How five years has flown by.
When we switched on our laptops to start Agent Public Relations back in 2013, little did we know how quickly half a decade would fly past.
Research shows that four in ten small companies don’t make it five years.
Small business survival rates are as high as 91 per cent after one year of trading, but after five years, just four in ten small businesses will still be trading.
Looking at the stats, information and communication-based businesses and retailers have the highest new business survival rates after one year, with businesses in the health and education sectors faring the best longer-term with more than half launched still trading after five years.
Our client spread has featured many of these sectors since we started. We now have retailers, education and health experts, property developers and professional services – but what we really have is a great group of contacts and friends who really like and respect what we do.
Clients who have become friends, media connections that we can rely on and creative thoughts that helps to bring column inches in print, online headlines and messages across the airwaves meaning we can continue to make sure that they are our priority every day.
Did I ever see myself as an entrepreneur? I suppose I’d seen flourishes in my past. Now working for ourselves and launching a small business has become a rewarding career option.
We direct the culture of our company and by being in the driver's seat, we make the decisions on how best to steer our company - whether that means the type of clients we want, how best to operate day-to-day and when and where we work. We are lucky to sit next to our pets while we work most days!
There's no question that owning your own business is a risky proposition. But, with risk comes reward. You learn quickly about the different challenges, but the benefits are many.
We have learnt to recognise good opportunities from bad ones, how to create exit strategies for bad situations and how to maximize the good ones. The most fun is to work on an idea with a client and watch the media snap it up and see the client revel in the response.
We do try to be creative and learn something new. The great thing about owning a small business is that we rarely experience the same day twice. Whether it’s something about finance and accounting, new communication methods and platforms, client requirements and even new words in the English language.
The most important factor is that we really love our work and have fun in what we're doing. We move quickly and get things done, are proactive and our USP of having two senior staff means we don’t delegate work to junior staff which means the high standards are maintained.
We thrive on dealing one-on-one with our best clients and we have a real sense of pride in what we have established and built over time with our ability, ideas and effort.
Our clients are interested in us and our story, but our message to them is - it’s about you, not us!
We work with the media to place news stories about our clients and as a reputable PR company, we work with individual journalists to raise awareness of businesses, key individuals within organisations and to position those individuals as experts within any given business sector. This is our bread and butter and it is an element of public relations that we excel at - gaining strong media coverage for all of our clients.
Forming a crucial part of PR strategy, Agent Public Relations has looked after the reputations of clients on a national level through the darkest of times and can handle all aspects of crisis communications from strategy through to internal communications and managing the media so that you can get on with running the business. If crisis PR is what you need - you will not find a more experienced team in the Sheffield/South Yorkshire region.
Agent Public Relations has been pioneering the use of digital and social media within public relations strategies for many years. As part of our PR remit, we offer content creation and delivery, consultancy and management on all aspects of digital and social media. If you need a website, video content or social media services, we can help you to find the right platforms, remove the workload from your business and make best use of digital media.
Generating grammatically correct copy which reads well and has appropriate ‘tone of voice,’ is a forgotten consideration for many companies. As PR professionals - from websites to brochures, speeches to Chairman’s statements, awards submissions to newsletters, Agent Public Relations can deliver fast, efficient copywriting to support your business, whatever the sector.
Agent Public Relations was established in 2013 by Abby Worsnip and Iain Greenhalgh with the aim of bringing national public relations or PR values to a regional client base covering Sheffield, South Yorkshire, North Derbyshire and beyond.
Our PR expertise comes from connecting with businesses and journalists and understanding the best way to raise, protect and maintain the profile of our clients. Our past experience in journalism, central government, in-house and agency public relations roles combined with our trade qualifications in journalism and digital media is unmatched in Sheffield and South Yorkshire.
We deliver dynamic strategic communications support and activity to deliver proven results, ranging from the management of national crisis situations, to proactive social media messaging and traditional media relations.