I Think You Need to Hire a PR Firm

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week we welcome a new regular to the 21 hats podcast crew Sarah seagull founder and CEO of seagull Communications a public relations firm based in San Francisco first Sarah tells Jay gos and Liz picarazzi how she built her firm then Jay and Liz ask Sarah all of their questions about public relations how much Outreach should they do themselves should they hire a PR Specialist or a full service agency should they approach journalists directly or through a publicist and most important how much should it all Cost Plus why Sarah is still figuring out how to attract new business even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter that 21 hats more Morning Report which Inc magazine recently named the best newsletter for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Jay goz whose companies in Chicago include a picture frame business artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home Liz picarazzi who is CEO of City bin which is based in Brooklyn New York and makes trash enclosure ures and package bins and of course Sarah seagull founder and CEO of seagull Communications the episode is titled I think you need a PR firm welcome Jay Liz and especially Sarah the newest member of our 21 hats podcast team it's great to have you all here Sarah we want to hear a little bit about your journey how you got to this point uh let me start by asking if I'm not mistaken you uh used to do something uh Noble with your life weren't you once a journalist yes I was a journalist um for the first half of my career um I worked behind the scenes for uh NBC and CBS and even Fox News channel uh in New York City in the 9s and and 2000s um before deciding that I would be a TV reporter and work in small stations across New York and across California before moving to the dark side which is what I do now which is public relations not really the dark side well not really no it's uh just kind of a a running joke among people that leave journalism that uh PR is The unver Virtuous side of the a way to make a living much more uh affordable lifestyle yes absolutely um and to give you a little segue on that uh basically um I what happened was I was a reporter at a local television station in San Francisco called KRON 4 and um I was a general assignment reporter um I was a VJ meaning that I shot edited and um produced all of my own work in the field um and you know I stood in front of burning buildings I covered floods I covered shootings I covered all the the bleeds it leads news there was a a story that really kind of made me wake up one morning and say you know what I think I need to change a pace I I can't really deal with the blood and gore anymore I had small children at the time and uh needed to do something a little bit different I had been in contact with many public relations folks uh throughout my career and figured i' give it a shot and so that's how I ended up in PR you first took a job with a PR firm no I actually took a job with a e-commerce company it was literally it was a husband and wife team and 2 to 3 days a week I would go and I would work in their warehouse doing PR she was a former attorney that just knew how to do PR and supported that side of the business and taught me everything that she knew um and so I spent a good year or so with them before moving inhouse for a company called Cafe Press which was a big print on demand company um uh for t-shirts and how did you come to own your own firm well um after Cafe Press um uh closed their s their California offices um I bounced around to a couple different agencies and uh I was downsized from my uh one agency when I was downsized uh I took another job with a company that didn't really work out we spoke different languages um and I left that job and at the time um a friend of mine was working at a marketing agency and he said Hey listen I really need someone to do PR for this new Boutique Hotel we're opening up in Ketchum Idaho would you be able to do it and I was like I suffer from impostor syndrome and I was like why would you want me to do it he's like well because you know how to do it um he had been my the person that hired me initially Cafe Press and so uh I went ahead and did that and uh my friend at the time was disliking her position at a large PR agency um called me up and said hey you want to hang your shingle with me and so I started an agency with her because of her I don't know that I would have done it myself although I'm very happy that I did so you were Partners I was Partners my company was originally Vorhees seagull Victoria Vorhees was my partner and um for the first couple years you know we were just uh work work spouses um and did everything together but uh she had decided to leave the company um at the end of our second year um she just had to prioritize having more of a stable paycheck because as you know being an entrepreneur uh starting your own agency you're going to be the last people that are paid um and so she left and it took a lot out of me but I was like you know what I can do this so where are you today how big is the firm well um we have about six full you're going to ask me numbers and I'm very bad at this but we have six full-time people we just hired another person um she starts next Thursday we're very excited um and then we have a handful of Freelancers and Consultants that we work with because there are a lot of people that don't want to work full-time and they're just happy to you know do the work that we need and then disappear until a new project comes up and your revenues my revenues so last year we um made a million dollars um and at the end of the year I was like yeah this is great we're doing really well I'm going to I'm going to put my stamp on you know making 2 million this year wait you grossed a million you didn't make a million I assume you no we grossed yeah gross okay and do you focus in any particular type of client uh do you have a specialty that's actually a sore subject for me how so every marketing Guru will tell you the same thing they say well you need to really you know figure out what your your specialty is and then you know hang your hat on that specialty and then grow your business based on that specialty and um usually it's like food and beverage or Hospitality or Tech or consumer Tech I have failed at doing that um part of the reason is is I really have just a Natural Curiosity about so many verticals that we will do everything from a doughnut shop to um a high-tech um product uh in the hospitality technology space so um my feeling is as long as I'm interested in it and I'm curious about it naturally we'll do a really great job I don't think I knew there was a Hospitality technology space oh there is I'll tell you all about it well give me an example so one of my clients is a company called relay and basically what they have a really interest doing story because they ended up pivoting they have basically transformed they're replacing the walkie-talkie if you think about when you go into a hotel or an event center or um uh you know a large Warehouse the way that um most companies have their employees that are on the front line communicate are through walkie-talkies they they can't walk around with a laptop up and a screen in front of them so they invented a product that essentially replaces that but it's a much smarter product because it's voice operated um and it's connected to the cloud and what was interesting is they originally started out as an alternative phone for kids um because it doesn't have a screen um but then they started having all of these hotels like Place orders for 50 or more of their product um and so they had to make a not a pivot but I can think it just took a different path that's a example of hospitality um technology so how long have you been on your own without the partner I was literally on my own for like three weeks um and then I got a call um from uh this contact of mine who who had kind of played the role as of a advisor to me in growing a business uh and said uh I I saw that your your business partner left um we'd be interested in buying you because we run a crisis Communications and corporate Communications shop um and we would like to find someone who can do just regular PR um and social for our clients so we're not losing opportunity with our current clients because they would have people come to them for crises um and those same clients would say oh you're really great can you do our regular PR too and it wasn't their core competency so it took about it was this was in the middle of the pandemic so it took about a year for it to happen I was acquired officially last year and why did you decide to sell so um I'm sure you guys can feel the pain in this but like it was very Str I missed doing the work that was number one the amount of time I would spend on invoicing and following up and making sure that you know billables were paid and all that was just a horrible time suck for me and I didn't get to do the fun stuff anymore um the second thing for me was it was just really stressful just to make sure that I had enough money in the account to make sure that I was paying all my salaries um and that was that was kind of the appeal of being acquired where they were like you know what you'll still run your own shop you'll do your own thing you'll make your own decision we're here as a a backboard for you but we will provide all the backend infrastructure for you we'll give you a a general counsel we'll give you somebody who manages all of your billing and accounting we'll do all of that behind the scenes they made a compelling argument and I said yes so it also sounds like there was just a Synergy here that you ended up not only not having to do some of the stuff with you know the billing and all the infrastructure but that you had a ready pool of customers that were theirs that you were able to plug right in and it just was good for everybody yeah it was good for everybody I mean I I I had to think about it um I'm sure that there are there are things that I would have changed initially um there was um a short period of time we were where we were considering rebranding my agency to be branded with the crisis Communications agency um and as we went through that process we really kind of realized that it was like oil and water and that if you're looking for a crisis communication agency you're not necessarily going to be happy to see dut PR on the website so we quickly decided that um we would keep the the brands as is so now you've got crisis management and between crisis management yeah because when you're in business that's what we do we have our crisis and then we have non crisis for a while and goes back and forth yeah and it's and it's good not to hire I hear you laughing you get what I'm saying we get it we get it yeah of course I do Sarah you know as a consumer of PR and marketing Services one thing that I'm always a little confused about is whether I should go with like a full service agency that does like across the board PR marketing social or whether I should hire someone to be uh more specific I think that like my answer has often lately has been more get someone specific to do the pr work work sometimes it's even me um but I know that when I'm looking for marketing and PR Services they're often bundled together and um just curious to see how you structured your company and how you delineate between the marketing and the pr work well PR is essentially a a branch of marketing um and if you look at most PR agencies the definition between what they do and a and a traditional department does there's a lot of gray area the decision between going with a full service agency and um are you talking about like hiring somebody internally or an independent um contractor an independent like an independent publicist or go with an agency marketing that can do both well it really depends on what you want to do you know an independent publicist is going to be able to get you earned media hits right um but a full service agency is probably going to be able to do that plus do influencer relations probably do your social media handles um maybe do some digital ad buys for you offer a creative I mean you can grow but that's there's an expense with that right um it depends on your budget and it depends on really what services that you see that you're going to need a year away so I've been through four or five PR firms over the years and there's a point to where I just think it's difficult to get someone to pay attention so my question is if someone's got a23 million company and they're looking for a PR person can you Bill enough to be worth your while and it's going to be worth it for them I mean when you get to 1020 million okay you go you can afford to spend some serious money but Where's the Line to where you just can't put resources towards it what's the smallest bill you could see get sending somebody Oh you mean in terms of retainer yeah the smallest Bill well it really depends on the kind of firm that you're the kind of company that you're working with cuz um I kind of look at it in three three ways there's the really easy consumer companies that uh it's just a smile and dial kind of PR where they have a new pair of shoes coming out and that's very easy PR to do um because it's really about um numbers and then you have um the kind of companies that drank way too much of their own Kool-Aid and think that they should just be out there because they are who they are um but they have no natural news and honestly we charge them more because what happens is it we actually have to go in and and find and develop those stories with those companies because they are too close to their own work to see the interesting hooks that are going to get media interested now that's interesting because you've just described my company except I have the opposite problem I think I have a very interesting story to tell and I've hired a PR firm and she says well you need something like an anniversary or something and I go really that's so so that's what I need PR for if I'm having my 44th anniversary not the fact that we've been around for 44 years that I grew the largest framing business in the country not that I've expanded into different I mean i' I've got some interesting business stories I believe and she wants to know can I do an anniversary sale or something and I and maybe she's right I don't know I just all of your accomplishments then go into that article all of your many accomplishments she's is looking for a hook I know I know but she hasn't been able to figure one out and I'm just fascinated by that back in the old days 20 years ago you'd hire the pr firm I'm not making a blanket statement I hire a PR firm they come out make a presentation and they stick some 23-year-old on your account and they bill you about four grand a three grand a month maybe two grand a month and and then when you call them well things take time and then Peter's out and nothing happens and I've tried that a few times I've had some good hits but um I I certainly don't feel like I figured it out I haven't there are a lot of agencies that will do that they'll give you the dog and pony show all the VPS will show up to the meeting they'll say um all the things that you want to hear and then they disappear um but there are a lot of agencies that don't do that that where their executives are still leading the charge um I'm on 99% of our client calls because I need to know what's going on with the client and help them figure out what those stories are cuz you know maybe an anniversary is not the right hook but you can also look at data like do you have any data or uh that you can look at internally that that spell out a larger Trend in society right that's also a way of developing a hook is by looking at the the materials that you you create in house to to get that that recognition oh I've and I shared this with Lauren I wrote an article called is retail uh uh an endagered species and I believe that I have some unique if not unique unusual expertise and that I've been doing it for a long time I own three retail businesses I grew up in retail and I've got some insights that I don't read about anywhere and I gave it to this PR firm and they're trying to get it put somewhere but it's been I don't know it's been a couple months nothing's happened yet but there's some interesting retail stuff that I I you know there's it's not out there at all I mean like for instance I believe you're a small retailer you ought you ought to think about buying your own building because that's that could be a defining Factor whether you're going to be in business in 10 years whether you own your space or not and then the whole e-commerce thing there's another bus coming between the freight cost and the digital marketing cost it's not you know people talk about brick and mortar like it's a ball and chain you know what free shipping costs more than rent so it's it's complicated and you don't read about this anywhere and I thought I wouldn't say not anywhere those issues well I don't know I haven't seen any of those things discussed in any well tell me I haven't read any article that talked about that Rising shipping costs are putting to to squeeze on these companies with doing free shipping and many of those companies there have been lots of stories about how direct to Consumer uh businesses are struggling because both the cost of shipping and the cost of marketing uh digitally have gone way up yeah so there you know there has been some of that that's not to say that you don't have a good story to tell uh I'm curious Sarah how do you handle the situation when a client like Jay um not that he would necessarily do this but uh a client who has what he or she believes is a good story to tell comes to you and says I would like this place in the Chicago Tribune or the Wall Street Journal or which is exactly what I did yes I did that no I said I wanted in the tribute what do you tell somebody who has that kind of expectation well first of all I'm I'm going to go back to them I'm going to say well who buys your your products right what is the value of you being in the Chicago Tri Tribune like are your customers reading the Chicago Tribune are they clicking on those articles to buy your product like is it more for your own notoriety and wanting to get your name in headlines or is it to actually generate revenue for your company no it's absolutely my customers do read the Tribune and I'm in a retail business and yeah lots of people have never heard of my company so yes I absolutely just want to get some publicity for the company cuz I I think we have a fairly unique uh position in the marketplace so yeah I mean I think that you know you have to sit down with any client and talk to them about and honestly if it's a story that I don't think is going to hit with uh with media I will tell them I mean that's part of what I do it's it's and that's interesting with the younger people that are starting up in PR is they're always afraid to look at a client and say no but no is a really powerful word we know this business and we can advise you that that's going to be a waste of your time but let's try this instead because we think it's going to be a better hit for you so the question is do you tell them that on the interview before they've got a retainer or do you tell them that after I'm serious do you tell them on an interview like Jay I got to tell you I don't think we're gonna be able to help you if that's what you want us to do because we don't think it's going to work or do you get the retainer do some research work with the company a little bit and then tell them uh generally when before we get retainer we don't get we don't dive into um all of the details of what they want to get out there in the media like it's more about our process and how we think about things um so but we won't take on a client that we don't think that we can do good work for because you have no idea how frustrating that is for the team to like put all this energy into researching and pitching and finding the right media and doing all this work and then nobody picks it up it's not just damaging for the client in terms of being disappointed but the team is just Crest falling when something doesn't hit and the client paid a lot of money for it so like there's a lot of suffering to go around here I it's bad for everybody there's no question I remember once I worked for a company that retained a PR agency and they really had a hard time getting pressed for a lot of good reasons they weren't really selling anything interesting they didn't have any interesting clients and they paid this agency a lot of money and we had so many meetings with them and they just couldn't get anything to hit and it was kind of understandable but then the CEO of this company I was at was so Furious and even like threatened the pr agency like how dare you take all my money and you didn't get anything done as you could tell from my voice I was already a little bit disgruntled there but um I saw that clash and kind of told myself you know you really should only get a publicist if you've got a great story and you know you have a great story maybe the agency can help pull it out of you but if you have something that's profound uninteresting don't hire a publicist but Sarah said it in the beginning she said they're drinking their own Kool-Aid they think they do have a story and that's the problem well I actually believe that anybody has a good story you just have to spend time with them to figure out what that story is and you know Jay for you you obviously have a lot of opinions about the retail space your PR work should be focused on your business but it should be F focused on building your credibility as a thought leader and profil that you know pushing out your opinions and your by lines well that's what they said actually that's interesting you say that they sent this article out that and she sent it to the retail reporter and she said they're going to eventually want to write about retail and now you are positioned as the go-to person there are other ways to go about doing it is you know watching the news cycle and seeing things that happen I mean there are retail numbers that come out statistics and stuff that come out on a regular basis that that reporters cover like every year the the national retail Federation they they preview um people spending on Valentine's Day right um they make predictions and literally every year they put out this massive report that says oh people are going to spend this month on flowers this amount on jewelry and this amount on chocolate and what we do is about two weeks prior to that we reach out to all of those reporters who have previously covered the topic or the national retail Federation report or are in the retail space and we say Hey listen this report's coming out in 2 weeks we know it because it happens annually we can serve up this expert this expert and this expert if you end up covering it please let us know and then we follow up a week later and say hey just reminding you that this report comes out next week and then the day of when it hits the wires we follow up and so we say hey do you need to talk to our our executive that can tell you all about the jewelry business and um what it looks like on that side so I'm sure your PR agency is doing all of that one of the things that we have been very careful about doing and have done because there's always this distrust with clients that you're actually doing the work so we have built an agency that is super transparent with everything we do we share our media lists I know that's um I'm sure there PR people listening to this saying that's um not good but you share your media list that means you are telling the world who your best contacts are in the media we're no we're selling we we share our media list with our clients they can see who we've reached out to what they've said back to us whether or not they've opened our their email and we're just super transparent with all of our pitching activities um because yeah sometimes things don't hit and you need to prove that you actually still did the work you know what good for you that is very very interesting and I would appreciate that if I was a client that somebody that they're showing me look they're doing this stuff and and you were being very kind to these people and you said I'm sure they're doing this I'm not sure they're doing this I mean we don't know if they're doing this they you know I've learned that people getting get involved with their busy client and they kind of send a letter or two or an email or two I I don't know if they're working hard on this so that would make me feel much better if I was spending the money people often ask me they're like well aren't you afraid the client is just going to take isn't going to just take your media list and go and and reach out to all those reporters themselves and the answer is no because most of our clients they don't have the bandwidth to do what we do what we do is not brain surgery by any stretch to the imagination but it takes a lot of work um and most companies tap into us because they just they don't have that specialty and they need somebody who's going to do that work I would also argue the benefit far exceeds the risk that that's extremely powerful and beneficial for your clients if every once in a while someone does that it's worth it that also raises an interesting question Sarah the the question I get most often as someone who used to be the target of many of these pitches is is it better to hire a firm to do that Outreach or should I as the entrepreneur CEO do it myself I love that Lauren that was going to be my question too I'm glad you're asking it it depends on what stage you're in um like if you are literally just opening your doors and starting out there is nothing wrong with doing your own PR um and there are a lot of um local journalists that are love hearing from a new CEO but there are also journalists that hate hearing from um directly from companies because they don't know how to work with their deadlines before we even go out start pitching something we have put together every every piece of material that a member of the media might need to cover this we have cleared the CEO's calendar we have put together a Dropbox full of images and other files that they might need to really do this story Justice uh an entrepreneur may not know to put all that stuff together it's it's not hard to figure out but like there's nothing wrong with doing your own Outreach initially um but as you grow it's really not probably not where you used to be spending your time like you you should Outsource that the ideal situation for us is when we're working with a A company that has an in in-house PR person who's kind of you know midlevel somebody who can uh keep us updated on everything that's going on um who is dedicated to managing us as the agency um and and then we can do our work well um so it's it's not a bad idea to hire some um onto your team to do that because usually they're pretty good writers and you can use them for other things if you need to I think you brought up two critical pieces one is do they have better things to do with their time in my case my company's big enough it's better for me to go pay someone to do it and two you have the natural ability to do it some people are much better at it than others there's some people that aren't good at it at all so you have to kind of know yourself and know whether you got that skill set because it might not be brain surgery but it's also not walking down the street yeah you have to be kind of a News Junkie too I sometimes look at it as a challenge so for both of my main products um my package Locker in my trash enclosure I set out to get in the New York Times o um the first time I hired a publicist and it hit it was great working with her um we'll always appreciate her for the work she did on that but the second time around I contacted that same journalist who wrote the first article about my product and um you know was able to pitch him but the thing that I did was I gave him everything that he would need to write the story like all of the statistics about package theft everything around the holidays how it increases um gave them the competitors I even gave them links to my competitors because I knew this journalist often will write a product profile about something whether it be vases or pianos or package Lockers in this case so I gave him all of the information about three of my competitors and I made it really easy him to write that story um but that was something where I really thought it through if I were him what would I want and that's what I put in my pitch and it worked like it worked fast too I didn't even need to follow up yeah that's great I mean you you had a a good Instinct you want to serve it up on a platter for them because reporters don't have the bandwidth to like do the whole back and forth thing right they have these crazy deadlines a lot of them also have to do social media as well um to highlight their story stories like some reporters are doing two three different stories every day so it's like the more that you can give them upfront the more likely your story is going to uh resonate with them and if you can get the absolute essence of why why they should care in that first two sentences you've upped your your chances too but like there are resources out there that um a lot of uh startups use um like uh I'm sure you all heard of um help a reporter out Haro um that is a aggregator for reporter in um requests so reporters will put hey I'm looking for someone to talk about um uh new sports drinks hey I'm looking for somebody an expert on uh Botox and they'll put that out and it gets pushed out via email three times a day and you can respond to any of them if you have an expert or somebody who can talk to whatever they're looking for um you can pitch it and it's a great way to kind of step into that in terms of reactive pitching okay so tell us so there's no opinion in this what is the lowest retainer you have charge someone in the last couple years oh that's a good question um well I have a pro bono account right now um and so that's free okay how do you get a program that sounds very good you were my college roommate how about that oh all right so that's one person all right what about for the rest of the world so that hotel that I started out with that very first hotel um in Ketchum Idaho um they pay us um a very small retainer um because well we love like we love working for them they're they're a fun client and they have been with us from the beginning you know Hospitality has struggled over the last couple of years but they still need someone to help get them out there in terms of you know mentions in the media and um I can't say no to them okay so you're charging them $500 a month wow okay but they're a legacy client I take that as a very unusual situation so it shows up tomorrow that let's say they up uh they own a picture framing company and they own a furniture store and they used to write the small business blog for the New York times for 5 years and he thinks he's got a story to tell what do you think and he's extremely fun to be with and everybody loves him most people love them 2% hate them what do you think uh you're going to charge that guy or woman Well we'd have to look into it I mean if they have a good story and they have a consistent you know consistent new like it depends are we going to have to be pulling teeth to get stories out of them no no this person's would just give you 10 stories off the top of their head I feel like you're asking for somebody you know I just it's a friend of mine I I just I'm asking for a friend ask for just give us a range just give us a range is it $55,000 five to 10 well it's five to 10 really yeah that's what I would have thought that's that's the range I mean once you get above 10 you're talking about strategy and creative and social media and you're adding all these add-ons that's good to know but yeah five to 10 is you should be expecting to pay five to 10 for regular PR um for uh for most companies but the add-ons can really increase that like if you look at me said well we also want to do influencer relations I'm going to say well we're going to talk about we're going to charge you a couple thousand dollars more for that what do you mean by influencer relations Sarah Oh meaning like you know you want your product to be featured by some Tik Tock um Creator that's influencer relations that's a whole another animal though it is but it's a super I got it but it's different than just I can tell you 20 30 years ago I was at a wait Jay can I stop you for a second that Tik Tok influencer that Sarah's talking about might be a lot more valuable to your Jason home business than getting a story in the Chicago Tribune 100% I agree with Lauren I think we're doing that Tik Tok and Instagram reals it's video is King now like the more that you can get into that content feed the better off you're going to be um especially with newer customers newer customers are not reading newer customers are not reading let's just put it that way they're watching and listening okay good to know can I tell you my PR story from 30 years ago I love to hear it I'm at a business thing I'm on a board there and it's a business group and I meet this PR person and I know this is hard to believe but I was 30 years ago I was more hyper than I am today way more so I'm telling her about my business she says well the first thing someone needs to do for you is calm you down and I said to myself I just had a PR person tell me to calm down that didn't make a whole lot of sense and I'm happy to report that 30 years later I have a pretty sizable company and never heard her name again when I was working in broadcast the first job I got in TV was for a station on Long Island New York and the news director looked at me and he said I hired you despite your voice nice no the very next job I got the news director looked at me and said I hired you because of your voice right so it really depends you know it's one person's opinion Sarah how has it worked out being owned do they leave you alone as they promised yes they do probably too much no but like I have um the CEO COO of that company is is really my my backboard um for me figuring out whether or not my idea is dumb um and so or whether or not I should invest money in something um and they're just they're super supportive I think I won the the lottery on this one has the business been growing do you expect to grow this year so it's been a stressful year and I it's um I made some mistakes last year and had some retainers end at the end of the year so I started out um in the negative Sarah what does it mean to have a retainer end in the negative no no no I just the retainers like the contracts ended in December she lost more business than she gained for the new year right well yeah so um I was um I was a little bit in the red in January um and I had to really step back and be like okay what mistakes that what kind of Cl s that I take on that that put me in this place where I'm not um I'm not uh flush with cash in January and you know part of it was just learning not to have contracts end all at the same time like making sure that when I put together a contract I'm working with a client I say okay well this is a pretty big client and I'm going to have to hire two people to make sure I'm servicing them um I don't want to have another similar size client um have the same end date on their contract because all of a sudden I'm going to have you know two kind of holes to fill if they don't renew well how do you manage that I mean if a client comes along and the timing just happens to coincide you're not going to turn one of them away what's the alternative uh I haven't figured I'm working on that well the alternative is to work really hard during the months that you don't have retainers coming up to try to find some new clients to fill in those gaps it's like it's like retail you want to fill in when it's slower and if if a lot of your stuff comes up December 31st maybe in June they should you should put extra energy into finding some new clients because maybe you don't have any contracts ending in June so that makes sense I've kind of learned along the way that I have to do New Biz like 20 365 days a GE it can't just be when I'm like seeing a cliff you know that's interesting you say that because I've figured out in at least in my business that I'm going to lose 15% of the business every single year between people just dying or moving or running out of the need for picture framing in my picture framing business or just they found somewhere else they like you need to have new business coming in all the time and these companies that think that oh they mooved to some weird location well everyone knows who we are that could be a fatal mistake and in your business you're not in a retail thing where you've got a storefront like in my business between the internet and my storefront and the social media and referrals we're always getting new customers in and your business though it's not as natural what is your best marketing Sarah how how do you get new business well I was going to ask Jay and actually ask Liz how did you find your agency and your PR person how did you find those people the one I views lately the marketing person I hired who has worked out beautifully she um you know she does a lot of stuff with the furniture store and the frame business she worked with them before and she's friends with them and they do a nice job but I'm afraid that they're a little too busy at the moment and um I'm open to yeah maybe I'm drinking my own Kool-Aid but I still believe I've got an interesting story to tell because Lauren you obviously read a lot more than I do I don't know where you're reading all these stories I'm not reading a lot of stories about existing retailers and how they're Fairing and there's a great daily email newsletter Jay is there called the 21 hats Morning Report you might want to check that out I still don't think there's a lot of news out there about talking about someone who's just navigating it but you got your agency through referral right yeah it's yeah Liz how did you get yours mine was through a referral so a very trusted friend who also has a couple of businesses worked with the current person I'm working with on both social PR and like kind of marketing Blended together um but she's not an employee she works kind of more on on a campaign basis and I do four campaigns a year and she's just a very unique find um but part of the reason I like to work individually is in the past both as my own business owner as well as in corporate I also did not like that long hierarchy between the person that sold the business and the person that executes the work I found in almost every case that line or that string is way too long so because I also have an MBA in marketing I don't want to pay for that chain I like working directly with people to give them that direction and I don't want to pay other people to do that if there comes a point and I do think will happen where I need to completely you know hire someone else to be my CMO you know we'll we'll see if we want to do more in-house and build up the team or if we want to do an outsourced more of a marketing team but for now I like working with individuals Siri you said something that is very USP you know unique selling proposition you know you pay for accounting you get your books done you pay for a lawyer you're going to court you pay a PR firm the money just goes out and then you just sit around hoping that something happens you're actually giving them something a report that that is tells that here's all the I think that's great and and I've probably used four PR firms no one's done anything like that um I think that is a tremendous value to the client and it put you on the same team a little bit like okay I can see you put the effort in it didn't work all right doesn't always work versus oh you just got to wait a while i' I've got some context I'm working on it yeah really I don't know maybe they are maybe they're not yeah but you had um Lauren I think you had asked me how I get new like new business right Y and I think Jay and Liz answered the question for you where it's very rare that um I get somebody coming to me out of the blue um it's always through conversations and referrals and people that know are you doing any actual marketing like for example like give me an example digital marketing are you doing PR for yourself that's my question I mean have you done a story about your own PR story cuz again I haven't read whole lot of articles about PR people I don't know if I ever have read one I do contributed pieces um talking about PR um uh as I can um PR in general doesn't do marketing like you're not going to see an ad for Edelman or Flashman helard or you know any of these really I'd never thought of that going to see that show up in your feed that's not the way PR does it and I don't know why maybe we should maybe you guys will convince me I should do that I would think there's a niche out there if there's plenty of lizes and Jays out there that think about should I hire a PR firm and if I saw an article in somewhere that talked about what we're talking about right now I would find that really compelling and I would call you I think you need to hire a PR firm you think I need a PR well yeah I have to say that it's easier to do PR for other people than for my company and myself um because it's not uh it's not natural for me to push my own self um but you know we do the contributed stuff I'm trying to go to to more conferences just to meet people in person after two years which is nice um but yeah I haven't figured out what that secret sauce is in terms of creating a consistent New Biz funnel talk about Hierro a little bit tell us a bit a little bit more about that Haro is help a reporter out and you can easily um search it and there's two ways to sign up you can sign up as a journalist where you want to place your requests for hey I'm looking to talk to somebody who can tell me about the ins and out of uh predict what's going to happen with the retail space in 2022 or you can sign up as a contributor for some uh where you are can respond to requests from reporters and you literally get an email morning noon and night um of just crazy amounts of requests from reporters this is not to say every request is going to be worth your time there are small blogs that use it there are corporate content um companies that use it to to fill out their the their client blogs um but every once in a while you get somebody from the Chicago Tribune that's looking for an expert on x y and z and I've used Haro to to do their Outreach there are a lot of other tools like that um there's something called profet that um cision does and there are a couple other resources a lot of reporters especially on the lifestyle side are using um substack to do their callouts excellent answer very valuable thank you it's great I used herrow in the past and um I found it overwhelming how many returns I got but I think that I if there's a way to set up a filter um I would definitely sign up for that again you can you can go in and you can say I only want to get the requests for business or I only want to get the requests for Tech um and it lets you filter that out a little bit or you can have somebody else review it this ran longer than I expected I had all kinds of other things I was going to ask you but uh I'm afraid we're out of time Sarah thanks so much uh for joining the podcast I want to give you the highest award we give out on 21 hits which is the you're not full of certification excellent and you swore I love it Jay where's my certification yours a special one that's coming the next time we were together but you need to wait for it it's going to be beautiful will it be framed it will be framed in a beautiful Italian hand Leaf frame with a eight ply wow Liz I feel really special does Sarah get that as well look for a space on your wall yes everyone's getting one everyone gets an award my thanks to Jay goz Liz picarazzi and Sarah seagull thanks for sharing guys wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l r n at21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess Theron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone