HighRes PR celebrates its one-year anniversary this month. It’s hard to believe only a year ago, we were testing out company names, logos, having intro calls with first potential clients. Fast forward to today, HighRes PR has become a media relations staple among clients in healthcare, technology, finance, B2B marketplaces – even connected clothing and digital business cards!
Milestones at the one-year mark:
- 16 clients
- 200+ media placements
- Billions of impressions
In looking back, perhaps the biggest challenge I overcame was knowing when and how to say “no.” I joked that HighRes became official when my first cold email came in about buying cleaning supplies for the office managers. While I disregarded that one, I did dedicate time to misfit presentations, calls, self-proclaimed connectors and unrelated offers or information that was blasted out by the hundreds. In any aspect of my business, I didn’t want to be the company driving with square wheels because I didn’t listen to the round-wheel salesperson, but reducing that fear has been helpful in terms of time allocation.
Also in hindsight, here are a couple tips I’d recommend, even though I don’t like overarching advice without knowing a person’s specific situation:
1. Sanity-check your offering, less so business operations:
If you’re wondering if you can start your own business, focus less on whether you know how to run and operate a business; instead, ask yourself if you truly know all facets of the work: AKA the job, the grind, the service/product you want to provide. If you trust you know all the ins and outs of the offering you want to provide, it’s a good sign. No one knows the “business side” before learning about it and trying it the first time, but in many instances, that should not be an impasse to trying to become an entrepreneur. A good business consultant, advisor and various service providers can help you immensely with the backend business side, but you’re setting yourself up for a tough situation if you don’t know what you’re offering better than most everyone.
2. Team up with smart people who like to buy the first round – buy them the first round – and then see what happens:
The best mentors, consultants and service providers I’ve worked with are simply generous people. Ask yourself if a potential service partner or provider is the type of person who’s giving of their time and effort, or if they’re more so the type who bills you 10 minutes for the act of mailing you an invoice. This consideration is at least as important as their experience and know-how. And, importantly too – be generous to them as much as you can: this could be with simple acknowledgements and thank-you’s (especially when you’re cash strapped ahead of day one), offering your service or product to them as a loose for-trade of sorts, being generous and accommodating with your time too – even though they’re helping you, and more along this line of thinking. The best working agreements are less so perfectly spelled-out contracts, and more so simply between people who are good to each other.
It’s been an amazing first year, and I can’t wait to see what happens in year two!
