Elevating Mission-Driven Brands with PR Expert Helen Sharp

What is— how did you get into launching your own PR company? What got you into sustainability? Because there's not very many of those focused companies for PR. And just how'd you get, get started in this?

Yeah, so my background is in journalism and sales, and I've always been a people person, loving to connect the dots, put, you know, connect people to help other people get, get things moving. And kind of with that personality, PR came naturally to me. And I first started working in PR for a tech company based in Austin. And they just— I was out to dinner with the founder one night with a bunch of friends, and he's like, Do you do PR? Because you need to do PR. And I was like, yeah, I'm actually something I've been really interested in and talking to to people, friends in New York and San Francisco that are in the industry. And it had been something that I'd been kind of like drawn to. So he ended up, you know, we had a meeting. I put a plan together with the help from a dear friend in New York who's the VP of a big firm. She's been an amazing help when I did launch my business and also for kind of working with that company. And I was working for them for about a year and I was also living abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So I'd like come back and forth between the US and Buenos Aires and randomly there was cousin of a founder of this company called Final Straw that was in Buenos Aires. And she— they had launched Final Straw. It was— it's a reusable, foldable, collapsible straw that they launched on Kickstarter. And it was during all of the straw bans, you know, back in like 2018, the straw wars, basically. Yes.

Yeah, that was a hot topic for a while there.

Yeah. Um, so anyways, this girl knew my friends and she was like, I'm drowning. I know nothing about PR. We really need help. And then a friend of mine was like, oh, you need to talk to Helen. She loves PR. She's in it. And I also have been super, um, thoughtful about sustainability my whole life. I grew up with a father who was always making sure the lights were off. We were always like recycling before recycling was a thing. I— when I was a kid, I would burst into tears at, um, festivals or, you know, whatever, when they were letting balloons go. I would be like, no, the sea turtles, they think they're jellyfish! And I would just like just freak out. So I've always been into that. And so getting put in touch with Final Straw, I was like, yes, this is 2 things that I'm obsessed with— PR and sustainability. Um, so I started working for them, and I worked in-house for Final Straw for a year, um, and loved it, loved the messaging. And with PR, I think it's super important, obviously, if you're the person that's repping the brand, to be obsessed with the messaging and the brand and everything that you're working for, because you are the person that the press is talking to, and that's such an important Um, piece to it. But yeah, so I started working for them, and then, um, we did a lot of brand partnerships, we did influencer marketing. Um, I kind of did a lot. It was a big— like, PR is a lot of things, and those are two of the things. Um, and then also the media relations. Um, and so while I was doing that, I was talking to these sustainable influencers, I was talking to these other brands, and They came to me and they were— they asked me if I would be available to do their PR as well. And I was really starting to feel that there is a need for this service for more brands. So after a year of working for Final Straw, I started Influential PR. And my— one of my first clients was this company called Last Object. From Denmark.

Love them. Interviewed them.

And love them. They're incredible. They're some of my favorite people and still are still clients today. And they were launching Last Swab, which was a reusable cotton swab. And yeah, they— and it was another kind of Kickstarter that I was a part of. They did really, really well. I think it was Like $1.2 million, um, in crowdfunding.

Yeah, they had a great campaign.

So I— yeah, the campaign was funny. Um, and then, so when I— then it had, you know, at that point I had worked on these 2, um, these kind of viral Kickstarters. And then people started finding me through, um, press releases. They're like, who did the PR for that company? And they'll find me. They find my name on the bottom of the press release. So I started getting more inbound just from that, from the clients that I worked with. And I started working with a company named Hitch, which also was an incredible viral Kickstarter that launched during 2020. And I mean, it's kind of funny, that's when I started my company in 2019, like at the end of 2019, and then 2020, it just like took off, which was crazy because it was the pandemic. But these brands were launching at that time and sales went up, uh, online sales. So, um, it was a really incredible time to, to grow my business. And that's when I brought on— I have 2 team members that have been with me since the beginning, um, who are still with me. And, um, I brought them on at that time because it just started getting really crazy.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's how it's grown. Um, and it's all been word of mouth. All of my clients have been referrals from the clients that I have, and, um, or people that I know just putting me in touch. And it's grown organically that way, I think, because I've stayed in the sustainability space. And it's, you know, it was a question for a while of, you know, I'm getting this, this company coming to me, should I work with them? I feel like I need another client right now. Um, but it didn't feel like the right fit, and I, I'm really happy that I stuck to my guns and just stayed with this, these sustainable brands, because I've become known as the PR person for sustainable brands. So, um, it's been a really fun adventure, and, um, yeah, really excited to keep it, keep it growing.

That's awesome. Yeah, it's, it's great that you exist because I've been in sustainable product development for a long time. And there's not really, not really a lot of super focused like PR or even like advertising agents, anything like that. They're usually much more, they'll be in a vertical. So like they're cosmetic or they're consumer goods or CPG or something like that. But it's not focused like you are in helping sustainable. Which is great.

Yeah.

For sustainable brands, because you've been working with them for a while, is there anything just kind of generically or that you typically find that is unique? Like, is there a uniqueness to how you can actually do PR with sustainable brands or?

Definitely.

What's different? What's that? special difference that makes it, makes it unique?

I feel like these types of brands are founded by people that care a lot and that have a really incredible background in sustainability. So for me, that's really fun for thought leadership. So with these founders, we're able to do ghostwriting and pitching out articles, you know, that these founders are finding, you know, it's something that they can speak to and educate the public on. And I love that. That's one of my favorite pieces. I— there's 4 main, um, kind of pillars to my business. Um, thought leadership is one. Um, media relations is one. Um, I feel like with media relations, the, the media actually like really responds well to sustain— new sustainable brands. They're excited to talk about it. It's something people are more thoughtful about right now. And people want to have like good, healthy, non-toxic products in their home. Um, they want to be thoughtful about what they're purchasing. And so, um, with that, I feel like there's always a really good story behind the brand as well. So pitching media, there's usually a lot of good like teeth that these stories have.

Yeah.

Um, another part, like the third one is affiliate PR, which is including affiliate links. When these are CPG brands, media now really wants affiliate links in their articles because that's how they're making money. So with sustainable brands, because people are really wanting to learn about them and purchase them, we are finding that there are people that are working with these affiliate links, different publications are wanting to use put these brands in their publications and write articles about them, do reviews and things like that. And the way that works is you just set them up on an affiliate platform, you create a unique link, and that goes to that publication. And you can see purchases that come through that. So it's also a really good way to measure the value of PR that wasn't really available before.

Right, yeah.

Um, with traditional media relations, it's a little bit tough to know, like, if you're getting anything. I mean, you are usually getting something out of it. Even if you're not getting sales, you're getting some type of notoriety. Even if you're getting—

It's more brand awareness.

Brand awareness. Yeah. I mean, say you get into Forbes and you can then say, as seen in Forbes too. Like, there's just so much that can be used. Um, you can use them in your newsletters. You can say like, this article came out about us, check it out. Socials, all that kind of stuff. There's just so much that you can do with it.

Yeah. Right.

So, and then of course influencer campaigns as well is like the 4th one. And so for influencers, we've found with creators these days, they do wanna be paid and like, you know, paid well and making like beautiful content because they are artists, right? Like they're creating this content. There are, of course, like different types of campaigns that you can do with affiliates or, you know, giving product to something that's like hyper-focused in this certain area, and they'll be happy to just post with product. There's just so much that you can do with influencers. It's like crazy.

Right.

We have actually a team member who focuses solely on influencers, and she came from a really big influencer agency in New York. So that piece of our business has been super fun to grow.

Are you, are you finding that influencers, 'cause there's, I feel like there's a trend and you can add your thoughts to this, but, but I feel like there's a trend where this like sustainability is almost more of a requirement for product, like consumer. It's not, it's not like 20 years ago when it was like, oh, sustainable. And like you could just sell something based on it being sustainable to this small group of people. Yeah, it feels a lot more like it's an expected thing. Are you, are you seeing that on like the influencer side as well? And like, and you mentioned, you know, publications are much more interested. Do you feel like that's an advantage? Like it's—

Yeah, I mean, I think it really depends on the person.

Okay.

You know, there are so many people that do not care also, and that's horrible. You know, there's people that are doing their Um, you know, product roundups of things that are just, you know, fast fashion, or, you know, the, the influencers that are like, oh, this is— what is it called when they buy, they get like this huge like bag of stuff from Forever 21 and, oh, this is like my Forever 21 haul, and they're like trying it on in front of the camera and it's just like, this is so bad, you know?

Right.

People watch that and people buy those clothes. Um, But I think it is getting more important and popular to the generation, you know, like younger generations are really starting to care. And the people that we work with really care, but it's not everyone. But it is trending that way for sure.

Hey, it's Ian here. So glad you're enjoying this episode of Conscious Design. If you want the full scoop on Conscious Design, what it is, how we do it, how you can do it, Then check out our book. We wrote it so creative entrepreneurs like you can code social and environmental responsibility right into your brand's DNA. You can download the first chapter for free. Link is in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Do you, do you find kind of with that in mind, do you find that you're able to use, like how heavily can you lean on sustainability versus Features, right? Like solving a person's problem. Is that right?

Yeah, that's a really good question. Um, I, I think it's— so I've seen a lot. I've worked with a lot of different brands, and I've spoken to a lot of different brands, and, um, I've seen, you know, there's an idea and it's like, oh, this is like sustainable, it's better than what's out there, but it's you know, it's sustainable, but it's— and it's better for the earth than what's out there, but it's not better than what's out there. So it's like an inferior product and it doesn't do well. So there's like that.

Yeah.

And it also, you know, I think people are open to changing their habits, but not like too much. You know, I think like why, like Last Swab, for example, it was such a hit and it still sells like crazy and we get pressed for them constantly just for Last Swab. And, you know, they have a bunch of other products, but this, their first product does so well because it's, it looks exactly like a cotton swab. It, you just, you know, you just, and you can just wash it with soap and water. You're not changing that habit of like whatever you're doing with a cotton swab every day. But like, um, you know, there are other products that come out that just, you know, they're, they're clunky, they're hard to put together.

They just, Don't—

it's an inferior product to whatever else is on the market. And so it's harder for people to adopt those. So, you know, when I am talking to people that are starting to develop products, 'cause I talk to people all different, you know, during all different times and they may not be ready for PR, but they wanna start the conversation or they're just thinking maybe they're ready, but they're not yet. And for me, I'm like, wait until—

You gotta be ready.

Wait until you have the product ready. There's a lot that needs to go into getting something ready to actually do PR at the right time so you're not wasting time and money. Um, but yeah, I think, um, just some advice that I've given to people that I've spoken to is just like, try and figure out how to make this as easily adoptable as possible. And if you can, better than what's out there.

Yeah.

Because that is actually what's going to make the difference.

Right, actually. And that's, this is great to hear from you on the PR and marketing side, but that's been what I've seen 'cause I've worked with so many startups and I've seen so many okay ideas that were, you know, way more sustainable. It was like, oh great, we've, you figured out how to make it more sustainable, but it's not as convenient or it's not right. It's harder to use. It's uglier. It's, You know, all these things kind of stacking up against it. And I feel like it was, there was a time when you could do that and launch it and kind of just stand on it's sustainable and people were growing. But I think what we've, we've kind of left that behind in a way and we're like, okay, it's still, but does it actually make my life better now? Exactly.

Does it solve a problem? Yeah. And there's just constantly, I mean, there are so many entrepreneurs now. There are so many people creating products. Like the D2C world is just like Flooded with stuff.

Yeah.

And I think, um, you know, like, you just have to be really, really, really good to make it work, to make a product work, to make it so that people are buying it. And then, you know, that again, that's like something really good, so it actually makes a difference. So yeah.

Yeah, I, I try to tell as many people as possible the perfect— like, I could design the perfect sustainably designed product in the world, but if nobody buys it, it's actually the opposite. Not helping because we just wasted a bunch of money and time on it. Yes.

Yeah. And also it's like not worth it either if this product, it's like it's better, but then people buy it and they just never use it. That's wasteful, you know? So, right. Yeah, there's, you know, there, there's a, a client I have They're called Bruvi, and it's a single-serve coffee machine. They have a reusable pod that you can use and put your own coffee in, but then they have pods that they created that have an enzyme in them that become activated in a landfill environment. So once they're thrown into a landfill environment without oxygen and light, it becomes activated and it, the enzyme eats the pod and doesn't leave any microplastics behind. So this company did a lot of, you know, R&D just to figure out, okay, should we make compostable? Should we make compostable pods? What should we do about this? And it's like, you know, the CEO, Mel Elias, who actually, he was the old CEO of The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. So this is like a straight up coffee guy.

Yep.

You know, the coffee also in the Brewvi is amazing. It's so good. It's sustainably sourced. And he has this beautiful house in LA, and he did this experiment where he did composting in his backyard, and he was like, it was just kind of a disaster. And he's like, I just don't see the average American and people really just starting to compost on their own. There aren't a lot of— there are very little cities in the United States that actually have commercial composting facilities where you can—

Right.

So, you know, what actually is the best option here? So they spent years and years developing this pod with this enzyme. And, you know, I think it's not the best solution forever, and they're the first people to say that, but it's the best solution for now. And it's something that's like good.

Yeah.

That is, you know, they're doing their best with what we have. Now, you know, so I really liked that thought process.

And yeah, so yeah, I love, I love that point cuz it's, I run into this with clients sometimes. They're like, oh, it has to be compostable or it has to be this. And I'm like, well, we don't have to, like, yes, that might be the ideal perfect scenario, but we're also like 20 steps away. Or more from there. So it's okay to meet, like, if we just take steps, we're still making progress. So it's okay if we don't make a leap, we can, you know, don't take forever. We shouldn't take 30 years between each step. But like, if we just make little steps ongoing and you've, and you kind of plan for it, right?

Yeah.

Like maybe that coffee company, you're like, oh, for now it's this. And then we're working on, you know, version 2 when the market's ready. It'll do this. And then, but there's big things, like you said, the infrastructure you got to think about. People don't, they're like, oh, it's, you can, you can compost it. Well, yes, you can.

Yeah.

But can you really? Like, yes, it's physics says that it happens. Like we've seen it, but there's a difference between it being accessible.

Totally.

And, and easy and I don't know. I don't know anybody. I, there's, I have, oh, I have some family that has like a tiny little farm and they compost, but they're like on a farm. Like they have, yeah.

Yeah.

That's just part of it there.

Yeah.

And so they've been doing it for generations. Like it's not a, it's not new and they have plenty, like the, the system's down. Like it's not, they don't have to rely on a city system to be able to do that.

Yeah.

So it's good. It, I always love it when I hear about brands that are actually thinking about what can we do today and not, I mean, keep thinking hypothetical, but yeah, it's really hard to market it, especially, you know, from your, to engage with you and have you be able to do something with that. It's gotta be now and not, yeah, 10 years from now.

Yeah.

Do you, do you work with, because you, you said you have, you know, companies that are really early stage. Do you find that it's beneficial? Like, would it be a smart choice to just take, you know, I have an idea, should I go talk to Helen and see, hey, this is the idea before, like, we're maybe like 2 years away even, but here's the idea. And get, get a really good picture of, okay, let's say, let's say everything goes well and I have this product. Can you actually go market it? Can you go, is there, is there a way to buy?

I mean, you could ask my, you know, I don't, it's really hard to know what's gonna work. I feel like I've seen companies come and go and I've worked with companies and, and the companies that I've most, like a lot of the brands I work with, I've been working with from the launch, and we have worked together for years and years and years. And what I've seen with those businesses is typically they're not first-time founders. They've run a business before. They like that. I think that's one of the biggest problems with startups is that they just— people just don't know how to run a business properly. They don't know, you know, when—

Yes, that's true.

You know, like how to, how to properly allot finances, or, um, you know, there's just so much that goes into running a business. Um, and then also, yeah, like, is it a good idea? Does it have legs? Can it, can it be something that people can use easily and can make a really big difference and has a great brand story behind it? Is it something that is, you know, the brand, you know, there's just so much. Is the branding good? The packaging? You know, there's just so much that goes into it. Um, but yeah, I mean, I love talking to people in any stage just to figure out, um, you know, what they're looking at and what they're interested in, in doing. I can definitely help them just say like, okay, I think this has a good story or this doesn't. And I've definitely said to people that have come to me that I just, I don't know, especially if it's like an older business that maybe doesn't really have like They have a little bit of a sustainability angle, but they're reaching a bit. And it's just like, I don't know if there's really much that can be done here with PR. So I think PR is really great for— you have a brand, your brand is launching. PR is amazing for that. We are the sustainable brand launch experts. That is what we really excel in. And then also, if you're doing, you know, certain marketing campaigns that you want PR support with, certain days, I mean, Earth Day obviously is like our biggest day in Earth Month.

Right, right.

And then gift guides, if you're CPG, gift guides are a really big deal. We get a lot of people coming to us in the fall. Um, to do gift guides, but really we start doing gift guide pitching in July. So, um, you know, a lot of these publications set, get their guides ready like far before the holidays. So yeah.

Right. Yeah, that's something people don't think about too, is just how, how early. Because you would think, right? Oh, gift guide is in Christmas, maybe it comes out, everybody decide what good is it. into it in September or October, like, and that, but it's not, not always.

I'm sure there's some. Yeah, there are some for sure. There you can pitch. I mean, we're pitching like up until November, you know, with gift guides. We're pitching just to the last minute to get as much as possible. But yeah, I mean, with PR, I always tell people it's just a time-consuming thing. It takes a long time to get. And also you want to Make sure that when you engage with the brand that you're spending the right amount of time to make sure that you're both on the same page, the messaging is right, and you're creating the brand persona that they want you to, to the media.

Are you— look, this brings me to a question. You met because you mentioned story a lot, and that's right. Good. PR is storytelling.

Yes.

There are, I, and I've run across quite, quite a few companies over the years that they don't have necessarily a great compelling story. It's not like, yeah, there's just not a great story, but it's still a good product. How, how, you know, somebody has examples, somebody has an idea, it's not their field, but it happens to be a good idea. They patented it, people like it, but there's no like, Oh, one day I had this problem. Like, there's no, like, story to it. It's just, oh, I had an idea and it solves this problem. Like, it's very analytical to a fault. So, like, you know.

Well, I think there's— I mean, there's not always a great story. Like, there's not always, like, some, like, aha moment. It's— or it's just like, I had this idea, but the story is the problem it's solving. Like, that's the big story, you know? I think there's so many different angles you can find, and that's why I really like doing the founder stuff too, because a lot of times if the founder has an interesting background, it gives the brand more credibility, and it's another angle, it's another story to tell. And then there's just— when we start with a client, we create a press calendar, and it has all the special days in the year that could be that the brand could have some connection to. So like, it could be like, you know, if it's this, say it's a reusable water bottle, like Hitch that we worked with, it was a reusable water bottle with a coffee. It was like with a reusable coffee cup that screwed on top that like nested in it, which was super cool. So you had 2. you had 2 reusables that could click together so you weren't having to use 2 hands. Um, and like, that would be a good one for like World Oceans Day or keeping, you know, plastic bottles out of the ocean. Like, you're able to have 2 reusables. Um, or, you know, even that or Broovy for like Espresso Day, you know, like just little things like that.

Right, right.

Like, you're like—

There's a day for everything.

There's a day for everything. And this is definitely like, this is Totally made up by every PR company that came before me. Like all these days. That's so funny.

I've gone through those websites. They're like, here, we're gonna list all the days. And it was like, you know, the 2nd of March and it's like 15 things the day of for all these things. Like, okay, I got it.

It's, yeah, it's just to like make up news, but there's so many of them and press loves to write about them. It's another, um, it's another, um, excuse for them to use affiliate links. Um, it's like, um, yeah, so anyways, yeah, doing that. So we create a 6-month— usually all of the, um, uh, campaigns I do are at least 6 months, um, because it does take that amount of time to get a good amount of press for a brand and really like, you know, have a, have a good presence in the media. Um, just because like I said, there is so much pitching, there's so much follow-up. There's also a lot of like sending out samples so that the media can try it, things like that. But yeah, we create a calendar so that we have all of that like planned out and mapped out for that 6-month period, what we're going to be launching or what we're going to be pitching about. And then we also meet with the brand's marketing team to see if they're doing any special promotions or marketing, you know, things. Right.

Things you can, you can pair up with.

Yes, exactly. It's how we can set, like we can support them, how we can support them.

Right. Now, sometimes brands will, will run, start to run out of time, right? And they're gonna try to launch for Christmas, but their product development is behind. I run into that quite a bit. Yeah.

I was with someone like 2 days ago that's in this exact predicament.

It's, you know, it's hard. It's product development's hard, so it always slides things. No. And you've talked about Yeah. You know, having a 6-month runway and stuff like that, is there, are there certain things, you know, because if you take the entire marketing PR umbrella, you know, there's everything from like SEO that takes like a year to, to start to really return. Do you have strategies that you're able to do if someone is like, hey, we're a little bit behind, we can't, we can't provide you photography because It's in pieces up until— like, are there ways you can—

That person's not ready. I mean, I have like a bunch of questions I would ask. So I would say, do you have product to send? Do you have product like that is actually ready? Is, you know, it's not a prototype. You actually have the product that you're going to be selling in Christmas. Um, I mean, unless you wanted to do— for Brewvi, we did like pre-sales around Christmas and then the product was ready in the spring. So you could totally do a pre-sales campaign around Christmas if your product isn't ready. Um, and it was great. It went really, really well, actually. Um, and—

So pre-sales, because some people are anti, they're like, oh, don't even try, like, make sure you have the product. But you're— You're—

but if you have a— but your product needs to be like ready, you know, maybe you're not ready to like To, to be sending it out at Christmas, you need time. But like, you need to have a working— if you're going to be doing that and you're going to be doing pre-sales and it's going to be shipping at a certain date, your product should be ready. You don't want to be like pissing off new customers. It's like, not good.

No, I tell everyone, you probably know, uh, you know, remember the Pebble Watch on Kickstarter? No, it's a great— you should use it. It's It's been used as a case study so many times. It's called the Pebble Watch.

Yeah.

They were, they might even still be the most successful. They raised like $14 or $15 million on Kickstarter and it was like early days of Kickstarter. So it was, it got national news.

Yeah.

Because it was so successful.

Yeah.

Except they weren't actually ready.

Yeah.

And they couldn't handle the orders. And so like 2 years later they were still not delivering. They ended up getting Divvied up, sold off, IP purchased by like, so yeah, one of the other smart— like it, it turned into a, a mess. And there's like people who got a Pebble watch.

Yeah.

That managed to get one, but so many didn't. So it was, it was bad.

I mean, that's the problem with Kickstarters. Like they're ideas that aren't ready yet a lot of times. And the people making these videos maybe are great marketers, maybe they can make a great video, but it doesn't mean that they're actually a good business person, that they can run a business well. You know?

Yes, that happens.

Yeah, yeah. No, I've seen, I've seen a very similar case just like that. Um, and it's, it's hard. And that's why it is really important if you're going to be doing pre-sales or anything like that to actually have— like Last Object, for example, with, uh, Last Swab, they had— they already had everything made. And before they launch anything— and they always launch on Kickstarter and Indiegogo as like a proof of concept to see if it's actually something that you know, people want. Um, and they always have their products ready before even going on Kickstarter.

Right. So they're like really, really, really ready.

Yeah.

And that's— so yeah, so that's PR and all that. You should have product before.

You want to have product, you want to have a website up, um, and you want to have High-res images.

Is there, because sometimes people will say, oh, well, hey, you need to build up a community before you actually launch your products and things like that. Is that, from your perspective, is that a yes, but you should still have your product ready? Or because some people do it way earlier, like, oh, yeah, no, you should definitely be telling the story of how they're developing it.

Yeah. Yeah, from what I've seen, there's a lot of, um, the preliminary, preliminary marketing and email collection before a lot of these campaigns go out. And the more you can do on that, the more you can kind of tease it. This is specifically for like launches and Kickstarter launches. Um, yeah, building up that community is super important so that, I mean, if you're doing especially crowdfunding, um, that really helps with the first day getting a lot of sales. And that's great for PR too, because then we have something to, you know, that's another pitch. Like, you know, we obviously pitch, we're launching on this date, would you like samples? Then we pitch launching in a week, then we pitch that day, launched today. And then we have a follow-up pitch, funded in 5 hours. You know, and then as it goes, it's like, you know, uh, $800,000 in 5 days, you know? So like those, like doing that preliminary work helps PR so much. It fuels PR. Having a good product, having good preliminary marketing. I think the email collection stuff is, is really, really important. Yeah.

Awesome. Yeah. Well, this is, we could talk about this. It's so much, there's so much.

Yes.

To go into about PR. Yeah. But before we, before we wrap up, I wanna just give you opportunity to share if there's anything else, any pointers, tips, things that people should have ready before engaging PR. 'Cause I think that's, you know, you don't wanna be not ready. It's kind of like, yeah, you know, coming to me for product development and saying you have $5, like, can't really, can't really do anything with that.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really important just from what I've seen in the years that I've been working, especially in this field, I think having a working product. ready that, you know, you're not looking for suppliers, you have that all locked down, unless it's like a Kickstarter or something like that. But if you're trying to launch like a typical T2C company or something like that, having your product ready, having a website, having good high-res images is the most important thing.

Awesome. Perfect. Well, for anybody that is ready, or you should talk to, where— what's the best place to find you guys, reach out, connect? Yes. Um, your sustainable brand.

Yeah, you can find me on influentialpr.com, on our website. We're also on Instagram. It's Influential PR is the handle. And then you can email me helen@influentialpr.com. And anyone that's seeing this, I'm happy to give 10% off of our retainer.

Amazing.

Yeah. So if you're seeing—

Fantastic.

Just mention this podcast and yeah, have a great—

Perfect. Well, and we'll have for everyone listening, we'll make sure those are in the show notes. You'll be able to click on those things, get them really easy. And then yeah, if you are a sustainable brand, you should talk to Helen about getting your PR going. So awesome. Well, thank you. I really appreciate you taking some time to share this. I think it's so important, especially for sustainable brands to keep growing, to have the right help. So great to have you share your knowledge.

And thank you for having me, Ian. This is fun.

Amazing. Thank you so much.