Pamelyn Rocco wants to remind us that no matter how busy life gets, we can still carve out moments to feel grateful.
“Instead of being annoyed at all of the driving that I have to do, we take it as a time to look outside at nature and be grateful,” she says about chauffeuring her girls between activities. “Tennessee is so beautiful right now, like the amount of colors coming off of these trees and plants, it’s just gorgeous.”
“We’ll see how many colors we can count of flowers getting from here to the soccer field.”
It’s just one of the ways Pamelyn taps into her surroundings to guide her family through the practice of gratitude without it feeling like a lesson or chore. She also published a children’s book, Gratitude the Great, to help parents and kids learn together.
“A deep soulful feeling of gratitude is what I’m trying to get out there,” she says, pointing out the difference between gratitude and good manners. “Gratitude is like a whole different beast.”
“Our job as parents is to model that behavior on a daily basis and that’s why I think rituals are so important.”
As a busy mom that stays up late to work while everyone’s asleep, Pamelyn spends her first waking moments making mental thank you notes.
“My eyes wake up and I just start with anything that comes to my head,” she says. “If there’s something special that’s about to happen that day I make sure I give gratitude for that and it just like starts me off on the right foot.”
Pamelyn uses the “gratitude train” to illustrate the interdependence of the meals we eat and gifts we receive—which we all have a new appreciation for after dealing with 18 months of strained supply chains.
“If you can backtrack and explain to your kids all of the different stages and people and effort that had to go into that one meal on your table, from the farmers, to the truck drivers, to the grocery store workers, to your mom and dad working so hard in making this beautiful meal—that makes children understand that we all depend on each other and that it’s not just about us,” she says.
Her new book highlights the tradition of giving Rea bracelets as a visual reminder and gift to the people we’re grateful for.
“I’m all about prompts because you’re so crazy during the day,” she says. “You can be sitting waiting for your doctor’s appointment, or waiting for your oil change or waiting in the car line at school and you just look down.”
Pamelyn and her daughters have been giving out Rea bracelets to first responders, frontline workers, cashiers and delivery drivers throughout the pandemic.
“Even through bad things that happen in life, COVID and all these things, it has really been the most amazing tool for me to use to get through the darkest days,” she says.
“You have space for thoughts, and thoughts are what drive gratitude.”
Cameca Bacchus doesn’t shy away from reinvention, having toggled between corporate roles, baking and motherhood. She takes inspiration from women like Sylvia Weinstock who achieved success much later in life.
“I can crunch numbers well, but my passion really is baking,” she says.
“When the subprime crisis happened, I remember walking to my office one day and seeing people leaving with all their stuff at the time, losing their jobs left and right,” she recalls. “I said, ‘it might be a matter of time before I’m one of those people, so maybe I should figure out what I really enjoy instead of what I just do well.’”
One week later, she filled out an application for culinary school, and then nine months later left her corporate finance job, and began classes while working for a catering company. Things changed again when she started her family.
“The thing with working at bakeries, is that you start really early, like, I was working a shift from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. but not being around in the mornings is what’s tricky,” she says. “You also would work on the weekends, so that was another point of losing Saturdays and Sundays–when can we ever have a day when we’re all home together–because you just don’t get to replace that time.”
Now Cameca approaches baking as a part-time passion, one cake at a time. Her goal is to grow Creations by Cameca at a gradual pace as her kids get older and more independent. Meanwhile, she is back in a corporate role and also has time to support causes like Behind the Book as a board member, which is hosting its Book Bash fundraiser on June 19 in Washington Heights to give 3,000 books to young people in the neighborhood.
“The biggest goal I have now is to continue to just refine my craft,” she says. “I have a two year old, and I still want to be able to enjoy that season of her life, so I don’t necessarily want to sacrifice the key parts of the day for baking at this point.”
As any mother who juggles a corporate job and young kids can attest, there isn’t a lot of energy left at the end of the day. That’s precisely when Cameca heads into the kitchen.
“Baking has always been something that I find reduces my stress,” she says. “The key is just that I can take my time and really give it the deliberate, intentional devotion it needs. It’s because I enjoy it, it gives me a sense of calm, so even though I’m doing it at the end of the day, I know I’m the only one in my kitchen and I can take my time.”
Cameca encourages fellow moms to focus on the long game and not put pressure on ourselves to achieve milestones at the pace we were once accustomed to, and to be “okay with things not happening in the exact time frame that you wanted.”
“You can take your time and you can really let yourself grow in stages,” she says. “So that when you do land on the top, you can stay there.”
And for those moments when you’re feeling overwhelmed or questioning yourself and your choices?
“Remember your reason why you’re even pushing for this in the first place,” she says. “Where you might be right in that moment is not where your story’s going to end. That’s just one point where you are and your story is still being written.”
Cameca sees burnout as a sign that it’s time to reevaluate and make changes, pointing to the critical need of a support system when you’re “taking any leap.”
“Who’s going to help catch you?” she says. “You can’t have it all without support. It’s just impossible to do by yourself.”
Cameca seeks support from her husband, her mom and friends when she needs an extra set of hands or hours outside of her late night baking sessions. And her kids will pitch in, especially for a taste test.
“They definitely have an appreciation for it and so I do hope, at some point, they can see that ‘hey, mommy’s a business owner,’ like this is something that people can do,” she says. “You can own a business and run a business, so that’s important for them to know.”
“Someday, I do want to have a bakery where they can run in and be like, ‘mom, let me help you.’ That’s my goal.”
While the world was in quarantine, Abigail Nawrocki worked 12-hour shifts with her team to keep online orders humming, moved across the country, and had a baby.
“When everything shut down last year, everybody started ordering more from home and relying on more distribution companies to get them the goods that they wanted,” she says.
“In the beginning it was scary because we were all still going to work and there were so many unknowns with COVID, but I think now everybody’s got really good corporate policies around it, there’s a lot of structure and safety so we’re just enjoying it and riding the wave.”
Abigail’s ability to embrace fear is at the core of how she manages the logistics of growing her family and her team.
“I think that’s just how I’ve always lived my life, and what I role model for my kids as well, so that they have similar tendencies,” she says. “It’s okay to take the risk, and even if you fail it’s not that big of a deal.”
Originally hailing from Chicago, Abigail moved from Indiana to Los Angeles after graduation—and as of last year, now calls Nashville home with her husband and four kids.
“It’s always been a natural state for me, taking risks and really just seeing the return on investment from that,” she says. “My parents have always encouraged me to get out there on my own and make things happen for myself.”
After finding out she was pregnant a few weeks before lockdown, Abigail experienced the contrast of a socially-distanced pregnancy without the common courtesy of someone offering their seat or a helping hand.
“You lose that cultural aspect of being pregnant and having everybody in amazement of you in public so that kind of sucks,” she says, noting there are pros and cons.
“It was just me and my husband and no one else was allowed in the hospital and we got that time together to bond and to bond with the baby,” she says. “But it also was a lot of pressure to leave the hospital right away. Normally with a C-section, I would be in recovery for three or four days. I left in 40 hours after this one.”
Now that Abigail has a “pandemic baby who’s not used to being in group settings” she’s seeing how new situations affect everyone differently.
“There’s been so much change in the last year and that’s really what’s difficult for people,” she says. “It’s not necessarily the isolation or the environment that they’re in, but it’s the change right?”
“Look for your village,” she says. “When you have those people around you supporting you, or even just there to talk and listen, it takes so much of the mental load off and allows you to get back into a good space.”
Abigail enjoys connecting with other moms, whether it’s outdoors at the park or virtually in groups like HeyMama.
“It’s very hard for humans who are habitual creatures to accept change and so having that community and being able to talk to them and go through the change together really helps,” she says.
Every day Lesley Osei answers the call to help others, beyond her five children under four and her six siblings, across fifteen acres where she and her husband are building a church in Connecticut, with the thousands of followers she motivates on Instagram, all the way to Ghana where she’s bringing basic comforts to rural mothers-to-be.
“We actually stumbled upon a village where you can’t even take a car or bus there,” she recalls. “Once a month, they have to go and fetch water–it’s like a big thing–and so what we’re doing now is we’re getting developers to go and dig a well so that it will be easier access for water for them.”
After making progress with four wells, Lesley felt compelled to do more—especially after a group of husbands expressed what it was like to watch their wives suffering through labor and delivery in the elements.
“What we are creating are maternity pods where they can actually go and at least have a midwife there coach them through, be there with them, where they can lay on the bed–because a lot of them are squatting in the middle of their houses to give birth.”
It’s not the first time that Lesley has extended her arms out to fellow mothers. While counseling couples at church, she’s discovered that education and support is needed across the full spectrum of pregnancy and postpartum, which inspired her to start Moms Algorithm as a hub for “systems and processes” to support moms.
“I realized that a lot of people didn’t know things like folic acid was something that you should be taking, even before, to make sure you get your body right,” she says.
“I truly believe the Lord gave me a lot of kids just so I can get it done and teach people how to get it done and shifting your mind is very important to me. I am the the third of seven, and so my siblings are always calling me for advice, always in some type of emergency situation.”
Lesley makes it a priority to be present with her kids through all of her endeavors, and often wakes up before dawn to put her ideas on paper. For her latest project, she’s drawing inspiration from the experiences of her 3-year-old daughter.
“She loves princesses and anytime I’m trying to find her a black princess they don’t have any,” she says. “So what the Lord laid on my heart to do is to create my own and so that’s what I’ve been doing recently—trying to get all the different things and items and products that children normally use, and get characters that are biracial, that are African American, that have white friends, that have black friends and just trying to get more mixture into what they see.”
Lesley’s aspirations to support young girls and women all around the world are fueled by the care and attention she receives from her mother and husband.
“He always maintains time for me and when he sees that I’m withdrawn or quiet, he stops whatever he’s doing,” she says. “He doesn’t care who is around—he literally stops and has a conversation with me, which I always appreciate.”
The solid foundation of their faith-based family has stemmed into a global network of giving back.
Gladys Simen is known as the “motivation whisperer” among friends and colleagues–something we could all use right now. She’s recognized her own courage to propel forward through any circumstances, whether that’s starting over in five different countries or navigating the compounding responsibilities of working motherhood.
“I came to a country that was not originally mine with no support system and it stretched me and I didn’t break,” she recalls.
For Gladys, it took a pandemic and racial tension reaching a tipping point to finally recognize her superpowers: being brave and “super acutely aware of things.”
“There’s a lot of things that changed in the world,” she says, reflecting on 2020. “It hit me hard–harder than I thought it would–because I’m parenting Black kids, so I had to start thinking about what am I leaving for them not to have the same struggle.”
“Every parent, no matter what color you are or race or creed or whatever, you want the best for your children,” she says. “I want my kids to look at me and say ‘you contributed to this being a better place.'”
Another superpower Gladys had to get comfortable with is being a role model. She’s quick to point out that it took courage to recognize her influence beyond her own children, and recalls a time when she hesitated to assert herself publicly.
“I discovered that having an edge is not a bad thing,” she says. “I realized that using my voice brings me more support than I thought. People come and say, actually I like the new Gladys better.”
Now, she’s expanding the use of her forces for good to help people define post-pandemic life on their own terms at www.mylifecouch.com.
“I won’t be shocked or surprised if people now realize maybe that life is not about racing to have a title anymore,” she says. “It could be just being present or enjoying what you’re doing. I’m trying to create that platform for other people, because that’s what fuels me.”
Gladys is particularly passionate about the intersection of career and motherhood, having been through her own transformation after her first and second experiences returning to work after having a baby. She encourages new moms to focus on everything gained in the process, especially during a particularly rough day (or year).
“You’re more powerful than you think because you have that tiny human being that you created and you have gone through a crash course of any leadership thing that people can teach you,” she says.
It’s one of the reasons that Gladys gets so frustrated when people in the workplace don’t recognize–over even go so far to discount–the superpowers that only motherhood can teach you.
“Becoming a mom is juggling so many things at once and still showing up,” she points out. “I think boards of directors or companies need more moms because you know how to make things work with very little.”
Gladys wants to flip the script on how we often react when presented with a list of qualifications in a job description or career development plan.
“You should be coming with a badge, ‘I’m a mother. I tick all those boxes.'”
She’s also learned that it takes a lot of courage to say no and stay true to what provides meaning in your current situation.
“Every single day you wake up, there’s an opportunity to do something different, better, greater, bigger,” she says. “There’s no right or wrong answer.”
Gladys gained the 20/20 vision we were all hoping for—and in some cases may need to do a double take to realize is within us.
“I’m having so much fun building amazing human beings and satisfying their curiosity,” she says. “This is the amazing age where they will never be six and three again, where they’re just exploring and seeing the world through their eyes. It’s magnificent. It’s success for me right now.”
Even though Gladys had to adjust to lockdowns and virtual school while juggling her full-time technology role, she loves that her children have so much more access to her.
“They know that I’m their best friend because we can go and jump in a mud puddle because we want to,” she says. “These are the moments that I was not able to give them before.”
“I usually say the superpower’s inside you and you don’t realize it until it is time.”
On Mother’s Day, after a discouraging attempt to make Neiman Marcus’ chocolate chip cookies inspired by memories of mother-daughter shopping trips, Julie Barrier faced a heart wrenching question.
“Do you want to see your mom?” read the text from her mother’s caregiver as Julie was pulling up with flowers and groceries. It had been 10 weeks since their visits had gone virtual, just before LA’s lockdown.
“That was a very, very emotional moment for me during all of this because what am I supposed to answer?” she recalls in the moments leading up to their masked reunion in the building’s lobby.
“I’m just standing there with groceries,” says Julie. “My mom had her eyes super wide. She couldn’t even talk, she couldn’t say anything, she didn’t know what to do. She’s holding on to the caregiver’s arm and then she just breaks away…comes shuffling really fast over to me and just puts her arms around me and holds me, and I hold her seriously for at least five minutes.”
Part of what weighed so heavily on Julie’s mind is that her mother has Alzheimer’s, which makes it hard to explain masks and social distancing.
“Eventually we kind of lighten the grip and we look at each other in the eyes and she stares at me with our masks,” she says. “I’m now face to face with her and she goes, ‘are you mad at me?’ and I was like ‘no, Mom. Not at all.’”
It was a moment that Julie will never forget and it motivated her to make weekly COVID tests part of her routine: a complex system managing two grocery deliveries at a time, two sets of finances, two caregivers and her full-time job—all designed to honor her mother with the comforts she’s accustomed to.
“My mom was always a knockout,” she says. “She gets stopped in the street. People will be like ‘you’re so beautiful, are you famous, are you (this or that)?’ She’s been like that all of her life.”
Before the pandemic, Julie made sure her mother got dressed and put on her Sephora makeup to go out to lunch and runs errands with her caregivers.
“As human beings we have accountability to each other, and especially if it’s our parent who did all this for us,” she says. “And it feels really good to do nice things for somebody. Just because you think someone won’t remember, can’t recall or doesn’t know who you are, they actually know and feel a lot more than you think they do. But they can’t express it.”
After years of caring for her mother in private, Julie shared her experiences in “The Beautiful, Blissful Side of Alzheimer’s” to help bring awareness to the incredible relationship that can emerge during an otherwise difficult situation.
“We all need the same things, which is love, and tenderness, and touch, and human connection, and a feeling of protection and safety,” she says. “Those are just basic needs. It starts as a baby and it ends like that in this disease, especially.”
As the roles in Julie’s mother-daughter relationship reversed, she found herself caring for her mother with a newfound affection that typically comes when we begin our own journeys as mothers.
“I wasn’t someone who would just go hug and touch and kiss her,” she says about growing up. “Now, it’s like the opposite. But it feels totally good and natural.”
The feeling is mutual. Julie says one of her mom’s favorite things to do when they can safely visit is to hold her hands and kiss them. She kisses the phone when they FaceTime.
“My mom is still my mom and I try to make sure that she always knows that,” she says. “She’s my baby now to take care of and make sure that she doesn’t have stress, worries, that she doesn’t have fear.”
“Maybe this is why I didn’t have kids,” she says. “Because maybe, in fact, what I was meant to do was this.”
It took Julie a long time to find the courage to share her story. Now she encourages others to do the same to help bring the experience of Alzheimer’s out of the shadows. She doesn’t want anyone to feel like they have to hide or go through it alone.
“If we choose to bury it, we’re running away from it and we’re ashamed,” she says. “And there’s nothing about her or her condition that I’m ashamed of. I’m proud of her.”
Viola Sutanto found joy within the four walls of a hospital room where her 9-year-old daughter awaited a bone marrow transplant for aplastic anemia, ultimately defying the odds of a match with her 3-year-old brother.
“They had told us of course we’ll test your son, but just know that sibling matches are a 25% chance, so don’t hold your breath,” Viola recalls her doctors saying at the time. “So when we heard that he was a perfect match, we couldn’t believe it. It was such a miracle.”
Now Viola wants to pay her gratitude forward by publishing Eat Cake for Breakfast and 99 Other Small Acts of Happiness in partnership with The Collective Book Studio and will give a portion of proceeds back to the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. She’s been amazed at the response to her iFundWomen crowdfunding campaign, which has reached all the way to her hometown in Singapore.
“I was really very touched and overwhelmed,” she says. “In the first 24 hours of the campaign, we had raised thousands of dollars. Longtime friends of mine, people in our community and even friends I hadn’t heard from in years—suddenly I’m getting texts and messages from them saying, ‘I cannot believe you went through this’ and ‘here you go, I want 10 copies of your book.’”
Sharing Her Story
“I’ve been pretty isolated for more than a year since Maika was diagnosed, and I’m a very introverted person so I tend to hold it all in,” Viola says. “I realized, gosh, I’ve never even told most of these people what had happened.”
The inspiration for Eat Cake for Breakfast and 99 Other Small Acts of Happiness began when Viola and her daughter came up with sketchbooks as a way to keep themselves occupied during the hospital stay. The “100 days” creative movement had also recently gained popularity.
“So that’s when the drawings started happening,” she said. “We’d pick one thing to draw and it could be just the most mundane thing in the world. I think my first drawing was actually a dinner at the hospital or something silly like that— but over time it just became something fun for us to do.”
Viola started posting the drawings on Instagram and as a former book designer, she naturally began to imagine them taking shape in page form.
“What happened last year made me realize, as a family, how much resilience we have,” she says. “I’m a more optimistic person now than I ever was before, and also very mindful of being grateful for everything that we have.”
Because Maika was immunocompromised following her treatment, Viola’s family entered another year of social distancing and mask-wearing with plenty of practice and perspective.
“I think it really helps to find the silver lining in everything and every day,” she says. “Being able to see that on the upside, while stuck at home I get to spend a lot of time with my kids, which I love. I have the privilege of working from home—some people don’t. There’s just so many things to be grateful for despite everything else that’s happening.”
“Our wholesale business plummeted between March and now,” she says. “It’s still very much in recovery mode and that was a real bummer because we had started off the year strong. Every day we’d pick up the phone and get order cancellations and postponements. It was really devastating because most of our accounts are mom and pop stores, or they’re small businesses like mine. We have real relationships with these people and worked with them for years.”
She stays grounded by centering herself with meditation and journaling, before jumping into full days of distance learning and running her now booming e-commerce business. It’s a practice that helped Viola get through her darkest days.
“The only other person who was really in the thick of it with me is my husband and that’s all we talked about,” she says. “Sometimes I just don’t want to talk. I felt like my journal and my meditation practice was my own thing that I could do solo, without having to worry about how everyone else is feeling. And that felt sacred to me.”
No matter what life throws your way, Viola recommends giving yourself a break, taking it one step at a time and focusing on the small things you can start with.
“Try to find the silver lining somewhere,” she says. “There’s going to be light at the end of the tunnel, even if it’s a super long tunnel and these days of not seeing where it’s going to end. But I do believe it will be there.”
“If you just take the time to notice, there’s always something, some small joy to be found.”
Sarah Kelly’s rebound from a breast cancer diagnosis at 32 weeks pregnant to building a clean beauty brand featured by the likes of Good Morning America, exemplifies what “salty” women are capable of.
“I was up in Maine at my parents’ house and my sisters were there and it was one of those moments that you’ll never forget,” she says about the dreaded phone call that no one ever expects.
Just 72 hours earlier at a routine prenatal checkup, Sarah mentioned the lump she’d recently found to her OB-GYN, at the encouragement of her sister Leah, an oncology nurse who’s now her business partner. That Tuesday appointment led to an ultrasound on Wednesday, followed by a biopsy on Thursday and confirmation on Friday that it was indeed stage 3, triple-negative breast cancer.
“They wanted to start chemo right away, and it was too big for surgical removal,” she says. “The first cancer treatment that you do, you can receive while you’re pregnant. So I started two rounds of chemo and then they induced me at 38 weeks.”
What Sarah calls her “warrior week” started with the birth of her daughter, followed by blood transfusions two days later, and her third round of chemo two days after that.
“It’s just amazing; I always say, your body can handle so much,” she says. “You just have to have the right mindset.”
Sarah also credits the support she had during treatment, especially while she and her husband were between houses and living with her in-laws. She points out that her 14-month-old and newborn were in incredibly capable hands with her mother-in-law, a neonatal nurse.
“Cancer sucked, but it also gave me perspective on how I wanted to live,” she says.
“I think I was checking the boxes—half of them were making me happy and the other half were creating a lot of toxicity,” says Sarah about life back in Boston, which involved battling traffic to and from work, taking time away from her kids.
The idea of starting a business with her sister Leah entered the equation, inspired by the emerging interest in green beauty and a lifelong dream to build her own brand after working in sales and corporate marketing.
“Having lost my hair and everything, putting on a lipstick really empowered me to feel a little bit more feminine throughout my journey,” says Sarah. “That’s the direction we decided to go in and then it just evolved, talking about how we take care of ourselves, eliminating stress in our lives.”
Salty Girl Beauty took a minimalistic approach to cosmetics and body care, made locally in small batches using organic coastal ingredients. The name is a double entendre, honoring the resilience of women.
“What we were going through at that time in our lives, you needed a lot of grit and sass and attitude,” she says. “I think women feel that throughout the day they need to have that armor—whether you’re going through amazing things or a really hard time in your life.”
Sarah noticed that while she was getting a lot of attention during her treatment, finding ways for her husband to feel supported too was critical. So she, Leah and their siblings started Foundation4Love as a non-profit arm of the brand to carve out quality time with caregivers.
“Making sure that we were staying connected was really important to me, and so people would come over and watch the kids while we could go out to dinner,” Sarah says. “So that’s kind of the thing we do with other people going through this. Who’s their number one, is it their family or is it a sister, a husband? We try to do something that allows them to disconnect from their cancer and connect with whatever is love in their life.”
Through the spirit of partnership they’re also funding the cold cap program at New England Cancer Specialists, running workshops with Mount Sinai, and even spun up a new kind of cancer wellness retreat called Warrior Revolution—together with Cynthia Besteman, the cancer survivor behind Violets are Blue Skincare.
“There are so many conferences around the medical side and the treatment side but we really wanted to focus on, ‘yes, you’re going through cancer, but how do you live through that?'” she says about the full-day events which covered a range of wellness, intimacy and mental health topics and ended with a pajama party.
“At the last retreat, we had about six stage IV 30-40 year-old women they didn’t know in our own community,” she says. “And now they’re best friends. Being able to create those connections has been really great.”
While 2020 brought a lot of uncertainty for Sarah, Leah and their team through the spring and summer months, things took a very exciting turn when the opportunity to be featured on Good Morning America popped up.
“Getting that national exposure has been life-saving,” she says. “It’s been literally the biggest whirlwind ever. To see how the four of us, as well our greater community, helped and pitched in so that everything came together for it was just really, really special.”
Coming together, whether it’s as “Salty Girls” or as a family has given Leah the life she reimagined for herself five years ago.
“As much as I probably work too much, it’s on my own terms and I can do it in the living room while my kids are around,” she says. “I’m very present and we’re able to do the things that they want to participate in and spend a lot more time outdoors and all of the things that I think create a happy house.”
While that often means Sarah has a six-, five- and two-and-a-half year old clinging to her while trying to put makeup on, she still believes in the importance of self-care “without it being a big production.”
“Being able to have that message to talk to women about taking care of themselves and not putting themselves last,” is what fuels her.
“Because when you’re healthy, everyone else around you can be healthy,” she says.
Just when we think life can’t get any crazier, it does. When things feel out of control, I regain my footing by helping someone else. It’s also the secret to telling your brand’s story.
Whether it’s complex enterprise technology or building sustainable products while raising small children, a successful brand and PR program boils down to being helpful.
1. How you help people (and why) is the basis for your brand
The good news is that you have everything you need to define your brand. Here are some ways to get super crisp on what you do to help people and why it’s different from the way other people do it:
You can tell your story to someone who can shape it into a narrative about you and your brand—which is essentially the formula for how I interview and write the stories of “Mama Makers” and “Mama Shakers.”
Once you have clarity on what sets you apart, you can use it to become a helpful resource for journalists, which brings us to the basics of what drives media coverage.
2. PR is about relationships and timing
When it comes to PR, you have two choices. You can build your own media relationships, or you can invest in professionals who already have relationships.
Either way, reporters are looking for experts on particular topics that are available on short notice.
You can start by becoming a HARO source and have short, bulleted responses ready to send on a handful of key topics that you care about (and reporters are writing about). Even if they don’t use you this time, it’s an opportunity to introduce yourself.
If you feel like you don’t have the time to build relationships one-by-one, or you’re ready to do it at scale, then you could enlist a professional. Here are two of my favorites:
“Mama Shaker” Ashley is a former broadcast producer who offers virtual media training along with other PR services at Nardi Media.
The tech-savvy women behind The Key PR include former agency colleagues of mine who led startups through massive growth using the methodology mentioned above.
If you want to learn more or practice telling your story, I’m here to help.
Angela Engel flips right past the “why me?” question that many stumble over when the opportunity to make a difference presents itself. The mother of three is a publishing industry disruptor by day, who mobilized the creation of PPE at the start of the pandemic–while continuing to lead the San Francisco chapter of Hey Mama, support social causes, and navigate distance learning.
Her response when people ask how she raised $30,000 and distributed 10,000 face shields across the country—including Children’s Hospital Minnesota, Alameda Health Consortium and Navajo Nation clinics in Arizona and New Mexico— says everything about her willingness to spring into action.
“When this all hit and I saw my best friend literally in the ER when the Princess Cruise landed and he was working night shifts and lost it when he couldn’t get a face shield, I was like, ‘who else is going to save him?’”
“I think that same spirit is the greatest thing you learn when you’re an entrepreneur,” she says. “That fire, that spirit, that idea…what’s the worst that could happen? Someone says no, right? That’s not a big deal.”
Angela felt a similar call to action when she was “really pregnant” with her third daughter and had grown weary of publishing industry trade shows where she struggled to find a humane place to pump in concrete convention centers.
She dabbled in children’s apparel for a while, which was more kid-friendly and introduced her to the faster pace of retail.
“I would bring the baby with me and put her in the stroller and that was great, but I missed publishing,” she says. “It’s the creative piece.”
While doing business development for an independent publishing house in Petaluma, Angela “noticed the surge of self publishing” that was more akin to the speed of fashion than the traditional publishing industry.
“Why are we letting Amazon and self publishing take that market share?” she realized. “Why not pull together my colleagues from traditional publishing who are fantastic, who are graphic designers, who are typesetters, who are editors and let’s form a collective? We can do this as good as any big house and we can do it fast.”
The Collective Book Studio was born in 2019 around the idea of “partnership publishing” which retains the authors’ creative control and has gained the attention of her industry peers for its disruptive business model.
“We don’t print on demand,” she says. “We really believe the book is an art form.”
One example is how the team packaged up a series of beautifully crafted pages from parenting coach (and Mama Shaker) Sue Groner in Parenting with Sanity & Joy: 101 Simple Strategies in a way that even the most exhausted among us can digest at our own pace.
“What is the message that you want your reader to take away?”
It’s the first question that Angela asks prospective authors (and something that anyone creating content should take the time to answer).
“That will help decide why are you writing this book,” she says.
For Maika handbag designer Viola Sutanto, it’s a reminder that even in our darkest days, happiness is all around us. She’s working with Angela and iFundWomen to fund Eat Cake for Breakfast and 99 Other Small Acts of Happiness—inspired by Viola’s 9-year-old daughter’s hospital stay while she awaited a bone marrow transplant from her 3-year-old brother.
Whether our story involves putting an important message out into the world, or giving back in another way, taking action is the antidote to fear.
“I think the first step is to practice,” Angela says. “Write a sample chapter. Just write, even if it’s not good at all. It could literally be bullet points for all I care. But just get it down on paper.”
in a way that even the most exhausted among us can digest at our own pace.