This week we talk to Nicole Rodrigues, founder of NRPR Group and also, author of a great new book, Beverly Hills Boss. In her book and on this episode, she shares all about starting and growing your business. And of course having 20 years of PR experience, she gives lots of great tips for promoting ourselves. Even though Nicole had a vision for her future PR firm in college, she put in well over a decade of working for bigger firms first. She learned what worked and what didn’t work. Then when she felt the time was right for her to go out on her own, she took a hard look at her finances. She started selling stuff wherever she could. She stacked her vacation pay on top of what she had saved. She cut back on her rent. She wanted to make sure there was no stress in her finances. She says to start by dreaming big and then check your finances. Not surprisingly, next she advises you to PR yourself. Start with social media because it’s free. Check to see if your url is available and secure it. Put the branding in place, get the website built, get the messaging done. Then it’s lights on! Ready for business and ready to accept. She shares about how Linked In Pulse is a great marketing tool. You can share something as brief as an update or something more in depth like a blog post. Use and share your expertise. Collaborate with others to trade work until you can build a team. Then you can ask, “How can we market us? How can we build for ourselves?” PR is meant to get you more attention. What can the extra attention get you? Sales come after they begin to trust the brand. A magazine article will build more trust than an advertisement. 3rd party validation builds the most trust. The attention a PR firm can bring you can be measure in a few ways. Volume is important. They start from the ground up with blogs, magazines, etc. Then you can take the attention and amplify it through social media. Are you ready for the attention? It doesn’t make sense to draw attention to something that can’t be amplified. Then Nicole explains the difference between earned media and owned media. How do we make ‘you’ the media? Do you have a blog tab on your website? She tells us how to repurpose your content. Start on your company blog page then put it on Medium, put it on Linked In Pulse. Again, amplification is everything. You want to share your expertise. You want that to go far. That’s when the inbound starts coming in. The goal is for you to get more attention from people who are looking at what you’re sharing and then they realize they can use you. They need you. If teamwork doesn’t exist it between a company and NRPR as the PR firm, it’s hard to make it come together and work. It’s important as a business owner that you know where your money is going and how to make it all work together. We always ask two questions at the end of every show. The first one is “What is your definition of success?” Nicole shared how success to her is being able to do something you love, get paid well enough for it, to live in a way that feels satisfying to you. Because that is different for everyone. And when we asked Nicole for the three words that come to mind when she thinks about money she said stress, essential, and flexible. She went on to explain that money can be stretched. You can find different ways to utilize it, it’s not hard and concrete. There are so many ways to make money grow. One of the things she learned and shared about starting and growing your business is to be more flexible and creative with money. www.nrprgroup.com Beverly Hills Book and Free Top 10 Mistakes Report www.beverlyhillsboss.com Beverly Hills Boss on Youtube with PR Tips and Interviews https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1zSTRF5xY9izkdRCwGHYXQ