5 Tips On How To Dazzle The Media

How to Dazzle The Media with Susan Harrow and Denise Griffitts

Denise Griffitts: Welcome to Your Partner In Success Radio™. I’m your host, Denise Griffitts, and this podcast is ranked in the top 2.5% of the most popular podcast globally. Honestly, it’s because of my incredible guests. I’m just here to facilitate their brilliance. I am honored and blessed to share time with people who are at the top of their game and who are willing to help you get to where you want to be in life, in a business. These are not people who hold back.

Their goal for coming on this podcast and other podcasts is to share with us the essence of peak performance. My guest today, Susan Harrow, is a media trainer, marketing strategist, martial artist, and author of the best-selling book Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul™, which I love. She joins us today to share five tips to dazzle the media. She’s going to teach us how to become charismatic, persuasive, engaging, but staying true to you, keeping your originality in quirks.

I think she wrote that about me. I’ve got quirks. So anyway, it’s all about me, right? I knew it was. So, for the past 33 years, she’s run Harrow Communications Inc., which is a worldwide media consultancy where she has trained thousands of CEOs, entrepreneurs and thought leaders worldwide to turn their message into money while becoming highly desirable and repeat guests who shine in the media spotlight. And that’s what we’re talking about today. Oh, and we’ll talk about Oprah. I don’t want to keep talking. I want people to hear from you. So welcome, Susan. I’m so glad to have you. I’ve been looking forward to this because your topic is just right in my wheelhouse.

Social Media And Its Cancel Culture Can Ruin Your Reputation in a Single Moment.

Susan Harrow: Me too. I’ve been really thinking about this a lot because media is everything now. Media is social media as well as traditional media that you and I grew up on and this radio show and video and all of that. Really, right now, no matter who you are, a CEO, an entrepreneur, an author, a founder needs to have both a personal and professional brand with consistent, clear messaging across all platforms, you’re on and all mediums.

And this today also includes philanthropic endeavors. It’s not really enough just to sell something beyond your product or service. You really need to serve your community or your cause in addition to your customers. There’s a study that just came out from Edelman that 58% of people will buy or advocate for brands based on their beliefs or values, and that 64% will invest based on their beliefs and values.

Brands now need to take a stand. They need to be able to articulate that in a media appearance to become a brand of the future and concisely. We have a long time to talk in terms of an hour, and this is very flexible and this is very conversational. The media is not media is very condensed, and it’s really like taking War and Peace and condensing it into Haiku. And it’s a different way of speaking.

Denise Griffitts: I know it is. I know that you have to be really careful when you’re convincing, because these days, honestly, everybody is offended about something. It’s just pathetic. But we have to be so cautious.

Susan Harrow: It’s very frightening today that we can be canceled in an instant. I mean, look what’s happening to Kanye West. This is not the first incidental course. This is a positive cancellation that Nike pulled out, his documentary got canceled and even Balanciaga canceled him. That’s a positive canceled. Any one of us is subjected to a negative. Just having one thing come out of our mouth that we can’t take back. You can never buy back your reputation, which is not edited. We can’t take anything back today.

Denise Griffitts: No, we have to be careful. We really don’t. We have to say what’s on our mind. Here’s the thing, and I’ve been telling this as a web developer and a social media person. I’ve been telling people forever, don’t put anything on your social media that you don’t want your grandma reading in a billboard. Knock it off. And they don’t take me seriously. Some of them. Well, my grandma’s not going to see it. Okay? Don’t take me that literally. Pay attention to what I’m telling you. Be careful on social media. Yes. Be authentic. Yes. Show your quirks. I’ve got quirks aplenty. And they’re out there. I don’t even try.

Susan Harrow: They’re beautiful.

Denise Griffitts: Thank you. I love cats. We all have quirks, everyone.

Susan Harrow: That’s so important. It’s so important to keep your quirk. That’s why you’re in the 2.5 percentile.

Denise Griffitts: Thank you for that. The thing is, it’s hard to remember a lie. When we’re creating personas that are not us, we’re going to make mistakes left, right and center. And the Internet is not forgiving. Be you is what we’re talking about today. Show up. Be you, be the best. You create your brand, but make sure that brand is who you are, is what I’m taking away from you.

Susan Harrow: It’s ironic because I think the biggest issue that my clients or course, participants have is being themselves. Part of that is the pressure to be other than ourselves and looking at what’s out there now, which is faux fame and filters and also fake vulnerability. Which I really rail against because it’s become a trope versus when everybody announces that they’re going to say something vulnerable instead of just being vulnerable and being real and in the moment.

There’s a really big difference between that between using that vulnerability for marketing or connection. And yes, it could be both. That said that there’s a kind of consciousness about being vulnerable that there didn’t used to be. I wanted to say one other thing about cancel culture, because my sweetie and I just watched a show last night called The Bold Type, which is three women who are in this magazine, which is very forward-thinking, pro-women, and women sexuality.

She wrote this article, and the editor of the new company that she was at edited it to be something other than she wanted and really took down the reputation of this woman who was doing really good things, which was creating menstrual cups. It has good intentions. It gave some homeless women, they had some problems with sanitation. What she did, I would imagine she called up and apologized and made an apology versus voicemail. The woman put that on social media, but the apology on social media, and it went viral. People did all kinds of things with it. You can’t take it back. You can’t even put anything in a voicemail or an email that you don’t want out there because it could ruin your reputation and you might not recover from that. It’s that kind of consciousness in the world that we’re in today.

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Denise Griffitts: I read 1984 when I was kid. It really scared me stupid, but I really think it’s one of the things I’ve ever read because I keep my privacy. I’ve got my quirks and I’ll show them. But you’re not going to see pictures of me ever. You’re certainly not going to see them in a bikini. It’s just not going to happen.

Susan Harrow: I’m dying to see a picture of you with the nerd and stilettos that you have on your LinkedIn profile.

Denise Griffitts: I actually am a nerd in stilettos, and I do have a black cat. There’s another one of my quirks. But here’s the thing. Hang on, I need to cough. I’m losing my voice.

Susan Harrow: That’s a personal choice that you have chosen not to do video. We all have that choice about how public we want to be. And it’s a difficult one in today’s day and age. I don’t know how you’ve done it, quite frankly, how you’ve escaped it.

Denise Griffitts: That’s true. I started this, I started my company 20 years, geez louise. Now I’m going to have a headache. 20 years ago. I didn’t know it was that long ago, but I made the decision then. Remember, 20 years ago, we didn’t have WordPress, we didn’t have YouTube. I don’t think we even had my own base. I don’t know what was happening. No, I remember building websites using HTML. I still can write an HTML, but I made the decision when all of a sudden people say, oh, you’ve got to put your picture on your website.

Oh, you’ve got to go to YouTube. You’ve got to make video. I’m a little bit pig headed. I said, no, I’m not going to do it. It’s not who I am and it’s just never going to happen. I have to tell you, I’ve been really blessed with that decision because in all these years, I’ve only had two people who wanted to consult with me or wanted to work with me.

Both of them said one of them said, Well, I just can’t work with you if I can’t see your face. And I said, really? How do you deal with the phone company, with a water company? Do you mark your b*** down there and go look at them? I mean, how does that work? She actually did wind up working with me, and the other one was just, no, I can’t see you. I can’t work with you. Okay, that’s fine. In all these years, only two people have argued with me about it. You’re right, it’s much and they have respected it.

Staying Firm With Your Own Boundaries In Media.

Susan Harrow: Well, I love that and I think it’s super difficult to stay with that. It’s an important point because you’re staying with your own boundaries, your own personal boundaries. That’s a decision we all need to make in our personal and professional lives, and particularly when we’re moving from private to public person it’s how much do you want to reveal and what will you and want to talk about and then being able to very successfully and very easily transition to the information that you want the audience to know. And that’s no easy feat.

It takes a lot of practice and role-play, and I think that a lot of times when I’m training my clients and it’s much easier to do it here in role play. I remember one of my clients who’s a New York Times bestselling author and international speaker, and were media training for his upcoming book and we did quite a bit of role-play.

And then he went on NPR. Thank God it was taped. The first one, just getting him warmed up for his media tour. He was, oh no. He came back and he goes, oh no. Thank God this is edited. And I listened to it. I said yes. Thank God. Thank God. You never know how somebody is going to edit it. It can be a double edged sword, but it’s getting that kind of practice and iteration in that’s really super important. I actually did media train him for Terry Gross and she had said the first time she had to keep wrangling him in Terry Gross NPR: Fresh Air.

My goal was to not have her have to stop that conversation and wrangle him in it. That’s what happened after quite a bit of media training and that role-play. Being able to get his message out in a condensed form. What we call the Zen it down without making it, without it’s simplifying it, but in the best way.

Like not dumbifying it but simplifying it. That’s why I call it Zenifying it down. That’s quite a lot of practice, just like with you in your podcast. Sure. The first few times, if we go back and listen to the very beginning, which you left up, we’re going to go, wow, Denise has come such a long way.

Denise Griffitts: I can’t even listen to them. I don’t dare. I would probably never speak again.

Susan Harrow: But it’s a great thing. I hear people on social media saying that, go back and watch my first YouTube if you want to see. It’s really inspiring for people to do that because we think that we pop out of, Zeus’s womb, fully formed, and what we don’t see is the practice and the sweat behind the scenes to become great.

Denise Griffitts: You’re right. Listen, people will come to me and say, how do I start a podcast? I’ll say, well, what do know and what are you really interested in? And can you shut up and listen? That’s the biggest thing. Can you stop talking? It is. Can you stop talking over your guests and let them shine? Unfortunately, a lot of people need to learn that’s where they could use you.

How do I be that good podcast host? How do I learn to listen? Seriously? Because podcasts, as in my opinion, is Marketing 101. If you’re not either a host or you’re being a guest, you’re missing a huge amount of goodwill. You’re missing backlinks, you’re missing the ability and the availability to get your voice heard. Get on podcasts, start one, be on one.

Tip #1: Dazzle The Media By Planting An Eye Garden.

Susan Harrow: It’s the first thing I recommend to everyone because it’s gentle and it is a good, great practice, like what you said in listening and being present and being just 100% there. Yes, of course, we work on getting your messaging out there in any circumstance. The most important thing is the essence. To be that person who is fully 100% there. That’s not easy, especially when you’re nervous and you’re starting to think about what you want to say instead of thinking about what you want to say. It’s really about the connection between you and the host, which then connects to the audience. The connection you set up with the host is then translated to the audience. I know we wanted to talk about how to dazzle the media, so I’m going to skip to number two. We’ll go back to number one.

[Tweet “The connection you set up with the host during a media appearance is then translated to the audience.”]

This could be number one is to plant an eye garden, which is something that President Kennedy did to look from he looked from one eye to the other. What I found is that there’s research now from therapy when a therapist looks into the eyes of the person that they’re working with, and gives them 100% acceptance, maybe even unconditional love if they’re really good. If you’ve had that experience, it’s amazing to have unconditional love. It doesn’t have to be a therapist either. A dog and a cat, maybe a cat. I’m not sure cats have unconditional love, but dogs do, and I think my cats do, and you probably think your cats do, too, but it’s about giving that unconditional love first. It’s about slowing down, looking deeply into the host eyes. When this is TV, live or video, when you’re looking actually into the dot, but you can also look at the person in between them asking the question and getting into the state of readiness.

It’s getting yourself into a state of readiness and a lightness and connection, and it’s very simple. It’s just taking a breath and thinking of something that’s really wonderful. You can think of someone you love or a great experience. You can think of a person or a pet or an experience that feels really good. You get that feeling in your body, and then you convey that through your eyes to the person or to the video. That translates to deep connection with your audience in those mediums, either video or TV, and the audience feels it energetically because you’re in that state of readiness. That’s something that sports peak performance, that part about getting it into your body and reviewing the experience and the feeling and what’s going to happen. That kind of review, if that’s a word, is something that peak performance athletes have been doing for quite a long time.

By the time they’re on the ski slope or on the tennis court, that’s deeply ingrained, and they can just call upon it in the moment. Some people have trigger words or words that just say, I’m ready, or I’m there, whatever that is. Some people need a word to get into that state, and some people might have a movement to get into that state, but I think, I would put that as number one, because we want to get in that state before we go live.

Denise Griffitts: What I do, and I haven’t heard it put that succinctly. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I know with my podcast, nobody can see me. I’m sitting here in my office. I’ve got a cat sitting over here on a pile of books. I’m good, but they can hear me, so they can see me because they can hear me, if that makes any sense.

Susan Harrow: It does.

Denise Griffitts: Amy Cuddy. I think it’s Amy Cuddy. She did the Ted Talk. I will jump up just before I’m getting ready to dial in and talk with you in my virtual green room. I will stand up, I will do my Wonder Woman pose, and then off I go, because I’m ready. Wonder Woman all the way to the end of it. She taught me that. I went well, that makes sense. I do it every single time I’m going to talk with a guest. Every single time.

Bring Your Full Being, Smile, Voice and Presence On Podcast Or Radio.

Susan Harrow: Whatever works for you. It’s individual. That’s maybe one of your quirks, right? That’s an individual thing that really works for you. Yes, I’m happy that you brought up that it comes through your voice, because sometimes we just do have the voice on radio and many podcasts, which aren’t video either. In connection with our potential clients and customers, it’s sometimes voice only. So it has to translate through your voice. Even if somebody doesn’t see you, they should feel like they know you.

Denise Griffitts: Exactly. You always hear about people saying, okay, if you’re going to be on the end of a phone, let’s say you’re in customer service, smile. They don’t see you, but smile because they’re going to hear you. If you’re grumpy or you’ve got what I call resting b**** face going on. People can dance.

Susan Harrow: The meditation master, Thich Nhat Hanh. One of his first things when people are beginning to meditate is he just says, smile. Think of a flower. I love that kind of simplicity where people say, get hung up on meditation, that it’s so difficult. Just lower your eyes, lower your gaze and smile. That automatically starts to put you in a state of receptivity and of openness. I think that when we’re in that state, the magic happens. Unexpected and wonderful things happen. And it’s so simple. Just that the smile. I think that’s one of the most basic things. We do it with babies, right? We do it with pets. We’re “koochy, koochy, koo, tickle, tickle, smile, smile,” right? I think it’s very ingrained in our human DNA.

Denise Griffitts: It is. The thing is, if you’re going to be walking around frowning and grumpy, that’s going to translate to everybody. Pretty soon you’re going to find out that nobody really wants to be around you. They just don’t. They can pick that up pretty quickly. I think this is something that people don’t really understand about social media, whatever it is, whether it’s Twitter. I just got back on Twitter yesterday. I left two years ago. It was a cesspool. We’ll see what happens now. Whatever I’m doing on social media, if I’m in a mood, I don’t do it. I know better because my personality is going to well, my attitude is going to show up whether I think it is or not. I may just be wanting to rant about something. Don’t do that. Don’t rant.

Susan Harrow: Don’t rant. I think that rants can be productive, though. I mean, I remember the New York Times doing some statistical studies on what got the most reads in their articles, and one of them was a rant. I think it is super popular in the media anyway, because it’s a strong opinion or a strong stand on an issue, and so that can then spark strong feelings on both sides. It can be conversations and if done constructively right. I think that anyone who’s moving toward a cause or something that’s important to their heart if they go on a rant and part of it is substantiated by statistics and that it’s not just an opinion rant, but it’s something that we need that needs to have our attention, I think it can be really productive.

[Tweet “Rants can be productive in expressing essential truths + can make your material viral”]

Denise Griffitts: See, that makes sense. If you’re just complaining to complain, don’t do that, telling you, don’t do it. Too many people think, oh, well, I’ve only got five friends on Facebook. Nobody’s going to see it. Google will. Seriously, just don’t put stuff out there that you don’t want to show up.
On your Christmas card or your grandma says. I don’t want to say behave yourself, but use kindness and compassion and assurance and just be the best you when you’re out there on the web.

Tip #2: Dazzle The Media With A Shocking Statement Or Fact.

Susan Harrow: I think that you can start with another way to dazzle media is to start with a shocking statement or fast that is something that will, boom, bring people together or against something really fast. Here’s one. It’s not if we’ll be cyberattacked, it’s when. I just did a live media training workshop and one of the participants was a cyber security expert and he runs a prominent firm, and he said that something I didn’t know was, our national security NSA has already been compromised. It was breached long ago. Other countries already have a lot of our cybersecurity.

Denise Griffitts: China. They’ve been having everything we’ve got forever.

Susan Harrow: The statistic is a total I just saw this yesterday. A total of almost over 108,000,000 accounts were breached in the third quarter of 2022, which is a 70% increase compared to the previous quarter. We’re here. When I say a shocking statement, in fact, it can also be something surprising or controversial or counter intuitive, something that evokes emotion. It rivets the host and the audience, so they want to know what’s next.

Denise Griffitts: I’m so glad you said that. You just became my new best friend. I’m writing a book. I’m creating a group. A coaching group. I’m creating multiple just ways for you to figure out how to I’m about to become an educator. I’m stuttering because now, I’m oh, I need to talk about it.

Susan Harrow: You’ve been an educator, Denise. You’ve done one for years now.

Denise Griffitts: I’m going to actually put it up. I feel like I know what I’m doing over here on this podcast, but I haven’t shared it, and I feel very guilty about that. It’s time for me to get out of my own way. Something you just said just made me stand up and go, I have a very contrarian view on how to podcast. Very. And that’s going to show up because.

I’ll share it with you. But here’s the thing. I belong firmly in The Keep it Simple Stupid Camp of Podcasting. Very firmly. Don’t make it difficult. Don’t pay for things that you can’t afford. Make it easy. Make it easy for you. Make it easy for the guests. And just keep building as you go. If they go into some of these groups, oh, you need to buy this and you need $6,000 later, they’re, okay, now I’m ready. I have a contrarian view for all that. Don’t be stupid. Start easy. So there you go.

Susan Harrow: You have lowered the barrier to entry, which I think is super important because I think myself included. When technology gets complicated, I just won’t do it right because it’s too scary and it’s too much. For you to say you just need a phone, which I’m on now, because we tried this on my computer, by the way.

Denise Griffitts: Me too. Me too. Since I had to change from my old computer to my new one, I can’t get my headsets to work. I’m on my phone. We’re having a good time. It works.

Susan Harrow: We are. So, yeah, just to get started, wherever you are, and I know a lot of people say that, but I think that people still think that they can’t start where they are, but there’s nowhere else to start. You can’t start anywhere else than where you are. That’s the crazy part of it. Just to get going and really start to get those repetitions in, to get good at anything. It’s not the 10,000 repetitions exact same way. It’s 10,000 iterations of tweaking at each time.

I mean, that’s how I got my black belt in Aikido, which is still a surprise to me. I’m nowhere near graceful or beautiful doing Aikido. It was the consistent practice of going to a class for 2 hours every night, four days a week, and consistently making those changes until something finally clicked or clicked. One out of 100. My sensei used to say, “If one out of 100 throws feels great, you’re in the flow. And then remember what you did.” Remember the feeling of it. Remember. Because it’s “Oh, my God, the 200-pound guy just flew. What did I do?” Remembering the technique behind the feeling.

Denise Griffitts: Yes. That goes back to what you were talking about earlier. You just go ahead and you smile. When you’re talking to somebody or you’re looking them in the eye, how did you say that? It was something to do with John F. Kennedy. Repeat that for me.

Susan Harrow: He called it planting eye planting, where he would look from one eye to the other. We can do this to people that was more in person. When you’re looking at someone, sometimes it’s hard to look at both eyes at the same time. He would look at one eye and then the other eye and people feel deeply seen and felt and accepted.

When that happens, when we’re really gazing with them in a soft gaze and really what you said before, it’s like really being present and listening to who they are. Obviously, he was a babe magnet too, because that’s part of it to be seen and accepted. We feel that energetic connection, which it can be sexual, but it can be nonsexual, but it’s all along the same continuum. It’s all the energetic, it’s just how you intend it. You can manage that part to not turn it into sexual energy. It does feel very intimate, I guess that’s the word. It feels very intimate and personal.

Denise Griffitts: Yeah, and that’s part of being seen. I mean, there’s an intimacy to just feel like somebody gets you, whether you ever speak with them again or you ever see them again, at that moment in time, they got you. At least that’s how you felt.

Tip #3: Leave Your Audience Feeling Light.

Susan Harrow: That’s right. That’s exactly right. I think that’s the most important thing in any media appearance is to leave people feeling light at the end of every interview, like in a high note, no matter how dire your topic, because we have serious topics. To end on the feel good aspect of it, that’s super important in any interview to not leave people in a dire place, even if a topic is serious.

Denise Griffitts: Okay, so today we’re getting way off topic and that’s my fault because I’m like, I’ve got stuff to ask today. You’re joining us to share five tips to dazzle the media. I really want to know how that works because I’m not looking to dazzle the media just yet, but there’s going to be a point where I want them to pay attention to me.

Tip #4: Dazzle The Media By Playing With Props On Set.

Susan Harrow: Sure, absolutely. When you’re doing your book tour. When you do your book tour. Number 1 was plant the eye garden, which we talked about. Number 2 is start with a shocking statement or fact. Number 3 is to play with props because this is for video and TV, because we’re not seeing each other here on the radio and this can be an event as well. One of my clients is a telehealth evangelist and she’s a doctor, and she was just going to a gala to raise money for children with chronic or fatal diseases. We’re talking about there were a lot of celebrities there and we wanted her to connect with celebrities. We’re trying to figure out what works for TV and also what works for in person. We’re trying to figure out what can she bring to give to a celebrity so she’ll be memorable. We talked about her kids love Legos and so she did a Lego model of herself and that’s memorable and it’s tactile.

Anything that amplifies supports or simplifies or even shortcuts your message on TV, some kind of physical prop to play with the prop. One of my client, who was a peak performance expert, was kind of complicated, talking about the brain, but she brought a brain and could point to different parts of the brain that were enacted to get to that peak performance in business and in sports. Anything that is physical, the more movement, the better. Like if it can be squeezed or oh, I remember another one. I was media training Debbie Ford, who sadly passed away, but she’s a very well-known New York Times bestselling author and transformational speaker. She was talking about the baggage that we carry around. I said, “Why don’t you bring a giant ball?” She brought this gigantic ball, one of those yoga balls that you lay on, too. She said, it’s carrying this around with you.

Your old baggage is like carrying this ball. We also talked about, should she bring a backpack and just fling it onto her back? It doesn’t matter. The ball was a little more interactive than flinging on a backpack. If we don’t deal with our own past, it’s carrying it around and it weighs us down. At that time, this is quite a long time ago, the Elliot Spitzer controversy broke, where he was having sex with men in bathrooms. It was perfect to tie into what was going on in the media today.

Being able to see that ball and use it immediately brings a conversation. That’s really what you want to have that and have it be memorable. It’s memorable, it’s tactile, it has a conversation. I haven’t talked to my telehealth gal yet to see what happened with her giving away that Lego.

That’s also something when you want to leave people with something that is very specific, not a pen. I’m not talking about, the pen thing. It’s something that is really uniquely you. Whatever your offer is, does that make sense?

Denise Griffitts: It does. I remember when she passed away, she was just so beautiful and so brilliant.

Susan Harrow: Oh, right? I know the saddest thing it was.

Denise Griffitts: What I’m taking away from her with that ball? I’m thinking of the Yoga Chair Ball. If you walking around and you’ve got your arms wrapped around that, because how can you do anything else? You’re stuck with this thing right in front of you. You’re stuck with it. It’s not going to go away.

It’s huge. It’s attached to you. And what the heck? Well, I would take a needle and poke it, but I’ve got this image in my head that you’re walking around with this wrapped around this ball, and people can’t get to you. They can’t get to your airspace. You can’t make eye contact because you’re now trying not to run into the mantle. I’ve got this whole thing going on in my head with that.

Susan Harrow: I love how you expanded that. I like you talked about pinpricking it, because that would be really fun to do, like with a balloon. That would make a big sound, too.

Denise Griffitts: See, what you did, you put in my head, and now I’m thinking, I never want to have that barring me from anything. And that’s what it’s doing. It’s barring you from practically everything.

Practice To Shift Your Trigger Points Before A Media Appearance.

Susan Harrow: That’s such a great point. The study out from Cornell was, what the most important quality that a leader can have today is self-awareness, which is shocking to a lot of people in terms of having that kind of self-awareness to be able to start to move through those issues, because they show up instantly when you become a public person, we all can see them instantly. We don’t think that it shows, but it does.

That’s a real case for being able to start to move through those things that are trigger points for you, that trigger you, that make you angry, that make you sad. We go through in media training, all of your worst-case scenarios and the questions that you don’t want to be asked to bring out those trigger points so they don’t come out when you’re on media, so we can work them through before the media because you don’t want them to be most people don’t want them to be worked through in a public arena.

Denise Griffitts: Kind of like trial prep. You don’t want to do it.

Susan Harrow: No, you don’t want to do it. You don’t want to do it. It happens in pitch meetings also for founders in pitch meetings because they are asked questions that are either inappropriate or aggressive. I had one client, and there was one man, he was going for next round of funding medical device company worldwide. There was one guy that just got under his skin each time. We went through those questions, and until he didn’t react anymore.

He could respond with equanimity and grace to those questions that were so irritating to him. We don’t always have to get to the source. He wasn’t even sure why it was so irritating. There was this one man and one personality just get under his skin. Kind of what we say about our parents. Why can your parents trigger you in an instant? Because why can they get to your….oh, my God, Denise, I forgot to push your buttons.

Denise Griffitts: They can push your buttons. They don’t even have to take a breath.

Susan Harrow: No because they’ve installed them. Thank you. It was buttons. Because they’ve installed those buttons. That’s why they could push them. Whatever your buttons are, we want to unearth those, so they’re not pushed. When you’re in a situation where it really matters.

Denise Griffitts: You’re telling me so much that I honestly didn’t know that people need a lot of us, me included as well. I’ll just open my mouth and see what comes out. Apparently, that’s not a good idea, especially if you’re going to get serious about being an author or being in the media or wherever it is that you’re going to go. You really need to know what you’re doing and how to navigate. That’s what I’m hearing from you, which I’m fascinated by this.

Be Deeply Intentional

Susan Harrow: Yes. Thank you for that. It’s about being deeply intentional. I did have another client come to me and said the PR firm was booking her on quite a lot of media, really rapid fire, both on social media and traditional media. She said, I don’t know what I’m doing. She was very fluent, but she didn’t have an underlying strategy or furthering her cause. Furthering what the messaging that she wanted out there to grow her business and brand. And that’s where we start. What’s your deepest intention? How do you want to serve? Because that’s the foundation of everything that you’re going to say, like, when you’re starting your course or your book.

What is it that you want your audience to know now? How can you help and how can you deliver that message and give them something that only you can with your personality and the knowledge and skills and experience that you have? We start with a deep intentionality. The other thing that she didn’t know is that because we as women have the disease, to please, that you have to answer every question literally. You don’t have to answer any question ever. There are ways that we can do that.

Denise Griffitts: Thank you for saying that, because I am known to say, “Why did you?”
Somebody will ask me something that I think is a little impertinent, and I’ll give the Denise side-eye and say, “Why do you ask?” that shuts them up. I don’t always answer questions. Not your business.

Susan Harrow: Yeah, for you. Good for you. And that’s a perfectly fine answer too. There are other answers too, where you need to instantly navigate to the information that you do want your audience to know.

Denise Griffitts: Give me some examples.

Transition Statements That Can Save Your Skin

Susan Harrow: Yeah, this one will save your skin in any situation. “I don’t know about that and what I do know is……” If I asked you an impertinent question, you could say just that. Then you want to transition exactly to the message that you want the audience to get. So, I could ask you anything. I could say, “Why do you think wearing stilettos is a good idea?” It could be anything. You could transition. The other thing you could do is transition to using it. You could say, “I’m a nerd in stilettos because I like to make my points quickly and the shoes represent that.” “My quickness on technology and being able to get to the point with my clients and translate their ideas into a website.” You could easily use that as well.

Denise Griffitts: Okay, I’m relocating that. Just so you know. I’ll give you credit but I’m relocating that.

Susan Harrow: Yeah. And then there are a gazillion. You can say something, “That’s a fascinating question that I will never answer.” That’s kind of a full stop, but it’s funny. You want to, again, go on to the information that you need the audience to know.

There’s lots and lots of statements like that. You can also transition to something many people want. You can kind of go into the underlying question as to what people really want to know, because sometimes the surface questions you don’t want to answer, but you want to answer the question. You can say, “What I think you’re asking me is…..” and then answer that deeper question. “What I think you’re asking me is, how can I be a nerd and feminine at the same time and run a very male oriented business, which is what we consider technology.”

Denise Griffitts: I found that out of college. Yeah. But I didn’t care. I was there to learn. If they wanted to get ugly and one or two of them tried, didn’t work well for them. It turned out that after a while, we would all help each other. I just stayed true to who I was and ignored them when they decided to go all boy on me. Shut up. We wound up getting along the line, but I wasn’t going tolerate their baloney.

Susan Harrow: I think that’s harder for women than for men because it has been ingrained in us to make people comfortable and smooth it over. You don’t caught into that.

Denise Griffitts: Not often. I’m not going to be mean for the sake of being mean, but I’m also not going to let you bully me. That’s just not going to happen.

Decide How Confrontational You Want to Be

Susan Harrow: Yeah. In the workshop that I did over the weekend, there was a very strong woman in there who runs a $30 million business. We’re talking about she was talking about a controversial topic, and she said, “Why shouldn’t I be right out there and give a full stop?” She was speaking at conferences. But that’s your choice. The choice of full stop and being in someone’s face is always a choice. Here are three ways that you can do it.

You can soften it, you can go directly to it, or you can do full stop. In Aikido the Japanese martial arts, we never do a direct punch. We move in the energy that the conversation is going and then slightly shift that and take the other person off balance and throw them. So that’s a media technique as well. Change the direction and go with or if you do want that kind of shock, you can do a punch.

It would be like a punch to somebody’s face. If you need a full stop, if you need a shocker, if you need a pattern interrupt, which could be something raising your voice or saying the person’s name. “Denise, that’s just not true.” That would be like a full stop. You could also go at that same thing by saying, “Many people believe as you do and statistics show otherwise,” and then begin to share the statistics and back that up. That’s going with and shifting. So, it’s your choice always what kind.

Denise Griffitts: I like that one. Going with and shifting. I like that one. You have to be able to think on your feet. You have to be able to speak extemporaneously. And some people just breathe.

Susan Harrow: Part of it is the practice. It’s really getting into all of those situations, and that’s why we practice worst case scenario. With the energy of it, with the hard questions, with the aggression, with the over intimate questions, which women often get.

Denise Griffitts: How did you start doing this? Yeah, that has happened to me all my life and I’ve learned to deal with it, but I don’t. I’ll look at you and say what? Well, in the south we’ll say “Pardon me?” and if we say pardon me in a very sweet tone. Leave now, go to another zip code quickly, because we’re about to get you.

Susan Harrow: No, I do not want to raise the ire of any Southern woman. That would be very dangerous.

Denise Griffitts: Me either. They scare me. And I is one. I mean, you just want to be really careful around when you’re going to get nasty. You better be prepared to have one of these scenarios that you just shared with us. I want to go back because I keep interrupting you. I’m sorry, but I’m genuinely fascinated. We’ve got five tips. I think we made it to four.

TIP #5: Dazzle The Media By Sharing a Mix of Personal and Professional Stories.

Susan Harrow: Yeah. A mix personal with professional, which is personal stories of good professional ones, but ultimately, if you can share a secret about yourself that you’ve never shared, that is within your comfort zone of intimacy or private, that feels right to you, that’s really lovely and fresh, because any interviewer wants the fresh. They don’t want a story that you’ve told a million times, even though, of course, I want you to have those rehearsed messaging. You can always make it fresh and you can tell a part of a story or tell a story in a different way. Those are the kinds of things because today we want to know you personally. We don’t want to just know you professionally.

We really want to hear, we want to hear about your cats. We want to hear about what goes on behind the scenes, what you do, how you live. Oprah, we really have to give Oprah credit for that, for opening the doors for emotional truth, to begin to allow people to share things that were private when people thought they were alone. Anything that you can share with people to let them know that they’re not alone, or that the shared experience that resonates that happened in your personal life, too, is a way of forging a deep connection with the audience.

Denise Griffitts: Susan, you mentioned Oprah. You’re known as the go to girl for getting on Oprah and this you’ve got to tell the story. How were you almost sold into slavery for ten camels and a mule? I need to know.

Susan Harrow: Well, I was in Israel on vacation, and I had just been okay. We went to the Dead Sea and we didn’t have our bathing suits, and weren’t planning to go in the water, and so I wanted to go into Dead Sea and float. I went into my dress, and my dress is highly concentrated saltwater, so when I came out, my dress had pretty much disintegrated on me. It was a very thin cotton because it’s so hot in Israel, and really it was half a dress. I was walking in Jerusalem behind my brother, and a man comes up behind me and says, “I want to buy you for ten camels and a mule. Are you married?” And I told him, yeah. I said, “It doesn’t sound like very much.” And he said, “It is a lot. Is that your husband up there? I tell him I buy you for ten camels and a mule.”

I said it was really, actually quite scary. I hustled up to my brother, but what I took away from that, too, is how and he did follow us for quite some time, is how much do we value ourselves? I really thought of this for as a woman, and I found out later that was a pretty good price. I was in my 30’s. I was not young, I wasn’t too young. I did find out someone later told me that they were offered 20 camels and a couple of mules, but she was a gorgeous blonde. I’m thinking back on that, and I thought, really? People pick up on how much you value yourself.

Denise Griffitts: I see where you’re going with that.

Susan Harrow: Yeah. I think that kind of training and self-valuation is something that is underneath the media training, too. People follow your lead, and the lead is not always immediately on the surface. It’s the work that you’ve done behind the scenes that shows up that we all get because we all get you in an incident now it’s one third. It’s like one third of a second. We’ve already summed you up.

Denise Griffitts: I do. They would say, oh, you’ve got three minutes on the Internet. No, not anymore you don’t.

Susan Harrow: No, you really just don’t. People judge you in a second.

Denise Griffitts: And we judge. People say “Don’t be judgmental.” We have to be judgmental. That’s how we keep ourselves safe. It’s part of being human. We have to make instant judgments. Now, some of them, you have to say, “Okay, that one was wrong.” But you have to be willing to let go of that initial judgment, which might have been negative, and say, “Oh, okay, well, I don’t hate him after all.” Kind of…But…We have to judge. That’s just all there is to it.

Susan Harrow: I think it is a safety measure. Sometimes what we’re picking up is people’s defenses, right? When we get to know them, we realize that’s how they’re keeping themselves safe, whether it’s productive or not, right? It’s starting to really, for media, it’s really starting to smooth out all of those rough edges. I don’t mean if you’re a controversial person to smooth out your rough edges, keep your rough edges if that’s your brand, right? Smoothing out those things that tweak us, that take us out of react and into response.

Denise Griffitts: Got you. Listen, did we make it all the way to five?

Bonus! Dazzle The Media Tip# 6: Socialize Your Stories.

Susan Harrow: Yeah, but you know what? I have 6. I was thinking about this socialize, your stories. This is about circulating and re-circulating and repurposing your wins, your stories, the things that are really resonating when the media is looking for an expert, then you’ll be everywhere in snippets and sound bites. Now, you might not like to hear this, Denise, but now the 15 secs to 59 secs videos are the consumptive norm. People are watching just 15 secs snippets. I mean, that’s TikTok, right? Sometimes they’re strung together. But now people are not investing as much time if they don’t know you in a 4 mins or 10 mins or 30 mins video, or whatever their mode of consumption is. Podcasting is different in a different audience. We’re listeners. These are the stats right now, 15 seconds to 59 seconds. You can take all of your information and put it out there, and I know you do this, you put it out in little snippets, too.

We’re putting it out there and starting to circulate it on the net. When the media is looking for an expert, then they see all of those, that multitude of you out there. Also, you talked about SEO because you’re an expert in that. It helps with your SEO to be out there in all the areas. When the media is searching for you because they’re searching for your topic. Google is the number one way that they find experts. Yes, they’re going to look to you, have you been in the media before? When they land and they find you want to have them riveted. You want them to say, yes, I want you as a guest on my podcast, on my show, for my article and my blog.

Denise Griffitts: So what I’m hearing you say. You didn’t say it, but this is what I translated it to, is leave breadcrumbs. Leave them everywhere.

Susan Harrow: Oh, yeah, I like that. Breadcrumbs, yes. Like Hansel and Gretel. Absolutely.

Denise Griffitts: Yeah. People can find you whether it’s a tiny 15 secs, or in this case, if it’s 60 mins. They get to know you because they’re hearing your voice or whatever it’s going to be. Maybe it’s a graphic that I create. Leave those breadcrumbs and people are going to find you. I wanted to ask you really quickly, I was wandering around a couple of your pages on your website and this grabbed me. Geek speak to media speak. Explain that.

Assure That Your Audience Will Understand Your Language.

Susan Harrow: Yeah, my client, Jeanne Hurlbert, who now became a friend when she’s an academic, and this is really common with academics and people who are super smarty boots. We can put doctors, academics, psychologists, anybody who’s got doctors, they’re all oftentimes they speak in their own language. Even on the internet, there’s a specific language, and we need to be able to translate that. I couldn’t even understand what she was saying at first, and I thought, she talks like a geek.

It’s just with software, can you read those manuals and understand anything on a computer? No. That is geek speak. We want to be able to translate to the media anything that’s jargon or that’s salesy or anything that doesn’t resonate. No matter how complicated your topic, we have to be able to speak it so people can understand it jargon free. That doesn’t mean that you can’t use the terms that are important to you, but you have to be able to explain them.

If you do want to use the term that you want to introduce into the vernacular, you can say it and then say what it means. She was able to do that and then got into Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. She got $100,000 contract, once she was able to speak to that. I was just talking to a gal who is transforming the metaverse and looking for funding. She’s got her own vision of what the metaverse is, and she hasn’t been able to get funding. When I listened to her talk, I said because this talk that she was giving was specific to architects. Whatever you want to say, I said, “You can’t speak to architects the same way you speak to somebody who you’re looking for funding for your business.” I see we’re coming up on the hour, Denise, and I know we’re going to get cut off in 1
minute.

Denise Griffitts: No, the streaming will stop, but we’ll keep recording. So don’t stop. Keep going. It’ll still show up when people come to find it later because I still hear it all the way to the end. Yeah.

Susan Harrow: Okay, so that’s another thing for you, the listener, is that yes, the host is paying attention to the time. But you have to monitor yourself to make sure that you are conforming to whatever time frame the host gives you and whether it’s going to cut off instantly or not. For example on a TV show. Of course, it’s going to go to on a commercial or it’s going to just stop. You have to be able to confine your messaging to the medium that you’re speaking in.

So back to her. We were really working on what’s the messaging for each audience, and she also had a consumer audience, a general audience, too, and she said, “Yeah, I say the same thing to all those three audiences.” I’m said, “Well, what’s the result?” She was, “Well, she’s not giving me a funding.” We know that needs to change because it’s market response, and that’s something that you can play with. If you’re not getting a response and we need to change it, or it’s the wrong market or the wrong people. We look at that, are you saying the right things to the right people in the right tone at the right time to resonate with them?

Denise Griffitts: That means that you really need to understand your audience, and each audience is not going to be the same, which you just spelled out so succinctly. You have to really understand what it is that they’re looking for from you and speak directly to them in a means or a fashion that they understand. Listen, I will often tell people, listen, I know that you’re brilliant. I know that you’ve got multiple degrees. Sometimes you just have to keep it Homer Simpson stupid simple. Just cut it out. Cut out the big words. I get accused of this all the time. My sister will say, you’re using big words. Sorry, off week. She knows the same words. She just likes to give me, harass me a bit. But people want to know.

Here’s the thing, and I’ve learned this with web development and with social media marketing, people really all they want to know is what’s in it for them? I think it largely boils down to that. What’s in it for them? Can they understand you? Do they know you? Do they like you? Do they trust you? Now, you can ask them to pay attention or ask them for funding or ask them for money. Am I far off?

Susan Harrow: No, you’re exactly on point. Yeah. I was media training another woman who was trying to get funding. She has a shampoo which can really truly help make your hair grow back. She has all these pictures on the net of men who gotten bald, lost their hair. Same with women, too. So when I listened to her pitch, she was talking about men because she’s international. She was talking about men in other countries because she’s done most of her research in India and other countries. I said, “But you’re in America and you’re talking to probably white, bald men in front of you, and so you’re not speaking to your market.”

Her pitch was great, but it wasn’t right for the audience because she kept using examples that were international. I said, “What your investors want first is this is going to play in the US, because they’re investing, this is where they are. They don’t know the foreign markets like you do. That can come later.” I said, “Here’s another thing to do. I mean, give them the experience. Tell them to take the shampoo home, to take the shampoo and conditioner in this other product home and come back, use it every day or three times a week and come back in three weeks.” If it works, you say to them, if it works, you’ll give me funding. Give them the product, have them take it home and try it. We just want to think about what does the audience need? Are they willing to do that? Of course, ask for the sale in that specific.

Denise Griffitts: You were advising that she made them her case studies.

Susan Harrow: Yes, she had plenty of them.

Denise Griffitts: Perfect. That’s brilliant.

Susan Harrow: I said, well, each of them, because they’re probably all over 50, could use your product. I get their agreement that they’ll do it and that if it works, they’ll fund you. It is very specific to the audience. If her audience were women, it would be a different message. It works for women too, but that’s not as pressing. Women losing their hair after menopause, that’s definitely a market. Those men who are giving you the funding are not that interested in that market, right? You need to present it in terms of their interest first. That goes for any topic and any media topic. If you’re speaking to lawyers, it’s going to be completely different messaging lawyers. Hold on, did I say something? Wait, politically incorrect. If I did, I apologize. Whatever the word is.

Denise Griffitts: Please, you’re talking to me.

Susan Harrow: I did not intentionally. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Denise Griffitts: I didn’t hear anything. Remember, I have no filters, so everything is good here. I didn’t hear anything that could be even remotely objectionable, but because I was getting ready to interrupt you and I wasn’t I didn’t hear it. Seriously, you don’t owe anybody an apology. But here’s the thing. We were, all of us guilty of this tunnel vision. We’re so close to what we do, what we’re passionate about, how we build it, how we think and how we breathe it, how we sleep it. We get tunnel vision, and we literally will box ourselves into a corner because we know it’s perfect, it’s beautiful, it’s going to work. We don’t know how to get that out. And that’s where you come in.

Women Stepping Out Of The Imposter Syndrome.

Susan Harrow: Yeah, and I really love that because I think there’s so many people out there with an important message. My favorite clients are the ones who are socially conscious, business, social, entrepreneurship. There’s so many and I think that a lot of people who are they’re introverts or women who may be hesitant about speaking up and speaking out. Those are the kinds of people whose messaging is super important and I want to help them get it out there in the most comfortable way possible. I think that you and I did talk in the beginning about imposter syndrome because I think it’s such a 75% of women do have impostor syndrome in one way, shape or form, but I think it really holds women back from stepping out into the more public domain and speaking up. Part of that is impostor syndrome or feeling like you’re fraud, or you’re not ready.

The other part, which a couple of my women clients have come to me about, is the trolling that’s happening on the internet. That is just a sad fact of where we are right now. I was just listening to these two young podcasters and they’re saying, “We can’t let that stop us.” Because she was talking about, oh, my gosh, I can’t even believe this, Denise. Somebody would go through her website. So they posted on social media, of course, but then they also go through the added step of filling out a form on her website to insult her and putting in all of her information, her name, her email address, so talk about chicken. People that we don’t need to listen to and to insult her. I was thinking, wow, people really have a lot of time on their hands.

Denise Griffitts: I was just thinking that, why don’t they have a job? They’re not doing anything good for themselves or the world.

Susan Harrow: No. Those are the people that we need to ignore and not give any energy to at all, and not to our energy. We can’t let that stop us as women or as men for what we came here to do. What we came here to do can’t be thwarted by someone who doesn’t want us to do it or disagrees with us or whatever. That takes some practice and thick skinness and really setting up a system for not listening to those outside voices that could thwart us from moving forward with what we know is right and is for the good of all beings.

Denise Griffitts: Exactly. Larry Ludwig has been my guest many times. The very first conversation I had with him way back in the day, I mean, this is probably 10 or 12 years ago now, and I wrote it on an index card. It’s still stuck up on my whiteboard. He was talking about a book that he had read and I think the title of the book was What You Think of Me Is None of My Business, or something like that. I said, you just described how I live my life and what you think is your issue. Now, if you try to make it my issue, we may have words, but for the most part, I really don’t care. And you know what? I don’t care. I don’t mean that to sound really harsh, but I’m not. In charge of your thinking. I’m just not. If you’ve got a stinkin’ thinking, that’s your problem, not mine.

Susan Harrow: Oh, yeah, the stinkin’ thinking. I like that line, too. That’s so great. Yeah. I’m not in charge of your thinking.

Denise Griffitts: I mean, I’m barely in charge of my own. Why would I take yours on? It’s just not going to happen.

Every once in a while, rarely, somebody will say something that has my eyebrow. I can do that one eyebrow thing. That’s another thing. Go email. If I did the one eyebrow, you get out of my way. I’ll just go, well, you’re not worthy of my time. Unless they are. I might try to say, okay, what’s going on? Why are you so touchy about this? Most of the time I’ll be, okay, good luck, bye, and I forget about it. I don’t ever give it any more thought. Some people are worth your time, some people are not. It’s up to you to decide who is and who isn’t.

Susan Harrow: I think that’s brilliant advice and that’s so easy to take, especially when comments are cool or when there’s a lot of them. Brené Brown talks about that, too, just understood her Ted talk, and that was barrage. It was heart-rending. I think that women are dealing with that today. That was a big concern with two of my clients, the women clients who have really important message. I said, we’re setting up a strategy to deal with this. I actually wrote a LinkedIn post about it where there were five women who dealt with it five different ways, and I thought they were all brilliant and could be used in succession or separately, or if you just adopt one strategy, it’s whatever is right for you. No matter what is right for you, adopt a strategy. Whether it’s never reading them some people don’t read the book reviews or they don’t read the comments on social media, that’s a strategy, not giving it any energy.

There’s also a strategy of speaking back and opening a conversation. If it’s something negative that can further make sense. There are all different ways and that’s a choice, too. There was this woman, what did she write? The future is female. The Future of Food is Female. She had lots of tattoos everywhere, really gorgeous, lots of tattoos. She was having a conversation that I chimed in on LinkedIn, which I really do, about the nature of conversation and how it’s not nuanced anymore. That we really want to have these kind of conversations of connection instead of dissection or creating these rifts between us. This man popped in and said something nasty about her tattoos and she wrote back, which I thought was a brilliant comment, that’s what you’re taking away from this conversation. She made a smiley face or something and I thought, wow, that was a really brilliant way of handling that, calling it out, but in a way that was helpful to all of us, I think, and showing us a different way of dealing with this.

I thought, wow, that’s a brilliant way of doing this. I’m going to add that to my repertoire. He said something mean to her. Wait, we’re having this conversation and you’re bringing in a point that’s completely irrelevant to what we’re talking about here. Is that what you want to do? I thought it was a very nice way of doing it. It wasn’t shaming and it was done with humor, which is if you can do it with humor, that is such a wonderful methodology to save someone’s face, if that’s what you choose. And that’s a choice too. If you want to call someone out or save their face, that’s always a personal choice as well.

Denise Griffitts: It is. And you mentioned nuance. I’m not a TV watcher. I have never enjoyed TV. I barely watch movies. Although on October, I watch Harry Potter. I have a Harry Potter marathon. I’ve got a stack of videos as I’m going to watch from Garfield to Harry Potter. The thing is I really don’t enjoy and I do not enjoy American TV and I’ll tell you why, because there are no nuances. It’s in your face, slap the crap out of you and see who bleeds first. If I’m going to watch any kind of TV, it’s going to be English humor because they know what’s the heck out of everything. And I appreciate that. And old black white movies. Carrie Grant you don’t see nudity, you don’t see bodice ripping, but you understand that there are some really wonderful emotions going on there and it’s all nuanced. You don’t need to get in people’s faces all the time.

Susan Harrow: That’s a style, it’s a valid style. I do bemoan that we don’t have these kind of nuanced conversations anymore because I think it is really important to try to understand each other. The different sides of these kind of conversations that used to go on in politics way, long time ago when Democrats and Republicans would be fighting each other on the floor and then go out to lunch and have conversations. And that sadly doesn’t happen anymore. I think that is definitely something to bring back to when you mentioned listening, I think that’s something that has been lost, that we don’t have the ability. We’ve not lost the ability, but it’s in the background of actually listening to each other and seeking to understand. I mean, Stephen Covey said that, right? Seek to understand first. I think that has gone to the wayside in the light of our politics today, which is very sad.

Each of us who is in charge of ourselves only and going on the media can work to shift that conversation, I think first. What’s that saying about the little boy walking on the beach and picking up a start? He saw a whole beach full of starfishes that were washed up on the beach and he threw the starfish back in and a man, and there were thousands of them and a man came by and said, what do you think you’re doing? He said, I’m going that starfish back in. He said, well, you’re not going to make a difference and it’s not important. He threw back one and he said it made a difference to that one, but each of us can make a difference to that one, even if it was only one, and we’re in charge of ourselves. If you have the media platform, you can do this on a larger scale.

That’s what’s really beautiful about both social media and media, is that we each have that opportunity to bring to the forefront what we believe in, what we value and what’s important to our business and brand and our personal lives, all of those things together. I think personal, professional, brand and life are intertwined. Everything you do say, I think, from your words to your website, how you are professionally, personally, all aligned. That’s when you have, quote, unquote, success, when there’s that alignment, you align with, quote unquote, the universe and things happen for the good of yourself and all being, Ultimately what we’re going to do.

Denise Griffitts: I absolutely agree with you. Listen, we’ve gone a bit over, but and I normally do this much earlier in the show. Can you come back? We’re not done. We’ve got more to talk about.

Susan Harrow: Oh, I would love to. I totally love to. Yes, there are so many other topics to talk about.

Denise Griffitts: We do. This one has been fascinating and I’ve been scribbling down some questions and I’ll get that maybe the next time, but there was another topic that I wanted to talk with you about too, but I would love for you to come back, maybe in the New Year? Which is not that far away.

Susan Harrow: I’d love that. No, I would absolutely adore that. Thank you for everything that we could talk forever, it sounds and it’s been super delightful.

Denise Griffitts: I’m so glad that you were here. Do you have anything else that you want to share with the audience before I finally let you go?

Susan Harrow: I think to sit with your deepest intentions to be able to communicate. I think the big question is, what am I here to do? Does everything that I’m doing align with that? Because then everything else will fall to the wayside if you keep that in mind. What is mine to do? What am I here? What is mine to do? To incorporate that into your daily life and then into your public and private life.

Denise Griffitts: That is brilliant.

Susan Harrow: That’s what I think.

Denise Griffitts: I agree with you. I really do. We’ve always heard separate your day from your night, your family, and we’re supposed to what is that phrase? Business life. What is it? I’ve lost it.

Susan Harrow: Business life balance.

Denise Griffitts: Yeah. There’s no such thing. You can’t separate them in my world. You can’t. You are who you are and who you are. What you are is going to inform everything that you do and everything that you bring to the table. Trying to split it up sounds schizophrenic to me.

Susan Harrow: I love that Gandhi said, “My life is my message.” To me, that is the deepest way that we can be when everything we do, say, aren’t consistent and we are moving toward the person that we want to become because that’s ever in motion. And it’s not just a daily thing. I think it’s a moment-by-moment thing. It’s a thought. It is moment by moment.

Denise Griffitts: And we are what we think. No question about it.

Susan Harrow: Yes, we are what we think.

Denise Griffitts: I think that’s important for people to remember too. Listen, you’re definitely going to come back, but where can people find you?

Susan Harrow: Oh, at prsecrets.com, like publicrelationsecrets.com. And also, everyone needs a signature story. We have a document that is a PDF, that’s five templates that you can do in five minutes to create your signature story, your core story for any media interview, any speech, and it’s at prsecrets.com/sigpod.

Denise Griffitts: I’m heading over there and like I said earlier, we get tunnel vision. People will say to me, what do you do? Okay, I’m a web developer. I write code in my sleep. I’m a social media marketing person. I’m a podcaster. I’m a cat wrangler. I’ve got gumbo on the stove right now. I keep going. We just bore ourselves to death because we’re so tunnel focused. It’s crazy. I need what you just offered because I honestly need to put into words what I really do and have it make sense. I haven’t found a way to do that because I’ll start writing it down and go, oh, nobody cares about that. Nobody cares about that either. I just wander around and go back and make my gumbo. It’s a coping mechanism.

Susan Harrow: It’s hard to do it for ourselves. So these are five templates. These, of course, are not the only stories you can tell, but it’s why you do what you do story. Which I think that everybody wants to hear, why do you do what you do? They’re going to ask you, Denise, why did you write your book? That’ll be the first.

Denise Griffitts: Are you kidding? I want to know what I do. You know why I do it? I get about a bit. I go. I go. I go. I fall. I go, I go. But why? I don’t know.

Susan Harrow: That’s hilarious. Well, you’ll have to let me know what I would love you to send me when you write your signature stories or why you do what you do. I’d love to see it.

Denise Griffitts: Oh, I’m going to send it you. You have permission to edit the heck out of it or say, Denise, did you fall and hit your head? Are you okay? Do I need to call your friends? What’s going on here? But, yeah, I will do it today and I’ll send it to you. And thank you.

Susan Harrow: Thank you. Thank you for everything. I appreciate you.

Denise Griffitts: Oh, it’s been my pleasure. I’m so glad you were able to join me today. Thank you for all of the terrific tips and advice that you shared with our audience, and I hope they got as much out of it as I did. In fact, I know they did. So, before we say goodbye, I would like to remind our audience to be sure to look for us iTunes, Stitcher, Amazon Prime. Believe It or not, Audible we’re everywhere. Just wherever you consume your business podcast, look for us there. You can’t throw a stick on the Internet without hitting Your Partner In Success Radio™. Find us and take us along on your success journey. Susan, thank you so much. It has been a joy speaking with you today.

Susan Harrow: It’s my joy, too. Thank you.

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