Working with Professionals

When to hire a PR person, a freelancer, a designer, or a photographer; what to ask; and how to read the reports they hand you.

Sooner or later you may want help. The workload grows, a specialty skill is needed, or you simply want someone with fresh eyes. Hiring a professional can be one of the best moves a small room makes, and one of the most expensive mistakes. The difference is rarely the quality of the person. It is whether you knew what you were buying, how you would know it was working, and what you would do if it wasn’t. Good help can save months of trial and error. Poor help can take money, time, and accounts you can’t easily get back.

This chapter is written from the buyer’s side. It doesn’t tell you whom to hire, because the right person depends on your town, your budget, and your goals. It tells you how to decide whether to hire at all, what kinds of help exist, what to ask in the first conversation, how to write a scope that can be measured, and how to read the reports you receive. If you have followed this book, you have an advantage that most small businesses lack: a baseline, a scoreboard, and a way to test. Use them to hold the work to account, fairly. That advantage also makes you a better client, because a professional who can see your numbers can do better work for you.

One more point of honesty. The author of this series works as a PR strategist, so there is an obvious interest in recommending professional help. Weigh this chapter with that in mind. Much of what a small room needs can be done in-house, and the best professional will often say so. The aim is not to send you shopping, but to make you a good client when you do. At the end you’ll find a Hire-or-Not worksheet to take into any conversation. The aim is the same as the rest of the book: spend where the evidence says it pays, and be honest about what you know.

PR TACTIC: The Scope Sentence

What it is: Before you sign anything, write one sentence: “For [cost], over [time], this person will deliver [things], and we will know it worked if [number] moves from [baseline] to [target].”

Why it works: If you can’t finish the sentence, you’re buying hope. If the professional won’t help you finish it, that tells you something.

Try this: Write the sentence for the help you are considering, and show it to the professional as the first question.

40.1 Do You Need to Hire at All?

Start with the problem, not the person. What is the number that is stuck, and where in the funnel? If the leak is at the second visit, a publicist won’t fix it, because the problem is inside the room. If the trouble is that nobody outside your circle has heard of you, outside help may be worth considering. Ask three questions. Do we have the skill in-house? Do we have the time? And is this a one-off project or an ongoing need? Skills you lack and need once, such as a logo or a set of photographs, are best bought as projects. Skills you need steadily and have time for are best learned. A simple test helps. Write down the result you want, using a number from your scoreboard. Then ask whether anyone in the room could produce it with a few more hours, a little training, or a clearer plan. If the answer is yes, try that first. If the answer is no, you have a reason to hire, and a number to judge the hire by.

Be honest about the cost of your own hours. If you spend ten hours a week on something a freelancer would do in four, and you value your hours at the rate you’d pay a bartender to cover your shift, the freelancer may cost less than you think. But if the work needs your voice or your knowledge of the room, hours spent briefing may erase the saving. Use the cost-per-regular logic from Chapter 32 to compare: what does the same result cost in-house, counting time, and what would it cost bought? Include the cost of choosing, briefing, and managing the person, which people often forget. Count the cost of switching, too. Bringing someone in means sharing passwords, explaining the room, and reviewing their work. Letting them go means taking those things back. If the engagement is short, those costs can be a large share of the total.

Consider whether the real need is capacity or judgment. Capacity is more hands: someone to post, to answer messages, to book the photographer. Judgment is a better plan: someone to look at your room and say what to do. Capacity is easier to buy and to measure. Judgment is rarer and more valuable, and a one-time consultation with a strong adviser can be worth more than months of ongoing service. Know which you are shopping for. Many small rooms discover that what they needed was a single afternoon with someone who had seen it all, plus a plan they could carry out themselves. A strong adviser will often recommend fewer things than you expected. That is usually a good sign. Write the result you want down before any calls, so the conversation starts from your goal rather than from what the professional happens to sell.

40.2 The Kinds of Help

A PR professional or agency helps with strategy, messaging, press relations, and sometimes reputation and crisis work. Their value is judgment and contacts. Ask how they measure results and what they’ll do that you can’t. A freelancer might handle social media, email, writing, or event promotion, usually for a monthly fee or by the project. Their value is capacity and craft. A designer creates a logo, posters, menus, and a visual identity as covered in Chapter 9. A photographer or videographer produces the images that your content and press depend on. Each is a different purchase, with a different way to judge success. For each kind of help, the scope and the measure differ. A PR professional might be measured by placements and what followed them, a social freelancer by guests from content and hours saved, a designer by whether the look is used consistently and recognized, and a photographer by whether the images are used and bring proof. Decide the measure before you hire. For a small room, the first hire is often not a PR firm but a photographer for one good evening, because good images feed every other channel for a year.

Other helpers sit alongside. A web developer or site builder, a bookkeeper or CPA who can calculate margin, an attorney for contracts, permits, and privacy, and a consultant for strategy or training. Don’t overlook non-professional help: a student intern, a skilled regular who loves the room, a local business association. These can be excellent, but they need as clear a scope as a paid person, and a favor that goes wrong costs a friendship. Treat them with the same respect for time and the same clarity about what is expected, and thank them well. Free help from friends and regulars can be the best help of all, because they know the room. Give them the same written brief you’d give a professional, and be clear about who owns the work and the accounts. A regular who runs your page as a favor and then moves away shouldn’t take the page with them.

Match the help to the stage of the funnel and the stage of your room. A new room benefits most from a clear identity and the basics of being findable, covered in Chapters 9 and 13. An established room with a leak might benefit from a consultant who can look at the whole funnel. A room facing a crisis needs a calm professional quickly, and Chapter 18 recommended identifying one before you need them. Whatever you choose, be wary of anyone who promises results that depend on things outside their control, such as going viral or guaranteed press. Good professionals promise effort, process, and honest reporting. Also be wary of anyone who wants long access to your accounts with little reporting. Ask for regular updates and keep the passwords yourself.

QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK

“How do I find good help?” Ask rooms, bands, and businesses you respect who they’ve used, and look at the work. A recommendation from someone in your trade is worth more than an ad.

“Should I pay by the month or by the project?” Projects suit things with a clear end, such as a logo or a photo shoot. Monthly fees suit ongoing work, and should come with monthly reporting against agreed numbers.

“What if they ask for my numbers?” Share totals and rates. Hold back personal data until a written agreement covers it.

40.3 The First Conversation: What to Ask

Treat the first conversation as an interview in both directions. Ask for examples of work for similar businesses, and ask to speak to a past client. Ask what the person would do in the first thirty days, and how they will learn your room. Ask how they measure results, and listen for specifics. Ask what they would need from you, in time and information. Ask what has gone wrong with past clients, and how they handled it. A professional who can describe a failure calmly is usually more trustworthy than one who has never had one. And ask what they would not do for you, since the best advisers say no to some things. Call the past client. Ask what the person did, how they communicated, what changed in the business, and whether they would hire them again. Ask what they wish they had known before starting. A past client’s hesitation is often more informative than their praise. Write their answers down as they speak, and read them back at the end of the call to make sure you heard them right.

Offer your own information. Share your baseline, your goal, and your scorecard, and see how the person responds. Someone who is interested in your numbers, who asks what a regular is worth and how you count first-timers, is thinking about your business. Someone who talks about impressions and buzz without asking, may be selling what they sell to everyone. Be especially careful about anyone who proposes metrics that you cannot connect to a decision, as Chapter 21 warned. If they offer followers, reach, or advertising equivalency, ask what it will mean for the second-visit rate. Share your numbers carefully. Give totals and rates, not lists of guests or personal details, until there is a written agreement that covers confidentiality and data handling. Chapter 35 applies to the people you hire as much as to anyone else.

Watch for warning signs. Pressure to sign quickly. Vague promises. Long contracts with no way out. Fees tied only to impressions or posts. Refusal to put the scope in writing. Claims of guaranteed press or reviews, which brush against the rules on fake reviews described in Chapter 35. A reluctance to share who will actually do the work. Also watch for good signs: clear questions, honest caveats, a short trial, a plan for handover, and a willingness to be measured. Trust your sense of whether the person likes your kind of place. A professional who doesn’t understand why people dance on Thursday nights will have trouble selling it. End the first conversation by asking what they’d need from you in the first week. A good answer is specific: access to certain accounts, a list of contacts, a tour on a busy night. A vague answer is a warning. Take notes during the call and compare them with what appears in the proposal. Promises that vanish between the call and the paper are worth asking about.

40.4 Scope, Contract, and Fair Measurement

Write the scope so that anyone could check it. List the deliverables: the number of posts, the photographs, the press pitches, the plan, and the dates. List what you will provide, and by when. State how the work will be measured, using the numbers from your scoreboard, and fix the baseline in writing before the work starts. Agree how often you’ll meet, how results will be reported, and what happens if a target is missed. A good contract protects both sides. It sets clear terms for payment, ownership of the work, use of your name and images, confidentiality, and ending the arrangement. The scope sentence at the top of the chapter is the heart of it. If the professional can’t agree to a sentence like that, or wants to leave the measure vague, ask why. Sometimes the reason is fair, such as press that takes longer to land. Sometimes it means they’re not confident the work will show a result.

Prefer a short start. A three-month trial with a review at day thirty, sixty, and ninety, as in Chapter 38, shows how the person works before you commit more. Pay for effort and deliverables, and where it’s fair and possible, link a part of the fee to a result that the person can influence. Be careful with results-based fees: they can encourage corners to be cut, such as buying followers or pushing guests for reviews. Avoid anything that rewards a number you can’t verify. Ask who owns the accounts, the passwords, the photographs, and the lists, and make sure you do. You should always be able to walk away with your own assets. Trials also protect the professional. A short engagement with clear checkpoints lets both sides see whether the fit is right before either commits to more, and ends cleanly if it isn’t. At the end of the trial, sit down with the numbers and the professional together, and decide in the same meeting whether to continue, change the scope, or stop.

Keep a fair standard. Judge the work by what was in the scope and by the numbers you agreed. Don’t blame the person for things beyond their control, such as the weather or a flooded road, and don’t excuse them for things within it. Allow time: a press effort or a reputation repair may take longer than ninety days to show. But don’t accept “it takes time” for work that should already show signs. Use the same tools as for any tactic: a prediction, a comparison, a count, and a decision. Professionals who are good will welcome that. They want credit for what they did, and a clear measure gives it to them. Keep every report and every invoice in one folder, with the dates and the scope. At renewal time, the folder shows exactly what was promised, what was delivered, and what it cost.

WHAT YOU SHOULD ALWAYS OWN

Accounts: website, domain name, map listing, social profiles, email tool, and ticketing. You hold the main login and the recovery email.

Lists: every contact list, with the consent records.

Files: logos, photos, videos, and design files, with written permission for the uses you need.

Records: the logs and reports, in a form you can open without the professional’s tools.

If any of these sit in someone else’s name, fix it now, while relations are good.

40.5 Reading the Reports

Reports can illuminate or obscure. A good report is short and answers four questions: what did we do, what happened to the numbers we agreed on, what did we learn, and what do we do next? Be wary of a report that is long on activity and short on results: pages of posts and impressions, with no mention of first-timers or returns. Activity is not progress. Ask for every figure to come with its comparison and its count, as in Chapter 34, and for the definitions to be written down. If a figure is an estimate, it should say so. Ask for raw numbers, not only charts. A chart can make a small change look large by how the axis is drawn. A table of counts by week, with the baseline beside it, is harder to misread.

Check what the numbers mean. Reach and impressions describe how often something was shown, not whether anyone came. Followers don’t equal guests. Open rates have been distorted by privacy features, as Chapter 21 explained. Press mentions vary from a feature in a major paper to a listing on a calendar, and counting them as equal misleads, as Chapter 28 showed. Advertising value equivalency, which prices coverage as if it were an ad, is widely criticized as a measure, so treat it with caution. Always ask: how does this connect to a person walking through the door? If a report includes advertising value equivalency, ask for it to be removed and replaced with what the coverage did. Chapter 28 explains why it has fallen out of favor among measurement professionals.

Check the report against your own numbers. If the professional says the campaign brought 40 first-timers, look at your how’d-you-hear cards and door tally. If they disagree, ask why, calmly. There may be a good explanation, such as guests who named a friend but saw the post. If there isn’t, raise it. The point is not to catch anyone out, but to make sure you’re looking at the same room. Then decide as you would for any tactic: keep, fix, or kill. Renew the arrangement only if the evidence supports it, and set the next scope with what you have learned. If you end the arrangement, ask for a handover: the accounts, the files, the logs, and a short note of what was learned. A professional who leaves you better informed than they found you has done good work, even if the numbers were modest.

TRY THIS WEEK

If you’re considering help, fill in the Hire-or-Not worksheet before any call. If you already have help, ask for a one-page report this month with every figure beside its baseline and count, and check one figure against your own door cards.

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR ANY REPORT

1. Which numbers did we agree to watch, and where are they?

2. What were they before the work started, and what is their normal swing?

3. How was each one counted, and has that changed?

4. Does this match what our door cards, register, and staff saw?

5. What should we do differently next month, and why?

If a report can’t answer these, ask for a version that can.

THE CHAPTER IN SIX LINES

Decide whether you need capacity or judgment before you hire.

Write the scope sentence with a number and a baseline.

Call a past client and listen for hesitation.

Start with a short trial and checkpoints.

Own every account, list, and file yourself.

Read reports for counts, baselines, and decisions, not activity.

CASE STUDY

Six Hundred a Month (Composite)

Ferris owns a dancehall and hires a freelancer for three months at $600 a month to run social media and email. Before starting, he writes the baseline: 24 first-timers a month and a thirty-day return rate of 33%. This is a composite, and all figures are illustrative.

Step 1 — Cost. 3 × $600 = $1,800, plus about 6 hours of his own time for briefing and review.

Step 2 — First-timers. Over three months he sees 90 first-timers. The baseline expectation is 24 × 3 = 72. The lift is 90 − 72 = 18 extra first-timers.

Step 3 — Cost per extra first-timer. $1,800 ÷ 18 = $100.

Step 4 — Returners. 33% of 90 is about 30 returners. The baseline would give 72 × 33% = about 24. The extra returners are about 30 − 24 = 6, so the cost per extra returner is $1,800 ÷ 6 = $300. With a regular worth about $176 in margin (Chapter 32), the three months did not pay back on returns alone.

Step 5 — Decision. The freelancer’s work was solid and the posts brought first-timers, but the second visit did not move. He doesn’t renew the same scope. He fixes the welcome in-house, then offers a smaller retainer for clip editing only, with a new target. The counts are small, so he calls the result a lead, not proof.

REAL TALK

From the owner’s office:

The best money I spent was an afternoon with a consultant who looked at my room and told me what to stop. The worst was six months of a monthly report I never read. Now I ask for one page and a number.

HEADS UP

Hiring help creates legal, tax, and contract questions. Whether someone is an employee or an independent contractor is a legal question with tax consequences in Texas and under federal law. Contracts should address payment, ownership of work, use of names, images, and music, confidentiality, and termination. Photographers and designers hold copyrights unless a contract says otherwise. Paying for reviews or press, or asking a professional to post reviews as guests, can break platform rules and consumer-protection law. This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Ask a licensed Texas attorney and a CPA before signing any agreement, and see Appendix J.

THE HIRE-OR-NOT WORKSHEET

Fill this in before the first call. If you can’t answer the first four, you’re not ready to hire.

Fill in: Help being considered, Date, Decided with.

• 1. The stuck number Which number is stuck, at which funnel stage? Write its baseline and swing.
• 2. Capacity or judgment? Do you need more hands, or a better plan? Could it be learned or done in-house?
• 3. The cost of doing it yourself Hours per month × the value of your hours. Include the cost of briefing and managing a hire.
• 4. The scope sentence “For ____, over ____, this person will deliver ____, and we will know it worked if ____ moves from ____ to ____.”
• 5. Questions for the first call Examples of similar work, a past client to call, the first thirty days, how results are measured, what they would not do.
• 6. Terms to settle in writing Deliverables, dates, who owns accounts and files, use of your name, confidentiality, how to end.
• 7. The check-in plan Days 30, 60, 90: the numbers you’ll look at and the decision you’ll make. (Hire / Not yet / Do in-house)

MEASURE IT

The number: Cost per extra returner for any hired help: total cost divided by the returners above what the baseline would have produced.

By hand: Add the fees and your own time. Count first-timers during the engagement and subtract the baseline for the same weeks. Take returners within thirty days and subtract baseline first-timers × baseline return rate. Divide cost by extra returners. Example: $1,800 ÷ (30 − 24) = $300.

Watch out: Reports full of reach and followers are activity, not progress. Fix the baseline in writing before work starts. Small counts are leads. Beware of fees that reward numbers you can’t verify.

Go deeper: Chapter 21 (why measurement fails), Chapter 32 (the money), and Chapter 38 (ninety-day checkpoints).

ROLE BOX

• Owner: Write the scope sentence, fix the baseline in writing, and review the work at days thirty, sixty, and ninety.
• Booker: Be a good client to acts’ managers and agents: clear terms, fast settlement, and honest numbers.
• Musician: Before you hire a publicist, photographer, or designer, write the scope sentence and own every file.
• Bartender: Ask the owner what help is available for your content, and offer your log and numbers as the brief.
• Dance Teacher: Hire help for what you can’t teach yourself, such as video or bookkeeping, and keep control of your students’ list.

TALK ABOUT IT

• What problem would you hire help for? Is it capacity or judgment?
• What would you want written in the scope so that anyone could check it?
• What is the cheapest way to test whether outside help would work before you commit?