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S2E16: The Art & Science of PR with Stories Consulting’s Co-Founders
190 Plays1 year ago
PR: Powerful. Mysterious. Often Misunderstood.
This week, we get a peek behind the curtain of earned media. I talked with Elise Labau and Florencia Cavallo, the cofounders of Stories Consulting - a very cool PR consultancy.
Stories Consulting primarily works with female-founded, mission-driven brands. Think: start-ups in the lifestyle, beauty, wellness, fashion, and women's health space.
These are the women who get clients placed in little ol’ outlets like Refinery29, Vogue, New York Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and more.
Our convo covered:
- How they nurture and respect their partnership.
- Why they believe in a “less is more” approach to storytelling and building brands
- Scope creep, people pleasing, and how to say no to being a client’s personal shopper.
- One of the reasons that big agency teams often fail where boutique firms thrive. (Hint: It’s about established team dynamics).
- Why you want to build a moat around your brand. 🏰
- Why good PR plans set 6 and 12-month KPIs - rather than 30, 60 or 90-day benchmarks.
- The advice they’d give all new founders.
Elise and Florencia - it was such a treat to chat with you. Thanks for your time and your great advice.
Follow Content People on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/contentpeoplepod/
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Elise on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elise-labau-topaloglu/
Follow Florencia on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/florencia-cavallo-59a12a52/
Check out Stories Consulting on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/storiesconsulting__/
Check out the Stories Consulting Website
https://www.storiesconsulting.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Meredith Farley and Medbury
00:00:04
Speaker
Hi and welcome to Content People. I'm your host Meredith Farley. I'm a former chief product officer turned chief operating officer turned CEO and founder. My agency is called Medbury. At Medbury we work with founders, execs, and companies who want to tell their stories and grow. But Content People is not about me or Medbury, it's about the creative leaders and professionals that we interview every week.
00:00:28
Speaker
We'll delve into their journeys, unpack their insights, and ask them for practical advice. If you like it, please rate and subscribe. Let's get started.
Interview Excitement with Elise and Florencia
00:00:37
Speaker
Elise and Florencia, I am so excited to be chatting with you two. I've been wanting to interview two female co-founders for a while. That's not the reason we're chatting, but it's such a nice element of this conversation. I'm really thrilled that it's a three-way combo and so glad to have you both on.
00:00:54
Speaker
Thank you. For folks who don't know Stories Consulting, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what Stories Consulting does?
00:01:02
Speaker
So I'm Florencia. And this is Elise. So we advise brands on all aspects of brand building and communications. We've been primarily working with female founded and lead brands that are mission driven. It's a mix of consumer and lifestyle brands. Think beauty, wellness, women's health. And more specifically, we've been doing a lot of work with early stage startups.
00:01:27
Speaker
In terms of what it means tactically for folks who may not be as close to PR and communications, we secure editorial coverage. So that's generally speaking, dedicated brand stories and founder profiles in high caliber outlets from the likes of Vogue to Forbes, Refinery29, New York Magazine, Bustle, you name it. And ultimately we're really passionate about building brands from the ground up and advocating for founders with a unique
00:01:54
Speaker
point of view that really used their work to affect positive change. Thank you. How did you two find each other and when did you know that you wanted to work together and build stories consulting?
Elise and Florencia's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:02:10
Speaker
Yeah, so we actually met while working together at a PR agency. We were each
00:02:16
Speaker
Vice presidents leading our own teams. And I remember that Elise and I just, just clicked. We quickly became friends and we were managing many clients at once, working with really high profile brands in the consumer luxury fashion space. It was an incredibly fast paced environment.
00:02:35
Speaker
And we then left that agency to start our own business. It was an online store dedicated to resort wear and vacation essentials. Really selling special sort of under the radar brands from all over the globe. And actually really storytelling around this notion of travel and discovery. And we had that business for about five years. We actually just recently closed its doors.
00:02:59
Speaker
And we learned so much as, as entrepreneurs, particularly what it takes to build community in this kind of current moment in time and what it takes to build a brand from scratch and how to foster authentic connections with this consumer or customer and how to really build and scale a business.
00:03:18
Speaker
And that business also gave us this added layer of expertise that we didn't really have as publicist because you're always on the outside when the brand and comms bubble. And it just allowed us to have so much empathy for founders and the roller coaster of being an entrepreneur. One day you're failing and the next day you're thriving.
Return to Consulting Through The Wing
00:03:38
Speaker
So at an emotional level, we're able to give so much to our clients.
00:03:42
Speaker
and really empathize with them, especially given that we really do primarily work with startups. It's really tough. So we're very much there in the trenches with them. And really consulting is something that we got back into quite organically and almost accidentally, if you will. We were working at the wing at the time and we were meeting incredible female founders who had, and one thing led to the next and here we are. Yes.
00:04:11
Speaker
And I know we talked about this a little bit offline too, and we all know the Wing had its challenges, but I really wish there was another space like that right now for female founders to be meeting and networking. I know there's a chief, but I don't know if it's quite, not a space, it's not the same thing. Thank you for all of that. When I think of consumer and lifestyle PR, I think of it as having, it has a glamorous connotation. I'm really curious for you two running this business,
00:04:39
Speaker
What is the average week like for you? I'm sure no week is exactly the same, but what is your time made up of right now?
Misconceptions About PR
00:04:47
Speaker
I think it absolutely has that connotation. And look, I'm not going to lie, it was probably Samantha Jones who made me want to move to New York City and do this. And a lot of people don't really understand PR. And I think that's because the PR world can seem, you know, so mysterious and alluring.
00:05:05
Speaker
But while it may seem like that way, it's all dinners or product launches and fashion week, et cetera. It's actually very much behind the scenes. And I would argue that perhaps not glamorous at all. And I think sure there are wonderful perks of the jobs and whether that's attending events or travel at times or taking editors after dinner, you get to try new products. You're present at photo shoots for a founder profile or brand campaigns, et cetera. But I would say that's maybe
00:05:35
Speaker
10% of the work and really the other 90% is like the literal work. So you are, we are speaking with many editors at any given time about story ideas. We are workshopping and brainstorming what comes next for a brand that we're working with. We're finding new angles. You are pitching these stories out constantly and then you're writing briefing documents for clients. You're prepping them from interviews or writing coverage reports, et cetera.
00:06:03
Speaker
Just to get into the nitty gritty a little bit, in case anyone listening doesn't know that much about PR, but wants to understand more. When you say briefing documents for clients, like what's a briefing document? So a briefing document is, for example, after you secure a feature or a story on a particular brand that you're working with, you want to brief your client to ensure that all the key messages and all the kind of key points of the brand is really coming through. And you work in advance to define what those key messages are.
00:06:33
Speaker
And before an interview happens with a journalist, we get on the phone with a client and really walk through what the story is going to be, what the angle is going to be. What are the really special aspects of the brand that we want to make sure that come across in the story? What is the story that we want to tell? And just ensuring that they feel really comfortable with that. Really careful, thoughtful planning, messaging, and then supporting the clients through the interviews. And then I think you said coverage reports. I'll let you. I define it, but.
00:07:04
Speaker
Sure, yeah. And you've guessed that it's essentially the result of all the hard work, just a snapshot of what we've done, mostly coverage, but also usually a bit of a synopsis of the conversations that are taking place at the moment across the board. So when I talked to Chris Cantwell, he was on in season one, he was the show runner for the show Halton Catch Fire. And he and his writing partner,
00:07:30
Speaker
One thing he said was that they treated their partnership like a second marriage because it was so important to their life and to the work they were doing. And when I think back on that interview, I wish I'd dug in more and been like, what do you mean? How do you treat your partnership like a second marriage? And I'd really love to hear how do you to balance a working partnership? I'm sure it's not always easy, but I'm really curious.
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. And actually it's funny because Florence here and I talk about this all the time and, and joke about it quite a bit to keep things light. But yeah, we've been working together a long time. And of course, when you start working with someone generally speaking.
00:08:12
Speaker
You probably have very similar values overall, but disagreements will come up and they do come up. And just like in a marriage, you can't always get your own way. There's a lot of give and take that takes place and you've got to find compromises. And I think, you know, I actually think about this a lot. I think in our case.
00:08:30
Speaker
golden edit, which was our first venture together, as Florencia mentioned, in my mind really was the foundation for our partnership. And I think it was that experience of building this first business together.
00:08:43
Speaker
which was quite challenging that really solidified our partnership and essentially got us to this place of deep trust that hopefully you get to in a marriage that really allows you to build and to keep building and allows you to do things that you probably can't do if you don't have a strong partnership because there's too much that gets in the way.
00:09:01
Speaker
And I'm also a big believer in accountability. I think who best to keep you accountable than someone you've been working and building together with for years, right? That's the best kind of accountability partner. Do you have any kind of shared rules where you're like, if something's bothering me for more than a day, we have to talk about it? Or do you have set times on the calendar to check in? Is there anything tactical or any advice you'd give to other founders who are
00:09:26
Speaker
just learning how to work together? We don't have a set of rules. I don't know. It just, it happened. I think it's because it almost happened so like organically and accidentally, if you will, that it's not like we set out to have this contract that says, this is, this is what we expect from each other, or it was never that way. And I think if anything, those things happen slowly over time. And it's almost, we probably have all these like unspoken rules that we understand and we, we have also
00:09:55
Speaker
You need to have boundaries. We each have families. Like it goes without saying, I wouldn't contact Elise at a random hour evening or unless it was something incredibly urgent or weekends with our families are sacred. I feel like you have all these little like unspoken rules potentially that are unspoken for that reason. It makes sense. I really want to chat a little bit about scope creep because I know we've all talked on it a little separately. And
Managing Scope Creep in Client Services
00:10:19
Speaker
do you ever find yourself
00:10:22
Speaker
offering or almost offering to dig into tasks that are slightly outside of your scope or do you ever feel like a pressure to do that? How do you two balance that? Because I'd imagine it's the two of you. You have to be very careful and disciplined about the work that you're agreeing to take on. Absolutely. And I think that's incredibly relatable to anyone in the service industry. I think it's such a
00:10:47
Speaker
It's such a complex, blurry thing. And the beauty of what we've carved out is that we only ever have a small roster of clients at any given time. And that's very intentional. And because of that, we're very excited about the clients that we bring on. And by definition, that makes you want to go above and beyond. But in order for us to deliver the kind of results we're proud of and that ultimately the clients are proud of.
00:11:12
Speaker
We very much have to stay focused because you said it, we don't have a team to delegate to, it's just the two of us.
00:11:18
Speaker
doing the work every day. So yeah, I think it's a very real thing. But look, when we were on the agency side, we used to call it over-servicing. And anyone in the service industry, I think, has dealt with some element of over-servicing clients. I think that just comes with the territory. And to this day, I sit on calls with agency leads and women who are leading, I would say, pretty large agencies with established clients and large teams.
00:11:42
Speaker
And they still complain about over-servicing. So I think it very much happens at every level. And whether you're two consultants working with a really tight roster, or you're running an agency of a hundred plus employees with a large group of established clients, there's an element of that will creep up. So I think it's incredibly relevant. And I actually, I have a distinct memory from early days at the agency.
00:12:04
Speaker
of having a client who essentially started asking me to personal shop for her. And I remember going to my boss at the time and saying something like, look, something doesn't sound right here. Like what, how do we deal with this? And she said to me, don't worry. I'll get on a call and I'll nip it in the bud.
00:12:20
Speaker
Again, it's this very slippery slope and I was just getting started. I was very impressionable at the time and very eager to please. Aren't we all as women? And I thought, next thing you know, I'm going to be walking into Bergdorf's with her credit card. And this is so not what we do. Not even close. So yeah, I think there's this constant towing of the line between added value and over-servicing.
00:12:43
Speaker
Yes, it can be so tricky because I know we've talked on this separately too. Sometimes I've had moments where I'm like, oh, this is outside the scope a little bit, but
00:12:54
Speaker
I'm really, I want this relationship to work. I want them to feel like they're getting so much value out of this. We're going to do this. And then it ends up in an upsell or they buy a lot more and they're so happy. And it's okay. That was an instance in which it was a little bit of over-servicing or scope creep, but it really worked out. And then there are other instances where
00:13:15
Speaker
And it's funny, I think when I was the COO at Brafton, I felt the boundaries felt more clear to me. But now as a founder myself, sometimes I think I'm having to reconfront some people pleasing tendencies because it feels a little more personal to me sometimes. And I think what you said about women and people pleasing, it's all really complicated.
00:13:37
Speaker
And for anyone listening, like both Elise and Florencia are very stylish. So Elise, I'm not surprised that someone tried to make all you personal shopping for them. Yeah. And I think, look, if you're making the decision strategically, right, to quote unquote overservice or to go above and beyond, then that's one thing. But.
00:13:59
Speaker
If it's not strategic and if it's just a matter of just not being able to say no, then you probably should reevaluate and take a step back. That's usually how we would, you know, differentiate it. Yeah. And I think several times we've been in a position to help clients fundraise and we've been able to make some incredible connections to whether that's angels or VCs.
00:14:19
Speaker
And that's the kind of above and beyond that we're really excited about because a win for them is obviously a win for us. And we want our clients to succeed, but we also cannot all of a sudden be spending 70 or 80% of our time helping them fundraise. That's not the work that we do, but if there is one introduction that we can make that is incredibly valuable for them.
00:14:40
Speaker
Then that's when we're happy to color outside the lines, if you will. And I think you have to ask yourself, why am I going above and beyond? Is it something that we're happy to do or you're happy to do because it adds value? Or are you doing it because you feel threatened or guilt or fear?
00:14:57
Speaker
So I think feeling like you're very much in the driver's seat of what you say no to or what you say yes to and really knowing your value and your worth is important. And I think to Elise's point, especially particularly hard for women. Yes. I love the advice that you're both giving on this particular bit.
00:15:17
Speaker
I think sometimes in all levels of agency or client service work, it's like finding the language in the moment or perhaps not in the moment, but in the email later to like, how do I say no without causing friction in the relationship? And if anyone listening is like that resonates, I would say a bit of advice I'd have is to have a Google doc with eight versions of a really nice, gracious,
00:15:39
Speaker
Sorry, that's outside the scope that you can copy paste or read off of just to have the language there. But I love what you're both saying about it's about is it coming from a place of I want to do this. This is going above and beyond for the purposes of the relationship and the services we've engaged in. Or is this just something that I don't know how to say no to without impacting the relationship. Thank you.
00:16:03
Speaker
That's really why we're definitely going to steal the Google doc idea because that's pretty genius. We do not have that. We usually it's like on a case by case. Oh my God. It's technical advice. Thank you. So I want to talk about product and deliverables a little bit. Maybe this is more inside baseball for folks who work in communications or PR, but I'm really curious. What are the goals or deliverables that your average client contract includes? So.
Tailored PR Deliverables: Less is More
00:16:29
Speaker
Very purposely and intentionally, the bulk of the work that we're choosing to do with stories is true editorial and you know, what we call earned media as a contrast to paid media. And so, you know, it's really placing focused
00:16:45
Speaker
dedicated brand stories and or founder profiles in top tier high caliber outlets. And the reason for that is because we really have found that is really what drives the most impact in terms of brand awareness. And that's especially the case for brands who are just starting out in the market and need to build a foundation and really set the tone for how they're going to communicate moving forward. And of course, each scope of work is unique and tailored.
00:17:14
Speaker
and one of a kind and really specific to each brand's goals and objectives. But the overarching theme I would say and what we really specialize in is what we call true big picture editorial because that's what we believe in. And in terms of just maybe more tangible examples, it can range from
00:17:33
Speaker
consumer stories that really help build an audience, provide social proof, and really build a moat around a specific brand to business stories that perhaps are communicating to investors or future retail partners or other important stakeholders. And in some cases, it can also be
00:17:51
Speaker
influencer marketing and ensuring that a brand's product is in the right hands. In some categories, we've found that it can be really instrumental in kind of the education portion that needs to happen. It's about aligning with the right people who've either spoken up about this particular category or a specific journey that they may be on. So you said something really interesting. You said build a moat around a brand. And could you say a little bit more about that?
00:18:20
Speaker
Sure. I think it's marketing lingo for how do you differentiate a brand from others in a category. And as we all know, there are certain categories at the moment that are crazily oversubscribed and it's challenging to communicate to a prospective audience about really what makes this particular brand stand out from the other brands that are already on the market. So yeah, I think editorial can be powerful. Big picture editorial can be powerful.
00:18:49
Speaker
in differentiating a new brand or an existing brand, again, leveraging storytelling tools, right? Whether it's telling a very unique founder story, whether it's really drilling down on particular aspects of the brand mission that makes it really different than what's already out there. Yeah. Is that helpful?
00:19:08
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's really interesting because when you say build a moat around a brand, I actually haven't heard that before. Now, maybe I've just had like my head in the sand around it. And I think what it would mean is I think of moats as defensive and separating. So I think of it as separating the brand maybe from the noise of the industry, but and also making it a little harder to, I don't know, get at it down. Yeah. Yeah. A little harder to take down. I think if you've
00:19:32
Speaker
There are certainly brands out there who've built a pretty deep mode and it's tough. Yes, it's tough to get at them. It's tough even if you were to do something.
00:19:41
Speaker
that really challenges what they've established. It's difficult because those kinds of kind of emotional brand connections run deep with consumers. So I think, yeah, I think it's a, it can be very powerful. It's, I know I've always found it a nice image. Yes. I love it. It's like archiving and I think protecting almost too, right? Like protecting your brand, protecting your voice, protecting your values and your mission and what you stand for.
00:20:06
Speaker
I think that also goes with being incredibly careful and thoughtful about where your brand is and we're actually big believers of less is more. We don't think you should be everywhere. I think there's this kind of old notion of PR that like any PR is good PR. And we actually feel like that's opposite the case. I think there can absolutely be overexposure in a way. And I think the consumer gets tired. The consumer is also incredibly smart. They're very switched on. They can read between the lines.
00:20:36
Speaker
So I think with that kind of moat that we talk about, it's about being at the right place at the right time, but also really protecting what you stand for and where you speak to your consumer and how you speak to them.
00:20:49
Speaker
I love this. I feel like I'm going to be thinking about this imagery around brands moving so powerful. When I asked about the contract deliverables, so many agencies do it really do it in a lot of different ways. Are you guaranteeing a certain number of positive stories? Are you guaranteeing a certain number of hours worked? What deliverables or goals does the average client contract include?
00:21:17
Speaker
One way that we talk about it is in setting KPIs. And that's something that we typically do at the onset of a new relationship with a client. And one thing that we talk about a lot is
00:21:30
Speaker
We use this phrase that's something along the lines of looking in the rear view mirror. And what that means is we typically work at minimum for contrast to six to 12 months. And really the majority of our contracts are 12 months. And so what that means is we're not guaranteeing anything in 30, 60, 90 days. And there's no such thing, but what we.
00:21:50
Speaker
do like to set in terms of a North Star for ourselves is what does it look like after six months? What does it look like after 12 months? The journey there is up for us to manage, right? And it's, you know, you, there's a part of it that's like, you have to hit the ground running and workshop as you go. But what we're clear about from the beginning with clients is, you know, what does the, yeah, what does the end of the road after six months or after 12 months look like? Like where have we been? And again, like if you think about outlets, cause that helps paint a very vivid picture for clients.
00:22:19
Speaker
Where do we want to be? Where do we want to have told this particular story, this particular brand story, this founder story? What kind of messaging and overall messages do we want to have put out there?
00:22:32
Speaker
If there's a slightly, if there's more than one audience, then where do we want to be tackling this audience versus this audience? So it's, I think it's a bit more qualitative potentially than quantitative, if that makes sense. But it is about putting a post in the ground after six months and saying, okay, what have we accomplished in six months? Because we need that kind of runway. It makes sense. So the contract is about like the partnership. It's about the setting the goals, setting the KPIs and then.
00:22:58
Speaker
you do working in concert on behalf of the client to achieve that through all of the many tactics, connection strategies in your toolkit, essentially. Is that right? Yeah.
00:23:11
Speaker
So on earned media, I think that earned media, which I think of as the right coverage at the right time, is so wildly impactful. But I know that it doesn't always, now maybe you guys are like, no, Au contraire, it really does. But from my perspective, it doesn't always have a media and obvious ROI attached to it that could go in a report, for example. So for deeply funded clients, I'd imagine that's OK.
00:23:37
Speaker
But do you ever feel like your feet are being held to the fire to prove ROI?
Proving ROI in PR
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think what we find ourselves constantly reminding clients is that this is an exercise that takes time. We're absolutely confident in our ability to show ROI over time, but we need a bit of runway. And I think that's usually the kind of situation we're in.
00:24:03
Speaker
We can deliver impactful results to your point, but it doesn't happen overnight. I think we live in a world where everyone is very concerned about runway and especially startups and early stage companies. So I think if they're in a situation where they're measuring in such a tight way, they've given themselves exactly 90 days to deliver XYZ and everything has to ladder back up to that, that's where it can get really tricky for us. Yeah. And I think I would add too that I,
00:24:32
Speaker
Unlike putting money into the meta machine or Google ads, et cetera, I think PR and comms is not black and white to Elise's point in that X gives you Y. And that's why we always talk about this sort of six month timeline. This is what we want to achieve in six months or 12 months. This is a story we want to tell. These are the key messages. These are the publications we want to tell that story through. And we have a very clear set of goals and objectives.
00:24:58
Speaker
And at the end of the six months, we look back and how we achieved the things that we wanted to tick. But also, I think comms and PR has to be a bucket in your broader marketing strategy. It can't be the only strategy. So you can't expect PR to be the only thing that moves the needle, gets people to your website, gets them to convert. We are part of that for sure.
00:25:22
Speaker
To give you an example, if you as a consumer served an ad on Instagram, you're going to go to that brand's account and you're going to pretty quickly get a sense of who they are and what their product is and whether you want to buy it or not. But then you're probably going to Google that brand and are all those dots lining up? Is the brand popping up on whether that's Refinery or Vogue or New York Magazine or Wall Street Journal or
00:25:45
Speaker
Whichever publication your consumer reads, are you in those outlets and are you telling that story there? And I think that credibility and social proof is key, especially really early on for new brands or brands who are trying to reinvent a category, for example.
00:26:02
Speaker
but it can't be the only tool in your toolbox, if you will. And what we're definitely seeing is that with the rising cost of paid content and media, and to be honest, pretty questionable ROI on that front, earned media is playing an even more important role in most brands' marketing strategy. And in fact, we've been speaking heard firsthand and speaking to a lot of very well-known influential VC funds that
00:26:26
Speaker
They're really advising brands to focus on more top of funnel activities and PR really being one of them.
00:26:35
Speaker
That makes so much sense. As you started to talk, I was thinking, I was like, man, the black box of meta and Facebook ads, which for so many years was like, you put in $10, you can make $100. And that's disappearing. But earned media has always been just like, to your point, a little bit of a gray area. In some ways, I think more of an artistic area of marketing. And I love what you just expressed too, which is so obvious, but I feel like important that
00:27:02
Speaker
It's an imperative element of a broader strategy. It's meant to be complementary, not standalone. And going back to the, because it was multiple questions, a bit about our feet being held up to the fire. I'm happy to get into that as well. To your question about, do we ever feel like our feet are being held to the fire a bit? I think the beauty of being able to handpick the founders and brands we work with is that
00:27:30
Speaker
Hopefully by the time we say yes to each other and agree to work together, we've had this
Managing Client Expectations
00:27:34
Speaker
conversation, right? We're aligned with their goals. They're aligned with ours and we're marching towards the same, in the same direction. Um, but, and hopefully we, we know that we're going to be in a relationship with a client that largely understands the landscape. But I'd say we've, we've obviously definitely had experiences in the past where that was very much not the case. And we've also been in a position where.
00:27:58
Speaker
Things didn't move forward with a potential client because they had been burned so badly in the past by different cast of characters. And as a result, there's absolutely no trust left in the craft, right? And sometimes it's just too soon. They need time before they get back in bed with anyone that has to do with PR. And it's like anything in life. You can't take it personally. And you have to say, it wasn't the right time. This wasn't going to work. Give it our best. Next, onward and upward.
00:28:26
Speaker
If a founder is listening and they're like, I want to work with these two so badly, but they know they don't have the budget to work with you guys or a firm like Stories Consulting, and they don't necessarily have an editorial or media leaning network, is there anything that they can do themselves to try and get coverage and placement? Where would you recommend they start?
00:28:52
Speaker
And that's such a good question. I think the landscape is changing a lot and publishers are able to do what they do because of their industry relationships and their network. And in fact, I think relations are probably more important now than they've ever been, especially because there's such a growing emphasis on sponsored content and the rise of affiliate programs and content partnerships and the like. That said, and this is very much depending on a product or a category that you're in, but
00:29:20
Speaker
You can absolutely try to reach out to freelance writers or contributors that you know, because you've done your research, that they write about your field or your product in particular. A lot of freelance writers and contributors these days are actually founders and entrepreneurs themselves. So they get it. And you could send them a DM, like literally slide into their DMs. This is who I am. This is my story.
00:29:43
Speaker
I'd love to talk to you. That could be an approach that works. If the category makes sense, you could even offer to send them a gift so they can experience your brand or product firsthand. So I think that's one approach. The sort of challenge then becomes that if they do want to write about you, how do you then control that narrative? How do you ensure that the key messages that are important to your brand
00:30:07
Speaker
are being included in that piece or that your story or the brand story is really told the right way. I think that can be tricky to do for yourself if you don't have a seasoned publicist that's essentially working on your behalf to really craft around what that piece is going to look like.
00:30:26
Speaker
to give them the briefing document that you mentioned earlier in the trial. Yeah, exactly. I think that's really helpful advice. And so I'm curious to know what are the most important lessons that you two feel you learned in your first couple of years of business together? And I know that was even a different enterprise years ago now at this point.
00:30:51
Speaker
So it's good just also just be general, good lessons learned you want to pass on. Yeah. And I'll start, look, not to repeat myself, but I think for me, it does, it does have to do with.
00:31:04
Speaker
the work that takes place in building our relationship and Florencia and I's like a marriage. And the fact that you really can't fake that experience as a duo and doing whatever it is that you're doing. And you can't fake that time in the partnership, right? You've either been in the trenches, gone through this together, been sort of stripped in some ways and rebuilt, or you haven't. And I think about that a lot. I do think that is something that sets us apart. I think in a lot of ways when you're working in larger environments,
00:31:34
Speaker
things change a lot and as a client you can come in and get pitched by a specific team and by the time the contract is inked you've been moved to a different team because things change in business and everyone's running their own P&L and it just no longer makes sense for you to work with the team that pitched you.
00:31:51
Speaker
And it's just, it's a very different business models, business model. Agencies are running a different business than what Florencia and I are running. And I think, yeah, there's a lot of that goes on. And obviously the industry folks that are, who are listening in know that. And I think just like most things in life, consistency is the key to unlocking a lot when it comes to success. And that that's true tactically and that's true in terms of relationships. And I think what happens a lot of times in larger environments is that
00:32:18
Speaker
Literally, the team just couldn't get their footing. It's as simple as that. And by the time you've realized it, the client got impatient and most likely left. And it's too late. They didn't get the results. They were promised. The team couldn't get out of their own way. And it's the opportunity is lost. It's gone. Yeah. I think consistency and loyalty are probably wildly underrated in business as far as I'm concerned.
00:32:45
Speaker
For sure. And I think I would also add really clearly defining your values and sticking to them and staying incredibly focused. And it is very much reflected in the roster that we've built. And just like it is incredibly important for any brand to define their values, their mission. Even if you're on the server side, you've got to have your own set of values and really stick to them and believe in them and live and breathe what these values are.
00:33:13
Speaker
And that's allowed us to stay incredibly focused and very much select who we want to work with and why. That's great advice. Thank you. Thank you. And likewise, we are stealing your Google Doc for, no, we don't do this, templates. Genius. Yeah, templates are my special power in some way. It sounds so basic though.
Connect with Stories Consulting
00:33:33
Speaker
So if people are listening and they want to follow you, they want to check you guys out,
00:33:40
Speaker
Where can they go online to find you or perhaps even reach out to you? Sure. You can find us on our website, which is storiesconsulting.com. We also have an Instagram account, which is storiesconsulting, which is incredibly new. So bear with us. Give us a follow, but also just reach out via DM to either Elise or myself. We're always open to chat. And interestingly enough, a lot of the brands that
00:34:06
Speaker
that we find ourselves working with are having referral and word of mouth. Everything we do is very personal and close to home. So it's word of mouth is great. Send wonderful founders and brands our way. All right. I will put all of those links. I'll put them in the show notes and I'll be following you guys on Instagram. Content people also just this week started.
00:34:30
Speaker
It's Instagram account. Elise, you followed me and you endeared yourself to me forever. You have my loyalty if you have anything. I'm doing it right now. Yeah. I'll put all those links in the show notes. This was such a fun conversation. I'm so grateful for everything that you all shared. I think you gave excellent advice and I really admire what you guys are doing at Stories Consulting. And I really admire the business that you've built. I think it's got so much integrity. It's so, such a cool offering.
00:35:00
Speaker
Thank you so much. That means a lot. Thank you for having us. This is lovely. Thank you. All right, folks. I hope that you enjoyed that episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe or review us. And if you want to check out our newsletter, Content People, it is in the show notes. See you next time. Bye.