From Engineer to PR Pro: Mike Maynard on PR Success

Eric (00:01.912)
When did you start going on podcasts, mate?

Mike Maynard - Napier (00:05.806)
so when we started our podcast very haphazardly with a couple of trial episodes that are incredibly embarrassing, I think about two and a half years ago, something like that. Maybe maybe a bit longer. And we played around with it and we didn't do very much. And then it was probably about two years ago that we actually signed with a podcast agency.

They started booking on shows and we actually got a bit more serious about our main podcast as well. I mean, unfortunately, it's one of those classic side projects that's never the day job. So, you know, I'd love to be doing the weekly podcast. We're not there yet, but we're getting closer. We're getting closer.

Eric (00:48.878)
Yeah. Yeah. How many have you been on as a guest, like at least 20 or 30 or

Mike Maynard - Napier (00:57.054)
probably 40. So yeah, yeah, but I'm quite a few. So, I mean, I really enjoy it. It's as a guest, to be honest, it's quite easy and straightforward. and it's a good way of, you know, getting some promotion out there and keeping your LinkedIn feeds, interesting. So,

Eric (01:16.546)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. I'm going to do a separate introduction for you. So don't worry too much about the introduction

Mike Maynard - Napier (01:26.461)
Awesome.

Eric (01:27.67)
Okay, so once we start going into it, just dive into it. Okay. We've already got a recording. Okay. Five, four, three. There's no countdown number. Two, one. Mike, welcome to Innovators Can Laugh. How you doing today?

Eric (01:51.274)
Yeah, no, it's hardly, I don't think I've ever had somebody with a drastic career change as you, because you used to be an engineer and then now you're like this PR marketing agency owner. So I thought we'd start there. And why did you leave engineering and jump into PR?

Mike Maynard - Napier (02:08.936)
Well, I didn't actually leave engineering and jump into PR. So I left engineering and it's actually moved into technical sales first. And I did that because I realized I was quite good at understanding technology and quite bad at being an engineer. And an engineer is a lot about detail and getting things right and getting things complete. And that kind of real hard work that engineers have to do. I wasn't great at, you know, to be honest. So I moved into technical sales.

and ultimately was running a technical sales team in Europe for a semiconductor company. I realized that in terms of career progression, I had a couple of options. I could go full on into sales rather than the technical support side. I could move to the States where there were some opportunities or I could move into marketing. So that's what drove my move into marketing. It was really a desire to say, I don't really want to be just a salesperson. like the technology, but I love talking about technology.

And, you know, at the time of a young family, didn't want to move to the States. So, that was the kind of, you know, last option I thought I'd rolled out the other two.

Eric (03:14.646)
Okay, did you take a marketing role somewhere with the company or did you just jump into an acquisition and buy in your own agency?

Mike Maynard - Napier (03:21.628)
That's a great question. So no, I actually moved into a marketing where marketing, where it opened up in the company I was working for, love the company I was working for. And so moved into doing European marketing for the next five years, actually. I was really happy. And then the agency I was using actually came up for sale. So the founders wanted to retire. And, you know, the classic thing, I like the agency so much, I decided to buy

Eric (03:46.062)
Okay, that is so bizarre that the agency you're working with, you like them so much and so the opportunity came. What did that deal structure look like? I'm just curious.

Mike Maynard - Napier (03:57.222)
And so the deal itself was a little bit money upfront and then payment out over three years based on performance. And that's good and bad. I mean, the good thing is, is that actually you both want the payments to be quite high because you want performance to be great. So from that point of view, the bad thing is of course, if performance really is great, then you can be in trouble and you have to pay potentially more than you wanted.

Eric (04:25.1)
Yeah. Now, how did you introduce yourself to the clients that you were basically taking over?

Mike Maynard - Napier (04:32.176)
that was fairly easy. I mean, that seemed to be a relatively straightforward thing to do. I've met some of the clients at events that the agency had held. And so going to meet clients and saying, I've made this move. A lot of were like, you seem a bit crazy. But really at the time as well, it was kind of a turbulent time in technology. And I think that also had a significant impact on taking over the agency and what happened.

Eric (05:00.716)
Now what was going on with your family? You said you had a family or did you have like small kids at the time or what did that look like?

Mike Maynard - Napier (05:07.73)
Yeah, so I had a, at the time I had one kid who was about two years old and actually within a year had another child. So two boys, great kids. You know, now obviously not kids anymore, you know, massively grown up, but yeah, so there was quite a lot of pressure with young family to make this work. You know, financially it did seem to be, it did feel quite stressful.

Eric (05:35.586)
Was there a lot of employees at the agency? I imagine it was a smaller agency, but how many overhead? was that like?

Mike Maynard - Napier (05:43.026)
Yeah, so at the time there was about seven people, so relatively small agency. We had a decent freelance network of writers and translators we used quite a lot because we're working across Europe, but the agency itself was not big.

Eric (05:56.502)
Okay. And your company, did they think you were crazy when you told them the news that you were leaving?

Mike Maynard - Napier (06:02.12)
Yeah. No, I mean, think lots of people thought it was, it was a crazy move. think, you know, people understood the company actually sent me on a management development course, you know, a little bit before I bought the agency. And I was on this course and I remember the last night you have a dinner, you know, you have a few drinks and someone said to me, you should run your own business, Mike. And I'm pretty sure what they meant was I never ever want to be your boss.

And they're just trying to say it in a really nice way. But I took it on and I think I'd always, you know, fancied trying to run a business and seeing how it worked. And whilst I hadn't really talked about that in the company, I think people recognize that was, you know, that was something that I felt I had to try.

Eric (06:47.148)
Yeah, isn't it crazy how somebody can say like one little comment and it changes sort of like the trajectory of your journey because it sticks with it sticks in your mind. I started this podcast because someone said you should launch a podcast and it just it just stuck with me and I thought, you know what, why

Mike Maynard - Napier (07:02.834)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, think it's not something that was completely new thought to me, but it was fact somebody said that and then literally a month or two later I got approached by, and actually it was a person I worked directly with. my account manager at the agency who said, look, the agency's going up for sale. think you should buy it. I thought, how hard can it be to run an agency?

Eric (07:26.56)
Okay, tell us about that. What were some of the initial obstacles when you got your feet wet? Like, how did you come in and have this new vision or did you just come in and figure out, let me just learn what's going on first.

Mike Maynard - Napier (07:39.72)
So, you know, I think it comes down to the great Mike Tyson business quote, which is everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. And so I had a plan and I think, you what I'd seen and frankly what the owners had seen was they were very much, you know, an older style of PR agency. They were driven a lot by entertainment, particularly of journalists, you know, is very much print trade media focused.

world was changing, the world was going digital, I could see that was happening. And so there was big plan to come in and make everything digital and win those extra business because we're doing all sorts of cool digital stuff. Unfortunately, timing is really important as well. One of the things that I never learned on my MBA, they really should have said is that, you you can do whatever, but if your timing is wrong, there's going be a problem. I walked into the, well, actually the day I was supposed to sign,

The accountant who'd given me advice on buying the agency tried to buy the agency from under me. So we had all sorts of issues there. Ended up in court with them, one in court. It was all good, but you know, massive stress there. And all credit to the owners of the agency. They said, no, no, no, we've been talking to you. It did wobble for a bit, but then eventually they said, we've been talking to you. You know, we need to go through with our promises. We need to make good on our promises. And you know, you're the person we want to, we want to sell to. So from that point of

they were very honorable about how they did business and I really respected that. So I walked into the business and got over this first challenge and then literally about three weeks after I started the dot -com crash here and we were an agency that was all in on tech companies. We had a lot of companies that were selling into communication systems. was the, I guess it was the hot trend, the AI of 2001 was comms and fiber and that business just vanished overnight.

And so pretty much we lost, I mean, the best part of 50 % of our business, you know, almost within the first couple of months. And that was, that was tough.

Eric (09:45.154)
Did you have to let some people go because of this?

Mike Maynard - Napier (09:49.288)
We didn't know I mean, this was perhaps naivety on my point of view. I don't know. Nobody's ever asked me that question. And we didn't let people go at that time. And in fact, we've had very few people who've actually had to leave the business because of financial issues. So over the years, we really haven't laid people off. We've tried to look after people and it's kind of worked with us and I hadn't thought that

know, in such a small team, it was really hard to let one person go. Because, you know, typically they were the one person doing X and that was going to cause a problem. you know, we held onto people, also, you know, totally believe the market would change. And having worked in semiconductors, you know, particularly through the, you know, late 80s and 90s, the industry was very cyclical at the

And there was a roughly a three year cycle and you went from boom to bust, you know, each one lasted about 18 months. And I really believe that was going to happen. Ironically, since then, the industry has not been quite so predictable in terms of its cycles. They're still seeing some cycles, but it's not so predictable. I mean, maybe that was naivety. Maybe it was, you know, stupidity. I don't know. But we just decided this business is coming back and we're going to, you know, tough it out. And we did.

Eric (11:10.048)
Okay, Mike, at this time you buy this business a few weeks later, the dot com crash happens, half your clients go away. You've got this new baby, another one on the way, or at least pretty soon you left this job that was a steady paycheck. How are you managing your stress at this time? Because a lot of business owners and founders probably find themselves in the same position. And I'm just curious, what did you do to, to just remain calm and still push

Mike Maynard - Napier (11:36.24)
I probably didn't remain calm. I think if you talk to people there, there was a lot of stress. I probably didn't do it very well. It was incredibly stressful. think one of the things looking back is it's very clear that the experience scarred me, scarred the rest of the people in the agency. We ended up running the agency on an incredibly conservative basis. We were incredibly careful. We built up cash reserves. We didn't invest money. We wanted to put money in the bank.

You know, and we got the agency to a situation where, you know, it was really secure, frankly, from 2001 through to, I mean, pretty much 2010, we barely grew. and we stayed as we were and we were making money. I mean, they're going to be wrong. You know, the business was profitable, but we weren't investing to grow. And those nine years, I think were really heavily influenced by what happened in 2001. We bought the business or when I bought the business, and,

we had to just go, look, this is survival, all that matters is survival. And to some extent, that mentality kind of impacted what we did going forward. And that, think, certainly hurt us in terms of the good times. We didn't grow very quickly in the good times. And in the bad times, we tend to shrink less. So it would tend to be much more stable than other agencies, but in the long term, less successful.

Eric (12:59.839)
I read in your bio, it said, as an engineer, you believe in combining measurement, accountability, and innovation. How does that transfer over to some of the PR and marketing campaigns that you do for your clients?

Mike Maynard - Napier (13:12.37)
That's a great question. mean, I actually lectured for a few years on PR, you know, and my favorite thing to do was to do the lecture on measurement and walking and go, I can tell you the one thing you can do that's going to make you more attractive to employers. And none of you are going to want to do it. Everyone sat there going, no, we will, we will. Because I mean, know, young people at university that they're actually super keen, they're super smart, you know, they're all set.

learn Excel, and everyone can see their faces fall. was like, I'm not doing that. So I think, you know, the problem is, is PR in the past has certainly suffered from, you know, a situation of people doing things they'd like to do talking to editors, they personally liked rather than necessarily publications they thought were influential. And I think there's a lot you can do around measurement. Now, the reality is, is that measurement you can do for PR

is much more limited compared to the measurement you can do on, say, paid advertising on Google or LinkedIn or something like that. So there are certainly limits, but what you should be doing in PR and what people fail to do is set objectives. And I think this is super important. PR people, go in and they go, yeah, let's just try and push this story out and do the best we can.

But actually, if you set objections and say, want this story to be covered in this publication, I want it to say this, you have an idea of what that perfect result would be, and you aim for it, I think then you can measure. And you can measure against what you'd hoped for. And yeah, sure, some of it is measuring the how well did you run the campaign? Some of it is measuring how well did you set the KPIs? So in the early days, you'll set KPIs that are way off. And you'll get it wrong. But I think if you keep doing

You'll learn and you can be a little bit more data driven. And that really, really helps going forward.

Eric (15:04.302)
Yeah, I totally agree, Mike. Back in the day, I used to work for this boutique agency and we bought online ads for American Express and we got the cost per acquisition from $1 down to around $150. You want to know how, Mike? You want to know how? Through Excel. Pivot tables. Pivot tables. I learned how to do pivot tables in a class I was taking and I brought that to the agency and I was able to slice and dice.

how we were running the media. And I'm like, you know what? These other ad formats don't really work. Let's put the majority in pop -ups. And before you knew it, American Express, instead of giving us $50 ,000 a month to advertise for them, I was writing insertion orders for a million dollars, because of pivot tables. So you're spot on about

Mike Maynard - Napier (15:53.047)
simply for doing the analysis and finding out what worked, what didn't and stop doing what doesn't work. Yeah. I mean, absolutely.

Eric (15:59.052)
Yeah, yeah. man. Now, how do you approach what you do when it comes to like measuring? Can you give an example, like measuring a campaign? You talked a little bit about the KPIs, what, give us examples or what are some KPIs that you guys, know, companies should be looking

Mike Maynard - Napier (16:14.59)
So a lot of companies, they really care about getting a broad reach of coverage. So, you one of our clients, Microchip, they're one of the leading microcontroller companies, you know, they've literally shipped billions of these microcontrollers and they're everywhere. They're in all sorts of bits of electronic equipment you wouldn't imagine. They care about, you know, getting their message out broadly. And so they're looking to make sure that they hit,

across different countries. They get a good balance of coverage. They don't want all the European coverage in the UK and nothing in Germany because Germany is a super important market for them. And they also want to make sure that they hit across different topics. They want to make sure that they're different business units. They all get a coverage representative of their opportunity. So they slice and dice the coverage analysis in all sorts of different ways, really to make sure that they're not appearing to be successful, but it's simply because

One particular release absolutely blew up and went crazy and everything else was disappointing. So they're looking to make sure that they push that bar up at the bottom and really get coverage across the board. And that's a great sensible strategy for them. It makes sense. They're a very broad company. They build for a lot of products. Really good, good approach. At the other end, we had a client come to us a few years ago and they said, we want to get coverage in a national newspaper in the UK.

And he said, you do realize that your product is software that does floor planning for data centers. National newspapers don't talk about floor planning for centers. We don't care. We don't care. want to hear. All right. These guys have gone nuts. What on earth is going on? So anyway, we came up with a strategy where we basically built something around a careers piece.

and careers in data centers and how that was important. And then we built the client in and it worked really well. We've got the coverage and it went into, think it was the times where the telegraph's really good coverage, excellent coverage, but we're still like, is this really gonna move the needle? Data center professionals, really big readers of this publication and they think about their job when they're reading it. And we're like, is weird, this is weird. And then about a month and a half later, suddenly there was an announcement of a big trade sale.

Mike Maynard - Napier (18:32.922)
And it was quite clear they had no interest in actually reaching their customers with this content. They wanted to reach the financial community. And they knew that without, you know, they couldn't talk about what they're trying to do. They wanted to get attention in the financial community and hopefully what we did helped a little bit, you know, make that deal work and get them a good press and all the rest of it. you know, I think there's two completely different examples of how companies look at coverage and what they want to achieve.

Most of them driven by really, really sensible, thoughtful goals that actually ultimately move the needle in terms of their business.

Eric (19:09.89)
Yeah, yeah. Tell me about pitches, getting new business. Do you have like a memorable pitch, something unique that you did for a potential client?

Mike Maynard - Napier (19:18.502)
we have pictures that are burned in my brain from going wrong. Yeah, so I think.

Eric (19:22.382)
Sure one, sure one.

Mike Maynard - Napier (19:29.816)
So I think it's interesting. In our industry, we're very focused on super deep tech companies. So they're like making semiconductors and things like that. And I think what happens is, is the pictures that go wrong, you don't think about the client. And I'm sure that's probably the case across all industries. But in some ways, it's much easier to understand a client if you're in food marketing for consumers.

that they're all somewhat similar and all trying to do the same thing. And, you know, the pitches that work well are the pitches we go into and we say, look, we've read your brief. Here's what we do. And this is why we do it. And this is why we think it's going to work. And generally speaking, if you can go in and pitch and present a strategy as though you were coming in as a CMO, you tend to do really well. Sometimes you get it wrong.

And for sure we've gone in and said, this is what we do. This is why we do it. And, you know, at the end of the pitch, the, you know, the potential clients, you know, very gently said, yeah, that's not going to work. And here's why it's not going to work. And actually very occasionally those pictures, cause they still like the creative approach. But, but more often than not, you've, you've not been able to prove that you've really understood that client. So I think it's about building that understanding of a client and, know, really showing

what we can do. mean, there was, you know, one client we worked with for a while and, you know, they were ultimately looking to get bought through a trade sale. And our whole goal was to make them appear more important than they were. So really build that industry awareness. And we met the company that ultimately acquired them. And, you know, we met them at a trade show and we're sharing to them. And one of them said, you know, we just can't believe how small this company is. We thought they were like five times the size.

all they're doing, all this, all that, you know, it's absolutely incredible. We're like, yes, that's a win.

Eric (21:26.508)
Yeah, yeah, obviously. Yeah. Okay. Before we get into rapid rapid fire questions, one more question. What is one of your weaknesses in terms of like, you know, being an owner and being a leader for your team?

Mike Maynard - Napier (21:40.58)
I'm not delegating. mean, my team would scream if I don't say that. yeah, it's something that I'm still working on. I'm still trying to get better. But I just envy the people who are able to go and delegate work out and not get pulled down into the weeds. And I'm continually doing that. That's clearly my biggest weakness. And that saves you a million emails from my team telling you that I'd lied if I said anything else.

Eric (22:08.224)
anything that you're trying to do to overcome that.

Mike Maynard - Napier (22:12.496)
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, one of the things I am trying to do is, you know, particularly on, on vacations, being European, we get vacations, right? So it's great if there's American listeners here, may not be a strategy for you. I know you guys work super hard, but yeah, so on vocations, I really am trying to switch off. And that's not to say I won't check my email. Of course I'll check my email, but I really am trying to actually stop doing things. I've just been for a week in California.

It was holiday after a week of business. Had an absolutely fantastic holiday. Had one call the whole week. Again, not quite delegated at all. There's still that one call to move on from. But pretty much that was it. And then just a little bit of email triage. And most of the time it was holidays. So I think that's really helping me do that. But it's tough. It's tough.

Eric (23:06.146)
Yeah. Yeah. When people ask me like, what's the biggest, the biggest difference that you've had from leaving the States and moving to Europe, I tell them it's a vacation that Europeans take vacation very seriously. In fact, they don't even work. Most of them don't even work when they're on vacation. And I tell my American friends, can you believe that? I mean, isn't that crazy? Because I've, I've, I've relaxed a little bit more now when I'm on vacation, I work maybe at the most two hours a day, but yeah, it's true. Americans, even when we're on vacation, we're still, you know, working for the most

Mike Maynard - Napier (23:36.328)
That's crazy. mean, Europeans typically won't check their emails. So I mean, you have a whole systems internally where, you know, we actually get someone else to step in and check, check people's email when they're on vacation. It's, know, it's obviously important to be available as an agency, but actually, and here's something for you Americans to know. It doesn't have to be you personally. If you're on vacation, you can let someone else, you know, take over and run with your clients or run with your work. you know, it's something that I think Europeans have probably got.

fairly right. I still have trouble with some of the countries that take an entire month off. That's still a bit too far for me. don't think I could do that. a week or two off for sure. think people should take a or two off and they should feel, certainly if they're not running a business, able not to read email.

Eric (24:23.5)
Yeah. Yeah. My sister -in -law used to work, or no, she still does for a French company. And I feel like she gets two months off because the entire month of August, she's really not working. And then she still has like other five weeks of vacation. So I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Rapid fire time. Give me the first thing that pops into your head. Are you ready? Okay. The craziest thing I ever did to make money or save money was...

Mike Maynard - Napier (24:33.982)
Ciao.

Mike Maynard - Napier (24:38.226)
Yeah, absolutely.

Mike Maynard - Napier (24:44.861)
Okay.

Mike Maynard - Napier (24:53.83)
Well, that's a good one. The craziest thing I would have to make money was to set up a company to design electronics for the rock music industry. It was crazy. And it made literally no money.

Eric (25:06.968)
To save.

There you go. Okay, best advice your mom, your dad, or someone close to you ever gave

Mike Maynard - Napier (25:20.99)
think the best advice...

I got, and it's something I keep saying to people is that ideas are easy and execution is difficult. And my dad used to phrase it slightly differently and slightly more directly. He was a big sportsman, played a lot of cricket. And he was just like, you've just got to and do it. So that's all that matters. Thinking you're going to do it or imagining it doesn't matter, just ideas are easy, but execution is really hard.

Eric (25:50.21)
Yeah, yeah, so true. Last question for you. I grew up in blank and my favorite thing about that city is blank.

Mike Maynard - Napier (25:58.332)
Wow, I grew up in Phoenix day.

My favorite thing about the city, which is everyone who feels they're going to hate me, is the wind. It's on the east coast of England. It's incredibly windy to the point that like where I live now, people say, this is unbelievably dangerous wind. I'm like, is it windy? So you get these really strong breezes and I actually really like them. So yeah, I kind of miss that, that strong breeze. And particularly now it's super hot in the UK and I could really do with the breeze where I am now and there's no breeze.

Eric (26:16.91)
Hahaha

Eric (26:30.764)
Yeah. All right. Mike, thank you for coming on the show. I will put show links to your LinkedIn as well as your agency in the show notes. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, Mike.

Mike Maynard - Napier (26:40.124)
Thanks so much, I've really enjoyed

Eric (26:41.964)
Yeah, and for those listening, I'll be back next week. Until then, this is Eric signing off. Cheers.