Noah Dye on the Front Row Rule, Making the Uncertain Jump and Being Told to ‘Find Another Career’ and How He Proved Them Spectacularly Wrong

What if the very challenges threatening to derail your career are actually the golden opportunities you've been waiting for? Today's guest, Noah Dye, transformed 25 years of agency experience, into launching his own successful PR agency. His journey reveals how embracing uncertainty and viewing setbacks as stepping stones can unlock extraordinary career transformation.

Guest Bio

Noah Dye is a senior communications and business development executive with over 25 years of experience driving agency growth across B2B and B2C industries. After an impressive rise at Team Lewis from account executive to head of United States operations (overseeing six offices), Noah founded Spoken Voice PR, specializing in media relations, crisis management, executive positioning, and content strategy. His agency focuses on meaningful storytelling and genuine connection.

Connect with Noah:

• Website: https://www.thespokenvoice.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahdye/

Content Sample:

Noah shares three transformative insights that challenge conventional career wisdom:

The "Front Row Principle": A pivotal moment when his CEO pulled him from the back of conference rooms forever changed his trajectory, revealing how physical positioning reflects professional confidence and engagement.

The New Business Paradox: Discover why the most "intimidating" aspect of agency work—new business development—is actually identical to client service, just with prospects instead of existing clients.

The Selective Success Strategy: Learn Noah's controversial approach to RFPs and why saying "no" to certain opportunities became his competitive advantage in building a boutique agency.

Key Takeaways

[00:02:00] Opportunity Recognition Over Perfection: Noah emphasizes jumping at opportunities even without complete preparation—"I had none of them [the required experiences], but I jumped at that opportunity."

[00:08:00] The Front Row Transformation: His CEO's simple directive to "sit up front" instilled confidence that lasted 25 years, proving how physical presence impacts professional perception.

[00:17:00] Strategic Selectivity in Growth: "Don't do every RFP"—Noah's philosophy of choosing quality relationships over quantity leads to sustainable agency success.

[00:26:00] Culture Over Metrics: Focusing on people and culture first allows revenue and profits to follow naturally, rather than the reverse approach.

Memorable Quotes

"If you can't tell a story, social media's not gonna matter. Media relations isn't gonna matter... None of the tools are gonna matter if you don't have a voice."

Suggestions:

Ready to transform your communications career or find top talent for your team? Whether you're looking to make your next career move or need to build a world-class communications team, we're here to help. Connect with us at paradigmstaffing.com

Subscribe to Career Wanderlust for more insights from industry leaders who've navigated successful career transformations.

Host Information

Hosted by Jolie Downs with Paradigm, a voice in career evolution and growth. Jolie brings over 20 years of executive recruiting experience, helping professionals navigate career transitions and companies build exceptional teams.

Connect with Jolie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joliedowns/

Ending Note

Noah's journey reminds us that sometimes the most rewarding career moves come from stepping into the unknown. As you reflect on your own career trajectory, consider this: What opportunities are you currently viewing as challenges? How might shifting that perspective open doors you never knew existed?

Transcript

Noah Dye

Jolie Downs: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Career Wander List podcast, your compass for new career horizons.

Today we are talking with Noah Dye. Noah is a senior communications and business development executive with 25 years of experience driving agency growth and sales across B2B and B2C industries. Starting his career in the PR agency world, Noah found incredible growth with Team Lewis, where he started as an account executive and worked his way up to head of the United States, where he led operations for all six US offices with a proven track record in securing new business opportunities, expanding client portfolios, leading successful teams, and building long-term partnerships.

Noah has taken his expertise and transitioned from building for others to building for himself. He is now the founder of Spoken Voice pr, the agency, which offers services and media relations, crisis management, executive rounding and content strategy, focusing on clients that include consumer brands, B2B organizations, and C-suite executives.

For [00:01:00] all clients, Noah is prioritizing. Meaningful storytelling and genuine connection, and I'm very excited to learn more. Noah, thank you for joining us on the Career One List podcast. 

Thank you, joy. Thank you for having me. Amazing introduction. Thank you. That was, that was very nice. Great. 

Jolie Downs: You, uh, you've been doing some amazing things, you know, so I'm sure you have some excellent advice to share considering all the things that you have done.

I mean, you. You went to Team Lewis and you literally went from account executive to head of United States operations. That's absolutely incredible. Is there any advice or belief or something that helped carry you through that has benefited your career? 

Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting. It's

opportunity is the one thing that continued to come to mind, one thing that I always had at Team Lewis was another opportunity and something new to try. Mm-hmm. Um, and some people see that as a challenge. You know, I would look at some of them as big challenges, but I also saw them as an [00:02:00] opportunity.

Every new thing that came along from, you know, I was a journalism major, I thought I was gonna be behind the scenes in, storytelling and I loved my client service work and an opportunity came to an open office and I knew nothing about p and ls or margins or operationally running an agency. 

And, you know, I had enough guidance and mentorship that I jumped at that opportunity. And that is essentially sort of what took me, to where I am today. 

Jolie Downs: That's great and that's a key point that you jumped at that opportunity because so often we will hold ourselves back even, you know, I'm sure you didn't have all of the responsibilities that you needed to have experience with before you moved into that role.

Is that correct? 

Absolutely correct. Yeah. I had none of them. 

Jolie Downs: Yeah. Yeah. But you still went for it 'cause you knew that's something that you wanted to do. You knew that you could learn it and you didn't hold yourself back. And I just wanna commend you for that because that's actually a very, very big deal.

Yeah, yeah. No, it seems simple. That's, that's the challenge, in [00:03:00] that is, you know, I, I did watch people not jump at opportunity. 

Jolie Downs: Right. 

And you know, I did start thinking longer term of there can be a vision, there can be a silo, and you can have an incredible agency career by doing account servicing and client management.

I felt at the time that the broader you can make that experience, the better you have in the future. Mm-hmm. Um, and for other opportunities that might come along down the road. 

Jolie Downs: Yeah. Well, I, I agree. And then if, if you had done that and decided that you didn't like it, it wouldn't have hurt your career. It would've just given you an advantage of a, a different highline view really, of the agency world.

And if you decided to go to different world. I mean, it just would've benefited you in the long run, I would imagine so. Yeah. 

And I think people don't sort of look at agency life in that way though. Mm-hmm. Um, I think people look at agency life as well, i'm on a client servicing path and that's my career.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that's what I'll always do. Mm-hmm. You know, and I do feel you can get stuck in that. Yeah. If you don't sort of broaden out and branch into new areas, [00:04:00] agency world is huge. Yeah. You know, from new business, I sort of joke that the only thing I haven't done is HR and. Finance. Um, but

when you're pushed into some of those new areas and you take those opportunities, you learn a lot about HR and finance and legal that you never thought you would learn as a journalism major. Yeah. So yeah, you, it's the opportunity that is out there. I would just encourage more people to take,

chances and take the risk. 

Jolie Downs: Exactly. You know, it goes back to I had this guest, Christine Nyirjesy. She, she talked about how it's not a career ladder, it's a career jungle gym. And ever since then, I talk about it all the time because I think it's so apt and, and it should be spread far and wide.

'cause we have this. Picture in our head of this career ladder, like just like you said, I'm on this path. This is the path I'm going on. And if we looked at our careers like a jungle gym instead of a ladder, it would open up our eyes to all of these other areas that we can grow and learn. And sometimes we wanna jump this way, sometimes we wanna jump back or sideways.

It all just depends on what's right for you at the time. 

Yeah, I love that. I've never heard anybody explain it that way. 'cause you always hear about climbing [00:05:00] the ladder. Right. But there's a lot of, you know, downside to that as well. 

Jolie Downs: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I agree. And so I'm advocating for the Jungle Gym everywhere I go.

Jolie Downs (2): I love it. I love it. 

Jolie Downs: And you know, something else that you said that struck me was you were talking about your, you know, it's an opportunity that you had this opportunity, but some people look at a challenge and I just kind of wanted to, make a note of that because really. They're the same coin, right?

Challenges and opportunities at all depends on how you're looking at it. And I think it's, it's an important topic, if you will, because right now there's a time of great challenge for so many people in this job search market. And, and you took that challenge and you turned it into opportunity for yourself.

And so I also wanna commend you on that as well. Thank you. Yeah. 

Yeah. I think I'm just saying I think it's, you know, one of the things that the, the job market is, you know, in 2025, something I've never seen. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, it's, you constantly completely unique look around and it, it's very unique and I don't know how long it's gonna last.

Jolie Downs (2): Mm-hmm. 

Um, but you sort of look inside yourself and say, I can wait this out [00:06:00] and hope somebody else creates something for me or I can take the challenge and turn it into the opportunity that, you know, you really didn't know was in front of you. So Exactly. You sort of pushed into things sometimes but if you do look at the other side of the coin, there's a huge opportunity out there.

Jolie Downs: Yeah. Yes, exactly. And you know what, not everyone can, has the ability to go start a company, what have you, but there's other ways that we can try to at least try to find some opportunity in these challenges. Right. You know, volunteering, passion projects, there's, there's other, there's other things that, that we can at least try to find some glimmers there.

So I just wanted to for sure to say congratulations to you though 'cause it's not Thank you. It's not an easy thing to do. So, I'd love to hear a story 'cause I feel that. We learned so much from people's stories, really, you know, is there, is there anything that you've experienced in your career that that turned into impactful lesson?

Um, and by sharing the story, it might help others. 

Yeah, there, there's probably quite a few. Um, there's some, feel free to share a couple 

Jolie Downs: if you want. 

There's some I for [00:07:00] sure can't talk about. Um, no, I think it's, you know, when I think about that, um, there's one really interesting thing that happened to me very early in my career.

My first job out of college, I was an account coordinator, for a small boutique agency in the Bay Area and. I was learning everything right. I'd taken all the classes I was supposed to take and you know, school prepares you for only so much, but I was sort of that active listener and engaged listener.

I just wanted to soak it all in and understand everything about the agency life. 

Jolie Downs (2): Mm-hmm. 

And I would always sit towards the back of the conference room. We're sort of the, the last three quarters of the conference room on the table, and I did it for months, um, as I was, you know, sort of the new account coordinator, learning everything.

And I remember walking in one day to a client meeting and the CEO of the agency sort of grabbed my arm and looked at me and smiled and, and said, you're sitting up front today, you've earned it. And it sort of just, it still gives me chills to this day that the confidence that that [00:08:00] instilled in me and sort of the inspiration behind it.

From that day forward, I never sat at the back of a room. I never sat at a conference at the back. I always sat in the front row. You hear about that a lot in school, right? All the athletes are told they have to sit in the front two rows or three rows in class. 

Jolie Downs (2): Mm-hmm. 

But that one moment I do think, sort of instilled that confidence in me that, look, I'm only.

You know, six months out of college, but I now have the confidence to not sit in the back of the room anymore. I love that. And 25 years later, I remember every room I walked into, I would look to where sort of the audience would be, where the speaker would be and I focused on, okay, I'm not gonna sit in the back of the room.

I'm gonna sit and be the active, engaged listener. And you know, I think it's, it's really important that people understand that to be engaged in a conversation, to be engaged in a client meeting, you don't want to be seen as sort of sitting in the corner and hiding. And I've learned a lot from [00:09:00]clients along the way as well, who I've had clients over the years that will look at the most junior person in the room and I've had clients say to them, you're just as important in this meeting as anyone else around this table, but you're sitting 12 feet away from me versus three feet away from me.

So I think that, you know, that still sticks with me today of that CEO just sort of getting around me and saying, you're not sitting in the back of the room anymore. 

Jolie Downs (2): I love this. So 

it was really powerful for me and I took it, you know, throughout my career and realized that the importance of making yourself involved and making yourself engaged in the discussion.

Jolie Downs: Yes. That's great advice. You know, is there, is there any other advice you get? So let's say, let's say there's some junior people and they're, they're listening to this right now and they're thinking, okay, I'm gonna go, you know what, next meeting, I'm gonna go sit in the front of the room. They didn't have a boss tell 'em that, but they're gonna go do it now.

Is there anything else that you would tell them to give them little boost or that little confidence or anything that they should do, you know, as a junior person [00:10:00] in the room that could help them? 

Yeah, I mean, we talked about it a little bit earlier is, is take every opportunity. Mm-hmm. But what's really hard to do, sort of as you're coming through an agency world or even an in-house role in corporate is see every opportunity.

So I think that, you know, being more proactive for younger team members is extremely important. But that comes from leadership. Enabling, you know, the junior team members to come with ideas, to encourage them to come with ideas, to ask the question. You know, maybe it's a client program, we've always done it this way.

Why are we still doing it this way? Because not every opportunity is going to be just given to you. Yeah. You know, there's no harm in asking or, shooting for the stars. Yes. You know, you can be told no. Right. That's not gonna hurt that much. 

But one thing is if you never ask for new opportunities, people aren't gonna continue to present them to you.

Jolie Downs (2): Mm-hmm. So a lot of 

opportunities are not there to be seen. You have to uncover some of those on your own. 

Jolie Downs: Have you ever uncovered an [00:11:00] opportunity on your own by asking? 

Um, I don't know if it was on my own but you know, throughout my career I've definitely seen a lot of change in the industry.

Mm-hmm. I've seen some very good change. I've seen some bad change. I've seen some ugly change. 

There were a lot of times where I felt we could do things differently and I would often just raise my hand. You know, I took on our new business, out of opening an office because I saw, again, another opportunity for something in the agency world that I wasn't doing 

Jolie Downs (2): right.

And again, new business and marketing within an agency. I would almost encourage everyone to try their hand at it. Great experience. It's not as scary as it looks, when you're coming from client Servicing new business is essentially exactly the same thing. 

Jolie Downs (2): Mm-hmm. You're just 

talking to prospects or other companies that aren't your client yet.

But you're listening to the same challenges that your clients are facing and [00:12:00] you're offering solutions to solve those challenges. Mm-hmm. But that's a big thing. I think everyone, it should almost be a requirement in the agency world, for everyone to go through new business, everyone to have to prospect, for everyone to have to sit through pitch training and, and, you know, RFPs, I.

I don't know. We could have an entire discussion on RFPs, but I think going through the process of agency, new business procurement and just understanding how it works is extremely important to any junior team member. 

Jolie Downs: Absolutely. Well, it teaches you incredible, I mean, incredible amount. Now, here's what I'm wondering,

for people who are a little scared of that though. 'cause look, this is this like biz dev, that's a topic that can actually bring a little fear into people. 

Absolutely. So 

Jolie Downs: for those people, do you still feel like it's a good idea and why? 

I think it's a great idea. Yeah. I think it's actually even a better idea.

Yes. For anyone that has fear in new business to participate in. Right? Yes. 'cause you do realize that it's not scary, after you [00:13:00] start doing it. 

Noah Dye: Yes. 

Prospecting, but if you think about it, if you're working on a client and you're doing media relations for a client that, to me was always much more scary than talking to a, a prospective client.

Mm-hmm. You know, it's not that different. Yeah. And again, I think what you have to realize is if you've been in the agency world for a little while, you have enough experience to go out and talk to, you know, prospective clients about their challenges. Mm-hmm. And that should be where the discussion starts.

Not selling anything or salesy. I was not a sales, I, I was a journalism major. I wanted to be behind, I wanted to write, I wanted to tell stories. Mm-hmm. And then all of a sudden you realize, well wait a minute. I can do that through a new business process. I can tell even more fun stories doing this because I'm not set to any standards.

I don't have any KPIs yet. I can have a lot more fun in the new business process than, you know, in anything else. 

Jolie Downs (2): Mm-hmm. 

So I think it's one of those things where, yes, it looks scary from the outside. [00:14:00] The minute you start doing it, a new business win, if celebrated correctly, is just the same as a big media hit for a client or an engagement that you hadn't had before, or video views going through the roof.

All of it is just as exciting. 

Jolie Downs: It's empowering, isn't it? Especially, yeah. Especially when you step into something that you're scared of and then you do it. It's, it's so empowering 'cause it's like, wow, wait a minute. That wasn't as scary as I thought. Look, I I just did that. That means I could do, I could do, I could do that over there.

So, 

exactly. And I think, you know, from a leadership perspective, one of the most fulfilling things that you'll ever see is the look on a junior team member's face or even a mid-level team member when. You go through a pitch process and the pitch process can be very challenging. Mm-hmm. It's, you know, it's a lot of work.

It's a lot of research, it's a lot of creative, there's a lot of moving parts in it. But then you look at the face after the pitch and directly after it, not even a decision has been [00:15:00] made, but you walk out of the room and you can see just the relief for one. But you can see sort of a. A sense of accomplishment on the other side of it.

Yeah. And for leadership, that is, for me personally, one of the most fulfilling things I ever experienced is that is awesome. You know, taking someone that had never been through the process before and then watching them walk out of that room after a pitch or ah, the zoom call more recently, and just the sense of success that they felt through that part of the process.

And then you win the business. They raise their hand for the next one and they say, I want to do that again. That was really 

Noah Dye: fun. I was like, but you told me last week you were scared to death of this. 

Now they want to do it every time. Right. 

Jolie Downs: That's a deep leadership win. Deep, deep win. Yes, 

Jolie Downs (2): yes.

Jolie Downs: Yeah, for sure. That's fantastic. You know, just, before we move on, on the topic of RFPs and new business pitching, whatnot, just because I know you had such an involvement with that, it's a success that you've had. It's something you're very good on. Is there any advice that you'd give people, who are really involved in new business and maybe they're [00:16:00] struggling with it a little bit.

Is there any advice that has helped you land those, like something that helps carry you and win those pitches, if you will? 

Yeah. This is not as controversial as it used to be, but don't do every RFP. Don't do RFPs. You know, I'm lucky now. Mm-hmm. I think I'm in a place where I can say that a little more freely.

You know, starting your own agency, you can work to your terms. Right. Um, I can say no to business that is not a good fit. I can say no to a situation that I know is not going to be really beneficial for myself or for the potential client. But the RFP process is, it's not anything that any other, you know, former agency or agency leader will tell you it's broken.

Many on the brand side feel it's broken. Mm-hmm. We've seen a massive increase in sort of procurement led searches. Yeah. And you know, a lot of times those aren't really searches. They're not really RFPs. And, you know, agencies can spend a ton of time and a ton of resources, a ton of investment on pursuing business that [00:17:00] is never really gonna be there.

Jolie Downs (2): Mm-hmm. 

There were a number of times where I would ask the question upfront, like, look, are we, going through a process or is this truly a search that you know is going to take place? And the one thing that I always learned was if I don't have access to the decision maker. At the beginning of the process, I don't wanna participate.

So if this is a financial exercise, i'm not interested in participating. Mm-hmm. If this is truly a, we've met a challenge that we cannot solve with the current relationship that we have, then we'll have the discussion. 

But I think the RFP process, it, it's changing. I've seen, um, but I also think our industry is changing, uh, dramatically.

Very much dramatically. What do think of that? New business is always gonna be a grind. Yeah. Agency life. And you either have to love it or, you know, hate it. But I think one of the things that can differentiate, you know, sort of boutique and smaller agencies from some of the midsize to large agencies is being [00:18:00] much more selective.

Jolie Downs (2): Mm-hmm. 

Like I said, there's certain things that I'm just not gonna do. Yeah. I'm not gonna take on business. That again is, you know, I'm not gonna be a good resource for that business. It's not gonna be a good long-term relationship. 

Jolie Downs: Yeah. And I now luckily, 

am able to do that 

Jolie Downs: very wise. I'm curious being in business as long as you have, I'm sure you've gone through.

A lot of different career challenges, so I'm curious if you could share with us some type of career challenge that you've gone through, that you've overcome and what you learned from it. 

Yeah, I think probably, I don't know if this is surprising or interesting. I thought that I was gonna be working in someone else's agency for the remainder of my career.

I didn't know if it was gonna be for Lewis or if it was gonna be for someone else. But that was sort of the path that I thought I was on. But then I started sort of seeing, I mentioned the good, the bad, the ugly earlier. I started seeing our industry change pretty significantly in the last few years.

Maybe it was coming out of Covid. Clients and [00:19:00] brands were looking for something completely different. And the challenge for me became how do I really back a massive budget campaign with the results that the client is expecting? And I think one of the challenges that face agents today is they're doing a lot of different things, you know?

Right. Very few traditional PR agencies that haven't expanded into social and digital and research and strategy and analytics and all of the things. Yeah, which is great. It's great for some brands. Yeah. It's not great for all brands. Yeah. There are some brands and there's still a lot of brands that need the initial.

We don't even know what to say. How do we talk about ourselves? How do we tell a story? And the challenge for me in that was, well, I can do all these other things for you. Realizing that they only needed one thing, they needed someone to [00:20:00] come in and develop their messaging, develop their narrative. You can't go and start running paid ads if you don't have a story to tell.

So from an agency standpoint, I was challenged with how do you solve the challenges for many different types of business versus just throwing the kitchen sink at everybody and saying, this is how much we charge for this, and this is what we're gonna do. Not everybody needs that. So that was the point where I kind of started looking around going, there's still an opportunity for this industry to have something completely different.

And I'm seeing a lot of successful sort for former agency folks like myself, that have started their own agencies. Mm-hmm. And, you know, started very small. But again, they saw the challenge in the industry. And I think, you know, one of the reasons of doing what I'm doing now is getting back to basics.

And yes, there's tons of technologies out there that are changing our industry. But storytelling, being at the heart of what we do day in and [00:21:00] day out, there's tons of channels to help tell those stories now. But if you can't tell the story and come up with a story and sort your narrative, you're not gonna go anywhere.

Exactly. So I think that's one of the biggest things, you know, it's personally for me as a challenge was there's so many things that we can do, but what are we gonna do really, really well to make the client successful?

Jolie Downs: So important. 

And that's the back to basics, right? Right. The clients matter. The team members matter.

And that's what I'm hoping to do now. Yeah. 

Jolie Downs: I think it, it, it really, and the back to basics is. Such a key aspect of success really. I mean, whether it's in your life or your career, personal or professional development, I, I found that when things start going off the rails a little bit or I don't know, when you're in that, that cycle of difficulty of

challenge where you're not seeing the opportunity if you'll, you know, I mean, it, it really, so often it's going back to the basics that that [00:22:00] helps, right the system, right, the ship. Like, it, it's all going back to those basics and figuring out what are those key things that you need to do, the key things you need moving forward.

Again, whether it's your career life, starting an agency, going back to the basics so often is that first move that we need to do to right whatever is going wrong. And so I love, I love this. Yeah, I love this. I think it's great. Could you tell us more about spoken voice pr? I mean, how do people find you?

Like who, who, who should be contacting you? Is there anything else that you can share with us about 

your agency? Yeah, so it, it's a great segue. So coming off of sort of that challenge, opens up the opportunity, right? So I sat down and really started thinking like, what am I. What do I have to offer to the industry, and to prospective clients, and that sort of journalism background, the storytelling, side of what I do.

I love the client service work that I was doing and throughout your career you start to develop new, new sort of strengths and, and tools throughout, what you do. So I started the spoken voice as sort of that way [00:23:00] to give brands back, get brands back to basics, starting with the voice. Because I think that is the most important thing that we have.

Yeah. And if you can't tell a story, again, social media's not gonna matter. Media relations isn't gonna matter, digital is not gonna matter. Whatever that means to everybody nowadays. But none of the tools or the channels that we have available to us are gonna matter if you don't have a voice. Yeah. And you know, I thought that based on those 25 years of working inside agencies, bring it back to what I really enjoyed doing within the agency world, which was telling those stories. I'm really excited, like I said, consumer tech cybersecurity, more B2B tech opportunities. I'm excited about, again, I just

part of having so much time in an agency, you get such a broad range of experience 

that you start to find the niche of the areas you really like, or you stay as broad as possible and take on the type of business or [00:24:00] more for me as the type of founder. Or the marketing contact that I want to work with.

Because that can be a big challenge, for, tell us the type of 

Jolie Downs: finder. Get what's your type of founder? 

I love the founders that are controversial. 

Jolie Downs (2): Mm-hmm. 

That offer. The freedom for, you know, their internal teams to tell their own stories. But also founders that are still learning and willing to admit that they're still learning.

And. Many are, right? Mm-hmm. Um, it's just having the right conversations and the right respect. 

Jolie Downs: Anyone's still learning. 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's, 

Jolie Downs: can I just say that anyone, people comes to tell me and say that they know everything, I'm gonna have some problems with it. 

There are some people that still feel that, you know, they're the smartest person in the room.

Yeah. Oh yeah. And those are, you can find that really quickly during a discussion and [00:25:00]that's, you know, if you know what I'd like to work with, that's absolutely what I do not wanna work with. I agree. If you're not willing to take counsel, if you're not willing to listen to others within your team or within outside your team.

That's not somebody that I wanna work with or a brand that, you know, I would put in front of anyone to work 

Jolie Downs (2): with. Mm-hmm. 

Completely agree. You know, so that's, you know, what I'm excited about now is. On my terms, I get to make those decisions. Yeah. Um, you know, and I've, I've learned a lot over 25 years from incredible people.

You know, but what's really interesting is when you sit back and think about your career, and if you have time to sit down and think about your career, you understand all of the incredible mentors you had and all of the things that you learned from many people, but you also learn the things that you don't want to do and how you can do it differently.

And to me, that is more of an important lesson for people to learn. And I wish more people would learn that early and often. [00:26:00] Yeah. Versus sort of sitting back and going, oh, it's, you know, this is how business works. 

Jolie Downs (2): Mm-hmm. 

You know, if you feel uncomfortable in business, it's not how it works.

Jolie Downs: Yeah. I'm curious, what's something that happened in your career where you learned that you're like, oh, I'm, I'm not going to do this, actually. 

Yeah. I think, well, and I think this is potentially, you know, what's happening in our industry now is that we've gotten too big in some areas to focus on what matters.

And that's what I talk about. Back to basics. You know, the basics to me are clients, and that's what we all do this for, but the team also matters, to me. And I had a number of, of experiences where I felt that the industry would lose sight of that. And all of a sudden we're focused on, you know, and I get, somebody can say, well, if you don't focus on your margins and your p and ls and your profit and all of that good stuff, you're never gonna have a business.

I really believe that you can focus on people and your culture and if [00:27:00] you get those things right, the revenue and the profits and all those things will follow that completely. Um, so I've just seen too many agencies over the years that I think, again, they grow really fast and they don't know what the hell to do with it after that.

And you start to lose the culture. Mm-hmm. And once your culture is gone. Everything else is gonna go as well. 

Jolie Downs: Completely agree, and exactly what you said. I can, I can say with certainty. I, I have talked to so many different people who have run companies just like that, who have, you know, they didn't listen to all the things that everyone was saying.

They basically built it. Through desire, through passion, through fun, through all the good things, and created this amazing culture that just kept bringing in amazing talent and they just kept growing and expanding. And it like, it becomes this living, breathing thing. 

Jolie Downs (2): Yeah. When you know 

Jolie Downs: that people are so attracted to, and it just, it, it becomes, its own entity, if you will, when it has that amazing energy at the core.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I was sort of the culture [00:28:00] and I've been around a lot of incredible cultures and I've been part of teams that have built amazing cultures. I won't name names and when this happened, but I was once told, that maybe I should look for a different career. 

Jolie Downs: Why? 

I didn't know at the time why.

What I found out later was I was leaving something that I had been doing and the individual that made the comment was upset that I was leaving, and it was, it took me a long time to figure it out. It initially made me think, wow, maybe I should do something else if I'm not very good. That was the sort of

individual sort of pushing their negativity onto me. 

Noah Dye: Right? 

And early in your career, you look at that and you go, oh, okay, maybe they're right. They've done this for so long, they've been successful, and they're telling me maybe I should look at doing something else. Well, I'll tell you, I saw that individual [00:29:00] 10 years later, and the comment was,

what the hell are you doing? You trying to take over the world now? And I said, well, I didn't go into another career, but yes. Yes.

So it's. Career sort of advice and, don't ever let anyone tell you what they think you should do. Mm-hmm. You make the decisions on your own. No. And then if you can rub it in their face years later, even better. Even better. 

Jolie Downs: Even better. Even better. Yes. My previous boss before I started my company say, you know, he told me that I would absolutely fail when I started my own agency and sent me a threat of lawsuit as well to make sure that I could have no contact with anyone that I had previous contact with.

And make sure I starting from scratch, but, yes. Yeah. That's the, I'm here 25 years later to 20 Exactly. 

Four, 

Jolie Downs: what have you. Exactly. That's the 

motivation, right? Yeah. For, for me, at least for you, I know that's the motivation. Like, [00:30:00]okay, tell me I can't do something. And there's the opportunity coming from the challenge.

Right, 

Jolie Downs: exactly. Well, and that's the thing, we can't let, we cannot let other people's own saboteurs, own negative voices, influence our own. And, and I will admit, you know, I did not let him influence me. Then I have another, I think of another situation in my life where I did let someone's voice influence me.

Yeah. And, and while I'd like to be like, oh, you know, how could he or screw him? It's my fault for listening. It's my fault. You know, I can recognize that now that I should not have internalized that. I mean, it's easier said than done, especially at a young age or at a fragile time in life.

You know, these things can get, but it's an important lesson. For anyone listening who might be going through a difficult time, who might be feeling fragile, you know, do not let anyone else's voice, anyone else's negativity, anyone else's own saboteurs, sabotage your own life or impact you. You need to listen to yourself.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you listen to those around you that, you know, and respect. Respect 

Jolie Downs (2): you, who want the best for you. 

Yeah, because [00:31:00] there's, and what's really interesting that I found through this process over, you know, the last six months of leaving somewhere, I'd been a really long time.

To going out on my own. Was that the network that you built during that time is there to support you and the messages and sort of the, the inbound things that I'm hearing still today from former colleagues, from former clients, from former reporters that I worked with, you know, 15, 18 years ago.

It sort of gives you that boost, right of wait, I can do this. And you realize. That your network is much stronger than any one individual. Hmm. 

Jolie Downs: Absolutely. Absolutely. I, that just gave me chills. I love that actually. So, um, this has been great. Yeah. I, you know, I, I would love to ask people, uh, because I'm very passionate about feeding our mind, and I think it's, I think it's incredibly important just because of.

This world that we live in with information coming out even more so right now where it's such a, an uncertainty that's happening. There's, there's a lot of people going through challenge, there's a lot of [00:32:00] people out of work, and I just think that it's incredibly important that we're feeding our mind in the most proactive ways possible because there's a lot of negativity coming at us.

And, uh, I'm curious if there's anything that you read or watch or listen to that helps feed your mind in a positive way or has had a positive impact on you that could. Positively impact others as well. 

Yeah. Um, so I obviously, you know, journalism major, big reader thought I was gonna be the next Walter Cronkite.

That obviously didn't happen. Um, there's still time. There's still time, right? I could, maybe that'll be next. I, I 

Jolie Downs: mean, another thing to conquer Yes. Maybe, maybe eighties. 

Yeah. You never, um, um, you see me, those are all like historical, um, you know, images of of the, baseball gear. So batting, helmets, gloves, catcher's masks.

But I absolutely love sort of true life sports stories. And, you know, not sort of biographies about super successful, you [00:33:00] know athletes, those were great too. But I love sort of the real life, human stories of inspiration, overcoming something. It was an incredible book I just finished called the, boys of Riverside.

Cool. And it's about a deaf football team in Riverside, California. And. Absolutely something unbelievable. My sister-in-law turned it, turned me onto it, and, it's just one of those stories of, you know, it touches your heart. It's got the sports sort of drama to it. But it, it gives you all the things that the outside world right now doesn't give you.

Right. You know, it's a high school football team and you look at it from the outset and go, wait, how do you, they're, they're a deaf team. And do they do this? And the amazing stories. And they ended up winning a state championship. Sorry, don't wanna give away too much, in the book. But, it's incredible.

And I love, you know, every type of book I'll take recommendations if people have 'em, of, sort of humans in any capacity overcoming those challenges. Because again, I think it helps you [00:34:00]block out everything that's going on in the world, all the negativity that we, that we see right now.

And it, it stops you from sort of the doom scrolling that, all of us are guilty of doing. Absolutely. So I love that. I think, you know, anything I can find that has that sort of human inspirational story of overcoming a challenge. Um, but the Boys of Riverside phenomenal, phenomenal book. So 

Jolie Downs: love it.

I'm excited to put, I'm a hundred percent reading that. My family are very, very big sports fanatic. So this is something we could all read together. Have a little Yes, exactly. Have a little, a little book club in the family or something. 

Noah Dye: I love it. Always fun. Yes. 

Jolie Downs: You know, my teenage, they really love that.

Noah Dye: Right. Not have the family chat afterwards. Yeah, 

Jolie Downs: exactly. Oh, 

Noah Dye: that's classic. 

Jolie Downs: No, but thank you. That's a, that's a perfect example. I'm curious, is there anywhere you go for those stories? Like is there a website or something that has really good sports, sports stories? Just 'cause I be into that 

so Good. I, again, turned on by [00:35:00] somebody else.

But Good reads, good reads is where. So I needed, this was years ago, but, sort of a way to track, um mm-hmm. Because I'm also a huge John Grisham fan. Me too. But I have forgotten how many of his books I've read and so many times I, you know, I used to travel a lot during the week and I'd be in the airport and I'd have finished a book on the plane and I'd run in and, and grab one and I'd start, and I'd get to page three or two and go, I've read this.

So I needed a way to track it. So in Good Reads, it lets you sort of track all of your books, but it also then will give you recommendations. Um, 

Jolie Downs: oh God, yes. Okay. So you could follow. Mm-hmm. Here's 

the 12 books that you've read. Here's your, you know, legal thrillers and then here's, you know, some recommendations on sports, you know, history or, uh, you know, human interest type of books that you might like as well.

Yeah. 

Jolie Downs: Great place to go for it. That's perfect. 

Yeah. 

Jolie Downs: This has been wonderful. Noah. I am so grateful for your time. Thank you for joining us. I'm gonna throw out one final question at you right before we [00:36:00] go, 'cause I love to hear answers. What are you sure of in life? 

I am sure of my family in life. And like you said earlier, those around you that love and respect you.

Um, I know that I will always have that no matter what. Again, what's going on personally, what's going on professionally, uh, you know, family is the, the truest thing, um, that I think any of us have. So, to me that's, again, that's, that's why I do it professionally as who I am, and I really believe that, you know, family, it starts there.

Jolie Downs: I agree. It's be very beautiful. Thank you so much, Noah. I really appreciate your time,

Julie. Thank you. I appreciate it. It's great to have a discussion with you. 

Jolie Downs: You too. Thank you for joining us on the Career Wanderlust podcast. If you find value in learning from others, give us a like and subscribe. If you're looking to grow your communications, marketing, public relations, or sales and biz dev team with the best talent, and [00:37:00] quickly check us out@paradigmstaffing.com and submit a request.

We are wishing you a most successful and fulfilling career Until next time.