Learning to Pivot

In public relations, you have to stay on your toes. This is a lesson that Liz Galloway, founder of Brand Sanity Media, has encountered many times over the years. “I have a lot of admiration for anyone who is consistent and resilient,” says Galloway, who in addition to launching her own PR firm six years ago, is the organizer behind TEDxBelltown Women. “It seems very cliché,” she continues, “but if you’re not putting in the work, you’re not going to get the results.”

Galloway has spent her career ticking off those results, developing a wide swath of skills in the realms of PR, media, and storytelling, as well as brand and business development. Her background includes work in the travel and hospitality industries, where she has helped companies score press coverage in major outlets, developed in-person engagement experiences, and managed large-scale brand crises. Outside of work, Galloway has a lust for adventure—her experiences flying helicopters, living overseas, and traveling the world have shaped her professional perspective, where she blends grit and perseverance into any campaign she tackles.

Accomplishments

The ability to pivot and be adaptable. I lived overseas for about a decade, and I did that with different contract work, with consulting, marketing, press, and all that. I’m pretty happy to have had the opportunity and pleasure to not only be in those environments, but to thrive in them.

Challenges

No matter what you’re doing with work, I think learning is always a spot where you can face challenges. There’s going to be the regular things, like a very challenging press campaign or trip. Then you’ve got crisis management, where major things happen with brands, and you’ve got to manage their crisis PR. Those can be quite challenging…but they’re also very rewarding. It comes back to that same theme of keeping an open mind and being able to pivot so that the challenges seem a little easier.

Lessons Learned

People are going to have opinions about you, regardless. You could work your butt off, and that can get you certain things, but in the end, you really don’t have control over anybody but yourself. People are going to talk—you’re not in control of that—but you can continue to pursue your own wants, desires, dreams, and needs because that’s going to get you the farthest—and the best results.

Role Models

I wouldn’t say it’s one person. I think it’s more organizational. Some of the organizations I admire are trying to do things differently and provide spaces for people to have different, safe, and unique conversations about perspectives that may not be heard. In the spaces where I work, it’s just so much of the same message. The same tone, the same vanilla stuff. People are afraid to do something different. But the brands that I see that are making those moves, and that I do admire, tend to speak up. They tend to take risks. They tend to do something a little bit differently.

You gotta step out of the box, and you gotta be resilient. this is an industry that moves very fast. —Liz Galloway, Brand Sanity Media Overrated Traits

Overrated Traits

That [leaders are] supposed to be perfect, that everybody’s going to look up to them as some type of guru, and that they have all the answers. They’re just another human. I think that people put a lot [of pressure] on so-called leaders to be more than they are. I think it takes a very strong-willed person not to have an over-the-top ego.

Leadership

I think on the flip side of that, if you can be an active listener—both for your own internal voice and inner thoughts, and with your teams and society as a whole—this is going to benefit your leadership role.

Advice

You gotta step out of the box, and you gotta be resilient. This is an industry that moves very fast. We have a lot of different software and technologies, not to mention all the AI tools moving at light speed that we should embrace to make ourselves more efficient and better at our work. Create your own niches and spaces. You don’t have to do everything that everybody else is doing. But it’s not easy. You have to be super resilient.

Do Differently

Some of the places where I’ve found myself, I’ve allowed [those situations] to happen—they found me rather than me being a little bit more intentional [about seeking them out]. I think I might have taken that more intentional element a little sooner, rather than just accepting certain things, and really diving into my “why” a lot more.

Saturday Afternoon

If it’s a Saturday afternoon, I’m going to try to be outdoors and get my body moving. If I can get on the water, it will definitely be that. In our Pacific Northwest area, it’s going to be something like paddle boarding, or even just being by the water with a picnic.