I Think You Need to Hire a PR Firm

Introduction:

This week, we welcome a new regular to the 21 Hats Podcast crew: Sarah Segal, founder and CEO of Segal Communications, a public relations firm based in San Francisco. First, Sarah tells Jay Goltz 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’s still figuring out how to attract new business.

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

Sarah Segal is founder and CEO of Segal Communications.

Jay Goltz is founder and CEO of The Goltz Group.

Liz Picarazzi is founder and CEO of Citibin.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word Productions.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
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 about your journey, how you got to this point. Let me start by asking: If I’m not mistaken, you used to do something noble with your life. Weren’t you once a journalist?

Sarah Segal:
Yes, I was a journalist for the first half of my career. I worked behind the scenes for NBC and CBS and even Fox News Channel in New York City in the ‘90s and 2000s, 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.

Loren Feldman:
Not really the dark side.

Sarah Segal:
Well, not really no. It’s just kind of a running joke among people who leave journalism that PR is the unvirtuous side of the coin.

Loren Feldman:
But a way to make a living.

Sarah Segal:
A much more affordable lifestyle, yes, absolutely. And to give you a little segue on that, basically what happened was, I was a reporter at a local television station in San Francisco called KRON4. And I was a general assignment reporter. I was a VJ, meaning that I shot, edited, and produced all of my own work in the field. I stood in front of burning buildings, I covered floods, I covered shootings, I covered all the bleeds-it-leads news.

And there was a story that really kind of made me wake up one morning and say, “You know what? I think I need a change of pace. I can’t really deal with the blood and gore anymore.” I had small children at the time, and I needed to do something a little bit different. I had been in contact with many public relations folks throughout my career and figured I’d give it a shot. So that’s how I ended up in PR.

Loren Feldman:
You first took a job with a PR firm?

Sarah Segal:
No, I actually took a job with an e-commerce company. It was a husband-and-wife team, and two to three days a week, I would go and I’d work in their warehouse doing PR. She was a former attorney who just knew how to do PR and supported that side of the business and taught me everything that she knew. And so I spent a good year or so with them before moving in-house for a company called CafePress, which was a big print-on-demand company for T-shirts.

Loren Feldman:
And how did you come to own your own firm?

Sarah Segal:
Well, after CafePress closed their California offices, I bounced around to a couple different agencies, and I was downsized from my one agency. When I was downsized, I took another job with a company that didn’t really work out. We spoke different languages, and I left that job.

And at that time, 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?” I suffer from imposter syndrome, and I was like, “Why would you want me to do it?” He’s like, “Well, because you know how to do it.” He had been the person who hired me initially at CafePress.

And so I went ahead and did that. And my friend at the time, who was disliking her position at a large PR agency, 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.

Loren Feldman:
So you were partners.

Sarah Segal:
I was partners. My company was originally Voorhees Segal. Victoria Voorhees was my partner, and for the first couple of years, we were just work spouses and did everything together. But she had decided to leave the company at the end of our second year. She just had to prioritize having more of a stable paycheck. Because, as you know, being an entrepreneur, starting your own agency, you’re going to be the last people who are paid. And so she left, and it took a lot out of me, but I was like, “You know what? I can do this.”

Loren Feldman:
So where are you today? How big is the firm?

Sarah Segal:
Well—you’re going to ask me numbers, and I’m very bad at this—we have six full-time people. We just hired another person. She starts next Thursday. We’re very excited. And then we have a handful of freelancers and consultants who we work with, because there are a lot of people who don’t want to work full-time. And they’re just happy to do the work that we need and then disappear until a new project comes up.

Loren Feldman:
And your revenues?

Sarah Segal:
My revenues. So last year, we made a million dollars. And at the end of the year, I was like, “Yeah, this is great. We’re doing really well. I’m gonna put my stamp on making 2 million this year.”

Jay Goltz:
Wait, you grossed a million? You didn’t make a million, I assume?

Sarah Segal:
No, we grossed. Yeah.

Jay Goltz:
Grossed, okay.

Loren Feldman:
And do you focus on any particular type of client? Do you have a specialty?

Sarah Segal:
That’s actually a sore subject for me.

Loren Feldman:
How so?

Sarah Segal:
Every marketing guru will tell you the same thing. They say, “Well, you need to really figure out what your specialty is, and then hang your hat on that specialty, and then grow your business based on that specialty.” And usually, it’s like food and beverage or hospitality or consumer tech. I have failed at doing that. Part of the reason is, I really have just a natural curiosity about so many verticals, that we will do everything from a donut shop to a high-tech product in the hospitality technology space. So 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.

Loren Feldman:
I don’t think I knew there was a hospitality technology space.

Sarah Segal:
Oh, there is. I’ll tell you all about it.

Loren Feldman:
Give us an example.

Sarah Segal:
So one of my clients is a company called Relay. They have a really interesting story because they ended up pivoting, but 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 a large warehouse, the way that most companies have their employees who are on the frontline communicate is through walkie-talkies. They can’t walk around with a laptop up and the 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, and it’s connected to the cloud. And what was interesting is they originally started out as an alternative phone for kids, because it didn’t have a screen. But then they started having all of these hotels place orders for 50 or more of their product, and so they had to make not a pivot but I think just took a different path. But that’s an example of hospitality technology.

Jay Goltz:
So how long have you been on your own without the partner?

Sarah Segal:
I was literally on my own for like three weeks. And then I got a call from this contact of mine who had kind of played the role of an advisor to me in growing a business and said, “I saw that your business partner left. We’d be interested in buying you, because we run a crisis communications and corporate communications shop. And we would like to find someone who can do just regular PR and social for our clients.”

So we’re not losing an opportunity with our current clients. Because they would have people come to them for crises, 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. This was in the middle of the pandemic, so it took about a year for it to happen. I was acquired officially last year.

Loren Feldman:
And why did you decide to sell?

Sarah Segal:
So I’m sure you guys can feel the pain in this, but like, it was very stressful. 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 billables were paid and all of that was just a horrible time suck for me. And I didn’t get to do the fun stuff anymore.

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. And 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’re gonna make your own decisions. We’re here as a backboard for you. But we will provide all the back-end infrastructure for you. We’ll give you a general counsel. We’ll give you somebody who manages all your billing and accounting. We’ll do all of that behind the scenes.” They made a compelling argument. And I said, “Yes.”

Jay Goltz:
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 the billing and all the infrastructure, but that you had a ready pool of customers who were theirs, who you were able to plug right in. And it just was good for everybody.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, it was good for everybody. I mean, I had to think about it. I’m sure that there are things that I would have changed. Initially, there was a short period of time where we were considering rebranding my agency to be branded with the crisis communications agency. And as we went through that process, we really kind of realized that it was like oil and water, in that if you’re looking for a crisis communication agency, you’re not necessarily going to be happy to see donut PR on the website. So we quickly decided that we would keep the brands as is.

Jay Goltz:
So now you’ve got crisis management and between-crisis management. Because when you’re in business, that’s what we do. We go from we have our crisis, and then we have non-crisis for a while. It goes back and forth.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, it’s good not to hear—

Jay Goltz:
Liz, I hear you laughing. You get what I’m saying?

Loren Feldman:
We get it. We get it.

Liz Picarazzi:
Yeah, of course I do. Sarah, as a consumer of PR and marketing services, one thing that I’m always a little confused about is whether I should go with a full-service agency that does across-the-board PR, marketing, social, or whether I should hire someone to be more specific. I think that my answer has often lately been more: Get someone specific to do the PR work. Sometimes it’s even me. But I know that when I’m looking for marketing and PR services, they’re often bundled together. And just curious to see how you structured your company and how you delineate between the marketing and the PR work.

Sarah Segal:
Well, PR is essentially a branch of marketing. And if you look at most PR agencies, the definition between what they do and what a traditional department does—there’s a lot of gray area. The decision between going with a full-service agency and—are you talking about hiring somebody internally or an independent contractor?

Liz Picarazzi:
Independent, like an independent publicist. Or go with an agency marketing that can do both.

Sarah Segal:
Well, it really depends on what you want to do. An independent publicist is going to be able to get you earned media hits, right? But a full-service agency is probably going to be able to do that, plus do influencer relations, probably do your social media handles, maybe do some digital ad buys for you, offer a creative. I mean, you can grow, but there’s an expense with that. It depends on your budget, and it depends on really what services that you see that you’re going to need a year away.

Jay Goltz:
So I’ve been through four or five PR firms over the years, and there’s a point where I just think it’s difficult to get someone to pay attention. So my question is: If someone’s got a $2 or $3 million company, and they’re looking for a PR person, can you bill enough to be worth your while, and it’s gonna be worth it for them? I mean, when you get to $10-20 million, okay, 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 can see sending somebody?

Sarah Segal:
Oh, you mean in terms of retainer?

Jay Goltz:
Yeah.

Sarah Segal:
The smallest bill? Well, it really depends on the kind of company that you’re working with. I kind of look at it in three ways. There’s the really easy consumer companies that 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, because it’s really about numbers.

And then you have 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, but they have no natural news. And honestly, we charge them more, because what happens is we actually have to go in 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.

Jay Goltz:
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?” So that’s what I need PR for, if I’m hitting my 44th anniversary? Not the fact that we’ve been around for 44 years, that I grew the largest framing business in the country? I mean, I’ve got some interesting business stories, I believe, and she wants to know: Can I do an anniversary sale or something? And maybe she’s right. I don’t know.

Liz Picarazzi:
All of your accomplishments then go into that article—all of your many accomplishments.

Sarah Segal:
She’s just looking for a hook.

Jay Goltz:
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 hired a PR firm—they come out, make a presentation, and they stick some 23-year-old on your account and bill you about four grand, three grand, maybe two grand a month. And then when you call them: “Well, things take time.” And then it peters out, and nothing happens. And I’ve tried that a few times. I’ve had some good hits. But I certainly don’t feel like I’ve figured it out. I haven’t.

Sarah Segal:
There are a lot of agencies that will do that. They’ll give you their dog-and-pony show, all the VPs will show up to the meeting, they’ll say all the things that you want to hear, and then they disappear. But there are a lot of agencies that don’t do that, where their executives are still leading the charge.

I’m on 99 percent of our client calls, because I need to know what’s going on with the clients and help them figure out what those stories are. Because maybe an anniversary is not the right hook. But you can also look at data. Do you have any data that you can look at internally that spell out a larger trend in society? That’s also a way of developing a hook, by looking at the materials that you create in-house to get that recognition.

Jay Goltz:
I shared this with Loren. I wrote an article called, “Is Retail an Endangered 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 a couple months. Nothing’s happened yet.

But here’s some interesting retail stuff that, it’s not out there at all. I mean, like for instance, I believe if you’re a small retailer, you ought to think about buying your own building, because 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 bust coming, between the freight costs and the digital marketing costs. 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 complicated. And you don’t read about this anywhere. And I thought that’s a story.

Loren Feldman:
Well, I wouldn’t say not anywhere.

Jay Goltz:
I don’t know, I haven’t seen any of those things discussed in any way. Tell me. I haven’t read any article that talked about how rising shipping costs are putting the squeeze on these companies doing free shipping. And many of those companies have …

Loren Feldman:
There have been lots of stories about how direct-to-consumer businesses are struggling because both the cost of shipping and the cost of marketing digitally have gone way up. So there has been some of that. That’s not to say that you don’t have a good story to tell.

I’m curious, Sarah, how do you handle the situation when a client like Jay—not that he would necessarily do this—a client who has what he or she believes is a good story to tell comes to you and says, “I would like this placed in the Chicago Tribune or The Wall Street Journal”?

Jay Goltz:
Which is exactly what I did. Yes, I did that. I said, “I want it in the Tribune.”

Loren Feldman:
What do you tell somebody who has that kind of expectation?

Sarah Segal:
Well, first of all, I’m gonna go back to them. I’m gotta say, “Well, who buys your products? What is the value of you being in the Chicago Tribune? Are your customers reading the Chicago Tribune? Are they clicking on those articles to buy your product? Is it more for your own notoriety and wanting to get your name in the headlines? Or is it to actually generate revenue for your company?”

Jay Goltz:
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, because I think we have a fairly unique position in the marketplace.

Sarah Segal:
So yeah, I mean, I think that you have to sit down with any client and talk to them about what you need. And honestly, if it’s a story that I don’t think is going to hit with media, I will tell them. I mean, that’s part of what I do. And that’s interesting with the younger people who 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 gonna be a better hit for you.”

Jay Goltz:
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’ve gotta tell you, I don’t think we’re gonna be able to help you if that’s what you want to do, because we don’t think that’s going to work”? Or do you get the retainer, do some research, work with the company a little bit, and then tell them?

Sarah Segal:
Generally, before we get a retainer, we don’t dive into all the details of what they want to get out there in the media. It’s more about our process and how we think about things. 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 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 crestfallen when something doesn’t hit.

Jay Goltz:
And the client paid a lot of money for it. So like there’s a lot of suffering to go around here. It’s bad for everybody. There’s no question.

Liz Picarazzi:
I remember once I worked for a company that retained a PR agency, and they really had a hard time getting press 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 threatened the PR agency: “How dare you take all my money and you didn’t get anything done?” As you can tell from my voice, I was already a little bit disgruntled there. But I saw that clash and kind of told myself, “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 profoundly uninteresting, don’t hire a publicist.”

Jay Goltz:
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.

Sarah Segal:
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 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 focused on building your credibility as a thought leader and profiling that, pushing out your opinions and your bylines.

Jay Goltz:
Well, that’s what they said. Actually, that’s interesting you say that. They sent this article out. 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.”

Sarah Segal:
There are other ways to go about doing it: watching the news cycle and seeing things that happen. I mean, there are retail numbers, statistics and stuff, that come out on a regular basis that reporters cover. Every year, The National Retail Federation previews people spending on Valentine’s Day. They make predictions. And literally, every year, they put out this massive report that says, “Oh, people are gonna spend this money 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 The National Retail Federation report, or are in the retail space, and we say, “Hey, listen, this report is coming out in two 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 we say, “Hey, do you need to talk to our executive who can tell you all about the jewelry business and 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’m sure there are PR people listening to this thinking, “That’s not good.”

Loren Feldman:
You share your media list. That means you are telling the world who your best contacts are in the media?

Sarah Segal:
No, we share our media lists 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 email. And we’re just super transparent with all of our pitching activities. Because, yeah, sometimes things don’t hit, and you need to prove that you actually still did the work.

Jay Goltz:
You know what, good for you. That is very, very interesting, and I would appreciate that if I was a client. They’re showing me, “Look, we’re doing this stuff.” 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. I’ve learned that people can get involved with their busy client, and they kind of send a letter or an email or two. I don’t know if they’re working hard on this. That would make me feel much better if I were spending the money.

Sarah Segal:
People often ask me, they’re like, “Well, aren’t you afraid the client is just going to take your media list and go 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 of the imagination, but it takes a lot of work. And most companies tap into us because they just don’t have that specialty, and they need somebody who’s going to do that work.

Jay Goltz:
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.

Loren Feldman:
That also raises an interesting question, Sarah. 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?”

Liz Picarazzi:
I love that. Loren, that was gonna be my question too. I’m glad you’re asking it.

Sarah Segal:
It depends on what stage you’re in. Like, if you’re literally just opening your doors and starting out, there’s nothing wrong with doing your own PR. And there are a lot of local journalists who love hearing from a new CEO. But there are also journalists who hate hearing directly from companies because they don’t know how to work with their deadlines.

Before we even go out and start pitching something, we have put together 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. An entrepreneur may not know to put all that stuff together.

It’s not hard to figure out, but there’s nothing wrong with doing your own outreach initially. But as you grow, it’s probably not where you should be spending your time. You should outsource that.

The ideal situation for us is when we’re working with a company that has an in-house PR person who’s kind of mid-level, somebody who can keep us updated on everything that’s going on, who’s dedicated to managing us as the agency, and then we can do our work well. So it’s not a bad idea to hire somebody 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.

Jay Goltz:
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: Do you have the natural ability to do it? Some people are much better at it than others, or some people aren’t good at it at all. So you have to kind of know yourself and know whether you’ve got that skill-set, because it might not be brain surgery, but it’s also not walking down the street.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, you have to kind of be a news junkie too.

Liz Picarazzi:
I sometimes look at it as a challenge. So for both of my main products, my package locker and my trash enclosure, I set out to get in The New York Times. The first time, I hired a publicist, and it hit. It was great working with her, and I will 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 I was able to pitch him.

But the thing that I did was, I gave him everything that he would need to write the story—all the statistics about package theft, everything around the holidays, how it increases, gave him the competitors. I even gave him 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 the information about three of my competitors, and I made it really easy for him to write that story. 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.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, that’s great. I mean, you had a gut instinct. You want to serve it up on a platter for them, because reporters don’t have the bandwidth to do the whole back and forth thing. They have these crazy deadlines. A lot of them also have to do social media, as well, to highlight their stories. Some reporters are doing two or 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 resonate with them. And if you can get the absolute essence of why they should care in those first two sentences, you’ve upped your chances, too.

But there are resources out there that a lot of startups use. I’m sure you’ve all heard of Help a Reporter Out—HARO. That is an aggregator for reporter requests. So reporters will put, “Hey, I’m looking for someone to talk about new sports drinks.” “Hey, I’m looking for an expert on 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, you can pitch it. And it’s a great way to kind of step into that, in terms of reactive pitching.

Jay Goltz:
Okay, tell us—so there’s no opinion in this—what is the lowest retainer you have charged someone in the last couple years?

Sarah Segal:
Oh, that’s a good question. Well, I have a pro bono account right now. And so that’s free.

Jay Goltz:
How do you get on that program? That sounds very good.

Sarah Segal:
You were my college roommate. How about that?

Jay Goltz:
Oh, all right, so that’s one person. What about for the rest of the world?

Sarah Segal:
So that hotel that I started out with—that very first hotel in Ketchum, Idaho—they pay us a very small retainer, because we love working for them. 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 mentions in the media, and I can’t say no to them.

Jay Goltz:
Okay, so you’re charging them…?

Sarah Segal:
Five hundred dollars a month.

Jay Goltz:
Wow. Okay.

Sarah Segal:
They’re a legacy client.

Jay Goltz:
I take that as a very unusual situation. If someone shows up tomorrow—let’s say 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 five 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 him. Two percent hate him. What do you think you’re going to charge that guy or woman?

Sarah Segal:
Well, we’d have to look into it. And we have to have a good story, and they have consistent news. Like it depends, are we going to have to be pulling teeth to get stories out of them?

Jay Goltz:
No, no, this person would just give you 10 stories off the top of their head.

Sarah Segal:
I feel like you’re asking for somebody you know.

Jay Goltz:
It’s a friend of mine. Just give us a range. Is it $5,000? Is it $5,000 to $10,000?

Sarah Segal:
Well, yes, five to 10, really.

Jay Goltz:
Okay, that’s what I would have thought.

Sarah Segal:
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 add-ons.

Jay Goltz:
Okay, that’s good to know.

Sarah Segal:
But yeah, you should be expecting to pay five to 10 for regular PR for most companies. But the add-ons can really increase that. Like, if you look at me and say, “Well, we also want to do influencer relations,” I’m gonna say, “Well, we’re gonna charge you a couple thousand dollars more.”

Loren Feldman:
What do you mean by influencer relations?

Sarah Segal:
Meaning like, you want your product to be featured by some TikTok creator. That’s influencer relations.

Jay Goltz:
That’s a whole ‘nother animal, though.

Sarah Segal:
It is, but it’s a super lucrative animal.

Jay Goltz:
No, no, I got it. But it’s different than… I can tell you, 20, 30 years ago, I was at a—

Loren Feldman:
Jay, can I stop you for a second? That TikTok influencer that Sara’s talking about might be a lot more valuable to your Jayson Home business than getting a story in the Chicago Tribune.

Sarah Segal:
One hundred percent. I agree with Loren.

Jay Goltz:
I think we’re doing that.

Sarah Segal:
TikTok and Instagram Reels, video is king now. The more that you can get into that content feed, the better off you’re going to be, 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.

Jay Goltz:
Okay, good to know. Can I tell you my PR story from 30 years ago?

Sarah Segal:
I’d love to hear it.

Jay Goltz:
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 30 years ago. I was more hyper than I am today—way more. So I’m telling her about my business, and 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.” It 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.

Sarah Segal:
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.”

Jay Goltz:
Nice. Ugh.

Sarah Segal:
The very next job I got, the news director looked at me and said, “I hired you because of your voice.” So it really depends, you know. It’s one person’s opinion.

Loren Feldman:
Sarah, how’s it worked out being owned? Do they leave you alone—as they promised?

Sarah Segal:
Yes, they do. Probably too much. The COO of that company is really my backboard for me figuring out whether or not my idea is dumb. Or whether or not I should invest money in something. They’re just super supportive. I think I won the lottery on this one.

Loren Feldman:
Has the business been growing? Do you expect to grow this year?

Sarah Segal:
So it’s been a stressful year. I made some mistakes last year and had some retainers end at the end of the year. So I started out in the negative.

Loren Feldman:
What does it mean to have a retainer end in the negative?

Sarah Segal:
No, no, the retainers—the contracts—ended in December.

Jay Goltz:
She lost more business than she gained for the new year.

Sarah Segal:
Well, yeah, I was a little bit in the red in January. And I had to really step back and be like, “Okay, what kind of clients did I take on that put me in this place where I’m not flush with cash in January?” And 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. I don’t want to have another similar-size client have the same end date on their contract. Because all of a sudden, I would have two holes to fill if they don’t renew.

Loren Feldman:
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?

Sarah Segal:
I haven’t figured—I’m working on that.

Jay Goltz:
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 retail. You want to fill in when it’s slower. And if a lot of your stuff comes up December 31st, maybe in June, you should put some extra energy into finding some new clients. Because maybe you don’t have any contracts ending in June. So that makes sense.

Sarah Segal:
I’ve kind of learned along the way that I have to do new biz 365 days of the year. Like, it can’t just be when I’m like seeing a cliff.

Jay Goltz:
That’s interesting you say that, because I’ve figured out, at least in my business, that I’m going to lose 15 percent of the business every single year between people just dying, or moving, or running out of the need for picture framing and my picture frame business. Or just they found somewhere else they like. You need to have new business coming in all the time.

And these companies that move to some weird location, “Oh, 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. In my business, between the internet, and my storefront, and the social media, and referrals, we’re always getting new customers. In your business, though, it’s not as natural.

Loren Feldman:
What is your best marketing, Sarah? How do you get new business?

Sarah Segal:
Well, I was gonna ask Jay, and actually ask Liz—how did you find your agency and your PR person? How did you find those people?

Jay Goltz:
The one I’ve used lately, the marketing person I hired who has worked out beautifully—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 yeah, maybe I’m drinking my own Kool-Aid. But I still believe I’ve got an interesting story to tell because, Loren, 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 faring and—

Loren Feldman:
There’s a great daily email newsletter, Jay.

Jay Goltz:
Is there?

Loren Feldman:
It’s called the 21 Hats Morning Report. You might want to check it out.

Jay Goltz:
I still don’t think there’s a lot of news out there, talking about someone who’s just navigating it.

Sarah Segal:
But you got your agency through referral, right?

Jay Goltz:
Yeah.

Sarah Segal:
Liz, how did you get yours?

Liz Picarazzi:
Mine was through 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 that kind of marketing blended together. But she’s not an employee. She works kind of more on a campaign basis, and I do four campaigns a year. And she’s just a very unique find.

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 who 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 it will happen where I need to completely hire someone else to be my CMO—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.

Jay Goltz:
Sarah, 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 happened. You’re actually giving them something: a report that tells, “Here’s all the conversations.” I think that’s great. And I’ve probably used four PR firms. No one’s done anything like that. I think that is a tremendous value to the client, and it puts you on the same team a little bit. Like, “Okay, I can see you put the effort in. It didn’t work. All right, it doesn’t always work.” Versus, “Oh, you’ve just got to wait a while. I’ve got some contacts I’m working on.” Yeah, really? I don’t know. Maybe they are. Maybe they’re not.

Sarah Segal:
Yeah, but Loren, I think you had asked me how I get new business, right? I think Jay and Liz answered the question for you. It’s very rare that I get somebody coming to me out of the blue. It’s always through conversations and referrals and people that know…

Loren Feldman:
Are you doing any actual marketing?

Sarah Segal:8
Like, give me an example.

Loren Feldman:
Digital marketing?

Jay Goltz:
Are you doing PR for yourself? That’s my question. I mean, have you done a story about your own PR story? Because, again, I haven’t read a whole lot of articles about PR people. I don’t know if I ever have read one.

Sarah Segal:
I do contributed pieces talking about PR, as I can. PR in general doesn’t do marketing. You’re not going to see an ad for Edelman or FleishmanHillard or any of these. You’re not going to see them 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.

Jay Goltz:
I would think there’s a niche out there. There’s plenty of Liz’s and Jay’s out there who think about, “Should I hire a PR firm?” If I saw an article 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.

Sarah Segal:
Well, yeah, I have to say that it’s easier to do PR for other people than for my company and myself. Because it’s not natural for me to push my own self, but we do the contributed stuff. I’m trying to go to more conferences, just to meet people in person after two years, which is nice. But yeah, I haven’t figured out what that secret sauce is, in terms of creating a consistent new biz funnel.

Jay Goltz:
Talk about HARO. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Sarah Segal:
Haro is Help a Reporter Out, and you can easily search it. And there are 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 outs of predicting what’s going to happen with the retail space in 2022.” Or you can sign up as a contributor where you can respond to requests from reporters. And you literally get an email, morning, noon and night, 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 companies that use it to fill out their client blogs. 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 use HARO to do their outreach. There are a lot of other tools like that. There’s something called ProfNet that Cision does. And there are a couple other resources. A lot of reporters, especially on the lifestyle side, are using Substack to do their call-outs.

Jay Goltz:
Excellent answer. It’s really valuable. Thank you.

Liz Picarazzi:
It’s great. I’ve used HARO in the past, and I found it overwhelming how many returns I got, but I think that if there’s a way to set up a filter, I would definitely sign up for that again.

Sarah Segal:
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.” And it lets you filter that out a little bit.

Loren Feldman:
Or you can have somebody else review it. This went longer than I expected. I had all kinds of other things I was going to ask you, but I’m afraid we’re out of time. Sarah, thanks so much for joining the podcast.

Jay Goltz:
Sarah, I want to give you the highest award we give out on 21 Hats, which is the “You’re not full of shit” certification. Excellent.

Sarah Segal:
And you swore. I love it.

Liz Picarazzi:
Jay, where’s my certification?

Jay Goltz:
Yours is a special one that’s coming the next time we’re together. You need to wait for it, but it’s going to be beautiful.

Liz Picarazzi:
Will it be framed?

Jay Goltz:
It will be framed in a beautiful Italian hand-leafed frame with an eight-ply mat.

Loren Feldman:
Wow, Liz!

Liz Picarazzi:
I feel really special. Does Sarah get that as well?

Jay Goltz:
Look for a space on your wall. Yes, everyone’s getting one. Everyone gets an award. [Laughter]

Loren Feldman:
My thanks to Jay Goltz, Liz Picarazzi, and Sarah Segal. As always, thanks for sharing guys.