25 Abby Laub: writer, photographer, communications director

Abby Laub serves as director of strategic communications for Asbury University. She holds a B.A. in journalism from Palm Beach Atlantic University. Prior to working at Asbury, she owned a photography and media business, and wrote prolifically for magazines, newspapers, and nonprofits. 

She published a photography book with Jon Carloftis, titled Jon Carloftis Fine Gardens.

Abby is the host of “This Is Asbury” podcast, where she talks with faculty and students of Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. 

Kathie’s note: Abby is so chill. She’s busy, busy, busy and yet never complains. I’ve been so impressed to see her prioritize things in her life, like getting exercise outdoors. She walks and plays with her kids outside all year long. I mean, there are so many excuses to stay inside! But fresh air is a pillar of health, y’all.

Abby and I are both post-Hosties, a fun thing to say for having worked at Host Communications. She was in the print side of college sports, with magazines and media guides, and I was a board op for the radio network of University of Texas football and basketball games, and fill-in for several other college sports programs. 

Writers Rotation intro/outro recorded at Dynamix Productions in Lexington, Kentucky.

Transcript

Abby [00:00:01]:
I'm Abby Laub. I'm a writer, photographer, podcaster, and communications director. I think words are a gift from God.

INTRO [00:00:10]:
Hi. Welcome to the writer's rotation podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Stamps. I love words and writing and people and talking. So I'm talking to people who write all kinds of things in different professions. It's a writer's rotation. 

Kathie Stamps: 
Abby! So you are a photographer and a journalist and a writer and photojournalism. Oh my gosh. Which one did you have in your hands first as a child, a camera or a book?

Abby Laub [00:00:38]:
Oh, goodness. Okay. So I started out kind of as your classic book nerd, and I would always get in trouble for reading under my desk. And I would always have the first book I can remember reading under my desk in, like, elementary school was some Nancy Drew book.

Kathie:
Yes.

Abby:
And I would, like, literally sit in class and read instead of pay attention because I just wanted to read all day. And then I remember in, like, gosh, maybe 7th grade, 8th grade, somewhere in there, I remember asking if I could have some more writing assignments for extra credit for my English teacher. Can I just do more work? Because I just want to write a story. So I'd write stories and turn them into my English teacher, and she would give me extra credit.

Kathie [00:01:22]:
That's awesome. Do you still have them?

Abby:
Probably somewhere. I don't know.

Kathie:
I found some.

Abby:
Yeah. I've got some of my writings. I've got a couple, but sadly, I don't think I have very many of them. I am from upstate New York, and I went to college in Florida. When I was there, living my best life on the beach, my parents moved to North Carolina. And so I just feel like I kind of just got rid of a bunch of stuff because I was like, oh, I'm going back to Florida. I don't need this. And I do remember, but sadly, just kind of like tossing some of those things, just being like, oh, whatever. Because you're in college. You don't know anything when you're in college.

Kathie [00:01:58]:
That's true. Actually, you know everything and nothing.

Abby:
Yes. And you're not thinking sentimentally. At least, I was not thinking sentimental thoughts when I was 19, 18. I was just like, oh, it's great. I'm going to go back to Florida and surf. So I do have some of them, but not all. And then the next the most vivid memory too is I started a magazine when I was little, when I was, like, 11. And, it must have been some future inkling that I would, like, be a boss or something someday because I just had this it was a club. I started a club for my friends, and I would just boss my friends around and be like, hey. We're going to make a magazine. You're going to do this, and you're going to do this. So I guess that was, like, my first real editor job. We would draw things because this is, like, before we all had cameras, so we would literally draw things. I remember drawing, like, fake ads, like hand drawing, writing stories. And do you remember when quizzes were really popular? Like, take a quiz.

Kathie [00:02:58]:
I still take quizzes.

Abby:
You do? Kathie, that's so funny. I haven't seen a…Where can you even take quizzes now?

Kathie:
Well, I okay. So here's one. I tutor, well, she's now in high school now, through the Carnegie Center, and I had one a few years ago that I said, oh, let's test each other on our slang. I knew nothing (of hers). This was in 2020. I knew nothing about you know? I don't even remember some of those. And then I just took, slang from basically the ‘80s and ‘90s. So recently, this kid, because I've been on TikTok for 4 years, she could not stump me. Her first word was delulu. I said, delusional! And she goes, well, what about OOTD? I said, outfit of the day.

Abby:
I know that one.

Kathie:
I said, how about one for you? Fit.

Abby:
I don't know what that is.

Kathie:
That's your outfit also.

Abby:
Oh, you probably know more than I do. My kids are now in 4th grade and 7th grade. They've said a couple, and I can't even think of what they are now. Sigma. What does Sigma mean?

Kathie:
That I don't know. It's either good or bad.

Abby:
I think it's good. I don't know. Let's Google it. Sigma… slang. Cool dude. Oh, well, that's good. It means cool dude.

Kathie:
Sigma. Delta. We're just throwing out Greek letters.

Abby:
I know. That's so fun.

Kathie [00:04:16]:
What about your first camera?

Abby:
Yeah. So first camera. This I also remember very clearly too because, again, it was 2002, I think. I was taking a photography class in college. I was a journalism major, but one of the one of the requirements was also to take a photography class, which, you know, is very smart. You should be able to at least know how to identify a good picture if you're a writer. You want to represent your writing well with a good photo and even better if you can take said photo. They were starting to phase out and limit the film classes because they're like, oh, it's all digital, and they were kind of pushing everybody to go to the digital classes and I remember being really upset because I really wanted to learn how to develop film. So I was like, okay, fine. I'll just take the digital photography class, whatever. Took it and that's when I first learned Photoshop. I remember it was a little tiny little Canon point and shoot, and I remember walking around Palm Beach Island with my little Canon point and shoot. Back then in Photoshop, you had to, like, physically cut out with your mouse. So you had to have, like, crazy fine motor skills to accomplish this. Now it's all AI. You just, like, tap it and it knocks the background out for you.

Kathie [00:05:27]:
Yes.

Abby:
My now husband, boyfriend at the time, knew I really liked photography, and he was also real creative. And we just really liked doing creative things, and so he surprised me. He led me on a photo scavenger hunt in the mountains of Colorado. And at the end of the photo scavenger hunt was a beautiful Nikon film SLR film camera, beautiful camera. It was up there for, like, 4 hours on top of this mountain. And I was like, dude, did you just leave this camera here? He's like, no, my friend. Our friend John was, like, hiding behind the bushes for 4 hours guarding the camera.

Kathie:
That's hilarious.

Abby:
Thanks to John for guarding my camera! So that was my first, like, real camera. And then since then, you know, I've gone digital, but I do want to go kind of back to film again and just play around with that, but it hasn't happened yet. And since then, I've had many, many cameras, but that was my first camera that I was really excited about.

Kathie [00:06:23]:
When you think of taking photos for an article or for anything, do you kind of automatically reach for a camera instead of your phone, or have you gotten used to phones?

Abby:
Yeah. People will tell me, oh, you can get stuff just as good on a phone. And I'm like, it looks good on your phone, yes. But the second you try to put it on a magazine page or blown up on a retina display, it's like you could tell awfully quickly. So I call my camera my real camera. That's my clarification. I'm like, I gotta get my real camera. So I have my phone camera and then my real camera.

Kathie [00:06:58]:
Do you name your cameras?

Abby:
That's a good question. I should. It would be real camera.

Kathie [00:07:02]:
There you go. RC. Real Camera. So you went to school in journalism?

Abby:
Yep. And then my first job, people will laugh because newspapers are basically dead now, but when I graduated from college in 2005, newspapers were still doing okay. And I was a big jock in college. I love sports in high school and college. I mean, I was a big sports person, big sporty family, know a lot about sports. And so, when I moved to Kentucky in 2005, I just kind of applied, if you remember, the economy wasn't fantastic in 2005. Like, it was hard to find a job. Well, the economy wasn't bad; it was just hard to find a job. There's a lot of millennials and, like, all of us millennials were all searching for jobs at the same time. So, like, it was hard to find a job in 2005 because of oversaturation. Anyway, so I moved to Kentucky and didn't really know, and I was like, ah, I worked for my high school newspaper and my college newspaper. I love newspapers. I still subscribe to the newspaper.

Kathie [00:08:02]:
Do you? Good for you.

Abby:
Wall Street Journal is my paper. I went to work as a sports editor at the Jessamine Journal in Nicholasville, Kentucky. My husband, again, then boyfriend at the time, was in Louisville. And so I came up to Louisville for a little bit. I had never been to Kentucky. I was like, I don't know where Nicholasville is, but cool. So I came over here, and I was the sports editor and I didn't tell anybody that I was 21 because I was embarrassed. I didn't think they would take a 21-year-old little girl seriously. And it worked out fine. I did that for almost 3 years and then I went into sports marketing, sports publishing for a company that published, again, it's all digital now. The market has completely changed, but at the time they were publishing game day guides like the college sports magazines, and we were the official publisher of the NCAA. And that's where I learned all about printing and publishing and magazine, like putting together a magazine. It was great. I got to do Tennessee women's basketball programs, and this was, like, in the Pat Summitt era. That was really, really, really cool because she was a legend. So I did that, learned a ton, but I wasn't getting to write. And I wasn't getting to do anything creative. I was doing a lot of, like it was more like administrative project management. You know? Wasn't actually writing the content or taking the pictures, very rarely. Once in a blue moon, we get to go to, like, a photo shoot or something. Went down to, like, Furman and Wofford in South Carolina a few times, but, like, that was it. And so I was like, man, I really want to write. I really don't want to be in an office all day not being creative. So I started to freelance. I started to find all the little local magazines, local newspapers. I remember just sending people, like, literally making cold calls like, hey. I'm not from here, and I don't know you, but can I send you some writing samples? And ended up getting some really cool gigs out of that. Like, you'd be surprised by how many people respond. If you have the guts to pick up the phone and call somebody and put yourself out there, it works better than you think. So I did that and started freelancing for, like, Smiley Pete and Lane Report and then Kentucky Monthly and just started to grow my resume. And then at the same time, still had my camera, and my husband and I were growing our photography business, and it just became unsustainable. I was like, I think I need to quit my fulltime job. And so that's what I did. And I was, like, freelancing and contracting from about 2008, 2009 range, 2010, like, in earnest. And I went back to coaching. I coached and taught classes at the gym just so we could eat, you know, could have a steady paycheck. My husband was working fulltime, but, you know, it's hard to go out like that. I was like, okay, I need to make sure I have a check every month. You know, you've done it for a long time. It's hard. 

Kathie: [00:11:05]

Abby:
So I coached. I leaned into my sports background, and I was a gymnastics coach for, like, 25 hours a week while I built up my writing portfolio. And then every, like, month that would go by, every semester that would pass at the gym, I would take off a class and weaned myself off of coaching because I was making enough money writing and doing photography. And so finally, I was basically fulltime as a writer and photographer running our business and freelancing. And then we knew we wanted to have kids, and I knew I didn't want to work fulltime with kids. I knew I would never do that. That's just what I wanted. And so we were able to do that because I had built up enough of a portfolio of people I was working with writing. And that's where our paths crossed at the Lane Report.

Kathie [00:11:58]:
Yes. You were my editor.

Abby:
It was so fun. You were the best.

Kathie:
I'd be like, Abby, I know my deadline is tomorrow morning. Can I have until tomorrow afternoon? You're like, whatever. Wednesday’s fine.

Abby:
I know. I knew whatever you turned in wouldn't require a lot of editing, so you were good. Those are fun times.

Kathie:
And then you took a fulltime job role.

Abby:
I did. I could've kept freelancing. I could've kept running my business. And, honestly, there's times when I'm like, why did I give that up? No. I'm just kidding. I love my job. So I just started to sense, like, it was time for me to do something else, you know, when you get those little nudges. And in that time that I was freelancing, I had picked up some marketing and PR clients. So I was doing some more, like, PR work and marketing, which, you know and as a journalist, you know, part of you is like, oh, this isn't journalism. You know? Like, you start to feel a little conflicted sometimes, but you're like, okay. No. I think the best PR people and the best marketing people are great journalists because you can still tell a story. And so I started doing more of that, and then more people kept asking me to do that. And I was like, okay. Maybe I'll, you know, try my hand at this for a little bit. And so I knew someone who had gone to work at Asbury University recently. And, you know, LinkedIn is, like, real sneaky like that. And so I saw her. Her name is Jennifer McChord. She's my vice president now and is just amazing. And so, you know, LinkedIn was like, oh, probably saw our comments. So, of course, it fed me a job, the algorithms, to Asbury. And it was at that exact time when I was like, oh, man. It was it was, like, kind of and, honestly, some of it was, because of COVID. COVID really, really, really hurt our photo business. We had a lot of event clients, large event clients. We went from 2019 doing about 35, 40 events in 2019 to, like, 4 in 2020. And then my husband was kind of thinking about making a change as well, and we're like, well, one of us should probably have health insurance. We have 2 kids, you know, minor detail. Yes. So, anyway, that's when the job at Asbury opened up. I'm the communications director, so I love it because I get to still incorporate journalism and storytelling. And I just think that makes you even better at marketing and PR when you can you know, we all have gotten the pitches from people trying to get their story out there, and it's just like, this is not a story. Like, no. You're just I'm not I'm not giving you free advertising. Like, tell me a story.

Kathie [00:14:41]:
I know. It's so easy when you see the press releases come into your inbox to go yes, no, maybe. But it's kind of hard to explain it to people why this one is just, no.

Abby:
Yep. So it's been really fun. Asbury is a cool place. And for me, I love it. There's a lot of reasons I love it, but they have a really cool media department, and I've gotten to know some of those professors. And so I love all the professors are fantastic, but, of course, I find myself gravitating toward those media people because that's, you know, we speak the same language. And so they just have, I would argue, the best media program in the country, one of the best. I mean, they have students going to work at the Olympics, producing their own shows. They do amazing, amazing stuff. And they just installed one of those big, huge video walls for the journalism students. I mean, they just have, for how small Asbury is, like, people, when they go in that building, they're like, what?

Kathie [00:15:40]:
That's very cool. You have a book under your belt?

Abby:
I do. Yes. So the fun thing about freelancing is that, you know this, Kathie, you meet so many people. So during that time freelancing, Kentucky Monthly ha—I love Kentucky Monthly—they had assigned me a story about this guy named Jon Carloftis. And if you're from Kentucky, most people would recognize his name. I did not because I'm not from here. Got to know him, did a big story for him down at his place in Rockcastle County. Livingston area. Beautiful, beautiful part of Kentucky. And so our paths crossed many times. And then during COVID, he called me, like, a month before I applied to work at Asbury. And I was still happily freelancing, and he's like, do you want to do my next book? And I was like, absolutely. That sounds amazing because he is a genius. I mean, he's he is a creative genius and just so much fun to be around, and his work is just absolutely beautiful.

Kathie [00:16:46]:
Gardener to the stars.

Abby:
Yeah. Garden design, gardener to the stars. Lived in New York City for, like, 25 years making rooftop gardens for very wealthy and famous people. Moved back to Kentucky, published his, this was his 4th book actually, and it was his first book in, like, 10 years. It ended up being a ton of work. But, yeah, we published that book last year, 2023. It's called Jon Carloftis Fine Gardens. It's beautiful.

Kathie [00:17:12]:
Now did you write it? Did you photograph?

Abby:
I photographed and designed the entire book and did a lot of copy editing and was very, very involved in the entire publishing process, which was great. I learned a lot. It was great. We worked with Fran Taylor. She did a lot of publishing before, worked for Keeneland, did a lot in the horse industry, and she did the airport book. She did some really cool books, and so she came alongside and helped us get through the publishing process. I learned a ton from her. It was a beautiful book, 328 pages, huge, like, coffee table book. Took about 20,000 photos for that book and got to go to some amazing places that you can only go to if you know Jon Carloftis because they are some really, really interesting properties. The Bruckheimers’ house is in it. Linda and Jerry Bruckheimer.

Kathie:
Oh, wow.

Abby:
Yeah. Maker's Mark, Castle and Key, which, you know, those are famous places for Kentuckians that they know well. And then a lot of other just, like, private properties, beautiful farms, beautiful homes. So we published that book last year, and it was it was a lot of fun. Lot of work, but a lot of fun.

Kathie [00:18:26]:
What about creative writing? Are you doing any these days?

Abby:
Not doing a ton, although I have to say, and I'm sure you're like this, I can guarantee you're like this because I think we think a lot alike: you're always thinking about a story in your head. Always.

Kathie [00:18:41]:
When they invent the little machine that you can just go (zap), and it'll pop out a script.

Abby:
Oh, dude. I'll have so many stories when that happens. I'll just write them. I'll be walking my dog and, like, writing a lede, and it just never makes sense.

Kathie:
Push a button. Do you want it as a screenplay? Do you want it as a novel? Do you want it and you just push the buttons, and it'll go! So what would be some things that, as a trained journalist, you know about communications department for a company or an organization that you can bring to the table because of a journalism background?

Abby:
Yeah. I think the attention to detail and just asking questions and asking good questions and getting good information and then just simple things that are not so simple like AP style and consistency and brand consistency. I think a lot of those things come a lot more naturally to a trained journalist. Attention to those details and carefulness and then just creativity. I mean, if you think about journalism and, you know, you gotta tell a story, even if it's a news story, like, you know, it can be factual, it should be factual. You know, most journalism these days is not, unfortunately. Should be factual, but it can still be interesting. Like, there's an art to making something factual but interesting, and I think that applies to any industry.

Kathie [00:20:05]:
The who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Abby:
Exactly. Give me the W five and H, baby.

Kathie:
Do you journal? Are you a journaler?

Abby:
I journal sometimes. I wish I would journal more, but I journal some. When I had my daughter, I remember writing out, and it was kind of, like, written to her. I wrote, like, her birth story because I didn't want to forget all the details for one thing. It was partly for me, partly for her, and then that started. I still have it. It's a little journal. It's actually almost out of paper. I'm going to have to get a new one. But I write things, like, about my kids or sometimes I write it to them and, like so it'll just be, like, a few times a year, I'll write in there something significant or just, like, a funny thing that they say. I'm like, oh my gosh. I have to write that down.

Kathie:
That's awesome.

Abby:
I actually just got done recently reading Abigail Adams' biography and John Adams' biography, and I was very inspired by their journaling and their letter writing. And I was like, oh, what are people who are alive today, what's our footprint that's going to be left that generations from now are going to study? And I was like, oh my gosh. That's so depressing. That's so depressing.

Kathie [00:21:12]:
Text messages. BRB!

Abby:
Yes. Right. Or, like, our Instagram feed or whatever. But you look back and, like, all the letters that Jefferson and Adams wrote to each other and the years they hated each other, and then they became friends again. And they like, he spent the last, like, 10 years of his life just writing letters, like, copious amounts of letters. I was like, how cool is that? Like, we have all of history, early American history just documented right here.

Kathie [00:21:38]:
In handwriting.

Abby:
In beautiful handwriting. So that's something that I wish I would do better at. Maybe that'll be my goal. I don't really make New Year's resolutions, but maybe that should be my next one.

Kathie [00:21:49]:
That's so cool. Thanks so much for being on the podcast.

Abby:
Thanks. Yes. We'll definitely get together soon. See you later.

OUTRO [00:21:59]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of writer's rotation. Like and subscribe for more. And remember, writing is a marketable skill. Smiling is a remarkable skill.