{"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\t\tPeople & Leadership<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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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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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\tKate Newman<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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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Subscribe to our Sage Advice Newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Get our latest business advice delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Working\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u201cpay it forward” and share the best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":278,"featured_media":2875,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sage_video":false,"post_featured_image_hide":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[199,138],"business_type":[41],"lilypad":[],"context":[102],"industry":[55],"persona":[99],"imagine_tag":[234,233],"coauthors":[696],"class_list":["post-2857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people-leadership","tag-coaching","tag-leadership","business_type-growing-business","industry-professional-services"],"sage_meta":{"region":"en-us","author_name":"Kate Newman","featured_image":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/10\/HRAdvice_2.jpg","imagine_tags":{"234":"Enterprise Management","233":"Medium Businesses"}},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Sage Advice US","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/278"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/2875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"business_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/business_type?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"lilypad","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/lilypad?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"context","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/context?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"persona","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/persona?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"imagine_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/imagine_tag?post=2857"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}