Lessons Learned from 15 Years as a Woman-Owned Business

By Barefoot PR

Fifteen years ago, we founded Barefoot PR, a women-owned public relations and design firm based in Denver. Today, we are proud to say that we are running a multi-million-dollar business, a financial base that too few women-owned businesses ever achieve.

In celebration of our journey, we are reflecting on the lessons we’ve learned and hope they will inspire other women who lead businesses to see that growing a business is indeed possible.

1. You don’t have to do it alone.

One of the scariest aspects of starting a business was considering all the areas where we weren’t experts. Neither of us went to business school. Accounting? Kind of makes the eyes glaze over. We’ve seen organizations without HR go down in flames. How could two people with expertise in public relations and design get a business off the ground? The answer was asking for help.

We recognized early that we couldn’t be experts in all things and invited others to help us find experts that were right for our size and culture. Today we work with an HR counsel, a lawyer and a fractional CFO. We also have dozens of friends who are willing to provide perspective and advice over lunch. You go further when you aren’t trying to build a business alone.

2. Don’t overthink your business plan. 

One bit of lore from the Barefoot PR archives is that our first business plan had four bullet points. It was simple, to the point and defined what we wanted to do for the first year. Many businesses need complex business plans, but consulting wasn’t one of them. We didn’t need capital investments to get started, and our risk level was low. Instead of spending months hammering out a detailed plan, we spent those months refining in real time. 

We invested a significant amount of time and energy in building a partnership charter, a supplement to our legal agreement that defined work styles, conflict resolution, shared values, philosophies on work-life balance, and many other softer elements of working together. Building that foundation has allowed us to navigate difficult situations without questioning the foundation of our business—the relationship between the two founders.

3. Set big goals. 

Growing by 50% in one year feels daunting, but when you put pen to paper, you realize it can be done. The same is true for moving from a regional firm to having a national presence. Maybe it’s the PR in us, but dreaming big has never been a problem. Even more inspiring has been sharing those big dreams with our team and inviting them in to make them happen. 

As leaders, we believe it is our job to set the vision. However, we need a team to bring that vision to life. We’ve also found we get there faster when we are constrained by our own ideas of how to get from point A to point B. We have a team that is creative, smart and really good at what they do. They have agency when it comes to how we make the dream work. 

4. Stay nimble.

When your computer breaks, you don’t wait a few days to see if it will magically fix itself. You take action immediately. The same is true for our business. When a policy or product doesn’t work, we pivot quickly. 

A good example is our work-from-home policy. We love being trust-based and allowed our team to select when they wanted to work from home as long as they communicated it to their manager. What resulted was confusion. We had team members who were spending more time trying to figure out what was and wasn’t ok than taking advantage of the flexible policy. As a result, we implemented a new policy with specific parameters. It’s clear, and it has allowed new levels of collaboration and head-down work time to happen in harmony.

Cori Streetman and Sarah Hogan founded Barefoot PR in 2010. Their agency now has a full-time staff of 17 professionals who provide public relations and design services to nonprofits, foundations, government agencies, and businesses focused on community impact. Learn more at www.barefootpr.com.