Initially worked for different PR firms to gain experience and in 2012, aged 23, started her own PR business with nothing but her laptop and tons of passion and creativity. Was the only FTE and now has 4 (Alessandra Pollina)

Feb 17, 2021

In this episode, I interview Alessandra Pollina, the Founder, and CEO of Quotable Media Co (Formerly Pollina PR), a Boston-based public relations, marketing, and media agency with a passion for supporting female entrepreneurs. Alessandra is also the host of Quotable: a female millennial entrepreneur podcast. She works with business owners and entrepreneurs to build their brand and their business through public relations and marketing. 

After studying PR in college, she used her passion for creativity and helping promote businesses to venture into the PR space. She started out by interning for PR agencies to gain the necessary experience and in 2012, aged 23, started her own business. She started out with nothing but her laptop, which was convenient because it meant that she didn't have any overhead costs until she could start hiring. 

Alessandra says the hardest thing in growing a small business is the loneliness of doing things alone and finding the necessary support system, and shares that the one thing she would tell herself on day one of starting out in business is, “Go for the things that scare you first, and make sure that you’re consciously thinking about what that might be, and making sure you’re going towards it” Join me as I take this small business ownership with Alessandra to learn from her wealth of experience. 

This Cast Covers:

• Generating their revenue from promoting small to midsize businesses and offering content in different forms including courses.
• Why every small business owner should have a marketing budget and invest in an expert who can help with their PR.
• Tapping her passion for creativity to build a business in the PR space.
• Gaining the necessary experience from interning for PR agencies and starting her business a year after college.
• Being inspired by the desire to work for herself and the numerous challenges she had to overcome when she became a small business owner.
• Hitting $100,000 with the business before she was 30 and what pushed her to grow it in an agency.
• Providing a great workplace for her team and ensuring that team members can live a life that they love.
• How every small business owner never really feels like they have succeeded because they constantly have bigger and bigger goals.
• Why word-of-mouth marketing is the strongest thing for building a business.
• Dealing with the stress of the changes that a small business owner has to make in their business at different stages.
• Navigating the ups and downs that come with an entrepreneurial journey.
• Loving how being in business enables her to bring opportunities to her team members and clients.
• The importance of every small business owner learning the art of a quick follow-through.
• Open and constant communication: The backbone of building a great culture.
• Constantly struggling with trying to achieve some form of work/life balance.
• A dose of reading constantly to build on her personal development.

Additional Resources:

• Confessions of an Advertising Man By David Ogilvy
• Girl Code By Cara Alwill Leyba
• The Marketing Agency Blueprint By Paul Roetzer
• The BossBabe Podcast

Music from https://filmmusic.io "Cold Funk" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/