She Did It Her Way

How do you break into a career field that barely exists? What resources do you search for? Do you know where to search? Who to contact for guidance?

Crosby Noricks has access to those answers! Crosby is the founder of PR Couture, which is the PR sourcebook for fashion and lifestyle communicators. With her business, she aims to support individuals, brands, and agencies with strategy building, job leads and finding business partners and collaborators. They also created the Bespoke Communications Awards, which focuses on recognizing overlooked, high performing players in the PR industry, such as the 2017 winners Rue La La and J Public Relations.

Always having a passion and love for the fashion industry, she couldn’t have been more excited to find that she could mix her two loves of PR and fashion into a profitable career. Though when she began networking in the PR fashion industry, she found it hard to connect with the right people and find sources to learn from. So she took to the fashion blogging world with PR Couture and used her platform to shed light on the decisions being made, and the communication strategies being developed by the behind-the-scenes PR reps.

Launching in 2006, she saw that most PR agencies only had an online Splash page with their phone numbers on them, and relied heavily on selling themselves through a cold call. Feeling like she was too introverted and nervous to let a phone call seal the deal, she networked and built her audience by hunting through LinkedIn and Google for PR reps in fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle. Via email she introduced her blog and asked them for some tips and tricks about navigating the industry, and what their work looked like in the day-to-day. She then used that material and advice for PR Couture’s posts.

While running her blog, she still held a full-time position at a digital marketing agency, where she managed the social media department.  She used that role to further promote PR Couture by using conferences for the agency as a networking opportunity to gain knowledge on different social and digital marketing techniques; as well as community building centering through branding.

With all the opportunities and intel she accumulated through building these relationships, she was able to self-publish a book in 2012 and began to career coach young entry-level talent on how to break into fashion PR. With these other platforms, she continues to help them set career goals, and connects them with PR professionals that she feels they’d clique with, and provide the best assistance to.

Since she has added a job board and an agency directory, that has provided several strong internships and full-time positions at companies across the industry such as Greenlee Swim and Zoi Agency. This has kept them at the top of the search engine results for PR jobs in fashion, entertainment, and lifestyle; which has led to increased traffic and trust from visitors. Crosby has also launched an affordable entry-level course, called Prism, a 3-month online program that teaches personal branding, PR skills, and offers more guidance in career planning.

Hear more about how Crosby continues to expand PR Couture brand, like with their new reality PR web series and helps young PR reps find their place in fashion!!

In this episode, you will…

Learn how to support newcomers in your field with your brand and company

Find ways to build a network in your field

See if your business’s brand will flourish with or without you as the face of it

Understand the power of email acquisition, segmentation, and personal and professional support

Know if your brand has one or multiple target audiences

Figure out how to positively dismantle stigmas about your career with business and brand

INSIGHTS

“I had a lot of questions because when you learn about public relations in college it’s [a] very academic perspective…if you’re a girl sitting there with these big, big dreams of fashion, lifestyle, entertainment, you’re not getting a lot of useful information. I was just so curious. I wanted to know what the work actually looked like in the day-to-day, and so that’s really where the blog started.” -Crosby Noricks

“There was no clear-cut path…the success that had happened was very masculine in approach…I started [PR Couture] because I wanted to share information, and I figured if there were people out there seeking this information like I was, I would take the lead…I will be the person to try to provide these answers.” -Crosby Noricks

“There’s still this lingering perception that because fashion is considered to be a little bit superficial, that those who work in the industry are also superficial…[and] without depth, and that’s been something that I’ve really tried to challenge by featuring the stories, and insights, and boosting the credibility of many of the women that I know who work in the field…and giving them space in the site to showcase their thought leadership.” -Crosby Noricks

RESOURCES

PR Couture Website

Crosby Noricks Profile

PR Couture Facebook

PR Couture Instagram

PR Couture Twitter

PR Couture LinkedIn

The Living Room Strategy by Tara Gentile

How do you plan to take control of an industry with your business? What would building a foundation for that scale of a business look like?

How has your business bettered your lifestyle? Improved your mental and physical health? Or motivated you to put yourself, and your well-being first?

How has your business bettered your lifestyle? Improved your mental and physical health? Or motivated you to put yourself, and your well-being first?

For Lauren Benbassat a health scare prompted her and her husband to create Mele, which offers all-natural meal replacement smoothies loaded with ingredients like real fruits, nuts, vegetables, and whey protein. These ingredients are freeze-dried and crushed into a powder, and when you add water, you have a filling smoothie with all the benefits of a perfectly balanced nutritional meal.

Her inspiration for Mele came about when she moved to New York from Florida to pursue a career in marketing. With nothing but her bags and determination, she grinded her way up the corporate ladder, and while success became the pay off, her health declined. After her early morning workouts, she would run head first into work, with only a coffee and office snacks to nourish her for the day. She said she became constantly exhausted because she never stopped to properly refuel her body with the nutrients she needed to sustain her active lifestyle. She noticed her husband, who was a corporate attorney, experiencing the same fatigue as he tried to cram a “healthy” lifestyle into his long and unpredictable work schedule, too.

She started to feel her body changing and began gaining weight in her stomach and hips. She knew it was probably due to her poor diet and went to the doctor to get some blood work done. When she was told her cholesterol and triglyceride levels were through the roof, it gave her the jolt she needed to finally take action in correcting her diet. She started researching the ingredients inside her food, and found that a lot of products and ingredients were synthetic, didn’t meet any of the macro and micro nutrients that our bodies needed, and the foods that did weren’t flavorful. Committed to the goal of improving her health, she and her husband decided to take it upon themselves to create healthy meals that fit into their hectic world, and started to build Mele.

Initially building their company for themselves, they were extremely dedicated on making a transparent brand with high quality ingredients. This mindfulness can be seen in the smallest of ingredients like their decision to include the powerful and natural brain food, sunflower lecithin. Most food products contain soy lecithin because it's cheaper. However, Lauren didn’t want to spend a dime on it because it is bad for our thyroids, which was a health issue for her mother. Another careful measure they took was making sure the protein used was grass-fed, hormone-free, and an isolate protein. The benefits of using isolate protein is that it's casein-free, so it doesn’t cause indigestion and irritate people who are lactose intolerance.

They were also particular about sourcing, and created all of their recipes from scratch because they wanted their meals to have their personal touch. They contacted different produce manufacturers, and played with fresh ingredients to create balanced macro-nutritional meals that had the perfect carb-fat-protein ratio. This was a process that her husband took the reins of, while she focused on correcting the taste like suggesting peanut butter to add smoothness, or pineapple to cover up earthy flavors created by wheat and barley grass.

Lauren also used her expertise in marketing and design to create the logo, website, and packaging, while also handling the company’s social media presence. As Lauren took charge of the creative, her husband handled Mele’s finances, inventory, as well as the liability and insurance aspects of the company due to his job as a corporate lawyer and his CPA in accounting.

To see if their side passion had legs, they sent out anonymous samples and surveys to their family and friends as a form a market research. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and they gained the confidence to release their product on the mass market. After taking some of their savings and investing in a small product run, they found that they public loved their brand, too, and they quickly sold out. Since then, they have continued to grow as a business, and expanded into a company whose wholesome brand and packaging have attracted the likes of Anthropologie and Amazon!

Though Mele has turned into a success and Lauren’s new full time job, it was painful for her to transition from corporate employee to entrepreneur because she truly loved her job. Mele wasn’t intended to become anything more than a hobby or side hustle, so the level of responsibility it began to demand was unexpected. Even though she was honest with her job about Mele’s conception from the beginning, she saw that they were sadden by her departure. Her coworkers became her family, so to say goodbye to them was emotional.

What got her through that tough transition was remembering the chance her father took when he started his own business, too. Their family had to make several sacrifices when he left his corporate job, but as an adult she became inspired by his passion and belief in his dreams. With him and her husband as her support system, she knew she had to take that leap, and see what road her brand would lead her down.

Her first day as an entrepreneur was overwhelming and daunting as the reality of her decision kicked in, but she picked up the phone, started asking questions, and figuring it all out one project at a time.

Learn more about how Mele changed Lauren’s health and gave her confidence in her abilities to do something scary and succeed!

In this episode you will…

Learn how to break up the steps involved in starting a business

Know how to leave a corporate job that you love to grow your company

Learn how to launch and run a business with your significant other

See how to add your own personal touch to your product

Learn how to sell your brand to big companies and manufacturers with your story

Find a way to produce a professional looking brand and product with a small budget

INSIGHTS

“You can’t compare yourself to brands that are already there, and you can’t look at this huge, massive picture of where you want to be. It’s good to have goals, but you still have to take one step at a time…” – Lauren Benbassat

“Through the process my passions were pivoting…of course I can…keep this job that I know is there and I enjoy parts of it…but I think in the back of my mind, I would of always wondered what if my company could of gone somewhere…I’ll never know if I don’t try.” –Lauren Benbassat

“I’m so much more capable than I realized. I’ve struggled with imposter syndrome where I think I don’t make qualifications, and I’m not good enough…but in launching a business it was just such a confidence boost that I think I really needed to prove to myself that I was able and I could figure anything out.” –Lauren Benbassat

“Tell your story. I think a lot of our initial partners have just been really drawn to the story of the brand, and the concept, and it being something a little bit more innovative and new.” -Lauren Benbassat

RESOURCES

Mele Shake Website

Mele Shake Facebook

Mele Shakes Instagram

Lauren Benbassat LinkedIn

Lauren Benbassat Instagram

The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss

Staying Healthy with the Seasons by Elson Haas

Women Code by Alisa Vitti

A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson

How I Built This Podcast with Guy Raz

FounderMade

Shopify

OKReal

If you’re starting a business with a partner, how do you find where you’ll both thrive and stay productive? How will you be able to navigate your personalities?

If you’re starting a business with a partner, how do you find where you’ll both thrive and stay productive? How will you be able to navigate your personalities?

We get to hear all about this with Jenni Brown, who is the co-founder of Prim’d Marketing, along with Sophie Davis. Originally, Jenni did marketing for mid-size businesses in her early 20's, and ended up working for brands such as Samsung, Nabisco, and Pepsi. She was in love with the field of marketing and loved that she got to tap into her creative of side of writing, designing, and working on a team. However, she wasn’t in love with the practice of working so hard to make these huge brands money, and she said her work didn’t feel meaningful. She eventually left her job and decided to get her MFA in writing in order to transfer her creative skills to an artistic forum. She also got a side job handling the marketing sector at a boutique PR firm, which is where she met Sophie, who was in charge of cross promotion and strategy.

The two found their groove with Jenni’s ability to come up with a brilliant marketing plan, and Sophie’s skill in taking that plan and finding the perfect collaborators, like bloggers and brands, to grow that strategy into a profitable opportunity. Unfortunately, the ladies found themselves without a job just before Christmas in 2013 due to the firm losing some important clients. During the following months, the duo ended up unintentionally freelancing together by recommending each other when hired onto projects. Soon they finally ended up deciding to go into business with each other, and Prim’d Marketing was born.

They began by offering every service under the sun, with Sophie doing jobs like writing newsletters to managing social media accounts, and Jenni designing logos and making websites. Their first year allowed them to see what they did and didn’t like, and to build a monetary foundation. They soon whittled their services down to a Brand Plan, which was a plan that helped clients figure out what was unique about their brand and services, who their target audience was, and how to appeal to them in an authentic way. Initially the plan was free since their client’s needs tended to change quickly, and to charge for the plan proved to be wasteful for the client and frustrating for Prim’d. Now the Brand Plan has become the keystone to their business and forces clients to think through their ideas thoroughly, stay committed to them, and increase productivity by showing them that their time is valuable.

As they built their business, they also had trouble with role overlap which led to a lot of frustration, and inefficiency. They had to learn how to distinguish their roles in order to effectively hone in on each other’s purposes and strengths to lead Prim’d in the right direction. Sophie began to take the lead as the business developer and tended to be the one who handled potential clients. Jenni stepped in as the CFO, and handled the systems of the company because she’s more left brained.

Jenni found that her pitfall was that she threw to much of herself into Prim’d because she was so determined to get Prim’d off the ground. Her mind became so consumed with her business that she would be listening to her partner speak, but thinking about her clients. By the end of 2015, she felt fatigued by constantly having her brain occupied by Prim’d, and she saw how it was negatively affecting her business and relationships. They both had to learn how make time for the things that gave their life and brain rest and enjoyment outside of work, like shutting down for a month and traveling to Mexico and Africa!

Here more about how Prim’d Marketing came to be in today’s episode!

In this episode you will…

Learn how to distinguish your role in your business when you have a co-founder

Find out how to work with your co-founder by picking up on their habits and behaviors

Figure out the best way to tweak your services to fit your client’s behavior and needs

Begin to find the courage to charge for your time and services to show that your effort is valuable

Start to balance your hustle flow with play time

Know how to stay organized as a business in order to stay productive

INSIGHTS

“We started freelancing…and we found that we kept offering our skillsets together…[Sophie]’s sort of the other half of what I do…we decided to umbrella our skillsets to offer our clients the best of that creative, strategic, whimsical, fun so they could have the whole breadth of what they’re looking for.” –Jenni Brown

“I think for people that are really just getting out there, there’s nothing wrong with putting as many irons in the fire as you can. And particularly if you’re just trying to get paid, there’s nothing wrong with doing all the things that are within your capacity to do, just to try it on and see what fits and what feels good.” –Jenni Brown

“If you’re a driven ambitious person, when you have goals that you haven’t met yet it can be hard to say ‘That’s enough.’ Even though I may not be making the amount of money I want to be making…I don’t have the audience I wish that I had…I’m not putting out the offerings I had imagined…being able say that enough and I’m just going to shut it down for today…[for] whatever your alternative life is outside of your business…learn how to figure out balance in your life.” –Jenni Brown

RESOURCES

Prim'd Marketing Website

Prim'd Marketing Facebook

Prim'd Marketing Instagram

Prim'd Marketing Twitter

Jenni Brown LinkedIn

Basecamp

Contactually

Quickbooks

You Need a Budget

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

Are you feeling overwhelmed by work or personal life? Do you look at your life and wish that it consisted of more? Do you know where to begin to find out what that could be?

Are you feeling overwhelmed by work or personal life? Do you look at your life and wish that it consisted of more? Do you know where to begin to find out what that could be?

If so look no further than Arielle Loren, who owns a marketing agency that focuses on advancing female entrepreneurs in their careers and in their life, as well as growing their businesses through online campaigns and product launches. Right out of NYU she began working for marketing agencies and start-ups, but felt really uncomfortable being boxed into a space, and operating by a locked in schedule. She felt like there had to be more to this adult thing, and wanted to find something engaging and meaningful in her personal and work life.

Upon hearing that her role and duties at her job would change, she decided to cut the ties with her agency, and shake up her life. To her anything would be better than continuing down the path her life was headed and she needed to take a risk. Having always felt a spiritual calling to Brazil, she started prepping her life to actually move there. However, she forgot a few necessities: a plane ticket and the funds. But headstrong in her gut feeling, and armed with her security deposit and final paycheck, she made the move.

While living in Bahia, located in the central region of Brazil, she was able to separate her energy from the anxiety of time, and learned a lesson in humility due to drastic changes in her lifestyle. She began to reexamine what truly made her happy in life, how she could obtain them, and implement them into her daily functions. One way she did so was by expanding her hobbies into possible careers, and because she moonlighted as an online sex writer, she began an erotic magazine called Corset.

Running the magazine caused her to feel in tune with her sensuality, and basking in the sunshine of Bahia improved her mental and physical health. More importantly, she had a very high degree of self-awareness and was firmly in control and confident in where she wanted to be in life to thrive. 

By the time she left Brazil and returned to New York City, she had a newfound appreciation and respect for marketing, but wanted to return to the field in her own way. After a brief move to the Dominican Republic a few months, she took her marketing skills to Miami. It was there where she finally found the perfect mix of the hustle and bustle of metropolitan life, and the calm and Zen of beach and sunshine, with a prevalent Latin culture. There her energy was balanced and she was able to live the life that she had been searching for and build her own unique marketing business.

One thing she said she coaches her clients on is finding what their energy consists of and locating where it is they are the happiest, because the energy they approach their business with is the key to fulfillment in their career. Once her clients are in a career that their energy can flourish in, she gets them to start considering long term businesses goals through her Driven Workshop. The workshop is for female executives and CEOs who are looking to develop business strategies through self-discovery.

She said that there are three parts to women that need to be examined: ourselves, our sex lives, and our spirit. In order to master ourselves, we have to master our thoughts. This is achieved through observing our thoughts to know if we are positive or negative thinkers, and how they make us feel. By becoming aware of how our thoughts influence our feelings, she said we can then see how they affect our behaviors.

To tap into their sex lives, she creates a safe space for women to talk about their experiences with pleasure and energies like orgasms. She said she aims to help women discover their sensuality and heighten their senses in general, and their relationships with their bodies. She feels that the strengthening of that relationship is essential in the release and flow of creative energy, and if it that connection isn’t achieved for women through sex, it could be by simply doing and finding more things that bring us pleasure. She then asks when to observe how that practice influences their performance at work. She said when she does small things like taking the time massage lotion on her skin or take baths instead of showers, she arrives to work more alert, intuitive, and with a relaxed energy.

When it comes to approaching the spirit, she wants her clients to find a connection with something greater than themselves; whether that be people, the universe, or another energy. She used kundalini yoga, which is a positive and spiritual form of yoga, for 90 days and did asana early in the morning. From 4 a.m. to 6:30 a.m., she chants, meditates, and does kriya poses that involves breathing exercises and posture poses. She doesn’t do it every day anymore, but the practice connects her to higher energy, and saw how it changed her life and attitude for the better. She is able to let a lot of negative energy go because of the balance and peace that kundalini helped her obtain, and because of that she has gained clarity, and positivity in her thoughts and perspective, and wants the same for others.

Come and hear more about the other ways Arielle helps her clients work on their energies in order to better their outlook on their lives!

In this episode you will…

Be able to find the perfect place for your energy

Learn how to reinvent an industry to fit you

Know how to channel positive energy into your business development

Begin to observe your thoughts in order to master to yourself

See how experiencing high amounts of pleasure can improve your performance in business

Find ways to connect to something greater than themselves

INSIGHTS

“My job balances between being this hard core business strategist whose very numbers oriented, and really helps a lot of women entrepreneurs grow financially in their businesses, but at the same time I also become like the therapist because these women, these CEOs, they are also human and so human things come up in the process of business development. And so for me, just the intimate role that I take for my clients, I feel like it is part of my role and part of my calling to really be able to show up for women in an authentic, powerful, and beautiful way.” –Arielle Loren

“I look at Driven very much so as an experiment, because I never wanted to position myself as this guru or coach that has all these answers. I think for everyone it’s going to look different…what’s it going to look like to observe your thoughts? What happens when you actually make the intention to speak positively or to surround yourself in an environment that feeds that self, so that you feel that a better vibration day to day?” –Arielle Loren

“There are so many women who are unfortunately walking around with these clogged up portals of energy that are waiting to be released…and sexual energy at its core is creative energy. And so what I like to do is to encourage the women that I’m working with to observe how you function in your business when your experiencing more pleasure, whether that’s through sex…or just see what happens when [you] pay more attention to [your] body, or infuse more pleasurable things into [your] body.” –Arielle Loren

“I think it’s important to realize that it’s not just you in this business, and this energy of producing things, and creating things to serve the world. There’s definitely something much greater than all of us that influences how all of this plays out…and comes together. And so for me, when I talk about connecting to spirit, I like to give women different tools to be able to do that.” –Arielle Loren

RESOURCES

Arielle Loren Website

Arielle Loren LinkedIn

Arielle Loren Facebook

Arielle Loren Instagram

Arielle Loren Twitter

Paulo Coelho Books

Hi Friends! This is the last episode in the 6 part series. The 10 things I’m about to share have really helped me in my business from a growth perspective whether it was my mindset, revenue and adding team members.

Hi Friends! This is the last episode in the 6 part series. The 10 things I’m about to share have really helped me in my business from a growth perspective whether it was my mindset, revenue and adding team members.

1. Track Your Time

2. Create a Resource Library

3. State Your Revenue Sources

4. Ask These 3 Questions in Your Business

5. Set Goals

6. Set Up An Ideal Week for Yourself

7. Protect Your Calendar and Goals

8. Take Advantage of Free Content

9. Seek Mentorship

10. Level Up

Tune into the podcast to hear exactly how I did each one of these so you can too! :) Happy Thursday!