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ENTERPRISE
From the August 20, 2004 print edition |
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| Printable version (coming soon) |
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| Up a notch |
| Principals at Next Level aim to lift up clients |
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| Doug Campbell |
| The Business Journal Serving the Greater Triad Area |
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| WINSTON-SALEM -- Not long after getting downsized on Halloween day, 2002, Rachel Barron grabbed her cell phone. Within 48 hours, she had two clients -- and public relations firm Next Level Communications had begun. |
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| To Barron, that early success is a direct product of her approach to doing business: treat all customers well and cultivate strong relationships. |
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| "When we went into business for ourselves, our clients already knew that about us," she says. |
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| Barron and Next Level co-owner Bert Woodard have survived almost two years of running their own business, finding it to be at once more excruciating and exhilarating than they had imagined. |
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| They have tackled harrowing bookkeeping chores, opened up an office in Five Points in Winston-Salem and all the while built up a solid roster of clients from the area's base of small and midsize companies. |
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| Clients include janitorial and security firm The Budd Group, retailer Space Savers Inc. and even economic development group Piedmont Triad Partnership. |
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| "At first, not knowing how much money is going to come in each month is worrisome," Woodard says. Adds Barron: "When everything goes well, there's nothing quite so satisfying as owning your own business." |
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| In Next Level, Barron and Woodard are selling themselves. They like being able to tell prospects that there's no chance a junior staffer will be assigned to their account. Except for a small cadre of on-call free lancers, Barron and Woodard are it. |
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| Barron had the name "Next Level" all picked out even before she decided to start the business. She didn't want her own name up in lights, and she didn't want a "nonsense" name that didn't convey what the firm was all about. |
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| "Clients used to come in and say, 'We want you to take us to the next level,'" Barron says. "I wanted a name that means something to people, and Next Level is something that people understand intuitively when they hear it." |
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| Straight up and simple |
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| Clients like The Budd Group started off using Next Level for press releases. Nowadays, the firm also produces the employee newsletter and an online customer newsletter, says Teddy Burriss, vice president with The Budd Group. |
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| "Rachel and Bert do things straight up, simple, and make it happen in a reasonable amount of time for me," Burriss says. "We don't have a big marketing or PR department, so I rely on people like them to do that work for us, and they're a great group." |
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| Barron and Woodard met while working at the former Fyock & Associates PR firm in Winston-Salem, where Barron was Woodard's boss. (Fyock declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2003.) |
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| Both have wide backgrounds in local PR circles. Barron started her career as a reporter at the Winston-Salem Journal before taking on PR duties at Salem Academy, then moving to Fyock. Woodard worked in a variety of roles for Wake Forest University, RJ Reynolds Sports Marketing and Charlotte-based Carolina Blue newspaper before landing at Fyock. |
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| About four months after Barron started Next Level, Woodard agreed to come on board. Together, they bring a wealth of contacts and a similar world view on how to treat them: Be realistic, don't sell PR as a magic bullet that will make instant millionaires. |
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| "We don't overpromise or overcharge," Barron says, "and I think we knew that about each other going in." |
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| Helping get the word out |
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| As for goals, they wouldn't mind hiring another employee, or outsourcing more of their bookkeeping. For now, while Next Level is in its infancy, they are satisfied to keep it the way it is, confident that running their own business is preferable to doing it somebody else's way. |
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| "It's still competitive out there, especially for the bigger accounts," Barron says. "But the economy is picking up. We feel like we've been through the worst." |
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| Barron and Woodard consider media relations their strength. They take time to get familiar with each publication or broadcaster's product and the people who are producing the content. When they pitch stories, they do so with the backing of research that helps them avoid wasting a reporter's time. |
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| Their niche tends to be smaller businesses, the likes of which want to get their name out but lack the in-house expertise to make it happen. With so many larger organizations trimming PR and marketing expenses, the growing small business market has been a boon to Next Level's principals. |
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| "At Fyock, we noticed that a lot of large companies were cutting back on their PR spending, but we were getting a lot of inquiries from small business," Barron says. "A lot of people are displaced and have gone out on their own to start a business, and they need PR help to get going. We've seen a lot of opportunity in that market." |
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| Reach Doug Campbell at (336) 725-1163 or dcampbell@bizjournals.com. |
| © 2004 American City Business Journals Inc. |
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