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293: Communicate in Soundbites with Nathan Miller
https://youtu.be/wrIFxgnkJ1A
Nathan Miller, Founder and CEO of Miller Ink, is on a mission to help organizations communicate clearly and strategically—especially in moments of high stakes and crisis.
We explore Nathan’s journey from diplomacy and speechwriting at the UN to launching one of California’s top crisis communication firms. He shares the Miller Ink Communications Framework, which anchors every campaign with a clear objective, a targeted audience, and a compelling message. Nathan breaks down how to craft memorable messaging using the 3 Cs (Clear, Concise, Compelling) and the 3 S’s (Stories, Statistics, Soundbites). He also reveals how to build a reputation-driven business, navigate hiring decisions, and future-proof your communications in a rapidly changing media landscape.
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Communicate in Soundbites with Nathan Miller
Good day, dear listeners. It’s Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint and my guest today is Nathan Miller, founder and CEO of Miller Ink. and he’s also a seasoned communication strategist with deep experience in business, government, diplomacy, crisis management and issue advocacy. Nathan, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Steve. It’s great to be here.
Well, it’s good to have you. And I’ve got some questions I’m really curious about that I want to ask you. And starting with my favorite one, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your business?
My personal “Why” really is a couple of things. One, our business makes a huge impact for a lot of people and to feel that impact every day is tremendous and it gives me a lot of satisfaction and pride. The people who work for Miller Ink., the people who work here and launched their careers through this company, our clients, every day you get to be in rooms with people who are solving problems, addressing challenges, navigating different challenges, and helping them get to a better place is incredibly gratifying. You want to be somebody who’s of service in that way. We do a lot of advocacy and mission-driven work as well as an agency.
I’ve done a lot of work on behalf of the Jewish community and the State of Israel, which has also been very meaningful. And for me, the most important personal “Why” is I have three kids and so much of what I do is really for them. And that is really one of my big North Stars in life.
Yeah, well, lots of meaningful stuff in your life. And you left the UN Security Council, where you were a writer, to become a PR entrepreneur. So tell me about this journey.
The journey was crazy. My career began, I got a master’s in public policy here at UCLA. I went to Europe for a little bit. I worked in Brussels with the EU institutions there at a think tank. And then I came back and I worked at a PR firm in LA for a couple of years early in my career. I got a job as the chief speechwriter for Israel’s mission to the UN. And it was a crazy time to be doing that job. I was really young, and it was the outbreak of the Arab Spring. A lot of different things that were happening in the Middle East and in the world. So, fascinating moment. And I did that job for three years. And at that point, my now wife and I were dating, and she was in LA and I was in New York, and we had to figure out a place to be. So I said, you know what, I’m gonna come back. And I think I have a problem with authority is what I learned working in big institutions in different ways.
And I like to be able to set the pace of what I do. And so I say, every entrepreneur has a different cross that they’re trying to not bear. And for me, it was really having control of my own destiny, and that mattered a lot to me. So I was a young guy. I saw communications changing rapidly, really rapidly. When I started at the UN, then the ambassador, Susan Rice, they asked her if she was on Twitter and she said, I don’t do diplomacy by haiku. And that was like a funny thing. But then within a year she was on Twitter and it was a big deal. And so, my first job in PR, I remember, I went into a meeting with a professional sports team and I set up their first Facebook page. Facebook came out my freshman year of college or sophomore year, maybe, but it was something that I sort of, when I was very young was very new and I saw how this was going to completely change the ecosystem of how you do communication.
And I thought there would be an opportunity for us in starting the firm. And I think I was right. I mean, I think that was an insight that was correct. And so, we’ve been able to build a firm that I think is on the leading edge of a lot of the changes in our space. And we’ve grown over time today. We could talk about that whole journey, but fast forward to now, we’re about 20 people. on the West Coast, on the East Coast, 65 plus clients across a number of different industries. And we’re one of the market leaders in a couple of different important verticals.
So that’s impressive. So one of the things that led you to achieve that success is you developed your own communication framework. You just spoke about how communication was changing rapidly. So tell me a little bit about this Miller Ink Communication Framework. What does it look like?
Absolutely. Well, I’m really an analog guy in a digital world. I really believe in the principles of communication. When you go back to Aristotle, there’s really nobody who understood the framework for persuasion. There’s a lot of wisdom that’s been passed down through the ages and that people have. I think too much of the people now who are purely digital, they think in a very tactical way, but they’re not getting back to the big strategic framework of what are we trying to achieve and how does communications do that.
Communications is a means to an end. It's not an end in itself. Just doing good PR because it makes you feel better or whatever is not a goal.
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It always is what are we trying to achieve? Having the experience that I had in diplomacy and in politics, I felt like there’s a lot of skills that I would sort of a shorthand, but they’re analog skills, like really like core building block skills that I think are missing today that we train everybody on our team and those skills, but we also bring a sense of understanding of how the ecosystem has changed and leveraging all the opportunities in a place where the mediated model of communication is no longer as relevant, where everybody is a publisher, where digital is so important, et cetera. We can talk about that. So, but our framework that I teach everybody, and I think this is important for any entrepreneur starting out, Miller Ink 101, every person who comes in and all of our clients, we really talk about this framework.
So, every good strategic communications program has a clear objective, a clearly defined objective that’s measurable, specific. The objective is not, we want to get better PR. The objective is what do we want the PR to achieve? Do we want more clients? Do we want more sales? Do we want to raise more money? We want our issue to be seen by a certain segment of the population. So the first thing is that clearly defined objective. A targeted audience, I have yet to have a client that has unlimited budget to reach the whole world. You always have to think about, and people will say, well, everybody matters, but that’s not the truth.
The art of this business is understanding who really matters.
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How do you do that, by the way?
So, there’s many different ways. Sometimes you do formal research where you’ll do quantitative research and survey or you’ll do focus groups. We do a lot of focus groups. A lot of it is using your imagination. We train our team to before they write something, they have to think about who they’re writing it for. How are they going to internalize the information that they’re writing? And I think this is where a lot of people have lost that ability in some sense. It’s really important. Even when you have research, you have to understand how to apply it. So a lot of it lives in your mind. And this is where AI and things like this are never going to really be as strong in my view. It’s in really learning, it’s a combination of formal research and then having the kind of the sense of things from doing this for a long time and from really like thinking about who is the audience. And then the final thing is a message. And the message aligns your audience in the direction of your objective.
It drives your audience towards whatever your goal is. If your goal is to sell more chocolate, your message gets your customers to buy more chocolate. If your goal is to help people think differently, a certain segment of the population to think differently about an issue, it’s the message that’s driving a certain segment of the population to think differently about an issue. And so how do you make that message really do that? So we have a framework. We call it the three Cs and the three Ss, and there’s different frameworks, but I developed this working with clients, I have had different positions, training in different educational settings, training CEOs, startup founders, and teaching a bit at some different schools. So I wanted to try to boil down the way I think about messaging into something that’s simple and memorable.
So the three Cs, a great message is clear, it’s not full of jargon, the target audience can understand what you’re talking about, they know what you’re saying. It’s concise, especially now in a moment of decreasing attention spans, you need something that’s going to really be able to capture their attention quickly and they’ll be able to understand it. And it’s compelling. The message moves them to action in some way. And the corollary to the three C’s, how do you make a message compelling, are the three S’s. And there’s different tools that we do, but we like to think about stories, statistics, and soundbites. So stories, we’re hardwired as humans since we’ve been cavemen painting on caves and we connect to other human beings and we connect to other human stories.
And there’s something very important about being able to help people not just think about something in the abstract, but see the other, the human element, in it in a specific way. Statistics. Statistics can be used really in an effective way to move our logical sense, but they can also be used ineffectively and generically. So we have a lot of work around how do you use a statistic to your advantage when it comes to messaging. And then soundbites. Boiling down our core ideas into memorable little quips that people will hear. When you read a newspaper article, where you hear a speech, when you watch somebody on TV, at most you’re going to remember one or two things they said. And usually it’s from those little sound bites. So there’s an art to developing soundbites. And we also teach that and we think about that when we’re developing a message for a client. I always tell people the average press release quote is extremely boring and extremely unmemorable and it’s not a soundbite. And many people who come here, especially if they come from other agencies, the first quote they write for a press release, and it’ll say, we’re excited to do X, Y, or Z. They learn very quickly that that’s not our method here.
We're always thinking about how do you make that quote really stand out, live off the page, have a reporter really want to pick it up, or somebody who is going to hear it will remember it and it’ll stand out in the article.
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So how do you do that? Is there a process for this?
There’s a process. There are books. One of the first books when I became a speechwriter at the UN, I really wanted to study it like a science. So I had a book of speeches that sat by my bed every night for three years, and I would read two or three famous speeches every night. William Sapphire wrote a book called Lend Me Your Ears, which is a great book, which has a lot of, like, thousands of speeches, and I’d look at others, and I’d really break it down. So a great speech in some ways is a great soundbite. It feels like you’ve heard it before. It becomes really, like, innate, or it really shocks you when it makes you think differently. There’s a lot of things you can do within the language that makes a soundbite strong. So people like to think, you call them a trisome or a triple. This, this, and this, people’s brains are sort of wired to want to hear a triple.
So that’s one thing. Rhyme is another thing. Creating puns that are funny. Our food is fresh, our customers are spoiled. Paradoxes. Things that are like, again, and sometimes it’s too cheesy or whatever, but you want to think about how do you make something stand out and really be different? And then I also want to think about how do you boil down your core idea into something that’s really at its essence. You think about some great core lines like the New York Times is forever. Their line has been all the news that’s fit to print, which I think captures exactly who the New York Times is and what the brand that they’re trying to sell. There’s a lot of thought that goes into that. And part of our job is to develop those ideas and then connect to the client and build a messaging framework, a messaging architecture that we can use for everything we do. But that takes a lot of work at the front end.
Yeah, they say that it’s the headline that you will spend 50% of your time on, and 50% on the actual message.
100%. When I’m writing an op-ed, I spend most of my time writing that first paragraph. The rest of it is because you need something that’s going to really stand out and be different and it’s hard to do that. Sometimes even something stands out, it’s not quite right for other reasons. There’s a process by which you think about that.
Yeah, I love it. The message has to be clear, concise, compelling, and then you make it compelling with stories, statistics, and soundbites.
Yes.
With the right mix and tailored to the audience.
Yes.
I love it. So you’ve been running this business for what? For 10 years? 12 years?
For 12 and a half years.
12 and a half years.
Yeah.
So, what was the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make during that time?
So I think the hardest decision was starting the business because it was a crazy idea and I had no business doing it at that point in that stage of my career. For me, the hardest decisions are always around hiring. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at it. But in an agency business, our people are our superpower. And we’re only as strong as the team that we bring onto the field every day. For me, the toughest calls are, should we make this investment in this person or not? Or is this the right person for the role? Is this what we need? And when you hire the right person, it’s like rocket fuel. It really helps the business tremendously. We’re a small enough agency, we’re 20, 25 people. And so every person on the team really matters.
And I like this size of a business because of that. I can really have a lot of visibility into and control over what we’re doing and how we’re doing things. So, we made some really key strategic hires over the years and we made some really bad hires. And I reaped the benefits and paid the price respectively. And so for us, I’ve built a much more robust system for hiring now. It’s a longer process. It’s less based on my gut and more based on data and really asking ourselves the hard questions before we pull the trigger. And I have a lot of other people involved. When you’re just making a decision based on I think this person is going to work out, I think you have a lower batting average than when you have a better process.
Now, when you sell PR services, is it about the personality of the individual and the knowledge or is it something else? What makes a PR person attractive to a customer?
It’s a great question. We work in a number of different verticals. I would say it really varies by vertical. So we’re probably the leading crisis communications company in California right now, just by volume and reputation. And a lot of that is built on the brand reputation and in the cases we’ve worked on and the victories we’ve had, people know us. And just for me, years of working with many people in the field, and it’s a relatively specialized field, so it’s heavily relationship dependent. We get some leads that just come in from the internet because of our brand identity and things like that. But a lot of it is, I’d say most of it is warmly relationships based on experiences with me or others who have relationship with us as an agency. We also do a lot of work connected to the Jewish community. And I would say it’s similar. It’s a brand name and reputation. Other verticals are different.
We have a public affairs real estate group. That is, I think, it’s a broader market and it’s more of a national market and people are always looking for, so there’s a lot more shopping around and things like that and people are less specific and there’s more players on the field in some ways. What they’re looking for at the end of the day, I think, is somebody who’s going to be able to solve their problem, who they trust will do that. And I’ve learned that the short-term sale in my business is not always the best approach. I’d much rather find someone who’s the right fit for us to have a long-term relationship. It’s very disruptive to bring on a short-term client who doesn’t work either because they have unrealistic expectations about what’s possible for them because they don’t have sufficient budget to really have somebody on for the long term. So, it’s a joint interview process in some ways.
And I’m turning away a reasonable amount of the business that comes in because I’m trying to calculate, is this going to be a long-term fit? Are we going to be able to deliver for this person? The worst thing is to have a client come in and have it not work out for them and for you. It’s a very specific business that we have, and I think a mistake a lot of PR folks make is sort of taking anything that comes in the door and not thinking about, are we the best agency to actually deliver on this piece of business? Can we actually solve their problem and can we achieve what they want us to achieve?
So you mentioned crisis communication. Is this the point when you can bring in a new client and they have a crisis and they want safe hands or someone who they get the inkling that they will be able to resolve it? And then the follow-up question is, how do you then keep these clients? So when the crisis is passed and hopefully you help them navigate it, how do you add, keep adding value so that you keep them for long haul?
So many crisis clients are just crisis clients. They come in for a couple of months and they go, and that’s a part of the business model. And our pricing and everything else accounts for that. Some crisis clients become long-term clients and that’s happened quite often. And also crisis clients become great referral sources for other folks. I randomly was on an event in Colorado with someone who was a crisis client of ours. And our crisis clients are always confidential basically. I don’t talk about that work with others. This person was there and I was with a big group of business leaders. There’s probably 50 of us there and we’re at this bar and it’s like 8:30 at night. And this person, we did tremendous work on his case and he was very, very happy.
And he said, this guy saved my life and I’m buying a shot for everybody at the bar because I did it in his honor. And he bought a bottle of something and it’s just like a way to illustrate kind of what happens when you’re in my business and I take it really seriously, we will give our all to deliver for our clients and people know that and we’ve built that reputation and that goes a long way and you have a mutual loyalty and respect. And so then, these are people who are prominent people, their friend gets in a similar situation or something else happens. They say, you know what, Miller Ink would be great. And that’s a big part of our business is just doing a good job and being honest with people. I think reputations are about the idea of compounding for me is really important. The seeds I planted 10 years ago are still bearing fruit today, both positive and negative. So if you blow out with somebody or you’re mean to somebody, you do wrong by somebody, that’s going to live with you forever. And similarly, if you do a good job and you’re fair to them and you’re not really greedy,
I think it's really important to have that view. And that's what we've tried to do as a business. I think it's always the better strategy.
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Yeah. Especially in the professional service, reputations are paramount. I agree with you. So as an entrepreneur, what is it that you would advise other entrepreneurs to ask themselves, what is the question? What is the critical question they should be asking themselves all the time?
First of all, I think you have to be very self-critical. I think it’s very important to have people around you who will be your mirror, whether it’s in the business or outside the business, and say, you could have done this or that better. My wife is a great partner for me in that sense. She also has a sister agency, but she’s a very good mirror and sounding board. The fundamental question at the end of the day, and people sometimes, I think, especially the last five years, as I deal with business leaders, it seems kind of obvious, but who is going to pay you money for this good or service, and why are they going to do it, and how are they going to do it over the long term? So many people get caught up in everything else, but that’s the fundamental question. And the same thing is true for PR. How is this advancing you towards a goal, whatever that goal might be? And to have that strategic framework, it seems like really complicated, but it’s pretty simple. And I think that too often people get caught up. We’re emotional creatures. We’re sort of focused on whatever the thing is in front of us. We have a hard time sometimes zooming out and saying, are we moving in the right direction in this way? Tell us to it.
Okay, so final question. You mentioned that you love the size of the firm that you’re running. Do you wanna keep it that size or you still wanna grow it?
We have some exciting plans for growth right now. I don’t wanna be a mega firm. We have some folks on the East Coast and we’re gonna be building out some of those presence. We have plans to do that soon and we’re kind of actively building that. There are some other businesses that we’re looking at right now that are ancillary that I think will support our core businesses, either both on the crisis side and otherwise, where I think related to AI and sort of where the field is going. I think that the one thing about communications is what works today is not going to work tomorrow and you have to be thinking about where it’s going. And so we’re trying to anticipate that. And so I’m making different strategic investments. I continue to do that over the years in our firm’s capabilities, because I think just as what I said about compounding, it’s really true now. You always have to be putting in the work today for tomorrow. And that’s when you really reap the benefits. You’re going to be much better off.
Okay, that makes sense. All right, Nathan, so we’re coming to the end of the recording. If people would like to learn more about your firm Miller Ink and personally want to connect with you, where should they go? What should they do?
Yeah, miller-ink.com. That’s our website. And you can feel free, you can contact us through the site and give us a call and we’ll be happy to be in touch.
All right. So thank you for coming and sharing your wisdom and insights on communication, and crisis communication, and PR in general. And those of you listening, if you enjoyed this conversation, if you picked up some good ideas how to communicate your situation, your stories, make it clear, concise, compelling with stories, statistics, soundbites. Then stay tuned because every week I bring an exciting CEO to the show to share their wisdom with you. So thank you for listening and coming, and thank you for sharing your wisdom, Nathan.
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.
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By Steve Preda
5
3535 ratings
https://youtu.be/wrIFxgnkJ1A
Nathan Miller, Founder and CEO of Miller Ink, is on a mission to help organizations communicate clearly and strategically—especially in moments of high stakes and crisis.
We explore Nathan’s journey from diplomacy and speechwriting at the UN to launching one of California’s top crisis communication firms. He shares the Miller Ink Communications Framework, which anchors every campaign with a clear objective, a targeted audience, and a compelling message. Nathan breaks down how to craft memorable messaging using the 3 Cs (Clear, Concise, Compelling) and the 3 S’s (Stories, Statistics, Soundbites). He also reveals how to build a reputation-driven business, navigate hiring decisions, and future-proof your communications in a rapidly changing media landscape.
—
Communicate in Soundbites with Nathan Miller
Good day, dear listeners. It’s Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint and my guest today is Nathan Miller, founder and CEO of Miller Ink. and he’s also a seasoned communication strategist with deep experience in business, government, diplomacy, crisis management and issue advocacy. Nathan, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Steve. It’s great to be here.
Well, it’s good to have you. And I’ve got some questions I’m really curious about that I want to ask you. And starting with my favorite one, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your business?
My personal “Why” really is a couple of things. One, our business makes a huge impact for a lot of people and to feel that impact every day is tremendous and it gives me a lot of satisfaction and pride. The people who work for Miller Ink., the people who work here and launched their careers through this company, our clients, every day you get to be in rooms with people who are solving problems, addressing challenges, navigating different challenges, and helping them get to a better place is incredibly gratifying. You want to be somebody who’s of service in that way. We do a lot of advocacy and mission-driven work as well as an agency.
I’ve done a lot of work on behalf of the Jewish community and the State of Israel, which has also been very meaningful. And for me, the most important personal “Why” is I have three kids and so much of what I do is really for them. And that is really one of my big North Stars in life.
Yeah, well, lots of meaningful stuff in your life. And you left the UN Security Council, where you were a writer, to become a PR entrepreneur. So tell me about this journey.
The journey was crazy. My career began, I got a master’s in public policy here at UCLA. I went to Europe for a little bit. I worked in Brussels with the EU institutions there at a think tank. And then I came back and I worked at a PR firm in LA for a couple of years early in my career. I got a job as the chief speechwriter for Israel’s mission to the UN. And it was a crazy time to be doing that job. I was really young, and it was the outbreak of the Arab Spring. A lot of different things that were happening in the Middle East and in the world. So, fascinating moment. And I did that job for three years. And at that point, my now wife and I were dating, and she was in LA and I was in New York, and we had to figure out a place to be. So I said, you know what, I’m gonna come back. And I think I have a problem with authority is what I learned working in big institutions in different ways.
And I like to be able to set the pace of what I do. And so I say, every entrepreneur has a different cross that they’re trying to not bear. And for me, it was really having control of my own destiny, and that mattered a lot to me. So I was a young guy. I saw communications changing rapidly, really rapidly. When I started at the UN, then the ambassador, Susan Rice, they asked her if she was on Twitter and she said, I don’t do diplomacy by haiku. And that was like a funny thing. But then within a year she was on Twitter and it was a big deal. And so, my first job in PR, I remember, I went into a meeting with a professional sports team and I set up their first Facebook page. Facebook came out my freshman year of college or sophomore year, maybe, but it was something that I sort of, when I was very young was very new and I saw how this was going to completely change the ecosystem of how you do communication.
And I thought there would be an opportunity for us in starting the firm. And I think I was right. I mean, I think that was an insight that was correct. And so, we’ve been able to build a firm that I think is on the leading edge of a lot of the changes in our space. And we’ve grown over time today. We could talk about that whole journey, but fast forward to now, we’re about 20 people. on the West Coast, on the East Coast, 65 plus clients across a number of different industries. And we’re one of the market leaders in a couple of different important verticals.
So that’s impressive. So one of the things that led you to achieve that success is you developed your own communication framework. You just spoke about how communication was changing rapidly. So tell me a little bit about this Miller Ink Communication Framework. What does it look like?
Absolutely. Well, I’m really an analog guy in a digital world. I really believe in the principles of communication. When you go back to Aristotle, there’s really nobody who understood the framework for persuasion. There’s a lot of wisdom that’s been passed down through the ages and that people have. I think too much of the people now who are purely digital, they think in a very tactical way, but they’re not getting back to the big strategic framework of what are we trying to achieve and how does communications do that.
Communications is a means to an end. It's not an end in itself. Just doing good PR because it makes you feel better or whatever is not a goal.
Share on X
It always is what are we trying to achieve? Having the experience that I had in diplomacy and in politics, I felt like there’s a lot of skills that I would sort of a shorthand, but they’re analog skills, like really like core building block skills that I think are missing today that we train everybody on our team and those skills, but we also bring a sense of understanding of how the ecosystem has changed and leveraging all the opportunities in a place where the mediated model of communication is no longer as relevant, where everybody is a publisher, where digital is so important, et cetera. We can talk about that. So, but our framework that I teach everybody, and I think this is important for any entrepreneur starting out, Miller Ink 101, every person who comes in and all of our clients, we really talk about this framework.
So, every good strategic communications program has a clear objective, a clearly defined objective that’s measurable, specific. The objective is not, we want to get better PR. The objective is what do we want the PR to achieve? Do we want more clients? Do we want more sales? Do we want to raise more money? We want our issue to be seen by a certain segment of the population. So the first thing is that clearly defined objective. A targeted audience, I have yet to have a client that has unlimited budget to reach the whole world. You always have to think about, and people will say, well, everybody matters, but that’s not the truth.
The art of this business is understanding who really matters.
Share on X
How do you do that, by the way?
So, there’s many different ways. Sometimes you do formal research where you’ll do quantitative research and survey or you’ll do focus groups. We do a lot of focus groups. A lot of it is using your imagination. We train our team to before they write something, they have to think about who they’re writing it for. How are they going to internalize the information that they’re writing? And I think this is where a lot of people have lost that ability in some sense. It’s really important. Even when you have research, you have to understand how to apply it. So a lot of it lives in your mind. And this is where AI and things like this are never going to really be as strong in my view. It’s in really learning, it’s a combination of formal research and then having the kind of the sense of things from doing this for a long time and from really like thinking about who is the audience. And then the final thing is a message. And the message aligns your audience in the direction of your objective.
It drives your audience towards whatever your goal is. If your goal is to sell more chocolate, your message gets your customers to buy more chocolate. If your goal is to help people think differently, a certain segment of the population to think differently about an issue, it’s the message that’s driving a certain segment of the population to think differently about an issue. And so how do you make that message really do that? So we have a framework. We call it the three Cs and the three Ss, and there’s different frameworks, but I developed this working with clients, I have had different positions, training in different educational settings, training CEOs, startup founders, and teaching a bit at some different schools. So I wanted to try to boil down the way I think about messaging into something that’s simple and memorable.
So the three Cs, a great message is clear, it’s not full of jargon, the target audience can understand what you’re talking about, they know what you’re saying. It’s concise, especially now in a moment of decreasing attention spans, you need something that’s going to really be able to capture their attention quickly and they’ll be able to understand it. And it’s compelling. The message moves them to action in some way. And the corollary to the three C’s, how do you make a message compelling, are the three S’s. And there’s different tools that we do, but we like to think about stories, statistics, and soundbites. So stories, we’re hardwired as humans since we’ve been cavemen painting on caves and we connect to other human beings and we connect to other human stories.
And there’s something very important about being able to help people not just think about something in the abstract, but see the other, the human element, in it in a specific way. Statistics. Statistics can be used really in an effective way to move our logical sense, but they can also be used ineffectively and generically. So we have a lot of work around how do you use a statistic to your advantage when it comes to messaging. And then soundbites. Boiling down our core ideas into memorable little quips that people will hear. When you read a newspaper article, where you hear a speech, when you watch somebody on TV, at most you’re going to remember one or two things they said. And usually it’s from those little sound bites. So there’s an art to developing soundbites. And we also teach that and we think about that when we’re developing a message for a client. I always tell people the average press release quote is extremely boring and extremely unmemorable and it’s not a soundbite. And many people who come here, especially if they come from other agencies, the first quote they write for a press release, and it’ll say, we’re excited to do X, Y, or Z. They learn very quickly that that’s not our method here.
We're always thinking about how do you make that quote really stand out, live off the page, have a reporter really want to pick it up, or somebody who is going to hear it will remember it and it’ll stand out in the article.
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So how do you do that? Is there a process for this?
There’s a process. There are books. One of the first books when I became a speechwriter at the UN, I really wanted to study it like a science. So I had a book of speeches that sat by my bed every night for three years, and I would read two or three famous speeches every night. William Sapphire wrote a book called Lend Me Your Ears, which is a great book, which has a lot of, like, thousands of speeches, and I’d look at others, and I’d really break it down. So a great speech in some ways is a great soundbite. It feels like you’ve heard it before. It becomes really, like, innate, or it really shocks you when it makes you think differently. There’s a lot of things you can do within the language that makes a soundbite strong. So people like to think, you call them a trisome or a triple. This, this, and this, people’s brains are sort of wired to want to hear a triple.
So that’s one thing. Rhyme is another thing. Creating puns that are funny. Our food is fresh, our customers are spoiled. Paradoxes. Things that are like, again, and sometimes it’s too cheesy or whatever, but you want to think about how do you make something stand out and really be different? And then I also want to think about how do you boil down your core idea into something that’s really at its essence. You think about some great core lines like the New York Times is forever. Their line has been all the news that’s fit to print, which I think captures exactly who the New York Times is and what the brand that they’re trying to sell. There’s a lot of thought that goes into that. And part of our job is to develop those ideas and then connect to the client and build a messaging framework, a messaging architecture that we can use for everything we do. But that takes a lot of work at the front end.
Yeah, they say that it’s the headline that you will spend 50% of your time on, and 50% on the actual message.
100%. When I’m writing an op-ed, I spend most of my time writing that first paragraph. The rest of it is because you need something that’s going to really stand out and be different and it’s hard to do that. Sometimes even something stands out, it’s not quite right for other reasons. There’s a process by which you think about that.
Yeah, I love it. The message has to be clear, concise, compelling, and then you make it compelling with stories, statistics, and soundbites.
Yes.
With the right mix and tailored to the audience.
Yes.
I love it. So you’ve been running this business for what? For 10 years? 12 years?
For 12 and a half years.
12 and a half years.
Yeah.
So, what was the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make during that time?
So I think the hardest decision was starting the business because it was a crazy idea and I had no business doing it at that point in that stage of my career. For me, the hardest decisions are always around hiring. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at it. But in an agency business, our people are our superpower. And we’re only as strong as the team that we bring onto the field every day. For me, the toughest calls are, should we make this investment in this person or not? Or is this the right person for the role? Is this what we need? And when you hire the right person, it’s like rocket fuel. It really helps the business tremendously. We’re a small enough agency, we’re 20, 25 people. And so every person on the team really matters.
And I like this size of a business because of that. I can really have a lot of visibility into and control over what we’re doing and how we’re doing things. So, we made some really key strategic hires over the years and we made some really bad hires. And I reaped the benefits and paid the price respectively. And so for us, I’ve built a much more robust system for hiring now. It’s a longer process. It’s less based on my gut and more based on data and really asking ourselves the hard questions before we pull the trigger. And I have a lot of other people involved. When you’re just making a decision based on I think this person is going to work out, I think you have a lower batting average than when you have a better process.
Now, when you sell PR services, is it about the personality of the individual and the knowledge or is it something else? What makes a PR person attractive to a customer?
It’s a great question. We work in a number of different verticals. I would say it really varies by vertical. So we’re probably the leading crisis communications company in California right now, just by volume and reputation. And a lot of that is built on the brand reputation and in the cases we’ve worked on and the victories we’ve had, people know us. And just for me, years of working with many people in the field, and it’s a relatively specialized field, so it’s heavily relationship dependent. We get some leads that just come in from the internet because of our brand identity and things like that. But a lot of it is, I’d say most of it is warmly relationships based on experiences with me or others who have relationship with us as an agency. We also do a lot of work connected to the Jewish community. And I would say it’s similar. It’s a brand name and reputation. Other verticals are different.
We have a public affairs real estate group. That is, I think, it’s a broader market and it’s more of a national market and people are always looking for, so there’s a lot more shopping around and things like that and people are less specific and there’s more players on the field in some ways. What they’re looking for at the end of the day, I think, is somebody who’s going to be able to solve their problem, who they trust will do that. And I’ve learned that the short-term sale in my business is not always the best approach. I’d much rather find someone who’s the right fit for us to have a long-term relationship. It’s very disruptive to bring on a short-term client who doesn’t work either because they have unrealistic expectations about what’s possible for them because they don’t have sufficient budget to really have somebody on for the long term. So, it’s a joint interview process in some ways.
And I’m turning away a reasonable amount of the business that comes in because I’m trying to calculate, is this going to be a long-term fit? Are we going to be able to deliver for this person? The worst thing is to have a client come in and have it not work out for them and for you. It’s a very specific business that we have, and I think a mistake a lot of PR folks make is sort of taking anything that comes in the door and not thinking about, are we the best agency to actually deliver on this piece of business? Can we actually solve their problem and can we achieve what they want us to achieve?
So you mentioned crisis communication. Is this the point when you can bring in a new client and they have a crisis and they want safe hands or someone who they get the inkling that they will be able to resolve it? And then the follow-up question is, how do you then keep these clients? So when the crisis is passed and hopefully you help them navigate it, how do you add, keep adding value so that you keep them for long haul?
So many crisis clients are just crisis clients. They come in for a couple of months and they go, and that’s a part of the business model. And our pricing and everything else accounts for that. Some crisis clients become long-term clients and that’s happened quite often. And also crisis clients become great referral sources for other folks. I randomly was on an event in Colorado with someone who was a crisis client of ours. And our crisis clients are always confidential basically. I don’t talk about that work with others. This person was there and I was with a big group of business leaders. There’s probably 50 of us there and we’re at this bar and it’s like 8:30 at night. And this person, we did tremendous work on his case and he was very, very happy.
And he said, this guy saved my life and I’m buying a shot for everybody at the bar because I did it in his honor. And he bought a bottle of something and it’s just like a way to illustrate kind of what happens when you’re in my business and I take it really seriously, we will give our all to deliver for our clients and people know that and we’ve built that reputation and that goes a long way and you have a mutual loyalty and respect. And so then, these are people who are prominent people, their friend gets in a similar situation or something else happens. They say, you know what, Miller Ink would be great. And that’s a big part of our business is just doing a good job and being honest with people. I think reputations are about the idea of compounding for me is really important. The seeds I planted 10 years ago are still bearing fruit today, both positive and negative. So if you blow out with somebody or you’re mean to somebody, you do wrong by somebody, that’s going to live with you forever. And similarly, if you do a good job and you’re fair to them and you’re not really greedy,
I think it's really important to have that view. And that's what we've tried to do as a business. I think it's always the better strategy.
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Yeah. Especially in the professional service, reputations are paramount. I agree with you. So as an entrepreneur, what is it that you would advise other entrepreneurs to ask themselves, what is the question? What is the critical question they should be asking themselves all the time?
First of all, I think you have to be very self-critical. I think it’s very important to have people around you who will be your mirror, whether it’s in the business or outside the business, and say, you could have done this or that better. My wife is a great partner for me in that sense. She also has a sister agency, but she’s a very good mirror and sounding board. The fundamental question at the end of the day, and people sometimes, I think, especially the last five years, as I deal with business leaders, it seems kind of obvious, but who is going to pay you money for this good or service, and why are they going to do it, and how are they going to do it over the long term? So many people get caught up in everything else, but that’s the fundamental question. And the same thing is true for PR. How is this advancing you towards a goal, whatever that goal might be? And to have that strategic framework, it seems like really complicated, but it’s pretty simple. And I think that too often people get caught up. We’re emotional creatures. We’re sort of focused on whatever the thing is in front of us. We have a hard time sometimes zooming out and saying, are we moving in the right direction in this way? Tell us to it.
Okay, so final question. You mentioned that you love the size of the firm that you’re running. Do you wanna keep it that size or you still wanna grow it?
We have some exciting plans for growth right now. I don’t wanna be a mega firm. We have some folks on the East Coast and we’re gonna be building out some of those presence. We have plans to do that soon and we’re kind of actively building that. There are some other businesses that we’re looking at right now that are ancillary that I think will support our core businesses, either both on the crisis side and otherwise, where I think related to AI and sort of where the field is going. I think that the one thing about communications is what works today is not going to work tomorrow and you have to be thinking about where it’s going. And so we’re trying to anticipate that. And so I’m making different strategic investments. I continue to do that over the years in our firm’s capabilities, because I think just as what I said about compounding, it’s really true now. You always have to be putting in the work today for tomorrow. And that’s when you really reap the benefits. You’re going to be much better off.
Okay, that makes sense. All right, Nathan, so we’re coming to the end of the recording. If people would like to learn more about your firm Miller Ink and personally want to connect with you, where should they go? What should they do?
Yeah, miller-ink.com. That’s our website. And you can feel free, you can contact us through the site and give us a call and we’ll be happy to be in touch.
All right. So thank you for coming and sharing your wisdom and insights on communication, and crisis communication, and PR in general. And those of you listening, if you enjoyed this conversation, if you picked up some good ideas how to communicate your situation, your stories, make it clear, concise, compelling with stories, statistics, soundbites. Then stay tuned because every week I bring an exciting CEO to the show to share their wisdom with you. So thank you for listening and coming, and thank you for sharing your wisdom, Nathan.
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.
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