Christian Cerisola

Name:

Christian Cerisola

Business:

Quay2 Media

Web site:

www.quay2media.com

Years in business:

1.5

Number of businesses:

1

I think there was a sense of fear between myself and my business partner, Antonia, about taking the leap of faith that is setting up your own business. But we felt safer in the knowledge that we were doing it together; that there’s someone else in your shoes who’s thinking the same way.

I moved to the North East six years ago and joined a Newcastle-based PR company. It was while I was there that I met Antonia and we spent a lot of time together working on various accounts and we realised that we worked very well together.

We realised that we both harboured the same ambitions to run our own PR agency, but we also both had the same fears so it seemed an obvious solution to both of us that we would hold each other’s hands through the process.

We’ve both got young families so there were all these sorts of things running through our minds like ‘what if it all goes wrong?’ There were a million reasons why we shouldn’t do it. The hard bit was actually to say yes, let’s make this commitment, let’s go ahead and do it.

When we did, it felt like a huge relief because we were able to carry out our passion and enthusiasm on something that we had created ourselves.

I think you need to ignore the many, many reasons why you think you shouldn’t do it and go for those one or two reasons why you think you should.

I think that was the thing that nearly stopped me, but I hate to think that I almost didn’t go for it and not done what we’re actually doing now, looking back at what we’ve achieved over the past eighteen months is staggering.

Antonia and I have got lots of experience in PR and media and we’ve seen people do things that we wouldn’t have done. We had our own ideas of what we wanted to be as an agency.

So we put ourselves in the shoes of our clients and looked at how we would want to be treated. We thought there was a niche in the market for us to be just an honest company and work for clients that a) really wanted to help their own profiles grow and b) were enjoyable to work with – because there’s nothing worse than going into your office and dreading the day ahead!

We, in effect, wanted to be masters of our own destiny and do things that we loved to do with people who shared our passion.

There are clients that we’ve turned away and said “you don’t need PR, you need something else,” and as a new business that sounds ridiculous. But we wouldn’t be honest to ourselves if we were to take on clients regardless of their situation or regardless of their needs.

There’s been one or two occasions where our instincts have maybe told us that some particular individuals or companies might not be the greatest people to work with. And we’d take them on only to find out later that our instincts proved to be right.

We’ve learned from that though. It was a lesson for ourselves really in that we were right to say, “Let’s trust our instincts”. On the rare occasions that we questioned whether we really wanted to work with a particular person, they’re the occasions that have turned out to have been most troublesome.

We stand by being honest and very, very open with our clients on what will work and what won’t. I hate the idea that Quay2 became a company that simply carried our client’s requests.

We’re consultants as well so we’ll not only plan and advise what their PR campaign should be but we execute that as well and guide them through that process. I think there’s lots out there who may just chase the dollar and, in their hearts, not really believe that there is a PR requirement for that particular client.

There were various routes where we got help from in terms of start up costs. We got some assistance from Building Up Business and we also had some conversations with Business Link.

Lots of our clients are entrepreneurs as well. Their experiences, both good and bad, are really helping us. There are many individuals out there who have spent many years in business and have learnt by their mistakes and they’re happy to give us that advice.

Our door is always open to more advice; there are a lot of smart people in the North East who can really tell you about the pitfalls of running your own business.

We started on day one with zero clients: we had no commitments from anybody and nothing on paper. We thought, “what are we going to do?”

But then the phone rang and it was one of the people that we’d been speaking to about our new organisation. From there, things started to move very quickly. We built the business on the basis that we would treat our clients well and do a great job for them.

What we didn’t expect was for our clients to be so vociferous in their support of us. They talked to their colleagues and clients about us and we’ve won so much business off the back of just doing a good job for them. The business has been able to grow in that way and it’s surprising to us how successful that has actually been.

In a strange way, the business has actually liberated my lifestyle. Antonia and I have both got young daughters and I think there’s this sense of guilt with your employer if you have to dash home if your child’s ill or if you have to take your child to school.

If you have to ignore the wishes of your children to do what you need to do at work, there’s definitely a sense of guilt that way too. It’s a lose-lose. That’s stopped now because Antonia and I totally understand that families have different needs from you than the business does.

Because we’re honest with our clients, they know our situation. The bottom line is, we work when we choose to. Their work is always done, it’s just that it might be at odd time of the day or night. That means that we can combine a great family life with trying to establish a new business.

I think it’s because of having that freedom that we can enjoy our work so much more; we enjoy the time we spend with our clients and spending time on raising their profile and the job that we do for them is incredibly fulfilling.

The great relationships we’ve got with our clients, seeing them in the media, the fact that so many of them are willing to refer us to their clients – all those things give me a buzz.

But sometimes just sitting in the office, taking a step back and thinking about the gut wrenching fear we had the night before we started, to see what we’ve got now with two members of staff; it’s just a really satisfying feeling.

We found our members of staff fairly fortuitously. The first, Kirsty, was actually made redundant from her previous position and a colleague of mine who knew we were on the hunt for staff recommended her to us.

I don’t think we really knew what we wanted in terms of our first member of staff but we invited her in for a chat and very quickly Antonia and I realised what we wanted because she helped us shape that. We realised we wanted somebody like Kirsty.

Secondly, Paula was actually a recommendation from another PR company. We were talking to them about our requirements for a general office manager to take on administrative duties.

We want to continue to grow the business, but doing it in such a way that doesn’t jeopardise my or Antonia’s or our staff’s future.

We’ve got some fantastic foundations now, it would be foolish of us to then start getting greedy and start going back on what our promises were to each other about keeping this as an honest business, and keeping this as a business that means we can mix having success with our clients and sharing that with our young families.

There’s such a great vibrancy in the North East at the moment. In a strange way, the business community is vast, but small at the same time, so I think when you do a good job lots of people get to hear about it.

I think in order to be successful you’ve got to be very honest with yourself and very honest with those around you. You also need to be able to listen and take on board the advice of the people you’re with.

That’s another thing that’s blown us away; the amount of people who’ve been willing to help us along the way (even so-called competitors telling us about great members of staff!). That sort of stuff I really didn’t expect, so it’s being open with people who want to help you, and not shut yourself away and think that you’re on your own because you’re absolutely not.

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