The Freelancer Life: Lucy Werner
Meet Lucy, the founder of a PR, graphic design and brand strategy agency called The Wern, and a published author.
We chat to Lucy about getting her business off the ground, publishing her first book and how the industry has changed since she started in PR.
“When I see someone speak at event, land press coverage or make fruitful business-enhancing partnerships through my connections it gives me life. I genuinely just love helping to promote lovely people with brilliant businesses so when they get big wins, it is a big win for me. ”
Hey Lucy, tell us a bit about yourself, what you do and how long you have been doing it for.
Hello! I’m the founder of The Wern, author and PR expert focusing on small businesses. I’ve worked in publicity for 16 years and been running my own small biz for the last 6.
You run The Wern, a PR, graphic design and brand strategy agency. Talk us through how you created Wern - where did the idea come from?
I came from a big London agency background that I just didn’t feel was serving modern business owners and wanted to find a new way of bringing publicity skills, strategy and creative to entrepreneurs. When Hadrien, my now Creative Director, was made redundant it was a no-brainer to bring him on-board too. So now we are a bit of a brand-building one-stop-shop.
What was the start-up process like for you? How did the business get off the ground?
I had a lot fewer commitments then I do now, I didn’t have a family and my mortgage payments were very small. I had three months savings in the bank and basically gave myself that time to get clients. In PR though there are a lot of back-ups, I could have gone back into the agency world, moved into inhouse, freelanced for other agencies or other clients so if building my own roster didn’t work out there were still other avenues.
What steps of creating and launching The Wern surprised you the most? What parts have you enjoyed and which parts have been difficult?
I’m actually really surprised how little information and support was out there for micro-business owners compared to now. There were a few more stuffy corporate services but now there are so many free, affordable and brilliant resources to help build a business.
I’ve also loved re-learning my craft. I actually like being an “engineer”, not a business owner. I like doing the actual work. Being distracted from that doesn’t make my soul sing.
Staff is always the hardest. Not investing in hiring senior enough staff or working with friends – there has been plenty of mistakes.
Your first book, ‘Hype Yourself: A no-nonsense DIY PR toolkit for small businesses’ was published in January 2019 - congrats! How did you come to write a book? What were the challenges and surprises along the way?
When I launched the business in 2014 I bought a lot of PR books and was really disheartened that none were written by people from the publicity industry. Almost all were written by men, and all of them were journalists turned PR experts. That’s great if you want to learn how to talk to a journalist but for me, publicity and hyping your business is so much more than that.
I did a book proposal challenge and actually won my book deal which really set me on a new personal path. It came with a follow-on writing boot camp that gave me structure and organisation to get it finished. I was also about to give birth so I had an enforced deadline.
The main challenge was just how much I hated it by the end. I had looked at it so much I thought it was awful and couldn’t read it. The first time I properly looked at it after I wrote it was when I recorded the audio version in October.
Do you think businesses still need PR agencies in the way they once relied on them? How has the industry changed since you began working in PR?
I think bigger corporate businesses do but the whole model is very archaic. Very expensive monthly retainers, paying for large offices with overpriced art, furniture and a drinks trolley for a Friday afternoon – there is no just no value in that for the new wave of startups coming through.
Why do you think people challenge so much with doing their own PR?
Ha. Well, I actually know the answer to this from asking my audience a lot. Time and confidence/knowing what to say are the biggest issues that come up.
Of all the things you do, writing, PR, running The Wern, online courses, teaching with Jolt, what’s your absolute favourite? What makes you happy?
When I see someone speak at event, land press coverage or make fruitful business-enhancing partnerships through my connections it gives me life. I genuinely just love helping to promote lovely people with brilliant businesses so when they get big wins, it is a big win for me.
What’s your home office set-up like? Talk us through it!
I have a garden office which Hadrien and I share, it’s a little wooden cladded building in our back garden. We have a big wooden table we work from so we can both look out into the garden and it has a big skylight. I think it’s so nice to be able to break from the laptop to look at nature, we are very lucky. We mainly get complimented on our brightly covered office shelves which are in our brand colours.
What are your top tips for anyone thinking about working for themselves?
Let go of rigid structures and routines, running your own business will test your resilience at adaptability.
Invest in people with higher skills to support you be that accountancy, marketing or a personal assistant – it will make all the difference to your bottom-line
Have a bigger purpose than income. Research shows that these people actually perform better and have greater happiness.
What are your top 3 recommendations - podcasts, books, people to follow, sources of inspiration and why?
Oh gosh, this is hard. I change at different times in my life but I would say stalwarts in 2020 for me were Daniel Priestley for helping people to reset and reinvent in a pandemic (check out his Facebook group). Kim Does Marketing for small business marketing tips and Vanessa Belleau of High Fifteen who is a diversity and inclusion expert with a strategic business coaching perspective – she talks SO much sense, with directness and humour.
What is the best project you’ve worked on since starting The Wern?
That’s like asking me to pick my favourite child.
What were you doing this time last year? What have you learnt or how have you changed since then?
I was gearing up for my second son to have heart surgery in Great Ormond Street for a week after my first book launched. It was a very crazy time. I wasn’t working on any clients just doing one-to-one coaching, the odd workshop and teaching. I was gearing up for a big break in March in France (spoiler: that didn’t happen) to reset where I was going with the business. Since then, the design side has taken agency priority and I’ve been working part-time whilst focusing on enjoying my mini people.
In the last few months, I’ve been dipping my toe quietly back into client work with some of my original PR agency clients, and I’m in a business accelerator programme where I’m relearning about business models and where I want to take the business next. I’m currently working on a hybrid model between an agency and DIY PR and seeing if I can create the solution to that riddle but I’m taking my time.
What role has social media played in your business so far? What channel is the most prominent for you?
Honestly, I’m on the fence about this one. Yes, social has been great for elevating my profile and I spent a lot of time growing my profile on Instagram which I think certainly helped with the initial success of my book and has led to some opportunities. However, the most lucrative business opportunities have always come from public speaking/events or LinkedIn which I don’t even really play in that much.
The danger of social is that it can be a time-sucker, people who focus on follower numbers over growing their own newsletter subscribers for example… I try to live by the rule of creating more content than I consume. The scroll is dangerous.
“I try to live by the rule of creating more content than I consume. The scroll is dangerous. ”
Want to learn more about Lucy? Visit her website thewern.com and give The Wern a follow on Twitter @wernchat, Instagram @wernchat, Facebook @wernchat or LinkedIn @wernchat.
