Revolutionizing PR And The Rise of Raptor with Austin Holmes

In this conversation, Rob Pene interviews Austin Holmes, co-founder of Signal Raptor, a PR agency that aims to make public relations more accessible and efficient. 

Austin shares insights into his journey from the Navy to the PR industry, the innovative strategies his agency employs, and the importance of community and relationships in building a successful brand. The discussion also covers the role of podcasts in PR and the upcoming launch of their new software, Raptor, designed to streamline PR efforts for clients.

Takeaways

• Austin Holmes transitioned from Navy special operations to PR.
• Signal Raptor aims to decentralize PR and make it accessible.
• The agency focuses on delivering 80% of results for 20% of the cost.
• Building relationships is key to successful PR campaigns.
• Consistency in media opportunities leads to bigger placements.
• Podcasts are becoming a significant part of PR strategies.
• Community interaction enhances brand development.
• The agency has a strong referral-based business model.
• Raptor software is set to launch soon, enhancing PR efforts.
• Austin emphasizes the importance of results in PR.

Contact Information

Austin Holmes

• Social Media: @AAustinHolmes (all platforms)
• Full Name: Alexander Austin Holmes

Signal Raptor

• Website: signalraptor.com
• Social Media: @signal.raptor
• Phone: 1-855-RAPTOR (phone number available on website) / (904) 318-2309

Related Companies

• Publicity for Good: Traditional PR agency
• The DeSantis Group: Parent company

"If you want to build your brand and your community, come check us out and join the pack." - Austin Holmes

Ready to get 80% of traditional PR results for 20% of the cost? Visit Signal Raptor and see how they're revolutionizing media placement for entrepreneurs and business owners.

Transcript

Rob Pene (00:01.342)
All right, what's up everybody? Or do I have a treat for you? This is my buddy Austin. Austin is awesome. He's part of a pretty influential PR agency that's very innovative, but also what's that word like you push the envelope, kind of disruptive per se. What's interesting is this dude, should jump out of airplanes. He was part of the naval.

special operations as a team leader and just his life in general is very interesting. He's also a father and all the stuff that he's done in terms of their PR agency has been featured in all the major publications from Fox Business Insider, Inside Edition. I'm here to chat with Austin because they've got a really cool tool and then yeah, that's part of the disruption, right? But also to kind of pick his brain.

on how he operates. This is very successful PR agency and this is the dude behind the scenes, right? His wife is like amazing speaker and we'll talk more about her a little bit later. But before we get started, I like to kind of seed the conversation with this one question and we'll see how you fare against the surprise of the question. The question is, if you were to reflect on the last 12 months of your life, could be life or business?

Austin Holmes (01:18.017)
Let's do it.

Rob Pene (01:27.867)
and you were to turn that into a Netflix special or a movie, what would it be called and why?

Austin Holmes (01:37.771)
I can picture it. think it's more like 15 months. But the naming, I love doing this too. We've been naming a lot of our stuff recently for new projects and stuff like that. here it is. The rise of Raptor.

Rob Pene (01:57.046)
Oh, yes, yes, yes. I like that. That's actually really good for off the cuff, man. The Rise of Raptor. Yeah, so talk a little bit about that. What is Raptor and how did it start? And I know it's about to do something special, right? So that's where the rise comes in. So this is perfect. Yeah, you're a seasoned vet, man. Come up with that on the spot. That's good.

Austin Holmes (01:57.173)
Yes, it's pretty good, right?

Austin Holmes (02:19.861)
Yeah. that's the stuff that I will wake up at night and just like think of random stuff. Like, you know, there's different things that people will write down in their notebook or on their notes on their iPhone. And like, that's the stuff that I come up with is like little short titles, ideas for ads, stuff like that. So I love it. Raptor signal Raptor in full. We also have several others in the works, but

Signal Raptors started off as an idea of how do we make our lives a little easier? How do we scale PR in a way that is accessible to a lot more people? Because one of the most common objections we face is I can't afford PR because you're paying for something that's pretty like expensive. the same way you have to pay for a lawyer of you're paying for the

experience you're paying for relationships and you're paying for time too. So that's how a lot of the PR industry is structured and that's what our agency is. But in order to make that available to more people to have more stories heard, like that's what the media in general is doing. It's decentralizing and we wanted to be a part of that.

Rob Pene (03:39.31)
That's a good word, decentralizing. That's pretty expensive. like that. The PR, can you explain a little bit to the people that need PR why your approach is a little bit different? I know you talked about where it gets a little, well, very expensive for the big agencies and usually only the big celebrities that have, but for the common business consultants, business owner.

entrepreneur, what makes this slightly different and more beneficial for them?

Austin Holmes (04:15.945)
Right. We're trying to do 80 % of what an agency would do for any brand and put that in a package, you know, leverage technology, leverage some arbitrage and be able to get 80 % of that benefit, which is the majority of like what they need in order to get their message out to the world. That's really the core of what we're trying to do, no matter what side of the field we're playing on and

getting that message out in an efficient way where the cost is 20%. So 80 % of the result, 20 % of the cost.

Rob Pene (04:56.888)
Wow, that's pretty significant in terms of, yeah, okay. So that's a huge benefit. Also differentiator. Now, is this a software or is it a program or is it a package?

Austin Holmes (05:11.191)
I stole this from somewhere else. But we look at it as service and a software, which is a little different than the normal SaaS software as a service. But we put service first, like we that's our background, we come from a service agency. And so that's what we're focused on. And I think even with all the technological technological change coming in the next couple of years, there is still going to be that demand for

for the relationship aspect, for that personal one-on-one, for somebody actually looking after your account. Now we still want to leverage all of the benefits of somebody who never makes mistakes, which is our AI side. And we want to leverage that, but still have that interpersonal feel. Like I love building our team. Like I would never want that to stop. I want to give people a place to make a contribution. And that's from the internal side, but also like, Hey, let's

Rob Pene (05:51.864)
Mm.

Rob Pene (06:01.389)
Mm.

Austin Holmes (06:08.575)
Create a tool, create a platform, create a service that helps so many brands put their message out there, help make an impact in the world and, you know, share their story because that's how we all relate to each other.

Rob Pene (06:20.46)
Yeah, okay, so I might throw out something. I don't know if it's controversial or it's just kind of internal within the PR space, but there's usually that tension between the really high publications that's kind of essentially hard to get into to get a real feature versus like a blog or it's an active blog, but it's not as well known.

right, as those bigger fast company publications. Do you see value in that mass blog kind of arena, or do you guys push mainly the, let's get the bigger placements as possible? How do you approach it?

Austin Holmes (07:06.209)
So since 2020, we started a new tracking system on our media opportunities for clients. And that has probably crossed 26,000, but at least 25,000 opportunities since then. And so we have a pretty good data set of exactly what it takes to be successful with your PR campaigns and resounding.

difference between somebody who is just going after the major ones versus somebody willing to take everything. And so that consistency of getting your message out there is way more important. And the brands that are consistent and take everything and, you know, get their message out every opportunity they have, they get the bigger ones. So it's one in the same of needing to do

Rob Pene (07:57.102)
Hmm.

Austin Holmes (07:58.783)
as much as you can gets you the larger opportunities that then gets you the big opportunities that really move the needle. The other thing is those opportunities change even day to day. Like it is a fast industry. We've seen kind of over the past couple of years, CNN have its peaks and valleys and just kind of start becoming less of a big deal. And they had the huge crash with their, their software launch.

Yeah. so that, that was interesting to watch, but you know, everybody's going to recognize that name. Doesn't mean they have the viewership. So it goes back to, okay, what are your goals with your campaign? Are you trying to find investors? Are you trying to find customers? Like those are two very different campaigns that we want to run and like, yeah, getting in CNN is probably going to affect your investor value more.

Rob Pene (08:39.628)
Hey.

Austin Holmes (08:55.339)
than actually going out and finding customers because you're talking to a hundred thousand people versus, you know, going on some of these major podcasts that have half a thousand or half a million downloads for every episode.

Rob Pene (09:07.342)
That's good. So it sounds like you guys because of your experience and Your history you have a blueprint that you can track and say hey It's not necessarily where you're placed. It's what you do with it right and the volume because it sounds like if I'm not mistaken you take all the opportunities whether it's the you know, the the local podcast that you know, Joe Schmoe kind of thing and you stack 50 of those because that maybe by a number 10

will probably get you that big one that'll take you 10 months with no track record, right? If you didn't do it and kind of get out there essentially. So you guys are a roadmap, like a specific roadmap.

Austin Holmes (09:47.659)
Yeah, and.

That's that's one of the ways that you get on those shows is they see you on something else. It's a minimum requirement for anything that you're doing. High level TV is they want to see your clips. If you don't have those clips of a local station or a podcast or whatever you've already done, you're not going to get the segment. It's just not going to happen. And like for all the things that you might be going after, we did funnel that down. And so it really comes down to three things of, you know,

Rob Pene (09:56.566)
Mmm, mmm.

Rob Pene (10:10.071)
Mmm.

Austin Holmes (10:21.655)
You want to increase your reach. You want to build your community or you want to drive conversions. And I mean, that's true kind of across the board, even for nonprofits, like they're driving charity, charitable contributions. And so while we're taking that into account, like you are going after one of those three things, 98 % of the time.

Rob Pene (10:44.876)
Yeah, that's awesome. How did you guys get into this space? Now, can you talk a little bit about the parent company, the overall PR agency? Because Signal Raptor is the service that's also a software, right? And then the parent company is Publicity for Good, which is very well known for helping the consumer brands. And Miss Heather Holmes, dude, she's a killer, man. So yeah, how did you guys start the Signal Raptor?

Austin Holmes (11:10.079)
Yeah. So.

I even got to take it one level up. The DeSantis group is in charge of all of it. Heather grew up doing a lot of like community service activities, being involved, being in groups. And so she has the natural personality. If you know disc straight eye influencer type. And so she's always building these connections. She went to school for communications.

Rob Pene (11:18.442)
okay. Yeah.

Austin Holmes (11:40.023)
followed that up with some work at an ad agency for a couple of years as a publicist, went out on our own in 2016, started getting clients here and there, really fell in love with the food and beverage space, which she had worked with before at the ad agency. And now we've taken that food and beverage niche into multimillion dollar agency. And now we're starting to add some other niches. And along the way we started Raptor because we figured out

hey, this is a common thing and we want to solve a problem.

Rob Pene (12:13.058)
Nice. For your background, how did you adjust from your background into this whole, it's a completely different beast in PR and even software? Yeah.

Austin Holmes (12:29.109)
Yeah, I was in the EOD community in the Navy and we just blew stuff up. So now it's pretty much the same thing, but we're just blown up brands. I got the PR jokes, trust me. For the transition, I went to school for business management and entrepreneurship. So that was always on the horizon. I had already started a venture, just like wedding table, like the rentals for wedding.

tables with a buddy in San Diego. And so was doing that and I saw the numbers behind what Heather was doing. I'm like, I'm the wrong business. For me, starting to help it was on the organizational stuff. It was on the operations, which is a huge part of what I did in the Navy was operational management, like risk mitigation, stuff like that. So and that's translated to business terms. So the

Ways that I helped early on was with process, was with documentation. I got into hiring not too long after that just because Heather didn't have time. And so I probably have hired a hundred people individually, something like that. I need to go back and count, but it's been a journey since there. We started going to business events. I learned a tremendous amount. I just shared this story, but I think my second event that I went to

still in the Navy, end up sitting next to a couple and like four years later, I'm watching YouTube and Heather's like, that's who we sat next to. it was Alex and Layla Hormozi. I'm like, yeah, so my my very baby event time was exposed at that kind of level. And it was cool to see their progress over the past couple years. But you know, we've just this is what Heather's really good at is making those amazing connections.

Rob Pene (14:06.429)
wow. Yeah.

Austin Holmes (14:25.463)
because Heather knew them. But yeah, I don't know where I was going with that.

Rob Pene (14:31.758)
All good, man. All good. You're creative. You're creative. You're like, yeah, here, here, here. That's the fun thing about your experience. And then the way your brain works is you come up with a bunch of ideas, but then you also have that very logical, structured, you know, kind of analytical brain, which is rare, which is rare. So yeah.

Austin Holmes (14:49.079)
Mm hmm. yeah. It comes out in my desk to my natural styles DS, which is like, I've seen it like one or two other times in all the applications I've had. And my adapted is CD, which is just like the straight military personality. And so I do have both sides of it. And I'm thankful for that. I don't know how it happened. But yeah, it helps.

Rob Pene (15:06.35)
Mm.

Rob Pene (15:16.598)
Now, is there, cause you guys built a pretty cool community inside of your, publicity for good service. Is there a separate community involved with Raptor or is it all under the same umbrella and they get interaction with the software people?

Austin Holmes (15:22.901)
Mm-hmm.

Austin Holmes (15:35.255)
So this is an interesting problem in business is like, do you separate your brands? And we've had a lot of conversations about this recently, including with some of our mentorship, one of the programs we're a part of. And we've asked, right, how much do we separate the brands from the community aspect? I think all of it's even separate from the business brands. Like these are the folks that are just in Heather and my community. It's honestly the people we live life with.

Rob Pene (16:04.972)
Yeah.

Austin Holmes (16:05.655)
like, talk about seasons of life, but like, I still talk to a couple friends, but I don't hang out with them from like previous eras, whether that's Navy college, high school, like, I have those occasional conversations, but, you know, it's pretty much the people we spend time with now are who we want to become or like who are in the same phases of life as we are.

Rob Pene (16:14.807)
Okay.

Austin Holmes (16:32.864)
building a business. you know, us doing it as a couple, that's even a subcategory. And so we relate to people very much who are husband and wife teams building a business.

Rob Pene (16:44.832)
Mmm, that's good. That's good, so you kind of...

Austin Holmes (16:48.363)
But yeah, all that's the community and yeah, there's interaction between PFG and Raptor communities. We have a community call and we started inviting our PFG clients to that because there's a lot of opportunity created there.

Rob Pene (17:07.042)
Right, right, Yeah, it doesn't get better than the people you're already working with. Yeah.

Why would people want to work with your PR agents? Because I think you can imagine there's so many agencies popping up. People just kind of doing their thing. They're running ads like crazy, but they've only been in existence for one week.

Austin Holmes (17:29.079)
Yeah, so I kind of find this interesting about our story is we have pretty much not run ads and built the business that way a lot on social a lot of referrals and relationship building. But you know, we've had our primary marketing method if you want to call it that is cold outreach. So we've built a business kind of behind the scenes and you know, we're taking that approach of

ads now. We're restarting some stuff and really pushing because Raptor on the software side is about to launch. And so we're finding ad sets that work. And we had gone in the ecom world for a little bit and learned how to run ads at that point. But it's a different world when you're doing agency stuff. Plus, it's a different world five years later.

Rob Pene (18:18.827)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. Do you typically work with, like you mentioned, couple business owners or do you work better with the solo? What's your ideal client look like?

Austin Holmes (18:37.845)
Yeah, this goes back to the kind of client community crossover. And it's neither on PFG. It's really bored. A lot of our biggest customers end up at the there we're working with the board or as far as like point of contact, we're working with the marketing director. Sorry, the

other side of it is we work a lot with personalities, because brands and like physical products often have a personality associated with them. So there's this great double edged sword of influencers, personalities, celebrities, and brands. And, you know, we looked at it and we found like, wow, half of our referrals are coming from individuals who then refer us brands. So

Rob Pene (19:31.917)
Hmm?

Austin Holmes (19:32.471)
we leaned back into that, that's part of that like, re-expansion into multiple niches, because everybody says niche down. And it works to some extent, but there's a certain point where you have to say, all right, what's actually the strategic play here? And going on the Raptor side, it's two things. It's somebody who wants to maintain their presence, but doesn't want to be in front of the camera every day. And then,

new business owners just building their brands that probably have some messaging but need it refined, need it extended, need a chance to test it. So many people develop messaging and they don't ever see if it's good or not. And so they don't get that feedback of talking to 100 people or talking to 100 media stations and saying what's working. So

Rob Pene (20:13.877)
Rob Pene (20:29.058)
for Raptor specifically.

You guys also do podcasts? Like, do you get people featured on podcasts or is it just... Okay.

Austin Holmes (20:40.939)
Yeah, we used to just get them. But we actually segregated it out because it's becoming such a large niche. So it's almost like a sub offering. It's in our packages, but it's pretty much a sub offering of like, hey, X number of podcasts. So we've separated it out from general media opportunities to you're going to get this many podcasts, you're going to get this many articles, news releases. And the pitching is way more unpredictable, like

it's it's similar to email marketing in a lot of ways of you know, if we send 1000 pitches, we're gonna get three back. And that's pretty predictable within a couple percentage points. And that that's how we have to play that game. And so it's harder to predict the exact number but podcasts you you can have you can just work for it. It's just a couple more hours to build those relationships because it's more one

Rob Pene (21:10.413)
Mmm.

Austin Holmes (21:39.863)
It's more reaching out to the individual shows. Now there there's all kinds of tools out there, but yeah, podcast is becoming a bigger part of our business. And I think it's becoming a bigger part of media period. the customization is happening in so many industries. And I think media is one of those, you know, you can talk about, I ran into somebody that didn't know what rumble was, which is crazy. Cause I think they're approaching like 10 % market share on online videos and

Rob Pene (21:50.85)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Pene (22:03.244)
Mm.

Rob Pene (22:07.863)
Mmm.

Austin Holmes (22:10.163)
It was wild because they didn't know what it was because so much stuff is just customized for us now. It's algorithmic driven to where we get to see what we want. I always encourage people to go find other stuff that they don't necessarily want to watch, but broadens the horizons. Same thing with travel. I think traveling gives us better perspective.

Rob Pene (22:35.022)
You guys are really well known for TV, for getting on TV. so podcasts, people can reach out to podcasts through Raptor, or is that a service that happens at PFG and Raptor?

Austin Holmes (22:40.842)
Yeah.

Austin Holmes (22:51.851)
So yeah, it's still service side on Raptor. Like one day the software will be at the point where people can do everything themselves and it'll be at an even lower price point. But you know, we have a lot of systems in place, a lot of training on our team to actually get that result because I don't want to charge somebody for something that's they're going to mess around with and not know how to do it and get no results. That's what, that's what a lot of PR agencies do.

Rob Pene (23:15.149)
Yeah.

Austin Holmes (23:20.791)
is they don't get results for six months and then the person moves on. We are very much the opposite of that. That's why we're I mean, I guess it's one of the same, but we're good at getting TV because we're good at getting results. And TV is just kind of one of those highest levels of the media game. It's I just read this number. It was like 87 83 something like that. Percent of people will trust you more if they see your face on TV.

So it's a very, very powerful tool, but you know, there's the scarcity to it. There's only so many TV channels. mean, Roku is working on that. I don't know if you've scrolled through a Roku recently, but there's like 10,000 channels. It's an interesting world right now.

Rob Pene (24:05.228)
Yeah. And the pitching happens on Thru-Thru Raptor 2 for TV.

Austin Holmes (24:10.135)
Our team does the pitching and that happens in about five different ways. I mean phone calls still work. So it if you are out there trying to get yourself in the media trying to get on TV locally, easiest thing to do, go to chat GPT type in the media station, find somebody's phone number, the producer, even sometimes the talent will answer their phone. But

Rob Pene (24:18.87)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me about it.

Austin Holmes (24:38.167)
producers probably your best touch point or like a creative director. There's a bunch of different position titles for somebody who's going and gathering stories kind of depends on the industry, but go find those people, find their phone number and just give them a call. Um, that is still an effective way. Now you're going to have to call a bunch of them in order to get somebody to answer, but you know, persistence pays off.

Rob Pene (25:02.38)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you guys excited about? What's the one thing that gets you pumped up about people using Raptor and getting into the program and checking out the software?

Austin Holmes (25:15.571)
I'm excited about the feedback because this is something that we've been working on for 18 months and we've gotten our team's feedback and we've had a version of it that was just internal and we're about to roll it out to our current subscribers and then do a big launch and get a bunch of people on there. Like we have 50 people from one organization that are going to be a part of it and it's going to be interesting to get that initial wave of feedback and

Rob Pene (25:18.174)
So...

Austin Holmes (25:43.647)
see whether we're on the right track or not. Because it's been a lot of work to get to this point to build something that I think is worth sharing. And my the common software phrase that is out there is like, if you don't launch something you're embarrassed of, you waited too long. And like, I'm still embarrassed of it. I was definitely way too embarrassed version one to launch that but version two, it's like, still, this is not what I want to see. But it's

Rob Pene (26:00.43)
Mmm.

Austin Holmes (26:12.554)
It's what we're rolling with.

Rob Pene (26:14.486)
Yeah, and it works, right? It works.

Austin Holmes (26:16.299)
Yeah, yeah, the community is growing. The results are there and we're excited to share it with more people.

Rob Pene (26:25.164)
Yeah, yeah, at the end of the day, like you said earlier, it's the results. If you can pull the results, how you get there is cool, but I got there. Yeah, and Raptor will get you there. That's good, that's good. Is there a website, any socials that people can go to, a phone number they can call to...

Austin Holmes (26:43.127)
Oh, there is. Oh, I really need to memorize the phone number because it does spell Raptor like, you know, the old school like 1-800 Raptor. It's like 855 or something, something out of New York. But yeah, the number is on our website, which is signalraptor.com. And also you can check us out on social signal Raptor. I believe most of them are signal.raptor. There's probably one or two that are just signal.

Rob Pene (26:49.934)
Yeah.

Rob Pene (27:11.574)
Okay, signal, where did the Raptor idea come from?

Austin Holmes (27:15.383)
because Raptors are cool like Jurassic Park, bro. Just we test, it's getting harder to find domain names, but we tested like 20 or something to Heather's audience and got feedback eventually made it down to message brew and signal Raptor. And so I started calling the whole thing project Raptor. I was a little biased towards signal Raptor. And you know,

Rob Pene (27:20.893)
Bye.

Austin Holmes (27:44.201)
message brew actually beat out signal Raptor in the polling, but we ended up going with Raptor because we were already calling it that internally. And you know, there's another website out there morning brew that is kind of media related and we didn't want like the crossover and honestly dinosaurs are cooler than coffee. Even even though I definitely deal with coffee a lot more so

Rob Pene (27:47.491)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (27:53.006)
Mmm.

Rob Pene (28:06.444)
Yeah, amen, amen. Great, man. Do you have your socials that people can get in touch with or an email?

Austin Holmes (28:12.875)
Yeah, I'm A Austin Holmes everywhere. So that makes it easier to find me but two A's in the beginning.

Rob Pene (28:21.518)
A, Austin Holmes, and Holmes, H-O-L-M-E-S.

Austin Holmes (28:26.015)
Yep, Alexander Austin Holmes is my full name, but I go by Austin and so a Austin Holmes. Because I mean there's like 15 athletes that are Austin Holmes and I'm like, alright, let's let's get some branding here.

Rob Pene (28:40.142)
Yeah, yeah, good man. Good. Well, I appreciate the time. I think it's exciting what you guys are doing and The 80-20 idea I think that's gonna be revolutionary because right now it's backwards. All right people are paying 80 % for 20 % of the results, you know

Austin Holmes (28:51.946)
Mm-hmm.

Austin Holmes (28:55.511)
Yeah, 20 % of what they should be getting. Yeah, I agree.

Rob Pene (28:58.25)
Right. Yeah, it's backwards for you guys. Yeah, you guys, they're only paying 20 % to get a ton more. So good work. Good work for you and Heather. Appreciate it, man.

Austin Holmes (29:07.051)
Yeah. So if you, yeah, if you want to build your brand and your community, come check us out and, join the pack.

Rob Pene (29:15.936)
Yes, sir. Raptors go. Jurassic Park. Cool.

Austin Holmes (29:19.883)
Yeah, we're going to take down a T-Rex at some point.

Rob Pene (29:23.906)
Don't, don't. All right.