Inkandescent: Hi this is Hope Gibbs with the Inkandescent Radio Network, we are thrilled to be here today talking with Lee Woodruff, author of several books including her first novel which just came out, “Those We Love Most,” welcome to the Inkandescent radio show, Lee!

Lee Woodruff: Yes, it’s great to be here and great to talk to you again.
Inkandescent: Thank you very much, I’m thrilled and honored that you keep saying yes when I ask you for interviews, I really appreciate it, and I’m loving this new book. I’m going to introduce our readers to it. You ask the question why do we hurt the ones we love, and that’s the question that the book pulls from. You draw personally on your own experiences and explore the way in which close nit family is broken and made whole again after one pivotal moment results in an ultimate tragedy. Tell us about this new book and what inspired you to write a novel.

LW: I actually always had wanted to write a novel, I think that the crazier thing was that I wrote two memoir books prior to that. But I think when I was little and thinking about being a writer someday it was all people that I would make up in my head and stories I would make up in my head, but of course as much as writers know you do need to write somewhat about what you know, unless you have the luxury of lots of time and lots of dollars to do research and go travel somewhere and experience a place. So it’s really a novel about family and dynamics and people and where we go wrong and where we go right.

I: Amazing, so tell us about the story, this woman, the main character’s, life changed in an instant, and so did yours. So does she represent you?

LW: She doesn’t I think she represents anyone who has had their life turned upside down, and the novel was really based on a true story. It was a phone call that I got, when I was on the road giving a speech, from a friend and in the town next to mine a little boy had been hit by a 17 year old boy and that boy was a friend of my friend. And she was calling to see if I could talk to the parents of the little boy because he had a head injury and he was in the hospital and of course they were naturally very scared, and I walked out of that hotel room ready to go downstairs and talk and just though oh my gosh look at all the lives touched by that one in an instant moment which of course rang my bell because that was what had happened to us as a family. So I started thinking about the mother, I started thinking about the little boy, I started thinking about the 17 year old boy because at the time my son was 17, I think that might be one of the reasons why the story resonated so much. As I was looking at colleges with him and he was thinking about going on to the next phase of his life and I wondered what would happen if you took a life when that happened and that became the jumping off point for the book. And I’m definitely not doing a spoiler alert because I learned early on when I would tell my girlfriends what I was working on I would say well in the book a child dies, they would say OK I’m out, I can’t read a book where a child dies, and my response to that is this is not a sad, sad book, the child dies before you even get to know him and meet him really, and it’s really a book about the backside of the bad thing, it’s the coming together of family and the ways in which we’re tested and as you said broken apart and brought back together again to heal, and so it is in the end a book about resilience.

I: Alright, and that’s exactly what jumped out at me. And resilience is clearly one of the most important strengths we possess as humans, so talk about getting through these life altering experiences, how did you do it and your family, how did your husband Bob do it, and what advice do you have for others.

LW: Well there’s a big global response to that question, which anybody who has really been tested, their first response and whether or not they verbalize it depends on their personality type, but most people when asked that question would say what choice do I have. You do have a choice, you can lay down and grab a bottle of Jack Daniels and go grab some valium and lie on the couch for ten weeks and hope it’s all going to go away, but the honest truth is as a parent, as a mother, you have a responsibility to show your children that, well, bad things happen in life, the world keeps turning, and there are good people out there. Really, in the end, it’s not the bad thing that happens to you but really how you respond to it, and I think there are good days, there are bad days, there’s hideous days, there’s payback days, and you just literally just keep putting one foot in front of the other, as cliché as that sounds, and ultimately you realize you’re a month out, you’re five weeks out, you’re moving forward largely.

I: So what did you learn about yourself and what did you learn about your kids and your husband as you worked your way through that?

LW: I think we learned that we are a tight family unit, and that we responded in ways that I’m really proud, and we learned that we have the stuff that it takes to I guess keep pushing on and not let it break us. We also learned what a wonderful community we lived in and for anybody who has gone through something, which is probably just about everybody out there listening, you realize you’re part of a larger continuum of people who care and are nurturing you and helping in the small ways and big ways, and sometimes the small ways are the most astounding.

I: Yeah, it’s fascinating isn’t it, how deep you can go, I think. And you can always go deeper. So this is your third book, the other two have been non-fiction, they hit the New York Times Bestseller list, what’s the difference between writing a novel versus a story based on actual events?

LW: You know, it was so much harder to write a novel, because number one you need to make sure that the dialogue is authentic, when it’s your life you know what happened and you can tinker a little bit at the edges and the margins, but when you’re making stories up completely, you have to breath life into all of those characters, and they have to be real, the way they talk and interact with one another has to be real. It was a much larger job than just sort of going through my life and picking and choosing how I was going to tell that story.

I: So do you plan to write some more? What else is on your horizons?

LW: Yeah, I’m working on a novel I’m about my second draft through and if I could just buy a week on eBay with no emails, no children, no end of school year stuff, it would be amazing I could probably get through it, but time is my precious commodity with less of it out there, and I just where so many hats right now, all of them I love, but it makes it really hard to be a writer who spends three hours a day doing nothing but writing, someday I’ll do that.

I: No I hear you I’m struggling with the same problem. And we’re going to get this to that, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed for “PR Rules: The Playbook” the book I’m working on because you’re an expert in PR, so we’ll get to that after I ask you this one last question , so the issue that your book is our book of the month in, our June issue of beinkandescent.com, we feature Sheryl Sandburg and her book “Lean In” and one of her tips to women out here, is to make your partner your partner, and clearly that is what you have done, talk a little bit about that, what does it mean to make your partner your partner, and where do women fall down and how can they be more successful at that?

LW: I think we fall down because we always want to do it our way, I know that early on in my marriage I was telling my husband how the dishwasher was supposed to be loaded and he looked at me and said do you want it to be loaded because if I’m going to help you, I’m going to kind of do it my way, I’m not necessarily going to load it the exact way you want it. And I think if we truly want to be a partner we have to get them to be partners, we need to sort of button our lips on some of that, we can’t expect it to be perfect, or our way isn’t necessarily the right way. And it’s interesting because I heard Sheryl speak, she came to Colgate University and gave a talk on her book tour, and I loved a lot of what she said, I didn’t think it was a one size fits all model, and I thought that she did a lot of, and this sounds like a criticism but I guess it was in some way, I think she was so worried about being criticized that she tried to cover every single base, like this doesn’t apply to poor women, and this or whatever. And I think the message is the message, that women too far, too much of the home organizing and carrying those when they work as well, I know I do. I know my husband is simply not as competent as I am, which is actually true, but if I’m going to respect his work and allow him to help me then I just have to take a step back on some of that. One of my friends in listening to Sheryl, a very accomplished woman, said to me I was a little offended about the sex for laundry thing that she talks about in making your partner your partner, because she said we’ve got to honor the fact that men are wonderful dads in many cases, and a lot of it is not just about doing the housework and doing the chores, but really actively encouraging them in their role as parenting, which has quintupled form what our parents did when they were raising kids.

I: Yeah, amazing right. So how do you guys do it, you let him load the dishwasher the way he wants, what else do you guys do?

LW: Oh you know I have a guy who is a really great partner, that’s not my issue. I know a lot of women for whom it is, it’s really not mine, but I did have to learn in my type a, anal, I want the house run my way way, if I was going to go out for two nights and go away to give a speech or a book talk somewhere, than I pretty much need to just back off when I come home and the house is messy, if the kids are loved, the house being messy is not his deal, that’s not how he deals, so I better just deal with that I guess.

I: Yes, and she talks about that, I’ve personally experienced that. She says let them put the diaper on the baby’s head they’ll figure it out.

LW: Exactly, I agree with that.

I: Especially women who are very strong, and they are confident, we tend to want to over control, but I think that it’s the biggest mistake you can make as a wife and a mother, personally.

LW: I do too, and it’s an easy one to make, and I think sometimes you have somebody like a Sheryl Sandburg come in and lay it out I think it’s really productive, because otherwise it just degrades into one of those husband wife fight things.

I: Exactly, exactly. So let’s segue here into “PR Rules: The Playbook” talking about public relations, tell our listeners a little about your experience in PR.

LW: Well I was at big agencies for a number of years until I had a child, and he caused me to reconfigure life when my husband decided to leave law and become a journalist. So all of a sudden we were going to leave this protective life and being in the agency world was going to work with moving around a lot, so I just began setting up my shingle and taking on public relations clients every place we lived and doing a lot of freelance writing. In my big agency days I worked for a lot of fortune 500 companies I did everything from crisis PR to consumer product, pharmaceutical, and it’s changed and it hasn’t changed. I think ultimately what has changed is really the internet, and the ability for everything to sort of go paperless and for access, but other than that it’s all the same to me, basically the same principals in my opinion.

I: OK, so given that landscape, what is the purpose of PR?

LW: The purpose of PR is to take a cause, a product, a person whatever that may be and spread awareness of that, in my mind. Again, whether it’s talking about getting condoms on people in Ghana who HIV/ Aids, or whether it’s talking about Snookie’s new book, quite frankly, it’s a way for people to access information about whatever it is that you’re selling, offering, giving away. And it’s really essential I think when you have a product, and it’s really important to do it well now because there is so much out there. So many channels, as you know, radio, TV, so many websites, how do you find something now, and so it’s becoming much more targeted and you can find things in more of a silo system certainly, but I think it’s almost more confusing, in many ways, where we get information.

I: Yes, agreed, being a PR firm myself, it is very hard to explain to clients how they can be most effective, and that’s really the strategy piece. So talk about that you’ve worked for giant companies and smaller firms, what do small business owners need to know from your point of view to find a firm that’s a good fit for them?

LW: I think that they need to feel comfortable about personality as you know, if you like the person who is representing you and you feel like they understand what they’re doing and have a fair access and ability to share information and communicate, that’s number one because really the rudimentary part of PR, the ability to put it up on the newswire, or check websites get clips, all of that, that can be taught, but I feel like it has to be a good fit, and you have to also feel like they’re being a good steward of your dollars, in terms of your budget. You want accountability, you want to be able to see where they’re spending their time, and I think also clients need to understand that not everyone is going to get on the cover of Time Magazine, there’s a sense often among clients of over inflating their story, and that’s all well and good and we want everybody to think the best of themselves, but sometimes there is a feeling of if I just keep moving PR people or if I just get somebody else I’ll get on the cover of Time, and I think you need to respect your public relations practitioner in terms of what makes a story, what the angles are, and how you get somebody press and publicity.

I: Yes, and managing expectations is one of the first and most important things I think we do at Inkandescent PR, getting on the cover of Time may not be appropriate for every client.

LW: Right and it may not actually sell product, there are so many different ways now to plug in, as I said with specific and targeted marketing, and it’s kind of exciting what the internet has opened up.

I: Exactly, so how do you recommend clients measure the success of a PR campaign?

LW: It’s really hard, I’ve been asked that throughout my career, how do I know it was successful, how can you measure PR. And unless you’re absolutely, point of purchase, to talk about consumer harping, asking people how they heard about the product or the store, it’s really, really hard. I think if you don’t have PR it’s sort of like an inoculation, I think you’re probably not playing with a full deck in terms of what you want to do, and I think when you have good PR and it’s working, you’re just beginning to organically understand that your business is growing, and it’s one of the many tools along with other things like advertising and maybe direct mail, whatever it might be, I think that a lot of times it’s a complimentary system, everything sort of works together, and PR is a wonderful compliment to many other sort of marketing tools.

I: Yes, I completely agree, that’s exactly what we say in the book. Thank you for confirming it.

LW: And I haven’t even read the book so I must be doing OK.

I: Well I might be doing OK if we agree. What advice do you have for clients, let’s leave with that pivotal moment, what advice do you have for someone embarking on a PR campaign, what do you tell them that they need to expect and to do?

LW: Have realistic expectations, have a budget, understand what your PR agency is going to try to accomplish, understand that none of this happens overnight, building awareness and generating awareness takes a while, you need to establish yourself, very few things get to be “50 Shades of Gray” and even that started out as a slowly hatched web fantasy piece that she was writing. So all of this is a process, there are no overnight sensations.

I: Right and that slow, consistent burn, to me, is what makes something effective, because you’re working out the kinks along the way, I know so many people who are working on a book and it’s not out yet and they hire a publicist and they get on TV, but they have nothing to sell. It’s really a strategy to me.

LW: It is a strategy, and that’s why you just got to feel really good about the partnership as well, I think a lot of public relations is feeling good about the partnership, about the people that you’re working with, and trusting them. It’s a trust relationship, and you want to be in it for the long haul. I know a client who continues to jump PR agencies every time he does this one annual event, because he keeps thinking there’s going to be someone out there who is better connected, and the bottom line is it’s an event in New York, among the many thousands of events that happen every year, and no one is going to be able to garner really much more prowess, no matter how many celebrities he has there. And I think it’s really again, part of understanding that and laying out, as you said, managing expectations prior to embarking on the agreement.

I: You kind of make your partner your partner it reinforces that.

LW: That old Sheryl Sandburg line again, she has some good ones, she has some juicy soundbites.

I: She does, she’s good I like her.

LW: Yeah she is, I do too.

I: Well we’re thrilled to have you on the show and to be promoting “Those We Love Most” as our June 2013 book of the month, we can’t wait to read your next book and we wish you tremendous success with this novel.

LW: Thank you, Hope, and it’s always a pleasure to intersect with you, what you do you do so well and I’m really in admiration of beInkandescent and all that you’ve built, and I would actually say to anyone out there, you’d be a great PR person to work with, girl, so keep it up.

I: Thank you so very much, we’re talking to Lee Woodruff, leewoodruff.com, head over there, check out her new book, check out all of her amazing blog postings, she’s a wonderful woman and truly an inspiration to all of us, so thank you again for your time, Lee, will talk to you again soon.

LW: Thanks Hope.

I: This is the Inkandescent radio network, and we look forward to talking to you soon, thanks for your time.