Build Your Brand With Tracy Lamourie

Intro 0:01
The right habits puts you in control of your health, relationships, mindset, and more. But most people lack the tools to stick with those habits long enough to see results that is about to change. Welcome to the unshakable habits podcast with your host, habit change specialist and speaker Stephen Box. Join us each week as experts share their stories, experiences and insights and give you the tools to build unshakable habits so you can live life on your terms. It's time to take your habits from unsustainable to unshakable.

Stephen Box: 0:46
Welcome to the unshakable habits Podcast. I am your host, Stephen Box. And I am joined today, as you can see by Tracy l'amour a Tracy, thank you for joining me today. Hello, hello, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to share your story with everybody, I had a chance to hear it when we talked before. And it really is a fascinating story. But I want to, I want people to hear your story to a little bit different context. And we do this with all of our interviews. It's called the unshakable habits framework. And the reason why I want to put everything through this framework is that's what's going to allow our audience to take your story and see how they might be able to apply it to their life. Because I'm assuming that not everyone out there, listening wants to become a publicist. So the first part of our framework is you have to create low, I highly recommended no, yes, very highly recommend. So now they so the first part of our framework is to create a vision. Now vision is different than a goal, because goals are something that we're chasing after a very specific outcome. And truthfully, we don't have a lot of control over outcomes. visions, on the other hand, we have a lot of control over and they're a little more flexible. And in order to reach that vision, you're going to need some skills. So you either have to already have them to develop them somewhere else, or you have to develop them, which leads to the third part of the framework, which is what are those repetitive actions you're going to take to build up those skills. Because when you do those things, what you end up with is unshakable habits. So Tracy, we can actually kind of start a little bit with your vision. Because your vision is something that kind of came to you a little bit later. And I'm kind of putting this out a little bit in reverse order. So tell us about your vision as a publicist, and how you went into that. But then, right after that, take us back to the beginning of our process.

Tracy Lamourie: 2:54
So my vision of the publicist from when I started conceiving of myself as a publicist, and putting myself out professionally, to be paid as a publicist. From that point, which was about a decade ago, my vision was similar to what it is now, which was helping using the skills that I had developed. And most people do not have to break the media barrier that most people perceive. So most people don't have any real understanding of how to get into the media. When I say media, I mean, everything, from podcasts, to the mainstream media that we grew up with television, radio, newspapers, magazines, you know, that, how to get into the public eye, beyond social media, everyone's getting really good at using social media platforms. And of course, it's an essential part of marketing. But what I do as a publicist is what we call earned media, which is not paid for its editorial versus advertorial, which is a huge part of the way people need to start thinking in order to be successful that well, so yeah, so basically, I help people get into the media Li elevate and celebrate the good work that people are doing, whether they're creatives, whether they're filmmakers, actors, authors, public speakers, or entrepreneurs from across the board. Currently, people are surprised when they when they hear that they don't think of entrepreneurs as needing publishers. But in today's world, you really do. So no matter what you do, there is media opportunity for you in mainstream media, and in niche media, as well as, you know, podcasts and new media. So you have to think beyond social media.

Stephen Box: 4:29
It's funny, you mentioned that because one of my business mentors, one of the things that he always says is there's two rules, rule one do a good job, retool route, rule two I can talk today is make sure everyone knows about it. And that's exactly what you help people do is you help make sure that people know about the good job that they're doing.

Tracy Lamourie: 4:51
And it's huge. And just to just put that in perspective, as you just said, that was a great quote, you know, Bill Gates, whatever people think about Bill Gates, but he, you know, he's, there's a quote from him, that I love that if I had, if I was down to my last $100, I spend it on PR. And for the reason that you just mentioned, you know, you can have the best thing in the world. But if nobody knows about it, then it's not the than just you and your friends are the best thing in the world. You know, you're not making a million dollars. And yeah, so that's, that's hugely important.

Stephen Box: 5:23
So talk to us about how did you get into this field? Like what you mentioned that you already had the skills so where did these skills come from?

Tracy Lamourie: 5:33
Well, they did not come from the traditional path. Let me tell you, my friend, the traditional path of VR, is normally four to five years in it's actually university or college or whatever. It is actually a four year university course. And the other traditional path is through the media. So a lot of times you'll see publicist, they are, you know, they'll be working in journalism for a while, and then they stop working whatever or they go work for a company. Because they it's that you know, that media messaging, understanding what the newsroom wants is to skills from journalism to PR usually translatable. But if you're a journalist, and you've been seeing what publicists have been doing for years, and you're like, Great, so but the way I got into it was I was in entry level sales, you know, marketing, just your basic, hadn't gone to school for your basic, go getter, sales, marketing, job, whatever, right out of high school kind of stuff that I was doing. And my husband, Dave Parkinson, and I have a radio show on college radio, Toronto, which was right across the city. So it was real radio, real FM radio, a year or two before that we had been reporting, like actually reporting and doing interviews about issues relating to social justice, you know, whenever different issues around the city and internationally. And when we left that radio show, because we went to a music format, we were more interested in the issues. We didn't have that anymore through just doing our regular sales jobs with the early days of the internet, though. So we thought, Oh, we can still have a voice, we'll make a little website and you know, just share things that we care about, that we think should be elevated. And very quickly, we've that we found out we're not looking for anything that we had never been involved with the death penalty, or any kind of activism on that regard before we were in Canada, nothing to do with even states. And suddenly, we learned about the case where a man who said he was factually innocent man named Jimmy Dennis, who was on death row in Pennsylvania, just to let people know, so that he was factually truly innocent, was fact was released 20 years later, in 2017, after he'd done 25.5 years, he's now in Google his name, and r&b artists doing really well with and people are going to be hearing about it more and more. And that's, that's the problem is, but I can't say more about that right now. Anyway. But when you when we first started, nobody knew about him, he was literally asking for help. He paid 20 bucks or something to be featured on a little corner of the internet. He was saying I'm not looking for a pen pal, I'm not looking for a girlfriend, I'm literally looking for, like, help him in his own death row. So my husband and I were like, how is this idea? I don't know, what drew us to, you know, when someone asked, why would you get involved? I think, you know, yeah, we were activists, but also because I think essential component is because we'd had that radio show not long before. So we were in that mindset of Tell us about it, you know, what is this information. So we literally physically wrote a letter and send it off to death row. And when he wrote back 28 pages on either side, you know, 28 years old, 28 pages, 20 pages on either side, tightly written with all kinds of detail, and whatever legal documentation you have in itself, it was enough for us to be like, Oh, my God, that is crazy. And so you know, not that we are big heroes or anything at the time we weren't. We didn't have a penny to rub together. We weren't lawyers, we were certainly not publicists. But you know, we've made this dumb ass move right into this person. And what do you do when you get that back from that? You know, all that heartfelt? Please help me, you know, 28 pages? Was it is it just Oh, that was an interesting read what? You know. So what do we do NASA, we have no way to help. So we thought, well, maybe we put it up on the interwebs somebody will be a lawyer will calm or somebody with money with my husband learned to make a website. And I learned literally on the ultimate start to age myself, or write a press release or immediate release prepares us and we put it out internationally. That was the beginning. And that, you know, and it's very nice thing. We ended up being on CNN, not just for that case, but we ended up educating ourselves about the whole depth lie. And then somehow these 28 year olds with no legal experience and no media experience, ended up on CNN, MSNBC court TV, a&e. And it still took me another 11 years before the point of your question. Hit me because all that time I just kept getting major, major media dare Spiegel National Enquirer, People Magazine. But all the time, we were just doing our sales job, our marketing job, we weren't getting paid for any of that. That was just justice, where we were doing went to work. And then it literally hit me when I was 41 years old. 4110 years ago, when I was a bunch of making another call. Hi, Tracy calling from something I really don't care about or something you really don't care about or another 20 calls an hour. And I wish I could remember what I was thinking the moment before. But I clearly remember going Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I've been doing all this stuff. And it just hit me. But I've been super successful in media messaging. And from that moment, I just started researching Well, how could I do this publicist thing? I was a freelancer for a couple years. They've had a general partnership for five years. And then we incorporated during COVID. So now I'm a managing director of a corporation and

Stephen Box: 10:41
just life comes at you fast, right?

Tracy Lamourie: 10:43
And it's so sorry, but it's hard to tell that story. You know Little like, if you don't like how do you tell, then there was this guy on death row when I was little. So that's how it because back to the business story. So I'm like you said most people don't have, you know, whenever they don't have that story, but they all have a passion, something you love something, you know, you care about who you're good at. But you never probably thought, good at your day job.

Stephen Box: 11:09
It's interesting, because you really just brought up two points. One, something that I actually made a video about recently, and something is another guest that I interviewed recently brought up. And the first one is, I talk about the importance of being able to fill in the blank of sense of distance. I'm the kind of person who and for you, when you saw that little $20 ad, or whatever you want to call it on the internet. And you decided to reach out, like you said, you had no legal experience, you had no media experience, you had no reason to reach out to this person other than just, you saw yourself as the kind of person who helped other people. And this was somebody who, you know, needed help, obviously. So for whatever reason, you took that little desire to say, I'm the kind of person who helps people to say, I'm going to reach out and try to help this person. And that ultimately led to what my other guests referred to as an adjacent opportunity. And that's essentially that you are going down this path with no intention of ending up where you are. But then all of a sudden, a light bulb goes off when you go, Wait a minute, this thing is kind of like that thing that could probably do that

Tracy Lamourie: 12:31
I was so not focused on those possibilities, and literally was like 11 years later, 11 years after getting, like, continue on major media success. And that's, that's great Bye. Thanks for the vehicle, we got to get through my day job. never even occurred to me, because we were already being successful, or what our goal was, which was getting that message out. That was the goal. The goal wasn't like, getting that message up so that we can elevate ourselves.

Stephen Box: 13:00
Right? Yeah, it was never, it was never about you is about the person that you were serving. So it's also interesting to me, because it goes back to this idea of a difference between a goal and a vision, right? So when you have a vision of yourself as someone who helped people that opened up this opportunity for you to go do exactly that. It allows you to reach out and help somebody

Tracy Lamourie: 13:30
that's interesting. I never thought about it that way in terms of either myself or other people, but you know why people? But that's a really good really good point when incorporate because I always make the point when people are like, Oh, well, you did me interrupt, but just when they say Oh, you mean that, you know, Oh, wow. Oh my gosh, yay, 20. So awesome, you know, this 20 year campaign to you know, and I'm always like, stop, stop. Because I mean, obviously, it was epic. You can't tell that story without saying that was an epic thing to do. Okay. But you know what, you don't feel that way. Number one, it was epic. It was Jimmy Dennis that kept us together like a manager to do it all number one credit to Jimmy because how do you do that? Right. But also, why, you know, why do we do that for 20 years? Why does anybody do anything? You know what? I think more because I don't think you know, it's not because Tracy is awesome, or nicer than other people are kinder than other people. But like you said, that's an empowering thing. She's a I thought about myself as the person who doesn't stop. But why did I think I because I think some people might think of themselves, they think of themselves as nice inclined, and looked at they help people but why don't they do stuff like that? Because they don't feel empowered. They don't feel like they could actually make a difference in something like that. So we don't do you know, we're not going to I mean, that's just crazy to think you good. So you don't? Right.

Stephen Box: 14:43
Yeah. And that comes down to you know, that the next part of that framework, which is, you know, we talked about the skills, right, because you had to develop certain skills, and you didn't worry about, oh, yeah, I can't do this because I don't have these skills. Instead, you can I went out and did them. Now something I always try to point out to people because this is the really interesting thing about when we're trying to create, you know, new habits in our life, is we kind of fundamentally know this stuff, right? And really successful people, what I found is that they've gone through this framework, just almost either on accident or just by you know, coincidence, right? It's, it's a whatever this like, planned out thing. Really very common. It's very common, you'd be surprised. I've I've yet to have one single person that I've interviewed, who's actually said, Now watch the next person interview is going to say this and I'm gonna have to make sure I put their interview after that I've never had Somebody go, I had this 10 year plan and I, you know, sit down and I wrote down this list of skills. Now, had they known about the format had they realized that that was there, I'm sure a lot of people would have done it, and they would have been successful with it. I wonder,

Tracy Lamourie: 15:59
though, because, you know, you also see there's a million books in a billion books and a billion people who do that all day long. Maybe they are super successful. And I'm sure like he said, some of them are, but I don't think that's, that's the juice, you know, because like, he said, a lot of us haven't done that. Yeah, but I think we're strategic. And we take advantage of the opportunities that come our way. Not like, in a plan I'm gonna take advantage of, but I mean, we're just open hearted, open minded we, we communicate well, so people, you know, come to us with things you don't I mean, if you're, if you're open, and genuine things happen. And if you're out there,

Stephen Box: 16:36
and one thing that I see a lot is, most of the people I've interviewed, their desire to be successful, has had pretty much nothing to do with the awards or the money or anything else. It's almost always about serving other people. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, every now and then there are other reasons. Usually things like that person's had something traumatic happened to them, or, or something like that. We're trying to beat get above it, or trying to get above it. Because

Tracy Lamourie: 17:08
no, I Yeah, that's true. That's, that that resonates too, because I know people where that's the case. And they're like, No, I'm gonna prove myself and you know, and that's just like, you know, but like, you're saying, it's so true. When now that I'm thinking about the super successful people that I know, they're not on that that track of like, just like, I never was, like, how can I benefit from this? How can I benefit? How can I be, I was never like that. And I still say maybe I'm naive, I don't know, I didn't go to business school. Maybe. Maybe I'm naive when I say people when I say the same thing, as the head of a corporation, as I did, as a young activist who kind of looked askance at corporations, you know, which is people I used to say, hey, people are the bottom line, buddy people, not money. And I still say that I still want my company to be because we are. And I still think that your business audiences have a different perspective. Who is you know, because I was right. As a young activist in that perspective. Who is your customer? The ball, you are your employees, people. Don't forget, who are the frontline workers, especially Don't forget the face of your company that everybody sees people. So if you're not thinking about people, and you're just thinking about profit, then I don't know, I guess somebody will make profit that way. But it's not my game.

Stephen Box: 18:17
Yeah, I'm sure that there's people out there that have made him make quite a bit of money by just stepping on everybody and treating everybody poorly. But, you know, is that really a life you want to live?

Tracy Lamourie: 18:31
So no, I don't want to profit. I don't want to, you know, get rich by pushing all my neighbors. Like what kind of is, you know, do you want to be the only rich than the block? Or the only guy there in the block? Everyone starves? Or is that what you want? Is that even a nice picture? Jeez, yeah, okay. Not my world. Exactly.

Stephen Box: 18:50
Yeah. So it's a very interesting thing. You know, one thing that is interesting to me about your story, is when you talk about the difference between a vision and a goal, so you your vision was you wanted to be someone who helped people, and you didn't really know exactly what that was gonna look like you didn't like, plan it all out, like, Oh, you know, I want to be sitting on the beach in 20 years writing letters to whatever, you know, like you didn't have that. That'd be a weird combination. Granted, but you didn't have like his vision of what that necessarily looked like. You just knew you wanted to help people. Yeah. And when you started putting goals around your vision, and they were great goals, like to get somebody out of prison. That's, that's a fantastic goal. Right? to to get an innocent man out of prison. Let's be let's be clear, we don't want just get any. Yeah, actually backwards. So you know, when when you look at that goal, what you were able to accomplish, but that goal, also kind of limited your vision, because you didn't see the other possibilities, because you were so focused on that one thing. and to a lesser extent, I think a lot of times, many of us maybe have this tendency to do this, we get caught up on the outcome related type stuff. And we fail to see the bigger opportunities that are in front of us. And we

Tracy Lamourie: 20:18
Yeah, that's a great wait. You could even take that for an example of like, my daughter's going. Her goal is medical school, right? What she's gonna do one way or the other. But like when someone was telling her as you start going your medicine path, you'll have like one vision in your head, about what you what you plan, right? But you know, you as you go through that path, you're gonna run into a whole bunch of things that you never even thought of, and different avenues. So if you're just completely closed off, you'll probably get where you're going. It'll be a good thing. Fine. But you may never know about all those other little potential lights you could have lived. If you see the other possibilities, right? Yeah.

Stephen Box: 20:55
And, and when I go back into your story here, what I see is, even when you shifted, and you did something that was really more about, you know, like starting your company becoming a publicist, even that still had to do with serving other people. It still fit your original vision.

Tracy Lamourie: 21:16
How do I handle that? Yeah, and not just in the fact that it's a service company, but I mean, it very much is still like, I'm very proud that you can an activist me 20 year old whenever would still be proud of where I am today, not just because that, like I said, people the bottom line, but even in the projects that I choose, I say no to a lot of projects, because I don't really, it doesn't really align with just what my brand is. But my brand is me, it's got my name on it. And there was an accident his first night, you know, so you're not gonna see me representing Philip Morris tobacco company. You know, what I mean? You know, unless, I mean, you know, hey, they couldn't lose their, their, their bring $9 billion into some campaign that he aligned with, you know, something I've been working with my whole life, and they're gonna end the death penalty or something. Okay, then I'm gonna, I'll stand with them on that and support that action. You know what I'm saying that maybe that's a different story. I don't think they're going to do that. But hey, if you want me to propose, let's do it. Yeah. That's a good one. But no, you know what I'm saying though, like, I don't choose not to work for politicians. Because even when they get elected, it's just a difficult game, even though they're awesome. It's a choose, I like to stand with, you know, I want to always be proud of the message that I put out on in the world.

Stephen Box: 22:27
Yeah. Something that interested me when we talked before. And I'm bringing this up now, because it ties in with you talking about the people that you work with. We talked earlier in this conversation about sometimes people don't do things because they're not confident in themselves. kind of talk to me a little bit about when you have these clients who have accomplished a lot of things, they've got all these awards, they have all this stuff that's worth bragging about. And I remember you telling me that sometimes you'll write stuff for him and they'll go, man, you may sound so good, right? Yeah, yeah. So talk to me about the fact that sometimes even people who have all success, still don't think they're worthy of it.

Tracy Lamourie: 23:08
Yep. And they call that imposters, then you're now just another user a lot within talking to women in business, but it's exactly what you're talking about they, but they want to use that phrase, your knowledge, exactly the thing we we, you know, we don't see ourselves as the same way we see the people that in our minds, we elevate the celebrities, the people getting a war, even people in your own industry, getting awards, people on television, so I always say it's, and I see that, you know, in microcosm, when these hugely accomplished people in whatever realm, they give me their by their details, they haven't done the maybe bio, or they might just give me their their resume or CV or something. And I'm writing a one page resume. I'm not embellishing, I'm not making anything up. I'm not going other places on the internet and search for things they didn't give me. None of that. I'm literally just writing in one page and based on the information they give me, then you know, the kind of language you would use reading one pager magazine article by, like, you know, talking about their work. And I mean, literally four or five different times different people, different industries, have literally used to say more than say to me, oh my god, you made me sound so good. And I'm always like, he stopped right there. Perception pa you know, I didn't make anything. I wrote it up the way you're used to reading about other people. That's all I did. No embellishment, no, I mean, pretty words. And that it sounds nice, but nothing, nothing like it lying. You know what I mean? And nothing even exaggerating, just well worded. The way you used to reading a profile of another person. But this time, it's about you. And you're like, look at me. I sound good. I like Yeah, exactly. Now you see yourself the way you see other people for a minute thinking about that, that moment, and use that confidence. Gee, you know, and like I always say to people, when I when I talk to any entrepreneur, or expert, or in whatever their field is, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, let's wait. I you're not doing any, any media about that? How come you're not being interviewed? And then they look at me like, you know, what, why would they if they don't understand it? Why would they do to me? And I say, well, you're an expert. Right? And if you will, yeah, but what No, yeah. But if you're not an expert, are you a scam that because I see you're taking people's money by all these ads, people should give you their money? Of course you're not No, no, no, exactly. You're an expert enough that you believe people should give you their money, because you're better at what you do than they are. Take that same confidence and realize exactly, that you have that knowledge, that expert knowledge, and that's what media needs. And that's what once you get your head around, be advertorials. editorial not advertorial so you're not running an ad for your company, when they ask you to do is down by, you know, then you your goals, just like I'm a celebrity publicist now because I know how to get myself out there, and how to talk about what I do. You know, Chef comes me, there's celebrity chef after a while to get them ordered in here. They're in 15. Other places. But yeah, you know what I mean? So all of a sudden, it's elevating, I always say it's not spam and lesbian doctor, I don't do that. All but I'm the genuine publicist for real. But it's all about elevating and celebrating. I made that up just in a podcast one day just popped out. But like, it's exactly right, elevating and celebrating all the amazing things that whoever's doing, and making them realizing clearly.

Stephen Box: 26:29
Yeah, and you know, one thing that I love about that, and this actually ties in with something that I teach people all the time, I don't use your exact terminology, but I'm I borrow from you, please. Yeah, we need we need to get people to elevate and celebrate themselves more often. Because here's the thing I want you to share with us. How many people that knew, like, let's say like, 12 year old Tracy, how many those people would have said, Tracy is going to one day be an international award winning publicist?

Tracy Lamourie: 27:03
Probably not a publicist, they may have said a writer or and also, funnily enough, my school remind me, always told me you were gonna be famous and drama class. Apparently, I always had that I didn't feel like I was. And I was, you know, the fat girl. But I mean, I was never shy. And I was I guess I always had somewhat of the but whatever. Take me as I am, which is attracted to people, you know, when I need them. I really like you're like, not shy. And you're not. When you give other people that confidence to be themselves too. So I've always, you know, been. So yeah, so I guess a lot of people, a lot of people tell me no, and actually, I remember I do remember people say to me, they were well made a million you're famous and writing down my yearbook. But I yet I was never someone going yeah, I'm gonna be Hollywood. So I don't know. I think if anything, I would have said it was gonna be a writer. Maybe, but I did think drama and people drama. I remember them saying that, though. I don't know. So people, I know people thinking my dad always knew you were going to do something. So but I never went to school for anything. I never had one particular passion of anything that I was going to, you know, other than being an activist. So I don't think anybody will be surprised by the trajectory that got me here. You knew me back then. But they found me blown away by the levels that I reached as a result of that. Yeah, so

Stephen Box: 28:19
let me think about that for a second. So you, you obviously have some natural talents for this. Right? You You had the charisma, you had you know that that big, outgoing personality, you had this inner drive that, you know, you wanted to help people with the activism. So there were some components there that obviously served you well, in terms of transition into this role. But like you said, Maybe your skill was more with the writing. So people might not have said, Oh, yeah, you're gonna be doing interviews on scene in one day talking about, you know, definitely they wouldn't have a death penalty. Right? That would, that wouldn't have happened.

Tracy Lamourie: 29:00
Yeah, that, that trajectory, because if you interviewed me, 10 years ago, on Google, my name, I had a huge public profile that, which is an interesting lesson too, because I just realized recently that I've built like, twice in my life without meaning to while the second one publishes, but I was more doing my work for them. But because I'm always going in, I talked about what I do, you know, I started to see how I was building my own brand pretty successfully, then I jumped in with what, alright, let's do this thing, man in the last eight months, right. But basically, for the first time without me to build myself any kind of built brand. But now twice, twice now, I built like twice in 10 years, I built global brand, like, globally recognized brands myself in two different realms, because in the death penalty realm, there's like 28 books that quote us, me and my husband, that I used to know half the quota work where were 28 books, some are like just stupid little drugstore, true crime. Others are like scholarly books, like, you know, like about the banality of do have good ones called. And the other one is, you know, there's one about the international relations between Canada and other kinds of America and other countries. And we're quoted in an overkill. So like, we have a huge impact. This is the world you know, it's a small world after all, it really is you could have a book like I've twice how to globally but no crazy and I was not a lawyer. But if you Google my name, a lot of it's covered up now with all this PR stuff, because of the way Google works, right? But if you look at me 10 years ago, you would have 6000 things all about the definitely media from around the world. And now. Oh, no. clickety Click Tracy trick. Now global publicist, and now clickety Click Tracy again, because what I've realized over the last year of doing all This media, from podcast TV panels about what I do, and educating entrepreneurs about it, if I wanted to fold up my 10 year PR career tomorrow, and stuff and never send out another press release, which I never give out, because I mean, the seratonin, it's fun. But if I wanted to stop doing it tomorrow, and just put it away, I could have a brand new Career Career number three, literally doing nothing but public speaking, being flown around the world, standing on stages, educating about why you need to do media, how you need to do media, and then getting flown home at the end of the day and do nothing. So like I've developed basically, if you look at it that way, if I had no money to do this, not a penny in engine infrastructure, not $1 in investment, no money in my bank account. I started all this, you know, with this heart 20 years ago without you know, Jimmy thing, and then the internet. And then 10 years ago, I started my company, again with an old computer and the internet and a bunch of strategy. So it's this that stops you imagine if I had a friend that could have invested $10,000 in my little company back then, like most of you guys listening up, boom, boom, boom, I would have been the biggest. So we don't stop. It's literally this, I don't want to sound like one of those guys that gets it goes and trains each other. They help each other million dollars, I tell you this, but it's actually true. It all starts here. And that's the that's when we met you. It really is a fact. That's the only limitation. And and also, I know it's you know, a white girl, it's easy to say that. But I mean, no matter what challenges are in front of us, I've seen people who are super privileged, you know, fall apart and a pebble. And then I've seen people like Jimmy Dennis and black men who had everything stacked against him 25 years on death row. But he never lost his focus. He never believed that it was going to get him down. He believed every day that he's going to get any work to do it. You know? So we're obviously all different levels with different things against us. So it's easy for me, I don't want to be like, yeah, Think positive, you know, but if you don't think positive and start that. Yeah, you can't ever get rid of that even that little pebble is a hole is literally a mountain. So

Stephen Box: 32:52
it's interesting, too, because when you talk about positive thinking, right, this is this is a common mantra in the self development world, right is like, Oh, you have to think positively. But here's the catch 22 positive thinking is, yeah, doesn't matter. If you think positively, if you don't believe it, and then act in accord. Yep, you have to act, you have to take those actions. So one thing I want to ask you real quick here is, when you started your company, 10 years ago, you obviously already had some of the skills that you had developed over this time working on Jimmy's case. What skills do you think you had to develop that maybe were a little bit more of a challenge for you starting off, and maybe kind of take us through some of the things that you did to develop those skills?

Tracy Lamourie: 33:45
Well, so right before I started my company, and still wasn't thinking about this to the final kind of nail that made me do the company, I guess, because otherwise I would have just kept on thinking that it's something I did for the Justice and the death penalty. And I would have never even translated is another thing, right. But right in between those two, I started volunteering. Again, I'll volunteer, put it for the 2011 Ontario political, provincial election. And so it was a Yeah, I mean, I was a lefty. And it's still kind of bad. But I always say the bird can't fly, which is one way and I don't like politics anymore. But anyway, but anyway, the time I was what I was hugely passionate about the NDP at that time, which is Canada's left of centre party. For we are in Canada. We have three parties. No, we have the the conservatives, and then we have the liberals to the middle of the road party. And then we have the NDP, so I was, you know, young and believed everything the NDP said and blah, blah, blah. But anyway, so the provincial election was coming in and they had a young candidate, and I was supporting her and in a little small couches really like conservative down and I was just being exuberant. Tracy, you know, hey, this is you know, whatever, Alexandra, and, oh, no, so we've been doing like, weekly television. And that came from our, which sounds like we just like little community TV where you can go down, there's little small town, we didn't throw Well, I interviewed the guy in the park. And you know, so we were doing what we're doing. That's, I got kind of, in this tiny little town a bit of a public name for myself. As an activist, I wanted to use that for good because I'm like, well, this is stupid. This celebrity thing is dumb. Everyone was pitching me when they go to like Tim Hortons in this small town, right? And so if they want to do that, then we're gonna, like use the figurehead. So, when the election came around, I was like, Hey, kids, come on down. It's important that you know, all this stuff. So the campaign for the candidate was like, Well, you know, you basically be the campaign manager, will you be the campaign manager for Chevy as your campaign manager, which is still just volunteer, but now I had to write press releases, and I And I left her with this during all this made me realize, if she gets in, I'm not going to like her so much. Because then she's going to be in that old system and activist me you put my whole heart into this is then going to be like, Oh, that's why I stopped doing all that but nothing because what she did, she was awesome. But anyways, I was doing press releases there. What Wait, I'll do a press release. I've never done it before, except for about Jimmy Dennis to the whole world about this. But I guess now I'm gonna learn to do it for local media, about a local candidates, which is that's a whole different thing. And I'm just jumping in with both feet, because I can do whatever like, as a young activist because we have to bring some activists we're going to show that we're, we're not doing this together career, or that kind of strategy we're doing it has to be done. You know. So we go, we go in with that kind of attitude with you. And we, with that attitude, we did a killer campaign, we tripled the vote in a conservative riding to the point where the people that media was in there, like, at first all the signs, you know, the numbers were coming in from the outside of the area, not when in whenever it was looking really good for us. They were like, they were like, shocked. It looks on their faces. So we anyway, ran a successful campaign that tripled the vote and got really good media, and got people talking good and bad media, but the crime they got the campaign, the political people coming down from that office to talk about what was going on in that little town, where they thought all of a sudden had all this support. No, no, they just had us making noise boom, boom, filter that taught me Hey, that's, that's a whole different game too. Because that's like, now that's not life and death. This is getting fun and strategic. You know, and this is kind of against a different angle kind of now. And we're and I'm playing, you know, the local media and like, and I'm good at that. And then I still I still do my sales jobs. And whenever it was still another year, before I had a moment Wait, okay, well, I gotta write press releases. I know how to get media, I gotta do all this. I just got to find the people who are gonna look at my, you know, 10 years of crazy success of this. But then I was never paid for. And that is, you know, some people might think is edgy, definitely. But who cares? It's, you know, so there was an early on transition people would Google my name, and it wasn't published, they find they find that activists, you know, and I heard that, oh, it's gonna like, because you wouldn't tell somebody to go start a career as a public relations expert, you know, messaging for other people by doing something, and building a whole name for themselves internationally on something that people think is controversial. That would be counterintuitive, right? But the early people who saw that when they would search my name, and they say, Oh, I googled you, and I think, Oh, you know, what are they gonna say, and you know, what they guess if they didn't like me, I wouldn't hear from them again. But the ones I did hear from one of the members saying, You're a real, you know, your real go getter. If somebody else was like, you're clearly a mover and a shaker. So what they saw was like, well, you were able, you know, if you could get yourself known like that, do it for me. And that allowed me to show what I could do. And now, you know, no one asked me those questions anymore. They see like, millions and successes in every round, but make sure you're like,

Stephen Box: 38:49
I don't care what you did for him.

Tracy Lamourie: 38:51
I'm plus now since then, he's been released. When it started. Jimmy was released, he was still now he's been freed. And the world is calling him instead of he's been in Rolling Stone and bg. So now it's like, oh, my God, the PR company that freed an innocent man from death row. And I'm like, Oh, my God, stop though. Cuz we were in a PR company. That's the whole, like, a whole different story when you put it that way? Yeah. It was a bunch of dumb ass activists.

Stephen Box: 39:14
You're like, I know, it's been sounds like don't do it. Yeah, don't do it. That's exactly. Don't spin me.

Tracy Lamourie: 39:21
No. And this is going to be a Hollywood Story. We don't want no Hollywood, you know, we already have a crazy story. We don't need to know that.

Stephen Box: 39:30
It's, you know, the thing I love about your story, there's a couple things that stand out. And I want to kind of point these out for people. So first of all, is it no point? Did you ever stop and say, Well, I can't do this? Because I don't know how, what you did was you said, Okay, what is the bare minimum that I need to learn to do this? And then you get better with it over time. And that's something I think a lot of times when we're trying to create habits in our life, we overlook, we think we need to master things before we even start. And that's not how you find success. You find success by making mistakes, messing up stuff, not getting it right the first time, or maybe get getting lucky and getting it right the first time, right. And then you build upon it. So those skills are something you develop over time. So you even talked about how, yeah, I had wrote a press release, but I had never written one for like local media for a politician. So you had to learn a new skill was similar to a previous skill. Yeah.

Tracy Lamourie: 40:37
But it was still new, but it was actually new, like a whole different thing from Yeah, and then the campaign they either campaign and election campaign. being ready that like, it's a different thing than like, hey, Amnesty International this guy, you know, it's we're gonna ignore our time anyway. But you know, so yeah, that was a lot of heat actually. I mean, don't get me wrong, we're on CNN getting interviewed by Nancy Grace. But it's a different kind of, like you said, a different kind of thing.

Stephen Box: 41:03
Yeah, well, it's also when it's like a passion thing. It's a different scenario, right. And I think that's something that's so important for people to really stop and think about. And I think this just kind of fits in with your whole business thing here. Because you're all about branding people. You're all about helping someone to build their personal brand up. And a brand is by definition here, just a perception of what other people have a view. So when I talk to people about creating habits, one thing I'm always trying to tell people about is like, hey, what is your personal brand, because your vision is your brand. Tracy brand is she's the kind of person who helps other people. She's the kind of person who's passionate and enthusiastic, and you can see it during this and hear it if you're, if you're not watching the video, you're listening on podcast here, but you can hear the energy you can hear the life in her voice. That's her brand. And that's why she said earlier, it's like when she saw the business, she's like, well, it's not really so much about, you know, I'm not gonna represent a certain person, because it's not my brand, is because it's not me, and she is the brand. So, you know, when you go to create these habits, you have to think about it in those same terms. Like, it's not necessarily like, Oh, I'm going to go get on CNN because I lost 10 pounds, or I reduced my stress, right? Like, I mean, maybe you could, because there's not a lot of people going to CNN talking about that. But Tracy can probably help you with that if you do want to go. But it does come down to what is that perception that you want? Not just from the outside, but what is perception that you have of yourself? What is that brand that you're creating for yourself? Because that drives so many of your actions that drives your willingness to stick with things when they get tough. So I took all that out of your story. So I just wanted Yeah, that's, that's fascinating to hear that Thank you. I have a tendency to look at people's stories from a slightly different perspective, I guess that's something you can probably relate to, because you kind of do the same thing, right? You

Tracy Lamourie: 43:21
Yeah, no, it's not, you know, what that exact perspective what you just said, Everyone has their perspective, from what they know, you have a really genuine, interesting perspective. Because you have your background, your knowledge, what you think of what you what you educate people about. So when you talk to somebody you see, and you're completely different things that we may write that right there, if I was working with you, that's your bread, you know, that's what I was, you already have your brand. But that's one part of the pitch. Because I will you know, the more about you is what you have, when I when I say more about is what's in your bio and on your web page. But the pitch is, what is he going to say? Why is he going to be interesting to my audience? What does this person bring to the table that's different? So just like me, I don't just say, I'm an international award winning publishers, we're gonna cause industry, because then you'd be like, Okay, cool. Yeah. What do you want from me, you know, but I gotta give you an idea what, what I say to them, you know, my part one of my pitches is to teach people across industries, you know, how to catapult to the top of any industry using PR media. and other one is, you know, how to build your build up your self belief, so that you can build up your brand so that you can build up your communities and change the world. They always add that even to the hard corporate stuff to like, that's great. build your brand, and then make your million if that's what you want to do. But then I always had that, because I think that's important. So because that's my brand. Exactly. But you know, so yeah, so that's hugely important that you have to start thinking in that in that sort of mindset.

Stephen Box: 44:54
So, Tracy, just to kind of wrap us up here today. Is there anything you've noticed over the last 10 years of helping people get themselves out there? Are there some commonalities that you seen amongst your really successful clients that

Tracy Lamourie: 45:10
are willing to listen like I would say that they don't second guess them on and I'm not saying that to sound arrogant, but it's like when you hire, you know, you're not an expert in the media space. You're not even just like, I'm not an expert lawyer. When you hire a lawyer, you want to, you're hiring them for this skill and navigating that, so that people will hire you the question and I spend just as much time explaining to them why it's important to do that, even though they might think that has less of an audience. And that's what that one is over there. Oh, but that's not in my area. And I'm not I'm here. If I presented this to like understand it's for a reason we're building up a thing. This is not an advertising campaign or your sales campaign. You know what I mean? Do do like it's the Dziedzic thing. And when you talk about global thought leadership, especially, and even if you're talking about local, you only serve local local audience or a local customer base. What thought leadership is more than what's happening on your street. You want to be quoted in Reader's Digest you want to be quoted and whenever. So, like, I'm here in Canada, even though I work internationally, you know, but I've, you know, I've got clients who like a client who's a hair stylist, and that's the June but he's spiffy celebrity celebrities. iria. Right. So what I don't talk about him being in Saskatoon, I don't care about the local Saskatoon. I do. But the local Saskatoon audience is going to find him. When he puts it on his website when he I want it's the global recognition not only the Saskatoon times or whatever it is, you know, we want him recognize Nollywood thought, at first he was like, Oh, this is great. I'm in Hollywood times. But are we going to do something in my local media? I'm like to Yeah, after we get Hollywood times in five other things, and then we presented to your local media, and they're like, Oh, my God. Yeah. And there's a beautiful big flow politics, two pages, instead of begging your local media to pay attention to one of 10 stylists.

Stephen Box: 46:54
Yeah. Yeah, sometimes it's easier to start with the small stuff. And sometimes it's better to start with the big dream, right?

Tracy Lamourie: 47:02
If I just depends, like, I think, look at all the opportunities, you're not like limited to the small stuff. Start with the small, but also hit the large. And that's what we would like, you know, one person hired me the next day, they were in good housekeeping, the print issue, 150 year old magazine, American magazine, every checkout counter, and for the last 26 year old life quotes, over the last two years, every single thing she wants to get onto with mental health, as seen in good housekeeping, boom, boom, boom, but her career on it. So literally just the matter of reaching out, as long as again, think about yourself as a source, give valuable information. And then either find those opportunities or hire a publicist, I worked the tutorial for a moment I work internationally and all English speaking, you know, yeah, but you honestly think about, you have a marketing budget, put a little bit of a site even for a month. And you know, you work with me, and I tell you, at the end of me, you're you know, at the end of the month of the publicist, even though even though we prefer three months, then the month you'd have a media spot, plus, you'd have that pitch, you'd have an understanding of advertorial versus editorial, you'd have a basis to even from then on easily work with just doing it on your own. So

Stephen Box: 48:08
yeah, it's absolutely amazing just what a little bit of recognition can do. You know, just like for myself, you know, having certifications for different things. It's enough to make me stand out amongst you know, the crowd, or like, when I was working as a personal trainer, which, you know, that's a small part of what I do in the grand scheme of things now, but back when that's all I did, you know, I would blast out my 80 pound weight loss picture. And, you know, people would hire me without ever even hear me open my mouth, because they're like, holy crap, this guy lost 80 pounds. So it's the little things that you that you can use to separate yourself. But in order to have those things, you have to go through that framework, you have to create that vision, you have to develop the skills, you have to take the actions. Because if you don't, you're not going to be successful. You know, Tracey's story illustrates that for us very well, she had a vision of what kind of person she wanted to be, she went out and developed the skills and looked for opportunities to utilize those skills to be that person. And then she took the actions to develop those skills on a regular basis, so that she became that person. And then she stayed open just to look for opportunities. And here we are. So it's, it's a framework that we see over and over again. And the great thing about it is you don't need special talents or natural abilities, we all can develop skills, and we can all take action. So that is, is really the whole interview on a summary right there. We just we just basically just summed it all up. So So Tracy, if someone is interested in working with you, what's the best way for them to get a hold of you

Tracy Lamourie: 50:02
so they can reach me at LinkedIn is a great place to find me Tracy memori Facebook, Tracy lemare Tracy memori er media on Instagram, Tracy goddess at Twitter, that's an old account me. And if you want to use the old technology, you can use that telephone thing and call me the Toronto number is 289-788-5881 Beverly Hills number 424-444-8052.

Stephen Box: 50:32
All right, and we will also when we post the interview up on the website, we'll get all the information on the page there as well so that way people won't have to scramble to go grab a piece of paper and holy crap, I missed the link.

Tracy Lamourie: 50:45
Then the number again is my husband would say radio voice. A number again is 289-788-5881

Stephen Box: 50:54
I'm not going to lie I to this day every time I leave a voicemail for people I say my number in the radio way. Yeah, like this is Steven, My number is done. Once again. That's Yeah. Love it. Well, Tracy, thank you so much for being here today and being so generous with your time and your knowledge. It is greatly greatly appreciated. I want to thank everyone who tuned in for today and remind you that you can subscribe to the unshakable habits podcast on our YouTube channel at unshakable habits, comm slash YouTube or anywhere that your favorite podcasts are played. Until the next time this is Stephen Box reminding you that you are not created to be average, it is possible for you to take your habits from unsustainable to unshakable.

Outro 50:46
Thanks for listening to the unshakable habits podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others post about it on social media. Or leave a rating and review. do catch all the latest please subscribe at unshakable habits comm slash YouTube or on your favorite podcast app. You can learn more about unshakable habits at unshakable habits.com Until next week, be unshakable. my friends.