Category: Starting a business

Doing Our Best at Doing Our Part

Dana PhelpsBlog, Starting a business, Sustainability3 Comments on Doing Our Best at Doing Our Part
Josie rides her bike to work!
 

My son has a little sing-songy expression that he sometimes uses when he’s working through a task: “Doin’ my best, just doin’ my best.” I think it is a good motto for most anything, and especially for individuals and companies trying to live a greener life.

 

When I launched Clairemont, I knew that I wanted our agency to be sustainably aware, and that I wanted to work with sustainable clients. Being green is largely about taking baby steps. I selected office space downtown Raleigh so that hopefully some employees could travel to and from the office without getting in a car (which has become a reality!) and so that we are in walking distance of lunch spots (our faves buy from local farmers), the bank, the post office, etc. to minimize during-the-day driving.

 

Upon opening the office, we’ve found other small ways to do our part including the implementation of a reusable cup policy, participation in our building’s recycling program and printing on carefully selected recycled paper only when printing is a must!

 

When Josie joined Clairemont, I gave her an extra title of Clairemont’s Green Ambassador. The fact that the way she lives her personal life demonstrates that she loves her Mother Earth warmed my heart during her interviews. From a professional perspective, I knew her experience of living in Asheville serving in the AmeriCorps Project Conserve with a focus on conservation issues in North Carolina’s mountainous region would be a great asset to Clairemont clients.

 

In the coming weeks, our Queen of Green will be sharing sustainable tips here on our blog. As we also continually seek ideas on how to protect the environment, please send us your thoughts so that we can keep on doing our best… just doing our best.

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A Rose By Any Other Name…Might not be as Marketable

Dana PhelpsBlog, Furniture PR, Public Relations, Starting a business, , , , ,

Last month I had the honor of guest blogging on Spin Sucks about the art of naming. Since then, Clairemont has named three furniture collections that debuted last week at furniture market, so we thought it would be appropriate to share the post in its entirety on our blog, too. We hope you will enjoy it as much as we enjoyed naming the new collections!

A sampling of the furniture we named that was introduced during fall market.

In a few weeks, I’ll experience my annual ritual of kicking off Fall Furniture market by walking into the showroom and checking out my client’s toenails as I greet her. Yes, her toenails.

My client and I share a love. A love of OPI Nail Lacquer. Take a fashionable color, add a fun, catchy name such as Kiss on the Chic, Gliterzland from the Swiss collection or the best-selling I’m Not Really a Waitress Red, and it goes from a hue we might select once at the nail salon to a bottle we’ll buy to use again and again.

If you’ve ever started a company, you had to name it. If you lead a company or are in marketing, public relations or advertising, you’ve likely been asked to help name a product or campaign. It might not be nail polish, but chances are you want your target audience to respond the way OPI fans do. How do you do that?

Too bad it isn’t as simple as comedian Mitch Hedberg portrayed it to be. “I want to get a job as someone who names kitchen appliances. Toaster, refrigerator, blender….all you do is say what it does and add ‘er’. Hey, what does that do? It keeps shit fresh. Well that’s a fresher….I’m going on break.”

Start with some inspiration. From Altoids to Zima by Evan Morris tells the story behind 125 well-known brands. Morris writes that once upon a time, naming a product was as simple as taking the manufacturer’s name and adding a product description, such as Smith’s Pure and Effective Cough Syrup. Nowadays, as Morris notes, companies often create new words for brands. Google started as “googol,” a word that the nine-year-old nephew of a mathematician made up to mean a “very, very large number, ten raised to the hundredth power.”

Continue reading “A Rose By Any Other Name…Might not be as Marketable”

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L is for Learning

Dana PhelpsBlog, Owning a Business, Public Relations, Starting a business, ,

…and love and lollipops and lemon meringue and lightening bugs and lake houses and larkspur and lavender. But today’s L is for learning, and that is the focus of our next three posts!

 

As the L in Clairemont’s TLC Intern Program, our interns are assigned reading and other assignments independent of the work that goes on in our agency. They recently read Entrepreneur‘s Start-Up Guide from Entrepreneur Magazine, and were asked to write about their favorite tip from the public relations section. Today’s tip comes from Michelle who wrote:

 

Set a goal to meet five (or more) new people at each event.

 

“It’s not what you know, but who you know.” Although constantly over quoted, mastering this statement can be key in growing and keeping a successful business.

 

It is so easy to converse only with familiar people and friends at lunches or events, overlooking great opportunities that are always lurking. Therefore, without even realizing it, people miss many great connections!

 

This is exactly why I love this tip from this guide.Setting the goal to “meet five (or more) new people at each event,” in advance of arriving is a great way to create a business mindset before attending. Once focused, it will be much easier to meet new people and to not lose sight of such great opportunities and connections.

 

With this goal in mind, it is important to remember that making connections is not only beneficial, but it can be intriguingly fun. The key is to remember to actually do it!

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Reflection, Risk & Rewards

Dana PhelpsBlog, Owning a Business, Public Relations, Starting a business, , , , 4 Comments on Reflection, Risk & Rewards

Seven months ago today — on January 4, 2010 — I walked in and resigned from my position as SVP at the world’s largest PR agency. With no staff, no clients, no office space and no financial backers, I suppose you could say I left to start the world’s smallest PR agency.

 

I’ve read many times that the definition of success for a small business in the start-up stage is simply survival. There are days when the A/C in our office (in a lovely historic building) isn’t working again, and I’m in the floor trying to put together a fan, cursing at the screws that seem to be too short, that seem like mere survival. But those are the exception. Most days, I feel on fire in a way that has nothing to do with the broken A/C.

 

A part of the Clairemont vision from the very beginning has been to blend traditional communications and social media as part of an overall strategy focused on the client’s objectives. As an early mark of success, all ongoing Clairemont accounts have a mix of traditional and social tactics in the plans we have built and are executing for them. We have also been selected for social media projects, including an in-depth social media audit for UNC Kenan-Flagler’s School of Business. (More on that soon.)

 

The Clairemont team continues to grow which is absolutely thrilling to me! We don’t plan to be a small agency forever! Our summer TLC (team, learning, career) interns are amazing & have formed a great team with each other, and I’m interviewing for full-time positions.

 

What I’ve learned in these seven months (in addition to things such as get business insurance before signing a lease, how not to pull my hair out while using QuickBooks and that I have no future as a fan assembler) is that when you own a business, you have to take risks every day. Each day. I guess I thought before that the leap in starting the business was the risk and then somehow, voila, all would fall into place. Nope. I’m also learning — through experience and with the help of my executive coach, when I put an analytical evaluation behind my intuition and gut instincts, most risks yield rewards.

 

Last week, an interview candidate asked me why she should consider leaving her steady job to join a new agency and how could I reassure her that Clairemont will survive. Great question. I’m not interested in how to survive. Only how to thrive. I changed my life because I know that Clairemont will be widely successful and will bring me and my team members much joy in the process. Otherwise, January 4 would have just been another day at the office.

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Welcome to Clairemont Communications

Dana PhelpsBlog, Raleigh PR Agency, Starting a business6 Comments on Welcome to Clairemont Communications
Dana Hughens, CEO
Dana Hughens, CEO

Clairemont Communications was born out of a moment of clarity. It was truly one of those defining moments… convinced that no one loves this profession as much as I do, no one is as passionate as I am about teaching other communications professionals how to deliver the highest quality of client service, and realizing that few agencies have mastered a tactics-agnostic approach to building client strategies, it became crystal clear what I had to do. Now is the time! This is the opportunity to do not just great, not just outstanding, but monumental work for our clients. Clarity in vision + the promise of monumental results … This is Clairemont Communications.

So today I start a new venture, taking with me the incredible experience of building a successful business within the world’s largest PR agency. The safety net of a global network was an amazing comfort, and along the way I gained a great deal of confidence that has prepared me for this day.

Today is about doing what I do well… starting something from the ground up and working hard to grow it into something wildly successful. Along with the blood, sweat and tears that goes into anything worthwhile, there’s going to be a lot of gut-splitting laughter, random dancing and an occasional sharing of irreverent thoughts. Consider yourself cordially invited to participate. Oh won’t you join us?

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