Ready for Beyond

What if the experiences you thought were behind you turned out to be exactly what prepared you for what came next?

In this episode of Ready for Beyond, Gina Hudel sits down with Patrick McCaully, Founder of Pointman! News Creation, to explore how past experiences can become a competitive advantage. Drawing on a career that spans broadcast journalism, public relations, and entrepreneurship, Patrick shares the lessons he carried from the newsroom into building an award-winning communications firm.

From working overnight shifts in national newsrooms to launching his own business at age 28, Patrick discusses how understanding the way stories are selected, shaped, and shared became the foundation of his success. Along the way, he offers candid insights on entrepreneurship, adapting through disruption, and why bold thinking matters more than ever in the age of AI.

Together, Gina and Patrick discuss:

00:01:44 Newsroom Lessons: The Foundation of a PR Career
Patrick explains how working inside national newsrooms gave him a unique understanding of what makes stories resonate with journalists.

00:07:06 Why Great Stories Matter More Than Media Relationships
Patrick challenges the idea that PR success is built on connections, arguing that strong ideas always win.

00:09:22 Entrepreneurship, Risk, and Starting Without a Perfect Plan
He reflects on launching his business at 28 and what he wishes he had known before becoming an entrepreneur.

00:09:22 Navigating COVID and Unexpected Business Growth
What initially felt like an existential threat became one of the strongest periods in the company's history.

00:11:28 AI Search and the Future of Earned Media
Patrick explains why earned media is becoming increasingly important as AI changes how people discover information.

00:12:13 Breaking Through with Bold Ideas, Humour, and Creativity
He shares why taking calculated risks and embracing humour can help brands stand out in crowded news cycles.

00:17:08 Career Reinvention and Becoming Your Own Boss
Patrick discusses career transitions, resilience, and why entrepreneurship can offer opportunities during uncertain times.

00:23:01 Using Communication Skills for Community Impact
The conversation explores using professional expertise to support causes, charities, and civic engagement.

00:25:40 Mentorship, Networking, and Sending the Elevator Back Down
Patrick talks about the value of sharing knowledge and helping the next generation navigate their careers.

00:28:14 Sales Skills Every Entrepreneur Needs
He highlights why sales, financial literacy, and business fundamentals are critical for new founders.

00:30:30 Finding Balance Beyond Work
Patrick shares the simple pleasures that help him recharge, from dog park visits to the unexpected art of hat making.

Patrick believes being difficult to “put in a box” early in his career ultimately became a strength. His perspective is a reminder that the experiences we accumulate, even the ones that seem unrelated at the time, often become the very things that set us apart later.

A thoughtful and practical conversation about career pivots, entrepreneurship, media, and finding opportunity in unexpected places.


⭐ About Patrick McCaully

Patrick McCaully is a communications strategist and founder of Pointman News Creation, a public relations agency ranked #1 among boutique PR firms globally and recognized for delivering high-impact earned media. With more than 25 years of experience, including time as a broadcast journalist across national news outlets, he brings a strong editorial instinct and a clear perspective on what it takes to cut through in a crowded media landscape.

Over the course of his career, Patrick has worked across a wide range of sectors, from financial services and real estate to consumer brands, travel, technology, and non-profits. His work focuses on moving organizations beyond conventional, templated PR toward ideas that generate attention, shape conversations, and drive earned media at scale, often in unexpected ways.

Under his leadership, Pointman has delivered internationally award-winning campaigns and produced measurable results at scale, including more than 3,000 earned media hits from a small number of targeted pitches. His approach combines journalistic discipline with a willingness to challenge “safe” approaches, grounded in the belief that strong stories, told well, still have the power to lead.

Resources discussed in this episode:
⭐ About the Host: Gina Hudel

I’m Gina Hudel, a transformation leader who has worked with teams in more than 40 countries. Over the years, my career has taken me across sectors and communities, supporting people and organizations as they navigate change, make thoughtful decisions, and move forward with clarity and purpose.

I’m also deeply committed to volunteer leadership and community work, which keep me grounded in what matters most: people, connection, and contribution. Whether the setting is global or local, my focus is the same — creating space for people to find their footing, focus on what matters, and make steady, sustainable progress.

Ready for Beyond brings that perspective to the mic. These conversations are grounded and human, shaped by a reminder I hold close: the future matters, but so does today. Each episode offers a moment to pause, reflect, and take the next step with confidence and intention, while staying present to the day you’re in.


⭐ What Is Ready for Beyond?

What you do today shapes what comes next — and navigating change doesn’t have to feel overwhelming.

Ready for Beyond is a podcast about growth, purpose, and finding your way in a world that’s shifting fast. Through candid conversations and practical tools, host Gina Hudel helps listeners move forward with clarity and courage, while still making space to enjoy the day they’re in.

From personal pivots to leadership transitions, career shifts to community impact, the show explores how people make meaningful progress while staying grounded in what matters now. Whether you’re leading a team, rethinking success, or opening the door to something new, this is a space to learn, reflect, and feel supported along the way.

Let’s go beyond.


Contact Gina Hudel:

Contact Patrick McCaully:

Creators and Guests

Host
Gina Hudel
Gina Hudel is a global transformation and governance leader, operating in Kitchener-Waterloo in Waterloo Region along Canada's Innovation Corridor. She is passionate about supporting businesses, institutions & community growth. Whether helping a board navigate transformation, an entrepreneur flourish, a non-profit group evolve, or students master new concepts, she takes a systematic, collaborative approach to her work. Gina’s focus is on sustainable results and meaningful impact.
PM
Guest
Patrick McCaully

What is Ready for Beyond?

What you do today shapes what comes next—and navigating change doesn’t have to feel overwhelming.

Ready for Beyond is a podcast about growth, purpose, and finding your way in a world that’s shifting fast. Host Gina Hudel shares real conversations and practical tools to help you move forward with clarity, courage, and a little more ease—while still making space to enjoy the day you’re in.

From personal pivots to leadership transitions, career shifts to social impact, this show is for people ready to make meaningful progress while staying grounded in what matters now.

Whether you're leading a team, rethinking success, or simply opening the door to something new—you’re in the right place.

Let’s go beyond.

Gina Hudel: [00:00:08] I'm Gina Hudel, and welcome to Ready for Beyond. Ready for Beyond explores how we move forward in a world that's changing fast, from AI to global dynamics. It looks at how the lives we build lead us to shape our future. We'll examine growth and personal fulfillment with practical takeaways and candid conversations that open the door to possibility. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform so you don't miss any episode of this journey. Let's go beyond.

Gina Hudel: [00:00:52] Welcome to ready for beyond. I'm Gina Hudel, transformation and governance leader, community builder and your host. Today's episode is about how our past experiences shape how we think, how we decide, and how we show up in our work and in our lives. My guest today is Patrick McCaully, founder of Pointman! News Creation, an award winning communications professional whose career spans broadcast journalism, public relations and building his own firm. His work focuses on creating stories that break through and get attention. Patrick, I'd like to talk about what some people call the thread. When you look back across your career, is there a thread that now that you're looking back and as you look forward, seems to be connecting it?

Patrick McCaully: [00:01:44] So I started off in broadcast journalism, working at three of the four national broadcast outlets and worked really- went to journalism, did all the things you're supposed to do, went to journalism school, worked really hard to get a job, ended up being an assignment editor, which is the unfortunate guy that has to take really bad pitches from big PR agencies and decide not to do them or to do them in some rare cases. I think that I had an epiphany moment where I realized that it would be much better to be the person that's sending out the pitches. That probably gets paid a lot more, sees the sunlight, has more of a life, doesn't have to know about and see and do horrible stories and that there wasn't even 25 years ago. It didn't feel like there was a lot of upward mobility in broadcast news. It's only gotten worse since then. So I think had the epiphany moment decided I needed to get into public relations and it would be a better sort of best destiny. And went on that journey of trying to get a job and eventually got one and then decided, hey, I should just do my own thing because maybe I can do it better. The arrogance of youth, right? I think I was about 28, and when I started the company, the Pointman! News Creation.

Patrick McCaully: [00:03:07] But I was probably 25 or so when I left the assignment desk job at the major network. Newsrooms are not happy places, generally speaking, because a lot of people got into journalism because they want to be a reporter or they want to be a director, or they want to be a producer or a news director. But there's a lot of other jobs. The majority of the jobs are not fun. There's people who are tape operators. There's people who are assignment editors. The vast majority of people in a newsroom are probably doing a job they didn't think they'd get stuck with. So it was obvious that I wasn't going to get where I wanted to get to be a reporter and do that job. So I just started looking somewhere else to put the energy and the creativity. When I was 25 and fearless, I was just like, well, I've had enough of this. I'm going to get a job in PR. And then I marched off and did that and had, incidentally, probably about 104 job interviews because no one knew what to do with me because I had all this experience working in a newsroom, but I didn't have PR experience, which is what they value. So I was difficult to put in a box.

Gina Hudel: [00:04:19] I guess you ended up in a delightful box, a new career. And maybe it was hard landing there, but truly, I would anticipate that that experience makes you better and more effective and more efficient. And the world that you're in now, if you look back at the newsroom, is there something in particular that you feel that you learned about how stories actually get attention, that maybe even today, the modern, everyday person working in PR may not appreciate? And truly you got it because you were there living and breathing and drinking the water.

Patrick McCaully: [00:04:54] I mean, absolutely. It's absolutely the special sauce because the majority of PR people just haven't worked in a newsroom. And I think there's this odd, I'm going to say, fear that most PR people have of the media, like they're smarter than I am. I can't offend them by sending them an email that might not be an exact match to what they're doing that week. And I have to be so respectful of media people and make sure that I'm not taking advantage of the great impact that they have on the world. And it's like, I would say that what I have is the appropriate cynicism of understanding that it's a cool way to make soap, but they're making soap in a newsroom, and that's gotten even worse. Now you have the least number of journalists in history generating the most content. They probably have to not just file a story every single day for TV, but they're probably doing radio, they're probably doing online, and they don't have a whole lot of time to put it together. So if you went right now and asked pretty much any journalist in Canada if they needed PR people, they would say no.

Patrick McCaully: [00:05:59] That doesn't mean it's true. The reality is, is that they need people like me to send them stories that are smart and interesting, and maybe using humor and things that are unconventional and interesting in order to fulfill that need to, to grind out a story every day, you know? So did I learn something? Absolutely, and if you're at a relatively low and unthreatening level in a newsroom, you can learn a lot about what's actually happening, how it actually works, and understand what the media needs to do a story and what are the triggers, what are the humor triggers? What are the emotional triggers? What does a story have to have in it in order to be taken and cut and pasted into a story that ends up being a national story, but is essentially mostly the content of a press release that you've written. It's a dark art, but for sure the thread is being in the newsroom, being the guy making decisions on coverage at 3:00 in the morning on a weekend, and understanding what the media needs, which I don't think most people do.

Gina Hudel: [00:07:06] When you are working dark nights, 3:00 in the morning, surely you're working long hours and I know that you are recognized globally, which means you have clients globally and you're working global hours. Do you have a touch point? We talked about the thread, but are there any anecdotes, any scenarios that you go? I remember Bob, I remember Cathy, is there a moment that shaped how you approach your work today and that you find you call upon a touchstone?

Patrick McCaully: [00:07:36] I would say that the big misunderstanding, it's kind of like the gym industry, the fitness industry is based on if you work out, you'll lose weight and get healthy. It doesn't matter what you eat, and that's not really true. The same is true of PR. Everyone sells PR on connections. Like I know a guy at the Globe and Mail, and I worked with Sean O'Shea for six years, which I did, and he's a great guy. And, you know, we're friends, but no one does stories because they like you. They do the story because it's the best story that day. Like, PR might be the only meritocracy left in the world where you literally have to have the best idea every time that you're pitching. And it's really not about those, those connections. I'm proud to say that I haven't actually phoned a journalist who hasn't called me first in about 15 years. I sent out a pitch that's fully formed and interesting, and I get them to come to me in order to do the story. Or the best scenario is they never talk to me. And magically a story just appears on a TV station or on a radio station or in print based on a really strong pitch being written into a press release, you know? And again, that's another one of those things where Google right now and like, there's 2000 people that will say, oh, the press release is dead, but they don't know what they're talking about because it works. So they're not doing it right. Essentially.

Gina Hudel: [00:09:02] You had a lot of highs, and the idea that the journalists are calling you directly is a tremendous compliment. Were there moments when you thought, you know what? Maybe I'm going to need to make another transition. Maybe it was journalism, PR and then it's going to be something else. Did you think that you might do something else?

Patrick McCaully: [00:09:22] I really thought that when Covid happened, that was it because everything shut down and people were not making purchasing decisions and it was like, wow, marketing companies are shutting down. People aren't doing PR and this, who knows how long this is going to last. I ate a lot of my grandmother's meatball recipe and I wouldn't say a breakdown, but I was in a bad place. And it actually turned out to be probably the best couple of years of the business, because I think that was a real rubber meets the road moment of no one could screw around with the budgets that they had, they really needed to know that someone's PR tactics were going to work. I didn't go to PR school. I was a journalist first. So I never really understood the alchemy of how big agencies get and keep clients without getting the media coverage. But whatever that is, it didn't work during Covid. So I think everything became extremely results focused. And luckily I was the guy who had a very demonstrable track record of 25, 50, 100 media hits per campaign, which is well above the average. So, I was pretty sure that we were pooched, but that did not turn out to be the case. And it really should be the renaissance of PR because of AI search and like shifting from Google search to AI search. Now 82% of what's cited by AI search engines is earned media. So, agencies that are getting you seven media hits, like in a campaign that isn't going to cut it anymore because you need quantity, you need quality, and you need recency in order to be the person that comes up in that search, or you're essentially invisible to your consumer or your end audience.

Gina Hudel: [00:11:28] So some folks might say that AI could be a potential threat like Covid to the business, and newsrooms are surely feeling it, right? Ai is taking over some newsrooms. I'm trying to put that politely, and I'll bet some of those people are like, oh, I'll go to PR. It looks easy enough to me. It could be seen as an existential threat, and there's always something going on in the world as well. Are you taking that same approach that you took during Covid? Are you approaching things any differently being that this is not a pandemic health wise, but it's this new technology. Is it a tool for you? Can you share some insights and points of view without sharing any state secrets?

Patrick McCaully: [00:12:13] Yeah. I've always been a very direct guy, probably to my detriment with clients. I'm the first person that will say, oh, it's great that you have a self-published book. It's great that you have a robust solution that you're upgrading and a best of breed, whatever, whatever, but no one cares. And that isn't newsworthy, you know? So I've always been with the company for 25 years . Someone who says birth bubbles and says, yeah, I won't take your money to do something that I don't think is going to work. So I would say that the AI thing and like the horror in the Strait of Hormuz and Trump and any day of the week has just doubled down on that. So I've always been pretty aggressive about pushing clients to go as far as they will within their risk tolerance to do a story that's newsworthy. And that's always a push and pull. But I think in the last year, I'm like, you cannot pull punches. You need to go bold. You need to go big and you're breaking through like impossible news cycles. So, things that are still it's a challenge and an opportunity if you're willing to do something that's really ballsy and different. Yes, that will still work if you're willing to do something that's unbelievably positive to be the juxtaposition to that that's going to work to and humor, which people don't do humor in PR, which is which is unbelievable to me, because I think again, because they're kind of scared that journalists are going to see through it and think that it's not clever, but over and over and over and over again, humor works. So the tactics are the same if anything just amped up and I'm take it or leave it. This is the situation where you need to really do something different to get the media coverage. And it's absolutely true. Like you can't do anything half measures right now and actually expect to get media coverage.

Gina Hudel: [00:14:21] And maybe there's some math to that. You take those lessons you took from the newsroom. There's actually fewer journalists now, so you can't risk it. You've got to use your best practices.

Patrick McCaully: [00:14:29] And you got to pitch as many. Here's another thing that I do that, and again, this just doesn't make sense to me. There's a lot of scalpel pitching and PR people will be like, okay, let's really focus on ten people that write about the thing that you do. And let's also look at their entire portfolio of articles that they've written in the last year, and maybe we'll compliment them on some of the articles that they wrote first, just so that they know that we're like a really big fan. And then we'll just pitch these ten people and see what happens. And I would imagine that most of the time it's like, yeah, well, we pitch ten people and they said it was interesting, but they didn't do a story. But we tried. Thanks for the bag of money, it didn't work out. I'm like, why would you not do a pitch that's fundamentally bigger that you're making into a broader pitch? Populist is a bad word, but to make it into something that is of interest to as many media as possible. And I want to pitch 4000 people, not 40, because the math is there, right? So a quick example, I had a guy that was a procurement person. Not very exciting. Right? He does procurement for subway cars and transit systems and stuff like that.

Patrick McCaully: [00:15:47] So the thing that we could talk about and be critical of was defense spending. So this is back in October when we started, we did a very hypothetical at the time. What would happen if the US invaded Canada? Would we be able to scale up quickly enough? What would be the issues with that? Is our procurement good? And I called it procurement paralysis because alliteration is the key to the universe. We had a bit of a delay for a couple of reasons. In January, that was the week that the Government of Canada admitted they had an anti US invasion plan. So sometimes you get lucky. But that's taking something that's very, very B to B. And I think most people would have only taken trade publications and how many people actually write about procurement in Canada? Like five. I don't know. Not very many. And that became something that they were talking about on morning talk shows, on radio, on television. We had four radio interviews nationally that the guy did because it was timely and topical. We were the first people to talk about it. But you can always take even something that's seemingly very B2B and flat and make it into something that can be talked about in a lot of different kinds of media. And I think that's a missed opportunity a lot of the time.

Gina Hudel: [00:17:08] We're looking at opportunities. We speak about opportunities for individuals, for businesses and and beyond. Yours is an example of someone who saw an opportunity. Okay, maybe it was an escape. Maybe it was an opportunity. Maybe it was a dual opportunity. When other people are trying to suss out what their next opportunity might be professionally, personally, maybe with a career that's not satisfying, maybe within a job. A job that's not so satisfying. Maybe they might be replaced by AI. Maybe they're in an industry that's just winding down or something's being offshored. If someone was chatting with you and they don't necessarily have the skills that you have, but they do need to be thinking about making a transition, would you think that there would be any transferable lessons or experiences or anecdotes that you might share with them to say, I don't want to tell you what to do, but you know, here's something that worked for me?

Patrick McCaully: [00:18:08] I know what I would do differently, I guess, one, having a plan would be a good first step. Someone asked me, how much money did you put aside to start your own business when you were 28? And I'm like, is that what you're supposed to do? You're supposed to have money in the bank when you do something like that, right? So I was fortunate that I married well, and I had someone that absolutely supported me financially and otherwise during the first year of trying to run my own business. Because journalism school does not teach you business, really, or PR. I was really just a journalist. And then I had like two years in an agency where I didn't really learn much. I was fortunate in that way to have someone that had my back. And we both had our own companies for 25 years and lots of ups and downs. And I would say right now is a weird time to be in marketing. But I would tell someone I think you're always better off being your own boss. It doesn't seem that way, but it's a lot, I think it's easier to get a new client when you have an established company than it is to get a new job.

Patrick McCaully: [00:19:25] If you're middle management and you've been laid off and there's thousands of people in your industry that are also in the same position. And I hear like people my age, two years, three years to find another job, if even can, what would I do now if I was a journalist that got laid off? I mean, I think I did the calculation once when I was at global, how many times would I have been laid off? And I got to over 25 and I just thought, well, I'll just stop doing this now because so many times people got downsized or the company went bankrupt twice or whatever. Right? So I certainly wouldn't be in journalism now. PR is a viable option, but it is also shrinking and there's a convergence of really big PR agencies because I think the huge PR agency model is kind of dying. And the idea of retainers as well. So what does that leave? I don't know, like teaching is few and far between opportunities, so honestly, I might do something completely different.

Patrick McCaully: [00:20:39] Like just a completely different thing that is AI proof and not going to be a problem. Although, and I mean, I'm very much counting on this too. I do think with this AI earned media thing, once CMOs really catch on to how important that is and see that it's not really optional. Like it's because people are lazy. They want to ask code who the best PR person is in Canada. Thankfully, I come up at the top of that list for a lot of different reasons. You don't exist if you're not there. So PR is very much not a nice thing to have anymore. It's an absolute necessity, the same way that SEO has been. And unfortunately, people are not figuring that out quickly enough. I'm screaming it from the rooftops, doing podcasts, writing articles, telling everyone I possibly can about it. But it's not really quick. But I think that that speaks to the future of PR, there probably will be more jobs. I don't know if they're going to be at big agencies, but there will be more PR jobs and functions, and you're going to have to be able to create actual earned media, not buy it because AI knows the difference.

Gina Hudel: [00:21:50] Well, I really appreciate your linking this back to your past experiences and as well as connecting it to now and thinking about the future in your industry. And that in itself is sort of a little interesting little master's session right now in that particular area. However, there are also transferable lessons here, and the idea of opening up your own company is one of them, and being systematic about that. You also touch upon something that I hear a lot is that not only starting up your own company, but maybe intentionally doing two things one being opposite from the other. And then hilariously, sometimes what happens is one begets the other and they feed into each other and they become one. But that is an evolution that can take 3 to 5 years, I suppose. Do you take any of these skills to and experiences to the community at large? Do you find that that is rewarding and you touched upon possibly there might be some teaching, but are there any other areas that you're practicing and benefiting and using this background to serve the community?

Patrick McCaully: [00:23:01] I mean, I wouldn't say on a regular basis, but I am very much aware and feel that when you have a skill, like being able to create something that is widely viewed on national media, you have a responsibility to maybe support causes and to do things that are that you believe are necessary to do so. As you well know, I got involved with some charity stuff, Jesse's foundation and always very happy to do stuff like that. If you can do something that really makes a huge impact, even if it's on a local level, it's very rewarding. I have a client, Cpaws, which is a conservation organization, and it's really very rewarding to do good and do good PR work at the same time, for some cause that you believe in. And then on my own merits, I've done a fair amount of anti-Trump stuff, which I don't feel like I can go to the US at the moment. Not that I would support the US at the moment, but it's interesting.

Patrick McCaully: [00:24:14] I'm pretty sure that if you googled my name and Trump, they would not appreciate me at the airport. The Ice agents would have a special screening for me and maybe a free trip to El Salvador. It's daunting, but I need to do more. I'm in the process of thinking about what campaign I could do that would make the biggest impact. And I'm most concerned about Canadian politics and maybe provincial Ontario politics, because that's the wolf that's at the door. We're all very interested in what's happening in the US. And we all have a ridiculous amount of knowledge about that. Yet there's horrible things happening in this province, in this country, and we aren't on top of it at all because we're not engaged as Canadians. So I think some of those skills making things funny, making things interesting, getting national media coverage is something that I should be acting on, which I will when things are a little bit more stable in the industry.

Gina Hudel: [00:25:24] I think you might be a little tough on yourself. I think that you're also a person who gives a lot to your colleagues and peers. I know that you're very active in networking groups, and there's a fair bit of coaching and mentoring that you are doing regularly that I think you're being a little bit soft spoken on.

Patrick McCaully: [00:25:40] I appreciate that. I do think that you should send the elevator back down. Not that I'm looking for sympathy here, but I didn't get a lot of advice or help or anything trying to get into journalism and get a job in a newsroom. I think that I really do when someone reaches out and they ask me for advice, I do try to, and I mean, I mostly get like, I want a job or I want an internship. And I'm not really interested in being anyone's boss at the moment, but I'm happy to talk to people and give them advice. I usually tell them, if you want to be in PR, spend time in a newsroom, like get some practical newsroom experience because that's something that you can go to a place and say like, hey, I have a really good understanding of what, how things work at global TV or the National Post or anywhere. Right. And that's valuable currency that you're going in with. So I think that already puts you ahead of the class. So that's my best advice there.

Gina Hudel: [00:26:49] I like that for news. I like that for PR and I like that because it could be transferable. There could be a nugget there that if you want to do this in this sector, go do something over here in this sector.

Patrick McCaully: [00:27:01] Yeah. And when you're still a recent graduate or you're still in the post-secondary system, all of the big media outlets are compelled to have you as an intern and there's internship programs. You'd be crazy not to take advantage of that.

Gina Hudel: [00:27:17] Yeah, why wouldn't you? Earlier, you spoke of thinking about the way forward. And perhaps we may or may not be employees forever or even contractors and consultants on site. Opening up your own business, setting up and being organized and having a plan is one of them. Any tips from your PR expertise, background, and the sense of branding when they go, oh, I can't even think about opening up my own business. Okay, maybe they signed up for a course online. Any tips for the new small business person? Or think of someone who's thinking of getting themselves established? I don't want to. This is what pays the mortgage? This is what pays the rent, but just off the top of your head.

Patrick McCaully: [00:28:03] Well, so we're talking about tips to start your company better or tips to get better PR results.

Gina Hudel: [00:28:09] Well, I was thinking about the brand, you're going to start a company.

Patrick McCaully: [00:28:14] So I think that the mistake and the misunderstanding that most people have when they start their company is, oh, I don't have to sell because I went to college or I went to university. That's crazy. Sales is the key to the universe. So if you have no sales skills, then you need sales skills because you are going to be the person that's selling for your own company. You're going to be the face of it. You're going to have a million conversations with a million clients that are going to have a million objections, and you're going to have to overcome those. You're going to, I've heard everything in 25 years, but you're going to have to overcome, hey, PR doesn't have a direct line to sales. Why do I need you? There's going to be tough questions. And sales is a real skill that people don't have and don't think that they need, like your own business means that you are a salesperson whether you like that or not. So learn that, learn some financial acumen. I could still benefit from this, how to balance the books. Should you be incorporated? Actually, I'm going to recommend a book, The Unsure Entrepreneur by Roger Pierce, who is a good friend of mine, but maybe the foremost expert in entrepreneurship in Canada. And it is really good, here's what you need to do. And this is a guy that has 14 different companies very successful. And it's really like, should you be an entrepreneur? Here's all the ups and downs. If you're going to move forward, here's all kinds of things that you really need to think about that I'm sure you have. So I would, I would check that out for sure. There's a ton of things that in retrospect, I should have done, should have thought of, but that fearless bravado compelled me forward and I just somehow got here 25 years later.

Gina Hudel: [00:30:06] Yes, you did. And it's quite a story and very gracious of you to share all of that with us now. Those days are long. The weeks are busy. Ideally, you have a personal life too. It's not all work, work, work. We always wrap up with the same close, and that is after a long, busy week, how do you unwind?

Patrick McCaully: [00:30:30] Mhm. I'll let you know when I figure that out. I would say what brings me the most joy is, we are fortunate to live down at Harbourfront in Toronto, and there's a great dog park. And those times with our incredibly high maintenance poodle, Claudia Jean, the duchess in the dog park, playing with dogs and being part of that community, that's probably the greatest unwind that I have. And then this one even surprised me. I really enjoy hat making, which sounds crazy. It's like basket weaving. But, as someone who wears a lot of hats, I'm talking like fedoras, not baseball caps. It's endlessly fascinating to me for some reason, but it's probably because it's analog and it's using your hands and not writing something or doing PR. So there it is.

Gina Hudel: [00:31:27] Love that. And is there a book or a website or a YouTube or some lecture that goes with that? Because you may have just inspired a cult following.

Patrick McCaully: [00:31:37] There's a guy who, interestingly, my wife met at an International Women's Day event, I believe his name is David Dunkley, and he used to make hats for the Queen, fascinator kind of deals. And he actually had a course, as one does. And he actually has a course in Toronto where over three days he will teach you magically how to take a piece of wool and turn it into a fedora. So that's on the books to check to check out. And there is actually a lot of stuff on YouTube about how to re-blog a fedora hat if you pick one up at a vintage store and that kind of thing.

Gina Hudel: [00:32:20] Magic. This has been brilliant. Thanks for sharing your experience and perspective today.

Patrick McCaully: [00:32:24] Thank you for having me.

Gina Hudel: [00:32:25] And thank you to our listeners for spending time with us on Ready for Beyond. If today's conversation sparked something for you, follow the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts so that you never miss an episode. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn for more insights on transformation, leadership, and navigating change with confidence. Until next time, keep moving, keep growing, and keep going beyond.