Recipe for Success: Do Less of Better, Not More of Crap

Lee Caraher is Founder, President, and CEO of Double Forte, a "fiercely independent public relations and social media firm" with offices in New York and San Francisco. They select clients that are good companies doing great things in their categories (in particular – consumer lifestyle, digital life, and professional services); and set goals based on business outcomes (ROI)—not PR outcomes. At least 50% of the company's employees has a minimum of 8 years of experience.

In this interview, Lee provides tips on how to communicate effectively in email messages and why it is important for an agency to be "easy to work with." She believes that measuring against business goals comes first, because the closer an agency is to meeting its clients' business goals, the longer term its contracts will be. The longer term its contracts are, the more profit the agency can drive out of those contracts and the longer it will keep its employees. Her company's average client engagement period from Day 1 is 5-½ years, double the average retention rate in San Francisco. With an eye for the numbers, Lee points out that these strategies also help on the staffing side: Her 16-year-old company's average tenure for people under 30 is 4-½ years and over 30 is 6-½ years.

During the 2008 recession Lee re-engineered her company. Originally, she had required new hires to have at least 10 years of experience. With the economic downturn, she knew she had to bring on less-experienced people so that when things turned around, she would have a continuum of experience instead of a "hard times" hiring freeze "doughnut hole." She cut frills, diversified the client base and increased the percentage of consumer goods clients (working with consumer goods clients on a national basis), and told her employees to dig deep with prospective clients. Instead of saying "No" as a first response to clients that didn't appear to "fit," she told her agents to say, "Yes, tell me more." If they got to "No" in the end, they would have arrived there by going through, "Yes," and not bypassed an opportunity.

Lee can be reached on her company's website at: double-forte.com or follow her on Twitter @DoubleFortePR.