Prologue: The Need for Thymos

I drove the Morgan Roadster into the Forbidden City in Beijing without a permit and felt the excitement of creating a spectacle which was at once both foolhardy and audacious. The dark blue uniformed police were making their way towards my film crew, and I held back the clamouring crowds craning their necks to see this British sports car that looked as though it had arrived by time machine. I shouted instructions to the photographers from a Chinese magazine to keep filming; I would not lose this perfect PR moment. This British racing green sports car with top down, chrome spoke wheels gleaming in the sunshine within sight of the portrait of Chairman Mao was going to be the cheapest, cheekiest, and most impactful public relations launch in the Middle Kingdom. And so it was. The Autocar publishers laid out the photos of my tan interior 4-seater Roadster across the pages of their magazine, and I had launched my business in China for free.

I have spent my life building brands by using public relations, with conventional campaigns augmented with moments like the Forbidden City photoshoot in 2011. I first got a taste for public relations when I needed to raise money at 18 by jumping out of an aeroplane, and convincing a store in my hometown of Canterbury to give me expedition equipment in return for media coverage. In Manchester, at postgraduate University, my friends and I organised the Manchester Marketing Mix and raised money for charity. After 5 years working variously in an advertising agency, a food import business, and a music technology company, in 1995 I left for Singapore to start my agency, EASTWEST Public Relations. I was 28 and so full of ambition and belief. When China entered the WTO in 2001, I was drawn to this magnet of entrepreneurial opportunity. I moved to Beijing in 2006 to start a communications business in a country where I couldn't speak the language.

For a person who has always enjoyed talking, as my family will tell you, being in a place where I could neither understand nor be understood created a massive learning experience, especially when I was in the business of helping others to communicate. Over a period of 13 years, I built several businesses, including the official importer of the Morgan Motor Company, my own EASTWEST Public Relations, and Wake Drinks. I also created the British Business Awards, the British Motorsport Festival and was hired as the interim CEO of Lotus Cars in China. I built all of these without spending money on advertising or expensive events. Just as I had done when I made my expeditions to Australia and Central America self-funded through sponsorship. What I have wanted to do with this book is have industry experts and technologists explain how you too can #getnoticed, with my experience being used to curate their insights for you.

For over 25 years, I have enjoyed both success and failure in business, and I think I can save you some of my mistakes, as I've asked experts on your behalf what will improve your chances of success. I've been a founder, an employee, and a consultant, and so I know the pain of wasting money and not being allowed to spend money, and watching others spend it unwisely. In all these situations, though, I came to appreciate that effective communication is an essential element of personal and professional success. Building businesses in China without a budget and not able to read or write Mandarin, and in a market of immense scale, taught me the valuable lessons of focus, visualisation of messaging, and the essential need to use technology for the entire process.

Back now in the UK, with time to reflect and COVID enforcing long periods of concentration, I wanted to help other business owners communicate, not by asking them to become PR professionals but by sharing free and effective means to #getnoticed. When I returned to England in 2019, I saw my brilliant sister struggling to share her much needed message about the impact of light on children simply because she didn't know how to build a story and to share it. I saw so many people struggling under COVID, who needed new marketing skills just in order to survive. I wanted to help in a way that used my skills to the best effect. So in June 2020, I started "The UnNoticed Show" podcast, to help all those amazing entrepreneurs like my sister who can't afford an agency, and frankly don't really need one either, but can do such good if they can find ways to share their message.

I have sought experts, entrepreneurs, and technologists who are solving the problems founders face every day, and put them into a framework so that this is public relations for people who don't want to become PR professionals, just to use PR for their purposes. First though, let's address the poor reputation of public relations itself, that it is just "spin" or "gin-slings." Getting noticed goes much deeper than that.

Getting noticed is more than just a business issue, it's personal. Thymos is the Greek term for the need for recognition, and in Platonic philosophy is that area of the soul where feelings of pride, indignation, shame, etc. are located. In his book The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama coined the terms: "Megalothymia" which refers to the need to be recognised as superior to others, and "Isothymia" is the need to be recognised as merely equal to others. In Homeric poems, thymos is one of a family of terms associated with the internal psychological processes of thought, emotion, volition, and motivation.

Today, we know that feelings of pride and self-esteem impact levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain, releasing the "happy chemical" at a biological and sociological level, meaning that we need to get noticed as people. As entrepreneurs we are the business, we put our heart, souls and bodies into these ventures with all kinds of dreams, and anonymity does nothing to validate our aspirations, nor deliver sales. Anyone who has undertaken investor relations will know that the third-party validation of media or analyst coverage can affect valuations, recruitment is easier when candidates have heard of your company, supplier credit terms are better and of course sales pipelines fill up much more quickly.

I've compiled this second volume of The UnNoticed Show© to give you ways to release more serotonin into the collective bloodstream of your company. This book is a curation of just 50 articles drawn from the >200 interviews, which I've held since June 2020 with entrepreneurs, experts, and technology providers on the 20-minute format podcast. The style that you are going to read is conversational because these are curated versions of the transcripts, not elements drafted into a new article. I've taken this approach intentionally because I want to share the energy, tone, and personality of my guests as if you were to meet them.

I kept each episode intentionally short for two reasons: (i) You won't have a lot of time, and will want to get to the details; and (ii) You don't want to become PR experts, just to learn enough to give directions to others to take the right strategy. It was hard to decide on just 50, but I want to keep to the philosophy of being economical with your time.

Besides the guest essays, I introduce the SPEAK|prT programme as a framework for approaching public relations. This is a five-stage method I have developed to help structure the approach. There is a wealth of tactical information available on the internet, but it seems to me there is a dearth of strategy, and yet as business owners, we need to create a consistency and automated flow of information that, once set up, we can give to others to implement. I want to provide a broader overview of what thinking needs to go into developing a consistent communications campaign. I'll introduce a framework which I have been working under the name "SPEAK|prT" which stands for: Storify, Personalise, Engage, Amplify, Know. I have curated the interviews nominally by each stage of the framework, although there is overlap of course and ask for you to forgive the omissions or repetitions for which I am entirely to blame. I invited my guests to answer one of two questions:

Entrepreneurs to answer - "How do you get noticed?"

Technologists and experts to answer - "How do you help entrepreneurs get noticed?"

In doing so I have hoped to create both an inside-out and outside-in approach, which serves you in whatever role you play. This isn't of course a textbook, it is a series of conversations and formatted that way, with practical, easy to implement ideas which you can use to improve the recognition that you and your organisation receive from the people that matter. I have an online programme and mastermind for the SPEAK|prT programme for anyone who would like to go into more depth, but the goal of this book is to include you in the conversations I have had with 50 people around the world who are solving the same problems that you are facing every day.

I am most grateful to all of my guests for sharing their time and insights with me and...