We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Gillian Smith. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gillian below.

Gillian, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we talk about all of your success, let’s start with a story of failure. Can you open up about a time when you’ve failed?

My story of failure is an experience that at the time was rarely discussed and felt taboo, but thankfully has become more commonplace as people have become more comfortable being honest and brave about what they want to do with their lives.

The headline of the story is: I failed at the career I’d spent my whole life dreaming about, planning for, training for and working towards.

And if you haven’t guess by the way I phrased the first part, my answer to the question “What do you want to be when you group up?” was to become a journalist. And not just any journalist: I wanted to be the next Christiane Amanpour, reporting from the front lines of conflict and anchoring CNN news broadcasts. I traveled far from home to attend a college whose professors were award-winning journalists and whose alumni anchored national nightly news programs. I interned at the Associated Press in London, where I covered the Pope’s visit, the lead up to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding, and student protests over rising tuition costs (laughable, compared to what I was paying in the US). I networked, interned, wrote for free – anything to prove myself as an enterprising journalist and launch my career.

To be fair, the first job I held out of college was (and still is) my favorite job I’ve ever had. I was the editor of a small town newspaper in a town whose affluence allowed its residents to do wonderfully newsworthy things: fund a girls’ school in Afghanistan, build tilapia farms in Tanzania, and create a road race to raise funds and awareness for rare types of cancer, to name a few. I was living the dream of a budding journalist – including the measly salary an independent newspaper in a small town could afford to pay a 22-year-old employee.

With a mountain of student loan payments looming over me, I took on a second job as a digital producer for a nearby NBC-affiliated TV news station where I worked the 4 a.m.-10 a.m. shift, then drove down to the newspaper and worked 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. (or 10 p.m. if I was covering a Selectmen’s meeting). Lather, rinse, repeat for the next three years until I was offered a full time job at the TV station, where I had the opportunity to cover the induction of one of my favorite baseball players in the Hall of Fame, the trial of infamous mobster Whitey Bulger, and the discovery of a lead in one of the most famous unsolved crimes in history: the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum heist.

Despite the excitement and adrenaline of working in a newsroom, the novelty soon wore off and I began to realize something was amiss. I carried the stress of the job home with me every night, worn down by the constant stream of bad stories (in the media, “if it bleeds, it leads”) and experiencing anxiety like I’d never had before. It was all part of the plan, though. In my mind, I had to endure this part of my career if I wanted to work my way up this ladder to get to where I really wanted to be: the CNN anchor desk.

Then one day, a young boy was struck by a car and killed while in a crosswalk in a nearby town, and the executive producer sent a reporter out to cover the story. On a mission to be the first station to cover the story with a unique angle, the reporter went right to the house of the boy’s mother, stuck a microphone in her face when she answered the door and asked “How do you feel?”

It was then and there I decided I was done.

I could no longer work in an industry that exploited people’s tragedy for views and clicks. I could no longer sacrifice my mental health to tell stories about all the bad things in the world. I’d gotten into journalism to find the good in people, to tell the stories about how people were taking care of each other, putting good things out into the world, making a positive difference. All I could see at that time was death and destruction, and I gave up.

It took a long time for me to be able to comfortably admit that I had failed, that I didn’t have what it took to be a journalist in today’s news industry, that all of the time and effort and money I spent to get on this career path was wasted. As I failed, I saw my journalism school peers thriving: anchoring local news desks on the weekends, getting bylines in The New York Times, returning to our alma mater to give speeches about their success.

It took even longer for me to realize that this failure was a blessing. It had taken me seeing exactly the type of career I didn’t want to have to realize the type of career I did want to have. On this career journey, I’ve realized the art of the career pivot: every single working experience I have had has provided me with skillsets that are applicable in many fields and that affords me the opportunity to explore many types of careers all at once. As the founder of a media training and public relations company, I am many things all at once: one day, I’m a social media strategist helping amplify the work of a network for creatives, the next I am training executives on crisis communications strategies, and at the end of the week I get to tell the story of a woman who championed the CROWN Act and made it possible for women to wear their hair naturally at work without fear of discrimination.

If I hadn’t failed at what I thought I was supposed to do with my life, I might never have gotten the opportunity to be the storyteller I always dreamed of being.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am the founder of WordSmith Media, which helps established professionals, entrepreneurs and executives amplify their impact by empowering their voices through public relations strategy and implementation, tailored media training, and branded media presence coaching designed to improve their communications skills and media presence across channels and platforms. ​

I founded WordSmith Media with the goal of utilizing my more than 15 years experience in media, communications and public relations across industries to help folks tell their stories the way they want: clearly and passionately. WordSmith Media offers specialized media outreach and training programs to target our clients’ specific needs: key message development, public speaking preparation, navigating difficult interviews and personal branding.

After spending a decade working in journalism and nearly as long working in media and public relations, I realized that the first step to media success is media training. The clients I work with are incredibly passionate about what they do, and they want to get media exposure for their work, but they are often unprepared to discuss their work in a way that is clear, concise and accessible to their audiences. That’s where my media training experience comes in. Media training helps folks identify their key messages (AKA what they want the audience to know and understand about their work), practice saying those key messages aloud to build up muscle memory, and learn how to handle themselves when they are asked difficult questions. In today’s media landscape, folks can often worry about cancel culture and may be fearful to engage with the media because they don’t want to be canceled. With proper media training, there’s no need to fear cancel culture: when you know what you want to say and how you want to say it, all you need to know is the art of the pivot.

At WordSmith Media, our media training isn’t one-size-fits-all. We understand that each individual and brand has unique strengths and challenges. That’s why our expert trainers work closely with clients to identify their specific goals and areas for improvement. From mastering the art of interviews to perfecting on-camera presence, we tailor our training sessions to address our clients’ needs comprehensively. Our training is all about hands-on experiential learning. Through simulated interviews, real-world scenarios, and interactive exercises, clients gain practical insights and skills that they can immediately apply to their media engagements. Whether they’re preparing for a press conference or crafting a compelling social media message, our training empowers clients to navigate the media landscape with confidence and finesse.

For individuals and businesses that are ready to take their work to the next level in the media landscape, WordSmith Media also provides comprehensive public relations strategy and implementation tailored to fuel success. Through our public relations strategy and implementation services, we meticulously analyze our clients’ brand, audience, and industry landscape to develop a tailor-made PR strategy that resonates with their objectives and drives tangible results. Our approach is rooted in customization, ensuring that every facet of the PR strategy is meticulously crafted to reflect the brand’s unique identity and objectives. Whether it’s garnering media coverage, building brand credibility, or managing crises, we devise a plan that aligns seamlessly with their vision.

I am so proud of the work we do at WordSmith Media. Since its launch, we have worked with creative agencies that amplify the voices of underrepresented minorities, launched a PR campaign for a region-wide network of creatives and entrepreneurs to foster a vibrant startup community, and trained executives on crisis communications strategies designed to help them amplify their impact while protecting their reputation – and so much more.

Our unique approach leverages my career as a journalist, and the insights learned from that career, to create a media training-first approach to publicity. Understanding the media landscape is the foundation upon which our clients can have boundless success amplifying their impact and empowering their voices.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

As a woman, one of the biggest lessons I had to unlearn was the impulse to downplay my success or my skillset. It is incredibly easy for women to fall victim to Imposter Syndrome, especially when they are launching their own businesses or climbing the corporate ladder. Society tells us that we should be humble, that we shouldn’t brag about our successes or how diversified our skillsets are. We are told that it’s not appropriate for us to be big and loud and bold in our careers, that we should simply be grateful for the opportunities we are given. We have to work twice as hard to get half as far in our careers and many of us have been overlooked for promotions, even when we are far and above the most successful, best candidate for the job.

When everything inside me was telling me that I wasn’t smart enough, successful enough, established enough to start my own business, I listened. I made myself small. I made an Instagram account for my business but didn’t post to it. I created a website for my business but I didn’t share it. I only talked about the business with a handful of my women friends so that I wouldn’t be embarrassed when it ultimately failed.

I literally said to my best friend, “I don’t want to talk about it because it will probably fail and I don’t want to be embarrassed.”

To which she replied, “It WILL fail if you don’t talk about it.”

That hit me hard. So, I started talking about it with everyone I could. I reached out to other female founders and started meeting up for coffee so I could pick their brains about what lessons they learned when they first launched. I joined social media groups and attended conferences and learned as much as I could.

Here’s what I learned: I was enough.

My 15. years of experience in the industry was enough. My work at prestigious institutions was enough. My graduate degree was enough. I was not an imposter. In fact, I had a unique skillset that offered a solution to folks who would be worse off without my help.

For those struggling with Imposter Syndrome. I see you. And you should know, you are enough.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Being in the business of storytelling is incredibly rewarding because my entire job is essentially chatting with incredible people. I love talking and connecting with people, and I feel so fortunate that I have been able to make a career out of connecting with people.

People who work in creative fields are special: we see the world in a different way and dare to explore avenues that others have not yet explored. We can literally create something out of nothing, which feels like a superpower.

Working in a creative field also allows us to connect with audiences in a deeper, more powerful way. Humans are hardwired to connect through storytelling; it helps us make sense of the world in which we live and helps us bond with people who have different lived experiences than we have had. My work is focused on amplifying impact and empowering voices through creative means, and I find the experience of pursuing this creative work incredibly rewarding.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wordsmithmediaco.com/
• Instagram: @gillian_rose_smith / @wordsmith.media
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gillianrosesmith/