A high-profile PR and marketing expert who’s a serious blogger and well-followed in the Twitterverse (find her at @ConversationAge) just named me among the “100 PR People Worth Following on Twitter.” The list on her Conversation Agent blog is here.
She calls the list professionals who “do PR right.” She writes, “…they participate and contribute, on Twitter and to the profession…” I’m flattered.
Not that this is rocket science, but nothing can paralyze a body quite like the fear of making a mistake, certainly if that fear is reinforced by a leader. The times when I’ve worked for a boss who seemed to spend their days just waiting for me to stumble, my creativity flat-lined and my innovation hibernated. By contrast, when I’ve been given latitude to make mistakes without fear of disproportionate criticism, I’ve flourished.
This little life lesson came to me recently on, of all places, the flag football field. In that particular environment, I’m embarrassed to admit that sometimes, I have been that oppressive leader – even when I’m not in charge. I have been an agent for ensuring that neither my teammates nor I have a particularly great time.
I’ve known this for a while but have been oddly unable to address it. I’ve spent more time making excuses for my impatience. But this past Sunday, I tried an experiment. For two games, I completely lightened up. I focused on my attitude, not other peoples’ performance. I cast aside frustration. I encouraged my teammates to take it easy, even when the game was on the line, and made damn sure I led by example. I reminded myself that winning flag football games simply does not matter. I mean, really…
It was a little bumpy at first. Then everyone played really well. Then our team played far better than it had up until then. Then we won our games with authority. Then I said, “Wow.” And I’ve scarcely stopped thinking about it since.
Last week I participated in a brief business-planning retreat for a friend. It was all about probing best practices in trading in the traditional career path and going it alone in the communications / marketing / PR space. It occurred to me how regularly I am asked how I managed to get Kinkennon Communications off the flight deck and into the air without plummeting headfirst into the abyss.
Folks want to know what I learned. It’s two primary things. Here goes:
1. Write that business plan.
I know, I know, this is obvious, right? But PR people go into freelancing all the time — it’s not exactly radical. There are no capital requirements. There typically is no need to borrow money. So why did I invest the time in writing a business plan? That’s the question I get, because it doesn’t sound very fun. The answer – so I myself would know what the hell I was doing, and why, so I could do it with a sense of purpose.
It’s pretty astounding how often I ask new or aspiring freelancers what their mission, vision, or overarching business goal is, and they don’t know.
Me: “What is your business going to do that is unique to your skills and interest and different than anyone else?”
Victim: “Ummm…”
Me: “What exactly does your marketing plan call for this year?”
Victim: “Uhhh…”
So before you leave your cozy current job and your income continuity and leap haplessly into an economic malaise, pose yourself these three questions:
• What stuff, precisely, and in excruciating detail, is it that I want to do?
• Why, precisely, and in excruciating detail, do I want to do that stuff rather than any other stuff?
• How, precisely, and in excruciating detail, am I going to find and sustain the kinds of clients that will enable me to do that stuff?
2. Appoint a board of directors.
Do WHAT?! Sheer astonishment. But yes, I mean it. Find 3-5 people who you trust, who know your industry, who are smarter than you, and who might find it a fun diversion from the monotony of their days to give you advice. Designate them as your new board.
They won’t have governance responsibility like a corporate or nonprofit board, of course. But you can give them a significant guidance and advisory role. Think of them as fancy chaperones.
Run your business plan past them. Run your marketing plan past them. Run your financial projections and goals past them. Host a meeting, present your best thinking, and ask them to poke holes in it. Task them to help you be sure you’ve done your homework and are really ready to run a business purposefully. Because that’s probably what you want to do if you’re daring to leave your steady job right now.
Two years ago, a former client owed me a small Lexus’ worth of money. Heated as I was over the matter, I concocted a raucous plan to try to collect that sum. As a courtesy, I ran the plan past Kinkennon Communications’ three board members. Each of them, separately, told me to stop, called my plan a stinker, and suggested a 180 degree opposite course of action. I was irritated, to put it mildly. But I begrudgingly complied.
As you’ve already guessed, I collected every bit of that money. Had I done it my way, I would not have collected a dime. Lesson learned. At that moment, it became clear to me that no one should ever start their own PR business without a solid, active, committed board. Create one – you’ll be glad you did.
I’ve been doing something very interesting of late, something that may ultimately reveal new opportunities for both Kinkennon Communications and me personally.
Earlier this year, I joined the board of directors of the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute. Based in Washington, DC, the nonpartisan organization teaches qualified, talented, openly gay people around the country how to run for public office and how to keep constituents happy once they get there.
I believe in this mission because I think it’s a smart, sane path to social equality. So in my spare time, I’ve found a way to serve. I’ve been out trying to spread word about it among respected community and business leaders in Colorado, even as a relative newcomer to the state.
As a result, I’ve come to get to know some very interesting, accomplished people who are heavily inclined toward philanthropy — not solely on social equality for gay people, but on a wide array of worthwhile charitable causes. It’s a network that has come to fascinate me because these people seem to me to be living “purposefully.” Their common thread is formidable intellect combined with notable generosity with their time, brainpower and money.
This exercise is providing me a good degree of intellectual stimulation. I’m hoping it helps me refine my ideas about my own volunteer and philanthropic life … and the role that service and responsibility will play in my future and the future of my business.
But for today, because I’m engaged in board-level conversations with seasoned people, the kinds of folks I wouldn’t necessarily access wearing a “PR guy” sales hat, I’m hoping I reveal that Kinkennon Communications is smart enough to be worth a hire, should an appropriate opportunity ever arise from out of these new relationships.
Who else, by chance, is at the point where they are really discovering the meaning of “service” and seeing it as a pathway to myriad new opportunity?
I learned a new phrase yesterday from a Subaru salesman of all people. Describing the deluge that the showroom had experienced recently during Cash for Clunkers, he explained that only a portion of those people had been there actually looking to take advantage of the government program. Many were people who were simply hearing “new car” all day in the media and reacting, almost automatically. The “piranha effect,” he called it.
I had never heard the phrase. Urban Dictionary defines it as “the exponential effect of communicating a focused message through many different forms of advertising media with a very persuasive effect on beliefs and behavior.”
Piranha effect. I like it.
Jason Baer of the Social Media Today blog makes a fantastic point in his review of the hot new NYT Best Seller called Trust Agents (by social media experts Chris Brogan and Julien Smith), highlighting what we believes is one of the more valuable points made in the book (which I have not yet read, but will). The point is not new, but I love the simple way he puts it:
“… you need to develop relationships before you need them, not when you need them.”
To me, that is THE fundamental that has changed in communications, marketing, issue advocacy, fundraising, and the like.
As most savvy leaders of organizations now realize, audiences (people) are no longer waiting for organizations to disperse PR messages to them. Audiences are instantly skeptical of corporate or institutional voices. Instead, they are connected and word spreading on their own, hearing from real people who they trust far more.
When organizations are regularly engaged in that connection, audiences then may be willing to listen to the organization when it has something important to say or sell.
But first, the organization must engage:
• In the places where its audiences are already gathered (Facebook, for instance), rather than expecting audiences to come to it.
• In a much more humble, transparent, interactive, and “human” manner than traditional PR strategies required.
• In a way that proves a commitment by daily action to asking for something only after listening very carefully.
Baer makes the good point that this is really hard. It’s very difficult to teach this style of interaction to an organization that doesn’t already have some built-in proclivity toward it. I’ve experienced that with clients when advocating for this kind of thinking. The biggest challenge I often face is not unwillingness to do differently, but institutional inertia.
Nonetheless, each of us is a desired audience member for a huge number of organizations. Those organizations want us to listen. But if they are to find our listening ear, we expect them to first map to our expectations. And our expectations are a’ changin’.
