such a vast reach and if you’re coming up with multiple story ideas all the time, you know, obviously they’re not going to commission the same thing every single day, but if you go a month later with totally new idea, then they might be open to that again.

Carol Driver [01:06:44]:
And also other journalists, TV producers, book publishers, all read these publications. My, one of my contacts this morning has said to me, he doesn’t want an exclusive story. He wants it to have been a Mellow Line or the sun so that he knows people are talking about it. So I think just bear all those elements in mind in terms of, you know, where you ultimately want to go.

Melody Moore [01:07:13]:
And I guess with the, with online journalism now, there’s so much more hunger for stories than there ever was before because there’s so much more out there that’s being produced. You know, if you’re doing something every day on an online, you know, you’re creating new stuff every day for an online journal that’s very different to, you know, something that’s maybe got limited space, I suppose, is. Would that be right as well? That there’s more of a, there’s more opportunity, would you say there is for.

Carol Driver [01:07:49]:
The right types of stories? Just because there’s a higher amount of stories being published, it doesn’t mean to say that that widens kind of the remit of the types of stories that will be taken. They still need to meet all the criteria that a journalist would want them to meet. And also to bear in mind, teams are getting smaller and there’s so many stories now. You know, celebrities have social media accounts, influencers, you know, TikTok, Instagram, all these platforms provide content for stories. So yeah, there’s more opportunities, but also those opportunities are kind of easily filled as well.

Melody Moore [01:08:37]:
There’s more people going for them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I get that. Okay, brilliant. Right, let me ask you some of my regular questions. The first is an easy one, which is what’s next for you and your business?

Carol Driver [01:08:49]:
Okay. What’s next for me is growing my Carol Driver PR business and looking to increase the clients who I work with because I feel that I could help lots of people. I’m looking at launching a VIP membership group and working really closely with those members for it to be a curated, results driven, quality, make the headlines type of stories. Thinking about doing a course, I’d really like to do more in person days as well, where people come and sit with me for a day and we plan their strategy, get some story pitches written. I like, I like workshops where there’s action to be taken on the day. So you come away feeling as though made those achievements. So that would be kind of. Yeah, they’re sort of my next steps.

Melody Moore [01:09:44]:
Nice. I did online thing the other day was just an hour and the person was doing. It was. It was about social media and she was literally getting people to post whilst they were on the course.

Carol Driver [01:09:56]:
Yeah.

Melody Moore [01:09:57]:
And I just thought that was brilliant. You know, people were getting results before the course had ended, which I thought was really powerful. What advice would you give to your younger self? Looking back now over your career, what advice would you give to yourself?

Carol Driver [01:10:12]:
God, take a day off. I think, I think not to. To just do the things to, to just do, you know, don’t let yourself get in the way. And I guess that’s the same for people sharing their story stories as well. You know, we all have our blocks to do with something, so. Yeah, don’t worry. You know, I think even I had. Oh my gosh, you know, where should I be visible? What should I be saying and say someone I don’t know.

Carol Driver [01:10:46]:
Say who? I don’t know, someone saw it and said something and. And now I’m more visible and nobody’s saying anything. And it’s just led to loads of great things. So yeah, to just not worry about that kind, kind of Stuff.

Melody Moore [01:11:00]:
And what about books?

Carol Driver [01:11:02]:
Do.

Melody Moore [01:11:02]:
Are you a reader? Well, I can see other books behind you.

Carol Driver [01:11:08]:
She’s a bookworm.

Melody Moore [01:11:11]:
Or books or maybe even, you know, people to follow. Who you would recommend, what. Yeah, anything you’d advise.

Carol Driver [01:11:19]:
Because my job is words. All day long I’m writing or reading articles. I tend to listen to books. So I, I love sort of entrepreneurial self help books. So just I’m gonna put my glasses on because I can’t see a thing. So some of my ones I’ve listened to that I liked over the past sort of couple of years. The monk who sold his Ferrari.

Melody Moore [01:11:42]:
It’s Robin Sharma.

Carol Driver [01:11:43]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make your bed. And I thought it was just me. A tonne, A tonne atomic habits. I even like Rich dad, Poor dad. And that’s an, that’s an oldie. I mean obviously in the past year I’ve read Lisa Johnson’s book, Charlie Day’s book. I mean, you know, I go to lots of events now and there are so many people have written great books.

Carol Driver [01:12:09]:
Yeah, I like books where I can take, you know, it resonates with me and I can take sort of small steps of action as well.

Melody Moore [01:12:18]:
Yeah, I’m like you, I like listening and I discovered that you can listen to books on Spotify. Now I didn’t realise that you could. You get 15 hours of audiobook if you have a paid subscription on Spotify. So you don’t even have to buy audiobooks which is a great thing that someone, a blind guy told me that he said because he listens to all of his books on Spotify. And final question, you should be the best at this, that of any of my guests. So no pressure. What title would you give your story?

Carol Driver [01:12:55]:
Oh my gosh. Yes, what title? What title? Like a headline?

Melody Moore [01:13:03]:
Yes.

Carol Driver [01:13:04]:
Oh my gosh. What springs to mind is the obsession. But it sounds slightly sinister. Does it?

Melody Moore [01:13:10]:
Does I like it better way?

Carol Driver [01:13:16]:
I don’t know. In terms of a headline, I think my, my overall overarching kind of the theme that runs through my story is wanting to help others. To help others. So I know the benefit that sharing your story, doing PR can do to so many thousands of others and it’s creating that safe space and I, I’m a trusted pair of hands to help you to do that.

Melody Moore [01:13:48]:
I love that. Wanting to help others, to help others. I think that’s a brilliant headline.

Carol Driver [01:13:54]:
Thanks very much.

Melody Moore [01:13:57]:
Right, so thank you so much. I’ve learned so much today. It’s been been like. I feel like I’ve had a personal Master class in pr. So thank you very much for spending time with me today.

Carol Driver [01:14:10]:
Thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed it.

Melody Moore [01:14:13]:
You’re welcome. That was such a great interview with Carol. I really enjoyed it and I think it was a bit different to a lot of my usual ones. I think we perhaps talked a little bit less about her story and, and she answered some, you know, some questions in a really great way, really shared her, her expertise and advice and I found it personally incredibly useful. I took loads of notes during the session and actually I’ve just been taking notes again after listening back to the episode. There were some fabulous thoughts and suggestions from Carol about how to work with PR and why it’s so important for entrepreneurs and small businesses. There are a couple of things I really enjoyed here, hearing about and really struck me during the conversation. One was about Carol herself and she’s an absolute dynamo.

Melody Moore [01:15:01]:
If you meet her or speak to her, you, you’ll see that, you know, she’s an absolute ball of energy and I just thought that from such a young age she was given huge amounts of responsibility and people really saw the potential in her and her desire to work hard. And you know, at one point she had two full time jobs, which is just incredible. But what I thought was really fascinating about that was what she identified as being one of the reasons why she had those two full time jobs. And that was actually about her feeling like an imposter. And we often think of imposter syndrome or people feeling like an imposter as being something that would hold you back from something that stops you doing something. And, and I think what was interesting for her, she had two full time jobs, but it was the feeling like an imposter that meant that it was hard for her to give up one of those jobs because it gave her confidence and it felt like a safety net to her. So she was feeling like an imposter in the second job that she had. So she kept hold of and burnt herself out through having those two jobs because of feeling a lack of confidence in one of them.

Melody Moore [01:16:18]:
Other things that she said that I thought were really interesting was something that she and I both shared, which was around working in a small organisation early on in your career and the impact that that has, because what it does is it means that you have to get involved in a little bit of everything. So my first consulting job was in a much smaller organisation than the ones I worked in subsequent. And I really felt that you get a greater opportunity and you do a broader range of things and as someone who’s been deeply interested in leadership development and involved for a long time in that, I really, really believe that having a broad skill set and actually slowing down and not rushing to the top and taking a very narrow ladder, I suppose, in an organisation is super, super important in terms of actually making you a really great business owner, a really great leader. The broader your understanding, the more powerful you will be as a leader, because you’re able to understand how all of the different parts fit together. And it was interesting that Carol talked about that from herself, that from a very young age, as a very young journalist, she was able to take that step back and look at the bigger picture. And that was one of the things that meant that she was offered opportunities and progressed really quite quickly. The final thing I wanted to talk about was the conversation we had around the blocks to people sharing their story. Now, obviously, journalism is all about storytelling and I thought it was really interesting that it’s often people have got voices in their head, maybe from their childhood or previous experiences, that are holding them back.

Melody Moore [01:18:08]:
What I would call developmental trauma. It’s holding them back. It’s fear of other people’s judgments, fear of what other people will think when they share their story. But I loved her perspective that sharing your story, it’s not about you being boastful, it’s about other people and you share your story for the benefit of others. It makes them feel less alone. You can inspire them. And I just thought that was a really useful message for anyone who’s anxious about sharing their personal story is it’s not actually about you, it’s about other people. So I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

Melody Moore [01:18:50]:
My next episode is with Anne Damgaard. Now, Anne is an entrepreneur. She is a business mentor in Denmark. She’s a good friend of mine. We have a great conversation about all things entrepreneurship and particularly about the importance of mentorship and other people spotting your potential and supporting you on your entrepreneurship journey. So tune in next week to listen to that great conversation. This podcast is brought to you by Liberare Consulting. If you enjoyed today’s show, why not click on the subscribe button? So you are among the first to hear about new episodes and we would love for you to do us a favour and click on the Share button and share this episode with one of your friends.