7 Things To Consider Before Starting Your Own PR Firm

So, as an experienced and successful PR professional, you’ve just about had it being an employee, and would like to upgrade to the enviable status of ‘Employer’ – your own boss. You think  that you have all it takes to succeed as an independent ‘PR consultant’. You have some ideas on how things can be done better. Your mind is bubbling with so many innovations  that you would so graciously like to ‘donate’ to the PR fraternity, but cannot (or would not) try out in your current employment. You figure it’s about time you started working at making your own individual mark in the industry.

All of these are perfectly legitimate enough motivations for you to want to take the plunge into setting up and running your own PR consultancy.

As a veteran of more than a decade in the business, I am really looking forward to welcoming you to the club. But first, I just thought to share a short check-list of factors you might do well to seriously consider and tick-off before you take make that move.

# 1: The Right Perspective

You need to start out with the right perspective about your new role. As the proprietor of your own PR consultancy firm, you will be a Professional, Entrepreneur and Businessman rolled into one. These are three ‘caps’ you will be required to wear almost at all times.

First, you are a professional: you are expected to possess the requisite level of professional qualifications, skills and experience. You should have met all the laid-down requirements, statutory or otherwise, before even thinking of setting up shop. You should also commit to a continuous search for new knowledge, thinking and practices in the profession, so as to remain relevant.

Second, you are an entrepreneur: someone birthing a start-up enterprise. You will do well to prepare yourself adequately for the challenges that come with the territory. You just might find that administrative issues like registering the business and securing the necessary approvals, setting up the office, hiring staff and procuring the necessary equipment and facilities will require an unexpectedly disproportionate amount of your time and attention. Not to mention resources.

Finally, you are a businessman. One mistake common to otherwise brilliant professionals who venture into setting up private professional practice is that they forget (or do not realize) that the practice is also a ‘business’, and must be run as such. It must be able to pay its bills, and consistently deliver some respectable level of financial returns to its proprietor(s).

So you see, the moment you set up a consultancy, you immediately become more than just a PR professional. You become several other things you probably would never have imagined.

# 2: The Requisite Skills and Competencies

As a consultant, you are supposed to be the expert. Your clients will rely on you for proper counsel, and to do professional justice to their briefs. You must ensure that you are ready with the minimum requisite levels of training, certifications, skills and experience. Otherwise you will be nothing more than a quack, and your professional survival cannot be assured.

# 3: A Vision:

This factor is often underrated, but arguably one of the most important. And I use ‘vision’ here in a broad sense to include: your objectives, your goals, where you hope to be and what you hope to do with the practice five, ten, years down the line.

The vision that you have set for practice, and committed to pursuing, will help you craft the right strategy to pursue your dreams, and invariably influence the choices that you make. All of these go a long way in shaping the trajectory of the business.

# 4: The Right Attitude

It’s perfectly alright to fantasize about how becoming the MD/CEO of your own PR firm will mean the end to all your financial worries, and guarantee you absolute control of your time – to use as you please.

However, in reality, it does not necessarily work that way. It calls for an incredible amount of sacrifice, patience and doggedness. Can you imagine having to make the difficult choice to pay the salaries of your staff while your own children are out of school because their school fees have not been paid? Or always being the very last person to get paid his salary (that is if you are even smart enough to place yourself on a salary)? Trust me, that’s not fiction. That’s entrepreneurship!

How about arriving on time for a scheduled appointment with a prospective client, only to be forced to wait for five hours? And then having to repeat that same routine again and again? And ending up not getting the business anyway!

# 5: Finance/Working Capital:

True, the entry barriers for the PR consultancy business in this environment may be very low. Your set-up costs may not be high, but you will need a relatively cheap and reliable source of financing for your operations, when you get into full steam. The reason is that most clients are unlikely to pay you up-front. You might invariably find yourself working for clients who have very punishing payment policies. I was informed recently that one high-profile multinational company operating in Nigeria has a payment policy of 60 working days, post-invoicing! To think that slavery was abolished so long ago!

On the other hand, most of your suppliers will expect to be paid immediately. This mis-match between age-payables and age-receivables, invariably results in severe cash flow crises, which is one of the greatest headaches that agency managers face in this environment. To make matters worse, bank finance is not easy to come by, and where available, is so expensive, it could erode all your gains.

Too many consultancies have been forced to close shop, simply because they could not collect from their debtors as fast as they were paying out to their creditors. And they had no means of bridging the gap.

# 6: Business Acumen

As I mentioned earlier, your practice is also a business, and so you must learn to think and act like a businessman. Some level of financial and business management knowledge is imperative. You must keep an eye on the numbers. And you cannot do that effectively unless you understand and are able to interpret financial reports.

You should be able to make plans for growing the business and managing such growth in an effective and sustainable manner. Which means having a ‘helicopter’ view that covers every aspect of the business – human resources, marketing, operations, finance, and so on.

True, some of these functions, can be outsourced, but chances are that you might not be able to afford that in the early stages of your business, and so will need to do a lot of it yourself.

# 7: Marketing/Networking Skills:

As a service provider, you need clients to remain in business. Good marketing and networking skills come in handy in the search for clients. The most effective marketing strategy is to showcase good work that you’ve done in the form of Case Studies. Satisfied clients would also be too glad to give you referrals.