We recently connected with Aquila Mendez-Valdez and have shared our conversation below.

Aquila, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. The first dollar you earn in a new endeavor is always special. We’d love to hear about how you got your first client that wasn’t a friend or family.

When I first launched my business, I had a list of about 5 contacts I just knew would be my first clients. I knew exactly how much they would be able to afford for a monthly retainer, and I had my plans all laid out to be profitable by the end of Month 1. The reality, as it turned out, was far from that original vision, and I discovered that signing clients was much more of an uphill battle. Looking back now I totally get it; I was unproven and still getting my feet under me. It makes sense that it took time to land my first big client.

After months of grinding away at dead ends and weak prospects, I got a call from an acquaintance who was planning a luxury real estate summit. They had been burned by PR agencies in the past, but they knew their event had legs to be a newsworthy story. It just needed the right PR pro to get the story in front of the right journalists. This husband and wife team were also on a budget, so going with one of the big agencies was out of the question. Since I had met the husband previously, I met with him first to get an idea of the project.

As I would later learn, he is the glass-half-full partner, so he was easy to convince that I was the right person for the job. His wife, however, was much more of a tough sell, and to top it all off as she tells the story I walked into my first meeting with her about 8 months pregnant. Surprise! She thought her husband had lost his mind. But I could handle it, I told her, this was my second baby and I wasn’t even due until March. The event was in January. Not a problem, I promised them!

Against their better judgement, they gave me the job and they’re still my clients to this day. They’ve also referred me to more people than I can count, and it all stemmed from the fact that I delivered on my promises with that very first project, and I didn’t deliver my baby until AFTER the event. My feet might’ve been swollen beyond recognition after the summit had concluded, but I waddled around bringing journalists from print, TV, and radio to interview them throughout the day. I was and have always been so grateful to them for taking a chance on me!

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 started as a journalism major in college, but I quickly realized that starting out at a salary of $12,000 a year in Topeka, Kansas was not going to cut it for me. I switched to Public Relations so I could still tell stories for a living, and I’m very proud that I’ve actually been able to work in the industry I studied. So few get that chance, it’s really unfortunate. Right out of my undergrad I started my Master’s in Communications and Leadership while working for a PR and Marketing agency in downtown San Antonio, and learned everything I possibly could over the next few years. Throughout my time as an employee I was also growing Haute in Texas as a blog, building up a social media following and expanding my network of brands that were reaching out to work with us.

I still had never considered the entrepreneurship life, however, until I found out I was pregnant with my second daughter and felt if I was going to be working this hard I wanted to do it for myself rather than someone else’s company. Thus in 2014 Haute in Texas became both a blog and an agency, slowly but surely growing via word of mouth into the full-service agency it is today.

We specialize in working with small to mid-size businesses who need help propelling and curating their online or in-person presence. We do this primarily through social media and digital marketing, media relations, and community programming. One of our favorite types of marketing strategies to implement is influencer marketing because we got our start as a blog, and we truly believe this form of digital word of mouth is one of the most potent tools in our toolbox. But at the end of the day, we love telling stories, so we’ve intentionally never niched down into a particular industry. If you have a great story, we want to learn all about it, and then share it with the world!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I was raised by a strong woman, literally and figuratively. My mom is a former Big 10 All-American volleyball player and 6’3″, as is my father who always treated her as an equal in the house and in business. Because of that I’ve always held tightly to the belief that women are capable of ANYTHING, and it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t pursue my dreams full-force just because I am a woman and a mother. I think empowering other women to have the courage to speak up in that meeting, or ask for the pay they want, or start that business they’ve been contemplating, is one of my life’s greatest passions, and I’m proud that Haute in Texas is now an all-female female team. We are excellent and what we do, but we do it with compassion and heart. To me that’s the biggest advantage to women in leadership positions: we can achieve our goals without losing our integrity.

Now that we’ve launched our franchise model for the Haute in Network Agencies, I’m excited to give opportunities to even more women. So many have told me over the years that they have thought about starting a blog, or thought about leaving their corporate jobs. I want to give women the little push they need to GO for it. Then I know they have the determination and passion to soar from there.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I started Haute in Texas with $1500 just to open the bank account. From the very beginning, we’ve been a very lean and mean business model, and that hasn’t changed the more we’ve grown. Because we work with small to medium-sized businesses, we don’t have the luxury of billing clients for over-inflated retainers, nor would our core value of integrity allow us to. Rather, we’ve chosen to be a remote agency from day one, keeping overhead costs low, and the majority of our team are contractors who want the flexibility working with us affords them to pursue travel, hobbies, and other passions outside of a traditional 9 to 5 desk job. I think that’s the way of the future to give employees the chance to build the life they want, and that’s why one of our catchphrases is “Join us in pursuit of the haute life.” The “haute”, or high, life means something different to everyone, and that’s a beautiful thing.

Because of this philosophy and the huge blessing that my husband is very supportive of my career, we’ve been able to grow 100% bootstrapped, never taking out a loan or needing to raise capital to finance our growth. I see that as a strength of the health of our business, and while we may not be the biggest agency, that’s kind of the point. We’re big enough to get the job done right, but not so big that we lose our way.

Contact Info:

• Website: hitpr.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/hauteintexas
• Facebook: facebook.com/hauteintexas
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aquilamendezvaldez/
• Twitter: twitter.com/hauteintexas

Image Credits
David Lopez