4 lessons learned from starting a PR agency with a family member

Some might question the wisdom of starting an agency in the midst of a pandemic, let alone with a family member, but going against the traditional grain is a hallmark of both mine and my mother’s personalities.

In the fall of 2020, Carin Warner (my mother) and I teamed up to launch Notably, an integrated PR firm. We positioned it as an agency that targets high-growth companies that want to scale quickly, raise serious capital, be acquired or go public. In the course of charting our new agency’s direction, we have learned some valuable—and sometimes difficult—lessons about working together:

Being related does not ensure you will possess an equal skill set. Early on, we realized that we had complementary but different skills.

My mother had been running a successful PR agency for 20 years before launching this one, so she obviously knew a lot about agency administration, including how to set up a health plan, 401k, payroll and more. She’s also a very capable new business person.