We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jon Pushkin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jon, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about how you got your first non-friend, non-family client. Paint the picture for us so we can feel the same excitement you felt on that day.

About a week after deciding to start my own solo PR agency, I was playing a music gig at a bar in Denver. I ran into a woman at the gig who I new from my previous job. She worked for another company in the same office building. She said she had just started doing marketing for an integrative medicine provider and asked if I knew anyone who was looking for some contract PR work. I said, as a matter of fact…and that turned out to be my first real client. It also got me started doing healthcare PR, which became a specialty for Pushkin PR. Maybe I just got lucky that night, or sometimes things happen for a reason. Either way it worked out pretty well.

Jon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I didn’t take the typical professional route to a career in public relations. I learned by doing, working as a musician and concert promoter at the legendary Denver Folklore Center, for the Denver Zephyrs minor league baseball team, and doing PR for several nonprofits that had missions I respected. Early on, I realized the merit of being nimble and how working with a shoestring budget can boost your creativity. I wore a lot of hats and enjoyed it.

I started Pushkin PR as a one-man show working with small business and nonprofit clients. One of my first clients was American WholeHealth, a gig where I worked with a team of independent practitioners in multiple markets helping the startup company open integrative medicine practices around the country.

Seeing that cooperative, team approach in action inspired me to grow Pushkin PR into a boutique agency with a team of seasoned professionals who each bring a unique set of experiences. I carefully chose people who understand how to collaborate, innovate and who never want to stop learning and improving their craft.

I created Pushkin PR to provide clients with the service of a large PR agency without the large fees. After 26 years, we continue to grow, learn and evolve; but we haven’t changed all that much. Public relations is still about the relationships you build with clients, the community, the media and your partners. I still like wearing a lot of hats and telling my clients’ stories.

Pushkin PR was founded on the core values of respect, trust, ethics and integrity with one goal in mind: to make a difference by doing quality work for great clients. I believe that strong, long-lasting brands are built on these tenets; they guide the way we do business, and we like to work with organizations that feel the same. I believe in authentic, straightforward communication. That means we try to get directly to the heart of the matter and communicate with candor and grace.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I wrote a song once called Roll With The Punches. When you are a musician, that’s the first thing you learn to do. Sometimes the gig gets cancelled. Sometimes the van breaks down. Sometimes the band breaks up. One time I was doing a gig at a school on an Indian reservation in North Dakota. We were teaching school kids about swing music, but the kids at this school had no interest in what we were doing. Talk about losing the audience. It was in an old gym like in the movie Hoosiers with those old lights over the stage. We were in the middle of a song when when we heard a loud pop, we thought for sure it was a gunshot. I always wore a Panama hat onstage and I could feel something landing on my head. I looked at my band mate and we just kept playing right through the end of the song. Then we looked down and realized one of the overhead lights had exploded and piles of glass were scattered around. All of a sudden the kids were paying attention and for the rest of the show we had earned their respect because they saw we knew how to roll with the punches.

We all had to learn how to pivot during the pandemic, but if you run your own agency the ability to pivot is a survival skill you’ve learned, developed and practiced over and over and over again. .

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

When I was younger I was a huge fan of Jack Kerouac. I read all his books and several biographies, saw a few movies about him and attended an amazing On The Road conference in Boulder where I got to meet some of the Beat movement writers who became characters in his books. He has a line in Lonesome Traveler that really resonated with me. He’s trying to explain what it means to be a nonconformist. He says, “Imagine trying to explain to 1,000 raving Tokyo snake dancers in the street that you’re looking for peace but you won’t join the parade.” That line always stuck with me. It means that you should trust your instincts and have the courage of your convictions. That you should have integrity. Instead of always going with the flow, don’t be afraid to go against the flow. Sometimes you just need to let your creativity guide you and follow your passion. That’s how I try and work with my team and also with my clients. You don’t always have to play the same tune the same way every time. Don’t be afraid to improvise.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.pushkinpr.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PushkinPR
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pushkinpr/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jon_Pushkin