EP 436 | Ditch the "Me! Me! Me!" approach to PR featuring Nina Dafe
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Ever feel like you’re shouting into the void with your content?
You’re not alone, and Nina Dafe gets it.
In this heartfelt and wisdom-packed convo, Nina pulls back the curtain on what really moves the needle in PR: authentic relationships, intentional messaging, and purpose-driven visibility.
Whether you’ve pitched yourself once or one hundred times, you’ll walk away from this episode with the clarity and confidence to do it better, and more effectively.
TAKEAWAYS:
Nina shares how her definition of success shifted from “getting eyes on her blog” to creating deep, meaningful impact through visibility.
Visibility without purpose is just noise. Nina explains how to align PR with your mission to create lasting, ripple-effect impact.
Want to land the pitch? Shift your mindset from “look at me” to “how can I serve,” and personalize everything you send.
Stop ghosting yourself. Nina encourages entrepreneurs to follow up and not take silence as rejection—sometimes the best opportunities come after the follow-up.
PR is about people. Building real relationships (yes, even on Instagram!) can lead to powerful collaborations and unexpected breakthroughs.
Resources:
Visit Nina on her website and take her PR Readiness Quiz
Snag the $80,000 Email Template — the exact email that brought in $80K in sales in 2024 (and why it worked). If you’re ready to write emails that actually sell, without sounding pushy or fake, this one’s for you.
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Transcript:
Hey Nina, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you. Hey, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Of course. We've been connected for, I was telling you before we hit record that I was like, how did I get to know Nita? Like, where did you come from? Because I feel like I've known you for a while, but we figured it out that we met through a new mutual friend on Instagram.
We've been chatting away, voice noting and DMing anyway, yeah.
Yeah. Okay, so I'm interested to hear your answer to this question. Mm-hmm. When you first started your business, what did success mean to you?
Oh, I love this question. So, funnily enough, when I first started, in the online space, I started off as a blogger actually. Success just looks like getting eyes on the blog, and I was just really frustrated at the time that, it didn't seem to be growing and people weren't looking in.
So, yeah, that's. How I kind of got into the visibility of it all. It was eyes success just looked like eyes on the blog, so I didn't feel like I was just speaking into a void.
That's so frustrating too,
yes,
you have to have that visibility. Otherwise there's like nothing going on in the business.
You have a really expensive hobby. So, yes,
and I think that's what a lot of people don't realize. We think the launch and the setup is the main event, not realizing that actually it's everything that comes afterwards, you know? So yeah, that was definitely it for me.
Yeah. So when were you, what year was that
gosh. I had the blog idea. It would've been 2015. Launched 2016 and then actually got serious and put sort of frameworks and everything around it in 2017. So,
yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Okay. So now that you've been in it for a little bit mm-hmm. What does success look like to you now?
Success. I know this is gonna sound like a pageant answer, but it's the truth, success really does look like impact. Um, and so impact to me. So it's not so like nebulous, like what, what is that is really so, um, if I backtrack and backpedal what my blog was about in the first place, was very much like.
Female empowerment, but from like a biblical perspective. So I talk about the women of the Bible, but also sort of marry it with us as Christian women now, and how we can kind of step into our power. So fast forwarding now, it's really interesting that those themes for me are still there.
But like within the realm of visibility, like a lot of the things that hold us back as women are, like the limiting belief systems, the good girl syndrome, the ambassador syndrome, and all of those sorts of things. And so for me the impact is yes, absolutely getting women out there and visible so they can, you know, make the impact that they want to in the world.
But actually like breaking those things is where my passion really, really lies. I mean, sign me up.
My God.
Um, how did you, like, how did you land on that? Did something happen? Have you always had that desire? How did you arrive to that being your definition of success now?
Yeah, I think, that's such a, I feel like it's the way that I grew up. So you've got, I mean, those of you who are like listening and everything, you can hear that I've got a British accent.
That's because I'm born and raised in London. My, heritage is Nigerian and then I mentioned the Christian background as well, and so between the very traditional Nigerian culture and also the very traditional Christian culture, it was a lot for the women that I saw growing up basically.
Yeah. And so I think for me, just as a young girl and also growing up to be a young woman, I just had a lot of. I don't know, maybe it's the Libra in me, but just this is not fair, strong sense of justice. And so I think I went down the rabbit hole for myself because I didn't wanna be sort of conformed to those things, but also just had this whole thing of, look, women, the women that I saw growing up, and a lot of the ones that are kind of coming up.
With me are going this route because this is what we're being taught and this is what we're being shown. And if there is a way that I can kind of help to kind of open people's eyes, and realize that there's more to us and we have more power than we're actually well, than we realize, then, you know, we could really go out there and do some huge things, you know?
So I think that's really where, where that came from. It was, it was my upbringing. And then also just kinda really wanting to change things, you know, in society, to be honest with you.
Yeah. I always ask that question because I love hearing how people got to where you are because it's never like a, I did this and this and this and this.
It's always this like unraveling and untangling of beliefs and identities. Maybe you tried something, it didn't work, and you're like, oh, I don't wanna do that. Or you did something and you're like, oh, that strangely worked. So I always love hearing that part of everyone's story.
Yeah.
Okay. So here on the podcast, what we do is we pull back the curtain and we talk about what are we doing in our businesses to help us see and experience success. So what is that for you?
Okay. I love this question. 'cause I, you know, I talk about pr but whenever I talk about it, like to my clients or, other people, I always talk about it from the point of view of not just the kind of, look at me, look at me, you know?
'cause we are very much in this society at the moment, you know, everyone's an influencer and everyone's kind of got a platform and something to say. And so when I'm talking about pr, I'm really talking. At it from the point of view of, as I've mentioned already, impact. And also, the thing that I think also, tends to get left out of it is the relationship part.
You can't make impact if you're not actually building relationships. And actually. Serving people. And so yeah, that's kind of the twofold way that I tend to look at pr. So for me personally, what that looks like is, doing things like this, appearing on podcasts, writing articles as well.
Tackling those huge things like the sort of belief systems that I've been talking about but what's been great is I know for you, in your business, you talk a lot about, emails and funnels and all of those sort of things, and I always talk about how that is like the missing piece also that a lot of people leave out of pr.
You don't really get that sort of ROI. So I always sort of teach people also about how important it is to have things like lead magnets and funnels and all of those sort of things in place so that when you are in front of people, you also have that way of continuing to build that relationship, but also ultimately, you know, making the sort of revenue and income that you want to as well.
Yeah. So actually seeing an ROI from your PR efforts
absolutely.
Yeah. So many people struggle with that because they think that like the PR is like the thing and while it is the thing. Yeah, that's wonderful and awesome. Mm-hmm. What are you gonna do with that? Exactly.
Yeah, exactly. It's that whole, it goes back to that whole question also, isn't it of.
Of influence for what? Right? Now that you've got all the eyes on you, now that you have a platform, now that you've got everybody's attention, what are you going to do about it? What is it that you actually have to say? You know? And so that's why I think actually sort of knowing your mission, your vision, what the impact is that you wanna make in the world is super important as well.
Yeah. Okay. So earlier you said part of PR is relationships, and I also think this is something that a lot of people just don't think about. I think we know this intuitively, but like when it comes to certain things, we forget about it and PR is one of them. So why are relationships so important with pr?
Gosh, I think just from the very beginning, right? At the end of the day, we hear it all the time. People, do business with people that they know, like, and trust, right? And so part of being known, part of being liked, part of being trusted is actually being visible. Like if you even think about the way that you go shopping in the supermarket, right?
Or the grocery store, you are much more likely to pick up a toothpaste, for example, of a brand that you see all the time or that you are familiar with and that, you know, and all of those sort of things. And so I think if people would actually just think of PR as a relationship building tool, right? As a way of actually, amplifying your message so that you get in front of more of the right people that you can then serve.
Then that perspective shift, I think. Would actually serve a lot more people and they would be less intimidated by it and scared by the whole thing as well. And obviously there's the other side of it as well, right? Like in terms of sort of editors influences, those sorts of things. There is a way to approach people.
There is a way to actually, pitch yourself in a way that it doesn't feel. Sleazy, or whatever the case may be. And so, especially for the women that I work with, where that's a huge concern. People have concerns around how they're coming across. They don't wanna be smarmy. The best way to bypass that is to build relationships and to actually just truly interact with people that you do admire and that you do want to get to know.
So I think just all round, it's just super important, you know? Yeah. I mean. You're on this podcast
because we had a relationship on Instagram. Yeah. We developed a no like interest back to each other and then you're like, Hey, I'd love to come with a podcast. Yeah. And you sent me this beautiful pitch and I was like, well of course you can come on the podcast.
Like, yeah, why not? So I think that speaks to like so much to that relationship component. Yes. So when it comes to pitching to be on people's podcasts or. Write an article for them or, you know, whatever the PR piece is. Yeah. Mm-hmm. What are some, like, outside of relationships, what are some mistakes that you see that people make a lot of?
Oh, making it all about them. I have this qualification and I've been practicing for this amount of years, and then look at me. I'm the best and that's why I deserve to be on your platform. Yeah. Again, if we're talking about relationships, then we are really thinking about how you can serve and how you can be an asset.
So you don't wanna go in, me, me, me, you know, you wanna go in, well actually I've noticed that this is what's so great about your platform and this is how you are impacting people. And I would actually really love to come alongside and to help you to do that. Like, that's, that's sounds a lot better than you.
So much
better, I think.
Yeah. So I think that's definitely, one thing, and I think a perfect example is actually a pitch that I got on Monday, right? So I still write on my blog, um, you know, about pr, about visibility, about everything that I'm talking about today. I got an email from somebody who was.
Asking to write an article for my platform that I think was all about sort of trading and stocks. Right? Exactly right. Nothing to do with what I talk about. They clearly hadn't done any kind of research. It was very clearly, just kind of a generalized sort of pitch. It wasn't personalized to me, and so I think that again is like it.
You know, another sort of thing that you see, like not doing the research, not making sure that you are a good fit, and also just kind of not catering pitches to that particular platform or person.
Oh my God. Can I tell you, there's nothing that shines my gears more then when someone pitches me to be on the podcast and it's so clearly they've never listened to it, and I'm like, right.
Y'all like you can do better, right? It's not, you can do better than this hard. Oh, okay. So if someone is listening, I mean, I could talk, I could talk about bad pitches for like years. If someone is listening and they maybe have sent a couple of pitches and haven't heard anything back, or maybe they're afraid.
Afraid or nervous to send a pitch. They have this like idea and they're like, I think this would be really great. What is like a tip or piece of advice you would give them?
Oh, I love this. Again, it's probably gonna sound like a pageant answer, but it is. Just do it anyway. You know, because a lot of the time our fears, our imposter syndrome, they talk us out of results.
That actually, if we would just put ourselves out there, we actually would just get. Right. And I think the other thing also is just to realize that a lot of the time, even if you don't hear back or even if it is a no, a lot of the time that it doesn't end with that, you can take that same pitch, and, pitch it to another platform.
Form that might be able to use it or just go back to those same people like I've, I've done it myself, would've been like, Hmm, this isn't quite right at the moment. And so I've simply asked them again, because if you're going with a servant's heart, right, okay, so what is a topic that would suit you? Or, you know, if, if I made it this way, for example, would that work?
Oh yeah, actually it would. And so now we, we can collaborate. So you know, also not being afraid to. Kind of be adaptable, which in a way means that you have to not take things personally and not get, not get offended. You know, it has to be mutually beneficial. So really just keeping that in mind too.
I love that idea. What is your thought on follow up? So let's say you pitched someone and you didn't hear anything back, are you a fan of follow up? And if so, what do you think the frequency of follow up should be?
Okay, this is great. I am a fan of follow up, and the tip that I normally give.
So most platforms will say to you, for example, oh, we aim to get back to you within two weeks, or whatever the case may be. So first and foremost, just make sure you are within that window, like don't start hounding people before it's actually time. And then I would say maybe a week after that, sort of two week window or two weeks after, then I would follow up and just kinda, wave your hand and go, Hey, I sent you this just in case, you know, you didn't see it.
You know, I'm just following up again. I actually had one of my clients, do that a few years ago. So she had pitched Thrive Global, and hadn't heard anything back. And so I nudged her. And so she followed up with them and not only, did they feature her article, but because, she talks a lot about trauma and those sort of things.
They invited her to speak at a gala. She was turned into like a comic book hero. Got to be on tv. So it really opened up so many doors. Because she followed up. So I mean, they say fortune isn't the follow up for a reason.
100%. Yeah. I love that story because it just so clearly illustrates the value of following up.
Yeah. A lot of the time, it goes back to not taking things personally. Editors, influencers podcast hosts, their inboxes are chock full of emails. And so it's easy for things to slip through the net. If you actually follow up, you know, in, in a, in a certain way, a lot of times you actually get a thank you.
They won't see you as bugging them. They'll be like, oh my gosh, thank you so much. And here is my response, so don't be afraid to do it.
Be afraid to do it.
Yeah. Heck yeah.
What is, what is like a, outside of that follow up story, what is a like result that you have seen with some of your clients or maybe with yourself from getting PR that you're like, this was awesome.
Oh my goodness. I would say Tiwa. So Tiwa came to me a few years ago because, at the time she was doing sort of wellbeing and authenticity, training for organizations and businesses but she wanted to branch out, but she kind of wasn't sure how she could marry everything together because she's also a beautiful singer and so she also wanted to be able to marry her music into all of it as well.
And so I did a consultation with her about just, you know, who she wanted to. What she wanted it to look like. And now, all of these years later, I mean, she was just recently on CNN, she's been on the BBC, she's talking on stages. You know, I actually host a retreat that she now speaks at and, you know, things like that.
So, and actually going, going back to that, so in Mexico when we were in the retreat, she talked about wanting to put on an event. Based on empowering women, but also special needs, as well. So again, sort of branching out, and it was just an idea last summer in Mexico. Now she's done two of those events and one of the other attendees, we were doing a mastermind session toil.
She's a baker. And she was like, I really wanna do, cakes and stuff for events with their branding and all of that. Very long story short, her and TWA have joined forces. So now Toyo is actually doing the cupcakes for her and that sort of thing. So this is what I mean by impact and really seeing that trickle down effect of when you step into your purpose and when you spread your message, you empower other people to do the same as well.
It's been so beautiful to watch, honestly.
Yeah. I mean it's like a dream come true. Reaches,
yeah.
I think if that doesn't illustrate the power of pr, I don't know what does, amazing story. Thank you for sharing that with us. I know our listeners are gonna wanna find you online, so where should they go?
Yes. Ah, well, if you go to far above ruby collection.com, it's got all of my stuff, so the blogs that I was talking about, if you wanna find me on social media, all of that's there too. But also one of the questions that I tend to get a lot from people who are interested in PR is simply. How do I get started?
So I actually have a quiz, the PR readiness quiz, that is on my website as well. And so if you wanna check that out, you are very welcome to as well.
Amazing. So we will put the link to Nina's website and the PR readiness quiz in the show notes. Check it out.
Listeners. Follow her on the gram. She's a delightful human, as you already know.
You.
I've so loved getting to know you, Nina, so thank you for being here. And thank you for sharing so much knowledge with our listeners. Aw, thank you for having me. This has been my pleasure.
