{"id":2857,"date":"2017-10-24T09:43:18","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T13:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/?p=2857"},"modified":"2026-02-12T05:35:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T10:35:20","slug":"pay-it-forward-the-best-advice-hr-pro-suzanne-lucas-received-on-finding-her-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/pay-it-forward-the-best-advice-hr-pro-suzanne-lucas-received-on-finding-her-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Pay-it-forward: The best advice HR pro Suzanne Lucas received on finding her voice"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tPay-it-forward: The best advice HR pro Suzanne Lucas received on finding her voice\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

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Editor’s Note: Whether you’re CEO of a Fortune 500 company or just starting out as a small business owner, chances are you have benefited from someone else’s sage advice to help get where you are today. This is the second post in a new series where business leaders \u201c<\/span><\/i>pay it forward<\/span><\/i><\/a>” and share the best advice they’ve ever received.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suzanne Lucas<\/span><\/a>, AKA “The Evil HR Lady,” is a prominent writer in the human resources industry\u2014but when she started her career, she never expected to call herself a writer.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After working for more than a decade in corporate HR, she began blogging about her experiences to share her expertise, work through challenges, and provide guidance to employers and employees alike.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When I first started blogging, I didn’t think I had a chance of making a real career out of it because my writing was so different from other business writers,” she says.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When prominent editor Susan Heathfield from About Human Resources (now called <\/span>The Balance<\/span><\/a>), reached out to tell her how much she liked her voice, Lucas was surprised. She said, “Keep writing. Your unique voice will resonate with the right audience.”<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I thought that was odd. My voice?” she says, “I thought I was just a weird writer, but Heathfield insisted that not only could I write, but that it was critical that I kept my unique voice.”<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep writing. Your unique voice will resonate with the right audience.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to Heathfield’s advice, Lucas kept blogging, eventually leaving HR full-time and establishing a career as a freelance writer. Today, she blogs at <\/span>Evil HR Lady<\/span><\/a> and regularly contributes to top-tier publications including Inc., Business Insider, US News and World Report, and more\u2014reaching more than 200,000 readers a month.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It makes me happy to write this way, and it gives me a unique audience that I wouldn’t get by writing in another style,” she says. “I wouldn’t have had the guts to take my writing to the next level without Susan’s confidence boost and good advice.”<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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