A little more than three years ago, we announced we are no longer a PR firm.

What that means externally is, when prospects call and say they’re looking for a PR firm, if all they want is media relations, we now have a business model that doesn’t support that kind of “strategy.”

But, internally, it was a huge shift. Before we formally announced it, we spent most of 2008 testing new strategies, campaigns, and ideas with our more sophisticated clients. We created processes and metrics to measure and developed ways to sell new things.

In 2009, I spent time with my team, coaching and mentoring them to gauge potential and determine where we still needed talent.

But I knew, before we wrote it on this blog and before we fired our resistant clients and before we did 2010 planning with our current clients, I had to have total buy-in from my team. (more…)