Meet Sherry Lee of GTK PR Talent
If you had told me 5 years ago that I would be a publicist living in LA, I would never have believed you. It seems a lifetime ago when we left everything we knew in Alabama to now be residents of California. My son is an Teen actor and filmed a lot in the Southeast especially in New Orleans and Atlanta. My son’s manager thought it was time for us to move out to LA. So that is what we did. We had no friends or family living here in Cali. Looking back I can’t imagine living anywhere else. We have great friends and second family here. I guess my story stared when I started to look for PR for Grayson my son. I was in complete shock at how expensive it was to have a PR agent. We did acquire a PR agent for a few months then decided to try my hand at it .
The entertainment business was completely foreign to me as my background had been the complete opposite. I am an Engineer working on my PhD. I had a very large learn curve when it came to this business. I started to submit my son to events I was able to get him in E3, San Diego Comic Con, Queen Mary and Instagram events. So some of my son’s friends asked if I could help them. My company bases grew pretty large in the next few months. I was repping talent in LA, NY, London and even in the Southeast. I didn’t want to take advantage of talent just starting out because I Thought I would not want someone taking advantage of my son. So I started to charge extremely low fee it paid for my gas and parking fees to attend events. I just really wanted to help these actors starting out. I never thought I would be assisting, running or escorting talent on the red carpet but I love it. I feel bad when I can’t get my clients into an events or the event doesn’t live up to their or mine expectation. You will have good and bad days just like any job be there are some extraordinary days when you get rewarded by seeing your client excel. I think 2020 is going to be our year. I have a great friend in the business and we watch out for each other and I have met wonderful PR agencies that I’m honored to call my friends.
No, it definitely has not been a smooth road. But even with all the bumps in the road it is good to have friend and family to help you when you need them. Some days you want to say I’m done. Coming from the South, courteous and it was a little bit of culture shock being here. In my line of work I don’t work much with the public and now attending event being socialite was not really me. I would rather be a home watching Amazon or Netflix’s that being at event enjoying the night life. That is why I am so thankful to my wonderful clients that loves attending these events I know when I attend I will see a friendly face and I also realize why I’m doing this. It’s for these wonderful clients, although I had started doing PR for my son I think god has a way of showing you different paths.
GTK PR was originally created for me to do PR for my son Grayson hence GTK (Grayson Thorne Kilpatrick) 🙂 but like I said I think god shows you different paths for you to follow. I assist my clients to get into events, interviews. I also create EPK (Electronic Press Kit) for them. If my clients need a manager or agent I will assist them in their search. I also assist in webpage design to help them get started. I have some clients that I see myself in. I remember the beginning when I was completely green. I had no idea what IMDbPro was or Actor Access. So if my clients need help getting these services started I help them.
I think what sets me apart from the other agents is if I can not submit my clients for interviews or events for that month I don’t charge them. I want to alway have strong ethics in this business and I know how hard it is living here helping my son so I would hope others would treat me with the same kind of ethics. I am about to merge my company with that of my best friend company I feel two of us could help our clients more than just one person working for them. It should be about the clients at the end of the day. I have made wonderful friends with other PR companies and interviewers I absolutely love Action Magazine that can be found on Instagram I think they do a wonderful highlighting the actors in there publication.
I define success by the success of my clients. If my clients gets another Getty Image, PR Photo or book a role or get representation I think that’s a win for them and me. My criteria is I want to rep a client who has a passion about their dreams. Someone trustworthy, ethical. I have had only one talent that was not up to my standards. I tried very hard to help this person get into events and actually got him in great events but he didn’t want to go. He only wanted to attend events that were in the category of his specified area. That can be hard if their social media numbers are not high enough. After getting him into more than 5 events I sent them a monthly statement in which time refused to pay. It is very sad at the hard work you put in there is always one bad apple in the bunch. That’s ok, karma has a way of correcting situations evidently.
