Letting Go

So I fired my PR company. Trust me it was not nearly as easy as I made it sound. But first, the backstory:

I hired a PR firm in early summer after interviewing a number of them truly believing that the one I chose would help me get a tremendous amount of publicity which would in turn help build the brand equity. Between then and last week they got me precisely one radio spot on a local radio station. During that same time period I got (without even trying but simply through contacts I had who contacted me) four print pieces and one national radio spot (albeit all were within my industry) for or about the company. If you do the math - their one radio spot cost me more than the annual rental cost of my production space whereas my 4 print pieces and one radio spot cost the company nothing (though one could argue that I should be getting paid for my time - which hopefully will happen one day).

I'm incredibly frustrated that I spent all that money this year - money that could have gone to so many other things.

But that's what I'm learning running a small business is all about. While you do your absolute best to make the right decisions based on a combination of knowledge, know-how, and gut instinct - at the end of the day there's still a fairly large amount of trail and error and sometimes, as in this case, you error.

What's the plan from here on? I really believe PR is a huge asset to a company but I will most likely be bringing it "in-house" after the new year. I'm right now looking into getting a PR Newswire subscription in 2008 and once I have a chance to investigate that a little further I'll let you know what I find.