Stepping Outside Beaten Paths with Deana Bass Williams
Overview of this Episode
In this episode of the Trust Your Voice podcast, host Sylvie Légère sat down with Deana Bass Williams, Co-founder of Bass Public Affairs, Co-authored "Prayer & Pound Cake", with renowned national media relations experience, to discuss what is Public Relations and where do we start.
In this conversation, Sylvie and Deana discuss:
What is PR?
Personal public relationships - where do we start?
Interacting with the media
Roadmap to reaching people that are not on well traveled paths
Visit Bass Public Affairs that specializes in helping organizations impact public discourse by projecting a clear message in the crowded marketplace of ideas and grab a copy of Prayer & Pound Cake which made #1 on the Amazon Hot Releases for Christian prayer books.
We hope you enjoy the episode! Tell us what you think by leaving a review on Apple podcasts. Stay tuned for more episodes and be sure to subscribe to the Trust Your Voice podcast on your favorite podcast player.
Read the Full Episode Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, share, clients, relationships, respond, reporter, media, pancake, policy, find, expand, story, courage, events, competence, community, build, public affairs, podcast, sister
SPEAKERS
Sylvie Légère, Deana Rose William
Sylvie Légère 0:11
Have you ever felt challenged with making life changing decisions or leading in the public square or simply aligning your thoughts with your actions? Well, then you're in the right place. Welcome to trust your voice podcast. My name is Sylvie Légère. And as a civically engaged entrepreneur, and mom, I understand the challenges of advocating for yourself and others. While attempting to balance your personal and professional demands. I had to develop a personal system have success in every area of my life. And now, I want to help you build your unique system and truly trust your voice, even and especially when it shakes. By the end of each episode, you'll be energized to spark your creative leadership make purposeful connection, and confidently prioritize the matters that bring you the most joy. So let's start the show. I'm an introvert, I enjoy solitude, I enjoy being behind the scene making things happen. So it took me a really long time to wholeheartedly value relationships. And I realized that at the end of the day, the relationship that we have is really what matters the most. And it's what fills our heart grows our mind our spirit. And when you think about it, the human experience is about relationships. So with social media, and with all the Facebook, friends and Instagram likes, it's easy to connect to stay in touch with people all over the world when we think we know a lot of people. But we often forget that we need to build relationships with people who physically live in the community where we reside. Well, why? Well, you may want to be part of a project that builds something like a bike path or a park across town. And you need support from all neighborhoods, or you may want to hire people from specific neighborhoods or open a business in a specific area, or really expand the reach of your local business. You may also be seeking people's vote and support from people who are really not in your immediate sphere of influence. So I think it's might be really helpful to borrow some lessons and roadmaps from public relations, to do something that's easier said than done. And that is to connect with people beyond the roads that we've traveled frequently. So it's my pleasure to welcome my guest today, Deana Bass Williams is a partner at the firm, best public affairs. And she's also the author of a new book, prayer and poundcake with her sister, Didi bass, you can find our full bio in the show notes. Deana, welcome to trust your voice podcast.
Deana Bass Williams 2:39
Thank you. It's great to be here.
Sylvie Légère 2:41
You just published a new book that you just shared with me, tell us about
Deana Bass Williams 2:45
it. Yes, very excited prayer and pancake. It is based on 15 years of running a public affairs firm with my sister de Bess will bong and we really take 31 days and kind of go through strategies that we have succeeded in and actually, in some cases failed in, in growing our business. We also include prayer, because for us, as we chart our business, a lot of people believe that you you have to be some kind of business wizard. And it certainly takes business smarts, but it also for us, takes a lot of prayer.
Sylvie Légère 3:21
Yeah, I'm excited to read it. It looks really wonderful. And I love the daily focus, which is really great. So you know, the focus of this podcast today is really how can we build relationships beyond our beaten path as a way beyond the people that we already know, the geography etc. And I remember the first time that we met, you shared with me actually words of wisdom that your mother shared with you about when you come to a new town, who do you need to know?
Deana Bass Williams 3:49
Absolutely. And my mom gave me that advice when I was in my early 20s. And I was really moving from city to city trying to find myself I think in the span of about seven years, I moved 14 times. And so she always said that you need to know a hairstylist, you know, a barber or hairstylist, you need to know a reporter, you need to know a politician, not necessarily the mayor, but a local politician, you need to know a mechanic, someone who can keep your car running. And so there was like a treasure trove like this basket of people. And even in some cases, places like a church, a library, a grocery store, you needed to have a community, this kind of basket of places and people to build your community. And so that advice was given to me over 30 years ago, I still take it to heart and I continued to try to keep a collection of different kinds of people with different experiences in my network of people who who I can call on for support advice, you know wise counsel,
Sylvie Légère 4:50
It's funny I shared that when my daughter also an added you need to know your landlord and your plumber in case something happens. So I guess you know, like to build relationships in the city where where you are. There's some value. A lot of towns, cities are divided geographically, right east west, Northside Southside, in Chicago, etc. How do you as a public relations person, and even just in your own life, how do you define or kind of look at the community where you live in and be really intentional about building relationships beyond just the square mile you live in?
Deana Bass Williams 5:25
You know, I think that's very important and what we do at best public affairs, Diddy, and I take great pride in having a diverse set of people in our life who are ideologically different than we are. And I think when you begin to think of people, because we, you know, we are very set in the things that we believe in the way like our biblical worldview, our political worldview, our general worldview, but we recognize that we are so much better and so much richer when we have people whose ideological worldviews are vastly different from our own, like we crave people who will listen to us and say, Yeah, I don't really support that. I don't believe that. And I actually think you're wrong, but who can do it with civility. And when you begin to increase the people in your life who have an ideological difference, then that means that there's a geographical difference, there is a difference in religion, there's a difference in race even. And that's okay, we like to talk about diversity of thought. But that's a distinction of difference, not a distinction of value. So it's okay to be different. But that doesn't mean that one is more valuable than the other. So we love the distinction of difference rather than the distinction of value. And so I am blessed to have a sister who is an introvert, she's a social butterfly. And I think sometimes you have to connect yourself to people who, who don't mind going up and talking to perfect strangers who don't mind going to different events, different kinds of things that are outside of your norm. And because that's not my natural thing, I have literally attach myself to the hip of a business partner, who's my sister, who does that on a daily basis, like we cannot walk down the street without her finding someone to embrace in conversation.
Sylvie Légère 7:16
So how do you, when you onboard a client or you know, you want to define kind of a strategy for yourself, say, Okay, I'm determined to just expand who I know. And my network, how can you be intentional about that? Do you start off with having a goal of kind of finding, like, what do I want to share? Or an idea? Or do you start with, Alright, where are the people who are different than me, in my community? And how do I find events maybe to participate in, so I can just initially show up,
Deana Bass Williams 7:47
You know, actually, so we you give advice in your book that we think clients should always use. And we actually do use that with our clients, you talk about offering to help. And so oftentimes, because we were a public affairs forum, people come to us because they want us to expand their reach, they want to get to know more people, they want to be in relationship with more people, but you talk about looking around and seeing who needs help. And so we encourage clients to first before you can start asking people to come and do your stuff, and be a part of your event and being a part of your mission or plan, look and see who you can help look and see where you can offer help. And when you sincerely offer help with the intent of building relationships with the intent of doing good for your community, then people begin to trust you. And then people want to listen to you. And then you can begin the true work of Public Affairs and Public Relations. It's a knee jerk indeed. And we are very vigilant with our clients when they like they want to do events, and they want 50,000 people to come to their events when we so the people that you're inviting to your events, have you attended any of their events? Have you reached out to them first, and nine times out of 10? They haven't. And so we say we're going to do this, but the first thing we're going to do is we're going to start supporting the people who we want to support us,
Sylvie Légère 9:11
it's really a great reminder. It's like well, how can you use your gifts and your talents to help and connect and that's where you actually found commonality because you're offering something that you can help with. And then you're building really real relationships with people. So that's a really a great reminder. And and and also, I guess you can be on this show. We've also talked about knowing your strength and knowing yourself and that's part of it. Also, to be effective to build relationships with others, you actually need to know well, who you are, what you have to offer is it could be in mentoring could be in health care, it could just be in presentations, what can it be so what have you do you have like some good examples that you've seen of people, how they've been able to connect and just by offering to help?
Deana Bass Williams 9:57
You know, really the best example is As my mom, and she's not a client, but my mom works in a small community in Georgia population about 6000. But she has been named one of the 100 most effective people in rural politics or in rural communities. And it's because she, whether it is someone who needs glasses for their child, or the highest elected politician in her region, she has built relationships that allow her to actually get things done for people. And because she has done that, because she gets things done. For others, there is not anything that she can't call on people to do for her. So in her small community, she has brought in, you know, really millions of dollars from organizations and people to impact this little bitty, you know, one of those blink and you'll miss it towns in on Georgia's southwestern border. But she's done it because she has actually helped other people, and in doing so has expanded the footprint of this little bitty town that is so precious to us.
Sylvie Légère 11:04
So do you think like, the next step is also, let's say, you know, you start working with a tutoring program, let's say or, you know, you're you're welcoming refugees in a specific area, or teaching people how to read or something like that. And how do you go from there? Right? How do you go from there in terms of growing the relationship beyond like, perhaps just the tasks that you're doing or job that you're doing? How do you start to maybe raise your gaze and kind of see the bigger impact or share the bigger impact or be involved with others? Where what would be the next step from there?
Deana Bass Williams 11:39
Well, you know, there are tools that are at our fingertips that allow us to expand our reach. So if you're talking about, you know, you have created a program that mentors children in your area, and never want to overemphasize the power of social media, or the power of the virtual impact, but we really do at this stage, we have the ability to impact people, with our services and with our programs in such a way that we never had before. You know, I graduated from film school in 1999, with an MFA and the tools that I had editing on a flatbed, you know, actually editing film back in 1999, or my 14 year old niece with her iPhone has a bigger impact and a larger studio than I did as an MFA student in 1999. So being able to tell our story, to share it effectively, to reach people to change their lives, but also to change ours, it is an unprecedented power that we have now we just have to be able to communicate and share our stories effectively. So what we like to do is we like to try to help people use, you know, the things at their fingertips, to tell their stories effectively, but also to identify their target, you know, not to just start posting and sharing things. But there is a way to be very targeted to identify who you want to reach. And so we think everyone has an audience, and we like to help people find it.
Sylvie Légère 13:12
Right. And that's, it's a challenge, right? When you do something, to think, oh, is this worthy of sharing? And I think you need to have like, I don't know, special hat special lenses to really think oh, yeah, I want to share this, I want to share this story. Do you have like some questions that you ask yourself maybe some clues about Yeah, this is share a story worth sharing. And it is a story worth elevating and maybe sharing with a specific audience?
Deana Bass Williams 13:38
Well, we do have what we call the three C's that we use with clients and friends, and even in our own life to determine if it's something that we first want to engage in. And that's clarity, courage, and competence. And so the clarity, to understand, first of all, what the mission is, and sometimes missions are muddled. And if we don't know what the client wants, or even what we want in our own life, then we have to stop and we have to clarify that mission. So we have to know what the mission is. So that's clarity, and then courage. And sometimes you think, what do you know your public affairs officers? What are your PR people? Why do you even need to consider courage but in this climate, it is courageous to tell your story. It is courageous to even speak out sometimes. So do you have the now that you didn't know the mission now that you have clarity? Do you have the courage to actually plant your feet and say what you want to say? And some people actually don't have that courage? And if they don't, if they don't have the courage, then we certainly can't support them in the Public Affairs Public Relations space. And then there's the competence. And so that means like, do you have the ability to do it? So do you know how to do it and a lot of people have the clarity and the courage but they have no idea what they're doing like they don't know How to do it. And so you've got to find the team to figure out how to do it.
Sylvie Légère 15:04
Yeah. Is it competence, how to do it competence about the story of what they're doing, or competence to share the story.
Deana Bass Williams 15:11
It's actually all of that the ability to actually do what you're saying that you want to do, and the ability to share it effectively. We talked about my mom makes the best pancakes in the world. And so a lot of people think that they will, we've tasted other people's pancakes, and a lot of people think that they have the company's competency to bake pancakes. But until you tasted my mom's pancake, you really don't understand what competent pancake baking is like. So just because you think you can do it doesn't mean that you can you have to have wise counsel of people who can kind of let you know that you you you're not there yet. And it's okay. There are a lot of things that did. And we talked about this in the book, when we first started our public affairs firm, we recognize that we were a new business. If you wanted us to pitch you in the media, we would take the client and so we took on some cybersecurity had techie kind of clients, and they were wonderful, amazing people. But DD and I, we are not mathletes. We are not cyber people at all. So we would find ourselves pitching journalists who knew more about the cyber issue than we did. And so we recognize that we were losing clients by pursuing things that were not our fit. We talk about a superhighway like staying staying in your lane, our lane is a superhighway. And now that we figured out what our lane is, it's amazing the breadth and the types of clients that we can take on but but we have to stay in our lane of competence.
Sylvie Légère 16:41
Yeah, I love that the three C's about sharing your story, that clarity of mission, that courage, and then also just the competence to execute, telling the story and doing what you say you're going to do. And that part about courage, I think is especially true today. Because it takes a lot of courage to engage in to be out there and to share with others what it is that you are doing, or what you are believing. I'd love for you to share. How do we handle the arrows that come? Because regardless of what you do, what is the saying Right? No good deeds goes unpunished or something, sadly, so regardless, if even if you're doing something really awesome, there's always going to be arrows that are going to be at you, and how do you handle that? Right? Because you don't have to respond to everything and everything that you do, the way you respond, become part of your brand of your image of your platform. So you have to be very thoughtful and share with us how do you handle I know you do a lot of crisis, call it crisis management, what's your train of thoughts or framework to handle a crisis or an attack for people?
Deana Bass Williams 17:50
So and I'll tell you, there's the way that we handle it personally. And you know, Didi and I, in our, in our business, when it's attacks against us, and then there's a way that we counsel our clients to handle it. And sometimes it's the same, sometimes it's different. Because Didi and I, we are Christians, and we have a faith that allows us to rest in the comfort that we are loved by an unconditional God. So we rest in that. And then there's like that public response of we believe in attacking policy, not people. So any response that we make, or that we encourage our clients to make is a response that's born in addressing the actual policy and never addressing the shortfalls of humans of men and women, you will never find us. And you can go back as far as you want to in our Twitter feed. In our Instagram, we do not attack people, but we are very comfortable addressing policy issues. Now, that being said, we also think that it is important to before you begin to try to deal with general crisis in protecting your brand and protecting your, your name. When we started our business, one of our wives counselor said and we take this advice, usually in crisis communications, 20% of the problem is actually the media or is actually the public display of chaos. But 80% of it is actually solving the problem. Like if there's a if there's actually a problem, if there's some if there's actually some there there, then fix the there. They're like if you've done something wrong, if there's a mess in your business, fix the thing that is wrong, and maybe there's not, but if there's something wrong, you have to fix that first, and then you move forward. And so if you fix the problem, then you know the public display of chaos will generally go away. And if that doesn't happen, then we always say first of all, don't read the comments because people are ill mannered and don't always behave the way they should and comments, but more than anything, we believe that you have to be willing to apologize if you did wrong. And that's a place where we're just not publicly, we're not, we're not seeing people do that with grace, offering or extending Grace.
Sylvie Légère 20:14
Hi, Sylvie here, I want to invite you to visit the policy circle where you will find valuable resources and virtual events to expand your knowledge of public policy and equip to become backfills visits. And coming up this October is the policy circle summit on thriving communities, visit the policy circle.org to sign up for free to participate in this unique conference at the intersection of leadership and policy. Now, let's get back to the episode. How would you respond to labels or mis labels or you know, like what you're doing in your organization is being portrayed as something that it's not? Right? How do you respond to that, and there's, I feel like there's like different camps, right? One is, you don't want to give oxygen to those negative voices that are trying to just mislabel what you are doing. And by responding, you're amplifying that. So you have to hold back and not respond to those. And perhaps the way your responses, you keep the course right and you keep being principled and showcasing the value that you're delivering and value adding I guess would be a good way to respond to, you know, those those mislabeling are these attacks in this canceled culture, because there's movements out there that want to silence different points of views and different people and push people to not engage.
Deana Bass Williams 21:39
And that's when we do encourage people, first of all, not to read the comments. Because sometimes, when there's a press hit against you, you feel like everyone walking down the street knows it. And usually, if you pass that, like the first 30 people that you pass, 29 of them will never have heard of this media issue that you're having. Now, that being said, if your audience is picking up on it, you do have to weigh the cost of, like you said, giving it oxygen, right. But the reason we encourage people not to read the comments is because that knee jerk to respond in a negative way, is usually not helpful. But we do say this is again, when we go back to the clarity, you have to continue to out, perform the media, and find your own audience, find your own avenues to tell the truth to tell your story and do it consistently. And so, again, that it really is difficult, and sometimes not sometimes always. It's case by case. And it has to be if you are going to push back in the media, that's when the second C Courage comes because you can't do a two step and come in and come out you have to plant your feet. If you're going to engage the media, you have to engage.
Sylvie Légère 22:54
So what's your let's talk a little bit about that about interacting with the media, right? What's your advice and interacting with the media as people engage? Sometimes, you know, you're caught off guard and the media wants to have your comments about something that perhaps you're doing or an event that you're a part of? And what's your advice, like three things that you have to keep in mind whenever you are interacting with someone from the media?
Deana Bass Williams 23:17
Well, a lot of people talk about talking points at basketball affairs, we use messaging marks because we feel like it's not just one point. It's not one target. It's more general. But we do believe that when you know that you are going to engage the media, we always encourage people to put on a piece of paper, even if you have to write it down. The first three things like the top three things that you want to convey, because we know that most of the time you don't have an opportunity to have rich conversations like we're having here where you have a long form. Usually it's a soundbite. And so we encourage people to make sure that that they have three messages very clear and concise that they want to repeat, and that they want that story to have kind of as its theme as its headline, right? And so it doesn't matter, necessarily what the question is, you respond with your three very clear things now seasoned reporters, if it's controversial, or if they're really trying to get you to respond, don't do the very evasive pivoting that we see on television, when when we seen someone asks a question, and it's so clear that they didn't answer it. But the bottom line is that the journalist is asking you so you have the opportunity to say what you want to say, because they're gonna cut it up. So it's your prerogative to say exactly what you want to say. So we always encourage people to make sure that they have those three things and sometimes and you know, if it's going to be a short interview, just that one thing over and over again, this is what I'm going to say over and over again. And more than anything, don't ever lie to the media. It sounds very simple, but don't lie. It's never a pretty thing when you get caught in a lie. So don't do it. It always goes
Sylvie Légère 25:00
back to being authentic and what you do and how you reach out to people and how you build from there. So it's kind of I love how we've kind of created here in this conversation, a little bit of a roadmap where it's like, okay, you want to reach there for you want to expand your ecosystem of relationships, you need to look at the map or look at the communities that you want to be in touch with be part of, what do you have to offer? And how can you help? And then from there, how can you share those stories so that you can make it visible because it's okay, and I think we need to feel, okay. And it's not self promotion. It's about telling the story and inspiring others. And I think that's how if we change that, in our mind, that I think we do it in a very authentic way, in a way that also delivers values for others, to inspire others maybe to also help in the same cause, or to also share their unique talents and gifts with a specific community that is not close to them. So I thought that that's really a great reminder, and then sharing that story and making sure that you start to have these three C's that clarity of mission, that courage, because you will get arrows no matter what you do. And that you have, you're doing in a competent way. So it's thoughtful, and either you get some help to do that, or you do it yourself. And you ensure that there's competence behind your action, and also be ready to interact with the media, which oftentimes, I think were caught off guard were uncomfortable. And when your mother recommended to you to know a reporter, how do you go about doing that?
Deana Bass Williams 26:31
You know, there are people that you can follow on on Twitter on social media that and reporters love to get feedback, I mean, positive feedback about their articles. So if there's a reporter that wrote something that you, you agree with, share the feedback. You know, for us, we have reporters who are very good friends. And so because of that, Deedee, and I decided, I guess it's about six years ago, now that we, we live our life on the record. And by that I mean, because we have friends who are dear friends to us, we don't ever want to put them in a position where they are not able to say what we said. So a lot of people and we don't we don't have that as most people to do this. But we are never off the record, you will never find us giving an interview on background, we worked with Dr. Ben Carson, I was his national press secretary on his campaign and Diddy and he hired basketball compares to on his campaign, I was at HUD with him. And when I left her, I told him you will never see an article with me cited as senior HUD official familiar with the situation if I ever am quoted, like if anything I say is ever in the paper is going to be Dina bass Williams, I'm never off the record.
Sylvie Légère 27:44
It's a great advice, you're never off the record. Because you never know like what is on what is being filmed what is being said you're never off the record. So it's a good reminder, I think as we are trying to build relationships build relationship outside of our sphere, it's, it's a good thing to really, really keep in mind. So I love your advice that you share. I think this is so helpful, it's helpful to demystify, also, this idea of, you know, growing your influence growing, who you touch lives, you touch and it's so grounded in, in real steps. So thank you for sharing that. Do you have like some words like what are your top three, or maybe your one word, you know, phrase that you you live by? That every day or you know, that drives what you do?
Deana Bass Williams 28:32
It really is attack policy, not people. And we say that because we're so often in, in the space where we where we have to disagree with people. It's the nature of the business, but we do not believe in attacking people. Because at the end of the day, we firmly believe that most people want what's best for America, most people want safe schools, clean roads, we want to eliminate food deserts, we want people to have access to, to healthy living. We have a different plan of getting there and are like we are very clear about kind of our free market sensibilities and the things in terms of opportunity agendas that we believe will will help improve America, there are people who think that we're completely nuts, and that our plan is flawed. We don't believe that it is ever helpful for us to attack those people like the character of those people or question the loyalty of those people to America or to humanity. So if we live in this belief of attacking policy and not people, I think we'll have richer conversations and more solutions.
Sylvie Légère 29:37
Now thanks for sharing that. I think it also builds in my book, I have this chapter around human nature and it's like you have to acknowledge human nature and what people want. People want sometimes control they have competitiveness, there's anger, there's fear, and you have to acknowledge that and that might explain sometimes their behavior don't agree with that you don't attack that the people themselves but more what they're putting forward So share with us where can people follow you and find you?
Deana Bass Williams 30:04
Best public affairs.com is where they can follow us and get information about what we're doing our events and even our book, and your book
Sylvie Légère 30:13
And you also have a podcast. So yes, that'd be great. All right. Well, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for joining me. So the Lesia on my trust your voice podcast. I hope that this episode brought you a new way to think about your voice, how to trust yourself, and how to use your voice for good in your life and in your community. If you liked this podcast, be sure to leave us a review in Apple podcasts. And subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player again.