Day 326: Paige Wolf
“I’ve seen people who have started tremendous organizations and businesses from the ground up. So I’m inspired by the work that I see around me that the individuals who have been passionate about causes and against all odds have been able to accomplish great things.”
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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Paige, for agreeing to be part of the Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Paige Wolf: My name is Paige Wolf, and I am the owner of Paige Wolf Media and Public Relations in Philadelphia.
Toni: Well thank you for being here, and Paige, when you think of the word inspiration, who do you inspire, and how does that happen?
Paige: Well, what I hope to be doing with my work is inspiring people to live a more green and sustainable lifestyle, and also to understand that a lot of the things we can do to be green and sustainable are a lot easier and a lot more affordable than people might think.
Toni: So the inspiration comes how? Is it through education?
Paige: It is. It’s through education. I’m lucky to have the opportunity to promote clients that are a combination of green and sustainable businesses and nonprofits, and what my clients have in common is that they all are doing work that benefits the planet, benefits their communities. So in promoting these businesses and these clients, I’m hoping to inspire people to participate in the causes.
And I also send a monthly E-newsletter to a large network of subscribers that includes both information about my clients, but a lot of information on simple things that we can do, tips and advice, and discounts, and ways that we can help people and help the planet that are very simple and very affordable, and a lot of times will actually make your life easier and more economical.
Toni: Well, that’s a great lead-in to the next question, which is, how do you help others to explore their potential? And having asked that question, I’m wondering if it’s in two ways; one, not only from your clients’ perspective that you’re promoting, but then also the education piece that you’re providing to the general public.
Paige: Right. I mean, each of my clients is inspiring people in different ways. I represent green beauty clients that want to inspire people to take charge of the cosmetics and the body care products that they use, understanding that there are healthier alternatives to a lot of conventional products.
But then on the other hand, I work with animal nonprofits that work in the rescue world, and I work with an organization called The Career Wardrobe that for more than 15 years has been helping thousands of women reenter the workforce by supplying not only interview-appropriate clothing, but also education and resume review and interview preparation and financial advice.
So I’m able to help facilitate that inspiration through what my different clients are doing. But that’s true, on the other hand I’m also trying to on a personal level educate people about easy ways and affordable ways that they can participate in helping the planet and helping their community and helping themselves live healthier lifestyles.
Toni: What type of feedback do you get from people as you’re going through this education process? There’s a lot of outreach here, not just in the … I mean, the very, very important environmental issues that you’re discussing, but also the other outreach that’s happening as a byproduct of that. I’m hearing that this really goes very far.
Paige: I certainly hope so. I work on two levels. The main level that I work on is getting press for my clients, so letting the media pick up some of these stories and put them out on the local and national level for audiences that I can’t even begin to fathom the reach of, but then also on a direct to consumer level is where I have my newsletter that’s reaching people.
It’s so exciting to me, when I meet people and they recognize my name and they tell me that they do get my newsletter, and they did use one of my coupons to try out a new eco-friendly product, or they did just learn about easy ways to recycle in their community. It’s hard for me to gauge the effect that some of the work I do is having, but every time I meet someone who can tell me that I’ve made a difference, as you can imagine, it’s incredibly fulfilling.
Toni: Oh, absolutely. So what inspires you, Paige?
Paige: A lot of the work that my clients do is very inspiring to me. I’ve seen people who have started tremendous organizations and businesses from the ground up. So I’m inspired by the work that I see around me that the individuals who have been passionate about causes and against all odds have been able to accomplish great things.
On a personal level, I’m very inspired by music. I’m inspired by performance artists and people who go out there and say what they feel, and they’re honest and they’re passionate and they’re not afraid to be controversial.
Toni: Paige, how long ago did you start your business?
Paige: I started my public relations company about eight or nine years ago, but it wasn’t until maybe four or five years ago that I started to become more and more interested and passionate in healthy and sustainable choices.
I wish that I could say that I was someone who was raised in an environmentally conscious environment and that it’s something that I always cared about or knew about, but I think I’m relatable because like so many Americans, it really wasn’t until a few years ago when things happened like the release of An Inconvenient Truth and The Eleventh Hour and information that became widely available. It was really a wakeup call. I had no idea, and the more that I learned about the problems that existed and the ways that we did have the power to make changes, it inspired me to change my life personally and professionally.
Toni: And that’s kind of what getting to, because the unintended outcome of the Get Inspired! Project, which has been just amazing, is people that are talking about their passion and purpose not in a “woo-hoo” kind a way, but in a … this is what’s happened to me and this is what I’ve done. So did you always know that you wanted to start your own business? Where did you find the courage to take that step?
Paige: I was really an accidental entrepreneur. I did not know I wanted to start my own business. I did not even know that I wanted to be in PR. I went to school for journalism and originally had hopes of writing professionally, which I still get to do. In fact, I’ve written a book recently, so hopefully that will be coming up soon, but I fell into a job in public relations out of college, and it was a really hard and fast education. I left that job because it was a very exhausting commute and really just a very exhausting job for somebody my age.
As I began looking for opportunities closer to home, it was always a tough job market. What happened was I began taking on piecemeal public relations work for small local businesses, and it snowballed. And before I knew it, I had my own business. It was really a hands-on education, and I learned over time how to really perfect my craft, and I’m still constantly learning, but it’s really been almost a 10-year learning process of having my own business, and it’s gone into a direction that I never imagined it would take.
Toni: Well, I can see where you can relate then to the entrepreneurs that you’re trying to promote, because as you said, you called yourself an accidental entrepreneur, and now you’re in a place where you’re trying to open doors for others. So it’s not only the awareness that is happening as far as being eco-friendly, which is incredibly valuable and important, but it’s also, I can imagine, the support and the mentoring that you can give to these entrepreneurs based on your own experience.
Paige: Right. I’m fortunate, because my clients and I really understand each other. I take on people who are a little bit afraid, who are really taking the plunge, who might not be financially ready or feel like they’re ready to go out and promote a new product or a new idea. And sometimes they don’t imagine that they’re going to get picked up by the larger media or that their business is going to become successful. So I’m able to literally hold their hand and watch them grow.
What’s different about me from a lot of different PR companies is I choose to be a one-woman business. I choose to work very personally with each client. I don’t like to bring on a lot of employees to handle accounts. I’d rather take less work and just focus on the work that’s important to me and have a very personal relationship with my clients. There’s definitely pros and cons to that approach, but for me, I can’t see doing it any other way.
Toni: When you reach a day when you need to be more inspired – you know, the inspiration bucket is a little low – do you find yourself reaching for the same tools or resources on a consistent basis?
Paige: It’s funny, one thing that I wrote about recently, and you might have actually read it. Have you ever heard of the book called 29 Gifts?
Toni: No.
Paige: It’s something that I think that your readers will actually really enjoy. It’s a book called the 29-day giving project, or something similar – I think 29gifts.org – and it was written by a young woman who was around my age, in her early thirties, who found out that she had a very difficult, debilitating disease. And she just felt really down on herself and very pessimistic and really unhappy and didn’t know what to do to bring herself out of this funk.
And she got some advice from a mentor that the cure for what was ailing her was to go out and give 29 gifts in 29 days. And it didn’t have to be financial gifts. It could be anything from maybe giving change to a homeless person where you might not have ordinarily done it to sending a letter to an old friend, or maybe getting up to open the door for someone where you might not have ordinarily done that.
She found the rewards of that giving to be so huge that she never expected and it started this grass roots movement. Now she’s got thousands of people who go on her site and journal, and recently that happened to me. A couple of months ago, I was sort of feeling a little bit down, and business was slow, and I was just dealing with stress in a lot of areas, so I decided to go online and journal and take the challenge again.
What it’s really about is mindful giving, because a lot of people that I tell about it say, “Oh, I do that stuff all the time. I’m a giving person. I give plenty. I do enough. I give to charity.” But when you’re conscious and mindful of what you’re giving and you journal it, it can help in unexpected ways.
I don’t know that I necessarily believe fully in karma, but I’ve found that when I do the challenge, my luck turns around really quickly.
Toni: Oh, isn’t that interesting.
Paige: Yeah, so it was just an interesting little exercise, and I found it to be really beneficial, so I recommend that to people.
Toni: Well thank you for that. I myself will look into that; that’s fantastic. So the final question of the Project, Paige, is what are you doing now to explore your own potential?
Paige: All of these years I’ve spent so much time and energy promoting other people’s projects and other people’s dreams, and I thought that I really wanted to have something of my own to promote. And I didn’t know if that was going to be a product, or … it was hard for me to come up with an idea of what I could do that was truly 100% my own.
Then I had the idea for a book about my experiences as a new mother in a world with this information overload that makes it really difficult to make decisions, especially when it comes to being eco-friendly and safe and healthy. The information is constantly changing, and it can be really scary.
So I wrote a book to try to navigate those waters, and I spoke to mothers from all over the country that were dealing with similar struggles, and they were able to offer really sound practical advice. I spoke to a lot of experts in different industries, and they could really sort through some of the information to get some really good, easy, simple advice. So I’ve written that book, and right now I’m just in the place of figuring out how and when I’m going to go about publishing it.
Toni: Well congratulations to you. What is the name of the book?
Paige: It’s called Spit that Out! is the title, and then it has a subtitle of The Eco … I forget what the subtitle is … it’s a very long subtitle about navigating, you know, being an eco-conscious mother in a world of information overload. But Spit that Out! is all you need to remember.
Toni: Well, we wish you the best of luck with your book and what you’re doing for others as well as the planet, and just really thrilled that you’re part of the Get Inspired! Project. And we hope to see much more of your clients in the future as well, and we wish you the best of luck, Paige. Thank you for being here.
Paige: Thank you so much for having me be a part of it.
Toni: Take care.
Paige: You too.
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For more information about Paige Wolf: www.paigewolf.com
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