Kim Stoddart, founder of PR company Green Rocket, explains how she is improving the industry and why she gives 75 per cent of her profits away.

Explain your business so my mum would understand it.

I run a couple of businesses. The first one Blue Rocket (www.bluerocketgroup.com) is an ethical PR company which works with businesses, social enterprises and charities to build their media profile.

The second is Green Rocket (www.greenrocketgroup.com) which is a Green PR company set up to help green businesses and those with a green product or service, to market their company responsibly and effectively.

Green Rocket is also a social enterprise that gives back 75% of its profits to help to educate people and businesses about the environment.

Why did you start a business in the first place?

Because I was annoyed at how a lot of PR companies charged far too much for doing far too little and that smaller companies often didn’t get the service they deserved.

PR is a highly effective marketing tool for smaller businesses because it can really help them to ‘punch above their weight’, adding much needed validity and fast-track profile building.

I wanted to align my own values with those of my work and to champion the small business sector and make PR far more accessible to it.

What surprised you most about starting up?

How supportive other businesses were and how quickly people understood the benefits of what we were doing. I expected some to think our approach a little controversial, but instead they saw it just makes good business sense, this support has really driven us on these past five years.

Was there anything you would do differently now?

I would have been more vocal from the outset about the benefits of running an ethical business. Knowing what I know now, I could have started talking about this in the press a few years back.

What was your strategy at launch, and have you stuck to it?

Making PR as accessible as possible to as many as possible was always a prime focus. We have stuck to this by further adding to our range of services throughout the years, launching Green Rocket and more recently developing a range of services for social enterprises and charities to enable them to improve the efficiency of their communications.

We are always looking for new things we can be doing to extend or improve our service as well, which is especially important in the current economic climate.

What’s been your biggest hurdle or stumbling block so far?

We got stung a few years back by working with a company that didn’t pay us for our services. They were arranging a big event in Scotland , which they went ahead with, without paying any of the contractors involved. This taught us to be more careful about vetting the organisations we work with in the future. So it was a lesson learnt!

…And your luckiest moment?

Launching Green Rocket at exactly the right time, just after the Stern report came out and finding that the timing helped us to fast track the growth of the business.

Where are you now with the business?

Blue Rocket has just been shortlisted for a PRCA media relations campaign of the year award which is very exciting. We are also working on an ethical business guide in conjunction with Co-Op and the Institute of Business Ethics that is launching in the next month.

Work-wise we are expanding our reach into the social enterprise and charity sector alongside the work we do for businesses of all different types.

With Green Rocket we are looking to help businesses that have developed a green product or service to avoid the greenwash by promoting it responsibly.

What does the future have in store?

Lots of very exciting good things – we are all very entrepreneurial – we just wish there was more time in the day! But I think we are most excited about the range of services that we are introducing in order to make our approach even more accessible to companies.

These new services include a PR starter kit, training for in-house operatives as well as more rounded marketing expertise such as copywriting.

What’s your best piece of advice for someone who’s about to launch?

Think about what you want to achieve through your work, what’s important to you and what kind of lifestyle you would like to have and stick to that original vision. So many people go on to forget why they set up a company in the first place – recording why you are doing this and what is important to you, will help drive your business forward.

Also, aligning your own values with your work is possible and it makes really good business sense as well as enhancing your sense of personal satisfaction through your business. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough!

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By LaunchLab.co.uk  on   Nov 11,2008

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Keywords

PR    start-up    marketing    communications    late payment   

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