IAM1320 – CEO Helps Authors Bring their Works from Vision to Manifestation
Podcast Interview with Pam Perry
Dr. Pam Perry (www.pamperrypr.com) is an award-winning communications professional and publisher of Speakers Magazine.
Dr. Perry serves as the CEO of Ministry Marketing Solutions, her public relations consulting firm where she takes authors’ works from vision to manifestation. She helps them position, package, and promote their brand.
- CEO Story: Dr. Pam worked in corporate for many years and in doing so, Pam felt lacking, that’s why she volunteered a lot and created non-profit organizations. In the year 2000, she finally decided to work from home and built Ministry Marketing Solutions.
- Business Service: Digital marketing, social media marketing. Consulting.
- Secret Sauce: “My contacts become their (clients') contacts”. The system of onboarding/bringing in people. I am writing down on who to connect with.
- CEO Hack: Gravity forms (sent to clients, asking about their goals and struggles)
- CEO Nugget: Don’t work with broke fault. Don’t target people who can’t afford you. Go for people who can afford you and you feel great about it and your business will grow.
- CEO Defined: The Chief of everything, the responsible person, the visionary. The spokesperson and the salesperson. You’re the face of the place.
Website: www.pamperrypr.com
Get your free e-book ‘Be Heard’ on her website.
Instagram: pam_perry
Facebook: pamperryprpage
LinkedIn: pamperryprcoach
Twitter: @pamperry
Check out one of our favorite CEO Hack’s Audible. Get your free audiobook and check out more of our favorite CEO Hacks HERE
Transcription
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00:22 – Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:49 – Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dr. Pam Perry of Pam Perry PR. Dr. Pam, it's great to have you on the show.
00:59 – Pam Perry
I am great to be here, Gresh. Good to see you. Good to see you.
01:02 – Gresham Harkless
Yes, absolutely excited to have you on. Dr. Pam is doing so many phenomenal things. I had the opportunity to be on one of her shows, and I'm super excited that now I get to return the favor. So before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Dr. Pam Perry so you can hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. Dr. Pam is an award-winning communications professional and publisher of Speakers Magazine. Dr. Perry serves as the CEO of Pam Perry PR, her public relations consulting firm where she takes authors' works from vision to manifestation. She helps them position, package, and promote their brand. Dr. Pam, excited again to have you on. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
[restrict paid=”true”]
01:42 – Pam Perry
Yes, I am. Because it's so, I'm so passionate about this. And I'm really thinking that every CEO should have a book. And so not only just have a book, but a good book and promote the book because when you promote the book they promote themselves and they promote their business. So that's my thing. I love books. I probably got about 5, 000 books in this house, not including what's on the Kindle. So yeah, I'm a book, and have a book fetish.
02:09 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, as an English major, that's definitely, you know, music to my ears because I'm definitely a book person. You can see there are so many different books that I receive and get the opportunity to kind of hear and learn from people and hear about their expertise. But I guess before we jumped into like all the awesome things that you do, I wanted to rewind the clock here a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.
02:31 – Pam Perry
Well, one of the things is that when I was working in corporate, and I love really what I was doing, I worked for the Detroit Free Press for 7 years, I worked in radio and TV for roughly about 7 years, and then I worked as a nonprofit PR director for the Salvation Army for about 7 years. And I realized it was like every 7 years, I needed like something different to do, right? And I was like, oh my God, I got the 7-year itch. And even though I liked what I was doing, I felt that there was something more. And so when I was working a corporate job, I volunteered a lot and I created organizations on the side.
They weren't necessarily businesses, they were nonprofit organizations like it would be professional development groups or authors, writers groups, or things like that. And it was always like, okay, got the job. I love what I do. But then there was something on the side. So it wasn't really until the year 2000 that the company that I was working with, which happened to be my husband's company, I was working with him at the time, Perry Marketing Group went out of business he was doing a lot of automotive stuff and he was an ad agency and I was the PR director and the company went out of business.
We had a 4-year-old at, I believe at the time and he, his paycheck, and my pet's paycheck just evaporated, right? It was like, oh my God, the crash and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, well, what are you going to do? So he went and got a job working at an agency, one of the top black ad agencies in the country. And then he said, well, what are you going to do? You're going to go back to work in a nonprofit. And I said, I really feel, and I was a new mom at the time, I really want to work from home. This was way before people were working from home, right? It was like, what, what is that? I said, I want to open up my PR firm and I want to work with ministries and nonprofits from home.
And that's when ministry marketing solutions started in 2000. And then over the years, it evolved into Pay and Pair PR because I work with more than ministries. I work with people who have messages, people who want to get out there and get known. And so that's how it started. It started out of desperation, I guess you would say, because it was like, okay, so now what? And I could have gone and got a job, but I actually started my company and I started it with just a laptop, sitting on the kitchen table, you've heard it before, and then really making phone calls to people. And I worked with all of the major churches in the area.
I did all of their marketing and I worked with a lot of the major book publishing companies at the very beginning. And then over the years, I started really teaching people digital marketing and how to build their platform and really how to do their own PR. And that's only because of the Internet, right? Just really made a shift for everything from books. You know, we used to have Borders and Barnes and Noble, and now it's just Barnes and Noble. But then Amazon became the thing. So I had to teach people how to use Amazon how to create books and how to promote their books. So that's really the back story, so to speak. But I really work for some agencies and things like that.
But I said, if I could just create an agency of my own from home And people thought it was weird because like, Oh, you're gonna work from home, you don't have a real job. I listened, and I worked harder for myself than I did for anyone else. So I worked around the clock, building the business for over 10 years. So, the first 10 were hard. The last 10 have been really like a joy because I've come into some systems and some, I guess you would say some the space I've carved out my niche and I teach other people how to do the same.
05:58 – Gresham Harkless
Nice. I absolutely love that. I appreciate you, you know, sharing your story, you know, so much. And then I think too, there's so many things that I wrote down, especially around the 7-year age. I think so many times when we think that we choose something, whether we're within an organization or sometimes even starting something ourselves, that we have to do it until the end of time. But getting that opportunity to kind of pivot, try different things, as much as our businesses grow, as much as the organizations and our roles sometimes grow within them, we grow just as much. And sometimes we have to kind of lean more into that new thing or kind of scratch that itch so that we can learn different skills and develop as individuals.
06:36 – Pam Perry
I like change. I really do. I like change. That's an asset of mine. Some people really fear change. They like change. And I have always tried to bust out of my comfort zone. So when I'm too comfortable, I know that I have to do something different, whether it's social media, if it's a new social media, I love that people are like, oh my God, you got a new one, you got another one now. You got TikTok now. And I'm like, oh yeah, something new because I love change because we should always be evolving.
So it was easy for me when I did, started in 2000, I was doing primarily PR, just only PR. Then I worked in and really just helping people with social media marketing. Then I helped people with their digital marketing. So as you learn more, you evolve. And I think that's really important for anybody in any business, any CEO, they should always evolve, not just hand it off to someone else to do know about it.
07:29 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that makes so much sense. So I wanted to hear, I know we touched a little bit about how you work with your clients. I wanted to hear a little bit more about that, how that process goes what you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce, and what you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique.
07:41 – Pam Perry
One of the ways we work with my clients is that my platform or my contacts become their contacts. So if they're a client of mine, then I open up my old school Rolodex. Rolodex. Right. Subright, they don't know Rolodex. So that it was my media contacts, my social media contacts, people that I've met, that I've worked with in the past, whether it was in the media, that's part of what a publicist's brains are their contacts and their influence for that.
And then social media as well, 25, 000 on Twitter LinkedIn, and Facebook. So when they're promoting something, it not only goes to their audience when they're promoting it, but it goes to my audience as well, because I pick the clients because I know my clients would like that particular product.
The other thing that I think that sets me apart is how I bring in people. So now I have a form where if they're author or speaker they fill out this form. If they are an organization they fill out this form. If they really want VIP coaching or consulting they fill out this form. Then, I realized over the years that there are certain questions I need to ask in order to get to their solution. Or if I can't really be a solution for them, sometimes I'll just get on the call with them and I realize that I may not be the one for them, but I will give them a referral to a colleague or a friend or give them some suggestions. The other thing is that I've really been niche down in a certain area.
So if you are wanting to get speaking engagements, I can help you with Speakers Magazine, you know, because that's something that I can do. And then also to just connect them with other places where they can go and do workshops or keynotes and that sort of thing. So that's kind of unique because a publicist doesn't typically do that. But I know that working with authors, authors have to speak, so it's authors and speakers together. And then, and it does have to be a professional speaker.
It could be a public speaker because one of the best ways to really sell is to get on stage. And I always tell people, I said, if you can get on the stage and speak, you will sell your company, you'll sell your services. So you need to do that. But you can't get to a stage sometimes unless you have a book. So you gotta, you know, which comes first, the chicken or the egg. So I always say the book comes first and then you can go in and actually go out and speak.
09:50 – Gresham Harkless
I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
10:01 – Pam Perry
I would say one of the things that makes me more effective and efficient is my gravity forms. Okay, it's like probably something like what are you talking about? But it's the gravity forms and it is those forms that I set up that I send people when they say, hey, I want to work with you or hey, let's get together. So I'll send the gravity form, the gravity form will then send a calendar link. And so those 2 together keep me organized. Then, I can pull the information out to know what products I need or services I need to do in the future. Because of the questions that I ask, they fill them out and it'll say like, what are your goals? What do you struggle with? Whatever.
And if I look at that and I can pull them all out, especially like one particular area, I could see a pattern. And those patterns will help me understand what it is people are looking for. It helps with sales letters, it helps with email copy, it helps with products and services I want to develop, and any of those types of things. So those are my favorite ones because we can work all day in the lab and think we know what people want, but there's nothing like a real live focus group from people that says, no, this is what I struggle with.
This is what I want. Because for many years, I was trying to sell something that I thought people needed, but they didn't want it. They wanted PR. They didn't need how to write a press release. They just wanted someone to write the press release. But don't you want to write it yourself? No. No, they don't. They just want someone to write it for them. So I was putting together products that I thought people needed, And that's not what they wanted. They wanted someone to write it. So I figured out how to just give people what they want, not necessarily what they need. It's like, I was trying to give people vegetables when they really want dessert, right?
11:42 – Gresham Harkless
Right.
11:44 – Pam Perry
They don't want the vegetables, they want the dessert. So I'm trying to sell them vegetables and they don't want that. So I just had to figure out from the gravity forms in their language, what it was that they wanted.
11:54 – Gresham Harkless
I absolutely love all those hacks. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.
12:09 – Pam Perry
So this is something that I always say to those that are just starting out and they have such, you know, just such big hearts and they want to help everybody. And they just, oh my goodness. I just do, just want to just be a service. And it's like, it's, I understand that. I said, but you're in business, you're not a charity that you have to know that it's okay not to work with broke folk. And they're like, what? I said you can't work with broke folk. Broke folk won't pay you, okay? I said, when you become they won't value you.
Yeah, I said, when you become a multimillionaire, like you have long money like Oprah or Jay-Z, I said, then you can have a charity, and then you have a whole little foundation that works with the people who can't afford your services. I said, but until then, you're not a charity, you're a business. So don't target people who can't afford you. You will frustrate yourself because you're thinking that your services aren't good. Your services aren't good. You're just targeting people that can't afford you.
So go over here to the people who can afford you and you'll feel great about it and your business will grow. And if you still have that big heart and you have a lot of money, then set up a foundation or a charity where you can do your services and donate those services to the people who can't afford it. So I always say, don't work with broke folk. Yeah, people can always afford what they wanna afford though. You really can't. So if you just make the decision, draw the, you know, the line in the sand, if they really want to work with you, they'll find the money, they'll save for it and they'll come back and work with you.
13:40 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And so I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Dr. Pam, what does being a CEO mean to you?
13:51 – Pam Perry
Well, you know, the real term is chief executive officer, right? So you're the chief executive officer, but you're really the chief of everything. You're the chief of everything. Everything is going to stop with you. So you are the responsible person. You're the visionary. You are the operations person. But more than anything, you are the spokesperson and you're the salesperson. So if you're not selling anything, nothing gets done. You can have an entire organization and you can even have a sales department, but the CEO is the one who really sets the vision and puts it together, if people buy the CEO, you're the personal brand that people are buying.
So you are the person that people are looking to that is your, you're speaking on the stages, you're the one being called for the interviews, you are the person that is making the sale, and the people behind you are fulfilling the vision. So you write the vision so that they can run with it, but you've got to write it so they can run with it. So that's really the main thing, that you are the spokesperson, you're the salesperson, you're the person that sets the vision. You do have to have the staff behind you to do the other things. And you have to know a little bit about operations and all that other stuff. But the main thing is you're the face. You're the face of the place.
15:09 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Pam truly appreciates that definition. I, of course, appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people get a hold of you subscribe to your podcast, find out about the magazine and all the awesome things that you're working on.
15:27 – Pam Perry
Yes. So one of the things I want to do is give your listeners and viewers a gift. So there's a book I wrote called Be Getting on Be Heard and to PR.com/e-book, It's a Free book with about 160 pages. But it's from a nontechnical brand out about everything on p The magazine, my brand, program already set go who want to speak. And so everything is there at pamperipr.com.
16:00 – Gresham Harkless
Nice. So I absolutely appreciate that. To make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes for the book, your site, podcast, all the programs, and everything that you have. Thank you so much for doing that and providing so many different ways that we can do that as well too. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:15 – Pam Perry
Thank you. Thank you, Gresh.
16:30 – Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
00:22 - Intro
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:49 - Gresham Harkless
Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dr. Pam Perry of Pam Perry PR. Dr. Pam, it's great to have you on the show.
00:59 - Pam Perry
I am great to be here, Gresh. Good to see you. Good to see you.
01:02 - Gresham Harkless
Yes, absolutely excited to have you on. Dr. Pam is doing so many phenomenal things. I had the opportunity to be on one of her shows, and I'm super excited that now I get to return the favor. So before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Dr. Pam Perry so you can hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. Dr. Pam is an award-winning communications professional and publisher of Speakers Magazine. Dr. Perry serves as the CEO of Pam Perry PR, her public relations consulting firm where she takes authors' works from vision to manifestation. She helps them position, package, and promote their brand. Dr. Pam, excited again to have you on. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
01:42 - Pam Perry
Yes, I am. Because it's so, I'm so passionate about this. And I'm really thinking that every CEO should have a book. And so not only just have a book, but a good book and promote the book because when you promote the book they promote themselves and they promote their business. So that's my thing. I love books. I probably got about 5, 000 books in this house, not including what's on the Kindle. So yeah, I'm a book, and have a book fetish.
02:09 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, as an English major, that's definitely, you know, music to my ears because I'm definitely a book person. You can see there are so many different books that I receive and get the opportunity to kind of hear and learn from people and hear about their expertise. But I guess before we jumped into like all the awesome things that you do, I wanted to rewind the clock here a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.
02:31 - Pam Perry
Well, one of the things is that when I was working in corporate, and I love really what I was doing, I worked for the Detroit Free Press for 7 years, I worked in radio and TV for roughly about 7 years, and then I worked as a nonprofit PR director for the Salvation Army for about 7 years. And I realized it was like every 7 years, I needed like something different to do, right? And I was like, oh my God, I got the 7-year itch. And even though I liked what I was doing, I felt that there was something more. And so when I was working a corporate job, I volunteered a lot and I created organizations on the side.
They weren't necessarily businesses, they were nonprofit organizations like it would be professional development groups or authors, writers groups, or things like that. And it was always like, okay, got the job. I love what I do. But then there was something on the side. So it wasn't really until the year 2000 that the company that I was working with, which happened to be my husband's company, I was working with him at the time, Perry Marketing Group went out of business he was doing a lot of automotive stuff and he was an ad agency and I was the PR director and the company went out of business.
We had a 4-year-old at, I believe at the time and he, his paycheck, and my pet's paycheck just evaporated, right? It was like, oh my God, the crash and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, well, what are you going to do? So he went and got a job working at an agency, one of the top black ad agencies in the country. And then he said, well, what are you going to do? You're going to go back to work in a nonprofit. And I said, I really feel, and I was a new mom at the time, I really want to work from home. This was way before people were working from home, right? It was like, what, what is that? I said, I want to open up my PR firm and I want to work with ministries and nonprofits from home.
And that's when ministry marketing solutions started in 2000. And then over the years, it evolved into Pay and Pair PR because I work with more than ministries. I work with people who have messages, people who want to get out there and get known. And so that's how it started. It started out of desperation, I guess you would say, because it was like, okay, so now what? And I could have gone and got a job, but I actually started my company and I started it with just a laptop, sitting on the kitchen table, you've heard it before, and then really making phone calls to people. And I worked with all of the major churches in the area.
I did all of their marketing and I worked with a lot of the major book publishing companies at the very beginning. And then over the years, I started really teaching people digital marketing and how to build their platform and really how to do their own PR. And that's only because of the Internet, right? Just really made a shift for everything from books. You know, we used to have Borders and Barnes and Noble, and now it's just Barnes and Noble. But then Amazon became the thing. So I had to teach people how to use Amazon how to create books and how to promote their books. So that's really the back story, so to speak. But I really work for some agencies and things like that.
But I said, if I could just create an agency of my own from home And people thought it was weird because like, Oh, you're gonna work from home, you don't have a real job. I listened, and I worked harder for myself than I did for anyone else. So I worked around the clock, building the business for over 10 years. So, the first 10 were hard. The last 10 have been really like a joy because I've come into some systems and some, I guess you would say some the space I've carved out my niche and I teach other people how to do the same.
05:58 - Gresham Harkless
Nice. I absolutely love that. I appreciate you, you know, sharing your story, you know, so much. And then I think too, there's so many things that I wrote down, especially around the 7-year age. I think so many times when we think that we choose something, whether we're within an organization or sometimes even starting something ourselves, that we have to do it until the end of time. But getting that opportunity to kind of pivot, try different things, as much as our businesses grow, as much as the organizations and our roles sometimes grow within them, we grow just as much. And sometimes we have to kind of lean more into that new thing or kind of scratch that itch so that we can learn different skills and develop as individuals.
06:36 - Pam Perry
I like change. I really do. I like change. That's an asset of mine. Some people really fear change. They like change. And I have always tried to bust out of my comfort zone. So when I'm too comfortable, I know that I have to do something different, whether it's social media, if it's a new social media, I love that people are like, oh my God, you got a new one, you got another one now. You got TikTok now. And I'm like, oh yeah, something new because I love change because we should always be evolving.
So it was easy for me when I did, started in 2000, I was doing primarily PR, just only PR. Then I worked in and really just helping people with social media marketing. Then I helped people with their digital marketing. So as you learn more, you evolve. And I think that's really important for anybody in any business, any CEO, they should always evolve, not just hand it off to someone else to do know about it.
07:29 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that makes so much sense. So I wanted to hear, I know we touched a little bit about how you work with your clients. I wanted to hear a little bit more about that, how that process goes what you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce, and what you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique.
07:41 - Pam Perry
One of the ways we work with my clients is that my platform or my contacts become their contacts. So if they're a client of mine, then I open up my old school Rolodex. Rolodex. Right. Subright, they don't know Rolodex. So that it was my media contacts, my social media contacts, people that I've met, that I've worked with in the past, whether it was in the media, that's part of what a publicist's brains are their contacts and their influence for that.
And then social media as well, 25, 000 on Twitter LinkedIn, and Facebook. So when they're promoting something, it not only goes to their audience when they're promoting it, but it goes to my audience as well, because I pick the clients because I know my clients would like that particular product.
The other thing that I think that sets me apart is how I bring in people. So now I have a form where if they're author or speaker they fill out this form. If they are an organization they fill out this form. If they really want VIP coaching or consulting they fill out this form. Then, I realized over the years that there are certain questions I need to ask in order to get to their solution. Or if I can't really be a solution for them, sometimes I'll just get on the call with them and I realize that I may not be the one for them, but I will give them a referral to a colleague or a friend or give them some suggestions. The other thing is that I've really been niche down in a certain area.
So if you are wanting to get speaking engagements, I can help you with Speakers Magazine, you know, because that's something that I can do. And then also to just connect them with other places where they can go and do workshops or keynotes and that sort of thing. So that's kind of unique because a publicist doesn't typically do that. But I know that working with authors, authors have to speak, so it's authors and speakers together. And then, and it does have to be a professional speaker.
It could be a public speaker because one of the best ways to really sell is to get on stage. And I always tell people, I said, if you can get on the stage and speak, you will sell your company, you'll sell your services. So you need to do that. But you can't get to a stage sometimes unless you have a book. So you gotta, you know, which comes first, the chicken or the egg. So I always say the book comes first and then you can go in and actually go out and speak.
09:50 - Gresham Harkless
I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
10:01 - Pam Perry
I would say one of the things that makes me more effective and efficient is my gravity forms. Okay, it's like probably something like what are you talking about? But it's the gravity forms and it is those forms that I set up that I send people when they say, hey, I want to work with you or hey, let's get together. So I'll send the gravity form, the gravity form will then send a calendar link. And so those 2 together keep me organized. Then, I can pull the information out to know what products I need or services I need to do in the future. Because of the questions that I ask, they fill them out and it'll say like, what are your goals? What do you struggle with? Whatever.
And if I look at that and I can pull them all out, especially like one particular area, I could see a pattern. And those patterns will help me understand what it is people are looking for. It helps with sales letters, it helps with email copy, it helps with products and services I want to develop, and any of those types of things. So those are my favorite ones because we can work all day in the lab and think we know what people want, but there's nothing like a real live focus group from people that says, no, this is what I struggle with.
This is what I want. Because for many years, I was trying to sell something that I thought people needed, but they didn't want it. They wanted PR. They didn't need how to write a press release. They just wanted someone to write the press release. But don't you want to write it yourself? No. No, they don't. They just want someone to write it for them. So I was putting together products that I thought people needed, And that's not what they wanted. They wanted someone to write it. So I figured out how to just give people what they want, not necessarily what they need. It's like, I was trying to give people vegetables when they really want dessert, right?
11:42 - Gresham Harkless
Right.
11:44 - Pam Perry
They don't want the vegetables, they want the dessert. So I'm trying to sell them vegetables and they don't want that. So I just had to figure out from the gravity forms in their language, what it was that they wanted.
11:54 - Gresham Harkless
I absolutely love all those hacks. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.
12:09 - Pam Perry
So this is something that I always say to those that are just starting out and they have such, you know, just such big hearts and they want to help everybody. And they just, oh my goodness. I just do, just want to just be a service. And it's like, it's, I understand that. I said, but you're in business, you're not a charity that you have to know that it's okay not to work with broke folk. And they're like, what? I said you can't work with broke folk. Broke folk won't pay you, okay? I said, when you become they won't value you.
Yeah, I said, when you become a multimillionaire, like you have long money like Oprah or Jay-Z, I said, then you can have a charity, and then you have a whole little foundation that works with the people who can't afford your services. I said, but until then, you're not a charity, you're a business. So don't target people who can't afford you. You will frustrate yourself because you're thinking that your services aren't good. Your services aren't good. You're just targeting people that can't afford you.
So go over here to the people who can afford you and you'll feel great about it and your business will grow. And if you still have that big heart and you have a lot of money, then set up a foundation or a charity where you can do your services and donate those services to the people who can't afford it. So I always say, don't work with broke folk. Yeah, people can always afford what they wanna afford though. You really can't. So if you just make the decision, draw the, you know, the line in the sand, if they really want to work with you, they'll find the money, they'll save for it and they'll come back and work with you.
13:40 - Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And so I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Dr. Pam, what does being a CEO mean to you?
13:51 - Pam Perry
Well, you know, the real term is chief executive officer, right? So you're the chief executive officer, but you're really the chief of everything. You're the chief of everything. Everything is going to stop with you. So you are the responsible person. You're the visionary. You are the operations person. But more than anything, you are the spokesperson and you're the salesperson. So if you're not selling anything, nothing gets done. You can have an entire organization and you can even have a sales department, but the CEO is the one who really sets the vision and puts it together, if people buy the CEO, you're the personal brand that people are buying.
So you are the person that people are looking to that is your, you're speaking on the stages, you're the one being called for the interviews, you are the person that is making the sale, and the people behind you are fulfilling the vision. So you write the vision so that they can run with it, but you've got to write it so they can run with it. So that's really the main thing, that you are the spokesperson, you're the salesperson, you're the person that sets the vision. You do have to have the staff behind you to do the other things. And you have to know a little bit about operations and all that other stuff. But the main thing is you're the face. You're the face of the place.
15:09 - Gresham Harkless
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Pam truly appreciates that definition. I, of course, appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people get a hold of you subscribe to your podcast, find out about the magazine and all the awesome things that you're working on.
15:27 - Pam Perry
Yes. So one of the things I want to do is give your listeners and viewers a gift. So there's a book I wrote called Be Getting on Be Heard and to PR.com/e-book, It's a Free book with about 160 pages. But it's from a nontechnical brand out about everything on p The magazine, my brand, program already set go who want to speak. And so everything is there at pamperipr.com.
16:00 - Gresham Harkless
Nice. So I absolutely appreciate that. To make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes for the book, your site, podcast, all the programs, and everything that you have. Thank you so much for doing that and providing so many different ways that we can do that as well too. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:15 - Pam Perry
Thank you. Thank you, Gresh.
16:30 - Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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