Confidence and PR: What I Got Wrong

For years PR expert Pippa Goulden thought confidence was a byproduct of doing PR work. The nice thing that happened after the results came in.

Preparing for a talk on visibility and confidence made her realise she had it completely the wrong way around.

In this episode Pippa shares why confidence is not the destination but the thing that grows through doing the work. And why waiting to feel ready is the trap that keeps brilliant founders invisible.

In this episode:

• Why confidence is a muscle not a feeling 
• Why clarity is the biggest confidence accelerator Pippa has seen 
• The founders who are building confidence fastest and what they are doing differently 
• Why the nos matter just as much as the yeses 
• And the real reason you need to send the f*cking email

And once you've had a listen  you can explore the different ways of working with me: 

- Work with me 1-2-1 in Authority: The Impact Accelerator which is a hyper-focused, action-taking, results focused programme that's all about getting you great PR results for your business, with me supporting you all the way.

- Join my DIY PR membership using the code POD50 to get 50% off your first month - this will give you all the knowledge and confidence you need to get results for yourself. Have a look here 

Follow me on instagram @pippa_the.pr.set or LinkedIn (@Pippa Goulden) for more tips and insight into the world of PR

Find out more at www.theprset.com 

Book a discovery call with me to chat more here or email me pippa@theprset.com

Transcript

This transcript is created by AI - apologies for any mistakes

Pippa Goulden (00:43)
Hello and welcome back to PR Made Simple. Now, I slightly fell off the podcasting wagon for a few weeks. Life just got in the way. It's been really busy. I've had my Get No Launch. I've had lots of other things going on, some really great client work that I've been delivering and something had to give and unfortunately it was the podcast. But it does mean that I am back, feeling fresh. I've put my podcasting shoes back on. I am here.

and I'm gonna be talking today about something that actually happened over the last few weeks whilst I was off on my podcasting holiday. Something that I realized that, you know, I'm more than happy to admit, but I wanna talk about something today that I got wrong. And it's been a really interesting evolution of my thinking around this subject. And I'm gonna be talking about confidence today.

And for years, I thought that confidence was a byproduct of doing this PR work. It was the nice thing that happened after you sent the email and got the yes. after you did the talk and nailed it. You saw your name in the publication, your ideal clients read. I thought that confidence came after the action, that it was the reward at the end. But I was asked to do a...

talk in the brilliant Wilder Collective, which is Nikki Dentzen-Elliott's amazing community. she's doing a whole year called the Confidence Project. And each month is dedicated to a different element of confidence. And so it's been really interesting listening to the podcast she's been doing and the talk she's been doing around that each month relating to a different subject. And this month, the subject was visibility and confidence. And I was asked

by Nikki to do the talk in the community for her because she knew that it was a subject that I was very passionate about in terms of helping women to step up and get known for what they do. And I sat with it and I did lots of prep around it, some reading, some listening to other people's kind of thoughts around it. And I realized that I had it the wrong way around.

And I think that this reframe might change things for you too, which is why I want to talk about it in more detail today on the podcast. So when I started the PR set over five years ago, I knew mindset would be important. I knew the overthinking and the fear of putting yourself out there was such a big part of what held founders back. It was what stopped me from starting my own business for so long.

but I kind of thought of confidence as like the end result, the by-product, the thing that you arrived at after you'd done the work, the peacock feathers coming out after that first big yes and seeing that kind of momentum build. And it is partially true, it does happen, I see it all the time. I work with a one-to-one client who is a family lawyer, she came to me wanting to build her authority in a genuinely competitive industry. So we worked on her positioning.

her authority ecosystem, her pitches, and she got on panels, she got on podcasts, she got in front of referral partners, target clients, and by the end of six months, she said to me, it wasn't about the press coverage or the opportunities. you gave me confidence to put myself forward for things that I would have not gone for before. And that's the thing I'd been missing. And it's funny because this is what people say to me all the time when they've done this work, is that I'm now...

pitching myself for opportunities that I just wouldn't have done. Because I think I've been treating confidence as this nice side effect rather than understanding what it actually is. And by doing this work over the last few weeks, I've really changed my thinking around it. So what I now believe is that confidence isn't just the byproduct of doing this work. It's woven through every single part of it. It's the thing that grows as you do it. And it's possibly the most important and least talked about.

part of this whole journey as a founder, because what I see when founders start doing this work properly, it doesn't start with a big confident moment. That moment never comes. So if you're sitting there waiting to feel more confident before you start, it's not going to happen. It starts with a wobble. It starts with the email sitting in the drawer for three weeks, the overthinking.

the time you spend in your head wondering if the pitch is going to be well received or whether they'd be interested in you on their podcast or on their stage. It starts with that pitch that you rewrite 17 times with the hand that you almost put up for the speaking opportunity. But then something happens. So you get clear on what you want to get known for, really clear.

and something shifts before you send that pitch, your shoulders go back a little, your voice gets a bit more certain, that wobble is kind of diminished a bit. And not because anything external has changed, but because you've got more clarity and that in itself creates more internal

another one-to-one accelerator

work with Nicola, she's a leadership coach and when she came,

to me, like she said this on her LinkedIn, she thought PR was about spin and performance, not for her, but as we worked on her positioning and she got really clear on what she wanted to get known for, something shifted. Before she'd even pitched herself, she created the purpose papers, which was her own series of white papers, like her thought leadership, her stake in the ground, and she started showing up differently.

And incrementally, I could see the shift happening. You know, she won awards, she got featured in Stylist, Director Magazine, and now she says that clients arrive at discovery calls already knowing that they want to work with her. The call's almost a formality. And that's not just the PR result. That is what confidence does for you as a founder in your business. Because you send the email, you get the yes, and the confidence that then gives you from that

one yes isn't small it's significant because you've got the evidence you've got evidence that people are interested in what you've got to say evidence that the right people want to hear from you evidence that you were right to back yourself in the first place and that evidence builds and builds with every pitch you send every yes builds on the last one every stage you stand on every podcast that you record every journalist who comes back for more even the no's i think

actually help to build your confidence as you go through it because you kind of start to realize that the no's don't matter as much and that in itself is confidence building. It all builds into something that starts changing how you show up in every area of your business one of my accelerator clients said something about this as well she said the way

that your confidence grows when you send the fucking email and get a yes. When you host the event, when you appear on the podcast, the right people feel that confidence, right? That's it. That's the whole thing because confidence isn't just internal. It radiates. It's that energy and it changes what you put out into the world. The more you are believing in yourself, the more that your confidence is growing, the more that that attracts the right people. Your ideal clients,

the journalists, the other opportunities, they start coming to you because they want to work with you. They feel it, they're drawn to it. I'd never say to do this work for your ego, absolutely not. Don't lead with wanting to be famous. But watching those peacock feathers come out and watching what follows, the bigger opportunities, the better clients, the confidence in your pricing, all of those things, the business starts feeling like it was built for you and that is so...

extraordinary to witness. I bloody love it. And here's the bit that I think is the most important thing that lands with this confidence conversation. It's that most founders are waiting to feel confident before they start. They think that confidence is a prerequisite, that something that they need to have before they can pitch themselves, before they can put their hands up, before they can send the email. They're waiting for a feeling that will not arrive until after they act. Okay? And it's a trap.

Because if you wait until you feel confident, you're gonna be waiting forever. Confidence is not a feeling you decide to have, it's a muscle that you build by doing the thing that scares you anyway. And that was the real penny drop moment for me when I was doing all of this research and insight into doing this presentation around confidence and visibility. It was that confidence doesn't just arrive, it's the muscle. So the more you're exercising it, the more you're practicing, the more you're using it, the more you're doing it,

the more likely you are to build that confidence and it will build through so many different areas of your own business. And I know this from my own experience. I've talked about this before, but I wanted to do a particular speaking opportunity for over three years, three and a half years of telling myself, they'll find me, they'll come to me when they want me, thinking they'll discover me that, oh God, please don't wait three and a half years because

What I did was I had a word with myself. I did some coaching, I got out of my own way and I sent the fucking email. And within two weeks, I had a call with the organizer. The following January, I did the talk and it was one of the best things I've ever done in my business. Not just because of the people in that room, the opportunities that being in that room created, because it absolutely did. It helped get people into my membership, it helped fill my Get Known program.

but it was more because of what it gave me, the evidence that I could do it, the confidence that built from having done it. And I realized that on the other side of that fear was joy, like real joy, real fun in my business. And I think that that confidence gap isn't actually about capability, it's about not being able to see it yourself clearly. You know, I had a conversation with an amazing founder recently who,

told me that she didn't do PR, she tried it, it was a bit of a waste of time, she'd paid an agency, it hadn't worked, so she'd written it off entirely. But what I'd seen with her in her business was that actually she's incredibly good at her own PR. She just hadn't really realized that what she was doing PR. She'd built an entire authority ecosystem, you know, without really knowing it, YouTube videos, podcast appearances, a reputation that means people recommend her.

so much when she is not in the room. I see her being recommended in groups and communities I'm in all the time. She wasn't lacking capability, she was just lacking the confidence to see that what she had already had and to make it work strategically. And we had a power hour and that was a real shift for her. It was that kind of clarity that actually she was doing it right and it was working for her business. There wasn't anything missing from it, but actually maybe doing it strategically and doing it more proactively.

was gonna reap its rewards for her in that business. So when you're sitting on that pitch, when you're talking yourself out of that opportunity, because I know you are, we have all done it, we all do it, I still do it, I have to check in, I have to check myself, I have to send Mrs. Doubtfire back to the kitchen because she is not helpful for me in this situation. And when you're waiting to feel ready, please know.

that you do not send the email because you feel confident because it's suddenly arrived at you. You feel confident because you sent the email. So what does this mean for how you approach this work? It really means stop waiting. The confidence you're waiting for is on the other side of the action that you are avoiding doing. It means starting small if you need to. You do not have to pitch to Lorraine or this morning on day one.

You pitch to the niche podcast, you pitch to the local magazine, you pitch to the industry newsletter, you pitch to your network, people that you know to collaborate with, to do things with, and you build from there. And so each small yes, deposits confidence for the bigger asks. It's a build. It's not a thing that you do a one and done, right? What I would really recommend is getting clear on your positioning first because that is

the single biggest confidence accelerator I have seen doing this work with founders is that clarity because when you know what you want to get known for, when you can articulate it clearly and specifically, confidence comes from that because you can stop second guessing every pitch because you know exactly what you're pitching for and why. One founder who did my Get Known program, before she started, she said she'd been approached to be on podcasts but said no because she didn't really know what she wanted to talk about and she felt so unconfident doing them.

But by doing the work and get known, by getting really clear around what she wanted to get known for, she was then able to do that really easily because she had that backing. She'd done the thinking. She knew what she wanted to talk about. And that was that muscle, that confidence muscle being exercised. You don't have to do this work alone. So the founders I see building confidence fastest are the ones doing this work in a community with accountability, with someone who can see their business from the outside and reflect back what they already have.

because sometimes you cannot see your own authority, you need someone else to show it to you. I cannot tell you the number of six and seven incredibly successful business owners who don't feel confident at the start of this work with me, okay? Now that doesn't happen for long because I can see the opportunities for them and I can understand the crux of their business and I can help them to get there, but I want you to know that whatever level of business owner you are,

you will be starting this work apprehensive and nervous. Okay, they're not coming to me going, yee-haw, let's go. I mean, some of them do, but they're not, you know, they're not thinking I've nailed it. I own this, you know, everyone has a wobble around it. And it's hard, isn't it? Because what I'm asking you to do is to trust the process even when you can't see the results yet, because the confidence is building even when that press coverage hasn't even arrived yet.

One of my one-to-one accelerator clients had two separate journalists contact her in the same week to contribute to features. She'd pictured them months before, she'd been on their radar. I think she'd done some work for either one or both of them, you know, but she'd just forgotten about them and got on with her business. And the confidence she's built from doing this work strategically, from knowing her positioning was right, her pitches were strong, meant she doesn't give up, okay? She's trusting the process and that evidence comes back to her because...

two journalists get in touch with her. I think it was on the same day, both coming to her, both asking her to contribute to features that she was more than qualified to help them out with. So every email sent, every picture written, every opportunity pursued is adding to your evidence base and evidence is what confidence is built on. And I am so glad that I had this realization. I am so grateful to Nikki for actually asking me to do this and me spending the time thinking about it because

It's kind of shifted my own approach as well. Like I am not sitting waiting for things to happen to me. You know, I've already had that one real transition in my business where I made that determined effort. But I've also like, I've sent more pitches, I would say in the last week or so since doing that session, because I know that I'm exercising that muscle and I've got really excited. I've done a few things that I would never, I've never even thought about considered pitching for. So watch this space. I'll let you know what happens with those.

So, you know, I started this episode telling you about the thing that I got wrong and I wholeheartedly tell you now that what I was wrong about was thinking that confidence was the destination or the byproduct of this work, like the nice to have, but it's not, okay? It's part of the process as a founder. It's the thing that grows with every step you take towards getting known for what you do, towards putting yourself out there, towards building your profile.

So whatever you are waiting to feel ready for, whatever pitch has been sitting in your drafts, whatever opportunity you've been talking yourself out of, I want you to know you're ready. You're as ready as you need to be, right? You just need to send the fucking email. And if you want support doing this work, you know where I am. You can find me at the prset.com. I'm Pippa the PR Set on Instagram and I am Pippa Gordon on LinkedIn.

And at the moment you can work with me in my DIY PR membership, my one-to-one accelerator, my get known sprint will be back in the autumn. There's lots going on in the PR set in Q3 and Q4. I am planning some really juicy things and I cannot wait to tell you more about them. But that is me for now. Just have a think about what I've said about confidence. I hope this has landed for you. I hope it's resonated. Like send me some messages if you've listened to this, because I would love to know.

how you approach confidence, what you think about it, if it's something you think about in your business. I think it's such an interesting topic and it's one as female founders, I think we need to really start embracing because we're very good at talking ourselves out of things and actually we really want to start talking ourselves into them. I will see you again soon for another episode of PR Made Simple.