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

Rachel , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Looking back, what’s an important lesson you learned at a prior job?

Before I started my firm, I had a defining experience about claiming territory and taking credit – one that still guides me today! In my previous job, I was responsible for curating and directing a high-level annual gathering of CEOs, nonprofit leaders, government officials, startup founders, and other impressive people. It fell under my remit because much of public relations and communications is about building relationships with diverse groups, not just people you pay you, like customers or investors. Still, it was a huge undertaking to ensure that all of these key stakeholders were happy while also running logistics. In past years, the best marker of our success was when the guests said things to my boss like, “This was so well-run,” or “This is the best conference I’ve ever been to,” or even suggesting they would host their own. That meant the tireless work done behind the scenes paid off, as they were focused on their experience and networking and not on something going wrong.

Now as a business owner that provides services, I believe this is the sign of work done well. As services providers, we are not in the spotlight. We are working behind the scenes so our clients or customers can experience success. Our “reward” is a continuing contract.

I see agency owners and other business owners get this a bit twisted when they claim public credit for the success of their customers (especially without permission). If your job is to make someone look good, you have to let them look good.

The other part of this lesson is about territory. The most successful people at that event (then and now) were people who easily shared space with others. At one of the last gatherings, two female leaders I greatly admire stood up and toasted my team for our hard work. Others had been toasting to their impressive peers, or to the success of their companies/initiatives. In a brief moment where they could have advanced their own interests, these women spoke glowingly about the work of juniors instead. To this day, I find this non-transactional, confident attitude the strongest indicator someone (and their business) is doing well.

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 founded my boutique agency Maneuvre in 2020, and we specialise in “PR that sells.” In other words, we help founders and executives with communications strategies that help them grow, instead of focusing on vanity metrics! O

ur purpose is twofold: first, to ensure the world-changing work these visionaries do is properly recognised, and second, to free up their focus to scale. We realised that many incredible companies, especially female-led startups, are losing the recognition game because they are working on their vision instead of promoting themselves. That’s the mark of a truly dedicated human being, but it means they lose out on opportunities to scale compared to louder (if not less impressive) competitors. We come in as their promotional engine, advising and executing across all communications, marketing and growth areas like press/media, events and awards, executive writing and presence, and similar services.

We specialize in emerging technologies, both because that’s my background (web3 and blockchain since 2016, enterprise tech PR before that), but also because it has some of the most interesting but hardest-to-tell stories! We help our clients explain ‘what’ they do and how they’re changing the world without ‘dumbing down’ their innovation. And while we do that, we help them build up the processes and assets for an internal communications team so when they’re ready, they can hire someone without losing institutional knowledge.

What sets us apart is that other PR agencies don’t work this way. They don’t want to spend any extra resources hiring or training their team on new technology; nor do they want to give their clients the ability to work without them. I’m proud that we don’t operate that way, and I know from experience that we get more wins for our clients as a result.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

What built Maneuvre’s reputation in emerging technology PR (web3, digital assets, biotech, agritech, fintech, etc) is how clearly we return on investment. It’s not just that we’re far less expensive than another agency – it’s that we get more accomplished than they do, despite the price difference! Our clients also have to spend far less time managing us, educating on their tech stack, or even editing our work, so they save even more resources by working with us. Nearly all of our clientele has come to us through personal recommendation, having heard how much more impactful and pleasant we are to work with.

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

Our philosophy at Maneuvre, and my approach as a leader and entrepreneur, is to <b>work smart.</b> In any situation, we should choose to work on what matters most to our clients’ goals, and we should do so as efficiently as possible, so more smart work can be done.

Efficiency, in our world, comes from both communicating directly, and avoiding distraction to stay the course. For the former, there is no better resource than the book Radical Candor. It will open your eyes to how much time, energy and focus we waste by not speaking directly (yet kindly) at work! For the latter, I look to the role model of Ange Postecoglou. He is the coach of the Tottenham Hotspurs (my family’s football team!). It isn’t easy to achieve anything worth achieving – even without the internet’s vitriol hurled at you every weekend – but his steadfastness reminds us that to get where you want to go, you must put in the work. Part of that work is trusting your experience and instinct, even when others (or even your team!) find it stupid – and not allowing them to distract you. Stay the course and you will find them celebrating you soon.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rachelpipan.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-pipan/
• Other: https://nicework.email/lander

Image Credits
Consensus; Women in Tech WIT Regatta