We recently connected with Alli Goldstein and have shared our conversation below.

Alli, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?

At Cinch, we follow the golden rule of treating others the way you would like to be treated yourself. We also have an internal mantra – ‘people first, clients second’ – to remind ourselves that our clients are people first and foremost. Just like all of us, they have families, illnesses, birthdays, graduations, aging parents, etc. and it’s important remember they have full lives outside of work that will inevitably affect their management styles and day-to-day personalities and moods. This enables our team to get to know our client contacts on a deeper level and forge bonds far more meaningful than a typical client-agency relationship.

We make sure to celebrate birthdays, births, anniversaries, and promotions by sending a present and hand-written card. We often tailor the gifts to something we know our clients love, whether it’s a cup of afternoon tea or a dog toy. It’s often unexpected for a client to receive a personal gift from their agency and it’s a delightful surprise!

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?

I’ve been in public relations for over two decades. After a brief stint in the fashion industry I took a job in New York City with a major PR firm in their travel group representing significant clients in the hospitality space including Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, Barbados Tourism Authority, and South African Airways. I found myself, writing pitches and press releases, brainstorming creative ideas, generating strategic partnerships and alliances, and traveling around the world…and getting paid! It was a dream come true. I stayed firmly rooted in travel PR for the seven years that followed working for leading hotel brands such as Hyatt Hotels & Resorts and Kimpton Hotels.
As Director of Hotel PR at Kimpton, I managed the openings of 12 properties, led a CEO transition, and found myself managing 15 PR agencies nationwide as well as one in Hong Kong and in London. It was during that time I realized that not all agencies were created equal and identified an opportunity to start my own firm in the Bay Area, where I’m originally from.
I launched Cinch PR in San Francisco in 2006 with one hotel and one restaurant group. Over the past 16 years we have become one of the leading Bay Area-based agency specializing in consumer lifestyle brands. We have launched over 40 hotels and 50 restaurants and have expanded into promoting consumer brands which now comprise 70% of our client portfolio.
We continue to treat our clients AND employees as people first and our tenure reflects just that. Our clients and employees stay with us an average of 5+ years.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

In my teens and early 20’s, I always thought I wanted to be in the fashion industry. I studied retail and fashion as part of my undergraduate degree and vividly saw myself working in fashion in New York City upon graduation…so I did just that!

I got a job as a Production Assistant for a major streetwear fashion brand in 1997. This was the same year they launched their women’s wear line and also dressed The Rolling Stones for their Steel Wheels tour. which sounded fabulous to me but I quickly discovered that corporate retail was not full of the glitz and glamour I assumed it would be. Production in retail is the conduit between design and merchandising so you are often in negotiation mode between the ‘creatives’ and the ‘number crunchers’. And, in my very junior role, I was basically an errand runner and data inputter for two solid years.

My tipping point was on a trip to Hong Kong, where several of their production facilities were located and I realized I hadn’t left the offices for days except to walk to and from the hotel across the street. I was included in a meeting where they were having a heated debate over the color, texture, and the associated cost of a button and I just lost all interest and knew I needed to do something else.

I fled the fashion industry and vowed to never look back and never did!

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

The best way to create incremental revenue is to first try to generate more business from existing clients. PR now encompasses so much more than ever before. Our clients are now asking for our support with social media planning and execution, influencer seeding, crisis communications plans, event planning, media training, affiliate marketing services, and more. Cinch developed a separate pricing sheet for these additional services and we often present a tiered fee structure with various pricing strategies so a client understands what’s included in an additional scope of work.

With regards to new business, our best source has been from within our Cinch network. We love when our client contacts move to different brands and bring our team along. This has happened on several occasions. We’ll also have current clients refer us to peers within their networks. Our strongest, most visible marketing tools are LinkedIn and the Cinch website which we redesigned in late 2022. We receive several inquiries from both of these channels.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cinchpr.com
• Instagram: @cinchpr
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cinch-pr/