Talking Public Relations & Entrepreneurship – with “PR” Sarah Evans

Torrey McGraw: Hey, what's up, party people? I’m Torrey McGraw, the creator of Grind & Thrive. And you know what we do here. You know we talk to entrepreneurs, trendsetters, and tastemakers. We learn their stories. We learn their background. We learn about their grind all in the hopes of helping you and your business thrive. And I'm really thrilled today to be chatting with somebody I've admired online for quite a while. We are chatting with Sarah Evans.

You may know her as PRSarahEvans if you're following her on Twitter. But just to give you a little background on Sarah, Sarah is the owner of Sevans Strategy which is a PR and new media consultancy. It's our mission to engage and employ emerging technologies and communication that connects her with her rapidly growing base of more than 60,000 people. Sarah creates and moderates the Twitter chat, #journchat, which is the first ever weekly live tweet chat for PR professionals, journalists, and bloggers. She also blogs over at PRSarahEvans.com, as well as shares a daily resource for PR professional called Comments.

I want to bring Sarah on, first of all, to learn about her, learn a bit more about her experience and her background but also see what things are going on in the PR game and what entrepreneurs can learn from her experience.

So Sarah, thank you so much for hopping on with and welcome to Grind & Thrive. How are you?

Sarah Evans: I'm good. Thanks so much for the lovely introduction, Torrey. I appreciate it.

Torrey McGraw: No doubt. I'm so out of breath by reading all your accolades and achievements. It's really, really awesome to have you on. I shared with you prior to us recording this episode that I also have a PR background, so it's really interesting and a lot of the question will be, as I always try to do, just helping my own curiosity and picking your brain and seeing what we can learn. But before we get into some of the trends in PR and social media and what entrepreneurs to do, you're your own entrepreneur. You started this company Sevans Strategy I'm curious as to how you got started in wanting to be an entrepreneur.

Sarah Evans: Well, I think I always had the spirit of an entrepreneur. I just didn’t know it had a name. I knew that — I didn’t always love having a boss. I didn’t understand why we had to have specific business hours, why we couldn’t go work mobilely. So I think some of that was always within me but also, in addition to having a full-time job, constantly freelanced not because I'm a workaholic. I just enjoyed getting different types of experience so that I wasn’t locked into one particular area.

Over a time I found that I really thought that that freelancing can turn into a full-time business and I scared the heck out of my husband, friends, and family and said, "Why don’t I quit my safe steady job and jump into this business?' And we're about two years old now and honestly haven’t looked back. It's been a great experience.

Torrey McGraw: Okay. Let's talk about that because our community on Grind & Thrive has a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs that may be pretty new to the game and a lot of it is getting over that fear of either I'm working this full-time job but I'm either interested in doing something on my own and, you know, how do I make that determination to take that leap and take that leap of faith to take this passion and turn into a full-time thing? So how did you really overcome that fear? I mean was it just you were so passionate about the freelancing and learning more about PR and social media that that just overcame that fear factor so to speak?

Sarah Evans: I think some of it is was a naivety and it's great. I didn’t necessarily know everything and that's not such a bad thing. I'm getting ready to become a new parent and I'm glad that I didn’t know everything before jumping into it. And I don’t know that I ever actually overcame whatever fear was underneath it all, but I didn’t let it drive me. My father-in-law actually gave me great advice as I was starting the business and I was sharing some of my concerns, and he said, "In six months you'll look back and wonder what you were worried about."

And he really was right because once I start to get into the new routines and everything was kind of functioning, it just became my new job. But I did make sure I had three clients already signed and secured before quitting my full-time job, and I essentially was working two full-time jobs. It's not like I could kind of just take on some pieces. I mean it was my full-time job and giving them everything that I had and then coming home and doing another full-time job. So it wasn’t easy at first but I knew it was kind of like a marathon. I put in the effort now for the long haul.

Torrey McGraw: And I mean that really ties into some of our themes here on Grind & Thrive. I mean you're really grinding at the beginning, and I don’t think it ever ends but — especially when you're trying to make that transition from –

Sarah Evans: It's different.

Torrey McGraw: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That full-time job and then you go home, you eat dinner, and then if you have kids you put the kids away, and then you're doing whatever you do. Bu that grind, I mean just as from a, I guess, health or mental health perspective with having a family, you didn’t have the child. Now, you're nine months pregnant so congratulations. Hopefully, this will be the last interview before you give birth but…

Sarah Evans: No.

Torrey McGraw: You have a bunch of them lined up, but just from an overall mental standpoint, the family and wellness point of view, I mean how was that with bouncing your full-time job, your family, your husband, trying to do this, lift this dream off the ground at night? How was that?

Sarah Evans: You know, it's not easy and there are some brutal facts in all of it that when you dedicate all of your time to one part of your life, other things tend to suffer, and that's kind of the nature of the beast. So was I taking care of myself the best from a health standpoint? Probably not. Was I giving my husband all the attention that he deserves? Probably not. But I also knew that it was a short-term issue that I wouldn’t be working that intensely. And in fact, when I — I know the language I need to speak to my spouse with. I know how to communicate certain things and the finances is always a big issue.

So if I could communicate it in a way that by investing five hours tonight I can land this client which says, "We're this much closer to having this certain — to reach the certain number of dollars that we needed to have on hand to pay our mortgage payment," that worked well and it was a short-term fix. Now that I have my own business I build in that time. You can't just — you can't sustain that forever without something breaking down. There's — I think it's in the book "Good to Great." It talks about basically a kind of cashing out on talent, and it's the golden goose concept I think. And if you burn yourself out, you're going to burn the town out, and I definitely didn’t want to do that.

Torrey McGraw: Absolutely. And let's talk about that. So you transitioned from the full-time job. You started freelancing. You said, "Okay, I'm not going to leave until I have three paying clients." And now you have those clients and then some and have founded Sevans Strategy. So let's talk about what Sevans Strategy is and what you offer and that sort of thing. So what is Sevans Strategy?

Sarah Evans: Sevans Strategy is whatever I needed to be right now. It's somewhat evolving. I didn't actually — I had an idea of what I thought the services would be and what we would provide, but once you actually get into the marketplace and you start working with the organizations, sometimes there's a disconnect in what they actually need and what you provide. So we've somewhat evolved. So we fulfill a very specific niche and it's really that social PR.

I have found coming from a traditional PR background that traditional media relations and outreach can take out a lot of your time because you're constantly building relationships with reporters trying to figure out angles, writing customized pitches, doing follow-ups, securing media placements, monitoring. That is a substantial amount of time. And then there's this whole other world of, well, how do we leverage or work with bloggers or people who are dubbed as the influencers or enthusiasts? How do we produce social content? What is SEO, Search Engine Optimization, mean?

So we kind of come in and fill that void. So some people hire us to actually execute that and do that for them. Some bring us in to actually consult and say, "How do we build this into our current marketing and communication strategy?" We work with some PR firms who don’t have the bandwidth to bring on an entirely digital team, and they'll hire us on to kind of fill that for some specific clients. And then I've also been blessed and lucky enough that by doing the work I talk about the work that I'm doing online and that has built a brand that has allowed me to go and speak all over the country and get paid for doing that.

So there are different ways that I'm generating income and the business is functioning.

Torrey McGraw: It's interesting you mentioned that because — I mean you're well-respected online. I mean you're a thought leader. You're –

Sarah Evans: I hope so.

Torrey McGraw: No, I mean, you know that. I'm not breaking news here I don’t think. But I mean you're always asked for comments and including different quotes in different publications whether it's print or online. But you have those backgrounds, those tactics to back up some of the stuff that you're saying because you're doing them. Is there an issue now online — I know we're transitioning from entrepreneurship to more just overall themes of social media and PR. But with so many people claiming to be PR experts, social media experts without the claims to back it up, is that a problem that I guess we can see as entrepreneurs looking to maybe hire someone or read somebody's blog to get advice on how to grow our businesses? Is that a big problem you think we'll face?

Sarah Evans: Well, I'd like to think about it like this. If you are going to — you're getting ready to have major surgery, do you want to go to a surgeon who in theory has talked about doing the surgery or the one who has actually performed it half a dozen to a dozen times or more? It's not to say that people — I look at it as a theorist versus a practitioner. So someone who talks about what they think might happen versus someone who is actually doing it. And there's nothing wrong with either. I love reading. There are certain theorists I read and they hurt my head and I think, "Wow! That's really interesting or thought-provoking," but then you get into the trenches and you realize some of that is just not executable or it's just not doable currently.

So there's nothing wrong with it. When you're looking to hire someone, it depends what you're trying to hire them for. If someone is out there actually doing the work and getting it done, I might be more likely to hire them since I want them to actually execute something. If someone's just talking about it, you run the risk, not that they can't do it but perhaps they don’t have the in the trenches experience to put together a realistic plan.

Torrey McGraw: Yeah. And let's back up and talk about Sevans Strategy for a second.

Sarah Evans: Sure.

Torrey McGraw: Your baby here. Let's talk about just general business overview. I mean how many people do you have in your team? Was it you just to begin with? And how did you decide to bring on other folks to help you out with this growing business?

Sarah Evans: Well, we have a unique situation. I like to call it that because we're reaching that two year mark. We're in a time of transition. I called it consultancy because originally it's just me. Most of the time when people hire Sevans Strategy, they would like me to be the point person, the front person. I realized early on that I didn’t necessarily have the bandwidth to do everything myself and that's not a bad thing. And so I have one full-time employee right now but I have the amazing luxury, I guess you could say, of working with another digital firm based out in Atlanta called the Everywhere Team and we really function at times like a coop. so when I take on bigger clients, I know that I have the bandwidth to execute because they have such a larger team that we kind of — we shared different clients where we can execute.

So they might bring me on to assist with their project where they need a certain type of PR digital mind. I might take on a project that I need more bandwidth so people helping pitch, helping secure placements, helping to create some different strategy documents that I need. I know I can pull from that. So I don’t go without on the bandwidth side. So that's where we're at right now. I definitely see us growing in the near future after the baby gets here.

Torrey McGraw: Absolutely. And I hear that a lot with entrepreneurs are their business starts to grow which, of course, you think, "Hey, my business is growing. This is a great thing. This may be a problem to have." And the fact that you can't do everything by yourself or the fact that you're kind of I guess "the talent" and people see your company and they don’t necessarily want to hire your company. They want to hire you. And so just through that experience of realizing "Hey, I can't do all of this," how did you connect with these other companies? You mentioned the Everywhere Team. Were those existing relationships that you had or did you go just bounced ideas off of people and they directed you to getting that assistance or what?

Sarah Evans: We all met through social media ironically. I mean it's something that we're all in this space and you start to meet people and see what they're doing and you build relationships t here. But you bring up — you're kind of hitting a good point, and when you realize you can't do everything, there's this sustainability issue of will my business continue to function if I wasn’t here? So not that everyone can do what you do obviously if you're the entrepreneur starting a business. You probably have some gift or talent that most people don’t have. And not that you want to bring on a million people just like you, but you've got to set up some type of processes, some things in place so that things can function if you were to be removed. I look at that as the ultimate business sustainability. We're not there yet necessarily, but it's a work in progress.

Torrey McGraw: Okay. And just regards to this — you're getting ready to hit the second year. So let's talk about how many clients you have and what cool thing you have going on right now with Sevans Strategy?

Sarah Evans: Well, we've got too many clients to name right now which is a great thing. Some of which — I'm actually under an NDA and can't even talk about them –

Torrey McGraw: Got you.

Sarah Evans: — which is fine. But we are literally more than I can talk about, and we're executing all different types of campaign. Some people are bringing us to produce digital content for them. Perhaps they're doing an event and they want someone to come in and do live logging, blogging, social posting, teach them what to do for that. We've got that then we've got some fully funded startups that are getting ready to launch in the next month or two and we're doing comprehensive PR for them.

So everything from media relations to social content to launching online, ambassador programs for these people to full on consulting where it's very much high level strategy coming in to be at the table with the executives to talk about what their upcoming plans for integrating social are. And there goes my dog. Sorry.

Torrey McGraw: That's all right. That's all right. The one thing that I really admire about you is the following that you amassed via social media, Twitter and Facebook. I'm curious not only for me but our entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs that are watching, some of the tech — and I'm hesitating on how to ask this because sometimes you ask somebody to tell you how you do something and they get lazy and just want to follow the same template and it doesn’t work. "Oh, she doesn’t know what she's talking about." But just growing your audience online, in the beginning stages, what were some of the things that you were doing to attract this audience?

Sarah Evans: Well, I think one of the luxuries I had is that I was — not necessarily — I was not an early adopter to Twitter but I was early enough in the game that it wasn’t inundated by PR people yet. So being early was a huge plus there. Doing innovative things I launched a contest. This was pre-Twitter list suggested users to follow. These capabilities were not built in to Twitter yet. So I set up a contest called "The top 50 Tweeples to Follow." It was like a list aggregation and letting people in a community kind of vote, pick, and select who these people are guest posting on more established blog like Mashable, so producing a lot of content, blogging myself, interacting, starting a chat like #journchat.

So just constantly trying to stay relevant in the space, and it's not something that I've changed but I definitely — probably don’t post as much as I used to trying to manage the business full-time blog clients and posting online is a beast unto itself. But I think at the beginning it was just a hunger to really excel and provide a lot of value. It wasn’t self-promotional. It was doing the work and then talking about the work I was doing and then I'm innovating.

Torrey McGraw: Yeah, yeah. I mean that's really, really interesting. The entrepreneurs that are watching this, I mean I'd be hung if I didn’t ask you about just helping entrepreneurs that have this great idea. They conceptualized this product or service and they want to get some press on it. They want to get in the latest edition of whatever niche magazine or newspaper or website there is. The question that I get the most often is whether or not to hire a publicist when you're trying to do those sorts of things. Are there any rules of thumb in regards to when or if you need to hire one as a beginning entrepreneur?

Sarah Evans: Well, most entrepreneurs in the startup stage probably don’t have the finances honestly to hire a full-time PR firm or a publicist. And it's something to think about just like the small business owner. You might have to play the role of CFO because you can't hire a full-time accountant or a full-time financial adviser. So there are things that we kind of have to do with small business owners that you might be the best at or that might not be our strength at first.

But like anything, there is an expertise in the PR field that you might just not be able to — that you just don’t know which is not within your expertise. For example, do you know to watch national headline news every morning to see if there are any localized news opportunities you can pitch the reporters? Do you know how to pitch? Do you know how to write a really strong story angle? Do you know how to comprehensively pull a press kit together, online newsroom together for journalists and what their preferences are?

There are all sorts of nuances within our industry that just the average entrepreneur small business owner might not be familiar with. It doesn’t mean that by not hiring a publicist, you can't get a media placement. Absolutely not. If you have the inherent ability to identify the right media outlets and write a strong story angle, you might be able to do it. Ongoing, can you sustain how much time it takes to publicize and promote? Probably not.

Torrey McGraw: It's something that people struggle and not only that but knowing how to hire if they get to that point where "Hey, I can afford it." What sorts of things can they look for in a good publicist if they choose to hire one? Are there any qualities that they need to definitely take a look at?

Sarah Evans: Well, I think you need to determine, do you want a publicist or do you want someone who is more of a PR consultant or PR agency? The publicist to me says more of full-time media relations, someone who is really trying to land you in that news media circle, whereas comprehensive public relations might be a comprehensive approach. So it might be traditional media relations, social PR outreach, how to produce online content. They might help you figure out where your community or audience lies online and start coming up with promotional tactics to reach them.

So it becomes beyond about the publicist promoting just you or just the business and coming up with a well-rounded approach of how to both promote you and engage a community and hopefully result in sales. And when you're looking to hire them, ask them specific questions like who have you worked with in the past? And they can talk about what media placements have you landed? What types of media relationships do you have? What successes do you have? That's what I typically want to know when I find clients who are interviewing me. I ask a lot of those questions.

Torrey McGraw: That's great. That's great. And then just wrapping up here, just I guess a broader question in regards to — since you've been public relations and social media, has social media changed how PR is conducted now? Has PR changed how social media is done? I don’t know whether or not entrepreneurs fully grasp location — focus on PR or traditional public relations. Should I do a mix? Should I just solely focus on social media? Is it more of a hybrid now? Or what's the state of, I guess, each of those or a combination of both?

Sarah Evans: Well, I look at it all as a hybrid because social media itself is so vast and it can affect many different parts of the organization. So what I do is work with social media from a PR, sometimes marketing standpoint. But that doesn’t mean that I can execute it from a customer service or business development standpoint. So it can affect all parts of the organization and it has impacted what I do as a PR professional on a daily basis.

When I first came into the field, it was all about owning that corporate message making sure that your target messages were getting picked up in media place, making sure your messages are strong and all of the print and broadcast material that you are pushing, pushing, pushing out. And now you've — and not in a bad way, you don’t have that control anymore.

So it can be good or bad, right?

And we're constantly trying to figure out how to function in that space and figure out where to leverage that, where you not try to — you can't control it. So where do you feel comfortable letting go and engaging and working. And just the daily tasks, from what I did six or seven years ago to now, are completely different. I didn’t have monitoring alerts set up. I didn’t have digital dashboards set up for my clients. I wasn’t looking to see how many blogs I had to respond to or recommend clients respond to in the morning. My day is completely different.

Torrey McGraw: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Now, just taking your PR hat off and putting — you're just business owner hat on, any advice for someone starting out in a business? They have this passion, this dream. They're working a full-time job like you were. They want to make this thing happen. I need your dopest, your most awesome business advice for that entrepreneur.

Sarah Evans: I guess — you know, I just had a conversation with a girlfriend last night who wants to leave a really successful full-time job to start a business. And I just — I mean — I don’t know if this is the dopest advice. It was the most basic advice. I said, "Just don’t let fear drive you." Many times people don’t follow it and it's the fear that's ultimately driving them. You get one chance to get all this in life depending on your beliefs and it's taking that risk.

And even if it doesn't work out the way you think it will, that doesn’t mean you're a failure in any way. I mean there are some entrepreneurs who have tried several different ventures until they found one that worked. I don’t know where I'm going to be in five years of how this business is going to evolve. Will there still be a need for it? What will happen? But I will evolve with that and figure it out when I get there. But I just think it would be don’t let fear drive you.

Torrey McGraw: Don’t let fear drive you. Let's end with that. Sarah Evans, she's the owner of Sevans Strategy. Sarah, thank you so much for hopping on with me today on Grind & Thrive. And if anyone wants to reach out to you and say "hey," what's the best method to do so?

Sarah Evans: You can find me on Twitter @PRSarahEvans or you can always email me at PRSarahEvans@gmail.com.

Torrey McGraw: All right. We'll link all that stuff up in the show notes. Thank you so much, Sarah. And thank you guys for watching another edition of Grind & Thrive. Leave us a comment in the comment section. Let us know what you thought about it. If you have any questions for Sarah, we'll make sure she gets them. So thank you once again and we'll see you next time.