How to Bring Media Attention to Your Place of Business

If your business has a brick and mortar location, it could be highly valuable to earn on-site media coverage to showcase your space and give your customers better insight into what you do and who you are. But how does a business attract media attention? If you’re among the lucky few, the media might find you; however this is not commonly the case!

Instead, you need to take matters into your own hands by developing a strategy to get in front of your desired media outlets and make it undeniable as to why they should feature your place of business in an upcoming news segment.

Take a look at a few of our tried and true tips for bringing media attention to your place of business – and commit to trying these out for yourself in 2019!

1. Find the right angle.

It takes a lot more than saying “Hey, come out and do a story on my business so I can attract more customers!” Of course that’s the underlying motive for basically every business wishing to earn media coverage, however you need to paint a more interesting picture for the media. You need to find the right angle. Some options might include a special anniversary or milestone for your business. Or maybe it’s something related to a holiday, special occasion or piece of history in your local community. If you’re really struggling to find a compelling angle, think of how you can tie your story back to something charitable or “feel good.”

 2. Put effort into your pitch.

With the right angle lined up, don’t skimp on the quality of your pitch. The key to a perfect pitch is to find the right balance of being direct, courteous and creative. Make sure to address the WIFM (What’s In It For Me) so that the media can clearly see how this would interest their audience. With a quality pitch and a creative angle, you will drastically increase your chances of getting picked up.

 3. Follow-up and follow-through. 

Now that you have their attention, you need to follow-up with your pitch. If you get an interested response, act quickly. Nail down the time and location of the interview – and all the nitty gritty details. Quickly decide who will be on air and their key talking points. Make it as easy and seamless as possible for the media to cover a great story and you will form the foundation for a long-term relationship that could yield more coverage in the future!

On the flip side, should you get a “No” response, or no response at all, you need to follow-through. Be persistent, but friendly. In your follow-up email ask for a courtesy “No” if they have left you hanging, simply so you can close the books on this pitch. If they do say “No” kindly ask for a piece of advice as to how you can better pitch to them in the future. Maybe they don’t cover that beat – but you might be able to find a new angle in the future that does align with their topics.

 4. Make the most of the media coverage.

If you’ve successfully earned media coverage for your business, be your own best publicity! Ask how soon a link to the story will be ready and set a strategy for sharing. You’ll want to get this out on your social media outlets (personal and business) as well as finding a place for it on your website. Depending upon the coverage, you might also want to further promote it with sponsored social media posts, or create a blog post to tell the story of the behind-the-scenes aspect of the day. There is no limit as to how you can share quality content!

 5. Don’t lose momentum – plan for the future!

Finally and most importantly, don’t lose momentum. You deserve a pat on the back for a successful media pitch, but then it’s time to get back to work. How can you harness the power of this first feature story? Are there other outlets that may now be interested in doing a story as well? Can you find a new angle? Or maybe your strategy is to let a little time pass and then pitch a new angle in the next month or so. The more media coverage you get in a moderate amount of time, the more people will wonder what all the buzz is about!

Have you had success in earning press coverage at your place of business? Share your success story or ask a question that we can help you answer!

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How to Help Your Business Run More Efficiently (Contribution from Kevin Conner)

The following post comes to us from internet entrepreneur, Kevin Conner who is the founder of Broadbandsearch.net. In this blog, Kevin shares a wealth of experience related to starting and running an efficient business.

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How to Help Your Business Run More Efficiently

Efficiency is the difference between a company that doesn’t make it past year five and a business that succeeds for decades to come. Good efficiency practices show dedication to having good management, reduce wasteful spending, and discipline the culture of your business towards regular and sustainable productivity.

Yet how does one create an efficient business? It’s all about the environment you create and the policies you implement (and don’t implement). Above all else, consider it a mindset, a filter through which you should run all your decisions, even if you wind up deciding on the less efficient option in the end.

Here are some main principles you should keep in mind.

Delegate and Trust

While your instincts may at first tell you that heavy oversight is the key to better efficiency, we want to warn you that it will have a limited effect at best or even be counterproductive. While oversight is important, employees generally won’t like having someone perched on their shoulder all of the time and getting approval from you or a manager for minor, non-essential decisions will only bottleneck projects.

If you feel that you need to keep a close eye, then you don’t have an efficiency problem as much as a personnel problem, and it would be wise to find and hire people you can trust to work professionally and efficiently when you’re not around, at least in key positions. After this, trusting employees will ease your mind, generally let employees come up with the most efficient solutions on their own, and let people reach their greatest potential.

Make Sure Services and Utilities Are Effective and Working

If you’re using online services and technological tools to help you run your business or help employees perform tasks, make sure they’re either the best or the best option for the cost. Competition will breed a lot of new developments, and you might not be using the most efficient service or option anymore.

For example, consider the internet connection set up for your office. If its too slow to either upload necessary content to a webpage or, even worse, slow to download items your business needs, it creates a huge problem for your employees, and fixing the issue will be the best thing you can do for your business.

Automate Whatever Would Be Reasonable

Automation has become the new driving force in efficiency, and while the initial costs can be high to start with, getting a program (or even a machine in some cases) can save you a lot of money through wages otherwise spent on menial tasks. As a general rule, try to automate whatever your employees do that doesn’t utilize them in the tasks they are best at and were hired for doing. Paperwork, office chores, and laborious production steps can all often be automated or mostly automated, and you should investigate solutions to those problems.

Consolidate Tasks

By grouping tasks and improving the logistics of your business, you can increase efficiency by a great deal. Try looking at what tasks are commonly done and checking if you can simply have a dedicated block of time to taking care of them instead of them randomly being spaced throughout the day. Increasing flow around the office is a great way to improve efficiency.

Additionally, a group of specialists can likely do a better and faster job than a similar-sized team of generalists all handling their own tasks. See what tasks you can consolidate to one team member (when doing so wouldn’t put your business at risk) and let improvement happen over time. You’ll soon see productivity numbers go up as people adjust well to their updated agendas.

Focus on Improving the Most Time-Consuming Tasks First

This is a short tip, but one you should keep in mind. You may or may not believe in the 80/20 principle, but you’ll likely find that most of the stress and inefficiency in your business is coming from a few places and only a few places. As hard as it might be at times, we recommend you cut right to the core of those problems instead of distracting yourself with minor inefficiencies elsewhere (they’ll still be around once everything else is taken care of).

Review Tasks Regularly

Sometimes doing things as they always have been done is simply not the best choice for some tasks. New solutions appear and employees, when given some time and freedom to solve problems their way, can be extraordinarily innovative. Therefore, we recommend that at regular intervals (three months would be a good starting point for most companies) you look at your business and list out every major (and some minor but time-consuming) tasks your employees do, making changes where they would help.

This might not be something you want to do alone. Your job isn’t necessarily to know the ins and outs of everyone’s job so well that you can do it better than them. Instead, if you’re not entirely certain where to make changes (if that would be wise at all), talk to the employee about their tasks, and what might be done to improve efficiency, and which ones are truly necessary. Working with your best people on course correction will likely be the best path to success.

Conclusion

Your business will naturally have its own unique needs, and we are certain that there are methods that will work for you on top of those above that will vary based on your industry and team makeup. Yet with the above tips and strategies, you’ll find that your business will run more effectively and efficiently, driving growth forward and making everyone involved happier in the process.

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About the author: Kevin Conner is the founder and CEO of Broadbandsearch.net, the U.S.’s leading home services (broadband and TV) search engine. Kevin’s strengths lie in creating a strategic vision and leading a team to successfully execute that vision.

 

Do I Need Advertising or Public Relations?

It’s a really important question – and one that business owners’ return to time and time again. Do I need PR or advertising to grow my business? The answer…it depends! As like most things in life, it’s situational and really depends upon your goal, budget and target audience.

In this blog, I break down some of the most common scenarios businesses face and whether ad or PR is the better strategy to address each. Let’s go!

I want immediate and guaranteed publicity for my business.

You want to start with advertising. With advertising, you get what you pay for, rarely will it be more or less. The benefit of guaranteed media placement is that you can count on it showing up when and where you want it to. If your business needs this immediate boost in publicity and can’t risk anything less, advertising is the way to go – at least to start. Where PR can come in, is when you want to complement this with the power of organic media exposure that, when done right, can garner a whole lot of media attention for a fraction of the cost of paid placement.

I have a limited budget, but a great story to tell.

You want to start with public relations. If you have a naturally great story to tell, your business will do well with the boost of some public relations. PR thrives on taking a great story and bringing it to the forefront of media and before your target audience. With advertising, you have limited space to tell your full story, so it might not have the same impact if you try to fit it into a 15 second commercial spot or on a bill board. With PR, you gain the platform, like a featured segment on the morning news, or several paragraphs in print or online to really dig into the meat of things.

I can communicate my core message in less than 8 words.

You want to start with advertising. This is the reverse scenario of what we described above. Maybe your business is able to fully articulate its unique selling proposition in 8 words or less. In this case, you might better be suited for a strategy more focused on advertising. A short message can be easily communicated through digital ads, short commercials, sponsored social media posts and billboards. Once you determine this short message, you can advertise it consistently throughout these various facets to benefit from repetition.

I want to promote the charitable angle of my business.

You want to start with public relations. Even if your business is for-profit, you can still hitch your wagon to the promotional power of charitable giving. If your business or organization has a genuine charitable component (people can easily tell when you’re not being sincere!), this unlocks a lot of PR opportunities. Your story will more easily be picked up by local media and often TV stations or digital community calendars offer free promotion of such activities. Sure, you can also pay for this promotion, but why? When it’s charitable in nature, think PR first.

My business has some negativity publicity it needs to counteract. 

You want to start with public relations. If you find yourself needing to counteract negative sentiment toward your business, this is a job for public relations. It’s important to add the “human” element to your business in such circumstances. For example, you may want to pitch your CEO for a media interview, host a press conference or issue a press release to address the issue. You can also implement some strategic activities to repair your brand, such as a free community event, open house or giveaway.

People are familiar with my brand, now I need to keep it top of mind.

You want to start with advertising. If you’re an established brand and your target audience is aware of who you are and what you do – congratulations! You’re ahead of most businesses out there. But seriously, this puts you in a prime position to benefit from paid advertising, because what you now need to focus on is maintaining this awareness and staying top of mind. Carefully placed digital, radio, television and/or outdoor advertisements with help you to continue to capitalize on what you’ve worked so hard to create.

What I hope is an obvious disclaimer is that every business and its particular situation is different. While I hope to provide some helpful, general advice and a starting point for your strategizing, it’s important to seek the help of experienced ad/PR professionals who know your market, understand your target audience and can help direct your messaging through the most effective channels.

Do you have another question related to how advertising and public relations are different, yet also work together? Join in the conversation by leaving a comment below.

 

How to Stay Focused While Working from Home

It’s becoming more and more common for people to work from home, either full-time or even just a few days per week. If your career allows you to work virtually, it’s likely you’ve found yourself trying to be productive at home only to be derailed by a myriad of different distractions.

For the last seven years, I’ve grown my public relations business while working exclusively from home. During different periods of time, that included juggling work with infant babies at home and trying to schedule conference calls around nap times. The good news is, I survived! And throughout my experience working from home, I’ve developed quite a few tips and tricks to that have helped me to stay focused and productive.

Here are my go-to tips for staying focused and making the most of your time when working from home. Take a look!

Make a Mental Commute

When you work from home you don’t have the benefit of a commute. Maybe you’ve never viewed a commute as a benefit, but think about it for a moment. Physically moving from one place to another gives you the mental separation of work and home. During your commute you can get yourself in a “work” mindset. When you work from home, however, you have to make a conscious effort to change from your “home” mindset to your work one.

One tip I highly recommend is having a dedicated office space that feels separate from the rest of your house. This allows you to “commute” to your office and on that commute you can clear your mental space and walk into your office ready to work.

Stick to a Routine

Sure, working from home gives you extreme flexibility in your schedule, but this can also be a trap. To be effective when working from home, it’s so important to stick to a routine. There will certainly be days where this routine will be disrupted, but for the most part you must establish a core routine and stick to whenever you can.

Pick a routine that fits your personality and workload. Are you more effective in the early morning or do you thrive in the afternoons? Unlike a traditional office environment with a strict 9-5 schedule, you get to set your own schedule. However, once you set one, let it give your day structure and stability.

Set Your Work Hours

Along with setting a routine, you also need to establish your work hours. When working from home, it’s easy for work and personal life to blend together. If you’re not careful, you’ll find that you’re never fully present in either space, because you can’t separate the two. By setting work hours, you’ll know that from 7am until 3pm (or whatever you choose) is the time to focus exclusively on work-related tasks. Outside of that time, you must train yourself to put work aside, stop checking emails and shift your focus to friends, family and yourself.

Resist Chores and Errands

During your set work hours, resist any and all temptations to dive into tasks that are not directly related to work. I’ll admit that when working from home, I’ll throw in a load of laundry, put away dishes and tidy up some rooms as I walk through. These are small and necessary tasks that shouldn’t divert you from more than a few minutes of work time. The tasks I’m addressing here are the ones that can sabotage your work productivity for hours. Tasks like sorting out your closet, reorganizing a room or running personal errands can steal hours away from your day and can reasonably wait until the evening or weekend.

Give Yourself Small Breaks

Although you want to squeeze the most you can out of every work day, you can only accomplish this by giving yourself small breaks. Why? Because no one can be productive 100% of the work day. We all need mental and physical breaks in order to return back to a task and be even more productive than we would be otherwise. Trust me on this one. Allow yourself short, timed breaks where you can get some fresh air, stretch your legs, get a snack or cup of coffee and then return to your desk ready to work again.

Close Up Shop!

Finally and most importantly, when you’re done for the day – be done! Don’t linger around refreshing your inbox and fishing around for people to ask you for something. Disconnect, go offline and enjoy your time off. After all, you’ve earned it! The best part of having a productive work day is that you can close up shop knowing the most important tasks are taken care of and everything else can wait until tomorrow.

Do you work from a home office? How do you stay focused throughout the day? Share your tips and best practices by leaving a comment below!

 

5 Things Consultants and Freelancers Need to Stop Doing

As a Public Relations consultant, I work with a lot of other consultants and freelancers. The majority of these interactions are fun, inspiring and seamless. However, over the last seven years I’ve run into some consultants and freelancers who do things a little differently.

Don’t get me wrong; I love people who think outside the box. However, when it comes to how some consultants and freelancers bill, I get a little discouraged when I see practices that take advantage of clients. In particular, there are five billing practices that quite frankly I find to be cheap shots. And for this reason, I never do this to my clients or other partners I work with.

Learn what they are!

1. Making sales tax an added line-item

For many purchases, seeing sales tax as a line item on your bill is a pretty standard thing. When it comes to how consultants and freelancers bill, however, I find it a bit tacky to make sales tax an additional line item. Just include it in your hourly rate! Sure, you might feel like you’re making 6% more on every job, but I promise you’re turning off future business that would result in a lot more income long-term. Unless you’re selling someone and actual product or good, adding on sales tax feels like you’re grasping for more dollars.

2. Billing for an initial meeting

As a business owner, you know you need to invest in business development. And yes, this means sitting through a ton of coffee meetings and networking mixers. I never charge a client for an initial meeting, unless it’s specifically scoped out as a service with deliverables – and we’re all clear on the cost and terms. I’ve seen some consultants and freelancers charge their hourly rate for an initial meeting. Especially if that first meetings turns into more work, it’s best to chalk that time up to business development and build trust with your client by not immediately slapping them with a bill. After all, they didn’t bill you for their time to meet with you!

3. Billing for answering emails and phone calls

Maybe even worse than billing for an in-person meeting is billing for every phone call and email you answer for a client. I’ll admit, I’ve run into some long-winded and chat happy people who require more of my time than others, but unless email and phone responses are scoped out in a proposal, I don’t sneak that into a client’s bill. If you’re truly bothered by answering client messages, or you feel like they’re getting out of control, the better thing to do is address it head on with your client and set boundaries for your time.

4. Padding time sheets

Over the last seven years, I’ve gotten a pretty good feel for the amount of time it takes to complete certain projects. It’s pretty essential to giving clients accurate proposal, remaining competitive and staying on budget. What this also means is it’s easy to identify when another consultant or freelancer is listing really high hours for a job you know couldn’t have taken that long to complete. I’ve gone to bat for my clients a time or two to challenge how it takes 2.5 hours to switch out one word on a graphic. The best way to earn more money is to do good work, and more opportunities will come. Padding a time sheet will only help momentarily, then clients will catch on and move to the next freelancer with more reasonable costs and billing practices.

5. Going over budget without notice

My final pet peeve is when consultants or freelancers give you a proposal for the scope of work, but when it comes time to invoice the price has increased – and without notice. I fully understand how projects can expand beyond the initial scope of the proposal, but again the right way to handle this is communication. Inform the client as soon as they’ve exhausted your scoped hours and ask them how they wish to proceed. Better yet, give them a budget for the additional expense to finish the project the way they want it done. More often than not the client will give you the green light to proceed, but it makes a huge difference to get permission, and to be upfront about the larger invoice that will be coming their way.

Do you have another pet peeve to share when it comes to working with consultants and freelancers? Join in the conversation by leaving a comment below!

 

5 Things My Clients Have Taught Me About Public Relations

Throughout my career as a public relations consultant, sure I’ve taught my clients a lot. But what’s been most surprising is how much they’ve taught me in return! Working in a wide range of industries has afforded me the ability to track some powerful trends and spot inconsistencies that require us to rethink strategies.

It should be obvious, yet all too often it’s overlooked at larger firms, that every single organization must have its own unique public relations strategy if they want to see the best return on their investment. Even for businesses in the very same industry, no two strategies should be identical. It simply doesn’t work!

So what are the most valuable PR lessons my clients have taught me along the way? Here are the top PR “best practices” I have learned, not from a textbook, classroom or industry group, but from my clients!

1. Public Relations is a lot more than writing.

When earning my Public Relations degree it felt like the vast majority of what I was doing was creating content in some form or another – pitches, press release, op-eds, video scripts, media talking points, website content, social media content – and the list goes on infinitely!

However, now as a PR consultant in “the real world” I see that content is only the starting point. My clients have taught me that the real value I bring to the table is what I do with the content I create for them. Never should this fall on their shoulders! Rather, I take the lead with our dissemination strategy, never giving up until we get the full attention the content deserves.

2. You don’t know what you don’t know.

My clients have also taught me that I cannot be (nor should I desire to be) a one-man-band of solutions. Rather, I’ve learned to rely on my network of fellow contractors and consultant who serve in a variety of fields and specialties. These counterparts lend advice and expertise to the unique challenges my clients face from time to time. Whether that’s monitoring new SEO trends, understanding advertising best practices or learning how to save some money on the way we design and print a marketing piece, having a network of trusted professionals is what allows me to see my own blind spots. After all, we don’t know what we don’t know!

3. There is no template or formula that works for everyone.

I love the vast variety of industries my clients expose me to. It’s challenging yet rewarding to be able to develop a mini expertise in so many different categories.  What this has taught me, more than anything else, is that there will never be a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to creating a public relations strategy. Everything I do must be custom built. Sure, some similar tactics may carry over, but they will be heavily tailored so that no two email blasts, no two direct mail pieces and no two press releases will ever be the same.

Even the same event for the same client, year-after-year will continue to morph until it’s almost unrecognizable from its first year. That’s a good thing! Through this, my clients teach me that there are no shortcuts, no templates and no magic formula. The value of what I provide is complete customization in everything I do.

4. Complacency will kill your business.

I love when clients come to me with new ideas for how they can revamp their communications efforts! It shows they value the power of communications and also that they’re keeping their eyes and ears open to new trends. What they’re also teaching me is that complacency is a business’s worst enemy. I learn from example. This same passion and drive for trying new things is what inspires me to also try new things! It’s the kick in the butt I need to always strive to take my offering of services to the next level, to forge power partnerships and to restructure business relationships so that everyone benefits.

5. Persistence is key.

Finally and most importantly, I’ve learned that in order to see the greatest return on your investment when it comes to public relations strategy, you have to remain persistent and consistent with your efforts. We live in a society where instant results and instant gratification are expected. However, communication takes time! It also takes many touch points with your target audience for them to really start to pay attention to what you’re saying.

Through having many of my clients serve as examples, I’ve been reminded time and time again that investing in forming real, meaningful relationships with your target audience always yields the great return – and this simply takes persistence!

In your own industry, have you found that your clients or customers have actually helped you to learn things you didn’t know before? Share your story by leaving a comment below!

 

20 Fun Facts About Bennis Public Relations

I love sharing insights into the business I started more than seven years ago, Bennis Public Relations. At just 23 years old, I was well aware I didn’t have everything figured out. Actually I was pretty certain I knew nothing about the entrepreneurial journey I was about to embark upon, but I was certain I was passionate about following this calling and would do whatever it took to make this a successful career.

On a fun and light-hearted note, I want to share some of the little known facts about Bennis Public Relations, and me personally. Entrepreneurs are quarky people, and I am no exception. So as I draw back the curtain a little further, I hope you’ll get a kick out of these facts that are fun, interesting and maybe even a bit strange.

1. My business is named after my maiden name, and my son is also named Bennis. I love that when he gets a little older he’ll realize the business I started from ground up and poured a lot of passion into, also shares his name. Hey, maybe he’ll take it over someday?

2. Less than 2 months after I started this blog on WordPress (as a trial for my own blog building services) I was featured on WordPress’s homepage and as a result I got almost 7,000 views in 1 day. August 24, 2011 still holds my record for most views.

3. My only overhead expenses are $10 a month to Hootsuite and $40 per year to the PA Public Relations Society. Almost unbelievable I know, but it’s true. I don’t pay any other subscriptions, memberships, fees, payroll, rent, etc. (Taxes are a whole other story, of course). I love running a lean business!

4. I have no desire to have employees. I continue to grow every year without having to hire employees by raising my hourly rates, taking on new clients and finding ways to be more efficient with my time. It’s just me (and my network of vendors) and that’s how I like it.

5. One of my titles is the Executive Director of the Carwash Association of Pennsylvania. That’s right, CAP has been my client for several years and for the particular services I provide to them, I serve as the E.D.

6. I rarely work more than 6 hours per day. Again, I LOVE efficiency and I love that with my business model, the more efficient I am, the more time I have to devote to other passions and projects. Some days/weeks I work well over that! But I know those long hours every so often afford me short work days most every other day.

7. When I first started my business, I had just enough clients to pay the rent. I hadn’t figured out how to pay for other expenses or even taxes when I made the entrepreneurial leap to quit my former job. But I hustled hard and went into survival mode. That work ethic had afforded me what I have today.

8. I have successfully turned nearly all “competition” into partnerships and collaboration opportunities. I love meeting with other PR professionals because nearly every time I do I’m able to identify our unique differences and turn them into collaboration opportunities.

9. I started doing freelance public relations work when I was still in college. During my senior year at Penn State University, I met a professional speaker and best-selling author through one of the events I planned through an internship and he and I started doing work together that last for about 5 years. He’s how I bought my first car!

10. My husband is a serial entrepreneur too. Between the two of us, we run four businesses. His current and largest venture right now is a tech startup that provides performance-based fundraising – and it’s changing the world! Read the stories at http://www.pledgeit.org and you’ll see I’m not exaggerating.

11. Throughout running my business, we grew our family by two sons. As an entrepreneur, I can’t really take a maternity leave, so I literally never missed a day of work, even if it meant answering emails from the hospital (yes I packed my laptop in my hospital bag). It’s one of the hard truths of running our own business, but the payback is so worth it!

12. My dad is part owner of Bennis Public Relations. He gave me the money I needed to fully incorporate Bennis Inc. in 2011. He jokes that Jeff Bezos’s dad was the first to invest in Amazon. I don’t know if I’ll afford him quite that payback!

13. My cat, Pinot, has been the closest thing I’ve had to a colleague. She’s been with me since day 1 of starting Bennis Public Relations and lays by my side just about every time I open my lap top to write. She’s also been my most popular blog topic by far!

14. Most of my friends and family have no idea what I do. I’m not offended! Unless you’ve studied it or work in the industry, public relations doesn’t really fit in a standard “box” especially with how it’s evolved thanks to technology. I usually just say I do a lot of writing, and leave it at that.

15. As far as I am aware, I’ve never run into a roadblock for my gender. In the day and age when everyone is shouting “the future is female,” I’ve never found I needed to apologize or compensate for being a female business owner. I simply let my work ethic speak for itself. In fact, I’ve beat many male businesses for different jobs, not based on gender, but based on the ideas and follow-through I bring to the table.

16. A lot of people confuse me with a publicist. Frankly, I think I’d make an awful publicist. While I have worked with people to enhance their personal brand, I most commonly work to enhance the communications and branding for businesses and organizations.

17. In high school I was voted “Most Likely to Succeed.” I thought it was silly at the time – and my mom thought it was pretentious and borderline offensive. Now looking back, I think that title may have subliminally inspired me. And though I didn’t get “Best Dressed,” I think this one has served me a lot better.

18. Though I have a dedicated home office (behind a hidden door to boot) and several office locations in downtown Harrisburg I can use as I wish, I prefer to work from our home living room. I’m a creature of habit!

19. I still have my very first client on retainer – that’s been 7 years now! The work has ebbed and flowed over the years, but I love being able to say I have the consistency of working with clients for many years, some even from the start.

20. And for #20 the fun fact I want to end with is that I’m proud to say I have had the privileged to serve 100+ clients from coast to coast in just seven short years. It may sound crazy, but I serve 25 different client accounts monthly, with many more one-time projects scattered throughout. Entrepreneurship has been a crazy one, but I wouldn’t change it for the world!

So now that you know a little but more about what shapes me, and as a result by public relations business, what fact do you find more interesting? Or maybe you’d like to share your own quarky and random fact.

Join in the conversation by leaving a comment below!