Adam Bannister: How did you end up setting up your own PR agency?
Wendy Richmond: I went freelance in 2001 and never looked back. When I set up Yellow Bicycle it was a natural extension of what I was doing as a freelance – I was just making it into a company, rather than it just being about me.
AB: You work from home at the moment. Did it make a big difference not having to cover the costs of leasing or buying premises?
WR: Yeah, and there aren’t that many overheads anyway, so I just used my savings from previous employment to finance the business.
I’m a specialist in the sense that I like to help grow businesses
AB: What personnel does the company have apart from you?
WR: I draft people in depending on the workload and what clients need.
I don’t employ anybody directly. I’m due to have a baby so I’ve put my clients under the care of a fantastic person called Veronica, who has been working with me for the past three months, and I hope she will work with me in the future. She is exactly the type of person I tend to bring in on jobs – someone with a lot of experience.
Lots of really talented PR people do not want to work with agencies anymore. They want better lifestyle choices.
It is quite demanding working in an agency all the time, and people want flexibility – which is what freelancing can bring you. And that is why I did it: getting that long-desired work-life balance that everyone talks about.
It’s very common to find very good PR people who work for themselves, but still enjoy working together in a collaborative way. That is kind of how Yellow Bicycle works as well.
AB: We often ask entrepreneurs whether a perceived gap in the market was the driving factor in starting a business. But it seems that you spotted a gap in the PR labour market – and attracting the best staff is especially important in your business…
WR: From a personal point of view, this is something I wanted to do, but I knew a lot of people out there also didn’t want the traditional set-up anymore.
The other thing is – although I don’t think this is particularly new – you get lots of specialist agencies in PR. And I guess I’m a specialist in the sense that I like to help grow businesses – those that have just started dabbling in PR or are just about to move to the next stage of their marketing; SMEs that are established for a few years and want to take the next step.
AB: Getting those first few customers is often the hardest part of starting a business. Were you confident that after eight years in the industry you had the right contacts to set up on your own?
