Scott Allison wants you to
know that public relations
firms can be small businesses, too.
Allison & Partners, the 92-employee firm that Allison co-founded, has had to deal with
the same challenges that any
technology start-up has to face,
from staffing to infrastructure
to cash flow. It’s just that
instead of making silicon chips,
PR is his product.
“That’s why it’s always fun
when you meet with potential
clients and they say, ‘Oh, you
don’t realize what it is to be a
start-up entrepreneur,’” he says.
“Well, yeah I do. I understand all
too well.”
Allison, who serves as president and CEO, has overcome
those challenges to grow his
company’s revenue to $11.5 million for 2007, and he anticipates
posting 2008 revenue of about
$13 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Allison about how taking a
financial hit now can lead to a
big gain later and how to know
if you’re wearing too many hats.
Q. What are the keys to
effective leadership?
The biggest lesson I’ve learned
from watching others, watching
clients and then learning the
hard way with my own company as it evolves is that you’ve
got to communicate and then
overcommunicate. You can
never take for granted or
assume people understand
what you’re doing or where
you’re going with the company.
The real key is communicating to everybody on the team
frequently about the direction of
the company, what the goals
are, what the aspirations are, so
people have a real clear vision
of what you’re trying to do.
Q. How do you communicate
your vision to the company?
One thing we do is an annual
retreat where we bring the
whole company together for
two days. We have six different
locations, so it’s tricky to shut
the company down and bring
everyone together, but we do
that to really give an update on
where we’re going, our goals
and direction.
Then we do a monthly conference call with the entire
company. We spend an
hour just hearkening back
to what the annual goals
were for the company
and then really breaking it
down month by month,
with where we are.
The other piece is we
have our senior team,
which is the office heads
and a few other senior
folks. We do biweekly
phone calls to really talk
through all the challenges and issues that are
going on.
