Episode 8: What Can You Do With a Degree in Writing? Featuring Jaclyn Gardiakos and Jessica Walters

In this episode we talk with Jaclyn Gardiakos and Jessica Walters, who work in the field of professional writing and are both UCF Alumni. Jaclyn Gardiakos is the communications and public relations manager for Universal Engineering Sciences, the fastest-growing AEC firm in the US, and previously worked for Tupperware as a communications manager. Jessica Walters is a Content Strategist for Deloitte US, and similarly held a position with Tupperware as a content strategist. Our conversation touches on writing in professional environments, what it was like to be a part of the first DWR cohort of UCF, and the types of careers possible with a degree in writing. 

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
Greetings and welcome to DWR discussions on writing and rhetoric.
A space for informal conversations around research and practice in the field at the university level, a place inclusive for curious novices, blossoming scholars, and seasoned academics to consider and share their inquiries, experiences, and passions surrounding writing and rhetoric.

(00:29):
We are your hosts, professors Meeghan Faulconer and Nikolas Gardiakos with the University of Central Florida.
Thank you for joining us.
Now let's get this conversation started.
Today we are joined by Jaclyn Gardiakos and Jessica Walters.

(00:50):
Jaclyn Gardiakos is the communications and Public Relations manager for Universal Engineering Sciences, the fastest growing AEC firm in the US.
AEC standing for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction.
Previously, she served as communications manager for Tupperware US and Canada.
She holds a Bachelor's Degree in English from Flagler College and an MFA in Creative Writing from UCF, where she also taught ENC1101 and ENC1102 as a GTA in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric.

(01:18):
Jessica Walters is a Content strategist for Deloitte USA, a global professional services network serving clients in audit, consulting and tax advisory services.
Previously, she was a content strategist for Tupperware, US and Canada.
She holds a bachelors in Writing and Rhetoric from UCF.
Thank you both for joining us today.
Excited to be here.

(01:40):
So I thought we could start with a little bit of a background about how your paths crossed, if you wouldn't mind sharing some of that information and then we'll get into the lives of professional communications writers.
Sounds good? Sure.
Should I start? Sure.
If I started at Tupperware Go for Canada first.

(02:01):
I'll take those honors.
So I just have to throw in a quick anecdote that my father discouraged me from studying writing and telling me I was not necessarily going to ever find a job in the industry.
And not that many years later, I ended up working at the same company as him, which I would often say it's kind of the opposite of nepotism.

(02:23):
Tupperware in the early two thousand s in Central Florida was really an employer of choice.
There are a lot of great benefits.
Everybody knew it was a large campus and so everybody was trying to get in there.
So rather than it being that you could help your family members get in, it was really that you had to extra prove yourself to come in as someone's child.

(02:43):
So I actually started a contractor, creative writing contractor, and then was fortunate enough to advance in some positions and then manage the writing team.
And I met Jessica when she came in just to do a project.
She had reached out to me and I'll let you fill in a little bit about how that went.

(03:05):
Sure.
So I was at UCF at the time, I think second to last semester before graduation.
I was in a professional writing class and we were learning about writers in the workplace because, similar to Jacqueline, when I told everyone I was going to be a writing major.
They were like, what are you going to do with that? Are you going to write books? And I was very adamant that I was not going to write books or going to publishing.

(03:27):
I wanted to do something in the corporate world.
And so there were a list of companies and Tupperwares, such an iconic name.
Many households have their products.
Your parents probably remember having all different kinds growing up.
And so I picked that one.
My group went and interviewed the writing team at Tupperware, which is where I met Jacqueline.

(03:49):
And I went prepared with a list of questions including, do you have an internship so that I can graduate? And we didn't actually we didn't have a formal internship program at the time, not just in my department, but at Tupperware in general.
It had since formalized and gone through many iterations, but not having a formal program sometimes I've learned at corporations can be a good thing because then it kind of gives you some freedom and leeway to kind of fill your departmental needs through whatever way you see fit.

(04:21):
So I drew up a case for needing an international.
Jessica impressed me so much just in our meeting and the preparation and the questions that she asked and also the very quick passion she showed for the company and the products that's really what you need in a communications professional is some genuine passion and interest in what it is that you're writing about or communicating about.

(04:46):
And so I created an internship position for her a few months later and was able to I think it was kind of slow to get the approvals, which is something else in the corporate world in general kind of happens.
But then I think a few months later I was able to get you in and start working as an intern for us.
And so I did that for the remaining of my college career and was even able to extend until I got my degree.

(05:10):
And then I became a creative writing contractor, essentially, and worked that for, I want to say about a year before I finally went full time as content strategist and then did that for several more years and just kind of grew my career there.
So it was definitely like the start introduction.
And the cool thing about Tupperware was that we did so many different things, like communication to such a vague or very large genre, essentially, where so many things fit into that, and marketing and PR and advertising and all of that.

(05:46):
And so starting as an intern, I got kind of a taste of all different things, of what I liked, events and digital marketing.
And it was really cool to kind of see what I liked and what I was good at and go from there and then grow my career and step into larger roles.
I'm curious, so you're actually just you triggered a memory for me at first no shock that a rising star came from UCF.

(06:11):
No surprise there for me.
But so I flashed back to it's probably about 1990, 619 97, and the woman I was babysitting for started selling Tupperware.
This is up in New York.
And I remember how much material came with it wasn't just the Tupperware, I mean, the amount of marketing materials, strategies, background information about the company.

(06:38):
And this was before everything was online.
So, I mean, she had like just stacks and stacks of papers.
So it really started.
It didn't even occur to me until now, just thinking about not only the internal business communication, but how much a company like that would generate in terms of writing and writing production.
I think you were starting to kind of talk about that a little bit before I jumped in.

(07:00):
Software remained even up until the time that we departed, very print heavy.
And I think because it's direct sales, that's just the nature of it.
You want to be able to have people to selfprint or whether they take it to Vistaprint or order packets from us directly to be able to have collateral in hand.

(07:22):
And the catalog was a prestige product that we enjoyed working on that would print anywhere from four to sometimes three, sometimes two times a year.
But we love working on the catalog.
Was there ever any discussion in terms of even making it so that the materials were more accessible, that you didn't have to be someone who was tech savvy to be like a Tupperware rep? Was that ever any part of discussion, a constant part of the discussion? Yeah, that makes sense because you're not just thinking then about the material.

(07:49):
You're thinking about access.
Right? And so we would hear it from both sides.
And so we, interestingly, had very direct contact with our sales reps, especially the very top levels of the organization.
There were councils where we would interface with them, I would say almost weekly sometimes.
And we would hear about the needs of all ages and types of reps.

(08:15):
And so sometimes it could just be your more vocal person, but you would then also want to try to back that up with some data and surveys.
And so we would want to try to find out how do we serve the most good? And so sometimes it would mean designing or writing a piece and then having that be accessible in a few different ways both electronically and through print, just so we could kind of keep covering all those bases.

(08:39):
We could almost kind of never shift fully digital.
We needed to kind of keep covering both bases.
So in terms of the content for maybe one of those marquee projects being the catalog for both of you, when you're writing those things because you're writing descriptions which both functional and sort of marketing type materials for that piece, what is your sort of synthesized audience? Or how do you think about the audience or the reader or the user of the catalog when you were kind of coming up and with and creating those things, because that's really in large part, like what the work is with that type of writing.

(09:23):
Do you want to say a little bit about that? Sure.
So the catalog is a very unique piece, I think, because it's not only technical, but it's also creative.
And so in thinking about the audience, I think my approach was always, like, think about someone if you left this on someone's coffee table, you went over to their house and left it on their coffee table, they should be able to pick it up and have a good idea of the brand, the products, sizing, what it's made out of.

(09:51):
They should be able to get a general understanding and be like, oh, I want that.
It's like any magazine that you look at.
And so the catalog really was kind of the main piece that showcased a very, very large product line, but also showcased, like, the branding and the theming of either the season or of just what the company was going for at the time.

(10:13):
And so we really did use that as our main piece of information, essentially, while still making it fun and creative with headlines and storytelling.
Testimonials kind of putting the company on paper was what the catalog ended up being because there was always an introduction section that would open up about the history of the company, then tying that into the storytelling of what the theme of the catalog was, if it was summer, if it was Some are fun, and then tying that through with headlines and testimonials and such.

(10:50):
Yeah.
So tell us a little bit more about and, you know, you can draw on from Tupperware other work experiences.
One of the other interesting things, I think about these types of jobs and this type of work is that telling of stories.
So can you think of some I know you all have some examples of things like that, but what are some of the ways that you were sort of both creative and then how was that important not only to the company, but for the ones telling those stories and putting all that information together and putting other people's stories out there to read? What are some of the things, what are the considerations there, and what are some of those examples? I think testimonials are kind of the heart of any company, whether at Tupperware or where I am now at Deloitte doing a lot of human centric pieces.

(11:45):
They really speak to a brand, and I think they add a lot of credibility to whoever you're representing.
And so when we approach testimonials, it was always to tell their story in the most authentic way.
And so whether that sitting down and doing an audio recording and then transcribing it and then taking those key pieces and turning it into kind of a more elaborate, still true story that really highlighted the best bets so that someone else would read this and be like, oh, that could be me.

(12:16):
That was always kind of the approach to testimonials, no matter where I've been, because you're telling someone else's story and so you want to represent them, and you want that to really highlight the best parts, even if it meant sometimes doing a lot more work.
We were fortunate in much of the time that we worked together to have a lot of creative freedom of how we would solve problems like that, which is we knew we needed to showcase the sales reps and have a lot of testimonials in various pieces.

(12:46):
But rather than an exec coming and telling us, hey, we need to showcase people who are car drivers because it's a certain month, so it's a push month and we want to push this, we would work harder to have more of a library of stories of people who are naturally talking about that so that we could pull from it.
So it meant sometimes more legwork on our end, but we would go out of our way to do more of that work so that we could have people telling their authentic story rather than calling someone that we knew, like was driving a car and say, hey, can you tell me about how much you love driving your car? And so I think you and I would really try hard to help people tell their natural stories.

(13:23):
And so, yeah, Jess said it well when she said human centric stories, but something that's important to keep in mind, all communications, all good communications are storytelling.
I was I watched I'm obsessed with those just free webinars that you can watch through any various professional certifications.
So in my current role, my coworkers and I will sometimes put them up during lunch and just watch a webinar.

(13:47):
One made a really great point the other day about just putting together a PowerPoint.
Any kind of presentation that you're giving at work should follow this narrative arc of storytelling.
And I thought even that was a really great reminder in that everything you're trying to do in a professional setting, you're going to be more successful if you construct it like a story and think about your audience.

(14:07):
So to me, what I'm hearing is rhetorical awareness, rhetorical awareness, genre awareness, genre awareness, but not in those terms.
And it's so interesting to consider you're saying these things like these authentic sounding testimonials, and what is it that makes a testimonial sound authentic? What is it about that writer's perspective or their voice, I would say their writerly voice that makes them stand out as authentic over someone maybe who is trying to make the same point but just didn't quite get there.

(14:35):
And how as a reader, how does that resonate with you, that you go, oh, this is a keeper.
We're going to put this in the file for the month that we're talking about pumpkins because this is like spot on.
Talk about that process a little bit.
As readers as well as writers, I think in terms of authenticity, I mean, point of view is a very big thing who you're talking to, how you phrase your questions and follow up those questions.

(15:00):
So trying to think of an example but a lot of times we go in with almost like a boilerplate, a list of questions to start with but then as you get people talking they tend to open up more.
That's where you find that authenticity because no one person is going to say the same things or share the same stories.

(15:21):
So Tupperware, for example, so many people were kind of generational and so they would talk about oh, my grandmother's bowl.
I remember growing up and playing with the bulls in the kitchen on the floor or baking cookies for the first time.
And then when I got old enough I decided that I wanted to host a Tupperware party and then I became a consultant and it just kind of builds from there and telling those personal pieces adds that authenticity because everybody's got their own point of view, everyone's got their own story.

(15:54):
And so by sharing those details it makes it more genuine because you're learning something new about that person seems like a vulnerability.
Very well said.
Yeah, those personal details and we would try to seek that out too when we started a blog at the company while while we were there.

(16:16):
And it was always fun to just try to have that be a place where we could expound on people's natural stories.
So whether it was a vintage connection that someone wanted to share in more of a long form, we would let them do it there or we would help them do it because we would help them write it.
Depending on some people can just go and they would give you something in written format or video format and we would share it there.

(16:39):
So we love having an extra place outside of some of the more spaces of print or a few videos that, you know, they're short, those need to be more limited in terms of format.
But it was also wonderful to have a blog where we knew this story can continue and we can let them go on this and maybe we'll be able to house it there and promote it there.
So yeah, as a follow up to the example of starting a blog, when you're in company, corporation like activities, content, all these things are many times sort of driven towards what is our return on this investment of time or resources and things like that.

(17:21):
So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about as the creators, as the creative people, as the writers, the communicators.
How do you sort of explain what that value is to people who may be tracking sales numbers and things like that.
How do you sort of connect or quantify something like a story or these other kinds of content to people who are determining what resources getting used where when you're an inhouse communications professional, especially, I would say a lot of what you're doing is helping to problem solve.

(18:02):
And where I think we got great buy in on starting something like the blog was, we would get a lot of requests for oh, how do we share recipes or how do we help maybe a sales rep who's at a party more easily refer back to some product information.

(18:23):
And so we were able to sell kind of internally the blog as a place and a way to do that.
And so not only can it be a repository of information that through either a QR code or a Quick link.
A sales rep in an inhome party can refer to more product info on.
Say.
Cookware that may be very expensive.
So they want to be able to access more product information.

(18:46):
But also to have extra recipes in a place that you can refer back to that's in an external place.
So we were always thinking about our channels, so we had a lot of internal channels, a lot of external channels, and so where you place which content, we were fortunate we were never hard pressed on ROI on the blog because it would have been very tough to quantify, especially at the beginning when it's just getting going and those kinds of things are nascent.

(19:09):
But when you have an inhouse team too, especially a passionate one that's excited about working on it, we just fitted into some of the other things we were doing and then we were able to use it to problem solve, sharing some collateral and then storytell on top of that.
So it was a passion piece and a place where we could kind of share extra training and recipes using a blog.

(19:30):
Also for accessibility purposes, not when you're working for a company like Tupperware, where you have an internal and an external audience, it can be very challenging.
But also.
I guess the way sometimes we would pose certain article ideas or certain collaboration ideas would be like the blog could act as a resource for the salesforce.

(19:51):
But it also was an external form of marketing where if you're sharing this piece or maybe someone searches cookware and that article pops up.
That they know nothing about Tupperware.
It serves a dual purpose which really does help drive attention and drive need and want back to the website or the products.

(20:14):
Which is very interesting and kind of cool to see.
Not just driving traffic to read.
But also to buy and to connect with the brand.
And it's fun to learn in this industry too, how anything that you're doing can be done to varying levels of detail.
And I would say efficacy at a place like tupperware and even, especially where I am now, where a fairly small inhouse team functioning very much as generalists.

(20:45):
So in any given day, I'm an internal communicator and external communicator.
I work on public relations.
So kind of communications as a bit of as a generalist type where I feel functioned that way a lot too, where we were both internal external, we would step in to help with policy documents as often as we would write a marketing piece.

(21:05):
And so that's one way to handle it.
And I think why it was fortunate for you to start out there and for me to have spent ten years of my career there too.
Is you do get to learn what you like and what types of communications you might want to work on and then you meet friends in the industry who may work at a very.
Very large company where they may have 35 people on an internal communications team and they have one person whose job it is to work on open enrollment change management.

(21:33):
Communication.
It's so fascinating to learn that there's so much you can do to set it up just based on how much you invest in it and how much a company sees that it's worthwhile.
I know internal comms in general is a growing field.
More and more companies are investing in internal communications in addition to external communications.

(21:55):
Marketing was always a no need and communicators would function in that world.
But now internal communications is also growing and the sophistication with which you can do some of those digital things on the marketing side too, we never really dipped our toe all the way there, but I know you're I'm sure learning more about that now all the time too.

(22:16):
So it's fun to see how much more you can do with a lot of money and resources and people.
But also there's a joy in being a generalist too that's jumping from project type to project type.
What's interesting about marketing and communications nowadays, a lot of the professions and job postings out there is you get certain companies who view marketing as a one stop shop.

(22:40):
They're looking for one person who can do 50 million things, which is not always realistic.
They want a copywriter, they want a graphic designer, they want a video editor, and some people do have those skills.
But what I found in joining a consulting firm is I'm actually a specialist, I'm a subject matter expert in content strategy where I do specific things like newsletter writing or I market myself as a specific type of writer to join different projects now, whereas Tupperware is more of a generalist, which I do love doing all the different things.

(23:15):
But it's very interesting and kind of cool to as I craft my career and step into other roles to actually become kind of a niche subject matter expert and then dig into that and get better and better at it.
And so you'll see some companies, that's what they're looking for.
They're looking for you to be really, really good at one thing and other companies are looking at you to be really, really good at a bunch of things.

(23:38):
And so you kind of have to pick where you want to go.
And sometimes it's better to start out as kind of the one stop shop, learning all the different things and then finding what you really enjoy.
And then you can take that and kind of hone in on it and drive your career where you want it.
So I'm curious because it seems like unless you're one of that small percentage of people that from the time their children know exactly what they want to do in life, like that little kid that's like, I'm going to be a doctor, and then fast forward 25 years later and they're like, got the white coat on and everything.

(24:09):
It seems like being a generalist would be the first step into figuring out how you could become a subject matter expert because you may not even know all the types of crafting of communication that would be involved in different corporate aspects that you might not even know what you really love to do or what you're good at.
You might think, oh yeah, I really want to be a copywriter, start doing it, and then realize that you hate it, but you really love doing this other particular thing that you had never even knew was like a job.

(24:37):
So I'm curious, did you start out knowing that the type of subject matter expert you are now was always going to be what you wanted to do, or was it during your work as a generalist that kind of got you there? I would say during my work as a generalist, and I'm still finding different niches that I really enjoy doing and started digging into.
But I think when I chose writing and Rhetoric as my bachelor's, I originally thought I was going to get a fellowship and become a professor and stay in academia because that's what everyone told me I could do with it.

(25:08):
I didn't know that there were so many other options.
And it's not a bad thing.
I mean, I still want to go back and get my Masters.
It's a goal of mine.
I want to get my PhD just because I like school.
But there are so many other options than either going into academia or writing books and going into publishing or going into journalism.
Those are the three, I think, most known or most assumed professions for writers.

(25:33):
But everybody needs to be able to write well, or a company needs to be able to present itself well.
And not everyone has good writing skills, and so they need subject matter experts just in communication skills to be able to do that.
I mean, there's things that I've done, like apart from writing.

(25:54):
Writing definitely is the core if you can write well, if you can speak well and present yourself well, then I think you've got a good step forward to whatever you want to do.
But coaching other people is something that I found I really enjoy doing, but I also didn't realize would be a part of Communications, coaching people on stage, what they're going to say in speeches, how they're going to say it, how they're going to walk and look at the audience.

(26:17):
Also coaching people in creative things on stage or in videos, being able to sit there and talk to them and put them at ease and get them to talk about themselves, because some people don't like to talk about themselves.
So being able to communicate with a person on their level and pull out their type of communication so that you get the best piece of content is also something that I've found it's kind of niche.

(26:40):
Not everyone has that skill, but you can definitely build that skill.
It's more of a you have to do it to be able to get good at it.
It's not something that you just walk in and are like, okay, I'm going to sit down with a stranger and get them to tell me their life story.
You reminded me too, that Executive Communications is not only a huge portion of a lot of internal comms roles right now, but it is in some companies an entire role.

(27:03):
Yes.
And in it you are the adviser and coach and oftentimes speechwriter, but you will advise executives in general on how to come across.
Yeah, I wanted to just follow up question to that point you just made, Jacqueline, because we've talked about how being in that role of crafting the message.

(27:27):
The more kind of experience you have with that being in the room where it happens, so to speak, right.
You end up being kind of a participant in what that message is and maybe even what that policy is.
I don't know if you can both speak a little bit about some examples of that.
So it's not just sort of here's what someone wants to say or do, and you are just doing in the back and forth of creating that message, the idea about what is this message? What are we trying to do? What is the policy here? Is this the right policy? Is this the best thing to do? Because that also affects the message of it as well.

(28:08):
Well, that could be a sticky situation in terms of examples, but I will no, but it is true that it becomes easier and easier to talk about doing the right thing when the company you are working for is doing the right thing.
And so it's a fun kind of sideways way into that conversation of you go from advising on the message, just as you said, to advising on action and policy.

(28:36):
And in my new role, I'm excited to be working more on public relations.
Than I had in the past, where we did a lot of marketing, a lot of internal comms and salesforce communications.
But in my current role, we're working and focusing a lot on public relations because we want to be known in our industry.
We're growing very quickly and so a lot of what we're talking about is how do we want to be known and what kinds of policies now.

(29:02):
Especially toward the very beginning of this company coming together.
How do we want to create policies that we can then be excited about creating the communications plan communications follows somewhat naturally when you can talk about the really cool things that your company is doing.
If that makes sense.
Yes, I agree.

(29:24):
I think you sounded up pretty well.
Yeah, I think in tackling any like, policy or any kind of sensitive messaging, it's very easy just to say what you want to say.
But putting the why behind it was always something that I think we tried to drive as communicators because your audience wants and kind of needs to know why.

(29:48):
Why do they want to support you? You can't just tell them something or you can't announce something big and exciting and then not tell them the why or why they need to connect to it.
And so I think a lot of times in these advising roles, I guess is the best way to say it, you get very creative in how you're communicating with these executives of like, that's a great idea.

(30:12):
We're excited that the company is going to do this.
So if we add in this piece, it's going to drive your point home and also connect with your audience even more well, because you're speaking from experience and understanding.
Rhetorical awareness, which I think is where a lot of people fall flat when you have those moments where whether it's a tweet or an instance or a sound bite and people go, what were they thinking? Saying that they basically didn't have anyone around them going, no, that's not going to work.

(30:39):
In terms of rhetorical awareness, you need to understand your purpose.
You need to understand your audience.
That's why this is not going to work.
Or sometimes they do, but they ignore those people and then you meet them for a drink afterwards and you get to hear about how I told that person not to say that before they did it.
Or maybe they surround themselves with people that just want to pump them up all the time and tell them everything is great, every idea they have is great.

(31:00):
But I think that part of that is that to be successful in a particular industry, you kind of have to have blinders on for a little bit and be driven.
And I think with that drive you just get hyper focused to the point I think maybe the blinders come secondary.
Like you have an idea, you're focused, you're driven, you want to make that happen.
You're not worried about rhetorical awareness.

(31:21):
You're trying to get this particular thing because you have a fire for it or whatever.
And those blinders start to come on where they do need the people in the room to be like, oh, no, those shoes don't go with that bag.
No change that.
That doesn't work.
Or they need less just hype people and some people that actually have some situational awareness to read the room.
I apologize constantly for being the Debbie Downer in meetings or in conversations, and I try to make enough jokes so that people know that I am a fun loving person.

(31:50):
But yes, when you're in corporate cons, you are the one that has to point out the negative often, and you have to be clear about how you're doing it.
Some successes I know, are when we or in other roles.
I've been able to convince companies I've worked for not to say something about a natural disaster or a certain, you know, movement that's happening.

(32:14):
If you don't have anything to say, you don't have to be a part of every conversation.
And why.
I think I have a lot of respect for every audience of any company I've worked for, and they're just getting more sophisticated.
I know that there's some eye rolling of attention spans and some oversimplifications of what younger and younger audiences like or I think they're more sophisticated than ever when it comes to understanding authenticity.

(32:39):
And why is this company saying something about this if they're not doing anything about it? And I'm personally fascinated by reading and understanding the ins and outs of corporate action, corporate inaction and the nuances of that.
I bring that into my role.
I like being a part of that in my current role, but also just hearing how other companies handle these kinds of things when they go well and when they don't.

(33:03):
Those are a lot of what are covered at internal and corporate comms conferences, a lot of those kinds of postmortems.
And that all is important.
And it reflects, I think, how sophisticated just general audiences are now.
Yes.
Because I think part of what the sort of good advice becomes is anticipating how this is going to be received.

(33:25):
Right.
Because I think a lot of times people who create some of those policies or messages or even some ideas, like you said, Megan, oftentimes have people just around confirming every thought or idea that comes up.
And that sort of doesn't allow you to have a good understanding of how things will be received by a particular audience.

(33:48):
And so I think that sort of advisor kind of role when those ideas come up is really important as well.
Yeah.
And I think also as we become more digitally connected.
We often find ourselves really just spending time in echo chambers because we don't want to spend our downtime necessarily engaging with people who have the opposite point of view and getting into arguments so we seek and find those conversation spaces where it is supportive and it is like.

(34:19):
Encouraging and it's a lot of echoing and I think that that also can lead to a false sense of.
Oh.
I read the room.
But really.
Maybe you haven't.
The trend mentality that marketing operates in nowadays with social media and everything, I think, poses like a very big challenge to people in our industry because you want to be part of the trend, but you want to be part of the right trend.

(34:46):
And it's kind of like Jack said, you don't need to be a part of every conversation, especially if you're not actively a part of that before the trend happens.
And so being that voice of reason in the room can be very difficult as a communicator.
But it needs to be done in order to keep the brand positive and going towards the correct audience.

(35:09):
Because I think that's also something else that has shifted in the last ten years.
Is like.
Everybody wants everyone to be the audience because there's so much saturation social media and so many content creators.
Even content creation as a career has changed so much.
You can be a YouTuber, you can be a TikToker.

(35:30):
That is a form of communication.
There's short form and there's long form that really just has changed the industry and kind of opened it up wide.
So now brands need that voice of reason to make sure that you're still relevant, but you're also being appropriate in what you're putting out and representing your brand in the most accurate way.

(35:53):
Yeah, and I think with big companies, too, a lot of times if you were to ask them, like, who do you want this to go out to? Or who is your audience? They'll be like, well, everyone.
Always everyone.
That's not really realistic.
And so, yeah, it becomes kind of crafting or managing or affecting some of those expectations for what the communication can do or what it should be.

(36:16):
I'm getting flashbacks of how many times in at least four different jobs I've had, I've been asked to make a viral video.
We ever successfully did it, even though we've made some pretty decent parody music videos.
Well, what's interesting about the idea of a viral video is being viral.

(36:38):
People assume it's just a bunch of people watching a video and you've got that two, 3 million viewers and whatever.
Yeah, that number is great, but it's the turnover or the turning people into customers or your actual true audience that's the data that you're looking for, which is something that you consider more and more nowadays.
And so in looking at, like, being viral, it's more about your key audience.

(37:07):
If you target something to your key niche audience.
It's more likely to grow and you're more likely to get a more positive response because those people are actually engaging with what you're creating and that's going to get you the numbers you want.
Not posting some random meme that you think is on trend and hoping that 50 million people like it because they're not actually engaging with you.

(37:30):
They're hitting a button and scrolling.
And so that's something I think that you have to consider as a communicator and continue to advise on for your brand and the quality of your audience engagement.
I don't know if this would violate any confidentiality agreements that you may or may not have signed, but I think we'd like to know some examples of some of these paradise songs.

(37:53):
What were some of them? Any sort of NDAs it's hard to find some of them now.
Like top town funk.
I forgot about that one.
We would have basically so it's amazing, pretty much everyone in the company would sing and dance to parody music videos and it's quite a large campus with lot of associates at the time and at my current gig we were joking about oh, should we ever make a video where everyone's like dancing around in their cubicles.

(38:32):
I was like oh, you have no idea how much experience I have with that.
Not exactly what I had in mind when I joined corporate comms.
Although I think that does segue a little bit into being kind of a journalist.
We've helped put on and produce many events so large and small, which has been very helpful.
Now even if in certain roles you might just be on the team, that's like hiring and directing a team that's putting on a large event for you, but knowing some of the ins and outs of the production, not just from a budgeting perspective, but also what's doable and what time frame, what kinds of materials you would create and how long you would need to create it.

(39:09):
If you're doing full on scripting, what does that look like when you're loading it into the teleprompter? Do you have speakers who will actually use a teleprompter? Do they know how to use a teleprompter? Who do you need on your team to help? Do you have only two writers and you have a four day show that you need to write with six different speakers who each need a keynote? There's a lot of things I think we learned on the fly in event production both from a scripting perspective but also from a production perspective.

(39:41):
I think that was one of the most eyeopening things was sitting behind the curtain as the show was going on.
Running slides and sitting with the teleprompter and being able to try and help the person follow it or if they completely ignored it and you had to know what they were supposed to be saying so that if they decided to pick up the teleprompter.
You had to know your content.
You had to know their content and you had to have worked with them long enough that you knew their speech progression to be able to follow them because the person who'd been hired for production doesn't know.

(40:12):
They just click an arrow and if they're reading word for word or verbatim.
I don't think we're that unusual in that there are many companies where, depending on the level of comfort of a speaker, they may not read of prompt or verbatim.
And so if you're not going to follow a rehearsal queue for queue, then you throw a professional production crew off.

(40:38):
So you would have people like us say, well, we'll advance the slides because we kind of know what they're talking about because we knew the content well enough to do it.
And so it was seen at that time by that leadership team as being more organic.
If they would just constantly go off the cuff, and I don't even know that they were wrong, the audience really seemed to respond well.
It would drive the people we hired insane because they would say, why did you pay to have a guy run slides? Why did we rehearse? But it was interesting to see how it still worked for that audience and for that team at that time.

(41:15):
If you're talking about some companies at the highest level, they will hit Q for Q, so they won't need any of their communications generalists in the back running slides or helping the teleprompter guy jump around, because they're going to actually use a teleprompter and understand that that's not making it more flat, it's making it produced.

(41:36):
So I think it's interesting when you're in any kind of general communications role, you're going to have some exposure or experience with events as well, even if you're providing talking points or even if you're doing the communications around the event.
And so it's been every company is going to have some version of events.
At my current company, we just ran our first town hall for the entire company of around 30 folks, and we did it just through Zoom Webinar.

(42:02):
It was very low budget, but just bringing the content together, getting the Q and A's in advance and just running the event well, it felt very simple compared to some of what we had already done.
And that's some of the benefit of the experiences that you gather in working in corporate communication.
I think some of what just to connect about and thinking about what we do in our comp classes and things like that.

(42:28):
Jessica, you mentioned always talking about the why.
I mean, that's when we talk about rhetorical analysis and things like that, I'm constantly pushing students to explore that why question.
And then the other thing we talk a lot about, I'm doing En C eleven two right now, where it's all about research, right? Researching to provide credibility and also background on a particular question or whatever it is that they're having to write about.

(42:57):
Jacqueline, you're coming about being an expert and Jessica talking about knowing everything beforehand so that you can make those kind of changes on the fly.
Really makes me think of this idea of research.
So I wonder if you could speak a little bit about either examples or your thoughts on becoming not necessarily just general experts but in whatever context you're writing for.

(43:26):
How helpful is it to have these pieces of research or to become that kind of expert? Is that something that you both enjoy as part of this kind of work? Or I wonder if you have any stories about that fighting over who goes first.
We can pass it back and forth.
I think in any type of writing there's always an element of research.

(43:48):
I think as I've gotten more into article writing about topics that interest me but that I have no knowledge about.
It's very interesting that to research this topic, understand it, to be able to write about it.
Because as a writer if you are approaching an article you need to present yourself as an expert or at least you're collaborating with.

(44:13):
Experts need to turn their words into the simplest form so that your largest audience can understand what they're reading.
And so I think research is one of it's like the bread and butter of communications essentially because you're going to constantly be researching something whether it be the topic you're writing about or just the trends like we've talked about previously or what's going on in the world.

(44:40):
Research really is a key aspect of any kind of communication or writing work.
There's not an article I've written that I haven't done at least a day's worth of research learning and understanding about different topics that I'm writing about so that I can take that and turn it into more of a layman's terms so that everyone can understand it.

(45:00):
Because at the end of the day you want to be writing something that someone wants to read and if you are writing something for a blog or writing something for a website you need someone to be able to come across it and understand it.
And while the technical and when you work with a lot of technical people they will tend to want all of the acronyms and all of the tech speak in there because that's important, because they get it and they know how important it is.

(45:28):
But actually as a communicator you also have to be kind of advisory and kind of have that knowledge of well, you know, this is really important, how can I explain this in the simplest way? Or maybe, you know, this isn't as important I understand you that it is important to the process but it doesn't need to be here because we're actually telling this story and while it might be a good context for future expansion, it doesn't need to be here.

(45:54):
And so being able to explain that and differentiate that by having the background research and knowledge can really help make that argument.
When you're writing a piece well and having those reps, you know, people understanding that you can.
I love being known as like, the best Googler in most jobs that I've had, and also just in my personal life too.

(46:17):
Man, I just love finding stuff people challenge me that I can't find on Google, because, man, you sure can.
But internal research too, I think in any role that you're in, whether you stay at a company two years or ten, to spend a lot of time understanding what your we're talking mostly about corporate comms, what your company does, how does it make money from what kinds of clients, and find those people internally who are excited to tell you about it because they're there, they're everywhere.

(46:49):
I was fortunate to find early success in just being almost naturally paired up with people who were, you know, I might go in to interview them a little bit to help write some small piece of communication.
But if they were excited to tell me more about whether it was someone on the legal team explaining to me about how we get our trademarks, I was interested in it.

(47:12):
If you have the type of appetite for research, it sets you up for such success to learn as much as you can about the company that you work for, the inner workings of the programs that you're doing.
And it's not that hard to find people at any organization.
It's not going to be everyone, but some people are going to be really open with sharing information with you that helps inform you as a communicator.

(47:39):
And research is not just about Googleling nowadays either.
Research really is a form of networking.
And so in terms of internal comms, it's a really good way to present yourself.
And if you're just starting out, if you've just got a new job and you're trying to learn, the company not only going and asking the right questions about the company, but also asking the right questions about the person and remembering those things.

(48:02):
It's not going to bother them.
It's not going to bother them.
People like to talk about themselves, especially if they're in a role, or at least I found a lot of corporate communicators or corporate people like to talk about themselves and what they do and what they're passionate about.
You can learn those passions.
It can help you move forward in many different ways.
Whether it be if you are working on an article one day and you're like, oh, this person, they worked in this five years ago, I should go ask them if they know anybody.

(48:30):
Research is a good way to expand your network on a variety of topics, whether it be career advancement or just what you're working on right now.
There does seem to be a natural, like a separation between church and state and Google.
We all think of Google as something that we do.
The Internet is there to give us local restaurants or directions on how to get somewhere.

(48:53):
And I often find in eleven.
I want an eleven two with students.
When we are starting to talk about research, what have you just found out? Just looking online? Have you done a cursory Google? For most of those freshmen, they've never considered using the internet to their advantage that way.
And it's like a wonderful moment when they realize that, no, you can get the answers to pretty much everything.

(49:16):
I mean, even in my household, there are people that for work in professional environments, the first place they go when they're problem solving for technical things is the Internet.
What have other users said? What information is available to me? And I do it is fun to see that shift between like, oh, no, it's not just so I can get song lyrics.

(49:37):
Actually, there's things in here that are useful to me in my life.
Not that song lyrics are useful, obviously, like winning arguments.
But yeah, that is like, a really interesting element to writing that I think isn't necessarily given enough credit in terms of, like, transformative power.
There's that rhetorical awareness, but there's also that research component that is so important that you've just demonstrated so well.

(50:00):
Yeah.
Jacqueline, I was thinking specifically of some other opportunities you've had for research, like when you worked at Tupperware, being able to go to Washington, DC.
And the Smithsonian.
Can you tell that story? Yes.
I was rewarded by asking a lot about corporate history at Tupperware because I found it to be a very fascinating history.

(50:23):
It had all the right elements.
The movie with Sandra Bullock starring as Brownie Wise has not yet come out.
I google it every couple of months to see if that production is back on.
But Brownie Wise was an early executive at Tupperware, and she had a lot to do with the foundation of direct sales in general, but also moving, you know, the headquarters from Farnesville, Massachusetts, down to Central Florida.

(50:47):
She actually wanted to be on the beach, but Central Florida was cheaper land, as Walt Disney was pretty soon to find out.
But she was part of why that headquarters was founded.
There were a lot of historic buildings, so the main campus was built in the 50s, so it's just a lot of that like fifty s.
And then the other building was built in the 70s, so, like, just this fab retro vibe to our offices and Cadillac.

(51:12):
And being a Florida history buff in general, I mean, just she saw the opportunity for Central Florida to be like a big tourist spot, and so she would actually market the opportunity for the Tupor ladies of the earn trips to come down to Central Florida.
And then Gatorland was brand new and that was right next door, and this is all predisney.
So it was really interesting to just learn about the beginnings of Central Florida history through the lens of this really powerful female executive who really never took no for an answer and became a real personal hero of mine.

(51:45):
And she had a pretty famous ousting by the company and just a lot of really great drama at the end of the so a lot of her personal papers and things because of said ousting did not reside within the company.
So the company itself had very little in the way of any kind of archive.
And that was very frustrating to us as we became more and more passionate about the history and wanting to and we were very fortunate by the time we were there that celebrating that history became totally okay.

(52:18):
Again, there was a while where it was like, oh, what had happened to her was so unfortunate.
We shouldn't maybe talk too much about it, but then when you realize it was six, seven decades before, and it became more, let's restore the history of this female executive and really try to celebrate her story.
So we did everything we could.

(52:40):
Sometimes we were googling trying to find, you know, stories about her because we just didn't have as much of it in our own archives.
But then we came to find out that the smithsonian had a lot in an archival storage that you could request that they would wheel out to you that her son had donated, and me and another corporate communications pro on the global side, because we work for the US.

(53:04):
And Canada market, but the global side also has a headquarters here in Orlando.
And we flew up and got to spend two or three days going through her papers to find wonderful quotes.
We digitized some of it, but that got into a gray area of whether or not what you're doing is for profit, because a lot of that kind of research is meant to be done not for profit.

(53:27):
And so being the ethicist and nerd and research person that I am, it wasn't that we couldn't replicate those materials.
So essentially what it boiled down to was me soaking as much of it in as I could and sharing those kinds of stories and some quotes in a way that I didn't feel like violated anything that we had signed when we did check out those materials just to see them.

(53:56):
So it didn't yield maybe what the company spent on me flying to DC.
For three days to do that.
But again, I think a good takeaway for that is that if you're a company that has passionate communicators, it's never a waste of money to fuel and fund their curiosity and their passion for your company.

(54:20):
They're going to be better storytellers for you.
And a little bit of work travel is always good to get to know not only your people, your clients, your audience.
But that was definitely my favorite work trip.
Yeah.
Archival research is like I think anyone who likes writing or academia is just like, oh, my gosh, I got the gloves on.

(54:42):
Oh, yeah.
Did it make a little burpy noise.
They opened it all for us.
But I definitely enjoyed the gloves when we handled those photos.
I feel like we should mention that Tupperware in no way has endorsed this pie.
They have not.
No, they have not.
They're not paying us to talk about them.
That's true.
This is just purely coincidental that they've come into conversation so much.

(55:03):
Well, and that's where we shared five years of shared time working together in ten years of my career.
And it was really, in many ways, the beginning of both of our corporate careers.
I'd had a role as a copywriter and SEO specialist for a very small ad agency in St.
Augustine before going to Tupperware, but Tupperware was a larger company, so that kind of started introducing me to the concept of corporate communications and what those kinds of roles are like.

(55:29):
Whereas if you're a copywriter at a small ad agency, you're not going to see the full structure or ecosystem of what a larger company is like.
And now Jess certainly has me beat now on size of company that she works for, because I think how many total Deloitte employees are there in the hundreds of thousands, I believe Deloitte us at least on their website, so somewhere around 3300.

(55:56):
But don't quote me on that because it grows every day.
Consulting is a really interesting field.
I never thought I would end up in it, but I feel very lucky to have landed here because I've been in the role about a year, and content strategy is so wide too, and like what you can do.

(56:19):
And so I've been able to kind of find my niche and really get to utilize the skills that I enjoy since joining such a large company.
Well, I think it's fantastic, too.
We get to spotlight the fact that Orlando is more than just Disney or Universal.
Not that there's anything wrong with either of those companies, but the fact that there is a robust business community here that does have needs and does have employment opportunities and potential for success outside of that hospitality or even the space program that seem to be like our big two.

(56:53):
There are a lot of big companies around here.
I think what I found in the job hunt, which I know at least right now, can be very difficult, is that I have found my success with networking.
It's not that you need to know someone, but having someone, either who has worked for the company you're interested in or is currently there, can definitely help you kind of know if that's the right fit for you or being able to just introduce you to opportunities.

(57:23):
My first job was because of Jacqueline, and then a previous colleague of mine reached out to me when I was ready to take that next step to a different company for Deloitte.
And so she was able to kind of give me that introduction, and then I took it from.
There.
And so in anyone looking for either communications or writing or marketing or any job, networking really does come down to the core of it because it can really just help you understand the kind of culture that you're looking for too.

(57:55):
And if that person is a happy person and enjoying what they're doing.
Or if they have exciting stories from their job.
It can kind of give you a really good inside look before you make that commitment because it's a big commitment to take a job anywhere and there are so many opportunities here.
But it can be really hard to weed out and find the right opportunities when you're so desperate for a job.

(58:21):
I think that's great advice to maybe some of our audience of people that might be listening to this.
Students in our department and at UCF still in the process of finishing up their degrees.
We're closing in on the time for this episode, but we have a couple more questions.

(58:42):
Megan, do you want to yeah.
So in lieu of, like, tell me what your favorite word is.
Like those little, like, close down inside the Actors Studio kind of moments at the end of an interview or a conversation.
So I teach 32 50, which is for those of you that don't remember all the numbers, that's fine.
That is professional writing.

(59:03):
And I mentioned it briefly.
I like to think of it more as writing in professional environments because I think there is again with the word writing, there's a lot of thinking that it's just being professional writing that means I'm an author.
No, that's not what that has to do.
No.
So I'm curious for my students that are from a lot of varied backgrounds because we have people that are nonmajor as well as major in writing and rhetoric that are taking it.

(59:27):
The fact that you were talking about the difference in speaking to like maybe software people or tech people.
Even tech writers write very differently than my history majors who are taking the class or it's very interesting to see their authentic voice and how it expresses itself.
But for them at large, regardless of their background, I was curious if you have as professional writers yourself, any rules or rules, like there are no rules kind of sentiments about what is important for them to know as writing in professional environments.

(01:00:02):
It's so cliche to know your audience that's 98% of everything is crafting the right message for the right audience and that could be putting the right talking points together for a meeting.
It could be creating a piece that I'm struggling now more with trying to create a lot of material for a more technical audience.

(01:00:29):
And it's really fun, but I have the same instincts just where I still want to make it more readable for any audience to pick up.
But I'm in more of this architecture engineering environment now where we're creating things about very technical pieces for a technical audience and that is what they're looking for and that is what's exciting to them, is to hear about the engineering challenges of a project and how they overcame them.

(01:00:54):
And so I'm learning that that is what is best for that audience and how do we bring that together? I think that's the fun of it all too, because the better you understand the audience, the more you're going to continue to serve them what they need and to be asking for that feedback.
There is no shortage of ways now that you can be asking that audience whether it's through a survey monkey, I mean, however barebones you need to get with it, to say, is this the kind of content that you're looking for? Or in a more informal setting, is this asking for that constant feedback that helps you understand your audience better and also make your communications and your writing better? I think I don't know if it's a rule of thumb for me, but two skills that I'm constantly working on developing and I hope will just continue to get better.

(01:01:40):
As a communicator and as a writer, I feel like anybody who's interested in a career in writing or marketing, you really need to have at least these two skills, which is observation skills.
You need to be able to maybe not only read a room.
But read the person you're talking to or read the materials that you're looking at.

(01:02:03):
The scope of the project.
Just honing in on your observation skills and your understanding of different things will really help you understand and know that you're on the right track or hitting the brief or just on the right track to what you're trying to do.
And then being detailoriented, I know that one's also kind of a cliche, but as a communicator and wanting to be viewed as a competent communicator, you really do need to be a good proofreader, a good copy editor.

(01:02:37):
Writing and creating is one part of being a writer.
But actually a lot of what I do is copy editing other people's work, whether it's super technical or super creative.
And so you really do need to hone your detail skills.
And this is always my little closing because it's just not a pet peeve of mine, but something that I always make sure is have someone else read your resume, have someone else read your cover letter.

(01:03:05):
Do not as a writing professional, have grammar issues or any typos in any of those things because you immediately lose credibility when you submit for a job.
If you're looking to go into communications, make sure that all of your documents are clean because the person who is reading them is most likely a communicator as well.

(01:03:26):
That's the first thing they will notice and the only thing they will remember about you.
I literally just said that to a bunch of graduating undergrads that are taking their Capstone class and are crafting their e portfolios, and a lot of them are doing them.
It's like a division.
You're doing an e portfolio because you want to go to grad school and that's your audience or because you want to enter the professional field.

(01:03:47):
And I literally just said, if you claim you have editing skills, don't let there be a single editorial error anywhere in that portfolio or they're going to catch it and your credibility is going to be shot.
Yeah, I mean, I was fortunate to have for many years the ability to hire my own team.
And we didn't necessarily depend on how we wanted to do it.

(01:04:11):
I didn't want anything screened, so I would just say, give me all the applicants.
So sometimes I was going through 60, 70, 80 resumes.
I'm going to put those in two piles, one's with errors and one's without.
Because if I have a percentage of folks that I can look at that don't have errors, obviously I'm going to look at them first.
I'm not going to say it.
100% takes you out of the running depending on how many applications are coming in and how desperate the company is that you're working for is to fill a role.

(01:04:39):
But I've never hired anyone that had an error in their resume or cover letter.
I also appreciate that you highlighted that writing is a collaborative act.
It is.
That it's not just you, you're not an island, that it's perfectly acceptable to look for revision or suggestions on revision or hey, just am I hitting this right? Can you be a pair of fresh eyes for me? That was our favorite part of working together.

(01:05:02):
Yes, we would proofread each other's stuff, copy edit it, give ideas.
A lot of the articles I work on now are collaborative, where I will get a draft done and then I will work with another writer or the client who is also reviewing.
And the end piece is always something more developed and more just more, because multiple voices, while can be difficult to navigate, really do produce the best piece of work when you synthesize it all together, essentially.

(01:05:35):
What are some of the other because you mentioned writing as a collaborative effort, and I know that students often will work in group projects or even if they're involved in publications on campus and things like that.
And so they're trying to gain that experience of writing or editing or putting together a publication as part of a team.

(01:05:59):
Do you have some insights or advice or things that work for you in those kinds of environments or in those situations? I always find when I'm working collaboratively on an article and this is not for everybody, but it's best for one person to take a first stab at it.
Writing together can be very difficult.

(01:06:22):
And so you designate one person to kind of get the bare bones, get a skeleton, a template with the basic information, then maybe does need someone else to start filling out the detail.
Doesn't need someone to be the copy editor.
Just because you're designated the copy editor does not mean you're not writing.
Actually, a lot of times you have to be that person who understands every piece of detail on that page in order to come to a full article that actually makes sense that someone can read.

(01:06:51):
And so I think by having clear roles in a collaborative process, it makes it a lot smoother than having three to five people, depending on how big your group is trying to write a ten page paper together.
Because everyone has a different writing style.
Everybody is going to have your own opinion and your own approach to things.
Like, I'm one of those that I will do a bunch of research and then throw everything at the page and then I go back and I synthesize it.

(01:07:19):
Whereas I know other people who they will write everything word for word.
This is what is my first draft.
This is what it's going to be.
I'm a very big believer in shitty first draft.
I loved that book.
I will never forget that book.
And it's definitely stuck with me that I write a shitty first draft and then I make it a pretty first draft so no one sees my shitty first draft and then people see the second draft to me, the first draft to them shout out to Annalimot really quickly.

(01:07:48):
For those of you that know, just a contextual audience that I know, that's a fantastic piece by Ann Lamont called Cheeks for Everyone Else.
I was cheering along with you.
And I do want to talk about I think Jessica covered anything that's any bit of a longer form.
But if you work in corporate comms, you're also going to have endless opportunities to brainstorm taglines, slogans, themes, headlines.

(01:08:16):
So for anything that's like very, very short, I think a group brainstorm can work and it can be really fun.
And something that I would say is good advice, good career advice, regardless of which profession you go into, is you don't always have to have the best idea in the room, but you're going to be very successful if you are good at identifying and celebrating the best idea in the room.

(01:08:38):
And I felt like that was something that I was proud to do.
I was so thrilled when somebody came up with a better idea than me.
And we would all like, when it feels right, it feels right and we would circle it.
And so I'd say for anyone who's interested in communications and writing as a profession, it's a naturally creative skill set, but you have to be able to put your ego aside.

(01:08:59):
We need to talk a little bit more about that writing.
You reminded me of a piece of advice or an anecdote that someone recently shared with me about being a leader.
So it's not specifically about writing, but I'm sure many people listening to this will have goals of becoming a leader in their industry.
And it's that being a leader doesn't always mean taking credit or getting the credit.

(01:09:23):
Being a leader means being able to identify the right people on your team or the right ideas to present and celebrating the people who had those ideas.
Because at the end of the day, when you're working on a team, you are a team.
And in many corporate settings, people, while, yes, recognition is great, the company is not looking really to recognize one person or celebrate.

(01:09:48):
They're looking for the best idea that's going to represent them and get results.
And so if you go in to leadership with that mindset of how do I celebrate the people that I'm working with? It will serve you so much better as you advance in your career.
People will remember that, too.
If you remember celebrating them for the good things they do, they will celebrate you as well.

(01:10:11):
And that's what I've learned in many different roles, is it's best to uplift people and to be transparent and to just support each other, because competition gets in the way more than collaboration.
For better or worse, the corporate world is one long group project.

(01:10:32):
Yes, way to sell it.
We're trying to.
Yes, Jessica said it much more in a better, more palatable than I did.
But if you enjoy working on a team, I think it's important, especially as you did, to highlight it, that in a writing professional, you do you think of it as a more solo act, but in any corporate environment, or I would say large organization in general, whether it's for profit or not, it's a lot of teamwork, it's a lot of group work.

(01:11:02):
So you got to get good at being on a team and you got to like it.
And if you don't like learning that early and try to find roles that are like that, but collaboration is so it's part of every day at least I have not encountered, I should say, a role in marketing or communications that is an individual sport.

(01:11:25):
It's just not done because whether it's on a larger communication team.
We have multiple people brainstorming together.
Or you are added to a project where you are the communicator.
But you are working with other technical experts in other areas.
Like website design.
Or a subject matter expert on the topic you're working on.
Or just the client who knows what they want but doesn't really know what they want.

(01:11:49):
It is like one long group project, and the players continue to change.
And so you definitely have to learn how to work together with people from all walks of life in order to be successful in any career, honestly, but specifically in writing and communications.
Why the movie working girl.

(01:12:10):
Don't be so gorge.
Weaver.
Yes.
I haven't seen it.
Oh, my God.
I think I have homework now.
I'm glad that you said that and not me.
That's a good one.
Well, I want to thank you both, Jacqueline and Jessica, for sharing so much of your experience and so much great advice and for sitting down and chatting with us today.

(01:12:33):
Thank you so much for being here and for your time.
And thank you, everyone, for listening.
Yes, thank you.
It's always easy to talk about something that we're all passionate about, so thank you so much for being a part of that.
Thank you.
Thank you.