We were lucky to catch up with Laura Perkes recently and have shared our conversation below.
Laura, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
The biggest risk I’ve taken is going from a stable, full-time job to taking a leap of faith and setting up my own business.
Back in 2012 I was really close to leaving my full-time role as a Senior Account Manager at a PR Agency in London.
The clients we were working with weren’t setting my soul on fire and I could clearly see a huge gap in the market for a small independent PR agency to offer PR support to start-up brands within the health, fitness and wellness industry.
As part of my role as a Senior Account Manager I worked alongside my boss on new client acquisition, something I loved doing – there’s something really exciting about discovering up-and-coming brands and supporting them on their growth journey. But as a start-up, not many could justify investing in a London PR Agency.
This was my moment to bridge the gap and offer a solution to these innovative and exciting brands.
I had a discussion with my boss about how I wanted to set up my own business and work with my own clients. Naturally, she didn’t want me to leave, but also wanted me to pursue something I was passionate about. She made me an offer that sounded like a good solution, but it didn’t feel right. She suggested that I continued to work for her for four days a week, leaving me one day a week to work with my own clients. In hindsight, she was offering me something stable to fall back on if my own business didn’t take off.
To most people this would sound like a good deal, but by adjusting my working hours my annual salary would be affected. I wasn’t prepared to work as a senior member of the team but get paid less than others in the team with less experience than me. So, I took a pay rise and a promotion and continued to work at that agency.
But it wasn’t enough.
Over the next eight months opportunities kept presenting themselves to me – opportunities I knew wouldn’t be offered again.
This time I decided to put trust and faith in myself, handed in my notice and started my own business.
Those first few months were tough – not because I didn’t have any clients – but because I was having to justify my actions to others. My boyfriend at the time (who is now my husband) would often ask me what Plan B was and when it would come in to play.
There was never a Plan B. In fact, there never will be because I back myself 100% and know that as long as I show up and do the work I’ll continue to be a success.
At the seven month mark I started to sign up clients and the rest, as they say, is history! If only it was that straight forward!
Everyday involves a level of risk taking when you’re running your own business. I had no idea how to run a business at the beginning, but I knew how to attract clients, I knew how to get them featured in the press and I knew that I could never fail, as long as I continued to have faith and back my own abilities.
The good news is that I enjoy taking risks and feel that risks play a vital role in the development of myself and my business.
You will only truly learn by trying and tripping up, you don’t learn anything from being perfect.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I’ve always worked in the PR industry and even have a degree in Public Relations & Media Studies.
But PR wasn’t ever the dream. I wanted to be a Radio DJ – I love connecting with people and having conversations, so the thought of sitting in a studio, playing songs and talking to people really fired me up. Until I visited a University Open Day and realised that being a Radio DJ was a lot more involved than playing music and talking. During the Open Day we were taken into a recording studio and my jaw dropped to the floor. The three walls in front of me were covered from floor to ceiling in big scary buttons that I had no idea how to use and it freaked me out! The lecturer for the Radio Journalism course also made it very clear that to succeed in radio it’s not what you know but who you know. At this point I mentally checked out – I didn’t know anyone. How would I make it in this industry if I didn’t know anyone? How would I make it if I didn’t know how to work the tech and electronics?
I swiftly let that dream fade away, but was met with a very real situation – what was I going to study at university?
My Mum suggested that I do something within the communications field. In her words ‘you’re really good and talking and listening and connecting with people.’ I knew I didn’t want to be a journalist because I didn’t think I’d be able to handle the press of deadlines, plus the industry is notoriously bad on the salary front.
I literally typed ‘communications degree’ into Google and Public Relations appeared. It ticked all of my boxes, I visited a few different universities to assess the vibe and see which one I wanted to commit to and in 2001 headed off to Plymouth to study Public Relations & Media Studies.
There are so many things that I love about PR – it’s multi-faceted, it’s fast-paced and it allows you to get really creative with ideas and words and you really feel as though you’re making an impact on people’s lives. And not just the clients we work with, but those who come into contact with our clients and change their lives because of it.
After graduating in 2004 I worked for a small-sized PR agency with an eclectic mix of clients from a range of different industries. I had the opportunity to work on big-named brands as well as small independent brands in the B2B and B2c space.
In 2007 I moved to a boutique PR agency that worked solely with brands within the health, fitness and wellness industry and spent a further seven years there.
As I mentioned earlier, when I started up on my own in 2013 it was to offer PR support to innovative start-up brands within the health, fitness and wellness industry, but over the years this has expanded to include coaches, therapists and personal brands, as well as SMEs.
For me, innovation is key. It doesn’t matter if you’re a solopreneur or an established brand, if you’re doing something different then I want to be a part of it.
There are three non-negotiables when it comes to who I’ll work with:
1. Are they innovative?
2. Do they provide a solution to an actual problem?
3. Do I align to their purpose and mission?
If all three of those boxes are ticked then I’m definitely open to having a conversation!
In 2020, when the global pandemic hit I fell out of love with PR. It was practically impossible to get any media cut-through unless the story was Covid-related and I wasn’t in love with the brands I was representing.
I saw it as an opportunity to create an online course and help teach entrepreneurs and small business owners to do their own PR. But two problems presented themselves to me:
1. Most people who wanted to work with me didn’t have the time, the energy or the inclination to learn how to do their own PR – they were focussed on building and growing their business, not learning a new skill
2. I realised that I wasn’t very good at selling! I was booking sales calls with ease, but I just couldn’t convert people and get them to pay for this online course. At this point I decided to invest in a sales mentor and realised early on that my sales calls were all wrong – they were about me and the course and not the person I was talking to.
A few more months rolled by and I’d decided to invest in a six-month mastermind. During this time my mentors suggested that I hire a team of other PR professionals to help me build my business. This would free up my time and headspace to work in my zone of genius and do what I love, while giving them the opportunity to work in their zone of genius and do what they love – getting clients featured in the press.
I took a risk – because on paper I didn’t think I could afford to take on a freelance team, but three weeks later I had three incredible PR pros working with me – it was the best decision I’ve ever made!
In terms of the services we offer, there really is something for everyone – I truly believe that I can have it all: I can work with SMEs and established brands on implementing a 12-month PR strategy and I can also teach solopreneurs and start-ups how to do their own PR.
The PR process never changes, but the opportunities available to us are always evolving.
We live in such an abundant world, which can cause overwhelm if you’re not yet ready to invest in outsourcing your PR, but it can be broken down into super simple baby steps so that you enjoy the PR process.
It’s my wish to make PR more accessible, because it is still viewed as a luxury that only big brands can afford – which I know is utter BS – but not enough people feel it, or believe it. I’m going to change that narrative and re-write it.
Being me sets me apart from others – mainly because I haven’t got time for BS and I’m not going to roll over and give clients what they want because they want it. For me, business growth needs to be about quality over quantity. A handful of incredibly loyal customers and clients and worth way more than customers and clients that bounce around from one brand to the next. If there’s a high customer churn-rate then you’re constantly working to remain consistent, you’re not actually growing.
As an INTP I’m a rarity. I’m future focussed but incredible logical. I can see further into the future than many brand and business owners, but I’m also incredibly agile and diverse, so I can think quickly in challenging situations and create a solution.
I’m also very open, up-front and honest. Not everyone is ready for that – but you’ll always know where I stand, you’ll always know what I’m thinking and you’ll always know why. It’s important for me to meet people where they are, understand what they want over the next 6-12 months, then create a plan that will help them get there.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
I’m a massive fan of personal outreach and cultivating relationships – it’s why I’ve never been a massive fan of automation. I can understand that automation makes life easier in terms of saving time, but for me it takes away the fun part of getting to really know someone.
Most of my clients come to me via word of mouth, recommendation and referrals. When you’ve been in your industry for over 18 years you build a reputation, so clients will often refer to me other business owners, or people who I’ve met networking will suggest me when their connections ask for recommendations.
Again, these recommendations are built on personal relationships, whether it’s someone I met at a face-to-face networking meeting four years ago, or someone who attended a free masterclass that I presented in a Facebook group or membership group.
Social media has also worked for me in terms of brining leads into my pipeline, but I find that the decision-making process is often a lot longer when it comes to investing in PR, so I want people to really feel that I’m ‘The One’ for them, when the time is right for them.
As a modality, PR has been around since the late 1800s and it’s not going anywhere any time soon, so there’s never really an immediate time pressure when it comes to investing in PR, hence why I focus more on when the individual is ready to embark on a new journey to grow and scale their business.
Trust is a big value of mine, along with connection, which is why I’ve built a boutique business, because I still want to be at the heart of what we do – whether that’s working with agency clients on a 12 month PR strategy, or whether I’m working with a group of entrepreneurs to teach them the ropes until they’re in a position to outsource to an agency.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Asking questions, being curious and showing an interest in your team goes a long way. It’s not all about high performance and improving your bottom line – it’s about being human.
My current team works remotely so it’s important for me to check in with them from a wellbeing perspective, as well as to ask them if there’s anything more I can do to support them.
At the moment my freelancers have just as much industry experience as I do, if not more, so I’m not having to micromanage or check up on them to make sure they’re on top of tasks, deliverables and client results, so usually when I check in it genuinely is to ask if they’re ok.
Although the team is working remotely, we’ll still share ideas on impromptu zoom meetings, or What’s App or Messenger calls. When we’re in the creative zone, arranging a video call can cause buzz kill, but sending voice notes allows us to share ideas in the moment and bounce off each other.
Often I’ll see them post personal updates on social media and I’ll check in on them to see if they’re ok, the same as I would do with a friend.
I’m a big believer in allowing people the space to excel in what they do and work in a way that works for them. Two of my freelancers have young children so they’re often working different hours to me, but as long as we’re delivering what we need to I’m happy for people to work in a way that works for them. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you have to work in a certain way to please other people.
Being honest can really help to maintain a high morale. When I look back at my first nine years working at PR agencies, it was very much them and us – the CEO and MD were off limits and we had a line of command to check in with, so we only really got access to our line manager, who would check in with their line manager. Business feels a lot more fluid these days, or at least that’s the culture I want to cultivate.
If things are working – celebrate them. If things aren’t working, pull together to create a solution and celebrate the ability to do that.
The way we do business is definitely changing – and I hope the way that this new wave of entrepreneurs is doing business will pave the way for future generations of entrepreneurs and business owners too.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.prwithperkes.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/prwithperkes
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/lauraperkes OR www.facebook.com/prwithperkes
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/laura-perkes
Image Credits
Rosie Parsons Photography