Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / I Never Sold Anything, And My PR Agency Still Thrived: Emily Reynolds

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I Never Sold Anything, And My PR Agency Still Thrived: Emily Reynolds · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

0:00
I don't ever try to sell something.
0:02
I'm just like
0:04
I really like you. We should work together.
0:06
And it's so genuine. Like there's nobody that we work with that they don't feel that
0:11
way, you know? And they're like,
0:12
okay.
0:14
it would have been repelling if I had been like,
0:16
I only want to work with celebrities.
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I don't know if this is for me,
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you know. But then I was like,
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what else would I do?
0:21
So there was a moment what do I need to like pay my rent?
0:23
What do I need to and I just like totally forgot one month to like
0:26
pay my electric bill? And I was like,
0:29
my gosh, you know, the lights went out and I had to
0:31
Ha ha.
0:31
like figure that out. And I'm like,
0:33
that's when I hired Jackie. I was like,
0:35
I don't know how I'm gonna pay you.
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I don't even know how I'm paying myself,
0:38
when I started my business. I sat in my car and I almost like cried.
0:40
And I was like, Am I a door-to-door salesman?
0:43
how do I get clients? I'll never forget.
0:45
I was just like sitting in the middle of Texas and like,
0:47
my gosh, what did I do?
0:54
All right, Emily Reynolds, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
0:58
Thank you so much for having me,
0:59
Dave. So good to be here today.
1:01
Yes, we are excited to talk to you.
1:03
so Emily, you are the founder of R Public Relations.
1:07
And this is a lifestyle ~ reputation management firm,
1:13
which we'll get into. And you've been running that company for over
1:16
a decade and they've scaled it out very impressively.
1:19
And we're just talking off camera about how you got into this work,
1:23
and it was it was almost by accident.
1:25
so just to set the stage for our listeners,
1:27
can you talk about how you became an entrepreneur?
1:30
Absolutely. It started with some burnt pizza.
1:33
So I was sitting at a restaurant with an editor of mine.
1:38
I was a freelance writer for a magazine in Texas called Taste.
1:42
And one of my favorite pizzas
1:46
in San Antonio at this place called Trey Trecheria
1:52
had come out and it had it was a little bit more cr charred than usual.
1:56
And so I was like, I hate to do this.
1:58
~
1:59
But can I like just get a remake and the chef and owner came out,
2:05
Jason, and he just was like apologetic and just said,
2:09
Hey, listen, thanks for bringing this to my attention and then we were talking
2:13
and he knew Michelle, the editor of Taste I was with at lunch,
2:17
and just jokingly I said,
2:20
you know, I love your food, I love your reputation
2:24
~ if you're ever looking for anybody,
2:26
I have no experience in marketing,
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but I'm really passionate about food and writing about it,
2:30
just give me a call. Literally a month later,
2:32
his wife Crystal called me and I got a job helping as a marketing assistant
2:37
and then a marketing director after a few years helping their restaurant group
2:42
in Texas grow and ~ maintain ~ it's it's still in great standing today.
2:49
And ~
2:49
They're still friends of mine and just wonderful people that helped me become
2:54
who I am today and actually find what I was really passionate about.
2:57
I had I was one of those like really floundering people.
3:00
Like I didn't know what I wanted to study,
3:01
I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.
3:04
and so I found what I love. I love working with businesses and people
3:08
and helping the world get to know them a bit better and helping share their secret
3:12
sauce. Yeah.
3:14
Okay. All right. So interesting.
3:15
So so you're you ha you're a freelance writer.
3:18
You're not really sure what you want to do.
3:20
You're at lunch one day, pizza's burnt,
3:22
owner comes out, very apologetic,
3:25
and you just, naturally said, Hey,
3:26
if you're ever looking for someone to help,
3:28
I'm passionate about this, just kind of following what you what you enjoy,
3:31
what you're good at. A month later you get the call,
3:34
they take you under their wing,
3:36
you work for them for years, great people.
3:39
And then so what happens next?
3:42
So through the years working with the Daity Group,
3:45
I met a lot of great people. I loved my job and like I said,
3:50
I started out with no experience and just grew really quickly to like really love
3:54
marketing. I was doing full scale marketing with within the group and I decided,
4:01
~ man, I just love this thing called PR.
4:04
I loved pitching media. I loved getting stories written about things that
4:07
we were doing. It just felt really fulfilling.
4:09
And it mixed my journalism background and writing background with marketing.
4:16
And so I was like, hey, I wanna get to know this more.
4:18
And so ~ I ended up getting a job at an agency in Austin and ~ the rest is history.
4:25
I left the agency because it was just really straining.
4:28
I was living in San Antonio and I just like,
4:31
you know, the commute and all the kind of things going on with just that type
4:34
of agency life is very strenuous.
4:37
~ and I just said, you know, I think I still wanna do this,
4:41
but I wanna kind of lighter load and just take on some of my own clients
4:46
and ha make my own schedule. And it was literally ~ during the holiday break,
4:52
in
4:54
2015 that I was like, I'm just gonna take a chance on myself.
4:58
And I did, and the rest has been history.
5:01
And it was, you know, every month I'd you know go through,
5:05
and I'm not a math person, but I would just be like,
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okay, how many clients do I need to like pay my rent?
5:10
And how many clients do I need to if I wanted to hire an assistant?
5:13
And how many clients do I need if you know,
5:15
and I kept going and going, and I still had like I still remember in my office
5:18
I had these tiny little sticky notes of
5:21
just target goals that I had to set for myself as a,
5:25
you know, small, super small business at the time,
5:28
~ to to be able to fulfill,
5:32
you know, living and working for myself.
5:34
And then I quickly realized my very first hire had to be my bookkeeper.
5:40
Her name was Jackie. she was phenomenal and she was like Emily,
5:44
you know, like
5:45
Here's how you organize financially a business.
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And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about,
5:51
but I trust you. And ~ she helped me grow and us grow and then I was able
5:56
to hire people and then ~ we now have a full on CFO team,
6:00
you know, fast forward eleven years later,
6:03
and I always say to them, like you guys are the keys to this working because
6:06
I'm a super creative person.
6:09
My brain does not translate into numbers and but you know,
6:12
in order to run a really great business that's what needs to happen.
6:16
Okay. All right. So wow. So you're in a PR agency,
6:19
kind of getting burnt out with the agency life.
6:22
You you have this this desire to work for yourself.
6:22
Yes.
6:25
And during the holiday break, you just say,
6:27
I'm gonna just do it and and you start.
6:30
it sounds like you just jumped in and did it.
6:31
Was there hesitation? Was there like,
6:33
what if this doesn't work? What is this like,
6:35
what what am I doing? Were those thoughts going
6:37
through your head?
6:38
my gosh. Yeah, there was a moment,
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you know, like I said, I'm not a math person.
6:42
So there was a moment where I was like,
6:44
okay, what do I need to like pay my rent?
6:46
What do I need to and I just like totally forgot one month to like
6:49
pay my electric bill? And I was like,
6:51
my gosh, you know, the lights went out and I had to
6:53
Ha ha.
6:54
like figure that out. And I'm like,
6:55
that's when I hired Jackie. I was like,
6:57
I don't know how I'm gonna pay you.
6:58
I don't even know how I'm paying myself,
7:00
but I need help organizing all this because just not my skill set.
7:04
What I'm really good at is PR and helping businesses.
7:08
Like it's just my natural gift.
7:09
And the business side has always been a struggle.
7:13
But in order to do PR the way I wanna do PR,
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as a highly creative person, I have to work for myself.
7:20
And so the the constant struggle that we all have,
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you know, our own inner yin and yangs that we have,
7:26
mine is that, you know, creative meets business,
7:28
creative meets business. It was my my big
7:31
issue as a freelance writer. I wanted to just like write and write and write and,
7:35
you know, have all of this beautiful artwork.
7:37
And, you know, the editorial team would be like,
7:40
yeah, that sounds great. And then chop,
7:41
chop, chop, chop, chop, the marketing and,
7:45
you know, paid team that wanted,
7:48
you know, had to keep the wheels on of the magazine had to ~ cut that up.
7:52
And I was like, man, you know,
7:54
I don't like my creativity stifled.
7:56
But there's always a little bit of that yin and yang of,
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you know,
7:59
Here's creativity, it needs flow,
8:01
but the structure is an essential for the creativity to flow.
8:05
So I think that I would say just like the essence of my challenge has been.
8:10
And then you could put anything to that,
8:13
you know, like being a leader and giving direction as a really creative person,
8:17
big time struggle. Creating processes as a really creative person,
8:21
big time struggle. But, you know,
8:23
I've at this point, you know, we have a C suite team.
8:27
Like I mentioned earlier, we have an amazing CFO team.
8:30
we've really built a business that has people that are really good
8:35
at that structure component. And then the people like myself that really keep
8:39
us flowing in the creative state,
8:43
~ you know, are able to do that.
8:45
And that's often what I hear feedback from our staff that that,
8:48
you know, makes this different than other agencies that they've worked at.
8:51
R PR
8:53
really offers like the most extreme environment to be creative.
8:57
So I'm really proud of that.
8:59
Okay. I appreciate all the just the raw detail there about like l trying
9:04
to figure it out, right? you're s solo at first and just doing it.
9:08
You don't really even know what you're doing,
9:10
you just know you're doing it.
9:11
~
9:11
Yeah.
9:12
and then how how'd you handle the sales aspect of it?
9:15
'Cause it sounds like you were the chief person to go out and get all these clients.
9:20
That's a great question, Dave.
9:22
So sales has always been a natural thing for me.
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I have no idea why. Like most of our clients,
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if you were to interview them,
9:30
it would be like Emily sucks at sales,
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but I just she's actually a genius at sales because she sucks at it.
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~ and by that I mean I don't ever try to sell something.
9:40
I'm just like
9:42
I really like you. We should work together.
9:45
And it's so genuine. Like there's nobody that we work with that they don't feel that
9:49
way, you know? And they're like,
9:50
okay. And then I and then they're like,
9:53
okay, well, what does that look like?
9:54
And I'm like, here's some ideas.
9:55
And they're like, wow. And then all of a sudden,
9:57
you know, we have some of the most long-term clients that we have are from that that
10:03
type of interaction where it's just like places that I've frequented
10:06
as just a regular person or people that really inspired me.
10:10
And I just
10:12
Took a chance on, you know, asking them more about who they were,
10:16
and then all of a sudden they're like,
10:17
what do you do? And you know, just like I what I call natural networking
10:21
is the best sales for me. everybody may have a different answer to that.
10:25
But for me, if you're the type of entrepreneur where
10:30
You became an entrepreneur because you're really good at your craft
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and you wanted to do it the way you want to do it,
10:35
which there's a lot of us out there that what I call accidental entrepreneurs,
10:38
where you're like, okay, I guess now I have to be a business owner because
10:41
I have too many clients to handle on my own.
10:43
I would just say that like allow yourself
10:49
to fully embrace, the people that you know will will support you,
10:53
but also
10:55
naturally networking with people that you want to work with.
10:58
And that is magnetic. People want to work with people that are passionate
11:04
and good at what they do. It doesn't matter if you're a plumber,
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if you're a PR person, if you have that ability to just talk
11:10
the talk genuinely about your craft.
11:12
Anybody and everybody can sense that.
11:15
And so I always say that's the key to sales is just loving what you do.
11:19
It's so simple, but it's been really effective for me personally.
11:59
Yeah, love that. And I'm sure all all the entrepreneurs listening
12:03
can relate because we we all know when it's inauthentic and someone's just trying
12:07
to sell something and that genuineness is not there.
12:10
But like you said, and that might be the best sales pitch I've I really like you.
12:14
We should work together.
12:17
Yeah, you can
12:18
use that. Take it. Anybody can take it.
12:20
Yeah, it's pretty easy. But also Yeah,
12:23
there's something to it. one client of mine was like,
12:26
when they said to me, I was like,
12:28
I'm so I feel like I'm really good at sales.
12:30
He's like, No, you're actually not,
12:32
but you're really good
12:32
Yeah.
12:33
at what you do and I was like,
12:34
~ okay, that I'll take that, you know?
12:37
So
12:38
Yeah.
12:39
Yeah, I guess there's no one way to slice it,
12:42
you know, and I and I have tried through the years to develop like
12:45
a specific sales team. And it didn't it worked a little,
12:50
I will say, like not discrediting the hard work that some of the people
12:54
put in before. we've since done more internal sales because it it's just
12:59
you gotta kinda know somebody's a fit for the agency and you gotta kinda know
13:04
how to do the craft really well.
13:05
in order for the client to be a fit for us and to for us to serve them.
13:09
And so, you know, I think traditional salespeople are like,
13:11
Okay, I got you twenty five clients or I get emails probably ten times a day,
13:15
they're like, I can bring in a hundred new leads for you.
13:17
And I'm like, that that's actually not what I want as a business owner.
13:21
I want people that I am like, hey,
13:23
I really like you. Let's work together.
13:24
And how can you have that if, you know,
13:26
you're just kind of streamlining it through the lens of just like
13:30
the more acquisition. But
13:32
I don't know, that might be really bad advice,
13:34
but it's just what's worked for me.
13:36
~ some people, you know, depending on your business,
13:39
you might need a higher traffic turnaround.
13:41
But for us, where you know, our service fee is pretty expensive,
13:45
but we are really detailed in what we do and what we offer.
13:48
And so it's not a fit for everyone.
13:51
~ you know, it's not a fit for somebody who,
13:54
you know, just has a business idea and they want to kind of hire a
13:58
a PR agency because they want
14:01
the business idea to be out there is like,
14:02
no, we have to have like an actual business that has some sort of met reputation.
14:09
~ but yeah, without going too far down the rabbit hole,
14:12
like that's really what's important to us is like who can we serve best
14:16
and I like you, let's work together.
14:18
Yeah.
14:19
Okay. All right.
14:20
And so let's let's talk about how the company has has evolved,
14:23
especially given the way it started,
14:25
right? Like you've scaled out your team,
14:27
you've served over three hundred some businesses
14:30
Yeah.
14:31
at this point. you've evolved into reputation or crisis management
14:36
and working with some very high profile celebrities.
14:39
I mean, can you just talk about from the early days how you got to what
14:43
the business looks like today?
14:46
Wow. I mean early days it was very
14:53
you know almost too much I like you let's work together where I'd be like,
14:57
No, I really want to make this happen and somebody'd be like,
14:59
I have like no budget and I've never and I'm like,
15:02
no, we get work and we were more like what I call hodgepodgy.
15:05
Whereas now, you know,
15:08
we're a bit more buttoned up.
15:10
Like I said, we are we're not just kind of at the whims of just this really creative
15:14
spirit that's really good at PR.
15:15
We're a full, full-fledged agency.
15:18
You know, we're a very ~ well-known and established business.
15:22
So it's so different to go from somebody who's in that really early stages
15:27
of their entrepreneur journey and you know,
15:30
they'll kind of take anyone and anything just to kind of have their business
15:33
out there.
15:34
to then grow your business and to say to be more use more discretion,
15:39
but also use more awareness of what you're offering and how it is a fit to another,
15:46
you know, your client, your clientele,
15:48
whatever that might be. So I think that's the biggest distinction between before
15:54
and after that and like our team.
15:56
~ we just onboarded this month three new team members ~ across the country.
16:02
~ you know, we're
16:03
what I would call a medium-sized business.
16:06
So we're, you know, growing and very much ~ it takes a while
16:12
to get ~ a job here. It so people will apply.
16:16
We get lots of applications. It takes a at minimum two months to
16:19
go through the interview process and the creative writing process
16:23
and meeting the people that you're gonna work with.
16:25
And then we have discussions on that.
16:28
So I think
16:28
from the
16:29
External clients t has also matched the way our team works and operates.
16:34
So we have people that have been with us close to ten years.
16:36
We've had people that have been waiting to have a job with us and they're kind
16:40
of reapplied a bunch of times.
16:41
One woman that's joining this month has been one of those people.
16:44
and so it's really interesting to kind of see that we've created a,
16:49
you know, a culture of internal and also the type of clients.
16:53
So I think that's another distinguishing thing since the early days.
16:58
as the company grew, how did you figure out how to add to the team,
17:02
how to scale the team, how to put the right systems in place?
17:04
Because it sounds like there was a lot of growing pains and a lot of you know,
17:08
we all go through that stage as entrepreneurs where you're first starting,
17:10
you want to take every client,
17:12
you wanna do whatever you can,
17:13
Yeah.
17:14
and
17:14
then you reach a point where you've got to be more selective.
17:16
But how did you kind of manage that,
17:18
especially given that you were like this creative free spirit?
17:22
'Cause a lot of the business skills maybe you didn't you didn't have,
17:25
but you were just figuring out and you had this passion that just drove everything.
17:29
Like how did you figure out how to scale and systemize everything to
17:32
get where you are today?
17:34
That's a great question. So I didn't do a traditional kind of business
17:40
map or investor deck or kind of here's the roadmap,
17:45
here's how I want to scale. again,
17:47
it was similar to just how I do any sort of business.
17:50
It's ma as linear, more circular.
17:52
So we're moving the wheels, but they're turning this way instead of step
17:55
by step this way. And I think that translates to mean,
18:01
I let the business speak to me.
18:03
So it was like, hey, we keep getting clients,
18:06
more and more clients in Nashville.
18:07
Let's make sure we have people in person in Nashville.
18:12
It's still one of our biggest top markets.
18:14
~ that can then fulfill the demand for client events and openings and things that
18:19
we do really frequently on a monthly and quarterly and yearly basis.
18:25
So that
18:27
came out of nowhere honestly. I got a phone call.
18:29
We only had a b offices in Texas and then I got a phone call
18:33
and there was a restaurant tour that
18:38
was opening ~ in Nashville and they're like,
18:41
Hey, we've heard, you know, you guys are the people to hire and I was like,
18:45
We've never even been to Nashville.
18:46
Like I don't I I think you should find a local agency.
18:49
And they're like, No, no, no
18:51
We want people that are really good at PR.
18:53
It doesn't matter if they're a local agency.
18:55
And I tried to convince him not to hire us.
18:57
And he was really persistent. And so I flew there and we met.
19:00
And then all of a sudden one thing led to another.
19:02
We did that. And then we've, you know,
19:03
now we're very established in Nashville.
19:05
And I at the time I was like never even been there.
19:07
~ but for whatever reason, that was again me listening to the demand of our clients.
19:13
And that was our first take that was in twenty.
19:18
18, ~ our first take at expanding the business without
19:23
me specifically being in the location all the time.
19:26
So I was still living in Texas as the owner,
19:29
and we expanded it to Nashville and was like,
19:31
hey, this could either be the worst idea I've had or the best idea I've had.
19:35
Like it could really cause you know,
19:37
it could really harm my business in Texas because I'm not always there,
19:41
but it also was a very
19:44
Quick frequently asked question from people.
19:46
so do you live here? Are you local?
19:48
Like ~ how well do you know Nashville when we started to grow?
19:51
And I'd have to be really honest,
19:53
like, hey, no, I just moved here,
19:54
but like I've been doing PR for this amount of time and I have this amount
19:57
of experience. And so like kind of had to like pitch myself even though
20:00
I wasn't location specific. And that's still what we do every day.
20:04
So we can now we kind of developed a really cool internal formula to work
20:10
in any city. We have clients that scale themselves.
20:13
and we help them do that because we've done it ourselves.
20:16
So we've kind of found the way to kind of get known in a community without having
20:21
to fully be there all the time,
20:22
which is I think not only the wave of the future.
20:25
It kind of sounds like, okay, anybody can do that now,
20:28
just the way technology is. But at the time in twenty seventeen,
20:31
twenty eighteen, people weren't working remotely.
20:34
I remember people being like, Wait,
20:35
your staff? Like, does they're not you're not with them every day?
20:38
Like that was a really big
20:41
difference. And now, you know,
20:42
it's very common obviously because we kind of had no other choice at
20:46
one point in twenty twenty. But ~ I think that's how we scaled.
20:51
It was just like happened because there was a demand.
21:34
Okay. All right. And I love that.
21:35
Letting the business speak to you.
21:37
Right.
21:38
Yeah.
21:38
And it's so funny too because if someone you tried to talk out of being a customer,
21:43
they wouldn't let it go. And then that
21:44
No.
21:45
that ultimately was a catalyst for you systemizing and developing this system
21:51
to basically open up in in any other market.
21:54
Mm-hmm.
21:55
Okay. All right. And so
21:58
How how did you get into like the celebrity and these high profile clients?
22:01
How did you get into that type of work?
22:03
~ another great question. so we started out,
22:06
we were just food and beverage.
22:08
So it was my passion. I I didn't want to work with any other business.
22:12
One of my best friends opened up a baby store in San Antonio.
22:16
It's called Bambino's. It's still around today.
22:18
~ she convinced me she was like,
22:21
Listen, I think, you know, restaurants are great,
22:23
but I think you're really good at this,
22:24
and I think you could do more a variant of businesses.
22:30
Give me a try, I'll be your kind of guinea pig.
22:32
And I was like, I don't know. I don't know about that.
22:34
And sure enough, we loved working with her.
22:37
With, you know, she's since sold the business,
22:39
but back actually to its original owners,
22:43
but that opened up so many doors because then we weren't just in
22:47
a specific niche industry. But like I was saying earlier,
22:51
we kind of found the secret sauce to work and do PR in
22:57
any local communities, excuse me.
22:59
and we found the secret sauce from working with restaurants over
23:04
the years that every business kind of has a similar front of house,
23:08
back of the house, your recipes,
23:10
you know, what makes you successful,
23:12
what people talk about, your best burger,
23:13
you know, that's what we say internally.
23:15
~ you could pick any business and I can tell you how it relates to a restaurant.
23:22
And I thought that was really cool.
23:24
And I never really thought of that before.
23:26
And she really helped me kind of pave the way.
23:28
if you met the two of us, you'd be like the you two are complete opposite.
23:31
She's a super numbers person. She works in finance.
23:34
She is, you know, blonde hair.
23:36
We're like totally different people,
23:38
but like help each other as women and and friends that we ended
23:43
up growing professionally. And she really is the person that helped me open
23:46
up the doors from the restaurants to to other businesses.
23:49
And then from there, ~
23:52
Again, we ca a reput our reputation became really well known and we
23:55
had a hotel group that we had worked with and they had some pretty
24:00
big issues with the transition and staffing.
24:02
And I learned very quickly what reputation management and crisis management meant
24:08
to any and all businesses and started to study it,
24:12
started to get certifications in it because I was just so fascinated by it.
24:17
And
24:18
I just kept getting random phone calls.
24:20
I don't know why. I just kept getting random phone calls and then
24:23
but before you know it, you know,
24:25
one person then recommends you to another and then you're really known.
24:28
~ you know, at this point, ~ you know,
24:31
Hollywood life has featured my story,
24:34
been on HBO documentary, I've done some pretty cool things that my clients,
24:38
you know, I help my clients do that I've now done for myself and
24:41
and RPR because just being again passionate and good at what I do has led
24:46
me to have those open doors. So
24:48
That is a really good question.
24:50
It's often like something I can't I can remember when I started my business.
24:54
I sat in my car and I almost like cried.
24:56
And I was like, Am I a door-to-door salesman?
24:59
Like, how do I get clients? I'll never forget.
25:01
I was just like sitting in the middle of Texas and like,
25:03
my gosh, what did I do? And I went to my favorite coffee shop
25:09
and I just started doing research.
25:12
I started looking at just like who would I want to work with?
25:15
And then I
25:16
was in a line to get coffee and I started talking to this guy and he happened
25:20
to be a retired San Antonio spur and he,
25:24
you know, he's this really tall,
25:25
cool guy. I just always saw him there and I like,
25:27
hey, you nice to meet you, I'm Emily.
25:28
it was like, you kinda meet somebody that way and then you know,
25:32
everybody has these like unique connections.
25:34
And I was able to work with ~ another person that was a retired,
25:39
you know, MBA player that had some other things happen and like
25:43
wanted to kind of rebuild and recreate his reputation.
25:45
And I just was able to utilize my tools and my skill set with
25:50
PR and how PR is really all at the at the nexus
25:57
of it is relationships and reputation.
25:59
So people want to be your friend when they are excited and they've heard about your
26:02
reputation. Whether that's you and I,
26:05
Dave, and our community or business owners or
26:08
high profile people that people know a lot about,
26:11
you know, we always, especially these days,
26:12
can like really look into people's reputations.
26:15
So, it's something I just became fascinated by and I still don't know exactly
26:19
how it happened, but there was a lot of work and a lot of taking chances
26:24
and risks and
26:25
Putting myself out there, like I could have just stayed in my car and cried
26:29
and been like, I made the worst mistake of my life,
26:31
or like picked up my bootstraps and like just started meeting people just where
26:36
I felt comfortable. And so I would recommend that to anybody who's like,
26:40
How do I get clients? You know?
26:41
And I often say that to my clients who are like,
26:44
I don't wanna I wanna get to know more people.
26:45
Like, start with where you're c already comfortable because you're not trying
26:49
to be something you're not. You're you're gonna start with,
26:52
you know, talking about your business at
26:55
You know, a barbecue or just kinda networking naturally at your favorite coffee shop
26:59
like I did or something like that where you're not trying to I think
27:04
it would have been repelling if I had been like,
27:06
I only want to work with celebrities.
27:08
I mean maybe that could have happened,
27:09
I don't know, but I think because I just focused on my craft,
27:13
it became attractive to people to want to work with me too.
27:16
So that was that's kind of the journey.
27:19
Okay. Wow. Love that. All right.
27:21
Yeah.
27:21
And
27:22
so E Emily, like particularly like those moments when you're in your
27:25
car crying or you're just you don't know what you how you're
27:28
Yeah.
27:29
doing things or what you're supposed to be doing,
27:31
just figuring all this stuff out as you go.
27:33
I mean, like how often did you think about giving up throughout this whole journey?
27:39
man, I think I did I thought of it too often.
27:43
I was like, I don't know if this is for me,
27:46
you know. But then I was like,
27:47
what else would I do? There was one point where I got I really started studying
27:52
f I wanted to be a lawyer. I just thought,
27:54
you know, I'm really good at this.
27:55
I'm really good at like researching my arguments or kind of pitch you know,
28:01
pitching.
28:02
essentially ~ what I was thinking,
28:04
but then I like, I don't know.
28:05
Somebody actually a friend of mine that was a lawyer was like,
28:07
You're really good at this. Like why what it why would you do th
28:10
why would you restart another career?
28:11
I was like, You're right, I kinda like this.
28:13
So I think it always went back to like,
28:16
I love what I do. Like there's annoying things with owning a business for me.
28:21
Some people really like the business side and not really the,
28:23
you know, the service side. I'm more of a service side business owner.
28:27
And I just go back to that. Like,
28:28
that's why I'm here. Like, I could not do what I do and love it as much as
28:33
I do if somebody was my boss telling me I had to do it a certain way.
28:37
that literally was not for me.
28:39
It made me depressed, honestly.
28:41
and some people need that. Some people really need somebody to kind
28:45
of guide them and tell them how to do it the way that they want them to do it.
28:49
And there's some staff members that come to me and I'm like
28:52
I hired you because I like you to be your own snowflake.
28:56
I don't want a snowball. I want a snowflake.
28:57
Like I want you to be who you're meant to be,
29:00
your natural shape, your natural gifts.
29:02
And that's really confronting for some people.
29:05
but I think deep down that's what we all want.
29:07
I really do. and I love to be a business owner that cultivates that
29:11
for people where they start to see that they have their own way of doing
29:14
a a job that they really love.
29:16
And ~
29:18
that's that's how. That's how I've overcome it.
29:20
Now
29:21
Wow.
29:21
I serve other people. Yeah.
29:23
Yeah, no, that's incredible self awareness too.
29:26
Just to really understand who you are,
29:28
what you want,
29:28
Thank you.
29:29
what makes you take, and then just to go with it too.
29:31
And just to listen to your intuition and and go wherever it leads you.
29:35
~ so Emily, looking back at the whole journey,
29:38
how it ki accidentally started,
29:40
you went through all this adversity,
29:42
all these various iterations of the business,
29:44
and now scaling out this
29:46
real well-known firm that served so many businesses and has done,
29:50
you know, got all these accolades.
29:51
Looking back at the whole journey,
29:53
what's been the best part of it for you?
29:56
I think where I'm at now building something I'm proud of that people you know,
30:01
we have people that are starting families,
30:03
they've moved across countries,
30:05
they've built houses, they've you know,
30:08
it's like, my gosh, they did all that 'cause they work in a great place
30:11
and they have a you know, they have a team that supports them in their lives
30:14
and I'm I'm proud of that. I'm proud of the business that I've created.
30:18
Okay. All right. And Emily, if people want to learn more and
30:21
how they could potentially ~ utilize your services,
30:24
what what's the best way people can find you online?
30:26
Come to our website, rprfirm dot com,
30:29
and my email's there, my cell phone,
30:32
everything. I'm really an open book,
30:34
so call, text, email. I do everything but Snapchat.
30:37
So you can find me at
30:39
Ha ha.
30:40
my kids banned me. But yeah, I don't anywhere but but Snapchat.
30:44
Yeah. All right.
30:45
All right. All right. We'll
30:47
we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
30:48
~ Emily, thank you
30:49
Thank you, Dave.
30:50
yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing
30:53
all this incredible wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
30:56
Thank you.
30:56
We greatly appreciate it.
30:58
Thank you so much for having me.
30:59
Have a great day.
31:01
Yep, you too.