Founder's Insights: Navigating Launch, Growth, and a Successful Exit

Welcome to the first episode of Revenue Remix! Formerly known as C-Suite Sidekick, this podcast has a new name and an evolved mission: helping CEOs and senior leaders transform their revenue strategies through actionable insights and inspiring stories.

In this inaugural episode, Summer Poletti sits down with Judy Brower, a seasoned entrepreneur who bootstrapped her way to success, grew her business into a national PR firm, and orchestrated a seamless exit strategy. Judy shares her journey, from taking bold risks to secure her first clients, to building a culture of excellence, and finally transitioning her company to new leadership.

Whether you’re starting out, scaling, or preparing for your next chapter, Judy’s story is full of practical wisdom and relatable moments. Tune in for valuable lessons on entrepreneurship, client relationships, and why planning ahead for growth and exit strategies is the ultimate key to long-term success.

Show notes:

• Connect with Summer on LinkedIn
• Visit Rise of Us for more information about Summer's services
• Episode recorded and edited using Descript
• Repurposed content, such as this description created using CastMagic

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the first ever episode of revenue remix. I'm your host summer Polenti and I'm excited to launch this new chapter with you. You might recognize this podcast under its previous name. C-suite sidekick. But I've evolved in my work as a fractional CRO. And so has the show. With revenue remix, we're focusing on how CEOs and senior leaders can transform their revenue strategies to meet today's challenges. This rebrand represents my mission to help you move beyond static sales processes and align your teams to build resilient, adaptable systems that actually work. We're talking about repeatable revenue and it's a remix because. We're going to talk to people and we're gonna learn from their challenges and how they're. Tackling them and we're going to apply those strategies in our own organization. So it's a little bit of a remix, you know, we're not always inventing new things, but we're looking for inspiration outside of our companies. To kick off this new era. I'm joined by Judy Brower. And she is going to dive into too. Episodes. With us. One where she talks about how she bootstrapped. And exited successfully her company. And she's also going to talk about her pivot and what she has done after that exit, because who wants to sit on the couch for the rest of your life? Right. She was kind enough to be my Guinea pig and be my first interview. If you're looking for actionable insights or just a couple amusing stories. This is a great listen. She is a wonderful person. We go way back. She was my client. She was my employer. And now she's that great friend that I probably don't have lunch with nearly often enough. And she has been a mentor to me. A lot of who I am as a professional comes from her guidance. So I hope that you enjoy her wisdom just as much as I do. Okay. Let's get started.

summer: 2:11

Well, hello, Judy. Welcome and I appreciate you joining us. I'm very excited for this conversation and you, the listener are in for a treat. As I already said, this is a very interesting story and it's going to be inspirational to those of you starting out and to those of you who are thinking about a business and you're not quite sure. Full disclosure, Judy and I go way back. We are not going to talk about how many years because then that dates both of us. Hello, Judy. How are you doing, Summer? Fan freaking tastic. Well, for anyone who's listening and doesn't know you, would you do us a favor and just give us a backstory on who you are? Not the company or anything, but who you are, what makes you tick? Okay, I am as I'm a second generation Southern Californian. I have lived in a 50 mile radius my whole life and I, but I have traveled to about 40 countries now. So I don't think of myself as being too small town. Nice. I like that. Well, I mean, when you're from Southern California, like, I'm sorry, but why would you leave? At least permanently. I can't think of any good reason. Yeah, me neither. So, I,, selected my career in college. I think kind of because I decided to go into what my dad was doing. I did not ever work with him, in employment, but I realized that he was a good writer and I was a good writer. And so he was in public relations and I decided to go into it. But I always say that I have three siblings that have normal jobs. Well, I don't know. I think public relations is totally a normal job. And you happen to be one of very few people I know who studied something in college and then did that thing for their work. And your dad. Doing that. Okay. Now I understand. My dad was a contractor. Um, no, thank you. Oh, and I am a planner. However, from an entrepreneur standpoint, and for points that, you know, people that might want to learn about being an entrepreneur or being successful at it, you kind of have to go sometimes when you don't have a complete plan. I've watched a lot of people, uh, what do they call that thing? You were, you just overthink it. Analysis paralysis, right? Thank you. Yeah. It's, it's great to have everything planned in advance and have everything set up and all that. But even that requires time and money. And when you're starting as I did a bootstrap company, time and money weren't things I had extra of. So I just started and went. And one day I took a blue pen and I drew a. What I thought could be a logo. And I'm like, Oh, I actually liked that color. And I called, I call it Bic blue cause of Bic pens, which I don't think exists. And I used that color. I'm still using it. It's it worked. It was fine. I could have changed it. Let's just go. Let's just go. That is excellent advice. The only way you're gonna get good is if you get feedback. The only way to get feedback is to start talking to somebody other than yourself. So then, if memory serves me correctly, you had a good corporate job, and then all of a sudden you decide that you'd rather earn no money and go do your own thing. So what made you decide that like, END CREDITS You had to strike out on your own. Well, I was in a job that I did not like. I had already been working in marketing agencies, which is what I ended up opening. So I already was working in marketing agencies for a while. And I was at a job I did not like. I am still friends with that woman that owned the company that I quit. To this day, we spoke about a week ago. We're just really good friends, but, um, I didn't want to move. There was no other company that I felt like I wanted to join that was in the local market. And this man walked up to me while I was having lunch with my sister and said, do you want my account or not? And I said, yeah. And he said, be in my office on Monday. And when he walked away, my sister said, if you take that guy's money and give it to someone else, you're crazy. And just 11 years later, he became my client. Um, but I, I was like, yeah, that seems right. My uncle told me if you're ready to start your own business, when you hang up your shingle and people will want to work with you, that's when you know, you're ready. So I decided to go ahead and open my business. Thinking that I was going to have this guy's account, which like I said, I didn't certainly get right away. I was working in a job and I told my boss that I wanted to quit with no notice because I said, I'm opening up my own firm and I don't want to do it on your money. I hate when people are working at a company and try and steal clients or spend half their time not really working on the company So I told her, I'm just being honest that I'm, I'm going to leave and I will keep working for you until you can replace me. At 50 percent cost, you know,, I figured out kind of what my hourly was to her and charge her half of that. So the first day I sat down, I was busy because I had work to do for her. Ah, gotcha. I mean, so basically you kind of invented fractional leadership. Yes. Wow. Okay. And that worked out for her. And I think that also did help her not be mad at me You know, I was being super honest and I, I didn't steal clients and I, I mean, I didn't even try to, and I, I didn't leave her in the lurch. I worked for her for probably 3, 4 months while she found whoever she wanted to replace me or something. Wow. and it was kind of like part time work for me because. Yeah. That's just, you know, I did whatever she needed so that it would be comfortable for her. In the meantime, I had had another woman call me two weeks before I quit and say, We don't like anybody at your old agency. Now, this was not the one I was currently at, but a previous one. She said, we want to work with you. And I said, well, I'm about to start my own company. Do you care if it's really just me? And she said, no, you're the one we want to work with. Wow. So, um, that was my first real client because as soon as I told them, okay, I'm starting on this date, they said, good. Wow. So then the first client was, we'll call it easy. Uh, sometimes they fall in your lap. I wonder then, how'd you get your next client? Well, from what I can recall, because I numbered my clients, it wasn't until number, that I had a real one that stuck. I mean the first one did stick that one I worked with for 10 years or something, but the, second and third ones that I thought I got, I guess I didn't really get or something. Um, or I did one project for them. It didn't. Turn into anything. But then I got another client that was good, and they were a pretty big company, and I was in there pitching them And I said, wait, I don't get it. You work by yourself. How are you gonna get all this done? And I said, oh, I'm not gonna sleep. And we all laughed. I laughed. They laughed. I was, I was figuring I would never be able to sleep again. I don't know that's when I realized it was time to have an employee, because I couldn't really do that whole big account by myself. Yeah, that's a good big fish to land. Like, how long was it from the time that you rented an office? Cause I know you didn't work from home. You rented like your own little office to go to work every day. Yeah. And, um, and then when did you have to. Bring in somebody else. Like how long was that? Um, I think it was five months. Wow. And I went, I went and met with paychecks. How many employees I had. I told them, no, I'm about to hire someone. That's why I'm meeting with you. They were surprised, in the information age now, I think we know that it would be a good idea to get a payroll and HR expert in the room before you hire an employee. I mean, that's just being preventative. There's a lot of stupid stuff you can accidentally do, and I have seen people, get into tax debt and just having the IRS hound them and all that, and it's like, they didn't intentionally do something naughty. But they just made so many mistakes that they got themselves into trouble. So that was smart. Yes Months, that's impressive. Well, that's when I got that second client. No, it's like it's time We're gonna roll. No Back then You know, there wasn't the tools that we have available to us now So I'm imagining getting the clients like did that did that big client also come from your network? So was it a lot of networking or were you about calling like, how'd you get the big guy? A part of their company had been a client of mine at a previous job So when they decided that they wanted to hire for the whole company that person had referred me To them. I got a phone call from the owner saying, Hey, we think we want to hire a company and I want to come talk to you. Nice. Everyone else in the meeting didn't know that the owner was in on it with me and that we were, they thought I was pitching him and we all, he and I knew that I was pitching them because, wow. So I love it. That was lovely. So you're pitching, even though, you know, you have the job basically. Pretty much. And now it turned into a 20 year client. I want to start one thing back into the beginning, if I may really quick, is that when you said it was good that I brought in a payroll company right away, which I think it was, cause I don't know how to do payroll taxes. My CPA who I'd had before I started my company. My sister and I owned a condo together and we decided we needed a real accountant instead of filling out our own form. Yes. I said, Oh, good news. I'm going to open a business. That's more money for you, right? And he told me two things that were very, very important that I'd love to share with you. One was, You owe 50 cents on every dollar you earn. I mean, basically, unless you're really not making any money, you owe between state and federal, you owe almost half. And there's self employment tax if you're not a corporation. If you are a corporation, there's tax and blah, blah, blah. And the second one was, you could be as aggressive as you want on your deductions, but if you don't report your income, you are going to jail. I therefore never took anybody's offer to pay me cash. Or to do anything like that. I didn't spend money that wasn't mine because it was owed to the, taxes. I opened two accounts and every time I got a check, I put half of it in my account and half of it into an account that I named tax, super smart. And at the end of the year, I had to mail that entire tax account off. It was correct, man. Ouch. Yes. Uncle Sam is gonna get his, and that is all. so you got your first couple of clients from your network and eventually you're gonna run out of people you know who can buy from you. So, right. Um, you're a PR and marketing professional. You're not a salesperson. How did you get out there and start growing beyond your network and word of mouth yes, I have found for myself, and this is not everybody, and it's not, um, frankly, this was before Instagram. So I found that for myself meeting people in person is the most important thing I can do to get clients. Uh, I was focused on a specific industry and rather than going to marketing conferences, I went to those industry conferences to meet the people that work there and let them see me and know me. What did it say? No, like and trust. So that's what I did as I got out to, it. Everything I could think of, that I could afford. And I just started networking like crazy and it worked very well to meet new clients. because once I met people, then they would be like, Oh, okay, well we'll call you if we need something. And they did. That is pretty much how I continued to do my business the whole time, even though everything did come in. I mean, I advertised in the Wall Street Journal one year. And I do not know if I got any clients directly from that. But I do believe in marketing. And well, people used to read the paper. You know, so, but I'm saying it was before everything was online. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what you had to do. Yeah. I felt like this, having people see you in the right place when they're in the right frame of mind. Yes. Yeah. Is, I think, is a B2B. I know everyone uses Instagram, that would be more employee focused probably than client focused because most people, when they're on Instagram are playing. They're the wrong mindset. So that's why these conferences were really good is because people are at the conference to network with people, not in their own company, they're trying to meet. People that are colleagues, but not, not the same business as them. So that works perfect for finding a client, I believe. Yeah. They're in work mode instead of I want to watch cats fall off the window. Silk mode. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I love cats falling off windowsills. Oh, gosh. I know that getting out to networking events is what worked before online, but like, I think it's still the best way to do it. The nice thing is that they can be on Zoom and you can meet people in like New York City pretty easily now. Yes. I'm reminded of hearing the story of how Reed Hoffman launched LinkedIn and you know, LinkedIn is where we all go and we network online in a business fashion, right? But like when he was building it, he logged gajillions of air miles. Meeting people in person to build the thing that we somehow seem to think now replaces in person meetings. I just thought it was a funny story, That is funny, yeah. Well, and of course a lot of the marketing is not, it's not just events. Exactly when you're doing marketing, but still, I think the best way to market yourself is in person. I think so too. I mean, what I do now, I'm heavy on LinkedIn, and you're reminding me, I got to put on some shoes and leave the house and go to a couple of networking events. I actually went to a lunch last week where, it was just four people. It was a small group breakout from a, An in person event I had attended where this group thought to have meetups afterwards. So you were kind of, you know, I won't say forced. You were offered the opportunity and they clumped people together. Like I wasn't in charge of picking who I went to lunch with. And I think I got a client from it who said, what do you do? And I told her and she said, Oh, I think we need that. Wow, that is so cool. I was sort of surprised myself. I don't expect things to happen that quickly, where you meet them at lunch and they say, oh, yes, let me pay you, you know, yeah, that's not normal. So congratulations. Thank you. I think we're all little kids at heart still. And like, if you get to choose where you sit for lunch, you're going to sit with your friends and you're never going to meet new friends. Yeah. Them forcing you. You met somebody new instead of talking to the people you already know. With my company, when we went to events where there was more than one of us, unless it was our awards night, I really encouraged everybody to go sit at a separate table. What's the point of bringing three other people with you to an event and then the four of you talk to each other the whole time? Yeah. You could have stayed in the office. Yeah, exactly. It's like, here, you go meet those people. I'll go meet those people and, and we'll, you know, touch base after and see what happened. That is super smart. That's going in the highlight reel. Let's, let's get back to work instead of talking about having fun. I mean, we were talking about work fun, but still, um, if you want to grow 10%, you need to add 40%. Now that's not going to be every business and it wasn't my business. We did not lose 30 percent of our clients a year. I was very much focused on keeping clients rather than being a churn and burn where you just get as much money as you can out of them fast and move on. You can't save your way into profitability. You know, that's, that's not going to happen. It's not by saving money that you become profitable, but there are fat times and lean times and in the fat times, it's okay to spend more. And in the lean times, it is not, uh, maybe not go to so much conferences, there's ways to trim back costs that, you know, That are not a waste of money when you're doing them, but they are not necessary. I started my company by, taking two thirds of all the money I have in the world to go out and buy a computer and, Rent an office first and last month's rent. I really bootstrapped the beginning and I just thought, well, if it doesn't work, I guess I'll go get a job, you know, but, um, but I, I started out that way, but I zero based the business and then I never spent money I didn't have. I paid my credit cards off every single month the entire time I had the company. I did not have a line of credit. I didn't, whatever. Did that stunt the growth of the firm? I don't think so. I think if anybody stunted it, it would have been me. Because, I had once quit a job where the owner said he didn't want to grow. And I was like, well, I'm out of here. Who wants to look at a company that doesn't want to grow. Then I actually got to a place with my own company where I was like, look, I'm making money. I'm happy. I'm not working late at night. I have a good team like I didn't particularly want to grow bigger than I did. I get it. I mean, it's some companies find their right size. Yeah. And in order to do that, you have to keep adding clients. If you want to stay the same size, you have to keep adding clients because you're going to lose some. Yeah. So I didn't stop doing new business. I didn't stop going to conferences. I didn't. I didn't anything, but I wasn't trying my hardest to grow as fast as I could. Um, and to when people talk about scaling, as soon as you have one employee, your responsibility is your employee and not yourself anymore. So you have to keep bringing in business and then you bring in more than you hire more people than you need to bring in more because you have a bigger net to crack. And, um, so I, It's not that I wasn't in the constant go mode, but I was not like, let's see how I can figure out how to add 12 more people in this wing of the company. And, that just wasn't, where I was going with it. I was super happy. It was a national firm with a good reputation and, you know, I was making a lot of money and I could still keep my eye on quality, which I think you have to kind of let go of when you build a big company. You have to be like, oh, some of the people in my company are going to do terrible work for people. Maybe that was where I stunted my growth is that I wasn't willing to. To not know if the work was going to be a good quality. I get it, and it's making me think of In N Out Burger. You know, they're not in every country. They're not even in every state. Like they're not further east of San Antonio right now, I think. You had mentioned that you might have like a question about if you got a million dollars to spend. What would you do with it? The whole time I was running that company or at some point during it, I was hoping that I would win the lottery so that it would be public, that I had won 400 million. And what I wanted to do the next day was go and meet with my clients and say, gee, you probably heard that I won 400 million yesterday. So what I'd like to do is tell you what you should be doing with your marketing and you don't think I'm telling you it because I want to make money off of my ideas. Oh, wow. I had really wanted them to know that it wasn't to do with me making money. It was to do with me helping them make money. Yes, because I love that. I mean, that's super customer focused. Yes. And I think marketing should be a profit center. I know people don't look at it that way, but if it's not a profit center, you shouldn't have those people in your company or hire it or whatever. I feel like that's why marketing gets cut when times are lean is because a lot of. When used right, marketing should be getting leads in the door and helping them close. So I absolutely agree that marketing should be a revenue generator and not considered like a line item on the budget that is just a cost. And if you can't say that your marketing is helping generate revenue, then you've got, you've absolutely had the wrong people doing your marketing. I 100 percent agree. Each each of the businesses that are working with you, should have the same feeling about whatever they're doing, right? Because it's the same thing. If you're if you're a coach, an executive coach, and you're not making more money for the person that's paying you, if they don't think you're going to make them more money, I don't know why they. Work with you, you know, so I think the credibility is what I would want to do with my million dollars There you go is just show that you don't have to work that is not an answer that I expected to hear from that question. That is really cool thanks, so since I have a pr pro here i'm gonna ask you something That I didn't pre prepare you for so i'm sorry. Okay You I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about how AI is being used evilly. I mean, whenever we get a new tool, we don't use it for good. I don't know why our society's like that, but whatever. Um, and, and like all the deep fakes and the misinformation and people are, of course, just using AI to do naughty things. And they were talking about how every company you're going to be hit with a fake thing at some point in time. So you need to start strategizing about that now, so you're not scrambling when it happens. And what they were doing is they were focusing on why Earned media is more important now than it ever has been um, PR is multifaceted. I'm just going to throw that in there. But when you're talking about media placements about earned media. That is still important because people still in their tummies do believe, and I am especially a fan, I'm going to go back to trade publications. Yes, the Wall Street Journal, but it's all become sort of politicized of which Yes, people believe in which media, but the trade media for each industry seems to be pretty trusted, even if they're generally positive, they still pick who they want to cover and the companies that they're saying are really being successful and when they have articles by people that are, you know, written by the. Person in the industry talking about something that's going on. That's very trusted information. And then of course, merchandising that like crazy, you know, throwing up on your website, here's a link to this article about, you know, we could tell you were great all day long, but these people are telling you were great, including that a link in your newsletter. And so that people that didn't maybe see it in that media can still benefit from seeing that and seeing that, that, um, um, credibility. Of your good reputation in your industry and that you are a thought leader in your industry because you're so smart That's really important. That is and I hadn't thought about trade publications as opposed to the big ones, I appreciate you answering that, Kerpal. Thank you. So then, I want to talk about, how did you decide that it was time to start thinking about moving on from your agency? I don't know that we're going to call it retiring because you didn't, but like, when did you decide hey, I ought to sell this and do something else? And how'd you come to that conclusion? Um, I loved my industry and I loved my career until I didn't. I found myself too far removed from the generation of employees to understand what they wanted at all. Think had I been more aware of executive coaching and all those kind of things at the time, I may have been able to keep my in my agency and put someone else in charge of it, which, but I felt like my heart had suddenly stepped away. I, I also think that, um, tick tock was a little removed from my generation. It's not that I can't enjoy the dancing. I didn't feel like I was necessarily going to be really great at advising my clients moving forward because it had changed so much from what I felt had been. And as I'm saying, like people used to read the newspaper and now I don't think people really read the newspaper hardly. It was both, um, a little bit of feeling like I couldn't really lead correctly because I had gotten a kind of. Into the a place where I didn't understand them very well. And I had lost a little bit of, feeling as confident that I knew exactly what to do in marketing. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Now a lot, you know, always change in marketing, but it changed drastically. Yeah. Sort of, um, suddenly. Yeah. And then I've gotten a little rusty. Did you sell pre or post covid? Um, before, but it was before, but what I did was I brought someone in and trained them for 10 years. Whoa. You transitioned to a key employee. Yes. I, who I hired for the purpose of training her and turning the company. I mean, she knew that from the beginning I said, after the first year we'll start being partners and then I will turn the whole company over to you and the clients will be fine and the employees will be fine. I wanted to step away without hurting anybody. So by the time she'd been in the company for 10 years and I had promoted her up to president before we even did the sale. And I just sort of stepped away. I called it the curly shuffle, which I can't really remember what that was by like that name, but I kind of picture it being like a little quiet moonwalk backwards. I just kept stepping backwards until I wasn't there anymore. Yes, and it was fine. And all the clients all stayed and the employees stayed. Yeah. And everything was fine. And there you go. And it, wow. Wow. So that's what I did. And you're a planner, so you should plan in advance for your exit and start working on it. Unless it's a generational business and it's their kid. I don't know anybody who has. Much prep into the exit of their company. Brava. Yeah, thank you. And it was, um, like I said, it's just my planning thing that I can't help. Yeah, I get it. And it worked. It worked pretty smoothly. Nice. It sounds like it did. So is there any other pearls of wisdom that you have for the PR and marketing world? Marketing works. And it works best on marketers. I saw, I saw an advertisement once that said, it was in a magazine. Okay. Like a fashion magazine. And it said, if they had a public hanging, would you attend? And then when you turned the page, it said, And if you did, what would you wear? And it was from a shoe company and I ran right out and bought a pair of their shoes to support their advertising. Cause I love their ads so much. That is bold ads. All right. Well, thank you for telling your story. I am positive it inspired some of the folks who are listening.

31:51

Well there, you have it. I appreciate you listening to the first ever episode of revenue remix. I hope you got some interesting insights and I hope you tune in for the next chapter where Judy talks about her pivot and what she's doing now. If you or anyone, you know, as a CEO owner, founder, Or key employee. And you would like to come on the show and share your story, including your business challenges and how you're tackling them so that you can provide some insights to the listeners. You can find me on LinkedIn I'm summer Pawlenty rhymes with spaghetti, or you can go to the podcast page on my website, the rise of us.com for some more information. Share this with your network and if you have enjoyed it, I would appreciate. Uh, review, thank you so much. And we will see you next week.