From PR Startup to Powerhouse: Insights and Strategies for Building A Successful Public Relations Firm

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Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world.

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This podcast is ranked by Apple as being among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide, so I say thank you to all of my guests and listeners for making this happen.

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Now question for listeners have you ever thought about starting your own public relations firm?

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Well, my guests today have done just that.

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In fact, they published their book, a Practical Guide to Starting your Own PR Firm.

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Joining me today are LaSalle DeGrave, apr and founder of DeGrave Communications, and Rochelle Dickerman, mba, apr and CEO of RMG Communications, and they joined me from the San Diego area.

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Ladies, welcome to the podcast.

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Thanks for having us, Peter.

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So let's start by having each of you or, if you want to tell me why you decided to start your own public relations firm.

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Thanks, peter.

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This is LaSalle.

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I opened the grave communications in 2004 and so we've been in business for a while.

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I was in college and I really started out just as a as a freelancer, and I was also working full-time and over the years I just grew the business.

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I went in-house a few times, I worked for public agencies and and that's actually our firm specializes in working with public agencies because we've been on the inside.

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But we also understand how much support is needed externally from a consultant, and so we are a full service firm now and I just really started it because I wanted the flexibility of being able to manage my own schedule and that doesn't mean that you aren't responsible to anybody or you don't have time commitments and things like that, but I have a really hard time just sitting in an office eight to five every single day.

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So that's really the real reason and it still continues to be my drive.

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My why is I want to have that flexibility?

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To be a mother, be a husband, you know work remotely whenever I want to, and so that's really been what's been the driving force.

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It's just that flexibility and freedom of time for me.

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Okay.

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Hi Peter.

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Yes, this is Rachel and my story is pretty similar to LaSalle's.

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I actually went to college at UCLA for communications.

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I knew really early on that's what I wanted to do and when I ended up doing a few internships in entertainment PR which is where I thought I wanted to go with my degree I realized that's not what I wanted to do.

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So I went back to my hometown about an hour north of LA in the high desert and I started working for one of the local cities up there and I really just worked my way up from there and doing government public relations.

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So I ended up working at three different cities and then a large utility in Southern California and that's where I actually met LaSalle.

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And you know she was already established with her business, even though she was working part-time at that utility.

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She had that business on the side and I had several other work associates and friends that had also gone out on their own.

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And I just thought you know I really do want more of that flexibility in life and I kind of just got I don't know if the word's jaded, but it's just that point in your career where you're like is this all there is?

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You know, and I figured it wasn't as much an agency thing of where I was working but just having to be in the office each day and dealing with more of the day-to-day business interactions where you're not in charge.

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And I finally made the move right before I turned 40 to go out on my own too and hang my own shingle, and I never looked back.

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So I take it that you both now enjoy being on your own, so to speak, that you did launch it, got over whatever hurdles you had and you things are running smoothly and you're happy that you did it.

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Yes, and Rachel and I, we do something we call a collaboration, where we collaborate with the competition, and so, even though we both run really similar firms, really businesses that both work with public agencies specifically, we found that having each other to work with has really sometimes working for yourself can be lonely, right, and so you actually have extended resources that you have available.

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We have a lot of team members that work for both of us, and so there's a lot of advantages to that, and that's actually you know why we decided to write the book together, because we do the majority of our work together and it's really a unique concept, but it works for us.

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Well, now that you've done it and things are going well, what I think you just said why you decided to write the book.

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So let's really begin to talk about the starting point for your book.

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What are you telling people to do first if they want to start their own PR firm?

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As we started moving deeper and deeper into being business owners, we got pulled over by a lot of our friends and colleagues and they're like please tell me how to do this.

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I want something different.

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I either want more flexibility.

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I'm not happy in my job.

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I've kind of gotten to where I thought I should be and is this really it?

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So we were getting a lot of calls to have coffee or, you know, to go meet with them and answer all the questions that are really in this book.

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So one day we just said, you know, but why don't we write the book and just act like we're talking to our friends and giving them the advice that we had to ask other people, those lessons learned, those practical tips how to get clients building your brand, scaling your business, and then also those proven strategies that we hope that they might learn without having to go through a lot of the trials and tribulations we did, as we were just kind of having to learn as we were building our companies.

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Yeah, and to add to that, peter, I know you asked kind of what's that first step that we recommend?

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Like Rachel said, it is all laid out as if we were meeting with somebody that you know quote unquote wants to pick our brain, right.

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So, we decided to put pen and paper and just write it all down, and so I mean, one of the really key things that people need to understand is, you may have a specific skill set so for us in particular, it's in communications and public relations but do you have the drive and motivation to be a business owner?

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Because the majority of the work that we do is not necessarily communications or public relations.

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So I would say that's the first step really to determining whether you want to go out on your own, because as you grow and you scale which is one of the biggest challenges, I think, as a business owner, you're going to need to be able to decide.

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You know, am I going to work with freelancers?

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Am I going to hire employees?

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And these are things that you don't learn.

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I was a public relations major at San Diego State and we never we never had any kind of business training and so really trying to be as business savvy as you can, learning as you grow and determine you know, what kind of business do I need to set up my business?

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So am I going to be like I said?

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Are you thinking you're just going to be a freelancer?

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Maybe that being a sole proprietor might be the way to go.

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Do you need to set up an LLC, an S Corp?

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And we go into those details in the book with, of course, a disclaimer that we're not.

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We want you to check with your attorneys or accountants before taking any kind of serious advice from us.

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But we've been through it and Rachel and I actually both established our firms as sole proprietorships, for example.

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It's very cost effective, it's a good way to get started.

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But as we grew and having a good network of advisors around us, our CPAs were telling us both completely you know, in different, different people, you're at the point where you're paying too much in self-employment tax.

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You should be set up as an S-corp, and so at that point you dissolve the old business, you set up the new one, and so those are that's.

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That's really one of the foundational points, because you've got to figure out what type of business are you going to be as it's categorized by the IRS, and then at that point you can apply for an EIN number, which is your employee identification number, which is similar to a social security number for your business, right?

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So that's really one of the key things, and once you've got that set up, you are really ready to roll.

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That's where you can start, you know looking for clients, setting up your billing rates and getting down to the nitty gritty.

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Well, I'm glad to hear you say that, because I started my own firm back around 2004, I believe it was.

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I didn't really want to.

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I had come to Nashville, I was the vice president of a university for handling communications and so forth, but when the president left, my job left along with it, and it was the vice mayor because my background was suggested that I start my own PR firm.

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And I did do that and we started to do some business.

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But one of the things that kept bothering me is that I need to let people know I'm in business.

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How am I going to do that without just two or three lines that?

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You know?

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Peter Wolfo started a PR firm.

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I wanted something that was going to grab the front pages.

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So basically what I did was start asking myself who do I know and what boards do they sit on?

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One of my friends was on one of the major organizations here and I wanted to get for the first major client somebody's name that everybody knew.

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They said, wow, if he could get that one, he must know what he's doing.

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Well, to make a long story short, I wound up getting the Nashville Ballet and, yes, I did get some headlines with that one.

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But here was the deal that I did not talk about.

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When I met with the ballet, they had already had an advertising agency who was doing their advertising for them, so they didn't have any money left over to pay me.

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So to me, getting that name associated with me was more important than getting paid this time because the newspaper article helped generate a move.

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So what I did in terms of compensation, they gave me a handful of season tickets.

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So I got this big exposure in the newspaper that Peter Woolfolk lands the Nashville Ballet.

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That turns a lot of wheels and opened a lot of doors for me.

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So I'm just saying sometimes you have to be a little, have some ingenuity as to how you go about elevating who you are, what you're doing and the kind of work that you and who you'll be doing work for.

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Sure, absolutely, and that's I think that's one of the biggest things.

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When we meet with people, they're kind of baffled as far as well.

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How do you find your clients?

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And one we hope that if you're going out on your own, you have a network right.

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And those are going to be the low hanging fruit, being that Rachel and I, our firms, work specifically with public agencies.

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Sadly, we have to, most of the time we have to respond to an RFP, a request for proposal, which is, you know, these submissions are 90 plus pages long, they take a lot of work, it's unbillable hours, and so I do a lot of that.

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Yeah, yes, right, it's, I think, the worst part about being in this business.

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I'm going to be real candid about it.

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It's something that you don't really enjoy, but you get better at it and once you get your foot in the door I think we talk about this in the book but even if you just go for that really small contract, maybe it's not super profitable, similar to your ballet experience.

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That's what you need.

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You need clients that you're going to connect with.

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They're going to see that you're not selling them team, you're bringing value, you're making their life easier and they are going to work with you over and over again.

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Well, let me add another thing to that too, because one of the other things that I did was I decided, you know, being a small individual part of my background that helped me get to some of these levels is that one.

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Without going back too far, I wound up being the press secretary for the chairman of the House, education and Labor Committee, so dealing with media and heavy-duty stuff.

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I got exposed to that.

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I had radio background, some TV background and so forth and so on.

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I wound up actually being in the Clinton administration doing some work for the US Surgeon General, so the media part of it, tv, radio, satellite, all that.

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I had that, and so one of the other things that I did when I got here, I made a decision to go and meet the presidents of every major PR firm here.

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Every one of them I said hey, I'm the new guy in town, here's part of my background.

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If you've got some smaller deals and you don't have time for them, throw them my way and I'll be glad to take them off your hands.

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Well, one of them and I'm going to probably say after the ballet, it's probably about a year late I got another phone call from one of the presidents and they said, well, fine, here's something I think you might like, but you're going to have to go pitch for it.

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And what I did was, once I found out who it was, I went and looked it up.

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I went to the library, I went to google everything to find out.

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The bottom line was I had to go and pitch to do some work for the Nashville Opera.

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I had to go to opera.

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But what I did was, once I found out who I was going to pitch for, I went to the library.

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It was going to be Carmen.

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I looked at the video to find out what Carmen was all about, all that sort of good stuff.

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So then I went down and told them I said, hey, look, you're not looking for more season holders, you've got those.

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They're going to pay you.

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You're looking for people like me to come because they're new and you want to increase your outreach.

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And I said, hey, that's a great idea.

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We hadn't thought about that.

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Boom, I got another great big headline in the newspaper.

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Now Peter Wolff has the national opera.

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Wow.

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So that helped me grow.

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It's really about having a lot of self-confidence, knowing that you can get things done and willing to say hey, I'm new.

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If I can help you out, let me know.

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And it worked.

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And you're so right, Peter.

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That's what we really did too, I know.

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When I started out, I reached out to a couple of firms that I knew too and just said, hey, I'm here if you need anything, and it helped us.

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I grew my business and provided that solid foundation of some cash flow coming in, because it takes time, even if you're there and ready to work, to start getting you know a full roster of clients in.

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Well, one of the other things I found useful and I did a lot of it but I had to, you know, slice it down a little bit Well, that's to sit on board of directors of organizations, because you get to meet a lot of other people who have some connections and pull and know-how and those kind of things, and that's helped as well.

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I mean, one thing led to another and I wind up doing work for the Boys and Girls Club and you know things like that.

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So I mean those are door openers as well and it gives you additional media exposure it's so true and that's one of the things we touch on in our book we we actually touch on that same fact that we were very involved years before with a lot of different boards and committees and made a lot of great connections in our line of work.

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So when we did go out on our own, you know we had those folks as the first, what I like to call like the low-hanging fruit.

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Okay, you're out on your own.

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Who are you going to reach out to?

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And usually they're those people and you have to also be okay with hearing a no, not right now.

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And it doesn't mean it's a no.

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It might mean that, especially in the government world, like like we talked about sometimes there's a lot of contracts involved.

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They may have a firm under contract for one or two or three years and until that firm's contract expires, they're just not taking on any new PR firms, and that's just the way it is.

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And we had a, a client that we you know they're like one of our dream clients and they went from a city, um in the LA area to working um for one of the cities right on the Orange County coast, and we reached out and he told us you know, I'd love to work with you, but we have some other people under contract.

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And then, a couple years later, we just got an email one day out of the blue and he said, hey, would you like to work on this project?

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It's small, but we really need help right now and, like LaSalle alluded to before, that we just did such a great job.

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Now we have, you know, about half a million dollars in contracts just with that one agency, from doing good work, from being a person that they knew and being able to deliver on it.

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So it really it really does work.

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It's just it takes a lot of time.

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Well, you know, I think that's hugely important to say that.

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You know, sometimes you do have to stick with it because once the once the people have the contract, you can't do much of anything until the contract is complete and it's put up for to to be recompeted on.

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So I mean I've certainly done a lot of those things.

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I mean it certainly works.

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Sometimes they expand the contract because they'll add on something to it.

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I did a video again.

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You know, one of the things I like about this business is that it gives you a chance to do a lot of things and you don't have to be you don't have to be the person that actually does all of those things.

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For example, contract that I bid on for the airport here was that they wanted to produce an in-house video.

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Well, I can't operate a camera, I can't do any editing.

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I can do some writing, I can do some voiceovers.

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I had to go out and find and hire a camera person who could do all the editing and so forth.

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We bid on it, we won and then after that, as a matter of fact, they wanted to get a, a smaller version of it so they can show this, show this at a, an award ceremony that they went to.

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So that was another small contract that came out of that.

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So a lot of it is just being confident in what you can do and not being afraid to have people tell you no because you're exactly right.

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Sometimes no means well, no, not right now, and you have to understand that.

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And then don't be afraid to go back and ask again.

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Once you start getting those contacts in place like you said, peter, doing that great work, they're going to also refer you to.

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So a lot of the work we do.

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We're not out doing a lot of ads or paid advertisements, it's mostly word of mouth other than doing the formal proposal process.

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It's a lot of people that are just love to work with us, love the services and value we provide, and then if someone comes to them they're always referring, which is nice too.

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Yeah, and I will add, just on keeping relationships.

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I mean really everything that we do is based on relationships.

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I say that to young kids that are, you know, just going into college.

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Make those connections, you know, when they're graduating, they're looking for work, you just never know where someone might end up, where your paths might meet in the future.

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And I just had a client this morning text me we are doing a really small project with them and she said hey, I just want to let you know that we've got an RFP that's going to be coming out.

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I'm working on it right now.

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I'll let you know when it gets posted.

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And so, like I said, we're not working on a really lucrative project with them, but it's taking on that work, it's building those relationships that are really going to make lasting impressions and they're going to help build your business.

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Well, the good thing about doing that, too, is that they can also offer referrals, that somebody might call them and ask who should they know, or do they know anybody that can handle this project, and they can refer you because you've done good work for them.

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So maintaining relationships and doing good work and that was has always been one of my guidelines.

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I want the best person I can find to work with me.

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It doesn't have to be a friend.

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That does not have to be a neighbor.

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Even if you a friend but you don't do good work, I'm not going to bring you on board, because it's two separate things.

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You know people are going to pay.

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You judge you on the work you do for them and if it's not good, you're not going to get come back again.

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Absolutely, absolutely.

00:20:09.201 --> 00:20:29.509
And on the flip side, you can have great friends that are also great members of your team, and I'm happy to say that that is a lot of how our operations work, and we're so blessed because I think when you have people that you work well together and you do good work, it just makes it that much more gratifying.

00:20:30.715 --> 00:20:39.506
So tell me, what else did you discover or that you decided needed to be put into your book that people who might be considering starting a PR firm should know?

00:20:40.195 --> 00:20:50.000
Yeah, I think one of the important things I know when I first this is LaSalle, and I know when I first got started, I was working internally somewhere and I really wanted to.

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:59.666
We were expanding our family and I wanted to work remotely or have some kind of flexibility, and at the time, in the early 2000s, that wasn't really a thing, which is crazy.

00:20:59.666 --> 00:21:00.587
To even imagine.

00:21:00.587 --> 00:21:01.309
That world now.

00:21:01.309 --> 00:21:03.321
That just wasn't possible.

00:21:03.321 --> 00:21:05.357
And now fast forward.

00:21:05.378 --> 00:21:12.577
We're in 2024, and you absolutely do not need a physical office space, rachel and I talk about it all the time.

00:21:12.577 --> 00:21:30.346
We, you know, we have friends that are doing the same type of work, but I think they like that the idea of I have this, you know, beautiful office space and it looks great for optics and it's beautiful for Instagram, but in reality, we all just need our computer for what we do and it's not really necessary.

00:21:30.346 --> 00:21:39.837
And if we meet with a client, we're going to usually meet them for lunch or we're going to go to their office, and so you can I mean, you can shave off thousands of dollars off the top.

00:21:39.837 --> 00:21:40.118
Don't?

00:21:40.118 --> 00:21:45.176
That is something that is so it's not needed, it's really isn't, and I encourage people.

00:21:45.176 --> 00:21:47.222
There's no shame in having a home office.

00:21:47.222 --> 00:21:48.886
Rachel and I both have home offices.

00:21:49.595 --> 00:21:51.460
Well, I can certainly chime in on that one.

00:21:51.460 --> 00:21:55.208
I started back around, as I said, a little after 2002.

00:21:55.208 --> 00:22:03.423
And because I was being looked at for a major to join one of the major firms, they wanted to know where was my office.

00:22:03.423 --> 00:22:07.464
So I had one of those deals where you rent some space down there.

00:22:07.464 --> 00:22:17.582
You know they'll answer your phone with your name and if you need to have office space you call them up and, uh, reserve a meeting yeah you know that sort of thing.

00:22:18.083 --> 00:22:25.328
But at least I had, they had an office address rather than a post office box, because at the time that was a no-no that they frowned on.

00:22:25.328 --> 00:22:34.185
And and you're absolutely right, I think I was down there probably for about uh six or seven years and maybe three clients came down there over that time.

00:22:34.185 --> 00:22:36.309
So I don't do it again.

00:22:36.309 --> 00:22:42.155
And, and plus the pandemic, let everybody see, as long as the work gets done, they don't care where you are.

00:22:42.155 --> 00:22:46.144
As long as it gets done, done well, and you give it to them on time.

00:22:46.144 --> 00:22:53.506
You know you could be operating from an airplane, it doesn't make any difference, as long as as you satisfied the agreement that we reached.

00:22:54.146 --> 00:22:55.148
Yes, and we do.

00:22:55.148 --> 00:22:56.682
We do work from the airplane.

00:22:56.682 --> 00:23:01.123
So I agree, I think that you know, the lockdown was a little.

00:23:01.123 --> 00:23:12.825
That was one of the benefits, because everyone was working from home and there was, you know, no shame in the blouse on the top and the pajamas on the bottom right, and so I think people really welcomed it.

00:23:12.825 --> 00:23:26.818
And I think, as a small business owner that works from a home office, I found it really refreshing because people were able to realize that the quality of your work doesn't necessarily have to go down because you don't have a physical office space.

00:23:26.890 --> 00:23:33.320
So that's something we have a whole chapter on that and I think it's just you've got to think about the money that you're putting into your business.

00:23:33.320 --> 00:23:40.195
Thankfully, with a PR firm, for the most part you can get started with just your computer, right, and everyone already has that.

00:23:40.195 --> 00:23:46.723
So we like to tell people try to start out with Rachel, and I have never taken out a business loan.

00:23:46.723 --> 00:23:51.354
You know we don't have business debt and you really don't need it.

00:23:51.354 --> 00:23:52.875
Look at those things.

00:23:52.875 --> 00:23:57.799
Do I need it or is it, you know, just more vanity or a want.

00:23:57.799 --> 00:24:04.987
So we touch on that in the book as well, because you can really get started with minimal overhead.

00:24:07.750 --> 00:24:08.634
Well, you know, your reputation precedes you.

00:24:08.634 --> 00:24:12.095
So if you've done good work for people in the past, they're willing to work with you.

00:24:12.095 --> 00:24:13.238
And you're absolutely right.

00:24:13.238 --> 00:24:18.719
The pandemic opened a lot of folks' eyes is that as long as the work gets done, we don't care where you do it from.

00:24:18.719 --> 00:24:22.491
We want good work, we want it on time and at the price agreed upon.

00:24:22.491 --> 00:24:27.795
So if all of those things can be achieved then you know fine, I could be out of town.

00:24:27.795 --> 00:24:29.816
As a matter of fact, I've done work for people out of town.

00:24:29.816 --> 00:24:31.758
So I certainly agree with you.

00:24:31.758 --> 00:24:49.090
And it's a huge issue because I've actually seen some people, our friends, go out of business because they have a big palatial office, they have employees, which is different than consultants that you've got to pay them, pay their taxes, pay their Social Security, all that other sort of stuff.

00:24:49.090 --> 00:24:52.720
And if you don't have contracts coming in, you have a problem.

00:24:53.622 --> 00:24:56.778
Absolutely, and we both have a few employees.

00:24:56.778 --> 00:25:02.431
They are part-time, but it's still a crunch sometimes, as you know.

00:25:02.431 --> 00:25:13.038
Sometimes you're waiting for a payment that may not come for several months, it gets delayed, and then you have that finance crunch where you just don't have that money and it gets very stressful.

00:25:13.038 --> 00:25:15.211
So then it's down to do you take out a loan.

00:25:15.211 --> 00:25:17.477
Are you going to have to start letting people go?

00:25:17.477 --> 00:25:29.012
And I think for both of us it just makes more sense that we work with qualified contractors and a small team of staff to get the work done and it and it always gets done.

00:25:29.012 --> 00:25:30.757
Our teams are very flexible.

00:25:30.757 --> 00:25:38.624
The hours we allow them to work and, um, they enjoy having that freedom over their life and they give 110% all the time.

00:25:40.208 --> 00:25:45.496
Well, you know, one of my biggest selling factors were people's resumes and that was huge for me.

00:25:45.496 --> 00:25:48.351
I mean, yes, I, I did work for the Clinton administration.

00:25:48.351 --> 00:25:49.571
I mean, yes, I did work for the Clinton administration.

00:25:49.571 --> 00:25:50.972
I mean that's a real door opener in itself.

00:25:50.972 --> 00:26:01.920
But what I also discovered, I ran across a few Nissan North America moved its North American headquarters here in Nashville some years back.

00:26:01.920 --> 00:26:09.845
I was very fortunate to find a couple of ladies one who had retired as heading up the Nissan PR department.

00:26:09.845 --> 00:26:14.428
She was my consultant so I could use her resume.

00:26:14.428 --> 00:26:25.054
The other lady moved here because her husband was with it and before she got here she used to run the head of the National Public Radio's largest news outfit in Los Angeles.

00:26:25.054 --> 00:26:27.743
So I mean, she was very capable writer, new media very well.

00:26:27.743 --> 00:26:30.515
So I mean, she was a very, very capable writer, knew media very well.

00:26:30.515 --> 00:26:35.794
So that's the kind of information I used when I gave in.

00:26:35.794 --> 00:26:37.078
You know, put in a proposal.

00:26:37.078 --> 00:26:42.296
Here are the caliber of people who will be working on your project and it does make a difference.

00:26:42.871 --> 00:26:50.473
It does and I think now you were ahead of the curve, but now with all the folks that are wanting you know, different work styles and traditional.

00:26:50.473 --> 00:27:03.493
We have very similar cases where we have one person that's a stay-at-home mom but does excellent work and we had someone that had retired but still wanted to work part-time and they both have wonderful resumes.

00:27:03.493 --> 00:27:08.680
But it's just looking outside of the box, especially if you're starting out for employees.

00:27:08.680 --> 00:27:14.226
If you're going that route, that may be a good fit, but not wanting that traditional full-time experience.

00:27:15.171 --> 00:27:17.799
Ladies, we have actually had a very, very good discussion.

00:27:17.799 --> 00:27:22.681
I'm just wondering now are there any points that we missed, that you think we should cover?

00:27:23.182 --> 00:27:23.563
You know what?

00:27:23.563 --> 00:27:29.942
I would love to add that this is our last chapter of the book and it's called Looks Like we Made it.

00:27:29.942 --> 00:27:44.362
And I think success looks differently for everybody, and so we live in this social media comparison world right now and, as an individual, as a business owner, you need to define what success looks like to you.

00:27:44.362 --> 00:27:46.659
Is it a certain monthly income?

00:27:46.659 --> 00:27:49.056
Is it gross sales, net sales?

00:27:49.056 --> 00:27:52.987
Is it being able to afford, know, monthly income?

00:27:52.987 --> 00:27:53.729
Is it gross sales, net sales?

00:27:53.729 --> 00:27:57.233
Is it, you know, being able to afford certain things for your business?

00:27:57.233 --> 00:27:57.855
Is it more flexibility of time?

00:27:57.875 --> 00:28:06.949
Would you, would you sacrifice, maybe, income, but to have the flexibility to you know, have every Friday off or be able to kick off and go to the beach and work remotely whenever you'd like.

00:28:06.949 --> 00:28:07.932
You know things like that.

00:28:07.932 --> 00:28:21.938
Of course, we all have bills to pay, so you can't work for free, but try not to compare yourself to other businesses or other people that are maybe in a related field and really look at doing some introspective work.

00:28:21.938 --> 00:28:23.863
And what does success look like for you?

00:28:23.863 --> 00:28:27.578
At what point am I going to say, okay, this is a success, I've made it.

00:28:28.442 --> 00:28:29.063
Absolutely.

00:28:29.063 --> 00:28:31.232
I think that's so important.

00:28:31.232 --> 00:28:41.111
I know, lasalle and I we, and probably you too, peter have seen a lot of people that look like they're on, you know, just a one-way trip up and then they crash their businesses, crash and burn.

00:28:41.111 --> 00:28:46.157
And you know you don't know all the inside specifics, but we hear story after story about they've.

00:28:46.157 --> 00:28:59.675
You know some folks that make bad investments, have put a second mortgage on their house and so forth, but their business looks all shiny and fancy and they're bringing in new people and new contracts, but it's not always that way.

00:28:59.675 --> 00:29:10.198
So I think being really clear whether you want to start your own business or just figure out a lifestyle of work that works for you is what does that success look like?

00:29:10.198 --> 00:29:14.951
And I think we all have different even the three of us would have different ways to answer that question.

00:29:16.195 --> 00:29:31.317
Well, ladies, I think that you have given our listeners an earful today, and I really, really want to thank you for reaching out and bringing this to my attention, because I agree with you that a lot of people may want to consider going into business for themselves, and this is something for them to consider.

00:29:31.930 --> 00:29:36.798
So, any closing remarks that you might have, I think we're good with everything that we've shared.

00:29:36.798 --> 00:29:38.896
I don't know, do you have anything else to add, rachel?

00:29:40.451 --> 00:29:53.632
Well, if any of the listeners are interested in getting a copy of the book, the best place to get it is going to pressingonpodcastcom backslash PR book or they can find it on Amazon or Audible.

00:29:53.653 --> 00:30:01.344
Well, let me say thank you again and the name of the book, so if you want to make sure that you get it is A Practical Guide to Starting your Own PR Firm.

00:30:01.344 --> 00:30:14.820
And the authors who have joined me today to present this great information are Lizelle DeGrave she is the founder of DeGrave Communications, and Rachel Dickman, who is the CEO of RMG Communications.

00:30:14.820 --> 00:30:21.920
I want to thank them so very, very much for bringing this to my attention, and I certainly hope that you, the listeners, have gotten a lot from it.

00:30:21.920 --> 00:30:30.521
If you've enjoyed the show, we certainly would like to get some reviews from you, and we certainly would appreciate it if you'd share this with some of your colleagues as well.

00:30:30.521 --> 00:30:35.778
And don't forget also to listen to the next edition of the Public Relations Review Podcast.

00:30:36.590 --> 00:30:46.878
This podcast is produced by Communication Strategies, an award-winning public relations and public affairs firm headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.

00:30:46.878 --> 00:30:48.849
Thank you for joining us.