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Mindset, money and building a career

SUSAN GROSSMAN, our speaker on 14 September, has over 40 years of experience in the media. She was for 15 years a BBC broadcaster, including being a presenter on food and drink programmes on BBC2. She was a reporter for BBC Radio 4 and for five years a magazine editor. She's been for 20 years a visiting lecturer in journalism at City St George's and the City Lit. And she is a business coach, particularly for journalists, working with a range of people from interns to women returning to work to senior editors. Here is the advice she gave.

It must sound horrendous to you to have someone who says they've been working in journalism for 40 years. It's pretty horrendous to me actually as well. We are facing all sorts of difficulties at the moment with AI and with newspapers and magazines condensing everything and having one person taking all the commissioning pitches over loads of different titles. The one thing that hasn't changed, I'm afraid, is the amount we get paid.

I can look back on my portfolio of filing when I was contributing to women's magazines in the 70s, in the 80s, into the 90s. I'm afraid the amount per 1000 words really hasn't changed.

What I've done with my own career is a bit mosquito-like, being freelance for most of it, but under contract to different publishers and organisations during that time. Nothing much changed in terms of the words that were needed in terms of investigating things, bringing light to issues, informing the public, all of that sort of stays the same.

But the people who are producing it have changed. One of the things that I became aware of, especially when I started lecturing to journalists on an MA at Westminster University and to people at City Lit, who tended to have come to the middle of their careers, was that it’s not so much the work that changes, but that we do.

About 18 years ago my head of department tentatively threw into conversation that they were training a cohort of coaches, and would anybody on the staff like to train as a coach? I leapt at it because I thought to myself, “I can't go on with this much longer: I am fed up with trying to sell my ideas to people who are younger than my children.

Maybe coaching is a progression of journalism. Maybe there are lots of things which are a progression of journalism. By doing the coaching training, which was with the Institute of Leadership and Management, I discovered that it's a mindset, and that the work is out there and the money is out there, but it's in a different place.

Inevitably, if we've been doing the same job for some years, we're going to come up with feelings of disillusionment, feelings of frustration, angry, irritated, and just not knowing how to pay the rent.

So I began with my coaching career, to work with people that actually I taught because you can only teach people so much when they're on a city lit course or on an evening course with City St. George's, which I teach now or on their MA. Those students are thrust out into the world and have to decide how to make a living and which genre to make a living in.

Should you have a niche? Should you specialise? Should you go into video? Should you be a TV producer?

There are so many options when you're a journalist. What I found with my coaching is that the people who come to me are almost all in a similar position. They've reached a point where they want to progress. They might want to pivot, which is a fashionable word for changing direction slightly; but basically they need support and a conversation and somebody to understand where they're coming from.

I have been sacked, I've been fired, I've been made redundant, I've had pitches rejected, and I've had the opposite – having success and fronting TV shows and writing books and editing magazines.

I found that drawing on my experiences was quite helpful in helping people find that they weren't alone in the situations they were going through.

So that brings me to where I am today, which is most of my work is in my coaching practice. I've probably coached over 300 people in the last, six, seven or eight years. Most of them come for a minimum of three sessions and some are still with me after two or three years.

Some of them have one session and they're fired up and off they go and carry on. But most of them keep in touch.

Coaching is important in our profession– where it hasn't really been more than just friends saying, “I'll help you with this.” It’s about mindset, money and building a career.

Mindset

Mindset is the most important thing that's going to help you move forward from feeling that you are stuck. You may feel like an imposter. It may be because of a relationship at work, where your editor has suddenly become someone you can't work with, where the magazine or the newspaper has changed the way they put everything together, where you feel a younger person has taken over what you're doing.

And so your mindset has to change and there's no two ways about it.

You can't carry on battling, there's no point in battling. What I'm suggesting is that we find a way of reinventing, of thinking: what are your skills and where can you put them?

I've had, for example, a client who was a wine editor and she'd spent six, seven years editing a trade magazine on wine. She said to me, “I don't know what else to do. I just know the wine industry backwards, but I don't know how to contribute to something else.”

And it just only took a session or two for her to understand that actually wine is just the subject. Her skills and talents are editing. She can edit anything.

Now she is editing something completely different. She's actually working as an actor, stage managing productions and editing newsletters for actors. And she's very happy doing that.

I've had all sorts of people change their mindset. One was a musician, a music journalist for 30 years or so, a middle-aged man, really fed up – but he had a great interest in nurturing young talent.

So we talked about what he could do. After two or three sessions, he applied for a scholarship to train as a psychotherapist. He now has his own coaching practice as a music therapist. He has clients who are journalists, and he's helping them sort of navigate their careers.

Money

The answer is not to do more of the same, but often to do some more of the same and a bit more of something different: you work for people who are going to pay you more.

That may means opening your eyes to client-based publications and to NGOs (non-governmental organisations). To organisations that have budgets

Twenty or thirty years ago when I was working as a consumer journalist I started off at Which magazine. To work for a client or to work for Coca-Cola or something of the sort was frowned upon: “you had to sell your soul to do something like that.”

Today, they need journalists: what they want is someone who can put their message across in a way that will impress their client base, their audience, the people who are going to buy their product. You don't need to lose your integrity. You just need to see it in a way that they can't see it.

And it works.

I have edited three customer magazines, and I don't feel bad about helping BUPA clients, for example, understand that their lifestyle is going to make a difference to their health. I'm not beholden to the BUPA package with the editing that I do on the magazine. I just edit for lifestyle.

It's a question of really identifying who your audience is, and then realising that your skills as a journalist, as a sub-editor, as an editor, as an interviewer, whatever you do on a daily basis as a journalist, is absolutely widely wanted.

Building a career

Building the career is about being open to following your gut instinct and your passion. For example, if you're stuck, you might say, “OK, I'm not getting many commissions on the articles and the stories I want to tell, but I'm interested in organic farming.”

You put yourself forward and say, this is what I as a journalist can bring to the table to help with your conference.

It's a question of being proactive.

Don't answer adverts, don't fill in application forms. Those of us who do occasionally get the job, but most of us don't.

It's networking. How many times have you been out in the last month to a networking event?

How many times have you met somebody in a profession that you're interested in, where you've been able to say, this is what I can help you with?

Passion

I would love to help you with any questions that you've got. I'm a motivator. I'm passionate about what I do. I don't treat any person the same as the next person.

I work with young people and middle-aged people and older people and very high-powered people who are producers or presenters on newscasters, and they're all the same boat.

So, go for it.

Questions

Grace Livingstone, in the chair, asked: You said networking is key. Where do you find networking events? And then at a networking event, how do you approach people you don't know? What should be the opening lines?

Susan replied that “there are sorts of networking. There's obviously face-to-face, which is more difficult for a lot of us because we're in the wrong place or we're working remotely; and there is online.

“Online networking doesn't have to feel alien. It might be attending a conference which is on X or Twitter, whatever you like to call it, and joining in. It's engaging with LinkedIn posts. It's reading things and replying and responding.

“That is important and that is networking.

“Then there is face to face networking.

“You might think, ‘what sort of things should I go to?’ I can only recall the things that have worked for me. It’s always been in the queue to the loo or queuing up for some food, or bumping into somebody. It's always sort of accidental, but it's at an event of some sort.

“I remember getting an editorship at a PR event for Samsonite luggage. Early on, I thought ‘I’m not interested in Samsonite luggage. If somebody wants to throw me a bag, I'll take it.’ But I forced myself to go to all these events because the chances are there'd be people who were commissioning work there, and there always were.

“So, how do you make that conversation? When you're online, the conversation is about ‘I really liked your speech on… I agree with what you said about…’ Those are the opening lines for when you're online.

“In person... I once went to an event at the Ping Pong Club. God knows why I went. It was to celebrate a Richard Curtis film. And I just kept going to things.

“I went in and they were all terribly famous. And I was never famous. I was a jobbing journalist and occasionally people recognised me from the TV. But I saw Bill Nighy at the bar and I thought, ‘go for it, Susan.’ I sidled up to him and I said, ‘hi, I really enjoyed the last movie I saw you in.’ And he looked at me in that sort of sardonic English way. He had a five pound note in his hand and he said, ‘I'd buy you a drink, but I've only got a fiver.’

“The secret is that you're never going to get anything very much by saying nothing or saying, ‘excuse me, could you give me a job?’ The only way you're going to get people to talk to you is if you somehow get onto their wavelength – I hate the word, but... remind them how excellent they are.

“I met Hugh Grant in exactly the same way, at some meeting for Hacked Off. I just said, ‘how are you?’ He said, ‘do I know you?’ I said, ‘no, but are you writing at the moment? I heard you were.’ And he said, ‘actually, I have got a novel in me.’ Twenty minutes later, we were still talking.

“No, I didn't edit his novel, but I could have. It just wasn't ready.”

“We just have to find that tiny little key to open the conversation.

“It is very hard. You need a sort of drive: ‘today I am going to walk into a group of people and I'm going to have a conversation and I'm going to find out what they need and then offer them what they need.’ I really don't mean to sound arrogant. I'm just experienced at it.”

Nika Talbot asked about CVs. People say to focus on the last ten years only and to take all the dates off if you're over 45 plus, to work against the bias of the “AI” systems that are filtering CVs. It's very hard to condense 25 or 30 years into one page.

Susan replied: “I've only ever sent my CV off once in my whole life. I have never applied for a job.

“I've had hundreds of jobs and they've all come from networking and talking to people and offering services or being offered them on the back of something else.

“If you do send a CV, then what people are looking for are your skills. One of my skills is editing books. These are the books that I've edited. Or if yours is video production: these are the videos that I've produced.

“Turn it round. There's no need to do the conventional year-on-year list. I don't think you should be trying to structure a conventional CV. If you can, get round having to send a CV at all by networking and finding the person who's going to interview you via LinkedIn, for example. Email them separately, saying, @I want to talk to you about what I can offer in this job.”

Francesca Marchese was tutored by Susan. She asked, how can you find new skills that you didn't know you could have?

Susan responded: “Ask yourselves, all of you, when you get a job, a story to investigate as a journalist, where do you start? You start from nothing. You go to people who know more than you do. As soon as you've done your one story on investigating the subsoil of the Cotswolds, you become an expert on that subject. You've asked all the experts, you've done all the research, it's good enough for publication.”

Phil Sutcliffe observed: “I'm only 79, so I think I'm a real candidate for one of your tutorials. Usually in these meetings I talk about money. How much do you charge?” Because, you know, we don't have to do one niche. So how do we translate our niches, our expertise into cash?

Susan responded: “I love your question. Anyone in business, in any business, needs to invest. You can't sell gardening equipment, anything else, without investing in stock. Journalism is the same. You need to put a bit of money into investing in improvements.

“It's not your stock, it's your mind. and the way you might move forward. I hate talking money, but what I charge is $90 for one hour of coaching. How many articles do you have to write to get 90 pounds? If you write only half an article, you've paid for it.

“Coaching will enable you to reach more audiences, to discuss who pays more, to, make one story goes six ways. One core story can, with different hooks, making each version topical, reach different audiences. That's £1500 for one story rather than £250.

Grace Livingstone asked about social media strategy. It seems to her that you get the most attention on social media if you're very opinionated. But if, for example, you report for the BBC that may cause problems…”

Susan responded that you have to be very careful. Some organisations will say that they do not permit you to engage in social media and that's it. Perhaps you can engage in social media with is things that aren't necessarily to do with the exact work that you're doing.

“You can be fired, everybody knows, for saying the wrong thing on social media. You can also attract all sorts of abuse, which some people find such a deterrent that they wouldn't go near it. I think you need a plan. You need to think about why you are doing it and what your objectives are. Instead of reacting to everything that comes, to make a ‘voice’ for yourself. Think: ‘what do I want to achieve this week? Can I use social media to get it?’”

Edited by Mike Holderness

Susan will be speaking in person at our Ways to make journalism pay day on 10 October.
If you're interested in the one-to-one coaching, see www.susangrossman.co.uk
She offers a 10 minute free “chemistry call” to check that she can help you.
Nika Talbot noted that Susan is doing “some quite really affordable training at the moment as well, including one at City Lit on interviewing skills. Nika “did one recently at City Lit on travel writing, and it was excellent and it's really affordable.”

Ways to make journalism pay event 10 October