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Turning Passion into Purpose: How Aby Hawker is Transforming PR · Work It Like A Mum

• 0:01
  Elizabeth Willetts: Hey, I'm Elizabeth Willits and I'm obsessed with helping as many women as possible achieve their boldest dreams after kids and helping you to navigate this messy and magical season of life.
• 0:14
  Elizabeth Willetts: I'm a working mom with over 17 years of recruitment experience and I'm the founder of the Investing in Women job board and community.
• 0:22
  Elizabeth Willetts: In this show, I'm honored to be chatting with remarkable women redefining our working world across all areas of business.
• 0:29
  Elizabeth Willetts: They'll share their secrets on how they've achieved extraordinary success after children, set boundaries and balance, the challenges they faced and how they've overcome them to define their own versions of success.
• 0:43
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• 0:44
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• 0:45
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• 0:49
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• 0:50
  Elizabeth Willetts: Think of this as coffee with your mates, mixed with an inspiring TED Talk sprinkled with the career advice you wish you'd really had at school.
• 0:57
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• 1:07
  Elizabeth Willetts: This is the Work it Like A Mum podcast.
• 1:10
  Elizabeth Willetts: This episode is brought to you by Investing in Women.
• 1:17
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• 1:29
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• 1:52
  Elizabeth Willetts: Now back to the show.
• 1:54
  Elizabeth Willetts: Well, thank you so much, abby, for joining me today on the Work it Like A Mum podcast.
• 1:59
  Elizabeth Willetts: I'm so excited to chat with you and learn more about transmission, pr and your journey into entrepreneurship, and also get some tips as well on how people can maybe build a personal brand, a company brand, and use communications as their superpower in their career.
• 2:16
  Elizabeth Willetts: So thank you so much for chatting with me today.
• 2:19
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's a real pleasure to be here.
• 2:20
  Elizabeth Willetts: Thanks so much for having me.
• 2:21
  Elizabeth Willetts: I love chatting with entrepreneurs.
• 2:24
  Elizabeth Willetts: I really have enjoyed running my my own business, but is that something you always wanted to do?
• 2:28
  Aby Hawker: growing up.
• 2:29
  Aby Hawker: So I always wanted to come up with an idea that no one else had come up with.
• 2:32
  Aby Hawker: So I always used to chat with my husband.
• 2:35
  Aby Hawker: I'd be like, oh, have you thought what do you think of this?
• 2:38
  Aby Hawker: Do you think this is a million dollar idea?
• 2:39
  Aby Hawker: And he'd always sort of, look at me, give me that look, you know the kind of really.
• 2:44
  Aby Hawker: And I'd be like, well, what are you doing?
• 2:47
  Aby Hawker: What are you bringing to the table?
• 2:49
  Aby Hawker: And so I've always kind of had this thought that I felt frustrated by the idea that I feel often that no more new ideas can possibly come out there, because we've everyone's thought of everything and then when someone thinks of something new, it's a bit like music Someone will come out with a new song.
• 3:05
  Aby Hawker: That's absolutely amazing, I think.
• 3:06
  Aby Hawker: How the hell is there still space for new stuff?
• 3:09
  Aby Hawker: So there has always been that in me.
• 3:11
  Aby Hawker: But yeah, it was only retrospectively, actually, when I started transmission and we'll talk about that in a sec, but it was only retrospectively that I thought to myself, oh, I've done it.
• 3:21
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, you thought the idea.
• 3:23
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, for you the good trying to explain to people what transmission PR, who you are and who you have sure.
• 3:30
  Aby Hawker: So I am a PR pro.
• 3:33
  Aby Hawker: I've been working in PR for, so public relations, for the past 25 years, so a really long time, and during that time I've kind of done everything.
• 3:44
  Aby Hawker: I've kind of done everything.
• 3:44
  Aby Hawker: I've done big campaigns, teeny campaigns.
• 3:47
  Aby Hawker: I've worked on sexy brands and I've worked on lots of not so sexy brands.
• 3:52
  Aby Hawker: I had to go to New York to try out the flatbeds when I worked at British Airways and I had to go to Italy because I speak Italian, so I had to go to Italy to help to develop this new brand of pizzas with this Michelin-style restaurant.
• 4:04
  Aby Hawker: So I've done some pretty cool stuff over my time.
• 4:10
  Aby Hawker: But then I've also worked on sort of aggregates and roofing and cladding.
• 4:13
  Aby Hawker: You know you've got to pay the bills, but I've always had a passion for healthcare.
• 4:16
  Aby Hawker: Healthcare has always been something that's really sort of I like writing about human things.
• 4:22
  Aby Hawker: I like writing about things that people often shy away from.
• 4:25
  Aby Hawker: So I had a client who was a pharmacy for quite a long time and so I used to write a lot about bodily functions, erectile dysfunction, those kinds of things, and I never, never, shied away from that kind of thing.
• 4:42
  Aby Hawker: So on one occasion one of my existing clients came to me and said that she was opening up a healthcare clinic to help trans and non-binary people.
• 4:52
  Aby Hawker: So transgender and non-binary people to access hormones online.
• 4:56
  Aby Hawker: And and did I want to come and help manage the PR because she thought, you know, we might have a few stumbling blocks.
• 5:06
  Elizabeth Willetts: I can imagine.
• 5:06
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yes, it's such a big issue, isn't it?
• 5:09
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's always in the paper, so I can imagine you're very busy so.
• 5:13
  Aby Hawker: So I was like that sounds cool and at the time it was sort of coming up for a decade now.
• 5:18
  Aby Hawker: So is it?
• 5:18
  Aby Hawker: At the time there wasn't much not like it is now.
• 5:21
  Aby Hawker: There's kind of a huge amount of misinformation and disinformation out there.
• 5:26
  Aby Hawker: There's kind of hardly a day goes by where the Daily Mail isn't screaming some story about trans people.
• 5:34
  Aby Hawker: And.
• 5:35
  Aby Hawker: But 10 years ago it wasn't really like that, it was a lot.
• 5:37
  Elizabeth Willetts: You're right, it's quite a recent thing so I wasn't fazed by it.
• 5:42
  Aby Hawker: I just kind of thought, yeah, sure, no problem.
• 5:44
  Aby Hawker: And I started and I found it really interesting.
• 5:48
  Aby Hawker: I found it really shocking the challenges that the trans community was facing in accessing health care, and so I became quite passionate about trying to make a difference.
• 5:59
  Aby Hawker: And you know, there's this kind of notion that if you can combine what you're good at with what you're passionate about and actually make some money on the side, it's kind of the trifactor of glory and that's kind of what I quickly realized.
• 6:14
  Aby Hawker: I was doing something that I actually wanted to get up for.
• 6:18
  Aby Hawker: And so I started working more and building a team of trans and non-binary people to help, because I'm cisgender, so I'm not trans, which means that you know, I have no idea.
• 6:29
  Aby Hawker: I'm good at the PR side of things, but I don't know what it's like to be trans or non-binary.
• 6:33
  Aby Hawker: And so I built that team.
• 6:34
  Aby Hawker: You know I was working really closely with someone who had a trans kid.
• 6:38
  Aby Hawker: I worked very closely with somebody with a number of people who were trans themselves, and so very quickly that knowledge grew and I was able to kind of bring them in and lean on their expertise to build my own and also to kind of give them, to empower them to be able to kind of lean into who they are in a workplace, which was also amazing, because there's always this kind of huge statistic of I can't remember it off the top of my head, but a large number of people have to hide their gender diversity in the workplace for fear of discrimination, and so I felt that, oh my god, this is kind of ticking so many boxes on a purely human level and actually doing something that hopefully makes a difference.
• 7:20
  Aby Hawker: You know so, um, I did that for six years, but it was kind of apart from the fact that working in trans health care is a little bit like hitting your head against the brick wall in the UK why is that?
• 7:33
  Aby Hawker: just because of the numbers of barriers that are put in place for trans people who are trying to access care.
• 7:39
  Aby Hawker: Okay, it's huge.
• 7:40
  Aby Hawker: And so it felt a little bit like one step forward, two steps back, and I knew that actually, if I stayed focusing just on health care in this one organization, I wouldn't make as much progress as I could If I left that one organization and built a my own agency which could serve multiple sectors, still working in healthcare because that's kind of my, the area I am mostly passionate about, I'd say but also expanding it out.
• 8:12
  Aby Hawker: And now we work with healthcare, but we also work in hospitality, we work with recruitment, we work in so many different sectors.
• 8:21
  Aby Hawker: Fashion and the charity work effectively.
• 8:24
  Aby Hawker: Our agency, which is my agency, which is called transmission pr mission, is to change the narrative when it comes to the sort of toxicity around the transgender experience by bringing trans and non-binary people into the conversation so that we the content that we put out is authentic because it is written by and contributed to by trans people and also allies Do you feel a bit.
• 8:52
  Elizabeth Willetts: When you mentioned you're you know you're not trans, you're cisgender did you feel like a sense of imposter syndrome when you first went into that world?
• 9:00
  Aby Hawker: I get asked this a lot and no, i't.
• 9:02
  Aby Hawker: But I think it's mainly because I wasn't trying to be anything other than what I was.
• 9:06
  Aby Hawker: I was always the ally.
• 9:07
  Aby Hawker: So I think cis people often don't get involved in this conversation and I think that's why we're in the situation that we're in, because cis people, who represent around 99% of the population compared with 1% who are trans, it's not really their fight and so they think, well know, yeah, yeah, oh, isn't that terrible?
• 9:27
  Aby Hawker: But I'm not going to do anything about it because it doesn't actually impact me.
• 9:30
  Aby Hawker: And so I didn't feel any imposter syndrome because I was asking trans people and bringing trans people in and working very collaboratively and from transmission's perspective, I'm always, you know, part of our remit is to give, do pro bono work for the community.
• 9:48
  Aby Hawker: So if we have someone who is having a communication challenge, they'll get in touch and we'll help them and, you know, hopefully that will put them in a better position than they were before they spoke to us.
• 9:58
  Aby Hawker: So we try to do, we try to give back to the community in that way.
• 10:02
  Aby Hawker: But we also employ, as said, trans and non-binary people and we listen to them and we have them kind of work with the clients and input into the content, so that the content is authentic.
• 10:16
  Aby Hawker: And so I'm not really pretending to be anything other than who I am.
• 10:20
  Aby Hawker: I'm, you know, classic kind of person um, ally, my, an accomplice, I guess, trying to open doors, trying to do all of the sort of bits that maybe my colleagues don't want to do, trying to bring the business in, and then we can all work on it together.
• 10:37
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, yeah, I get that.
• 10:39
  Aby Hawker: Facilitate it, I guess, in a way yeah, I get it.
• 10:43
  Elizabeth Willetts: So you work with.
• 10:44
  Elizabeth Willetts: Are they like trans-owned businesses?
• 10:47
  Elizabeth Willetts: What, or is it?
• 10:48
  Aby Hawker: individual who do you.
• 10:48
  Aby Hawker: So it's a combination of things.
• 10:50
  Aby Hawker: So I um, from a healthcare perspective, it would be providers to the trans community, so surgeons and hormone providers, those sorts of things, and then you know we work with trans-owned charities, for example, and you know the rest is just just businesses who want to do better when it comes to communicating with this particular audience.
• 11:12
  Aby Hawker: So I think there's also an element of well, there's a large element of fear in terms of getting things wrong, in terms of making a mess, and I find that, because I am cis, that can take a little bit of that fear away.
• 11:27
  Elizabeth Willetts: People can feel they can be quite honest about their own ignorance.
• 11:30
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, and yet, if we deliver training because training is one of the things that we do we will always do it with a trans and a cis person because, you know, ultimately it's about centering their experience, but in a way which hopefully helps the audience to feel as comfortable as they can to engage with the content and to, kind of you know, hopefully learn something from it so, quite so it starts off with pr, but you're doing training, it's not, and then people will ring you if they've got sort of like a little bit of training.
• 12:00
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, I mean I refer yeah, I refer to it as kind of communications consultancy, really, yeah.
• 12:05
  Aby Hawker: So, yes, absolutely, we might be in a situation where a client has a problem because they've messed up and then we would help them with crisis and issues.
• 12:13
  Aby Hawker: But one of the first things we noticed when I first launched two years ago was people were saying it sounds brilliant, but we haven't even got the first clue where to start, from a language perspective even, and there's so many different pockets of knowledge throughout the organization that it feels coming up with a campaign which sort of focuses on the trans community feels like 10 years away.
• 12:39
  Aby Hawker: We're so far behind.
• 12:41
  Aby Hawker: So we developed the training because it was like, okay, well, let's do what needs to be done.
• 12:44
  Aby Hawker: First, let's come in, let's identify the gaps and then let's plug those gaps so that we all have kind of a base level of understanding and then from there you can move forward.
• 12:55
  Aby Hawker: Because I don't believe, you know, it's one of those things you can put off and put off and put off.
• 12:59
  Aby Hawker: Actually, anyone who does any sort of ED&I work knows it's transferable stuff, it's all kind of.
• 13:07
  Aby Hawker: You know, it's about being inclusive of minority groups and therefore, you know it's just another one of those minority groups that you need to yeah, I think you're right about the training.
• 14:08
  Elizabeth Willetts: About that there is certain like I found this in my job board sometimes clients put on jobs and they obviously have no real thought or I do and then we set up training for that same reason.
• 14:18
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's, yeah, it's, they need a baseline, you need some sort of knowledge before then you can do all the other fancy, fancy, add things on top.
• 14:27
  Elizabeth Willetts: So, in terms of PR, people might not might listen to this and not really understand what PR is.
• 14:32
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know, in its purest sense, what would you say PR is?
• 14:36
  Aby Hawker: PR is about managing an organization's relationships with its publics.
• 14:41
  Aby Hawker: So, whoever they might be, it's all about reputation.
• 14:44
  Aby Hawker: So if you think about marketing being what you want the world to see you as, pr is how they actually see you.
• 14:51
  Aby Hawker: So it's about managing that in a way which best reflects who you are, which is why it's so important to do things authentically as a business, because if you are faking it, there's so many relationships that you're trying to navigate and people.
• 15:08
  Aby Hawker: Those relationships will break down very quickly If you don't use the right kind of language or you don't think about the impact that a certain campaign might have on certain stakeholder groups.
• 15:20
  Aby Hawker: So it's just about managing those relationships through all of the different ways in which you communicate with them, whether that's by a news story, so media relations that's something everybody's familiar with, but it might also be you know, I want to build a new hotel in this particular space and the community is really annoyed.
• 15:39
  Aby Hawker: So it might be a campaign getting to know the community and building those relationships so that when you do want to build a hotel, there's more of a kind of a desire to engage with you as an organization I get that.
• 15:51
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know.
• 15:52
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's funny because you see and this is obviously very local, but you know often supermarkets, isn't it?
• 15:57
  Elizabeth Willetts: If they're trying to put a supermarket in a village and then locals don't want the supermarket and there's always a big campaign about yeah, you know, we don't want tesco or whoever and you can completely understand that.
• 16:08
  Aby Hawker: You can completely understand that and that is why relationships are so, so important.
• 16:12
  Aby Hawker: Everybody knows that.
• 16:14
  Aby Hawker: But often people don't give those relationships the time and the dedication that they deserve.
• 16:19
  Aby Hawker: Until the poop hits the fan and everyone's like those people are getting in my way and I can't do what I need to do.
• 16:25
  Aby Hawker: I'm going to go and try and build a relationship with them, but by that point they're like we're not interested in hearing what you've got to say, You're all about the groundwork before then, and do you work with big organizations, small organizations?
• 16:38
  Aby Hawker: Everyone, yeah, big and small, and is it companies?
• 16:41
  Aby Hawker: We do quite a lot of work with startups, yeah, and yeah, it tends to be a range, it tends to be individuals and bigger organizations.
• 16:52
  Aby Hawker: But I think probably the sweet spot we've found so far is with startups and smaller organizations, because they're more malleable, they're kind of more fleet of foot so you can go in and they can change everything, whereas with big organizations that's much harder yeah, there's so many more stakeholders isn't there to prove.
• 17:07
  Elizabeth Willetts: And what about?
• 17:08
  Elizabeth Willetts: Because I mean, I've seen it, you've probably seen it like the rise of the person around, the rise of the influencer.
• 17:13
  Elizabeth Willetts: Is that something you get involved with?
• 17:15
  Aby Hawker: or, yeah, I think that one of the things we had to do quite quickly as a new brand moving into a new space, was to raise awareness.
• 17:23
  Aby Hawker: There's, you know, diversity experts, but there wasn't an agency that combined, you know, public relations with this particular stakeholder group.
• 17:46
  Aby Hawker: And if you look at the likes of kind of Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney, there's one to Google if you're interested in kind of the challenges that can arise around this area.
• 17:57
  Aby Hawker: It just gives you a very quick overview of the fact that there is a lot of work still to be done.
• 18:02
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, that if you manage it in the right way from the get-go and you kind of ask the questions that matter, then you're going to be on a better path in order to avoid all of that, all of those.
• 18:15
  Elizabeth Willetts: I know there has been I can't remember the brands well, you probably like there has been backlash when they've used it would have been the biggest one was the Bud Light one.
• 18:22
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, so they basically quite a fratty brand, so quite laddy brand of beer, biggest seller in the US, and they decided that they needed to appeal to a new audience and so they went down the.
• 18:34
  Aby Hawker: They kind of had this campaign where they would make branded cans and they would send them out to celebs.
• 18:39
  Aby Hawker: And they sent one to a trans celeb and the trans celeb posted it on her tiktok account.
• 18:47
  Aby Hawker: I think she's got like 10 million followers and the right wing beer drink has lost their mind about the whole thing.
• 18:53
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, and they had sort of you know celebrities gunning down bottles of Bud Light and it was a bit of a mess really.
• 19:01
  Elizabeth Willetts: Is there any way that Bud Light could have handled that differently?
• 19:04
  Aby Hawker: I mean, or is it yeah, or is it the fault of the right way?
• 19:07
  Aby Hawker: There's enough examples.
• 19:08
  Aby Hawker: There's enough examples now of brands who have been have had their kind of fingers burnt, and also brands who have done a good job to well.
• 19:18
  Aby Hawker: It takes a bit of google you know a bit of google research and you can quickly see.
• 19:22
  Aby Hawker: But ultimately brands just need to know why they're doing it, why they're working with trans people, and then how does that play into their company values?
• 19:31
  Aby Hawker: and then you know what, what they're going to do in the event of pushback yeah and doing that prep work and making sure that they stand by what they decided was a good idea in the first place is all they need to do, because the pushback is pretty horrible.
• 19:43
  Aby Hawker: But if you've kind of got a clear reason why why is it you're doing this, you know if you've got a really clear understanding, then it doesn't really matter who says to you you know you're doing it for this reason or you're bad, it's like well, I'm not, and it does eventually blow over again.
• 19:59
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, and it does.
• 20:00
  Aby Hawker: It does eventually blow over, but it does impact when it's happening when you're in the eye, um, in the eye of the storm.
• 20:06
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's pretty, oh, absolutely for that person and I guess then there's the concern that then they won't do that again.
• 20:13
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know a lot of businesses would look at that and think I don't want to touch that, you know yeah, that's the problem.
• 20:19
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, in that backlash precisely so what are the misconceptions?
• 20:23
  Elizabeth Willetts: because I know you work really closely with the trans community.
• 20:25
  Elizabeth Willetts: One of the some of the misconceptions that you read in the new, you know, in the daily mail and the more right wing I think the main one is this whole notion that trans people are a threat.
• 20:35
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, trans people represent, as I said earlier, one percent of the population.
• 20:38
  Aby Hawker: One percent of the population.
• 20:40
  Aby Hawker: So chances are you know you're not gonna interact with somebody who's trans.
• 20:45
  Aby Hawker: No one's trying to persuade your kids to be trans, it's just.
• 20:50
  Aby Hawker: It's just a nonsense.
• 20:51
  Aby Hawker: Trans people have always existed.
• 20:52
  Aby Hawker: It's just part of natural human variation, and I just think that the media and the government is trying to paint a narrative which it seeks to kind of distract people from the failures they are responsible for, and they're using trans people as the scapegoat.
• 21:10
  Aby Hawker: And it's exactly how it was with the gay community in the 80s, and it's just people, unfortunately, are lapping it up and what we should be looking for is promoting a society which is kind and supportive and you know, instead we're going down this whole notion that woke is bad and actually woke just means being considerate of somebody who's different to you, which I don't think is a bad thing no, absolutely not.
• 21:37
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's so nice to get like a different perspective.
• 21:39
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know, and because you know, I mean I suppose, like as a woman as well when you think about walking, you know which is like this.
• 21:46
  Elizabeth Willetts: This thing isn't about like this threat and safe.
• 21:50
  Elizabeth Willetts: You think who would you like?
• 21:51
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know the person you think is going to maybe attack you on a night out or whatever, or when you're walking home.
• 21:57
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's probably not a trans person, it's something completely different and that's the threat really this is the problem.
• 22:04
  Aby Hawker: the narrative that's being pushed out by, you know, famous authors and people like that is that trans people are predatory, and it's just unfortunately because the majority of people, as I said, they don't have, they don't know anyone who's trans, they're not impacted by it, they don't really pay that much attention, but all they hear is the headlines, and the headline goes in and then they go about their day and they're like, oh yeah, trans people.
• 22:27
  Aby Hawker: I think I need to be afraid of them for some reason, I'm not quite sure why.
• 22:31
  Aby Hawker: So you end up and that's all.
• 22:33
  Aby Hawker: That's the residual.
• 22:34
  Aby Hawker: The residual kind of feeling is the feeling of sort of something I need to be worried about.
• 22:39
  Aby Hawker: I'm not really sure why, so I'm just going to be worried about it.
• 22:42
  Elizabeth Willetts: I suppose it's a distraction, isn't it from your day?
• 22:44
  Elizabeth Willetts: And I've done?
• 22:45
  Elizabeth Willetts: We're all guilty of this.
• 22:46
  Elizabeth Willetts: You're waiting in a queue and you go on the daily mail or whatever, and you're not even reading it, you're just scrolling and it's those just like alarmist headlines, you see.
• 22:55
  Elizabeth Willetts: I mean it could be about anything, but that is how they sort of bury themselves in you know the headlines, I guess, into your brain, especially if you're just scrolling precisely.
• 23:03
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, did you always want to get into PR?
• 23:06
  Aby Hawker: so no, I did languages at uni.
• 23:09
  Aby Hawker: I was, you know, it was like when I was born in the 70s.
• 23:11
  Aby Hawker: So in the 70s it was like you did what you were good at.
• 23:14
  Aby Hawker: So you go to school and you kind of it's probably the same now you get funneled into a certain direction, and I was.
• 23:20
  Aby Hawker: Because I was born in Italy, I can speak fluent Italian.
• 23:23
  Aby Hawker: So I thought, okay, well, I'll do languages and I was always quite good I did languages and it carried on through to university.
• 23:29
  Aby Hawker: But then at the end I was like, well, I don't want to be a teacher, I don't want to translate.
• 23:33
  Aby Hawker: I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
• 23:36
  Aby Hawker: So I thought, oh, I'll do PR.
• 23:37
  Aby Hawker: I had no idea what it was but I thought sounds good.
• 23:40
  Aby Hawker: Meet people yeah.
• 23:41
  Aby Hawker: Write press releases how hard can it be?
• 23:44
  Aby Hawker: Yeah.
• 23:45
  Aby Hawker: So I did that and I really loved it.
• 23:48
  Elizabeth Willetts: You were very lucky Because a lot of people you know and I feel like that, because I got into recruitment not knowing what it was.
• 23:59
  Aby Hawker: And it was similar, similar, you know.
• 24:00
  Aby Hawker: So I like people, I'll give it a go.
• 24:01
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
• 24:02
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, so weird, I don't.
• 24:02
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, I mean, maybe it's a simple, maybe bigger than us, maybe it was we.
• 24:05
  Aby Hawker: It kind of gone in subliminally and we just, I don't know, naturally gravitated towards it.
• 24:10
  Aby Hawker: But I don't know, it just worked and it's so varied.
• 24:14
  Aby Hawker: It's probably a bit like recruitment, you know, communications.
• 24:17
  Aby Hawker: There's so many elements to it and my day, no, two days are the same.
• 24:21
  Aby Hawker: You know, there's writing, or I might do a podcast on behalf of the client, and there's design elements to it.
• 24:26
  Aby Hawker: There's kind of meeting people and managing the media.
• 24:31
  Aby Hawker: There's so many different facets that, yeah, and it all comes under the under the sort of umbrella of communication, and that's what I'm passionate about.
• 24:40
  Elizabeth Willetts: So but yeah.
• 24:41
  Aby Hawker: so when I got I went through sort of my normal jobs and then I left.
• 24:44
  Aby Hawker: I was at a big agency and I had my daughter and who is now 17, about to turn 18.
• 24:51
  Aby Hawker: And I went back to work and I had my second child and I thought I cannot come back into a working environment where I was given all the crap jobs because they knew that I needed to leave on time.
• 25:03
  Aby Hawker: You'd get that sort of half look as you were leaving the office.
• 25:07
  Aby Hawker: Oh, part-timer?
• 25:09
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, and I think you're going home to relax, don't they?
• 25:11
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah?
• 25:12
  Aby Hawker: Hilarious.
• 25:13
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, you come to work to relax, not go home to relax.
• 25:16
  Aby Hawker: And I just thought I'm not going to do this second time round.
• 25:21
  Aby Hawker: So I took the maternity leave and I started freelancing after I'd had my second child, and but that was when I literally worked on anything was it hard starting a freelancing business.
• 25:35
  Aby Hawker: I was terrified.
• 25:36
  Aby Hawker: I thought I know you're never gonna work again as you do.
• 25:39
  Aby Hawker: I think that's a female thing, I don't know, but I I just thought no one will ever have me.
• 25:43
  Aby Hawker: By the way, hang on a second, you're a practical human being and you're quite bright, so you'll be fine.
• 25:47
  Aby Hawker: But I think when you're in the throes of it, you think how am I ever going to find a job which fits around the need to be at the beck and call of these two children who literally, you know, need all the attention that you can give them between the hours of, you know, 6 am and 7 pm.
• 26:04
  Aby Hawker: But I managed to get a couple of contracts how did you get that?
• 26:08
  Elizabeth Willetts: because is this when you started freelancing, what?
• 26:10
  Elizabeth Willetts: 2010 was it or before that?
• 26:13
  Aby Hawker: so Harry, what we are now.
• 26:15
  Elizabeth Willetts: 24 Harry's 15 for 2009 yeah, because this was obviously linkedin.
• 26:20
  Elizabeth Willetts: I remember linkedin was not like it is now.
• 26:23
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know, now I speak to people that seem to pick up a lot like freelance contracts through linkedin.
• 26:27
  Elizabeth Willetts: How did you find your early?
• 26:28
  Elizabeth Willetts: I think I went to an.
• 26:30
  Aby Hawker: I went to recruitment consultancy, did you?
• 26:32
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, I know, I ended up working at a company called trw, which is security systems for cars.
• 26:38
  Aby Hawker: Oh right, yeah, like, what do I know about security systems?
• 26:42
  Aby Hawker: Like, literally, I knew nothing.
• 26:44
  Aby Hawker: I didn't care about cars, I knew nothing about security systems for cars.
• 26:48
  Aby Hawker: But you know, then it was a really steep learning curve.
• 26:51
  Aby Hawker: But they needed an Italian speaker, and my languages have come into play throughout my career in various places.
• 26:57
  Aby Hawker: But, yeah, I had to manage the Italian and the German PR agencies.
• 27:01
  Aby Hawker: So it worked really well.
• 27:02
  Aby Hawker: Yes, it didn't really matter that I didn't have anything.
• 27:05
  Aby Hawker: I didn't have any interest in security systems because I was kind of managing that.
• 27:09
  Aby Hawker: But then, um, yeah, so I got a few contracts like that and then eventually I started to get a few of my own clients and then I got this.
• 27:18
  Aby Hawker: So it was the freelancing thing went for years and years and years.
• 27:21
  Aby Hawker: Three days a week, eventually going up a little bit more.
• 27:24
  Aby Hawker: But then I got this, the trans client, and I've never, ever, had a client before who said to me I will literally take all the hours you have, please get rid of all your other clients and focus all your energy on working for me.
• 27:38
  Aby Hawker: Did you not consider going in-house then with them?
• 27:40
  Aby Hawker: So well, it was effectively in-house.
• 27:42
  Aby Hawker: It was a virtual model, so it was in-house really, yeah, and so, yeah, I just lived and breathed it 24, 7, but it got a bit too much to the point where I'd get up before everybody else, I go to bed before everybody, after everyone else, because I was just there was so much to do.
• 27:57
  Aby Hawker: It's probably too much for one person, but you know, when you're sort of in it and you don't really see that.
• 28:01
  Aby Hawker: So that was the beauty of stepping up, because by that point the kids were a bit older.
• 28:07
  Aby Hawker: So the kids were would have been 10 and 12 when I started on my sort of trans journey.
• 28:13
  Aby Hawker: So, uh, I was in.
• 28:15
  Aby Hawker: Because that's what you forget, I think, as a mum.
• 28:16
  Aby Hawker: You forget that the children actually grow up.
• 28:19
  Aby Hawker: When you're in it and it's kind of all flying around your ears, you sort of forget that things will change and it's amazing how much they change between sort of primary and secondary school.
• 28:29
  Aby Hawker: And now I remember I'd get a gig and it would be there'd be some travel element.
• 28:35
  Aby Hawker: I've always been really, really lucky from that perspective.
• 28:37
  Aby Hawker: I've been to all over the place with my freelance job, and it would always be on a day when my husband was working.
• 28:45
  Aby Hawker: Inevitably he's a shift worker, so it'd be like, okay, I've got this job needs me to be away for four days.
• 28:52
  Aby Hawker: I'm in Manchester or I'm in you know, and I'd just be like, oh my god, how the hell what did you do then at those points?
• 28:59
  Elizabeth Willetts: how did you parents?
• 29:00
  Aby Hawker: yeah, so my mum would come up or we would take the kids down to them and lived in the south and we'd just make it work.
• 29:08
  Aby Hawker: But it was so awful.
• 29:09
  Aby Hawker: It was such a horrible horror because you'd be stressing out about having to ask them and you'd be stressing out about you know, would they give them enough fruit?
• 29:17
  Aby Hawker: Because that grandparents are like that'd be awful, your mind?
• 29:21
  Elizabeth Willetts: it's not.
• 29:21
  Aby Hawker: It's not very sugar like sweets yeah, I remember once the kids telling me that granddad had given them chocolate for breakfast and I just, you know, that was it for me, no more.
• 29:31
  Aby Hawker: But you know, you're in that situation and you want to do your job.
• 29:34
  Aby Hawker: You want it.
• 29:35
  Aby Hawker: It's such an amazing opportunity and you're like am I completely mad?
• 29:38
  Aby Hawker: Should I just not bother?
• 29:39
  Aby Hawker: But you know, I've always kind of said yes to anything that came my way from a work perspective, because I never knew whether or not I felt grateful that someone was even asking me and I didn't know if anything else was ever going to come again.
• 29:53
  Elizabeth Willetts: I do get that, and it's also everything's like a learning as well, isn't it?
• 29:57
  Elizabeth Willetts: Yeah, and you take a lot from it.
• 29:59
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, but yeah, they've managed to survive it.
• 30:02
  Aby Hawker: So the kids are now a levels in GCSE and then, what made you then move?
• 30:05
  Elizabeth Willetts: so, from freelancing for you with this person, you were practically in house and then moved to actually set up an agency.
• 30:11
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, just to freelance it and being having the in-house role was brilliant.
• 30:15
  Aby Hawker: I'd always wanted an in-house role, even though it probably probably wasn't a conventional one because, like I said, it was a virtual company, so I worked from home the whole time.
• 30:23
  Aby Hawker: But I think putting all my eggs in that one basket just was not working for anyone.
• 30:28
  Aby Hawker: It wasn't working for me, it wasn't working for my family and I thought you know actually my agency background.
• 30:33
  Aby Hawker: I loved working on lots of different things and kind of jumping around and kind of managinguggling lots of different things, and I thought, yeah, actually I'm going to go back to agency model, yeah, so that's kind of how I ended up here.
• 30:46
  Elizabeth Willetts: What about?
• 30:46
  Elizabeth Willetts: I'm interested to know your thoughts on AI, because obviously it's massive, it's.
• 30:50
  Elizabeth Willetts: We're recording this, aren't we?
• 30:52
  Elizabeth Willetts: And you put autopilot into getting the transcript.
• 30:54
  Elizabeth Willetts: So we're definitely working with AI, but you worried about the future of PR.
• 30:58
  Elizabeth Willetts: If people think they can do it themselves, do people you know think they can do their own profile?
• 31:02
  Elizabeth Willetts: I think it's good.
• 31:04
  Aby Hawker: Look at google search engine.
• 31:06
  Aby Hawker: We used to go to the library, used to use microfiche, all of these things.
• 31:11
  Aby Hawker: Developments in technology are always a move forward.
• 31:15
  Aby Hawker: I guess it's just about how you use it.
• 31:17
  Aby Hawker: There's there are always going to be people who don't use it in the right way.
• 31:20
  Aby Hawker: There's going to be people who, then, who do use it in the right way.
• 31:23
  Aby Hawker: I think that we can't overly rely on it and it has to be a harmonious relationship we have.
• 31:29
  Aby Hawker: Maybe we get our first draft from AI and then we put our own human stamp on it.
• 31:34
  Aby Hawker: But I also know time's short and often you're, you know, against the clock and sometimes you have to kind of just go with it.
• 31:41
  Aby Hawker: And I think that that's probably the risk that people rely too heavily on AI and they take what they read as gospel, when actually AI is only as strong as the sources it's drawing upon.
• 31:54
  Aby Hawker: And if those sources, for example with the trans community, the narrative is rife with misinformation and disinformation, yeah, and so the result that you get if you asked a question might not be balanced on yeah because everything that it's drawing on has a certain leaning.
• 32:14
  Aby Hawker: So, yeah, I think we just have to be cautious.
• 32:17
  Aby Hawker: Use it, engage with it, because I think the worst thing we can do is just kind of shy away and, you know, ignore progress.
• 32:24
  Aby Hawker: But yeah, I think I have to be responsible, use it responsibly yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
• 32:29
  Elizabeth Willetts: and there's obviously I.
• 32:31
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know I was saying to you then last year I watched some videos on YouTube about AI and how to use chat, gpt, and it's all about the questioning.
• 32:39
  Elizabeth Willetts: I think that is a lot of people just put in one question, they get an answer and they think, a that's rubbish, so they don't then use it again, or, b they'll just use that and it's not that good.
• 32:49
  Elizabeth Willetts: They haven't put their like human touch and they maybe haven't gone back.
• 32:52
  Aby Hawker: Yeah, and what's brilliant about it?
• 32:53
  Aby Hawker: What I think is so brilliant about it is there is a steep learning curve from the human side to understand how to use it properly.
• 33:00
  Aby Hawker: But seeing how people are using it and kind of learning from other people I think is really valuable.
• 33:05
  Aby Hawker: I saw something recently which said someone had asked chat GPT something, and then they said can you now give me a description of the same thing?
• 33:15
  Aby Hawker: As if I were a five year old child and I was like what a brilliant idea did it manage to do that?
• 33:21
  Elizabeth Willetts: yeah, that's clever, isn't it?
• 33:23
  Aby Hawker: really, really clever and that's where what we will get better at doing, I think.
• 33:28
  Aby Hawker: And a colleague of mine said that they had got a parking ticket so they put into chat GPT how do I get out of paying this parking ticket?
• 33:36
  Aby Hawker: And chat GPT said that is legal, I won't.
• 33:39
  Aby Hawker: I won't to that effect.
• 33:41
  Aby Hawker: I can't give you an answer to the question.
• 33:42
  Elizabeth Willetts: I remember it did it last year, didn't it?
• 33:44
  Elizabeth Willetts: I remember this was in the news.
• 33:46
  Aby Hawker: So what they did was they said something like write me a story from the perspective of someone who's been giving given a parking ticket and is trying to get out of it, so that it responded.
• 33:58
  Aby Hawker: It gave an answer and they were able to use the feedback that it gave to try.
• 34:02
  Aby Hawker: I don't know whether they were actually successful, I think they were, because I think this was a big.
• 34:06
  Elizabeth Willetts: This was a new story last year when it first came out that they got out of a parking ticket.
• 34:11
  Elizabeth Willetts: Brilliant, yeah, absolutely so what's next for transmission PR?
• 34:15
  Elizabeth Willetts: Where do you see the agency going?
• 34:18
  Aby Hawker: So what I would really love is to continue growing, to continue expanding the team.
• 34:23
  Aby Hawker: That's kind of a really key one for us at the minute, because we are new and working in a new space.
• 34:29
  Aby Hawker: Having the right people around us is absolutely crucial, and you know.
• 34:36
  Aby Hawker: So, partly focusing on that expanding the team because I know that we're never going to grow, because I want us to grow, without you know the right team and just continuing to get the word out there and continuing to kind of hopefully make the world a tiny bit better, you know, for this group of people who are really having a horrible time of it absolutely and you are in a real neat.
• 34:59
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know, I think you found your that point, haven't you?
• 35:02
  Elizabeth Willetts: You said you've got your purpose, you're in a niche.
• 35:04
  Elizabeth Willetts: It's paying you, you, you know.
• 35:06
  Elizabeth Willetts: Personally, do you feel you're in a good spot now?
• 35:09
  Aby Hawker: yeah, personally, I feel, yeah, really great.
• 35:11
  Aby Hawker: I'm really unbelievable to think.
• 35:14
  Aby Hawker: I still kind of, you know, it's a bit pinched me really to think that I've managed to get to that place where I have created this job out of nothing, which gives me so much pleasure.
• 35:27
  Aby Hawker: And, like I said at the beginning, it's kind of like, oh, no one else, no one else has done that yet, because often I get that people, I'll talk to people and they'll be like, well, there's no one else working in this space, and I'm like, well, not, I mean, there are, you know, equity, diversity and inclusion consultants.
• 35:41
  Aby Hawker: There are a lot of amazing trans people who are out there training, who are, you know, working in this space.
• 35:49
  Aby Hawker: But the combination of PR communications through the lens of the trans community at the minute I'm the only one doing it, but we're the absolute pioneer.
• 35:59
  Elizabeth Willetts: I love it and it is something you were saying, you know, when you, you were younger.
• 36:02
  Elizabeth Willetts: You know with your husband, like I really want you know to invent something and it sounds like you have so well done you.
• 36:08
  Elizabeth Willetts: Where can people find you, connect with you and learn more about you and transmission PR?
• 36:12
  Aby Hawker: so transmissionprcom is our website and I am abby hawker on linkedin and we are trans.
• 36:15
  Aby Hawker: Mprcom is our website and I am abby hawker on linkedin and we are trans mpr because transmission pr was already taken.
• 36:24
  Aby Hawker: Trans mpr on all of the social platforms.
• 36:28
  Aby Hawker: I am on x, even though I don't do very much on there because it's on the toxic side when it comes to this particular area of conversation.
• 36:36
  Aby Hawker: But, yeah, instagram, even tiktok, which is tragic oh yeah, do you know?
• 36:41
  Elizabeth Willetts: I've just started posting on tiktok, so I will go and find you now.
• 36:45
  Elizabeth Willetts: Thank you so much for your time today absolute pleasure.
• 36:48
  Elizabeth Willetts: Thank you so much, liz thank you for listening to another episode of the work.
• 36:55
  Elizabeth Willetts: It like a mum podcast.
• 36:56
  Elizabeth Willetts: If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, review and subscribe, and don't forget to share the link with a friend.
• 37:03
  Elizabeth Willetts: If you're on LinkedIn, please send me a connection request at Elizabeth Willett and let me know your thoughts on this week's episode.
• 37:09
  Elizabeth Willetts: You can also follow my recruitment site Investing in Women on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram.
• 37:15
  Elizabeth Willetts: Until next time, keep on chasing your biggest dreams.