What about the ‘s’?

When I first started talking with my mom about joining/taking over Taylor’d Communication, I knew my assumption of ownership would really be in name only, since she had already been phasing out her clients (and because I don’t live in the same city). But then the question became whether I would actually even fully take over the business name. Or, more accurately, whether I would take over the full business name.

Here’s the thing: I didn’t want the ‘s.’

Mom’s business name was Taylor’d Communications–originally, Custom Taylor’d Communications, actually–and I am of the mind that “communication” should not be pluralized in this context. So, I wanted to rename the business Taylor’d Old Taylor'd Comm logoCommunication. My mom didn’t say much about this subtle change. My dad thought the change was unnecessary and silly. My college communication professor would be thinking of a way to give me mucho extra credit points (never mind that I graduated 15 years ago…and that the professor has long been retired).

Of the tidbits of wisdom I gleaned from my Rockhurst University education (go Hawks!), Dr. Weslynn Martin’s insistence that the misuse of “communications” should be punishable by jail time was one lesson I think of often. As a professor of communication, Dr. Martin was a stickler about this issue, and, as a student of communication, I followed suit.

Indeed, there are conflicting schools of thought about whether the ‘s’ is appropriate when referring to the realms of public relations and marketing and the like. But, among topical experts, the prevailing opinion is that use of the ‘s’ in this context is inaccurate. The basic understanding about the distinction is this: “communication” refers to the method of conveying messages and “communications” refers to conduits and systems, such as telephone lines and internet cables. So, as much as I love to gab on the phone and play around on the internet, I am decidedly not a “communications” gal. I am, however, a “communication” gal.

To refer to this topic as ‘hotly debated’ may be a bit of an overstatement, but it’s certainly not something that everyone agrees on, even among those who are entrenched in the communication profession. Indeed, I know of several very reputable PR and mar/comm agencies, led by wonderfully capable executives, whose business names include “Communications.” And to each her own, of course.

But for me, I’m sticking with the non-‘s’ version in my business name. Mostly because I want my parents to feel like all that TaylordCommunicationmoney they shelled out for my undergraduate education resulted in at least one nugget of knowledge on which I stand firm. (Now, the issue of ending a sentence with a preposition is another topic entirely…)

What is your opinion about the ‘s’ vs. no ‘s’ issue?

[Giving extra credit where extra credit is due: Thank you to Dr. Pete Bicak, my college advisor and favorite Rockhurst professor, for refreshing my memory on Weslynn Martin’s name when I emailed him yesterday. Hey, a gal can’t be expected to always remember both the class lessons and the name of the person who taught it to her!]

A quarter of a century

If you’ll indulge me for just a moment here, I’d like to brag about my mom for just a second. OK, well maybe for more than a second…I’m not exactly known for my brevity. And especially when it comes to celebrating someone who is just so fantastically deserving of praise.

In 1989, my mom, Judy Taylor, founded the world-famous (um, not an exaggeration…this website was viewed by someone from Indonesia last week, sooo…) Taylor’d Communication. That means that before easing into retirement last year, she was a hard-working and well-respected business owner for 25 years. Or, as I like to refer to it, by its more grand-sounding synonym: a quarter of a century. She worked in other professional capacities for a couple of decades before that, too, but for a quarter of a century she hustled to get clients, keep clients and make clients happy. She figured out–with a little help from my dad, who is also a superbly capable human being deserving of praise–how to pull all of the elements together to start a business, and then she continually refined her skills over the years in order to land and keep quite a few pretty cool clients.

Belying her marketing savvy, mom never set up a website for Taylor’d Communication. (From the time that websites became a must-have for small businesses, she already had plenty of work and didn’t have use for additional promotion of the business.) She also hadn’t really had a recent occasion to gather and delineate her comprehensive client and project list, so when I took over the business, I interviewed her so I could document the history of her work. I wanted to know what specific clients she had worked with over the years and on what kinds of projects. Some of the business names she rattled off brought back fun memories of my time as her helper when I was a teenager. Others she had worked with before my time, or after.

I don’t think this is an exhaustive list, but here is a sample of the clients my PR-and-marketing-pro mom worked with during her quarter of a century as the woman behind the Taylor’d Communication moniker:

  • For the St. Louis Auto Show (1990-1997), she developed and executed a public relations and media relations plan that helped draw 500,000 attendees to the annual trade show at St. Louis’s largest convention center.
  • For 20 years, she worked as the chapter executive for the St. Louis chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth, a professional development and networking collaborative for mergers & acquisitions professionals.
  • She provided event management services for the Missouri Venture Forum, a connector for entrepreneurs and venture capital providers.
  • For the Society of Professional Journalists, Judy strategized, organized and cooperatively implemented the publicity plan for a large regional conference held in St. Louis.
  • For two years, she handled media relations for the St. Louis Golf Show, a local consumer exhibition that was the largest of its kind.
  • When the Shriners fraternal organization held their world convention in St. Louis, she managed media relations for the event.
  • For two years, she helped with media relations for St. Louis’s famous Veiled Prophet Fair (now called Fair St. Louis).
  • For Schaefer Manufacturing, a lubricant manufacturer, Judy handled media and public relations, including landing a product placement in a long-term exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
  • For the Suelthaus & Walsh law firm, she coached the firm’s internal marketing coordinator on special event production and sales training.
  • For Kerber, Eck & Braeckel, a certified public accountant and management consultant firm, she provided sales training and media relations consulting.
  • Judy managed media relations projects for the Huber, Ring & Helm law firm.
  • For the American Institute of Banking, she helped with media relations and special event management.
  • She worked with the Affton and Mehlville school districts to organize a door-to-door community relations campaign in a neighborhood where the two suburban districts were planning to set up operations.
  • For St. Louis Centre, a large urban shopping mall, she helped orchestrate a constituent and community survey.
  • For a weekly segment on Y98 radio that focused on nonprofit organizations’ good work in the St. Louis community, Judy organized about 100 interviews over two years, including recruiting and training interviewees and prepping the show’s host.
  • For the Entrepreneurial Business Center at Saint Louis University, she helped with speaker recruitment.
  • She provided personnel consulting services to the St. Louis chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
  • For the Gateway chapter of the U. S. Green Building Council, the premier organization promoting sustainable construction practices, Judy managed media relations, supported the volunteer marketing committee and served as a resource for the executive director.
  • For the partnership of construction professionals who created Missouri’s first sustainable, award-winning Passive House, Judy handled media relations and marketing.

So, that all sounds fun, right? (Well, most of it anyway. You can’t win ’em all.) As she was recalling these clients and projects during our chat, I enjoyed waxing nostalgic with her about the variety of work she’s gotten to do over the years and the variety of colleagues and bosses who she had the pleasure (and, perhaps, sometimes the displeasure challenge) of working with along the way. And now that I have become the woman behind the Taylor’d Communication moniker, I hope I’m able to earn a similarly varied set of clients and associates.

Cheers to you, Judy “Mom” Taylor, and here’s to another quarter of a century of Taylor’d Communication. I’ll do my best to do you proud!

The Evolution of Taylor’d Communication

When I was a kid, maybe eight years old or so, I loved to visit my mom at her office. It was an adventure and a treat. She had just started her own one-woman marketing consultancy, and the accounting firm where she had previously been working was kind enough to let her borrow some space while she was getting the business off the ground. (She named her business Custom Taylor’d Communications; her name is Judy Taylor; we really like plays on words in our family; it’s both a blessing and a curse; and I really like semicolons; also a blessing and a curse.)

Mom had a small, window-less office as I recall, and it wasn’t much to write home about, but I sure thought it was great fun to go there. I would sit at her meeting table, armed with an old ink pen and some scrap paper, and crank out works of art that were nothing short of spectacular. (That’s a lie; I’m a terrible drawer.) Sometimes, on days when I was acting particularly well-mannered and responsible, mom would send me on little inter-office errands, like dropping something off at the mail room or running a stack of paper over to the shredder bin. I was kind of a big deal. Now that I’m reflecting on this, I can’t believe I’ve never listed “Very Important Elementary-School-Aged Intern at Custom Taylor’d Communications” on my résumé.

As mom grew the business, she kept fine-tuning the brand and eventually decided to drop the “Custom” from the name because it was redundant.  Soon, she moved into her very own office space in a mid-sized office building in downtown St. Louis. I liked visiting her at her new office even more than the original office. She shared the third floor with a few other businesses that I’m now convinced must have been money laundering operations, because no one was ever there working. It was always chilly and the lights were usually off everywhere except in the Taylor’d Communications suite. Fine by me, though, because it meant I could run around like a crazy person and not disturb anyone…except my mom, I guess. (Sorry, mom!) Eventually I started working on actual projects for her and I became less of a runner-arounder and more of a helper-outer. By the time I was in high school, I had developed ninja-like filing skills and temp-agency-worthy alphabetizing acumen. I’m sure I was a delightful little co-worker and a treat to be around…although I was a teenager so my own sense of awesomeness and others’ sense of my awesomeness may not have always perfectly aligned. Whatevs.

After a few years, Taylor’d Communications moved to yet another new office, this time in a cool historic building with a beautifully restored, ornate interior. Mom created a funky office space in her section of the second floor and she seemed to really love being in an eclectic, offbeat work environment. (My parents are old-building junkies; in the Victorian neighborhood where they live, they have owned and renovated three different houses on the same block.) Taylor’d Communications, which was still a one-woman operation—supported clerically by my sister Andrea and me and supported accountancy-wise by my CPA dad—was humming along nicely. My mom liked her work and I’m sure she enjoyed the flexibility that came along with self-employment. She—um, I mean we…did I mention how useful my helper-outer skills are?—had several clients, including a large professional association that she managed and other organizations she worked with on public relations and marketing projects.

I kept helping out here and there with projects, and when I moved to Kansas City to go to college, I think the whole Taylor’d Communications family staff was sad to see me go. Like, really broken up. “Don’t cry,” I said. “I’ll be back during breaks and over the summer to organize name tags,” I said. “And so I can do my laundry for free.” Between moving loads of brights and darks from the washer to the dryer, I did help out some when I was in St. Louis for breaks but things tapered off around graduation when I got a big-kid job and my residency in Kansas City became permanent.

Somehow Taylor’d Communications managed to survive and thrive without me. (“But how?” you ask. Your guess is as good as mine.) Mom landed some big, fun clients and she really enjoyed the challenge of the work.

Fast forward a decade or so. After almost 25 years of Taylor’d Communications, mom was starting to think about slowing down. Her client base had shifted some: she was working with some new clients in new-to-her industries but she slowly began to take on fewer projects. My dad—after working 33 years for the U.S. Army, including a year and half of active duty and three plus decades of service as an auditor (Thanks for your service, dad!)—retired a few years back. And mom was tossing around the idea of doing the same. She moved her office into their home and scaled back her client work.

Meanwhile, on the other end of Missouri, I had been doing my college PR job for several years and was feeling eager for something new. I had fleeting thoughts of venturing out on my own and maybe joining (or usurping!) Taylor’d Communications, but I didn’t ever give much credence to the idea because entrepreneurism scares me. On one hand, I smiled at the thought of following in my mom’s footsteps by creating a neat career path for myself and having the flexibility to spend quality time with my sweet husband and our precious infant son. On the other hand, I was all like “Oh, crap, no, I would have to figure out how to drum up business and determine quarterly estimated tax payments to the IRS and keep track of invoicing and lose my cushy insurance benefits? Uh, no thanks; I’ll pass.”

I wasn’t ready to make the entrepreneurial leap, but I wasn’t feeling fulfilled in my current arrangement and I wasn’t having any luck finding a different position. So it was quite a quandary. A conundrum, if you will.

And then I got just the shake-up I needed: My husband Matt was presented with an opportunity to move to a beautiful mountain town in northern Arizona for a two-year work stint. Yes! He barely uttered the words “So, they asked me today if I would consider…” and I was already sprinting upstairs to start packing all of my shoes. (I have a decent number of shoes; it seemed like a good place to start if we were going to be moving out of our house.) I love Kansas City…a lot…but I was itching to break free of my rut. Together, Matt and I decided “Let’s do it!” We were ready for an adventure, and our baby was at an age that made him perfectly portable. So, Matt accepted the job, I put in my notice, we packed up our house and our baby, and we got on a plane to Prescott, Arizona.

My parents and Matt’s parents were sad to see us move. (Once again, I’d brought the Taylor’d Communications team to tears with my departure.) They didn’t so much mourn Matt’s and my departure as they mourned the departure of our cute kid. (Thanks for that, parents.) But, I think they were also excited for us to have this experience. Matt and I were both life-long Missourians so this was our chance to try out life in a different part of the country. I think my mom was excited, too, when I called her soon after we got settled and told her I was thinking of trying my hand at freelance writing and PR consulting.

“And since you are transitioning to retirement at this very moment,” I said, “what would you think about me taking over Taylor’d Communications?”

Mom had lots of follow-up questions, but I could sense the smile in her voice. Maybe she was truly honored and proud that her legacy as a small-business owner would be handed down to the next generation, or maybe she and my dad were just excited that something with their name on it would live on, despite the disappointment of not having any sons. (Note to my sister Andrea: be sure to add this to the list of things you and I need to talk to a therapist about.)

Mom said she would be happy to hand over the business name. (She had retired all of her clients by then so I would need to start fresh on the client-fetching front.) To make it a proper transaction, I offered her a choice of two forms of payment: (a) I could write her a check for the millions of dollars the clever, decades-old business name and brand identity were worth or (b) I could facilitate a lifetime supply of snuggles from my toddler and the baby-on-the-way. She opted for baby snuggles (phew!), we shook on it and the deal was done.

That was in early 2014 and since then I have done a ton with the business. (Or…it’s already late 2015 and I’m just getting around to launching a web site…same diff.) I tweaked the Taylor’d Communications moniker by removing the “s”—because I’m a little bit of a word nerd and I have always understood the singular form of “communication” to be more pure. I’m in the midst of reimagining the identity of the business a little bit, too, because my skill set and experience is a little different from my mom’s: she had a journalism and marketing background and I have a writing, fundraising and public relations background. So, I’m evolving the flavor of the business.

Somehow, through pure magic and a little bit of dumb luck, I’ve not done too shabby on the client-fetching front.  For a few months after we moved to Arizona, I worked remotely for my former employer until they could fill my old position. Then, I met the development director of a local nonprofit at a Christmas cookie-decorating event and she asked me to start writing grants for her organization. I’ve done some feature writing for a regional parenting magazine, some promotional writing for a local wellness center and some marketing writing for a local property management company. I’ve done web writing for one client’s new site and advertorial writing for another client’s homebuilding promotions. I served on a committee to help a friend organize and implement a gala to support her nonprofit’s upcoming project. And I’ve truly enjoyed it all.

I’m still on the front end of this small-business ownership journey but I am super-duper glad I took the leap of faith. I have had the opportunity to help out with a wide variety of projects and to work with some really neat people. With the help of a tech-savvy friend, I’m working on building a website and starting a blog. I make my own schedule so I get to spend a lot of time with Matt and our two precious little boys. (We’ve added to the brood since moving to Arizona. We found out we were expecting a baby exactly one week after arriving in our new home.)

And, of course, one of my favorite things about being out on my own is that since I work from home, I can run around the office (house) like a crazy person anytime I please without bothering anyone…except my husband and sons, I guess. (Sorry, husband and sons!) Photos of my current ink-pen-and-scrap-paper artistic masterpieces will be forthcoming.

I wish I’d had the forethought

If I had a nickel for every time I thought “I wish I would have known [specific important tidbit of information] back in the day”…I would have roughly a bazillion nickels. Like, enough nickels that I wouldn’t even need to work. But, I would work anyway because I enjoy what I do. (Too cliché?) And, besides, a bazillion nickels probably doesn’t even add up to that many dollars.

But something I think of often, especially as I’m trying to chronicle my work experience in detail, is this: I sure wish I would have had the forethought to keep samples of all of the work I’ve done over the years. That was not really top of mind when I was starting out because, well, I was 21 and had more pressing things to think about (e.g. Do these slacks really need to be ironed or can I get by with wrinkles in my strictly-professional-attire office?) And, for the few years after that, it may have crossed my mind to bring home work samples and put them in a safe place but I’m sure I lost track of things as I was moving apartments and upgrading personal computers and changing jobs.

So, here I am, 16 years into my career, with not much of an organized portfolio to show for it. Well, wait, I take that back…kind of. I did actually keep a fair bit of work samples–authored articles, earned media placements, executive speeches, speeches for my own speaking engagements–but since my career has evolved in tandem with the internet (thanks, Al Gore!), many of my writing projects are not online. In fact, this is the current state of my portfolio:

Portfolio Binder

So, um, I feel very 2004 having a papers-in-sheet-protectors-in-a-binder portfolio, but there you have it.

Thankfully, though, through little forethought of my own, at least a few of my most recent articles, feature stories and other writing projects are actually online. So, for the sake of gathering some work samples in one spot, here are some things I’ve written over the past few years:

A few news blog posts from my days at Metropolitan Community College-Kansas City:

A laughably small sample of my earned media placements:

Feature articles I wrote for Prescott Parent Magazine

So, there you have a handful of samples. Of course, it merits mentioning that not all of my work lends itself to being posted online. Some of the products of my work, like speech writing and grant writing, aren’t really intended for public consumption and, therefore, wouldn’t have reason to be posted online. And, of course, there is the consulting work that I do, like event coordination and media relations, that doesn’t really involve much writing per se. But, here is a general overview of my experience in those realms:

  • Executive writing: as a supporting writer for several executives, I have written speeches, correspondence, talking points and official corporate documents
  • Additional web and marketing writing: as the lead copywriter for a news blog and a corporate web site and a contributing writer for several other web sites, I have penned hundreds of pages of web copy
  • Grant writing: as the lead grant writer for one organization and contributing grant writer for two other organizations, I have helped bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable and governmental funding
  • Blog coordination: as the primary content coordinator for a news blog, I have experience in working in the WordPress platform and with other similar content management systems (note: I am not, however, an expert on the technical components of blog or website creation and maintenance.)
  • Event coordination: as the lead event coordinator for two organizations,  contributing event coordinator for two other organizations and event committee member for several other organizations, I have helped engage thousands of constituents, land dozens of clients and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars
  • Media relations: as the lead media relations manager for two organizations and media relations volunteer for two other organizations, I have pitched proactive story ideas and managed media inquiries that have led to dozens of positive media hits

So, that’s the gist of my professional experience, to the extent such a thing can be tied up neatly in a blog post. Perhaps someday I will streamline my portfolio into a slick, fancy online format (wait, are you saying that my current papers-in-sheet-protectors-in-a-binder arrangement isn’t slick and fancy?). But for now, I would be glad to chat with you if you are interested in further information regarding my experience in writing, public relations or any of the other above-referenced skill sets.

Call me!

Stepping Out for Step Up

Yesterday was a fun milestone: it was event day for a fundraising auction that Taylor’d Communication sponsored–the agency’s first official nonprofit sponsorship since I took the helm!

Stepping Out for Step Up: the 2015 Step Up for Kids Auction raised thousands of dollars to support programs for new parents and their children in the Prescott, Arizona area. (Prescott is the beautiful, idyllic small(ish) northern Arizona town where my unnamed (1)family and I are living for a couple of years during my husband’s limited-duration work assignment.) I served on the small-but-mighty planning committee for the inaugural event, providing public relations and marketing support and logistical and fundraising coordination. The numbers are still being crunched, but initial estimates are that we raised about four times as much money as Step Up for Kids‘ previous fundraising initiatives!

The lively event featured tasty food from El Gato Azul, a delicious local tapas restaurant whose owner generously sponsored the latest stepsmeal, and lots of great auction items, including the piece(s) de resistance: more than 60 custom-decorated stepstools (a few of which are pictured at left, awaiting transport to the auction site). Stepping Out for Step Up was held in downtown Prescott at ‘Tis Art Center and Gallery, another generous event sponsor.

Step Up for Kids, founded in 2009 by my friend Salli Maxwell, provides social, emotional and practical support for new parents and their young children. The organization works to foster community health through initiatives like a mom-to-mom peer support program and a project to place stepstools in local public restrooms to empower children’s hand-washing.

Step Up for Kids has been distributing these locally-made stepstools to businesses around the community for several years, but IMG_5008this year Salli wanted to kick it up a notch. (I almost typed “step it up a notch” but I just couldn’t bring myself to be so predictable.) Thanks to more than 50 artists from the Mountain Artists Guild who donated their time and artistic talent, Salli gathered more 64 unique, hand painted stools that would serve as the centerpiece for the auction. And they were a hit! Parents and business owners bid on and purchased many of the colorful stools, which are not only practical for tiny hand-washers but also will surely be conversation pieces in the buyers’ homes and businesses. My husband and I bought one for our boys and my two-and-a-half-year-old loves it, as does the 10-month-old (pictured here).

Step Up for Kids is a small organization, run by Salli (the dedicated, but unpaid, founding director) and a three-person board of directors. In the past, the organization had hosted only small-scale fundraising initiatives, but wanted to plan something larger this year to raise additional funds and to raise the profile of the organization. Salli has a dream of opening a nonprofit parent StepUpForKids_PDIC_Interior_02[m] (1)drop-in center in Prescott. Currently still in the formative-idea stage, The Parent Co. would be a family gathering place that supports parents and their young children across the local quad-cities area. The vision for the space (as seen in this rendering) is to have both indoor and outdoor gathering and play areas, a kiosk of information on child- and family-related resources in our area and a place for hosting parent and family education and support activities.

Salli is endearingly committed to Step Up for Kids’ mission of ensuring that new mothers and fathers are provided with resources to help them succeed as parents. After her now-11-year-old daughter was born, Salli became disheartened by the dearth of community resources for new parents, so she started coordinating programming that eventually morphed into a formal 501(c)3 organization. Her passion for the work is palpable, and I was glad to support her and Step Up for Kids by serving on the planning committee and having Taylor’d Communication be a sponsor for the inaugural auction event.

I look forward to seeing where Step Up for Kids is headed!