714 Tiffany Guarnaccia: PR Secrets

There’s nothing better than someone else singing your praises …the validation that comes when a major magazine, newspaper, blog, or TV show tells the world how great you and your company are. In a noisy world we all want to stand out from the crowd, build our influence and thought leadership, and get the credibility bump that comes with earned media. It’s easier said than done, like my guest today, Kite Hill PR Agency founder Tiffany Guarnaccia shares. So today we dig deep into the world of PR and how and when to leverage it for your business.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who started honing her craft heading up communications for the Huffington Post and PR for LimeWire and eMusic. Before long Tiffany Guarnaccia figured out that she was an entrepreneur and struck out on her own to found and grow Kite Hill PR, the agency that helps tech companies put themselves on the map. Tiffany also founded

Communications Week, which was recently acquired by Ragan Communications.

Tiffany will be here in a moment, and first,

What’s the power of PR? We all want a good story told about us and the companies we are founding, growing and scaling because face it – when a respected publication like Entrepreneur, Forbes or Business Week writes an article singing your praises, it puts a validation multiplier on everything else you do. And beyond getting the word out about your solution and the value you bring, it engenders trust and helps potential customers choose you over your competitors.

So what are the secrets of landing earned media?

Tiffany Guarnaccia has lived and breathed all things PR – first for the Huffington Post, and then as PR director at LimeWire and eMusic during the most disruptive time in the music industry.

Since founding Kite Hill PR, Tiffany has been recognized as one of PR News’ Women to Watch, a DMN Hall of Femme, and PRWeek 40 Under 40 award winner. Under her leadership, Kite Hill PR has been recognized as one of the “Top Tech Specialist PR Agencies in NYC” and “Most

Powerful PR Firms” by the Observer, a Best Place to Work by PR News and one of “America’s Best PR Agencies” by Forbes.

So today we get into everything PR, including when you should hire a PR agency, and inside secrets you won’t want to miss. Plus, Tiffany shares her entrepreneurial journey and why work-life balance is at the core of everything she does and how she runs her company, with flexible work hours and a work from anywhere hybrid culture.

So let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Tiffany Guarnaccia and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Tiffany welcome to Wings.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Thanks for having me. I’m excited to talk to you today.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, I’m really curious about your entrepreneurial journey. What led you along the way to start your company, Kite Hill PR?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Yep. I love that question, and it’s not because I want to talk about my company, Kite Hill PR, it’s more because when you think about the framework of my journey, the way you asked was my entrepreneurial journey. And when I think about myself, it’s really only over the past few years that I’ve realized that I’m an entrepreneur. You have this moment where you say, okay, I’m doing great. I’m running a business and you have this almost imposter syndrome that so many other young females face. And I think I was there for so long until I stepped up and realized that launching businesses and launching companies are my passion. I actually started out really studying PR and worked in house in a couple of other companies and have been at the helm of this fantastic agency for the past nine years. And it’s my second company. So it’s really exciting to see growth along the way.

Melinda Wittstock:

So what was it that allowed you to get over that imposter syndrome? Because I think so many women have that. It’s like, oh my God, someone’s going to find out. But the fact is, as entrepreneurs, we’re creating something new, a new approach that’s really drawing from our own unique abilities and talents and skills. And no two entrepreneurs are alike. It really is our own journey. So what was it, the moment where you finally really got rid of that imposter syndrome?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

And that is such a great question, because it is something that so many women are struggling with now. And I feel it’s almost more relevant in the context of the environment we’re living in post the initial impact of COVID, where we are sometimes isolated working at home. We’re not working in the office. We’re trying to understand work from anywhere. We’re managing many different realities. We’re balancing things like family and children, and so much more. And you’re trying to map out your career path in a new environment, in the new normal. So it pulls to question a lot of things about how we see ourselves moving forward and who we are today. So I started off in PR a long time ago, I’m going to play all the way back, starting my career in the early 2000s. I had just graduated college. I always had a passion for PR. So, I was one of those people that saw the industry and had a graduate degree in that area and leaned in and really wanted to start to work in the PR industry.

I worked in house at a couple of different companies and really started to get a taste for broader marketing and PR overall. And some of those industries were in the AdTech industry, which was very much evolving at the time. I also worked in house at a music tech company in some of the music industry’s most pivotal years, as we were seeing such tremendous times of transformation that really included moving from some traditional forms of the way music was distributed to digital forms of communication. It was right at the launch of Spotify in the US. So there was a lot of transition. There was a lot of change. And in that moment I realized the power of PR, the impact of storytelling and how much PR should always have a seat at the table.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

And as I started to work with many different executives and think about my own perspective, I also really started to solidify the belief that there was an opportunity in the market to launch a different kind of PR agency that celebrated not just what we do, but how we do it, and to live by our values, and to look at teamwork and collaboration that really has helped us stand out from the very beginning, because PR is about people. How am I building the right team around me? We’ve continued to adjust that in our work from anywhere environment and celebrate agility as I’ve continued to build out the team.

Melinda Wittstock:

Ah, I love that. You mentioned a whole bunch of really interesting verticals there, and I want to dig into PR itself, because I think so many people in a marketing sense spend a lot of time on their social media channels, or maybe their email auto responders, It’s like an endless cycle of content marketing. Yet there’s something that comes from PR, the validation of having a third party say how good you are that adds like an amplifier to all of those activities. So at what point should a business, at whatever stage, really be hiring a PR agency, or even bringing in a PR dynamic in house, however they’re going to do it, but really focusing on that, driving that valuable earned media?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Well, I’ll first answer that question by giving a little bit more clarity as to what is PR, because oftentimes there’s a general sense from executives, senior executives, or someone who’s just starting out and building their business as to what’s PR, how’s it different from marketing? How do I understand that as a part of the broader marketing and communications mix? The way you can look at public relations is essentially earned media. It’s the way you can’t pay for. So you think about the mix of communications there’s shared, there’s paid, there’s earned. So when we think about that, that pulls into working with journalists media relations, and that does add to credibility, to your point, that helps with telling the story of a brand and the brand perception, which is particularly important when you’re in those early stages of your company, when you’re looking to reach many stakeholders, that could be potential clients, it could be potential customers, it could be investors that you need to get in front of. And it’s also about thought leadership.

So how am I elevating the perception of my company, my executives, and my brand within a particular industry? So understanding all of that then influences when do you need to invest in PR. If you’re starting a company, this is a question I get very, very frequently in working in the tech sector. We work with startups, scale ups and larger companies that bring us in for our expertise. Generally, you want to be able to invest in PR when you’ve moved through a couple of different milestones. One, if you’re building from the ground up, you have to have some history of a working product within the market. So in early days of PR, maybe a decade ago, you could start to seed the market and talk about what’s coming and tee up some new products or services if you were a brand new company. We really like to work with companies that have had more of an established traction and have that product roadmap or timeline within the market, that we can start to build a communications roadmap from.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

You also want to be able to answer the tough questions that journalists might have when you start to really invest in PR, that is essentially might be similar to what your investors might be asking you about. What’s the traction in the market? How do you compare against your competitors or some of your clients who’s using the product or service? So all of these things are particularly important. And you also might want to evaluate when you’re investing in PR at the markets that you’re looking to reach. So oftentimes we have someone who is a startup in the UK, they want to break through in the US. And they’re thinking about when can I invest in PR in the US. And today it’s really about those earlier points I made, showing traction, looking at how you stack up against competitors, being able to articulate some of the key milestones within your roadmap. And what we’d really like to track back to is how can we show growth and momentum for your business within the market?

Melinda Wittstock:

So, there’s different strategies for different stages. And I like that you said, be prepared for questions that an investor would ask you. What makes a really good PR campaign? What are the ingredients that a company needs say, let’s start with the early stage. What are some compelling angles, say that with your clients, that have really worked in actually getting results, getting them lots of earned media, getting them on TV, getting them into, I don’t know, WIRED magazine, or Entrepreneur magazine or these sorts of things?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

It depends on the company. Generally what works is a couple of things, I would have to say we are in the business of storytelling and our team is known for being very proactive and creative. So oftentimes someone will come to us, and a part of our job is to do exactly that, is to find the story. Is to look at all the different parts of the business, is to do almost a structured brainstorm with the different executives and say, okay, let’s go deeper into your product. How is it different? What’s the traction? Now let’s talk about your company policies and procedure and your culture. Are you doing anything different that would be very interesting to not only some of your direct stakeholders, but a broader audience? When we speak to the media, it’s also about who do they need to have compelling messages that they’re trying to really look for their readers or their listeners, and some of that information.

So an example of that, that unique piece of a business that we pulled out, is one client that we have that’s called Goodway Group. We’ve been working with them for the past six years. And when we first started to work with them, we were really looking at promoting the business itself. We were looking at how they were differentiated against competitors. And as we started to get to know them, we not only talked about them in the business of advertising and some of their milestones as a business overall, we also worked with them through an acquisition, but we noticed years ago that they were fully work from home. And that was interesting, about six years ago, before the pandemic.

Melinda Wittstock:

Before COVID.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Yeah, exactly. Before we’re all in the situation that we’ve been through, and we’ve adjusted and we have that rapid digital transformation, but that was something we picked up is that’s really unique. And that also helped the business attract more talent that needed the flexibility. They had a high index of women who were in rising roles within the business. So overall, and we almost took that roadmap that they had already created and used that as a platform for their PR and for thought leadership. And we not only used it to create a program that we talked about from some of their HR initiatives, then we packaged up all the unique learnings that they had in running the business in that way, since the early days of that company, we used it to get a great piece, and then fast company. And then we used it as a platform overall for one of their executives, we elevated him as someone who was an expert in work from anywhere and some of these policies.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

And then it was perfect timing when it came to off the back of the onset of COVID, so many people were looking for that information that he became someone who was sought after on a much larger stage, because they had already cracked that roadmap. And that all tracks back to us, getting to know the business, seeing what they’re doing differently, not only differently from, as you would expect the product or service, but the company itself, the culture, who they are, how they’re operating.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. You raise a really important point, which is true of all marketing and PR, it’s differentiation, because, okay, I speak as a recovering journalist. Not only am I a five time serial entrepreneur, but for years I was a business correspondent and media correspondent of the Times of London going across my career, takes me across the BBC as a host and an executive producer through to ABC News. All of that. I know what it’s like as a journalist to get a phone call from a PR person. And if it’s not something that I know for sure is going to be of interest to my audience, or it’s not something new, novel, different, with that hat on, I’m going to put the phone down.

So how much of your work, I imagine, I think I know the answer to this already, but I’m just going to ask it for everybody. How much of your work is really developing relationships with all the journalists, all the producers, all the show, all the podcasters, all the people, and really getting very clear on, what do they need to serve their audience and crafting pitches for your companies that are going to fit that?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

You just hit a hot button issue in my book. And I think it used to be about, when he talked about PR and media relations, a lot of the old guard would say, it’s about relationships. You need to know the journalists to be able to break through. And that’s how you can look at the success of a PR agency. And relationships are still important, they’re very important, but really the way we work with our team members today, the way we train folks on how to do PR is more about being able to tell those stories and looking at the broader media environment. And, of course, it’s about the relevancy to the journalist, but we think about the fast moving environment that we’re in right now, a lot of journalists are hopping from publication to publication. So you might have a relationship at one publication they’re moving somewhere else.

So you really have to be able to, as a PR professional, or even if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re looking to take a DIY approach to PR, identify what is it that’s relevant to that journalist, but relevant to their audience. And then in the information that I’m sharing, if it’s something that I’m looking for, for coverage, what’s the news? Don’t bury the lead. What is that interesting perspective that I’m sharing from that? And that is where you start with storytelling with news, if it’s something in the broader bucket of thought leadership, which for reference tends to be, if it’s a Q&A, or a bylined article, that’s where we usually say, it’s also about having a strong point of view. So you don’t necessarily have to be controversial, but you should be counterintuitive and sharing information that’s relevant. And that really looks at what are the learnings that you have to share?

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, a hundred percent. When information is useful to people, it actually helps them. So there’s an interesting shift between that, oh, look at me. We have look at a nation of mini narcissists, of me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me all the way through social media. And it’s like, Oh, yawn!

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

But when the information is actually useful, actionable, or a story resonates, or there’s just something you can do with it. So is that how you really help your clients stand out, like get signal in all the noise?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Yes. Yeah. It is about identifying how the company is unique, looking at telling that story through media relations. And also it’s not just a one off, but the way we like to look at the approach is a peaks and valleys approach to PR. So you’re thinking about when are the news moments that I have something that is big and impactful for a lot of startup companies, that could be a funding round. I think you really want to maximize that moment. That is a PR moment for your company.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh God, we’ve got one of those in a couple weeks.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Great. Well, here’s an opportunity. Sometimes I get that question is even, I got funding. Should I tell the story? Yes. Yeah. The tech crunch bump is still real. There’s still, when you push out that news there’s an opportunity for you to really use that as a moment to create a splash [inaudible 00:17:09] company, to draw attention of investors, potentially more investors within that moment when you’re reaching a business audience and you’re planning against the company’s broader roadmap and goals and PR strategy should always be aligned to business strategy. So there’s a lens that you need to look at that. And then, overall it’s evaluating what do I need to accomplish within the market? And then in the valleys, so if I’m talking about the peaks and valleys approach, in the valleys, it’s looking at leadership, it could be events, a piece that we also like to look at that could take a mix of that is data and research.

So if you’re thinking about how can we help a client to tell their story and create that story, that is something we can tell to the market on a consistent basis, because PR is a frequency medium, that could also be research that backs up some of the key points that we have. And that’s particularly important now, especially within the current media environment, I say data is the new steak dinner. You really want to look at what insights do you have from your platform, if you don’t have them, where can you go get them? Can you work with a third party to help to build your story that way?

Melinda Wittstock:

I think the best kind of media, marketing, PR, all of that, has an approach that’s right brain, left brain balanced, where there’s a creativity and intuition, but with the data, the numbers, data, all of these things, psychographics just what people are actually doing, as opposed to what you hope they’ll do is a vital, vital part of the equation. So tell me a little bit more about your ideal client. What makes them an ideal client? Who do you like to work with?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

We focus on the tech sector and within that it’s B2B technology across a couple of categories. It’s folks who are in cyber security, a lot of AdTech and MarTech platforms. That’s a business that I have roots in, and that we’ve continued to work in and expand. That’s actually how we started off, was a specialist firm in AdTech and marketing. And that was a part of my business strategy to double down on a vertical and then expand. And as we’ve expanded, we’ve also worked across categories like clean tech and green tech and ESG, as well as enterprise tech.

Melinda Wittstock:

And you’ve just, before we started talking, you just said you just signed a bunch of new clients. Congratulations on that.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Thank you. Certainly at the helm of a business, you are looking ahead and trying to look at projections and look at revenue projections, and look at growth on the horizon. And we’ve been through such periods of uncertainty that to see the growth on the horizon is really exciting. I’m one of the many CEOs that’s also paying very close attention to what’s happening within the broader market. And some of the economic uncertainty that we’re seeing now. I’ve seen some statistics and studies recently that 75% of CEOs are preparing for a recession, but you can probably get that number just by talking to some of the entrepreneurs and folks-.

Melinda Wittstock:

In the air, it’s just in the air and it’s in the inflation numbers. Yeah. When you’re looking at that, let’s just dive into that, when you’re looking at that and the way that you prepare, you presume that certain companies that maybe were major advertisers now cut their ad budgets. So if you have an ad supported model, okay. If you have a consumer subscription model, they have less money to spend on that. So, what are some of the ways that a PR agency, such as Kite Hill, for instance, prepares for that? And by extension, what are some of your clients doing and some of these B2B tech spaces, depending on their model?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Well, I think we’re all looking about the principles for our business and looking at how can we take the lessons that we’ve learned along the way and set ourselves up for success. So I think back to March 2020, it’s a moment you might not want to think back to with me.

Melinda Wittstock:

No, I remember it well.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

And the onset of COVID, and in that moment, I really had to reset our PR agency. And I was challenged with the loss of revenue, just losing clients minute by minute, feeling that just revenue just slipping away so quickly in days. And in days I was challenged with identifying our projections for client revenue, our client needs, resources and how to do resource allocation all in times of uncertainty. And I knew in that moment, with tremendous pressure, that I felt that I needed to somehow live by one of the principles that I’ve always challenged myself to live by, which was exactly how can you turn every challenge into an opportunity? How can you find some kind of silver lining within what’s happening now?

Melinda Wittstock:

Look, there always is a silver lining.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Right. It’s hard to see sometimes.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s hard to see, but that’s what-.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

It created a lot of storms, but it’s always there.

Melinda Wittstock:

But that’s part of the job description of an entrepreneur. The more you’re an entrepreneur with each successive company, if you’re a serial entrepreneur, or you’re growing something over time. This kind of mindset issue, there’s always going to be something. And there are going to be a lot of things that are beyond your control. So it’s like, how do you take those things and alchemize them, I think we’re alchemists, how do we alchemize them into, yeah, like you said, opportunity?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Yeah. Exactly. So I’ll tell you what we did. We looked at three things first. One, we shifted to fully embracing work from anywhere as the way forward and added balance as a value to prioritize mental health. So we put people first and then stayed the course on that front. So, we never lost that vision of complete flexibility. All of the operations that support that within our team and putting our people first. Then we looked right to our services, evaluated and actually added some services like executive communications, internal communications, and crisis communications, which continues to be a big part of our business when we think about the broader communications that are needed in the market right now. And the third is that we formed new partnerships. So we looked at how could we extend our capabilities beyond what we were offering to further meet the needs of clients as we were facing uncertainty, and we’re still facing uncertainty now.

So within that, we’ve regeared the business so much so that it led to last year being our best year yet. And we had that initial hockey stick like growth, and we’re setting ourselves up growth. But as we look at this uncertainty, we use those lessons to demonstrate a key lesson that we have moving forward on how recession improved our business. And one is continue to put people first. Two is diversifying our revenue streams to focus on our most valued services. And three is their strength in numbers. So we’re looking at other ways to solidify the relationships and new partnerships we already formed plus going much broader than that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, the diversification is really important. I’ve learned to build business models from the outset now that have that diversification, like in the case of Podopolo revenue is coming from, I think we have six different revenue sources, and that sounds a little extreme, but if one of them is not so good, then the other one, and it’s like a flywheel concept. So they all have been architected to build upon each other.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

That’s exactly right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And for those of you who don’t know what a flywheel is, it’s a technical thing, but basically each part of that machinery, it can be hard to get going, but once it’s going, every single aspect of what you’re doing is building on it. I guess Amazon is a great example of such a business.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Great example.

Melinda Wittstock:

But thinking with that end in mind, because there’s always going to be something, a pandemic, a recession, a this, or that, oh my goodness. And so you made it through COVID, you learned obviously, I think COVID was an interesting opportunity to look within and figure out, okay, so who am I? What’s my real core mission and purpose as an individual in a nurse suit currently, what am I here to do? How can I be in an alignment? What does that actually mean? How does my business align with me? What is the business here to do? All those sorts of things, because there was a big pattern interrupt where I think a lot of really smart people did that. And I think a lot of other people reacted. And it sounds like you went within a little bit, is that right?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

I think there was a part of that, that was looking within, just reevaluating broader perspectives that I had within the business. But it was also not only looking at my own values, but realizing the importance of Kite Hill’s values and how they can really set a company up for success through times of prosperity and through challenging times. So I took a step back and I looked at our mission and vision and the culture that we had, and really brought that to the forefront, especially as we had adjusted to a digital first environment and then looked at, values aren’t something that you can set it and forget it. You have to live by your values every day. And I do think that it’s a part of what a successful company looks like today. It’s not about putting up a value wall, or some pages on your website. It’s much more about how can you really bring these to life for your team? How can you think about tangible examples, and balance was a big part of that.

So we had values like collaboration and agility in the beginning of the pandemic, and we added balance to really remind ourselves of that, to look at everyone’s perception and think about how do I set myself up for success in my daily life? It’s not just a one off, taking some vacation time, it’s I want to embrace things that are important to me and make sure that the work environment I’m in really supports that in a very real way.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Well, you talk about that at Kite Hill balance is a core value for everybody, this work life balance, and you’ve been able to create a business that in an alignment with you as a working mom, just as I’m a working mom, or an entrepreneurial mom, where those things that you want personally, chances are your team really wants as well. So in terms of being able to build a team where everyone’s in alignment, where there’s no distance between the walk and the talk, if you know what I mean, can you talk about that a little bit?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Sure. Well, there’s the importance of communications certainly comes into play. So if you are a company that’s looking to evaluate how more flexibility can work for you and you’ve seen some issues with maybe your current policy, I would say it’s definitely time to take a step back, and think about some of your internal communications and really encourage over communication when it comes to every employee should have a really good sense of what they’re accountable and responsible for. So, that’s some of your first steps. And then within that, it’s how am I communicating with the team? Is the team communicating with each other on the work that they’re doing and keeping focus there? Do I understand the results that I’m responsible for driving forward? What are the outcomes? And in some cases, I think you’d be surprised that there’s not a hundred percent clarity there. And that was one of the first steps that we took a step back and we made sure that every single person, from myself as the CEO down to our intern, had a really good sense of those areas of responsibility and accountability.

Then we underpinned that complete flexibility that we have, because we’re in the business of client service, you might think, how is that possible? We’re in media, we’re in client service, we’re in the PR industry, it’s fast paced, news is breaking, crisis can come up at any time. So how do we give everyone that flexibility? And we looked at some of the guideposts that we created for Kite Hill, that starts with an understanding of really looking at the client’s needs, looking at the work that needs to be done. And then putting tactical things into place are really helpful too.

So it’s not only those big principles of understanding and communication, but it’s also the daily reinforcement, getting into the weeds and doing something that sounds simple. What we did is just the creation of 90 day plans. And we have a rolling 90 day plan schedule that we rolled out across for everyone in the agency where you work with your manager and your mentor. We have a mentorship program on these are the areas that I’m responsible for. Here are three goals that I want to achieve in the next 90 days. Here’s how I think I’m going to get here. And this is what I’m going to do to work towards that. So it’s a structure and a framework that helps support all the flexibility and that’s facilitated by the process and communication.

Melinda Wittstock:

Beautifully said. I think a lot of entrepreneurs go into this sometimes just hiring people to do things rather than seeing them as the investment that they are like, what is the return that each one of these people on your team is going to bring, and do they have the resources to do it? Do they have the skills to do it? What do they need? What’s the support they need to do it? And like you said, the communication. So, Tiffany, when you’re running an agency like a PR agency, how does scalability come into the equation? Because it’s an agency, so it’s a people business. So how do you grow and scale? What are the scalable parts of your model?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

There’s a book that’s called Rocket Fuel.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, I know it well.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

You do. And one of my mentors gave it to me. And if anyone is an entrepreneur that’s listening and looking for inspiration about how to shape your C-suite, it was great inspiration for me early on. And it tracks back to how I think about scaling and growing the business, because I was someone who was doing it all myself. I was the single founder of the business and was very much, in Rocket Fuel there’s the principle of the visionary, who is a person like me, who essentially is, you come up with the big ideas. You are the one who’s going, maybe the big ideas and sometimes crazy ideas. You’re really looking at the market. You have your finger on the pulse, but you need another role, the yin and the yang, and that other role is the integrator. And that is someone who can also help look at the execution of the business plan as well as operations.

So I have a great COO, her name is Rachel Hadley, who I brought into the business in 2019. And that was really when we started to look at scaling the business and growing the business in a way that was more focused on the operational side and looking at things that are important, like capacity for an agency, profitability, projections, and planning against projections. So all of those things are particularly important as you think about that moving forward. I’m a big believer, especially within this environment where we’ve talked a little bit about the economic uncertainty, is to pace your growth and how you’re bringing on people, resources, and clients at the same time. So it’s a little bit of a dance that you have to do, but instead of doing a ton of investment hires, like some other agencies do, we look at what’s the business that we have now, what are we projecting in the next three months? How are we hiring against those projections? And then continue to evaluate from there.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so at what point did you say, oh gosh, I need my integrator? Did you bring that person on soon enough? Did you know very clearly exactly who that person was going to be? How did that work? Because sometimes that operational person comes a little bit too late in the business.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Right. Well, I remember I was sitting at a lunch meeting with one of my early mentors who was the CEO of PulsePoint, an AdTech company. And he was also my first client. So he was someone who I worked with earlier and had kept in touch with. And he knew that one of my ambitions was to launch a PR agency. So he brought me on, as soon as he took over as CEO. And we would frequently share information. I would help with PR and he would, anytime he was looking at the learnings he had from his business, he would share that back to me. And he was also at a point where he was looking to scale the company and had introduced me to that book, Rocket Fuel, because I had mentioned to him, I was looking at scale and different parts of the business and it felt like I needed to create different parameters around how I was looking at things, like the agency structure.

So I did then proactively look for a head of operations. And that’s how I found our COO and decided to grow the business that way. And it was really from there that I started to then look at building out the right executive team around me, it’s really about, I think a great leader surrounds themselves with other great leaders. So we brought on a chief client officer, we have two SVPs, and built the business that way.

Melinda Wittstock:

So I could talk to you for a lot longer, Tiffany, but congratulations on all your success and everything. And if you are the founder, or work for a company that needs Kite Hill right now, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Sure. Of course, if there’s funding news that’s coming up tomorrow, call me now. A lot of people wait until it’s after that they’ve closed, and they’re wondering what to do, but always happy to give advice. You can reach me at tiffanykitehillpr.com, and you can look at our website and follow us on Instagram, just at Kite Hill PR.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Tiffany Guarnaccia:

Thank you. This was a great conversation. Thanks so much for having me.