Yeah. I mean, this is has been, I guess, the the threat of my life is how can you integrate your personal life with your work because we spend so much time at work.

Hi. This is Paul Zoellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. Podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have a positive impact through values based business. Thanks so much.

Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Sandra Nomota, and our topic is vegan marketing success stories. At 25 years old, Sandra founded Conscious Public Relations Inc, an award winning virtual agency that certified as a B Corp twice, not just once. After a decade in business, she wrote the only public relations guide you'll ever need in 2019. More recently, she pivoted to working with vegan businesses and authors, and her new book is called Vegan Marketing Success Stories. Sandra, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Paul. So honored to be here.

You're doing such great work, and I'm thrilled to let our audience know about it. But before we get into your work, conscious PR and vegan businesses and all that stuff, like, what would somebody need to know about you and a little bit about your back stories for, like, where you are today to make sense?

Sure. I am in Vancouver, BC, Canada on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil Waututh First Nations. I was born in Montreal, so on the East Coast at two 2nd generation Canadians' immigrant parents who, yeah, who came came their way to to the East Coast of Canada and then found it's it's really cold out here. Let's try the West Coast.

And so It's a little warmer in Vancouver, isn't it?

Yeah. So 4 months after I was born, my my family moved here and my brother was born, and this is where I called.

And let's talk a little bit about your journey. So as, like, a young adult and making your way, you decided to go into PR and particularly like PR for good. Talk to us a little bit about like, how did you get into that work and why PR?

Yeah. I honestly stumbled into public relations sort of by accident. I got my degree in English literature and film studies in 2005 from UBC and honestly didn't didn't know what I was gonna do with that. I knew I had some idea of, oh, maybe it would be cool to to do marketing for films because Vancouver is where a lot of films get shot. And, at the end of yeah, right right around the time I was graduating, I got or the the film department administrator got a fax for an internship at a public relations firm and emailed that over to me and said, I think you'd be great for this. And so I I didn't know much about what public relations entailed, but I went in that little company. I went from intern to assistant to the partners within about a year and a half. And, yeah, just learned everything about the practice that I know now from that from that job that we did a lot of event planning, media relations, and and that part of that part of it, the storytelling part of it really fascinated me.

And so when I left that company because I knew I I I really did not wanna be an an event planner and my intuition sort of told me, you know, if you apply at other PR firms, you don't have control over who you get to work with. And I saw my sister, my sister had become a partner of a small business herself, so I thought, I can do that too. So so that's how I started my, yeah, my own little publicity business, which then became Conscious PR.

Nice. What's the facts? No. I'm kidding. I heard of that one.

Remember that.

Right? I'm kidding. So you really thought a lot. We're gonna get into the stories that you're amplifying today. But, like, pretty young in your adulthood, you said the stories we tell I don't know. This is my version of it. If I'm putting words in your mouth that don't taste good, spit them out. Right? But it seems like you got really passionate about the stories that you wanted to tell pretty young into your career. Is that fair to say?