Rai Cornell 0:02
Welcome to Season Two of the SOAR podcast, the place for creative entrepreneurs who want to build healthier, happier, more profitable, self employed businesses. I’m your host, Rai Hyde Cornell, business mentor at Chiron consulting and CEO and senior copywriter at Cornell content marketing, get ready to soar.

Hey, welcome to the SOAR podcast. This is Rai Hyde Cornell. And we have a very good friend of mine on today, April white. April tell us all about your business.

April White 0:41
Thanks so much for having me, Rai. So I own Trust Relations, we are a virtual, started as a PR agency, now we’re actually PR and marketing agency. But essentially started as a virtual agency before the pandemic on purpose, because I saw a way to do things a little bit differently a little bit, in my opinion better than the traditional agency format. And that cutting out that overhead of a big office space in a you know, fancy place in New York, or Santa Monica doesn’t allow you to have senior people working on your accounts for the most part and be profitable. And so rather than doing that, I think it’s more valuable to clients to have people that are the right fit for their account, and more senior that are leading the account. So basically, we do everything now from public relations to SEO and branding and logo design, etc. everything in between. But because my personal background is in PR that’s how we started out.

Rai Cornell 1:37
I love that you said started before the pandemic on purpose because that’s a thing that, it’s funny I think the the freelance industry is one of the fastest growing employment industries in the world right now. And that’s because of COVID. And so it’s funny that just like when we say like, oh, you know, I was sick over the weekend. But now with COVID, we always have to add that Asterix like Oh, not with COVID, though. And now it’s like starting my business on purpose before the pandemic, because it’s almost like the entrepreneurs I meet, and nothing against anybody who went freelance during the pandemic, it’s just a funny sort of trend that I’m noticing where it’s like 50 50, it’s like half the people that I meet nowadays, are pre COVID freelancers and entrepreneurs. The other half are COVID caused freelancers and entrepreneurs. So yeah, it’s funny that you said that

April White 2:28
And it was interesting, because we actually doubled in size during the pandemic. And in large part, well, a couple of reasons. We doubled in size, both in terms of revenue and clients, and also in terms of staff, which obviously need to go hand in hand. But you know, it worked out well. And that we ended up having this huge, you know, pool of of talent to choose from, because people were freelancing all of a sudden, and our model is a little different, we do have full time people as well. But now we have a network of 35 people. And you know, of those, 11 are full time 12 are full time, and the rest are still contract, right. And some of them, it’s because they want to stay that way, they want to freelance, they like that lifestyle. Some of them are too specialized, that there’s not quite a full time job for them yet, because their forte is you know, something very specific like AI or it’s, you know, crypto or, like health check or something that we just don’t have a 40 hour week job for somebody at their senior level. Right. So, but what’s cool is that then you can pair together people that have those expertise, and make sure that they make a holistic team for that client. And everyone’s happy because they’re doing what they do best. They do what they love, you know, put them all in one team. And voila. And so that’s part of the secret sauce that that we’re working with.

Rai Cornell 3:48
And you put all those experts together and a team of 35, that’s huge, especially coming from being a solo freelancer. And that was very much my journey as well, I think at the biggest, Cornell was like 32 on our team, and it was way too many people I had to scale us back. But I also started just solo. And so what’s interesting to me about your story, among many things, but the one I want to focus on right now is you know, a lot of us get started as freelance writers or freelance social media managers, and we end up evolving into freelance marketers, freelance strategists, freelance copywriters. You started in an area that still baffles me to this day, which is PR you know, I have clients come to me all the time within the content marketing business, going hey, do you do PR? Can you help me with this? And this and this? I’m like, Fuck no, like, I won’t go near PR. It’s a beast of a service. How on earth did you get into PR and then how did you get to where you are now with a team of 35

April White 4:59
Yeah, well, first of all, I just want to address what you said, which is that this is not something anybody can take on. And lots of people have discovered this the hard way. I cannot tell you the number of marketers that tried to do PR in house or tried to do it themselves. And realize it seems like it’d be easy, right? And then most components of marketing, oh, we can probably figure out how to do an E newsletter. Oh, yeah, we can probably figure out how to do social media. But there are things that if you’re savvy, you’re smart. You watch some YouTube videos, take an online class or something, you got it, figured it out. Okay, we can do this. Maybe we’re not doing it as well as a professional agency. But you got it. PR is not one of those things. Exactly. It is definitely its own craft within the marketing umbrella. And it’s not something you just pick up

Rai Cornell 5:45
And it’s also not just writing a press release and sending it through scission.

April White 5:49
It’s so much harder. Much harder. And I’ve to also talk to startups that were scrappy, and okay, we went and come the internet and we found all the emails of the reporters that we thought we needed to pitch and we pitched all of them. We got nothing. And it’s like, yeah, no, that sounds about right. But they don’t understand, we did everything right, we wrote the press release, we put it out, we’d send it to all these reporters that write about the things that we are offering, and then nothing. Crickets, you know. So first of all, yes, it is it is its own art form. I am a former journalist. And so when I got into PR, it was as a media relations specialist and technical writer. First, technical writer then media relations specialist, where all I did was pitch the media, because I knew as a former journalist, what would actually get my attention, what would actually make me write a story and what would be in service of me.

And so the biggest trick about PR, is that what you’re really doing, you cannot view the media as a vehicle to your success. As soon as you do that, if they get any wind of that, if they feel it, if they smell it, if they taste it, if they sense it, it’s done, you’re over. Because they don’t want to be treated that way. This is a profession they’ve chosen because they want to be the watchdog of society, delivers independent information that’s not biased. And obviously, there are journalists that don’t have the same level of commitment to that mission. But if you keep that in mind, okay, this is the audience that I’m speaking to. And the only way that I’m valuable to them, is if I offer them something that makes their life easier. So what you have to do is say, Hey, I saw that your beat is consumer tag with a focus on wellness and mindfulness or something, right. I have this product that I think might be a great fit for you, because you wrote about this other thing. And I’m pretty sure that you haven’t covered this angle yet. And I saw the only these two outlets have, then all of a sudden, that person goes, Oh, wow, you’re actually serving up a story idea for me on a platter, with having looked and done your research and having figured out, okay, this is a good fit for me.

Rai Cornell 8:09
And that’s a thing, that sentence that you just said, you just said about one and a half sentences there that you’d be sending to this media person. But to create that one and a half sentences, that’s a lot of time and research, you want to know who they are, what they’ve written, everywhere they’ve written, because if they’re freelance, maybe they’ve written on different publications, you have to know what their competitors are writing about, what has and hasn’t been written about. That’s a lot of work that goes into that one line in an email

April White 8:36
A hundred percent. Because if you send it through, and then they do Google search, and they see that this trend that you pitched them has been covered by three of their competitors, that’s it.

Rai Cornell 8:48
It’s not gonna happen. It’s not gonna fly.

April White 8:50
Also, it’s offensive to them that you sent them something that then upon one Google search, they can quickly figure out what’s bogus. So, a lot of research goes into it. A lot of knowing the reporters, a lot of knowing the landscape, a lot of constant, I mean, my team members who are media relations, they have so many Google alerts and talkwalker alerts set up all the time for all of the trends related to all of their clients, to see every single thing that every reporter is writing about related to that industry, right? I mean, it is a labor of love, it is not something you just like oh yeah, put together a media list and blast out a thing, no. You really have to know, to your point, the landscape, you have to know your client as well, right? Because you have to know where they fit into that landscape, then you have to understand that reporter and what they’re covering, their angles or tone of voice. I mean, if they’re funny person lean into that, and be humorous in your opening. But if they’re not, you can’t.

Then the other thing is sometimes you still have failed. So for example, you know, some of my team members will do a really good job of stalking them on Instagram and figure out okay, they’re cool they have a bunny. And then they’ll find out the name of the name of the bunny. And they were like, Okay, I’m gonna send, you know, hey, this pet product be perfect for name of bunny. And they put it in there. And that person got so pissed because they felt like they were stuck. And so it’s a fine line. It’s like, yeah, where do you cross over into Okay, that was cute that they put that much effort in versus oh my god get out of my head. Right? And so you sometimes also veer off into the other place, and it’s just one click too far. You didn’t know and maybe the bunny died and you don’t know like, that’s why they’re upset? I mean, you don’t know because you don’t know them.

Rai Cornell 10:53
It’s such a roller coaster. And you know, I always looked at PR, and this is what I always tell my clients when they ask for it from me. And I’m like, No, I’m not even going to touch that with a 20 foot pole. I always tell them, PR is all about the contacts. And honestly, I don’t have the contacts. I don’t know the media people, I don’t know the publication people, I don’t know any of that. I can do your writing, I can do your marketing. But PR is a whole other beast because of the contacts. But now what I hear you saying is it’s not just that you have to have the contacts, you also have to know how to approach those contacts. And then on top of that, you have to have the bandwidth to filter through the mass amounts of media to see, you’re kind of looking at this 1 million piece jigsaw puzzle to see where there’s a missing piece and where the clients on your roster could potentially fit those pieces.

And you may have a wide spread of different kinds of clients on your roster. And so then your 1 million piece jigsaw puzzle becomes a, how many clients do you have, 10 million piece jigsaw puzzle. You know, it’s like, how on earth do you do it? That just sounds like too much to me in my little like solopreneur you know, I can’t say solo anymore. We do have a team. But I feel like a lot of people who go into freelance and creative self employment, they go into it because they want it to be their little world. But it sounds like PR is something that could be very attractive for people to get into. But I would hate for someone to go into it with these shiny misconceptions and then get into it and go, Holy shit, this is way more involved than I thought it was going to be. So in your opinion, who is the right fit for being a freelance PR person?

April White 12:52
That is a great question. You have to have the tenacity of a bulldog. And it has to not go away. I mean, if you have that, then you have a fighting chance. If you really, really, really love what you’re doing and you know whether that’s you’re PR writer or you’re great at media relations or great at account work. I mean, but PR in general takes the tenacity of, honestly I don’t know if there’s another profession that takes the same amount of I mean, not that it’s the most, but I don’t think there’s anything that takes more tenacity.

Rai Cornell 13:27
Yeah. I mean in digital services, I would say that PR is the most, the word beast just keeps coming to mind and that’s why I’ve used it 17 times already. But it’s the most beastly, it’s the most intricate and involved and almost like an iceberg where you only see your clients and they see the tip of the iceberg and all this massive work underneath that holds that tip up the water.

April White 13:51
Yeah. And part of it is that I mean, it’s not a matter of spray and pray, which a lot of people think, Oh, well, you just sent this out to 500 people and then you get five emails back. How hard is that? That’s not what it looks like. Because what it looks like if you’re doing it, right, is that you’re customizing every single email, every single follow up. And then on top of that, if you’re not getting a response, you’re AV testing your subject line to see okay, does this one get a better response? What about this opening line? What if I switched it to this? Okay, well, these people opened my email because you do track these things, right? If you’re doing this right, but you also can’t show that you’re tracking it because media gets pissed. So you have to use streak or something like that where you can see okay, this one got opened, this one didn’t, let me switch. So the follow ups for you know, subjects line A are going to now be follow up with an edited subject line of B because that one got opened. And also this I’m gonna have to retool it because this isn’t working as is, I need to add a trend. I need to add data, I need to add stats. So it’s like you have to just constantly sort of like okay, let me try this. That didn’t work. Let me try and try again. Try again. So it’s not just let me just keep emailing. Yeah, it’s a lot of

Rai Cornell 15:09
art and a science. And so one more question I’m gonna ask you, before we go to break is, you mentioned, there are people who could be a PR writer or a PR, you know, data miner, something like that. So you really head up the whole beast, you head up the entire mission, you have all these branches, all these different initiatives going on, and you’re at the head of it all. But you need people who are experts in their own lane, in those individual roles. So if someone looked at what you do, and they go, Wow, that’s just too much. I am not there yet. I don’t know if I ever even want to be there. But they’re still interested in PR. What other areas could they get into?

April White 15:54
That’s a good question. Before I answer that specific one, I do just want to warn everybody that if you are thinking about becoming me, you will, full disclosure, you will no longer be doing PR. So, just keep that in mind. Cos somebody told me that when I started the company, hey, if you really love doing this, just know you’re not going to do it anymore. Because you’re running a company now. Yeah. So you don’t do PR anymore. So just to answer that, it sort of depends, there are sort of different avenues that are pretty clearly marked. One is being a PR writer, where you’re writing a lot of press releases, and messaging, and press kits and bios and things like that, where you’re doing strategic writing, that takes the clients marketing messages, but also make sure that there are proof points that the press is going to demand. Because unlike marketing writing, you can’t get by with the fluffy copy that sounds really great, but doesn’t have any substance. And not to say marketing writing doesn’t have substance, but it’s just that the media is going to fact check and double check and want proof for everything. So if you don’t have a case study to back it up, don’t put it in there.

Rai Cornell 17:14
It’s much more scrutinized than marketing writing and copywriting.

April White 17:20
So that’s a pretty clear avenue. Media Relations is another clear one where people just, if you can pitch the media and land stories, God bless you, you will always have a job. Because there’s always a need for that. And if there’s a specific industry that you really gravitate towards, if you love sports PR, you love tech PR, you love food and beverage PR. I mean, you can specialize in those things to write and say, Okay, I’m going to be the best media relations person for every single food and beverage brand known to mankind, you can do that and make a go of it. Data is not something that I’ve seen as a full time dedicated role. Research is important, but it tends to fall into the media relations category. So it’d be harder to carve that out as your own niche.

But account management is another thing that people always need, because it is varied in client services. You know, not everybody has the temperament for, or the bedside manner for client services. And, you know, managing clients in PR can be quite tricky, because you don’t have the tangibles that you have with a lot of other forms of marketing. So it is a lot of managing expectations, but doing it in a way that inspires confidence rather than Well, you know, we pitched 100 reporters, and we’ll just see, we don’t have any responses. Yeah, I mean, you can’t quite say that. You can say something like that, but not quite that or it’s gonna freak them out. So you have to be very, very delicate about how you go about explaining, well, we feel really good about this angle, and we’re trying this and you know

Rai Cornell 18:53
Yeah, cos you need the client to know, hey, part of this is out of our control. We’re doing everything you hired us to do. But ultimately, there’s only so much that we have right in our control. There are humans on the other end of this, that we need to do what we want them to do in order for you to get what you want. And, you know, we’re not puppet masters.

April White 19:12
Right, it’s earned. It’s earned media. That’s why they call it earned media. It’s not paid. So you can’t guarantee anything. It’s like being a lawyer, you make the case, but you don’t have any control of whether the jury or the judge outside of making the case goes in your favor. And so you know, you do your best and you put your best foot forward and you give them okay, well, this works for these other 10 clients. So it should work for you as well. And obviously, that’s not quite how you phrase it, it does take a very specific personality to do that well, and then the management side of things too, right? Because it’s difficult to get everybody working in concert together. So orchestra conductor

Rai Cornell 19:59
That’s what I want to ask you more about, the client management versus team management on all the agency things. I’m going to ask you about that right when we get back from those really short break.

Hey, Rai Hyde Cornell here. If you’re tired of doing it all yourself, all on your own, and you want a supportive, high vibe place to call your home, then the archer mastermind is where you belong. This small group program includes monthly business building trainings designed specifically for you and where you are in your business, Chiron counsel group coaching sessions, motivating co working sessions, special ticket prices for retreats in Colorado Springs, Las Vegas, Sedona plus free access to business building week and everything inside the Chiron Academy which includes all of my workshops and courses to help you make massive leaps forward quickly. The Archer mastermind is the ideal place for creative entrepreneurs who are ready to take their businesses seriously and remove roadblocks to success every single day. Early bird pricing is open now through November 30th. And if you’re listening to this after November 30, you can still get in, we open the doors for the Q1/Q2 mastermind cohort on January 1. So check it out, learn more and apply at Chironconsulting.us/mastermind.

All right, we are back with April White of Trust Relations PR agency. So April, we’ve talked about the great conundrum that is PR and whether you should or shouldn’t get into it. And what you really need to know like the nitty gritty of what you need to know if you’re going to enter this very, what’s the word I’m looking for, precarious industry, you know. But on top of all of that you run an agency. And this is one of the ways that you and I initially connected was that we both run agencies. And it’s something that I feel like there’s kind of like this Instagram myth, maybe it’s a more of a LinkedIn myth for people like us in the agency world, but where the outside world is telling freelancers, hey, you’ve only made it, if you have a team, you’ve only made it once you can call yourself an agency, you’ve only become successful when you’re actually hiring people and paying people to do your work for you. And I think that’s a myth. You can be wildly successful as a solopreneur and stay small. But for some people, the agency route is really the right way to go. How did you know for you that the agency route was the right path?

April White 22:53
That’s a good question. Well, I was at a weird tipping point where I was starting to get enough clients that I realized I had to start turning them away, or had to go bigger, and create something. And for me, I had gone freelance because I was frankly, unhappy with the culture of most PR agencies, and just wanted to bounce out and do my own thing and not do that anymore. But I had this moment where I thought, what if I tried to build the thing I wish existed? What if I built an agency that addresses all of those issues, that toxic culture that slave driving mentality, and I actually paid people for everything they did, for every hour, there was good work life balance, there was mutual respect, it was a considerate culture. What if I could do that? I wasn’t quite 40 but I had this moment where it was like, Okay, I’m old enough and wise enough to do this. I think I can pull this off. I thought about it many years before and sort of had this fantasy of it. But honestly and not to say that people at that age don’t have the maturity. But I personally didn’t quite have the personal growth and maturity to pull that off. So I had reached a point where I thought, Okay, let me try to go build the thing I wish existed and the agency that I would want to work for. Yeah. And so for me, it was more of a mission and anything else because I just wanted to see if it was possible to fill a void that I saw.

Rai Cornell 24:37
Yeah. I love that you said that because I 100% agree with you. I think in order to build an agency, you need to have something driving you that’s more than ego. It can’t just be Oh, apparently the world says I’ve only made it once I have a team of X number. So apparently I need to do that. Or it also can’t just be money. Like hey, if I can hire people to do the work underneath me and bring in more clients, I’ll make more money. Because ultimately, yeah, there is kind of like a buffer between how much your revenue increases from being solopreneur to running an agency, but your expenses increase as well. And so there’s only so much more money that you can make before your expenses start kind of outweighing the benefits of the profit. And so if you’re driven by just ego or just money, that’s not going to cut it, you’re not going to last. Really what you need is some kind of underlying mission. And for you that was really writing all the wrongs in the PR world.

For me, it was shitty writers being trained by shitty agencies, and I wanted to train good writers to write even better to serve great clients. Like my thing was like, this writing online is terrible. Oh, my God, I can’t stand it, I have to fix it. So mine was very mission driven too For you, because I feel like a lot of people, especially since COVID, are coming from that agency world thinking, man, maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Maybe I got laid off for good reason. And maybe there’s something better out there. So what were the toxic qualities, and you don’t have to like name names or companies or anything like that. But what are those things that you saw that really needed to be fixed, and that you set your mind to righting in your own agency.

April White 26:25
Yeah, great question. And also, just to build on before I forget what you were saying about, okay, can’t be ego, and it can’t be money. I mean, I will tell you, and full disclosure, I think I was making less the first two and a half years of starting the agency than I did as a freelancer. Because it was all of these expenses that I was putting out and trying to build the thing. So that’s not going to sustain you when you’re working 12 to 16 hour days

Rai Cornell 26:52
And that’s very normal, like you have to pay for the help before the help can actually help you bring in more revenue.

April White 26:58
100%. And that sense of grandiosity is going to disappear after weeks of you know, 12 and 16 hour days. I think it almost has to be like a labor of love or a passion, you know, that there’s this thing you have to give birth to, for the betterment of the world and society. And if you don’t, you’re gonna die. And so if you don’t have that, you’re not going to make it. I’m gonna remember exactly what I was gonna say, What was the last question?

Rai Cornell 27:31
What were the kind of toxic qualities that you saw in the PR world that you really wanted to correct within your own agency?

April White 27:41
Yeah, so there are a bunch of them. There are a lot of problems. One of the problems I saw was that there were a lot of agencies would lean on junior people, not all of them, but a lot of them would lean on people that just came straight out of college, early 20s, mid 20s. And they’re leading giant accounts that they have no business leading. And meanwhile, the senior people are basically just too over promoted, too over bloated, they leave at six and all the young people work until 8 or 10, or 12, or whatever, right. And so there’s a lot of that pushing stuff down and down and down and down. Terrible work life balance of you know, you’re expected to be on call any hour of the day, any day of the week, including weekends. There was a lot of infighting, a lot of competition and crabs in a bucket kind of culture. So a lot of backstabbing, and people all vying for the same promotion, and this feeling of scarcity. So there was this sort of, you know, I’m going to secretly be your friend, or I’m going to be your friend, but secretly not be your friend and, you know, claw you down behind your back. And you won’t find out until your review, when you get anonymous reviews from, you know, eight people that you thought like.

There was a lot of, for some reason, a lot of over promoting of people that were incompetent to senior positions, I still don’t understand why that was happening. And then there was just a lot of permission given for some unknown reason to be hateful and disrespectful to other people within the agency. There was one agency it was kind of like Mean Girls in high school. But it was the corporate professional version. Like, people were a little bit more savvy about doing it, but they were just as awful. I mean, there are definitely some toxic leadership issues with people that were just either had mental health issues or drug abuse issues, or, I mean, all those things I saw more than once. And then suddenly, all that you know, they always say the shit rolls downhill. And so it did. So there was a lot of that. The other thing I didn’t really love was that, for some reason, PR industry has decided that you have to be good at all of the components of PR to be a successful publicist. Meaning you have to be a great writer, you have to be great at Media Relations, you have to be great at account management, you have to be a great client management and budgeting and new business. And some people, yes, are multifaceted and versatile and can do all those things well, but not most

Yeah. That’s like a rare unicorn in the industry

It’s asking a lot of people. And so the other thing that I wanted to do to address that was say, let’s let people do what they’re passionate about. If they love media relations, they don’t want to talk to clients, don’t make them talk to clients. If they love accounts, and budgeting and management, and you know, that’s their jam, and they don’t like to pitch, great, let them do that. Let the other person pitch. And then what happens is when you pair people together, complement each other, then that sense of team and ship is heightened, because it’s like, Oh, thank God, you’re right in that bind, because I would die if I had to do that.

Rai Cornell 31:16
Right. And then it’s no longer pulling each other down. It’s Hey, let me give you a boost. And then from up top, you lift me up

April White 31:22
Oh, thank God, you did that. Thank you so much. You know, I thank God you get that media. Thank you. Thank God, you dealt with a horrible client call behind the scenes because that looked awful. I mean, I think it’s just nice to be able to let people shine where they want to shine. And just go into that. And if there’s an industry they love, let them do that don’t force them to also, well, you have capacity, and we have new clients. So therefore, we smashed you together and hope that you like to trip, you know, pitch triple A, like I don’t know anything about insurance or cars, like why am I, what is that?

Rai Cornell 31:22
Yeah, it’s funny that you say that, because I do the same thing within our agency, I like to pair our writers with the clients that they’re most interested in. And if we end up getting a client, who let’s say so for example, we’re just starting with this new client in July. We’re recording this in June of 2022. And right now, I don’t have any writers on my team who are super passionate about this client’s topic. So guess what, I’m hiring new writers. I don’t want to force someone to write about something that they’re not passionate about. Because then it’s going to be shitty content. They’re going to feel like the work isn’t worth it. It’s just not an equal, what am I trying to say, like monetary exchange for the energy. It’s just not going to work out so don’t force a square peg into a round hole? So what would be your best advice for someone who was thinking about going down the agency route?

April White 32:54
Best advice? Well, let’s see. Like I said before, if you want to start this, A, you have to know what your mission is. And that you’re really passionate about this, I mean, that this is the hill you’re gonna die on. And this is the thing you’re going to not sleep for. And this is the thing that even when you’re extended out on your credit cards, even though you said you would never do that, and you don’t know if you can afford the salary for this person who you brought on, because you lost a client, and you haven’t slept in four days, that you still are gonna want to do it. This is not an easy road to take. This is not for the faint of heart. It’s also not for somebody, to the point I made before, that really, really loves doing the job they’re doing.

So if you are somebody who is still passionate about the industry, and you have as much passion for that as the work itself, and you’re not going to feel like your breath was you know, taken from you because you no longer get to write or you no longer get to pitch media, or you no longer get to fill in the blank, whatever your craft is. If you can live with not doing that, but overseeing people who do it and not get jealous. I mean, maybe you’re even a little burnt out on doing it yourself. But still that’s what you know. And that’s where, you know, you see something in industry that can be done better. I think you’re the right fit. Yeah. But if you really, really love doing what you’re doing, and you’re going to be sad to not do it, don’t do it.

Rai Cornell 34:27
Yeah, you have to go from being the doer to being the leader. And the leader doesn’t do. And so if it’s the doing that you’re passionate about, you really have to question whether agency is right for you. And to your earlier point, you can make a ton of money being a solopreneur or just being a freelancer, and not have all the risk and overhead without running the agency and then having all of that weight of oh my god, they’re 34 other people riding on me to make sure that their jobs aren’t ripped from underneath their feet.

April White 35:04
And I will add, if you don’t like the business side of freelance, which a lot of people don’t, because you have to keep finding yourself clients, and then you have to do the accounting and you have to send them invoices, and you have to chase them for money they didn’t pay, and sometimes you have to sue them. That is going to go from whatever number you’re on a scale of one to 10, let’s say two, that’s going to go straight to an 11. Spinal tap 11. So if you don’t like that, then it’s not for you. But if you love pitching clients, that you love the new business development, and you love marketing, you love, you know, putting yourself out there and tooting your own horn, or tooting the horn on behalf of other people, which is more what it looks like and easier to do, quite frankly, because tooting your horn sucks for anybody. Unless you’re like, you know, a narcissist, but otherwise, but if you like connecting with strangers, and you like selling them, then it’s a great fit, but otherwise, just steer clear. I mean, again, I won’t lie it’s so hard.

Rai Cornell 36:14
It is hard, and on that perfect reality check, where can people check you out, April.

April White 36:19
So you can find me at trust relations dot agency. And also, I put out a TED talk earlier this year that I’m very, very excited about and I think that it’s something that people need to hear. It’s called Is The Fight To Live United Worth It? And so you can find that through actually just do a quick Google search on YouTube and put April White is the fight to live united worth it and

Rai Cornell 36:47
We will put the link in the show notes too

April White 36:49
It’ll pop up but yeah, I’d love for you guys to check it out. And if you think it means something to you, and you think that it’s, you know, something that other people need to hear, please do share it.

Rai Cornell 36:58
Amazing. Thank you so much for being here, April.

April White 37:01
Thank you so much for having me, Rai. Appreciate it.

Rai Cornell 37:16
Hey, Rai here again, thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, please subscribe and rate us in your favorite podcasting platform. Want to be a guest on the show or know someone who has an amazing story of entrepreneurship, apply on our website at chironconsulting.us/podcast.