We recently connected with Paula Rizzo and have shared our conversation below.
Paula, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Taking the leap and starting my own business. I only knew how to be a television producer and did that job for nearly two decades.
And in 2017, I decided to take the leap and start my own business.
I always thought that I would be very good at working for myself because I’m, in addition to being a creative person, I’m also very detail-oriented and structured and organized.
So I just knew that I’d be able to do that. And it was time for me to do it.
I loved working in television news, but I didn’t want my boss’s job. I had found that the thing that sustained me for so long had started to hold me back.
I had written my first book, Listful Thinking, and was doing a lot of promotion around it and starting to do some speaking engagements and traveling. And I couldn’t do as much as I would have liked because I had to use vacation days to be able to go to the events. I felt like I needed to grow into a bigger place and give myself that space.
It was very scary. I’m very calculated, and I always make sure that I know the next step, and so it’s hard to not know what you’re going to do next.
But one of the things that I did that really helped, and I did talk about it in my second book, Listful Living, was that I wrote a letter to myself.
It was an email, and I sat at my desk when I worked for a TV station in New York City, and I sent it to myself a year in the future.
I scheduled it to remind myself how I felt in that moment and that I was ready for something bigger and something new.
And when I got the email, I had put in my notice to leave and I had forgotten that I wrote it to myself.
So it was a nice reminder that I was doing the right thing and it was something that was going to be very positive in my life and I have not looked back.
Paula, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Paula Rizzo and I am an Emmy award-winning television producer. I worked in television news in New York City for close to two decades in both local and national news. I spent a lot of time as a health and wellness producer which I loved because selfishly I got to learn a lot of things that really helped me with well being and avoiding burnout and living a healthier life.
Now as an entrepreneur I help authors talk about their books in the media and on video. And I do that both by working directly with authors and also with publicists and publishers.
I’m also the creator of Media Ready Author (mediareadyauthor.com) which is a video course on how to speak in soundbites, set up your virtual studio and sell more books.
I’m also the author of two books about productivity: Listful Thinking and Listful Living and I’m working on a fiction book right now.
I’m a LinkedIn Learning Instructor (https://www.linkedin.com/learning/instructors/paula-rizzo) and I have produced many courses with them about productivity and media training.
So not only do I help authors to get their books out into the world and to get people excited about them but I also do it for myself as well so many of the things that I teach like how to speak about your book and how to get the media interested in it and how to sustain your book after the launch comes from my own experience as well as my clients as well.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I started a Blog at list producer.com in 2011 and I quickly realized that if I wanted anyone to read any of the blog posts that I needed to share it more widely. I quickly started an email list because I had been given the advice to do that early on and it was one of the best pieces of advice I was ever given because I have been talking to that list ever since. But social media has played a huge part as well in building my following first as a productivity writer then as an author and now as an entrepreneur. When I first started writing about productivity Facebook and Twitter were really the only two social media platforms that people were paying attention to. I did a few videos on YouTube early on since I had a background in television but I didn’t spend too much attention there. The following that I have now is really just from years of sharing content and sharing ideas and thoughts and things that have worked for me and for other people and building a network. But I have found email to be even better because people have been able to follow me as I’ve changed through the years from someone who started with a side gig to someone who has a business. If you’re just starting out with social media I would advise you to start thinking about video as soon as possible because I was telling people 10 years ago to start using video and now it has really exploded in the space. But really there’s so many social media platforms that you could be engaging in now that it’s overwhelming. And I think it makes sense for you to be where you like to be and where the people in your network and in your community are. And for me right now Instagram has been that place and Linkedin. So the trend might change for you over time.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown.
Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
Contact Info:
- Website: https://paularizzo.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/listproducer/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paularizzo.co
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paularizzo1/
- Twitter: https://x.com/ListProducer
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ListProducer1
Image Credits
The red dress book signing and speaking picks are Micah Joel
The other’s I’m happy to point out if you need them. But it’s LinkedIn, WPIX. Otherwise the others are personal photos.