Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sarah Russo. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Sarah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. The more we talk about good leadership the more we think good leadership practices will spread and so we’d love for you to tell us a story about the best boss you’ve had and what they were like or what they did that was so great?
I’ve been so fortunate to have many mentor’s and bosses over the years but the very first one I had in publishing really stands out. Nicholas never treated me like an assistant (even though that’s exactly what I was). He always introduced me to people as his colleague, and he introduced me to everyone. He was gracious and grateful. We worked long days, I was in the office at 7:30am and left at 7:30pm most days and truly loved every minute of it. At the end of each day, I would stick my head into Nicholas’s office and ask if he needed anything else from me that day. He would always say, “Thank you, Sarah, for everything you did today.” Nicholas set the tone for how I expected to be treated and he also taught me how to be a kind and supportive boss.
Sarah, 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 got my start in publishing at Alfred A. Knopf in 1999, back in the old days! I immediately fell in love with publishing. I felt like I could read, learn, and grow to my heart’s content. And I did, taking advantage of every opportunity to learn about the industry and from some of it’s great innovators. Publishing profits are very thin, especially since Amazon became such a behemoth and squeezes publishers with tighter and tighter terms each year. Budgets reflect that and I was tired of being the party of no with authors. After four years as the Global Head of Audience Engagement for Oxford University Press (heading up a brilliant team of publicists, marketers, and communications and social media professionals), I set out on my own to become the party of yes for authors.
At Page One Media, we create innovative publicity and marketing campaigns for authors and experts with books, as well as literary start-ups and organizations. I think what sets us apart *is* what I’m most proud of: our team. We have a phenomenal in-house team here at Page One. They are creative, smart, and dynamic team players both internally, supporting each others’ work, and with our clients. I’m proud of the level of notice out books and authors receive in outlets like New York Times, CNN, NBC News, Washington Post, and hundreds more. We’re also one of the only literary public relations firms that is doing integrative marketing across events, social media, traditional marketing and digital advertising.
We’ve had multiple award-winning and short-listed books on our list this year as well as multiple books that are on the best of the year lists.
Any advice for managing a team?
We are living in a really challenging moment for people and I think the best way to help support people is to ask them to bring their whole selves to work. What I mean by that is, we all have problems, responsibilities outside or work, doctor’s appointments to make up from when we all hid from the world for a year. If my team can’t come to me with problems and issues, I can’t fully support them to the best of my own abilities. There aren’t any problems we can’t solve when we put our heads together. My team knows I have their backs and that they can be honest with me when they’re struggling and that we’ll work through it together.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
We didn’t have any funding for the business. We started with one client and then added another and another. We’ve been building slowly and steadily since 2020 and adding team as we can afford them. I had a wonderful business coach named Natalie Eckdahl who always said, hire as much help as you can afford, and I’ve tried to live by that statement. We’re not coming to the end of year three and we’re a team of five. I hope to add two more people next year as the work can support those salaries. This is a challenge in one sense as I try very hard never to overload the team. It does happen sometimes as we grow and train more people, especially because we provide so much dedicated time to each client. But we have managed to grow a significant emergency fund which makes hiring before we’re overloaded much easier to do.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.page1m.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahlrusso/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahrusso/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarahrusso
- Other: BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/sarahrusso.bsky.social Threads: https://www.threads.net/@sarahlrusso
Image Credits
Photo of Sarah Russo (c) Sean Sime Photography All other images courtesy of Page One Media