Red Balloon Relations: The Two-year Truths
Laura Melanson // April 17, 2012
On Monday, April 16th, Red Balloon Relations turned two. A company I started on my own, on a whim, is still standing. Better yet, it’s thriving.
I could tell you that this milestone looks exactly as I hoped it would. That I always dreamed I’d make it here. But that wouldn’t be true. When I was sitting in PR class, or in my office in the years that followed, my daydreams were rarely about entrepreneurship. In fact, I don’t think they ever were.
The truth is that I started Red Balloon out of desperation. I no longer wanted the job I had and none of the ones I’d seen advertised seemed to suit me either. I wanted to like my job, and the people and workplace culture around it, so I simply decided that I’d create my own and see what happened.
I didn’t plot Red Balloon in the corners of my mind for months, waiting until the time was right. I quit my job after I wrapped a big project, because it felt like the right decision for me to make, and I started Red Balloon over the six weeks that followed. That’s it. I simply took it one step at a time, one day at a time.
I didn’t fret about how to “define what I do” or how to “distinguish myself in an already saturated market”. I simply believed that my reputation was strong enough to speak for itself, that I would figure it out and that even in this PR-heavy city, there was room for quality. And for the most part, I was right.
Getting started was easy. I had some reasonably well-connected contacts (some CEOs and Board chairs among them), a resume jam-packed with performance highlights, and had most recently worked on a very recognizable project (Bust a Move).
Beyond that, I had a lot of bus tickets, room on my line of credit, and a wide-open calendar that I filled with about 40 coffee meetings over a three-month period. All in, start up cost me about $4,000 (including those “on me” coffees), with my biggest expense being a new laptop.
I wasn’t scared, not even a little, and I didn’t doubt myself, not once. I simply knew I could do it, believed I was worth it, and was willing to work for it. Failing wasn’t an option for me; it never has been. I didn’t need to talk myself out of anything or silence my negativity with scripted self-talk. I trusted.
For 16 months, my confidence (and maybe my naivety or stupidity) held strong. But then I encountered the biggest challenge: keeping momentum and settling in.
When I couldn’t play the “new kid” card anymore, the novelty of hiring me had mostly passed, and my 8-10 most supportive clients had already spent a lot of money with Red Balloon over the last several months, I hit a dry spell.
I was struggling to secure enough work to sustain three people (after having Colette O’Hara and Ben Boudreau come on board – a story that warrants a separate article of its own). I was trying to solve sales challenges with marketing solutions (an easy mistake for a PR person to make, by the way). I was questioning Red Balloon’s position in the market, which is the fancy way of saying I spent a lot of time thinking about questions that didn’t matter much. I also thought the extra “structure” of having three people meant we needed more “structure” around everything we did and thought. I was wrong.
All that really matters when you own a business that sells services is selling your services.
Both my mind and my to do list were cluttered with the wrong things. Both the money and the room on my line of credit basically ran out. And my perseverance and confidence faltered, which was perhaps the most upsetting part of it all.
Now, months later, things look dramatically different, yet again. New clients, challenging projects, a growing reputation, and that familiar sense of confidence.
The best part is that Red Balloon has grown into a business that lets me just be*, to the point that I don’t need to “put on my brand” in the morning or worry about how clients are perceiving me. It also enables me to do the work I like best: creating ideas, plans, and words. When I’m lost in the zone of wordsmithing or brainstorming, I’m happy. And I’m happy a lot these days.
The last two years have been nothing if not unpredictable. And if I could do it all over again, I would. I believe all mistakes can be learned from and that valuable meaning can be found in even shitty situations. For that reason, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Two years ago I quit my job and started a business, and I haven’t regretted it a day since.
*If MSVU ever wants to offer a course on that, I’d be delighted to teach it!
To find out more about Red Balloon Relations, take a gander at their website.
