Eileen Rochford and Rob Johnson share their stories of escaping the corporate world and starting their own businesses.

Eileen, the CEO of the Harbinger Group, left her job at a PR agency to start her own agency, driven by a desire for a different way of working and a lack of fulfillment in the corporate structure.

Rob, a former television professional, transitioned into consulting after his contract in the media industry was not renewed. Both Eileen and Rob emphasize the importance of building strong relationships with clients and prioritizing trust and partnership. They also discuss the challenges of pricing their services and the need to adapt and pivot in response to changing circumstances.

The conversation explores the concept of value pricing and the benefits of establishing long-term relationships with clients. The guests discuss their approach to pricing, which involves creating a program for clients with a clearly outlined strategy and detailed tactics. They also emphasize the importance of trust and flexibility in client relationships. The conversation touches on the topic of building a solo business and the advantages of hiring specialists on a project basis.

The guests share their insights on networking, highlighting the value of deep, meaningful connections over quantity. They stress the importance of authenticity and a long-term mindset in networking.

Guest Links:

Eileen Rochford:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eileenrochford/
• Website: https://theharbingergroup.com/

Rob Johnson:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-johnson-communications-advisor/
• Website: https://www.rj47llc.com/

Takeaways

• Leaving the corporate world to start your own business requires careful planning and consideration.
• Building strong relationships with clients and prioritizing trust is crucial for long-term success.
• Pricing services can be challenging, but it's important to understand the value you provide and adjust pricing as you gain experience.
• Being adaptable and willing to pivot is essential in the ever-changing business landscape. Value pricing involves creating a program with a clearly outlined strategy and detailed tactics for clients.
• Establishing trust and flexibility in client relationships is crucial for success.
• Building a solo business allows for more control over time and work-life balance.
• Networking should focus on building deep, meaningful connections rather than quantity.
• Authenticity and a long-term mindset are key in networking.

Sound Bites

• "Why do we all have to physically be in the same place?"
• "I'm gonna resign today... I called my husband first, which was probably a good idea."
• "Every time Eileen and I would see each other, it was like, oh my gosh, is every day like this?"
• "We have value pricing in place, which to us means we've constructed a program for you consisting of X number of campaigns."
• "I just think it's so much easier... I mean, nobody wants to see that."
• "It just makes so much more sense to build relationships in the business comes with it."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Multiple Guests

00:41 Escaping the Corporate World: Eileen's Story

04:04 Transitioning from Television to Consulting: Rob's Journey

07:08 Building Strong Client Relationships and Trust

09:35 Navigating Pricing Challenges

13:07 The Importance of Adaptability and Pivoting

26:10 Value Pricing and Constructing a Program

28:44 Building a Solo Business and Hiring Specialists

32:38 The Importance of Trust and Flexibility in Client Relationships

39:36 Networking: Quality Over Quantity

44:37 Authenticity and a Long-Term Mindset in Networking

Eileen and Rob, welcome to the Corporate Escapee Podcast. It's great to have you.

Thanks for having us. really excited to be here with you.

Wonderful to be here, Brett.

And as I mentioned before, long time listeners, and I think there's one or two that have been here from the beginning, 250 episodes back, will realize that this is the first time we've had multiple guests on the same podcast. So I appreciate you two being the guinea pigs with this, but I think we're going to have a really good discussion. again, thank you very much for being here. So, so to kick us off, Eileen, why don't you share, we're going to make you the OG of the story since you've escaped a little before the two of us did.

what your story and kind of what you're working on today and then Rob we'll hit into your story for a bit and we'll get it going.

I'm sure I'd be happy to. So for context, today I'm the CEO of the Harbinger Group. We're a digital marketing and public relations agency based out of Chicago. But we are 21 years old. And 21 years ago, I had about nine months before I had my first child, I was a VP in a large PR agency in Chicago. I was commuting four out of five days a week to get

to work and had slogged in and out of the downtown commute experience for nearly 10 years. And I had, I don't know, probably around age 26, been toying with this idea of starting my own agency and just feeling like there's a different way of doing this. I don't really understand. Why do we all have to physically be in the same place when basically, I mean, I'm gonna say seven days out of 10, I was probably on the road traveling to clients or traveling to events or.

whatever the case may be, to do the work, right? And I just had this image of, or I guess vision, dream maybe, of we could work virtually, why do we do this? Why do we give away two hours of our lives a day, especially in a city like Chicago with the traffic and all the other, just hassle generally of having to commute to a place to work. I also felt like the structure of the place where I was working,

I like it, yeah.

was really obviously geared toward the ownership. was a publicly traded entity and everything that was done and the decisions that were made, while we did good work for clients, obviously it really came down to what was best, frankly for the shareholders in a lot of cases. So I just been kind of realizing that the older that I got and I went to hit around age 31 one day after another acquisition had happened at the place where I was working.

and restructuring was happening internally and the new acting president came in to tell me, I think you you, after never having bothered to really talk to me at all before that moment, which was so uncultured of the place that I was at, it was shocking. But she walks in and says, I think you would really enjoy working with, know, said person and he's gonna be your new boss. And up until that moment, I had never worked for anyone who I didn't deeply admire and learn from and genuinely wanna kind of walk.

over Kohl's for, and this person was anything but. So, I don't know, someone compelled me, but I walked into HR and just said, I'm gonna resign today. Actually, I'm sorry, I called my husband first, which was probably a good idea. Yeah, and he was great. I said, I think I'm gonna resign, is that okay? He said, what do you want for dinner? When are you getting me home? That sounds great. So I walked in and followed through.

Probably a ride.

That's very smart.

you

And again, I'm just gonna say I don't recommend doing this kind of thing without as little planning as I put into it. The end of the story is fine, it turned out great, but it was quite a big leap to make. But it was motivated by just, I just felt like I could do better on my own. it turned out to be the case and that's great. But I wanna hear Rob's story, because his is really good.

That's a great story. You don't end your origin story with that, Eileen. Come on. So I spent 28, almost 30 years in television and working my way up from small markets. Last 21 were in Chicago. Wonderful time to be in the media back in those days. We had a front row seat to history. We were able to travel a lot, go on the road and get to see history right in front of us. It was a wonderful job.

Yeah, before we get to Rob though, I'm not going to.

Okay...

And then I think the pressures of corporate life started rearing their heads and you know, like any other place, cutbacks and tough decisions and how do we do more with less and things of that nature. And then my contract wasn't renewed like five and a half years ago. And so I remember calling my agent and said, listen, find me another good TV job and I'll do it. But I'm also interested in maybe pivoting and doing something else and kind of looking.

you know, into perhaps consulting. And so I think the economics and the dynamics of

The television business had changed enough that he didn't really bring anything that was interesting to me. And so I made the leap. like, I'm going to, I'm going to take this leap and I'm going to do it. And I'm going to use all the things I learned from sitting on this side, you know, the media side of it and help clients left and right. And that's what I started to do. And I was very fortunate. Eileen's like, he's going to tell the story again. one of first people that hired me to do media training for one of her clients was Eileen. And so we'd been friends.

before showing up at once a year, the golden apple, is sort of the teacher of the year thing, Eileen, that's one of our longtime clients, and I would show up and kind of break in, break in, but like walk into a classroom and be like, hey, congratulations. And it's like, this is your life moment, your family and friends are behind me and all this kind of stuff. And so every time Eileen and I would see each other, it was like, it felt like Christmas day. It was like, my gosh, is every day like this?

Yeah.

And then, so she was terrific, gave me the first opportunity. And I'm proud to say that we work on, we're working on several projects together as we speak right now. And we do the pod, the Can You Hear Me podcast and we're 70 plus episodes in and it's been a great joy. So you having two of us as guests probably isn't as big of a deal because we're co -hosts and we, you know, have, we've had you on before and we're getting ready to have you on as well. And so it's been, it's been a lot of fun. I love.

For all the stuff I did in front of the camera and people would say nice election coverage or nice breaking news coverage or nice newscast, being behind the scenes and helping people achieve their communication goals. So I started Rob Johnson Communications, boutique communications firm, and to watch them achieve their communications goals no matter what they are and kind of listen to me and take my advice and put in the work. And then to watch them soar gives me such great pride and happiness, probably more so than.

Somebody saying, nice newscast.

Yeah, no, I, I love that too. And again, that's part of the beauty of us going solo is the ability to collaborate and work with people, but in a corporate world, we probably never were to work together. And I'm starting to see that more and more. And earlier in my journey, I didn't tell anybody. And we've talked about this before where it was just me, you people probably still thought I was in corporate. I highly do not recommend going down that path. And Eileen, I took the same path as you then said, Hey, I'm done.

I can totally relate.

We can agree to disagree. All right. I'm going to go do this without a ounce of planning to, than a belief that I think I can do this, which again, I don't recommend to people. If you've got time, put a little plan together. So, and I do want to get back to how you got started with, you know, from, I quit to I get my first customer in a second, but Rob, did you have any type of plan in place or was this, Hey, TV's not going to work. I'm going to start to do it. Or how deep did you go?

Well.

I will say this, it's sort of like that movie, The Dead Man Walking, like probably five months before it happened, I was like, this isn't going well. And so I started really being in a mindset of I may be forced to leave this business. And so I started having meetings and conversations with a lot of people that Eileen knows, you know, in the PR world and marketing world. And...

and they were very helpful and they gave me great guidance. And so when it happened, I still had like a six month vacation. So it was like, hey, we gotta pay you the rest of your contract or whatever. And so I was able, instead of like, my gosh, it's over and what am I gonna do tomorrow? I had a six month kind of window to figure it out and to see what I did wanna do. And that was very helpful because I was really able.

to invest time and money and training and all these sorts of things that I needed to do to go from, hey, if you give me a chance, I'm a great communicator. can help you to, hey, I've done this work or I'm doing this work right now. And so, you five and a half years later, I can say, hey, I'm doing this work all the time.

and I love it and people say, what's your industry? I'm like, it doesn't matter if you have a hard time communicating, it doesn't matter if you're in healthcare or if you're insurance or legal or whatever the case may be, I'm here to help out. So that little six month runway definitely helped.

It makes sense. again, hindsight's 2020. I would have taken that six months instead of, you know, counting the days down there. didn't have that grace period, but that's okay. It worked out, but, live and learn. That's why we're doing the podcast too. So.

Sure.

Sorry. All right, Eileen, how did you make that transition? And one, first of all, kudos to you realizing this wasn't a right fit at 31, right? I look back and it was probably 10 years ago. I should have known that this wasn't for me anymore, but it just, was just what I did for so long. I didn't even think that there was outside. So.

Amen.

Yeah. Thank you.

That aside, the biggest curiosity is, well, how did you go from corporate to that first customer? And I know that's probably no simple answer, but just kind of curious what your approach and mindset was and how you did it.

So interestingly, you mentioned how you didn't tell people. Well, the first thing I did was tell someone who was really important to me and really connected and had been freelancing for quite a while. And she immediately said, great. I'm pretty sure she had kind of an insider's perspective on it. So she said, I'm pretty sure that a client or two of accounts that you lead,

Okay.

are small enough and connected to you enough that they would want to go with you. And I said, well, I can't go solicit that business because I don't want to set myself up for any danger. And so as soon as the company that I was working for informed the clients that I would be leaving and that it was basically my two weeks transition off, they...

I don't know how magically. Cause I swear to God, I didn't talk to them, but they turned around and told, the company that I worked for that they were resigning the business and, and, asking me to take it over. And I have to say my employer was extraordinarily gracious about it. Didn't do a thing. Said, wish you the very best. the accounts just weren't big enough for them to care. genuinely, it didn't bring in enough money.

you

Interesting.

we had gone through kind of a transition phase where I had been leading a huge multimillion dollar and for that firm global in some respects account and that company had gone up in flames due to a little company called Enron. so, yeah, know them. The damage they did, yeah. So the corporate business at the place where I was working,

Hmm

Now.

guys

felt that impact very deeply. It was pretty devastating. So we were in kind of a rebuild phase of filling the pipeline and so thus we were taking smaller counts. the accounts that went with me, it worked out great. I genuinely, if that hadn't happened, I don't know that the Harbinger Group would have been born in the way that it was and sustained for as long as it has for this very reason.

Both of those accounts, those CEOs at those organizations went on to work for other organizations years later and took us, the Harbinger Group, with them everywhere they went.

So, know, 21 years old and we have some clients that have worked with us since the day we opened our doors.

It's kind of the dream and it.

And it's so important to have those clients, isn't it? I to have, I have a couple of great clients that are really the cornerstone of what I do. And then I have a bunch of other ones that are mostly regular, some that are quasi regular. so, having, knowing that, okay, I have them, I'm working with them and they know what they're getting from us, from me. That's, that's huge. you think, Eileen?

Yeah.

Yeah, I absolutely do. And I think another takeaway from it is the, cause now I have the hindsight so I can kind of say this. It's, it's about, it's not just about loyalty. I feel like that word just isn't enough. it's about, yeah, relationships, partner, like what is the true meaning of being a partner? You know, the trust that you develop and trust to me is.

worse.

relationships.

You do what you say you're going to do and you prioritize the relationship, right? I think that's how really, really strong trust is developed in a service consulting situation, which is really what we do. And we're seeing that play out in even, you know, clients that came into our fold five, six, seven years ago, what they ask of us and what they trust us with just gets bigger and bigger and bigger because we do, we prioritize them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it was funny, I think about when you were speaking, Rob, was thinking about how it feels so good to help these people, but it's almost akin, it's almost akin, the relationship and the experience to, it's almost like family and parenthood or something, that feeling of pride when they do really well. And so consequently, because we're connected in that way.

I think the relationships are just, they're just so deep and they know it. They know we care about them. They know they can count on us. And frankly, anyone who's considering starting their own business, don't chase the money. Chase the relationship because the relationship will lead to great things. So I think it's a good moment to mention that.

Yes.

Yeah, no, and it's so good. think just even to go back just a tiny bit where a lot of us, me included, were afraid to go back to previous employers or even current employers that, wow, they're going to come after me if I even look sideways. And honestly, nine times out of 10, they could care less. Because I started this podcast when I was management consulting. I'm like, my gosh, they're going to want the IP. going to want...

Truly.

Yeah. Mm -hmm.

See you later. We're, we're okay. Just you take it. So I think it's a good source of, because you've got relationships with some of these clients, depending on what role you're in, but yeah, it's a good, good way. And I think too, the, we have with 20 years in corporate is the ability to build relationships. If we've had any success or it's going to come, you've built either internal or external somehow. So that's, you know, play to your strength with, with what you're doing. So, you know, I love that.

And Rob, I'm going back to you now because you had some time you were going to build this out. But what was, what was your kind of thought process? How do I price this? What is, cause when I work with a lot of new folks now, they're like, well, I can do all of this. can't see I'm moving with my hands, but basically anything I've done in 20 years in corporate, I can do this now. I'm like, yeah, pick one, pick something to get started, be opportunistic about others. And then, you know, over time it may change depending on what you do. So kind of a two -part question for you is how did you

figure out what you were gonna offer initially and has that kind of changed over time over the last five years as you've got up and running and growing.

Yeah, I mean, first of all, there's so much to learn about everything, about what I would do for different clients. And then as I started to get multiple clients, I realized they all had different needs. So I didn't have to offer something that would say cookie cutter. But my first and best client to this day, in fact, still, which I'm so grateful for, we were talking about that a little bit.

They started off and said, okay, we're gonna hire you. And they said, we want you to do a rebrand. We're gonna spend six months with the new CMO, we're gonna do a rebrand. And I'm like, gosh, the only time I've ever done any really like heavy branding was on myself, as part of a team when I was in television, when we're marketing and branding ourselves. And so I did have experience doing it, but...

went and started collaborating with various people on the rebrand, went sector to sector, met with the CEO on a regular basis. And six months later, we had a plan and it was great. And I was doing, also I was doing...

whenever I say, you should do media training. Like Eileen gave me the opportunity to do media training, but I realized very quickly only one or two people in an organization are authorized to speak to the media. So I quickly changed it to message training because I wanted to be relevant to a lot of people internally and how do we talk about ourselves and how do we go to market and things of that nature. And so I had really started to develop that pretty well as this, this rebrand had started and then boom COVID hits.

and

And all of a sudden, all these sectors we were going to do the branding exercises with, was like everybody's scuttling out, they're all, know, 500 people are working from home. And so that's over for the time being. And then it's like, well, what do I do to make myself relevant? I mean, I can't do presentation training. Maybe I should do virtual presentation training. And so I got that idea. I developed a curriculum for it and started doing it. And everybody said,

man, when COVID's over, we're gonna be back to the boardroom in like six months. I don't need to learn how to do virtual presentation training, come on. And I was like, I think it's gonna last longer than you think. Thank goodness I was right. But I had a lot of pushback. People were like, why do I need to learn this? Because I'm gonna be back in the office in the summer. And they weren't. And to this day, they're not back in the office in the ways they thought they would be. So that was a total pivot. And it was like,

Right.

how do I make myself useful to my best client and to other clients now that I have to work from home? Cause we all had to work from home. So starting it and it starts off great. And then six months later, COVID hits. I you don't plan for things like that, but I wouldn't say that's the best time to start a new business, especially when you have no experience starting a business. So that was, that was a real eye opener. And then all of sudden virtual presentation training. And then that was a thing. And then I was able to build on that. And it's still part of.

All right.

Hahaha

the presentation and message training that I do to this day for certain clients that need it. It's still part of it. Here we are many years later and it caught on. Yeah, you're back in the boardroom some, but not all the time because they figured, mean, efficiency wise, Eileen was talking about not having to the commute or if you're sitting there near the company and you don't have to send a group of three or four to...

Yeah.

say San Francisco and then, you know, pay for business class tickets and then take out, take the clients out for steak dinner and there's $5 ,000 like, I mean, think of all the savings you can do when people say, just let's get on a zoom call. okay. And we're still going to have business. So a lot changed there. And, and I had to, pivoted to a new career and then quickly I had to pivot to, okay, how do I do this virtually?

Yeah, it's it builds the muscle. Just one follow on to that. So how did you were you under charging initially or how did you kind of figure out a rationalized pricing?

Yeah, well, I mean, I didn't know, honestly. I mean, the first person that hired me by a project, I think I woefully overcharged that person. I was like, well, I better go. And I did. And I didn't do any more business with that person. So that made sense, I guess. But also, I really didn't know how to price it. And then in certain cases for the smaller jobs, I would say, well, it's proof of concept. I need to be able to say, I can do this. So that sort of thing. So I would.

Bye.

probably I wouldn't say, I'm giving you a discount, but I would give a discounted rate. And then as I went along, I realized that what I'm doing does have value and it has increasing value with the more experience I get doing it. And so now it's much different than it was, but yeah, at first it's like, I don't know. Like, do I charge you? Okay, we're gonna work by the month or retainer or by the project. There's all sorts of decisions to make. And I'm like, I don't know. I probably undercharged just not knowing.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's good. And I'm coming right back to you, Eileen, with this one, because at least you had a little history with the agency, but did you follow the same pricing method when you got started? How did you, one, did you build that transition and did your business change after you brought those clients with you? So I'm kind of curious to hear, because again, everybody's like, well, whatever I do first is what I'm going to do for, I'm like, no, whatever you do is going to get the momentum. And then you can figure out what, what you want to do. So,

No.

Mm -mm. Yep.

Absolutely. So in our case, at this time, the industry was deeply entrenched in the hourly rate model that was much more the norm. There were lots of retainers as well in the very big agencies. But the hourly rate seemed to be the most popular and the one that most clients wanted.

I knew what the whole pricing scale was of the organization that I had left all the way up to general manager because I had been in a management position. knowing what the different levels were charging for their time and what we would charge out to clients when the, what we called the super experts such as the

very, very experienced media trainers and strategists and things would come in and what they would charge. I knew what that was. And I knew because we'd been working with two of the clients we started with, I knew what their budgets were. So I just kind of looked at it from that perspective of what is the budget and then what is our hourly rate? And frankly, I decided we don't have any of the overhead. We don't have any of those costs. We are all working virtually, remotely, whatever you want to call it.

And so we just took those rates and cut them in half. but largely the team that I built was all senior level consultants, kind of those who had achieved to some degree the vice president to senior vice present ish on up level in many major consulting firms, PR firms. So they all knew what they had, what people had charged for their

interesting.

time as well. So we just kind of took that and cut it in half. So really, we don't have any of those charges and we were wildly popular as a result.

Third time.

Yeah, I bet.

Can I say this about Eileen though too? Not exactly related to that, but being kind of a pioneer, because she said we went virtual before it was a thing. And then I can't tell you how many conversations we've had just between us or on our podcast about everybody's talking about remote work and this and that. And Eileen's like, yeah, I've been doing it 20 plus years. And I'm thinking, wow.

Who thought to do that? Everybody's thinking to do it now. So I just wanted to give a nod to that because you were well, well, well before your time on that one.

Yeah.

Well, I did have a mom who was a journalist as well and worked, you know, for wire services and trades that were based out of New York City, but who were raised in Cleveland, Ohio on the West Side. And she only worked three days a week and rarely traveled. But I heard her phoning in her stories my entire childhood. So I was always kind of like, why do people go to offices? This is so weird.

Laughter

So, right, you're definitely ahead of the curve on that one. And I just want to ask you too, so you brought these folks and were they contractors? Was your vision to build like a full on agency and bringing in employees or were you thinking, hey, I want to go solo and build this thing? What was the initial thought process?

No, I wanted a completely flexible staffing model. And I truly felt, and we still do it to some degree here, we have core employees, but we supplement with specialists all the time. People we have vetted or people we have longstanding deep relationships with in one way or another who are...

Maybe permalancers is the old phrase that people used to use, which I always thought was pretty funny. bringing that back out of the archives. Yeah. So we have lots of those. and it works great because again, you asked earlier, but you said, how did the model of charging at our place evolve? It totally evolves. I got away probably 10 years and I got away from the hourly rate and it was almost like, I got to get it. I wanted to get away from it as fast as I could. So we went to value pricing.

Permalancer is how I like it.

very quickly, we rarely do hourly rates. The only time we do is when scope changes. So we say we have value pricing in place, which to us means we've constructed a program for you consisting of X number of campaigns. And the strategy is very clearly outlined. The tactics are highly detailed and that vision is a 12 month structure.

And then we say, and this is what it's going to cost. And we will charge you the equipment, you know, take that number, divide it by 12, and we'll charge you that same amount of money every month. So that's our version of value pricing. It works great, clients love it. They can budget for it, they can count on it. They're worried about, you know, bills getting jacked up. But if that client or any other comes to us and needs something kind of last minute or extra or out of scope, then yeah, that's when we bring in the hourly pricing part of things.

Taking budget for it, yeah.

I just don't like hourly pricing because I hate to say, I spent 15 minutes, because you're accounting for everything. And I'm like, do you really want to read a line item, you know, invoice that looks like, you know, war and peace? So I just think it's so much easier. mean, obviously you're talking about the value pricing, Eileen, but also you have an idea of how much work it's going to take.

So the deeper.

No.

Bye.

And then you have an idea of, if I have a certain number of hours I'm getting that I know I have for six months or in your case a year, there's going to be a little discount there. So yeah, you're still keeping track of it, but for me, it's so much more efficient not to be chasing, having to write everything down and like, here's an invoice and it's 12 pages long. I mean, nobody wants to see that.

to some degree, yeah.

Mm

It is, I agree with you. We've often gotten into situations and I think this is where the trust comes up again, where if there's extra needed and it's urgent, I can confidently tell a client, okay, you need this and you need it in a short period of time. And we can do this for you, but I'm going to have to either supplement our staff with those, you know, flexible staffing folks that we kind of have at the ready. Or I'm going to have to,

Yeah.

you know, compromise other work that's in the pipeline, essentially using the stuff that we have. So here's what I am very confident it would cost to do that. And I give them a range and nine times out of 10, they just say, we need it, go put it in writing as a scope change. I'm good with it.

do it right. Yeah, yeah. And again, I love that about the relationship because again, that's what I encourage everybody build it. We don't need a million customers get really good, tight, right? Because again, in corporate, we're just looking for that next number, the client most of the time, right to fill the pipeline. And it just makes so much so much more sense to build relationships in the business comes with it. So great lesson. And Rob, I'm going back to you now because after

Yeah, get it done, I desperately need it.

you get the first, you know, through networking, you're still so I mean, you use resources, but you're still a solo company, right?

I am. And I have to say, as I sit there and think about growing my business, which I've been able to do year by year, in the last year, the focus was on other projects with other firms. And so I'm...

I do work, Eileen's, the Harbinger Group is a great example, do work with them and I do work with several other firms as well, sort of by the project. And so that's another way I've been able to grow my business and I also think it's a great endorsement of what I do, but do I still think about, am I gonna really grow it in a way where you start having employees and this and that? So whenever I have a project that may be beyond what one person can do, I have a, know,

list of people, people that are trusted as Eileen was talking about, that you know can handle something. It might be PR, might be not -for -profit PR, it might be corporate this, whatever the case is. I can, so the answer is always yes, I can do it, but I bring those people on to help me out. So I do hire people by the project at this point.

but I don't have any other full timers. And at this point in my life, that model works for me. Is it always going to? I can't say that it will, but right now it's working. And as long as I can keep growing the business in a meaningful way, that's a good way to keep score, I suppose.

Yeah, that's awesome. And again, that's what I tell people all the time. And like, can go any path you want, but I think the conventional wisdom was I have to, if I leave, I have to build a company. I need employees. I need to do them. You don't anymore. Right. With the specialists, the permalancers and again, think you, the three of us, I think you actually talked in the past about the future of work is going to be more of just supplementing with specialists or building around specialists that do things very well in building that way.

I don't know, it just makes a lot more sense to eliminate the overhead. But the main takeaway is you can build it the way you want to build it, right? It's what your goals, what your life is, what you want to achieve, when you want to work, how you want to work, all those things you couldn't do in corporate, you can do now. So, makes sense.

Yeah.

at this age, at this age, at this point in my career.

Thank

You know, I used to have a job where you had to physically show up the same time every day, same place reporting on, you know, mayhem and the news of the day. And, and you had to look like a million bucks, you know, and, now it's just, it's just so much more flexible in so many different ways. And to be able to sit here in my home office and do meaningful work for several days. And yes, of course I, I go downtown and meet clients face to face and do that sort of thing. So I'm still commuting.

several days a week. I'm just not commuting five days a week and I can decide hey Friday doesn't work for me. You know the greatest thing about being a consultant in my eyes is you know somebody who says hey you work for me we're meeting at one o 'clock and somebody if you're a consultant they say hey can you meet at one o 'clock. It's so much different.

Yeah.

Yes, and the answer can often be no.

Yeah, exactly. You will be. Exactly. You control the time. I actually posted something today about, you know, I didn't realize my biggest takeaway of four plus years of being solo now is I control the time, right? I didn't, if you don't control your time, someone's going to control it for you. And for decades, I just let somebody else control it for me. I thought I was in control, but in hindsight, no, I wasn't. You're telling me who to work with, what I'm working on, when I have to be in the office, when I'm traveling.

No.

and I had to work my life around that type of process.

Right.

But that said, were just, Eileen and I, one of these projects that we work on together, we just had a moment earlier in the week and it was like, we got to get this done. Like, and I'm like, you need this done by tomorrow? And Eileen's like, I kind of need it done like by the end of the day. And I'm like, good. I can, no, no, no, I know that, but the point is though, it was not like, my gosh, what a burden. was like, we got to get this done now. All right. Well, I'll drop what I'm doing right now and get it done. It was, it's a high priority. It's a terrific client. have a long standing relationship with, but, but

And that was like the first time I've ever made that kind of a deadline.

for us. And yeah, so it's not like, I lean to doing so. I mean, it was, I don't recall another time. But the thing is, it was something like, okay, I can do that. And then we get the work done. And we make the client happy, presumably, and, and we move forward. But that's the great thing about it, you can decide that.

Hahaha!

Like, with her, just like, tomorrow? No, I need it. Like, we need, okay, good, I'm on it. I'm on it, let's go. I gotta get off the phone now and you get cracking. So, but that is, but see, that's flexibility too. Even though it's like, hey, gotta get it done, you know, three hours ago.

Crank it out.

you

Yes.

you can still do it and you can still shift things around. That's the point I'm making about the flexibility. Like I've got other things on my plate for that day, but that doesn't mean I can't move it to, okay, I can do that tomorrow morning or I can do this or that. And I can prioritize this right now. That flexibility, it works both ways, but they're both satisfying in my opinion.

Yeah, 100 % agreed.

One of the things that I think is a big shift for folks who decide to leave and go solo or build something, whatever structure they choose, it's the understanding that time is your own and the understanding of the ebbs and the flows. you don't wanna fall into the mindset of I have to take every single thing that I get. I need to take every project, I have to work every hour, because I don't know when this is going to end.

There's no straighter path, you know, to kind of driving yourself crazy than doing that. Right. But understanding the ebbs and the flows and taking advantage of the flows. So, because when you take advantage of the flows, you can have the ebbs and not freak out when you have the ebbs. Cause it's like you're, you're putting, you know, you're lining your coffers as they say, right? The, you take the extra dough and you stick that into savings because you might hit those.

EBS and that's the time when you're probably going to draw on the savings to cover your normal expenses because maybe things were a little leaner. That's a really big adjustment in a mindset change that I don't know gets talked about that much. When people are kind of deciding, can I do this? So maybe that's a good thing to highlight for people because I witnessed my husband be a freelancer well before I made this leap to running my own business and not working for someone else.

It doesn't.

It's so important.

And I kind of, we got to a point where I kind of talked him through the, Hey, you can decide how much money you need to make in a year. And when we're going to go on vacation, if we plan ahead, then you can decide, you know, these are the months when I know are really peak months because of he's in healthcare PR. So he would know, I work like mad in January because of, know, JP Morgan. work like mad in May because of ASCO and other conferences and things. So.

He would bank and bank and bank in those periods and then we'd go on vacation for three weeks and he wouldn't be worried because he already had the money in the bank.

Yeah, such a good point. It was one of the shifts and I tell people it becomes more cash flow driven. Like when you get the salary, you know you're getting paid every two weeks or every month, depending on how it was. Here, it's I think more and more about the cash flow and the reserves of what we need because if it's your point, you do want to take a month off. You can do that, but you got to plan for it. Right. And

Right.

It's kind of the beauty of having different types of projects as well. I tell there's certain folks that just wanted to do nothing but fractional, which I'm like, that's great. But it's kind of like doing nothing but consulting that it's kind of fixed and it's hard to build flexibility. So if you have a couple of bigger ones, a couple of small ones, you know, what is that that old analogy about the rocks and sand and a fishbowl, right? You can, if you just put big rocks in, you're not going to get much, but you start throwing some other stuff. Again, your choice.

It just builds so much more flexibility into your life.

I think that's such an important point too. And I know you've raised it before about, you know, eating what you kill. Cause that was a huge thing going from the W two to the different, the different way of getting paid. But I think about the first three, four or five months of the year that were as busy as I've ever been. And I was like, that's great. And then June hits and for whatever reason, you people are starting thinking about vacation and various things, myself included, my family as well. and things slow down a little bit and all of a sudden it's like, Hey, that's June, July. It's a little leaner. And then, you know, in the past week, it's like,

all right, people are back in the business mindset because I've got a couple of new clients. It's like, there it is. But that's the way it is. I mean, you really have to count on the ebbs and the flows and the way Eileen was talking about budgeting for various moments in your life based on, we banked a little bit right now or hey, it's a little leaner than I'd like it, but it all evens itself out. But it's a different way of thinking, it truly is.

Mm

It also applies though to how you structure agreements with clients and what you're selling to them. So if you think about, you want to have a faucet that's on, even if it's at like low flow, but you want to have it on the whole year, then think about how you structure.

what you're going to do for them so that there is kind of that ongoing revenue element that's of very high value for them, but it also kind of creates a level of security for you in terms of continuous income.

Yeah, no, makes sense. love that. I love the more we can build it as a service model or a subscription. Right. think we can do almost anything as a subscription. Just got to think a little bit differently, more out of the box. But your point, almost every client loves it because they know exactly what to budget, right? They know what they're going to get for it versus a one -time project. All right. I know we're running low on time, but I have to ask each of you the number one question, which took me a little while to figure out from our audience and our community is networking. Right.

Yeah, no surprises.

everybody knows how to network and do it but when you think about 20 -30 years in corporate our networking is only when we're looking for a job or maybe a vendor or something along those lines our networking isn't customers and building relationships so if I could hit each of you with just you know some tips or recommendations that you have that what works for you that would go a long way with our audience

Rob, you should go first because you're the king of networking.

please. I would say that it cannot be quid pro quo.

Hahaha!

It cannot be only when you're looking for a job. need to have, listen, I'm not sitting there saying, I'm going to all these networking events all the time, but I keep a pretty regular cadence with different groups. And I never walk into it thinking what's in it for me. I always think about who am I gonna meet? How is this going to enhance what I'm doing as a professional and as a person? And just find the right group. It might be virtual, it might be in person.

I really like the ones that are somewhat intentional, know, with sort of like -minded people. me, it'd be more like at the executive level where you're able to share ideas and have meaningful conversations. And then, you know, it's gravy, but every once in a while, those will turn into...

a job. And I just had one happen this week. Somebody that I had met through one of my networking groups was like, Hey, you know, we talked and this and that I need help and I need it right away and all this sort of thing. I hadn't talked to that person in probably three, four months, but that's what happened. But you can't go into it hoping that that's what happens because then it won't happen. You have to go in there and say, what can I do to help you? how can I be of help to you? How do we, how do we share ideas and how do we, how do we,

elevate the conversation. That's what's important. But I do it fairly frequently and I find value in it. But don't just do it when you're like, gosh, I'm getting ready to be in between jobs or I'm in between jobs or I need to meet people because you're not going to get the most out of it.

Yeah, it's definitely a long game and that took me a little while to learn as well, right? That hey, it's meet good people. The more good people you have in the network, the better things are going to happen. And you're a hundred percent right. How can I help you? Always going to the, how can I help you? And maybe there's nothing you can do, but if you get that connection.

Absolutely.

somebody's going to remember you like you said three, four months later and say, yeah, Rob can do that for me. So I think that you can't go with the instant gratification with networking. just doesn't work. so long game, build some great relationships, and then the harvest will start to bear fruit at some point down the road. So Eileen, how about you?

No.

What do you say, Eileen?

Well, I like to bring up, I guess, an example. Do you guys, have you ever heard the expression if you have one or two great friends in your life, even when you're a kid, know, when kids kind of feel like, don't need friends, and as long as you have one or two people who you can really, really count on and that relationship is so solid, you're good. you can have kind of better mental health and all kinds of things. When I think about

networking, I think about deep relationships. I don't think about numbers and I don't think about touching as many people as I possibly can. that has never ever worked for me. And I think networking varies based on personality. My personality doesn't do, you know, big rooms and meet a bunch of people and, and I feel like I've established anything close to a meaningful connection. I go to a networking event and if I walk out of there having

solidly connected with one or two people, I am just utterly thrilled. So, and what's interesting about that in my experience is it usually turns into a lasting connection. I'll give you an example. I was at an event last year. It was, I think it was hosted by Marquette University and it was about sustainability. And I went there just to learn.

It's a topic that I'm really interested in how communications is a part of success of sustainability initiatives in all kinds of organizations, municipalities, for -profit entities, you name it. So I just literally went there to learn and just be a person at a chair and kind of feel like I'm back in school again. There's a room full of 300 people. And the table that I sat at, was not assigned seating. The table that I sat at, I ended up sitting next to

someone who was a CMO of a water products company. And so randomly, she also went to my university, she had graduated within a few years of me. We have kept up our communication since then and are now both part of this mentoring initiative called Marquette Mentors at Marquette. that's what I mean by, and it's turned into other things too, but my point is, like,

If you really focus on connecting substantially, you know, in a meaningful way with people, when you go to events, you might have the personality type that those are the relationships that turn into big things for you. So there's all kinds of people in the world, right? So everybody's going to network a little bit differently, but if you are like me and that's how it works for you, don't feel like you're losing, you know, the fight, the numbers game because

As I mentioned earlier in the show, our whole business has been built on deep, lasting, very meaningful relationships. So I think that there's a connection there, if you think about it.

Well, I would say this, that's completely authentic to Eileen and her personality, but I've been with her at communication leaders of Chicago events and she knows everybody. Or I should say they all know her. Come on. It's...

Ha ha ha.

Well, in that little sphere, which is like the it's so weird, the type the Chicago PR communications marketing world is really small. I mean, like everybody knows everybody. I don't even know why that is.

Right. Right. So she's not sitting there on the wall like, who are these people? They all know Eileen. They do.

No, it's yeah. And then those situations, it's really easy, you know, and it almost feels like a race. Like I walk out of there, with, you know, I can't sleep for hours because I've had to talk to so many people. in that, I just think that, you know, flip side, guess, focusing on connecting with someone in a meaningful enough way and learning enough about them that you could, reach out to them again and they'd remember who you are. that relationship could go somewhere. Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

quality over quantity I'm 100 % with you on that because you just burn bridges if you're just spamming and outreaching so and it's so much easier just to be yourself and be authentic than trying to remember who was I with this person and what was my persona I'm like no life's too short to deal with that anymore exactly exactly right all right well you guys have been super generous with your time I appreciate it

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

you

I know, right? That would send me into panic mode.

Authenticity matters.

Lastly, I'll throw it back to each of you. Just where is the best place for folks to connect with you, learn more about you, hopefully authentically connect, right? And network, right? That makes sense. But where's the best place to reach you guys?

Ha

You can definitely find me on LinkedIn and you can also find me, my email, there's a connect with me button on our website at theherbingergroup .com.

You know, I have everything in the show notes obviously, but yes. Rob.

I'm linked in and I would parrot that exactly except we have a different email address. Rob Johnson, one word at rj47llc .com. So that's the best way to get a hold of me through that method or LinkedIn.

Got it.

Well, I appreciate you both spending the time. This was a lot of fun. can't believe how much time flew by how quickly. maybe what did exactly. maybe there's a part two of this because there's a bunch of other questions we didn't get to in this one, but I think we hit the main ones. But yeah, if you guys ever have a project and need somebody just to sit on the outside that doesn't charge very much that you want to bring me into, I'd love to work on some with you guys. I think that would be fun. So exactly.

Well, that's when you have double the fun.

Yeah, here's two of us.

And if we ever need a podcast guest, wait, we already did that. Absolutely. Thanks for having us, Brett. We really appreciate it.

That sounds like fun. Yeah. Oops. We'll do it again.

So yeah, it'd be awesome. right, well, thanks again and you guys have a great day. Talk to you guys soon.

Thanks, Brett. You too. Okay, bye.

Take care. you. Bye bye.