Hey there, welcome to Data Democracy.
This is a podcast where we explore ways to make data and AI more accessible to everyone.
We do this by interviewing experts across industries, asking them how they think about
data, what are some of the challenges they face when it comes to data, and if they had
a magic wand and time and resources were not constrained, what kind of intelligence and
models would they wish to have?
We have a great guest today, Jim James.
Jim is a global entrepreneur, PR guru, author of multiple books, and a podcaster.
Jim has built businesses across three continents, has written fascinating books including The
Gap Year Cash, The Unnoticed Entrepreneur, Volume 1 and 2.
Jim hosts a podcast also called The Unnoticed Entrepreneur where he works with entrepreneurs
to help them grow and get noticed.
I'm super excited to welcome Jim to Data Democracy.
Jim, welcome.
Nidhi, thanks so much for the glowing introduction.
You've said it better than I could have said it myself.
I had to get you to do my PR.
Thank you for inviting me onto the show.
No, I'm super excited to have you on Learn From You.
Let's start with your story.
You've got an inspiring story.
You're more from the UK to Singapore at 28, founding your company, writing books and hosting
your podcast.
Tell us your story.
Well, thank you.
I think it all started when I jumped out of a plane at the age of 17, Nidhi, really.
I was trying to raise money to go overseas to Australia from the UK.
Working by the hour, I knew I'd never make enough money.
So I jumped out of an aeroplane and got it sponsored by people in the toy department
that I was working in, actually selling toys to children.
And I really learned from that episode, the jumping out of a plane and raising enough
money to go to Australia and then getting the local newspapers to report me buying some
clothes and some boots and backpacks and so on from a local store in exchange for coverage.
I learned that actually you can make money not by earning it by the hour, but by creating
something from nothing.
And that's really, for me, the start.
So at 27, after a few years of working for other people and finding, sitting in meetings,
not really for me, I moved to Singapore to start my first business, East West Public
Relations, which is still operating, in fact, EastWestPR.com.
And I sold it to a couple of young PR gurus that are now running the business.
That's awesome.
It's a really fascinating story.
I know you've got businesses across multiple countries and you've had a long career.
What are some of the unexpected challenges and surprises you've encountered in your global
career?
Yeah.
You mentioned about going on to other countries just to fill that in after Singapore for 12
years and moved to China, to start the public relations company, but also then started opening
the import business for a sports car company, a drinks company and started the British Business
Awards in China.
And the other continent was India, actually, where I opened an office in Bangalore.
So I've been fortunate enough to start businesses on many continents and many different kinds
of businesses.
I think that one of the challenges that you face as an entrepreneur anywhere is the physical
challenge because you have to be self-motivated and running a business is a marathon, not
a sprint.
And I think that for all of us, I'm 57 now, so I'm at the end of things.
The challenge of staying fit and healthy, when at the beginning, when you start an agency,
you don't feel like your health is that important because you think it's all about money and
ideas and networking.
So one of the challenges that I've had to overcome is change in the way that I address
and look after myself.
I actually had a tumor, grew a tumor, not intentionally, I can say, but I discovered
I had an amoblastoma when I was living in Beijing.
And that's kind of a rare disease, but it's fatal in 5% of people and it's not pleasant
part of your jaw disintegrates.
And that was really a wonderful, wrong word maybe, but a great reminder that there is
no wealth without your health.
So I think the first challenge as an entrepreneur is to recognize that the big goal is actually
your longevity, not your profitability.
So that'd be perhaps the first challenge.
Second challenge, I think, when you run a business is you're learning new things.
You're learning to do product marketing, maybe development, cashflow, HR, tax, finance.
If you're trying to learn those things in your own country, then you can ask people
that you know, and the language may be the same.
I was a bit of a fool really, because I went to Singapore, so I learned how to run a business
in an entirely new culture.
This was back in 95, so we didn't really have the internet, just the beginnings of Yahoo
and no mobile phones.
So that was a challenge, was, if you like, learning enough quickly enough.
And then when I went to China in 2006, I had to learn again.
So one of the challenges as an entrepreneur is that we have to continue to learn, and
we're learning while we're doing.
And finding this balance between doing things that you know work and exploring new things
that you don't know will work yet is central to being an entrepreneur, because we're always
the ones who are leading a business and moving it forward.
Because if you are an employee, of course, you have someone, an organization or a boss
who has made that decision for you.
So I think that constant challenge of learning and doing simultaneously is another challenge.
So that's two good challenges.
I don't want to put anybody off being an entrepreneur, so I don't want to say too many, but those
are perhaps two.
Retaining your health and continuing to learn whilst doing.
Yeah, those are really great insights.
You did mention about longevity and health.
It reminded me of an interview I was watching of Robert Downey Jr.
He basically said, I've got my acting down and I know how to emote and all that, but
the best thing I can bring, the best value that I can bring is to bring my A game and
make sure that I'm healthy and in the right mindset.
I think that's really, that spoke to me.
Yeah, so continuing on, like you said, you've got a unique vantage point of starting businesses
and running it in multiple countries and cultures.
When it comes to business, what are the things that work across cultures and countries?
What should entrepreneurs focus on no matter where they're doing their business?
The universal truths in running a business, probably a couple.
One is that central to any company, whether it's a software or a hardware, you're selling
fruit, you're delivering medical supplies, you have to add value.
It seems an obvious thing to say, but often people get caught up with what they want to
produce and forget that what's most important is what people want to buy.
Now I know this is antithetical to the Steve Jobs or even the Ford.
If I asked people what they wanted, they want faster horses.
But actually, if you look at it this way, people wanted transport.
The intuition was that they would do that through cars or people wanted mobile telephony.
Okay, so actually people did want those things.
It's just how we would have them that's different.
So first of all, I think that we have to remember that we're adding value because if we're not,
no one's going to give us any money.
Universal.
The second element about business, again, I don't know that I'm teaching anybody anything
new here, but it really does come down to people.
It comes down to the people that you sell to, liking what you offer them, trusting you,
working with you if things aren't quite right and not trying to make life difficult for
you.
It comes down to the people that help you to deliver that good in service.
So whether it's in Singapore or India or China, and I've worked in America and lived in Africa
as well, you can't create anything on your own.
Business is a team sport.
And even if you are a solo printer, you need vendors, you need suppliers.
Even if you're buying everything software as a service, you need someone who's on a
help desk that can help you figure out your domain name.
So the second point really, Mitty, is that business really relies on people.
And so no matter where you are in your entrepreneur life, you should enjoy and take comfort in
that because essentially as people, building relationships with other people is actually
the most joyful thing in the world.
And as an entrepreneur, really everybody and anyone can do that.
There is no barrier to having relationships.
It's not a technical, it's not a financial, it's not a legal barrier.
So the universal truth really is that we are all in relationships trading with one another.
And the rest is an application, it's an approach and so on.
But those would be two universal truths that I've learned over the last 25, 30 years.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
You mentioned about bringing customers or actually asking entrepreneurs to solve problems,
not necessarily how to.
That's the engineer's and entrepreneur's job to understand how to.
But like you said, people were asking faster, quicker way of transportation, not necessarily
the intuition, like you said, was, okay, just improve what we have.
Maybe that's a problem solving issue that the engineers and entrepreneurs need to solve.
Exactly, Mithi.
So people were racing faster and faster horses.
They were trying to get faster and faster.
They were feeding them better grain instead of grass.
So people were innovating around faster transport.
So the entrepreneur's role is to see that gap.
And the joy of being an entrepreneur is you try and build, create, innovate something
that solves the need that the market has, but hasn't yet fulfilled the need for.
So it's not that customers cannot tell you about your next product.
Entrepreneurs about customers do not necessarily need to tell you how to build your product.
They just need to tell you, you just need to understand what are the problems that they
want solved.
Exactly.
And that's really what our role as entrepreneurs is to watch what people do, listen to what
people say and be sensitive to those needs.
And that's why I say business comes down to people, because if you have empathy around
what people are struggling with, what their aspirations are, then you can understand what
kind of product, good or service that you can deliver to that need.
That's a great point.
In my work, I've helped businesses, business teams, marketing teams, sales operations,
and lots of teams with data and AI, but I've never dived into public relations.
We're just starting to do dipping our toes into it.
So for a novice like me, how would you explain the world of PR?
Public relations is really about how a company or an individual communicates to those people
actually inside and outside the organization, as opposed to intimate relations, I suppose,
where you talk to maybe a friend about what you would like to tell them about your emotional
wellbeing.
So public relations really is about sharing with those different communities, what we
call stakeholders, internal and external and partners, what you're trying to accomplish
and what your vision is, and maybe what's going right with that vision and what's not
going quite right with that vision.
So the way I look at public relations is it's a way to engage those stakeholders in the
forward progress of the company.
And we do that through communicating through the media, through traditional press, through
podcasts, which is a growing medium as we're doing now.
And I've just launched a podcast guest blueprint, which is a course for anyone that wants to
be on a podcast, how to get on a podcast, but also how to create connections so that
you get leads from those podcasts as well.
So public relations is about taking that thought that you have as an entrepreneur and putting
into different formats, be it a video, be it a written press release, being an article,
being it a podcast and audio, or even going out and speaking to people.
So public relations is really about how you communicate what your company is doing.
That's not a sales message.
It's about how you as an organization are addressing an issue or a community, for example,
as opposed to this is what I'm selling, which is quite tactical and a transfer of value.
So I hope that explains where it's about then trying to help people to move from maybe a
lack of understanding to a fuller understanding of what you're doing.
And ultimately you want people to engage in what you're doing, because if they engage
with what you're doing, then they will become customers and advocates and help you to do
that.
Got it.
It's more organic or more natural than a sales transaction in a lot of ways because you're
not going, maybe down the line, but in that specific interaction, you're not really asking
the customers for something else.
You're just trying to educate them or bring awareness to your product.
Yeah, but in a way, I mean, in the marketing tool, we do our funnels, right?
And public relations really is helping people to understand which funnels they're going
to be comfortable getting into.
And the sale is you like the company, you believe in the company, you've done your due
diligence and now you're going to have a transaction that buys that good or service that fits
into your company or your home, right?
But if you haven't understood what the company stands for, that the company will be around
for a long period of time and that they have integrity and they have authenticity, these
are values, if you like, that you ascribe to a company which go ahead if you wanted
to buy from them.
That's really what public relations is doing.
So it's helping people to understand the company better.
Do PR and brand awareness come under the same umbrella?
Are they tangential but separate or the same?
What's the relationship between the two?
Brand awareness, Mitty, really is the objective, right?
Brand awareness is what you're hoping to get from public relations, advertising, maybe
seminar speaking, podcasts, outdoor signage, where if people see the brand, it creates
a response within the person because a brand is a promise and it creates an emotional response
to people and that brand.
And because people will associate that brand with different aspects of their lives or different
meanings, one brand can have a positioning, but it won't mean the same to everybody.
McDonald's means one set of values and promises to one person and maybe something else to
somebody else.
Public relations is one of the ways that you can communicate the brand values.
Okay, so public relations, even direct media, social media, outdoor events, speaking, podcasts,
these all contribute to the brand.
And where you have an advert, for example, will build an impression, a visual impression.
I like the look of that, for example, but it doesn't really create any context.
The public relations helps you to understand the context of that image and that brand and
that message.
So one actually needs to have an integrated approach, which is why you'll see big companies
will have product launches, they'll have customer loyalty programs, they'll have after sales
care, they'll have AI bots on their websites, they have customer reviews, they'll do trade
shows.
So actually need an integrated approach to build a brand.
Got it.
So PR is one of the levers you have to reach the objectives, which would be brand awareness.
Exactly.
Got it.
This may be a very broad question, but how do you improve PR or a brand of a company
or a product?
How do you measure the impact of your PR efforts?
You've got two questions in there.
One is how do you improve the, let's call it the awareness or the understanding really.
So in public relations, we'll first of all look at how you do that.
Your second question was about measurement.
So the first question is how do you communicate about your company, your brand?
The first is really to understand what the company stands for.
And we've all heard of the missions and visions and so on.
And then what public relations does is it looks for different ways for spokespeople
in the organization to articulate those.
It could be, for example, as an article that appears in a magazine or a newspaper.
It could be appearing on TV, especially if there's a crisis management, for example,
then someone needs to speak, for example, like Boeing.
So a great example of the COO of Alaska Airlines, for example, was sitting on the Boeing MAX
737 on its first flight after the door had flown out.
So that's a classic case for public relations because they know that the perception of that
airplane is that it's unsafe.
So you have the COO of one of the biggest airlines flying next to the emergency exit
on a plane, right?
It's not advertising.
It's not direct mail.
That's PR.
That's saying we as a customer, me as an individual, I trust this brand.
I'm willing to literally sit next to the door to make sure it works.
So PR is about going out and being seen, whether it's in writing or in person and articulating
the values of that company.
And the way to do that is through consistency.
I have a strapline for my podcast, The Unnoticed Entrepreneur and on the book and in the podcast
guest blueprint course, keep on communicating.
It's very simple, but we are actually all required to keep on communicating because
if we don't communicate, it's the time when people say no comment, for example, if they're
asked after a trial, the assumption from everybody is if they're not commenting, there must be
something wrong.
We can't help but communicate.
We're actually always communicating even when we're not saying something.
So to build a public relations campaign, it needs to be consistent over time.
Consistency doesn't necessarily mean frequency, by the way.
It doesn't mean that you have to produce content every day.
Great music bands, movie franchises like James Bond, they don't come out every day or every
week, but there is consistent communication when they do come out that you have expectations
around them.
So you have to be consistent.
And what you also have to do is to be consistent with the language.
You know, public relations requires consistency of language because people will hear something
and it'll take seven or eight times for them to believe it.
So if you say at one time, people may have not even heard it the second time, maybe they
have, third or fourth time, it becomes repetition to you.
But to the audience, it becomes reinforcement.
So we have to bear in mind when we do public relations that we actually need to be almost
consistently dull and keep on communicating and move the conversation along at the pace
that the audience is ready to, not the pace that the internal organisation believes is
going to be right.
Even the people inside a company think, oh, I shared that last week, I can move on.
But actually people outside the organisation haven't necessarily heard it, haven't necessarily
bought into it, haven't necessarily processed it.
So keep on communicating consistently over time.
That's the essence of public relations.
If we look at measurement, measurement used to be back in the early days in column inches,
we used to literally buy newspapers and measure the column inches and clients would pay us
for the amount of column inches.
Or they'd certainly motivate you and incentivise you, say if you don't get this many column
inches, you're not doing your job.
Another agency can get that for me.
So it used to be that companies like Karma, which is actually started in Australia, there
are measurement companies like Karma and they would in the old days buy the newspapers and
clip them for you.
Now of course, we've moved into digital and technology is doing, listening, there are
companies like Karma is still doing it.
We have people like Ramiqi and Curtis doing it, but also some new entrants like Talkwalker
are doing not just the how often your company is mentioned, but what we call sentiment analysis.
And sentiment analysis is the new, if you like, the new part that is enabled by AI.
We used to read a newspaper article back in the mid 90s when I did this.
You'd look for keywords and say it's positive or negative and you'd manually put it into
a spreadsheet.
But on my podcast, the unnoticed entrepreneur, I have some of the originators of these technologies.
And these really sort of technopreneurs have built the software now that helps basically
review audio, video, text, and look for not just the keywords anymore, but the context
and the structure.
So now we can measure in real time what people are saying about our company or about our
competitors, whether it's positive, negative.
And in the case of one company called Serrano out of America, they can then use that to
see whether people have got buying intent, whether those people that are on social media
should be targeted with an advert.
So we're seeing now the joining up, Mitty, of commentary online with buying intent.
So measurement of public relations now is absolutely a core part of any strategy.
And it's really, really exciting because you can then alter the strategy, frequency, messaging,
type.
Also by geography, for example, now you can have websites that are location specific or
even customer journey specific.
There's a company in Holland that's got a software that depending on where you have
come from, your customer journey will serve you different content on the website.
So they've also been on my podcast.
So the unnoticed.cc you'll find actually 750 plus episodes with interviews of entrepreneurs
that are really shaking up the territory when it comes to public relations.
That is fascinating.
Yeah, you're really, I think you're on the top 3% of the podcast.
So I mean, I definitely encourage our customers to check it out.
It's a really good listen.
Thank you very much indeed.
And it's as good as the people I have on the show.
So I'm very blessed that people from around the world, entrepreneurs come on the show
and will share with me their innovations on really ways that entrepreneurs can use free
and creative tools to get noticed.
Very useful.
Going back to your answer, I think it's really, like I said, I'm really dipping into it.
And I think we have a tool called YouGov, which is a British company that we're using
for brand awareness measurement.
And they kind of do some of those things like measure the sentiment of people across the
globe about our company, or depending on what area geography that we cater to.
I think one of the important things that came to my head was with the digital tools, it's
so easy to change strategies in real time.
You're getting feedback in real time versus newspaper clipping and things like that.
So it's much more robust and helpful, but also it ties back to the other insight that
you don't want to change the messaging or consistency of messaging.
You got to keep the messaging consistent, but you can't change the strategy.
How you reach out to them could be changed, but not really the messaging itself.
Well, Misha, the way I'm looking at it is that the company isn't changing dramatically
that quickly.
If you think about a big company, it hasn't overnight decided to have a new business model
or a new customer focus.
So what we're looking for in creative public relations is about finding new ways to illustrate
that message or that proposition, finding maybe new case studies, finding new applications,
finding new ways that it might resonate.
What may change is an innovation, an iteration, for example, new software release, or there
may be something that happens in the marketplace where then people are using the product in
a different way.
So if we look at mobile phones, when we got the camera on the phone, all of a sudden people
were, oh, that's useful, but what would you use it for?
And we just took pictures and then TikTok came along and all of a sudden there's a whole
new category.
Well, if you're providing phones, the marketing changes from, we have a camera on the phone
that you can take a picture of yourself to, you can do streaming to your social media
channels.
Same product, the market's changed, so the message evolves as well.
But that consistency that you're innovating, that you've got a camera would remain the
same, right?
So that's really what we're looking at.
And that is kind of the joy of public relations is it's such a dynamic, such a dynamic field,
as indeed all the marketing fields are very, very exciting.
Yes, absolutely.
Like I said, I'm still dipping into PR and brand awareness efforts.
Can you please tell us the difference between aided and unaided surveys, which is a tool
used to measure brand awareness?
Yes, I think there you're talking about really whether you've got somebody taking a test
or a quiz online, for example.
And we've all got those, I've just gone actually from the British government to help them understand
demographics in my area.
And you can use tools like ScoreApp, for example, now where if you're running a survey, you
can create a survey for people and it gives them real time kind of responses and configured
responses to their questions.
That's leaving the individual to make decisions about their responses.
And you really have to structure the questions very carefully because the questions in an
unaided survey are literally open to interpretation.
If you're guided in the same way, maybe you go is doing or it's us, Marie, for example,
who also came on the show on the on the I noticed entrepreneur podcast.
They are doing guided surveys where they're going to people and they're asking people
what their thoughts are about a particular subject.
And depending on the response, then they're taking that person that respondent to, if
you like down the decision tree, a or a decision tree B. So the guided response gives much
more depth of understanding.
And so presumably, it's either costs more money or you survey fewer people.
There is a company in America called Pick For You that also came on the I noticed entrepreneur
podcast.
They're quite interesting because it's almost a hybrid, Mitty.
So what happens there is that if you're going to launch a new product or a service, you
put it on the Pick For You website and you can choose the demographics and you can create
options and you can leave a video.
And actually, you can let the survey base make decisions and respond to your product.
And it's been used, for example, product packaging on Amazon.
So we're getting this blend really, because of digital technology of the guided and the
unguided becoming kind of overlapping in a way.
What you really obviously have to do is to look for the output.
Are you looking for a statistical justification of a theory or are you looking for guidance
on the theory?
The unguided will give you some statistical result that you can interpret.
The guided, you could listen more and watch more and that will give you more intuitive
results.
Got it.
Like you said, guided is more in depth, knowing a little more about what the customers are
wanting, the feedback from the customers versus unaided or that will be more about what is
the measure of your brand awareness or any theory or hypothesis that you have.
Yeah, and it may be more open questions.
So for example, a guided question could be, how do you feel about my brand?
Because most people are not necessarily going to want to write that down for you.
Maybe they don't have the time, don't have the interest.
If you're doing inquiry rather than validation is the way I'd look at it, Mitty.
Inquiry is who, what, why, where, when and how open questions.
And then unguided is on a scale of one to five.
Do you agree with this statement?
Yes or no?
Okay.
So you have a different structure of question because actually your objectives are different
depending on the kind of interview that you want to hold.
That makes sense.
What's the role of data in PR?
We talked about measurement and what is the role of data in PR?
How important is it?
And how do you use data to drive your decisions?
Well, data has become more and more important, I think, across all marketing disciplines.
And the real issue here now in PR and others is in attribution.
So in the old days, Mitty, you'd say get an article in the Wall Street Journal, for
example, and it would be anecdotal.
You know, I used to get my clients on Bloomberg or CNBC and it'd be like, oh, somebody mentioned
they saw me.
It would be anecdotal.
Now because we can track where people have seen or read and the behavior through software,
I had the founder of a company called Funnelytics on my show, for example.
Funnelytics can track all the sources of traffic to your funnel, right?
Because you have more than one landing page and more than one funnel.
And it tracks it across the entire universe, whether it's you've been found on a website
from a blog post or a TV show that someone's streamed and watched on CNN, all the way back
to maybe the Facebook account that they tracked it on to where they shared it.
So the digital customer journey that we all have now, the footprint that we leave across
devices, even though now, of course, we have more and more privacy rules in place, attribution
has come to public relations as it has to every other discipline, whether it's advertising
or events where we used to do lead capture on the trade show booth.
So public relations now is very measurable.
And that's a good thing.
It's a good thing because public relations plays a very valuable role at building credibility
for a brand and starting conversations for a brand.
So really, we've got now tools, I say, like Funnelytics that are helping with attribution
all the way through.
And there are some platforms like Taboola, for example, where it's syndicated, it's called
syndicated discovery content, where if you have an article, for example, you want to
appear on CNN or BBC, you can put it onto Taboola.
And you'll often see at the bottom of, for example, the BBC or CNN, it says syndicated
content that it may say Taboola or Outbrain.
Outbrain was acquired by Taboola.
And so public relations now is going into some content platforms as original content,
as articles, but as actually as part of a syndicated content platform, which then has
the full trail of where it appeared, how many times you got read, where people read it and
so on.
So it's been tremendous to see in the last 25 years.
I first met Jim McNamara in Singapore in 1996 when he started Karma.
And he brought in a big stack of magazines and newspapers.
And we went through it together and looked at how he was scanning those and then showing
me in real time, the kind of attribution.
Now it's real time Jim McNamara can stay in Australia, not travel around the world with
stack of newspapers.
But public relations agencies can demonstrate to their clients the impact of what they do.
And clients can see if the budget was well worth spending on public relations.
Yeah, it's a great tool to have or great place to be and time to be able to measure all your
marketing efforts, especially with attribution.
I mean, as a data guy, I think it's a double edged sword.
I want to just say everybody else just stay quiet for three weeks.
We're testing Jim's PR effort.
We can't do anything on your end.
We just want the data to be clean, but that never happens.
But one day, I try.
We never have three weeks to wait because the world keeps moving on, right?
Competitors do something, the market does something.
So we're trying to get to real time and we're getting very close, right?
As you know, Mitty.
So yeah, data attribution, I think every marketing discipline, frankly, every function of the
business, be it HR, whether finance, production, internet of things in manufacturing has changed
as well how we monitor production processes.
So data, as you know, because this is your field, not mine, is ubiquitous and mobile
and constant.
Absolutely.
It's really fascinating the world of our digital marketing data.
There's so much and it's always evolving.
So it keeps me on my toes.
Yes, you're never going to be out of a job, Mitty, I think that's for sure.
Is there a difference in your approach when you're helping out an entrepreneur versus
a small business versus a large company?
You did mention about consistent messaging.
So yeah, is there a difference in approach that you would have?
The fundamental necessity to be consistent and authentic is the same regardless of the
organization because ultimately you're trying to build a level of understanding and trust
in the minds and hearts of all those people you need to deal with.
And that's regardless of company size.
The beauty of technology now really is that it democratizes the process.
So the small company, the solopreneur now has access to tools that can create content
of a caliber that a big company would have spent thousands of dollars on.
So there are tools like Descript, for example, or Veed.io or Lumen5 that enable entrepreneurs
to make videos or articles using platforms like Claude, for example, on Anthropic that
really enable the entrepreneur to create content of a level and a speed that they couldn't
have done before.
And the distribution tools like repurpose.io and then schedulers like Zoho or Buffer.
Putting in place the infrastructure for a smaller company is harder for sure.
So I think the challenge when I work with clients, so I consult Mitty for business owners
and I help them to get these systems set up, the challenge for them is bandwidth because
they're trying to manage this along with maybe HR and finance and delivering things to customers.
So that's really the difference, whereas bigger companies maybe have an in-house marketing
manager or they can pay for an agency.
So the principles are the same, but of course what a smaller company has to think about
is the earlier point I made about frequency.
It's essential to still be consistent, but the bigger company can have more frequency
across more channels.
Whereas the solopreneur can choose one channel and be consistent.
So for example, the solopreneur may have LinkedIn and a LinkedIn post once a week on a Thursday
at 12 o'clock.
They turn up every week on a Thursday with an article that maybe they wrote, or as I'm
working with one client, we're using ChatGPT to help the beginnings of the article.
And then we're using Dali to create the images.
And then we put that into Claude because Claude's actually quite a good long form writer.
And then into Grammarly because neither of those two platforms are as good at the grammar.
So in the space of an hour, the entrepreneur can have an article that on a Thursday at
12 o'clock they place into LinkedIn with a nice image.
And that could be enough for them.
But for the bigger company, maybe they're doing that twice a week on LinkedIn, but maybe
they're also putting that onto Medium.
And maybe they're also putting into YouTube, for example, a video.
So as companies get bigger, they can approach more channels with more content.
And almost by definition, they're going to have more customers.
So they're going to need to be seen against more channels and with more content, but they'll
also have more things going on.
So I think the message to entrepreneurs is to start with what is manageable and not get
overwhelmed by the need to be on Facebook or LinkedIn or X every day, all day.
Because it's more than your customers really need anyway.
They're just looking for reassurance.
So I think that would be the difference.
It's really about scale that the fundamental strategy of showing up consistently and authentically
has to stay the same.
The frequency changes, the channels change, Mitty.
That's a really good point.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
So let's change gears and talk about Unnoticed Entrepreneur, your book and your podcast.
What is your book, The Unnoticed Entrepreneur, about?
Just a second.
My AI assistant.
I don't know.
Google picked up something.
I don't know what it did.
I'll cut this off.
Okay.
Well, that's why I don't talk in between because it makes it easier to edit.
Appreciate it.
So Mitty, you asked about my book.
This is the first edition called The Unnoticed Entrepreneur.
Step into the spotlight.
This is published by Wiley under the Capstone imprint.
And a big part of my view is that I'm really a facilitator, Mitty.
I know a little bit about entrepreneurship and about public relations, but there are
many people who know much more.
But also the people that really entrepreneurs need to hear from are from fellow entrepreneurs.
So what I've done with my podcast now with 900 episodes on the video and also the audio
and nearly 400 interview guests is to take a selection of those interviews and make them
into articles using actually some AI and some human interaction, and then to compile those
into books.
Because my view is if I can help an entrepreneur to have, in effect, 50 conversations with
entrepreneurs in the space of a book, that's hugely, hugely productive.
I started the entrepreneurs organization, the EO Network in Beijing when I was living
there with a good pal called Rich Robinson.
And this is back in 2007.
And the most powerful thing we've done together and that I've learned is that it's peer sharing.
It's learning from someone that's either in the same position or has been in the same
position as you and how they solve the problems you're facing.
So the book series is entrepreneurs sharing how they got noticed.
And it covers some technology, it covers some theory.
And the first book that I published, I did on my own.
And the second book I published on my own and I entered the British Business Book Awards,
which is a great prize for a great book.
And I was a finalist in the book category.
And as a result, Wiley reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, would you be interested
to publish under Wiley?
So a couple of lessons in there.
One is to enter awards, great PR, if you meet people, but also you might have a chance to
win or get nominated.
And the second is to then let people know you've done it.
So actually it was through PR, putting it on LinkedIn, that my book was found.
So the second volume is coming out in April of this year and it's available on Amazon
now for pre-order actually.
So the unnoticed entrepreneur volume one and then volume two is another 50 conversations.
And then there'll be a volume three, I think in another year's time.
So the idea is to take these amazing conversations I have with entrepreneurs that are all trying
to be 20 to 25 minutes long.
Take them into text and make them accessible so they really become lessons that fellow
entrepreneurs can learn from.
Yeah that's like distilled down lessons that we can learn from in a shorter time span.
That's awesome.
It's fascinating and it's so helpful for entrepreneurs and even people in professional jobs.
I think so.
The response has been really good to the book because it's accessible and because it's 50
interviews, people can read one chapter at a time and it takes the length of a cup of
coffee.
So the idea is that you can dip in and out because entrepreneurs don't have a lot of
time and actually they might just find one story.
For example, like there's a photographer in India who during lockdown decided that he
would take a picture of himself every day for 365 days because they couldn't go out.
So he took pictures of himself every day and as a result then built a calendar.
And as a result of that on Instagram people said, hey, I love your work.
Can we have you come and work with us?
So really great stories of people doing things that are just creative and innovative, not
expensive but help them to get noticed.
That's awesome.
In your book you teach leaders and entrepreneurs about ways to be seen as an authority in the
industries.
Can you please talk to us about it?
What are some of the ways to be a thought leader in an industry?
First of all, you have to think of something, Mitty.
I know it sounds an obvious point, but in Venezuela people say they want to get rich,
but you have to do the work to get rich.
And if you want to be known as an authority, you have to do something or believe in something
or articulate something that establishes you as a thought leader.
Sounds an obvious thing to say.
But first of all, define what it is and not too broad and not too narrow either ideally.
So have some kind of a thesis that you believe in.
I worked with my sister, Dr. Shelley James, and what we did, we took her thesis, which
was about the benefit of light, natural light on wellness.
And then what we did, Mitty, was we gave her a title, we called her a Luminologist.
So the second thing you can do is think of some kind of brand positioning for yourself.
It's great you can have your own name, that works too, and you can create your own domain,
own your own domain name, for example.
You can create a logo for your personality if you like, but it's quite a good idea to
create some kind of a nomenclature.
So I call myself the champion of the unnoticed entrepreneur, for example.
What do you stand for?
And once you've got that, then you start to articulate that in terms of messaging.
So with Shelley, for example, which is about the impact of light on wellness in schools,
in hospitals, in prisons, in all people's homes, same content, you know, rays of light,
but in different verticals.
And then what we can do is we can position that thought leader, in this case, Shelley,
Dr. Shelley James, onto podcasts, writing articles on LinkedIn.
So this is then where we get into the content production, all starting with that central
premise, ideally with some kind of a brand proposition, and then start to create the
content and go to the different channels.
And it comes back down to creating content consistently over time.
Okay.
So that really is the way to start to build a brand.
Then, of course, there are different hierarchies, if you like.
So creating a blog on your own website, that's great.
Ideally, what you do is you start to do public speaking.
And then what we did with Shelley was then we moved her up to be a TEDx speaker.
So then we got her onto TEDx and her speech was seen over 300,000 times in the first month.
So she became a top speaker worldwide.
So we went to the TED stage.
And then it's the book.
So actually, I have mapped out a journey, if anyone's interested in getting in touch
with me, of the different steps that are required from going from being obscure to being in
demand of being paid for sharing that central proposition that you've got.
So there really is a workflow and a methodology.
And it's very, very possible for anyone to do it.
That is, yeah, that was so fascinating when I learned that from your work.
But yeah, you've developed a methodology around it and that was super fascinating to read
through it.
There is a science to it.
I know we're coming short on time.
So let me go to questions I'm interested to learn more about.
What excites you about the current advancements in AI and data?
You talked a lot about how you use some of these AI tools.
Can you tell us more about it?
I think AI is so exciting because it's such an enabler really, Mitty.
For people like me that can't draw or create images very well using AI like Dali or Mid-Journey,
give me a superpower that otherwise I wouldn't have.
They enable me to create content for courses at a speed that I couldn't hope to type.
That's selfish though, in that sense, I'm talking about me.
But I think AI is also really, really exciting for all those people that have maybe some
challenges.
So for example, if you are visually impaired, AI is now helping people to take text into
audio, for example.
So it's possible now then to put text in and text to audio.
You can have text on screens, for example, e-readers.
So that's an enablement part as well, I think, AI.
I think AI is also enabling people to bring goods and ideas to market at a speed and with
such a reduced level of risk.
So I met some young people that have got a business plan evaluator and you put the ideas
in and it finds other businesses that are similar or not and evaluates the risks.
So we're going to get into ideation and accessibility in a way that isn't possible.
And I think it's very liberating because people in other markets, maybe for example, maybe
India, for example, where they may not have access to capital or infrastructure, they
can create goods and services that can compete globally using the technology.
So I think it's really, really exciting on lots of levels, selfishly, but I also think
in other applications around the world, it's going to be very, very exciting.
Absolutely.
It's democratizing a lot of tools that we've never had before.
This is one of our staple questions.
If money and resources were not constraints, what kind of intelligence and models would
you wish to have and what would you do with it?
When you say models, do you mean as a human model?
AI too.
I think as a human model, I wouldn't mind taking 20 years off my body.
That would be great, but I don't think AI can do that.
Nothing could do that, I think probably.
An AI tool that helps young people to navigate some of the stresses and the strains that
they're facing now.
I have two daughters and I just see how much the young people are struggling with the future
and even the present because a lot of what we're teaching them in schools is irrelevant
because it's dated and they're facing such uncertainty and at the same time, so much
social scrutiny.
I think it's a very toxic mix.
If I didn't have a budgetary constraint, I would like to find ways to create an AI that
would reassure young people that at the end of the day, life comes down to people and
those relationships that I mentioned at the very, very beginning and that the technology
is there to serve us, not to enslave us.
That's what my AI would do.
That is such a profound answer.
I totally agree with you.
In their growing up years, they've been bombarded with so much negativity on one side, uncertainty
with the climate crisis and changes in technology and there's so much to unpack there.
That's a really great answer.
Thank you.
And world peace, of course, and end human suffering.
Absolutely.
But I have a nice, simple answer.
That's absolutely.
That's a great way to end our discussion here.
I appreciate you so much for taking the time.
Thank you for being here, Jane.