Today we’d like to introduce you to Liz H. Kelly.
Liz H., we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
After being on a business trip in NYC on September 11th, our life and career took a big detour. A few months later, when businesses were stalled, I got laid off like many. There was a lot of uncertainty and unease, so I made a bold decision to start writing a book while job hunting to stay positive and active. Our book writing project eventually turned into a new full-time job, public relations agency, and life as an entrepreneur based in Santa Monica, California.
After self-publishing the first version of our book, hiring two publicists, working with three media coaches, and getting on national TV, we got a literary agent. And based on the media success, the agent got us a publishing deal within two weeks to republish the book. Overall, it was a 5-year project with 500+ media hits for one book – and hundreds of lessons learned.
Fast-forward to 2008, we got laid off from myspace at the beginning of the Great Recession. At this pivotal moment, we decided to take a leap of faith and start our own public relations company to get other people in the media.
Based on feedback from friends and clients, we chose the name Goody PR for our agency with the tagline “Let Us Magnify Your Good”. We are thankful to have public relations clients all over the U.S. who are small businesses, CEOs, Founders, experts, and authors.
And as an unexpected positive result of the pandemic, many people wrote books, creating a surge in demand for our services starting in 2021. We’ve been very fortunate to have our clients featured on top media, including the TODAY Show, CNN, MSNBC, KTLA, FOX 11 Los Angeles, KNBC, TIME Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, NPR, many local TV stations, hundreds of podcasts and more.
To help others promote their story who could not afford to hire Goody PR, we also wrote and published a new book: “8-Second PR: New Public Relations Crash Course” (2022). It’s an 8-step how to do your own PR guidebook filled with case study examples and tips that is now being used by California State University – San Bernardino as a textbook.
And based on our experience submitting clients to book awards, we decided to start the new Goody Business Book Awards to recognize 100% social impact authors making a difference with words. Anyone can nominate a book published within five years for any of the 50 categories by the deadline of September 30th for this annual book awards program. Book awards are a great marketing tool for authors, who are all competing for attention with 46+ million books on Amazon. You can Nominate Your Book here: https://goodybusinessbookawards.com
Overall, we love our new life as an entrepreneur and promoting businesses and authors who are making a positive impact. To learn more, please visit our website https://goodypr.com
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Our two biggest challenges were learning how to be an entrepreneur and building a portfolio of client examples to showcase our work. To learn the basics about getting a book published and promoted, we set up a lot of coffee meetings with fellow authors in Los Angeles, went to book marketing seminars hosted by Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield (“Chicken Soup for the Soul” Series Co-Authors), hired a website designer, and learned a ton by writing our first book for at least 40 hours a week.
We got help from fellow entrepreneurs who we met at conferences, worked for almost one year for free to create successful stories, and worked as a contractor for a top PR agency at a very low rate to learn best practices.
This approach may sound crazy, but it worked. And we are grateful that our business is now thriving 14 years later.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Goody PR is a boutique marketing agency with a dynamic team of coast-to-coast specialists to magnify brands making a positive impact on the world. Our overall goal is to increase your business, book or project’s brand awareness, loyal fans, and sales results. What makes us unique is that we only take 5 VIP clients at a time versus many PR agencies that will assign 10-20 clients to one person. Based on booking thousands of major media interviews (TODAY Show, CNN, Fast Company, NPR, local TV, podcasts and more), we promote VIP Clients primarily through timely public relations and digital marketing campaigns that emotionally connect with their niche audience.
Goody PR’s VIP Clients are primarily successful small businesses, CEOs, authors, and experts in the finance, health, entrepreneur, technology, entertainment, and lifestyle industries – and our tagline is “Let us Magnify Your Good”.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Our core values for everything we do (Goody PR and Goody Business Book Awards Founder, and as the Award-Winning Author of “8-Second PR” Author) include gratitude, passion, integrity, innovation, fun, and life balance.
Pricing:
- Most Goody PR clients hire us for a monthly retainer with a minimum of a 6 month contract for public relations. Digital Marketing is an additional fee.
- Goody Business Book Awards is $75.00 to nominate a book per category. This administrative fee covers our costs, and is similar to most book award entry fees.
- Anyone can purchase our “8-Second PR: New Public Relations Crash Course” book (2nd edition, 2022) on Amazon for $19.77 (paperback) or Kindle eBook ($9.99)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://goodypr.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/lizhkelly
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodyBusinessBookAwards
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizhkelly
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lizhkelly
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/goodypr
- Other: https://goodybusinessbookawards.com
Image Credits
Main headshot credit with blue background and hands up – Bader Howar
