We recently connected with Julie Mullen and Elizabeth Kelley Grace and have shared our conversation below.

Julie Mullen and, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

We’ve always been avid believers in the positive power of public relations, but few things have proven this so clearly as a campaign we implemented for one of our longtime, nonprofit clients. Boca Helping Hands is one of South Florida’s largest providers of community services, two of which include the distribution of meals and pantry bags to 27,000 families annually through pick-up and delivery services, and delivering weekend meals to thousands of elementary, middle and high school students in 12 schools across the county.

In early 2020, just before ‘the end of the world as we know it,’ a massive, refrigerated delivery truck used by Boca Helping Hands to deliver those family meals and children’s weekend meals completely broke down. This was a crisis for the organization because there was literally no backup transportation equipped to handle the safe delivery of these critical meals. Unfortunately, donations had been soft that year, and there was no money in the budget to get the truck repaired. Keep in mind, this was a high priced piece of equipment that was essential for Boca Helping Hands to perform its work. A repair would have cost tens of thousands of dollars, but the truck was old, and they knew another repair just wouldn’t work this time.

Our team immediately jumped into action, and called every media outlet we know to generate coverage of the story in an effort to raise awareness and funds to purchase a new truck to help feed the community.

All of the local television networks immediately aired the story – with one network in particular making it a station initiative, continuously providing updates to their viewers, sharing information on how they can help, highlighting all of the services Boca Helping Hands provides, and so much more. They even created a station advertising campaign with anchors and reporters touting how proud they were to be involved in this community initiative.

Within less than a week, more than $150,000 was raised by members of the community, most of whom had never even heard of Boca Helping Hands. In addition, a number of corporate leaders provided funds, and their companies pitched in and started setting up volunteer shifts, packing meals from the pantry, serving hot meals in their kitchen, and more. Donations kept coming in, and Boca Helping Hands was able to purchase a brand new, state-of-the-art refrigerated delivery truck, repair the old truck, and expand its distribution service to even more people in the community.

And the timing couldn’t have been better. Once the pandemic hit, Boca Helping Hands was tripling and often quadrupling the number of families needing food from the pantry. To this day, there has been an increase from 200 to nearly 400 families – each day, six days a week – who come to Boca Helping Hands for a bag from the pantry. Their constituency has grown significantly and they simply could not have helped those thousands of families and kids without the help from the community.

Boca Helping Hands has been a Buzz Agency client for nearly a decade. We always love telling their stories, but this one, in particular, made us incredibly proud to be their public relations partner. In fact, this is precisely why we do what we do!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

In 2009, both in our 40s and already well-established in our communications careers – saw a void in in the market. The area’s public relations firms were generally small shops that focused on hyper-local clientele, but there weren’t really any agencies that focused on providing services to larger and out-of-market companies. With the explosion of corporate growth in South Florida at that time – and even more so now – we saw an opportunity to launch The Buzz Agency, putting our collective brain power and massive network together to service local, regional and national clients.

From the beginning, we basically oversaw a network of PR freelancers, but within 2 years, we made the decision to invest in our brand and hire full-time employees, providing benefits such as 401K, health insurance, paid vacation, and more. It was the best decision we could have made, though it was terrifying at the time, thinking of having to make payroll every two weeks!

But our team was (and is!) top notch, a combination of seasoned pros and digital natives, and we were able to land – and keep – a number of mid- to large-sized corporate and nonprofit clients. Even today, we have two clients that have been with us for the entire (nearly) 15 years!

One of the reasons we’ve maintained such great employees and clients is because one of us – either Liz or Julie – oversees a client account. And by ‘oversee’ we mean we are intimately involved. One of the criticisms we hear most often is that the agency owners will come in and ‘sell the firm’ but then the day-to-day-work is left to junior account representatives and, in some cases, interns. That is most definitely not the case with us, and we are very proud of the fact that our clients know and interact with us as agency founders just as much as their account manager.

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses

About six years after we launched, we were presented with an opportunity to acquire a small public relations shop with an outstanding reputation and a solid client roster. At that time, we were headquartered in the south part of Palm Beach County in Delray Beach, but the acquisition offered us an opportunity to expand to Palm Beach island, one of the world’s most exclusive enclaves.

After our due diligence with the financials, we agreed to a purchase price, to be paid over a two-year period, adjusted accordingly based on how long the clients were retained following the acquisition. The acquisition proved to be a good investment, as we retained a expanded presence in Palm Beach for the next seven years, and to this day, still maintain a couple of clients we gained through the acquisition.

It also enabled us to present a story of growth and expansion, with the inclusion of a senior account manager to oversee Palm Beach operations, and we were able to secure a number of clients based solely on the fact that we had a Palm Beach address.

Thankfully, the agency owner was incredibly forthcoming and transparent, and the entire process was smooth. Not sure we’d want to do it again, but it was a positive learning experience!

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We always like to tell the story of how we ‘funded’ our business, if you want to call it ‘funding!’

In 2009, the U.S. was in the height of a major recession. The housing market was crashing, businesses were closing left and right, foreclosures were rampant…it was a challenging time economically for just about everyone.

Why on earth we decided that was a good time to launch a business, we’ll never know, but, for better or worse, that’s exactly what we did.

Because we didn’t have a lot of initial expenses like staff, equipment, office space, etc. we really didn’t need a lot of capital. But, we walked into our bank, we each wrote a check for $250 and we opened our business account. The only real expenses we had incurred thus far was establishing our LLC, printing business cards, and logo and website design. But, when business started pouring in, we needed more help, and more help costs money.

We each continued to provide personal funding for the our business for about the first six months or so – to pay freelancers when client checks hadn’t yet arrived, the proprietary software we use, etc. But it wasn’t long until our cash flow was in solid shape and we didn’t need to loan the business additional personal funds.

It stayed that way – by the grace of God – until Spring 2020 when we lost 80% of our client base overnight. Like everyone else, we became crippled financially. But, we refused to terminate our staff, as we felt responsible for their well-being. We did have some paycuts, but no one was let go, and once we received pandemic-related funds, we were able to get back on track pretty quickly.

For women-owned businesses like ours, there are some great female-funding assistance programs available, for example the Tory Burch Foundation offers women-owned businesses access to low-rate capital funds. When it was time to get an office, we took advantage of funding from our local Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) who offered a year of rent-assistance for new businesses locating to the town. So, we would definitely suggest looking into those types of funding opportunities, rather than borrowing from your aunt or maxing out your credit cards!

Contact Info:

• Website: thebuzzagency.net
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Image Credits
Photos by: Eduardo Schneider, Tracey Benson Photography, and Aaron Bristol