Austin Holmes is the CEO of Signal Raptor and President of Publicity for Good. A serial entrepreneur, he played a key role in scaling his wife Heather Holmes’ PR firm, growing their monthly revenue from $12,000 to $163,000. Previously serving as a Naval Special Operations EOD tech, he brings a disciplined, systems-focused approach to his current roles. Austin engages in various ventures, including digital media, e-commerce, and the food industry, and co-founded Press Demand, a SaaS platform for media pitching. He is also a dedicated father with a purpose-driven philosophy and a passion for accessible PR.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [1:36] How past military experience can contribute to entrepreneurial discipline and leadership
- [1:49] Austin Holmes’ first step into entrepreneurship during his formative years
- [8:36] Publicity for Good’s mission to elevate purpose-driven businesses
- [14:46] Insights into balancing entrepreneurship with family life and personal values
- [17:19] How Signal Raptor, an emerging PR software, aims to revolutionize brand communications
- [19:50] An overview of the COMPARE framework — a comprehensive communication strategy for businesses
- [25:38] The critical importance of storytelling and messaging in building successful brands
- [29:57] Why mentorship and staying ahead of technology trends is crucial for aspiring entrepreneurs
In this episode…
Entrepreneurship requires a unique blend of honesty, continuous improvement, and a desire to make the world better. But how can military experience translate into successful business leadership?
According to Austin Holmes, CEO of Signal Raptor and President of Publicity for Good, the transition from military to entrepreneurship can be challenging, but it provides valuable skills in operational planning, organizational management, and leadership. Austin has transitioned into his current role after serving as a Naval Special Operations EOD tech. He highlights that those skills, combined with a mission-driven focus and the ability to build strong teams, can be crucial in scaling businesses and developing innovative solutions in various industries.
On this episode of the Top Business Leaders Show, Rise25’s Chad Franzen welcomes Austin Holmes, the CEO of Signal Raptor CEO, for a conversation about his journey from Naval Special Operations to successful entrepreneur. Austin shares insights on scaling his wife’s PR firm, developing a SaaS platform for media pitching, and balancing family life with multiple business ventures. He also discusses the importance of purpose-driven businesses and making PR more accessible through technology.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Chad Franzen on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Email the team at Rise25: support@rise25.com
- A. Austin Holmes on LinkedIn
- Heather Holmes on LinkedIn
- Alex Charfen on LinkedIn
- Dave Meltzer on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Publicity for Good
- Signal Raptor
- StoryBrand
Quotable Moments:
- “In order to maintain business, you have to continue to be honest.”
- “Entrepreneurs are kind of the one source that has continually moved society forward throughout history.”
- “If you can go out there and be a positive impact in the world at the same time, why wouldn’t you do it?”
- “Building a brand as you communicate, and you can communicate in a ton of different ways.”
- “If you don’t have a story, there’s nothing to relate to. Fundamentally, as humans, we relate to stories.”
Action Steps:
- Embrace the entrepreneurial mindset with honesty and consistency. Instilling these values promotes trust and longevity in business relationships.
- Integrate purpose into your business model. Aligning your company’s core operations with a mission beyond profit maximizes impact and resonates with customers.
- Leverage systems and frameworks. Applying organizational tactics like the COMPARE framework can streamline communication and brand-building processes.
- Invest time in proper storytelling and messaging. Crafting a relatable narrative for your brand is essential for emotional connection and marketing success.
- Seek mentorship and stay abreast of technology. Learning from established entrepreneurs and keeping up with tech trends can significantly accelerate business growth and innovation.
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Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Top Business Leaders Show. Powered by Rise25 media, we feature top founders, executives and business leaders from all over the world.
Chad Franzen 0:19
Chad Franzen here, co host of the Top Business Leaders Show, where we feature CEOs, entrepreneurs and top leaders in the business world. This episode is brought to you by Rise25 we help B2B businesses reach their dream relationships and Con and connect with more clients, referrals, and strategic partnerships and get ROI through done-for-you podcast. If you have a B2B business and want to build great relationships, there’s no better way to do it than to profile the people and companies you admire on your podcast to learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at support@Rise25 com.
My guest today is Austin Holmes, president of Publicity for Good and CEO of Signal Raptor. Austin is a serial entrepreneur and has played a crucial role in scaling his wife Heather Holmes’ PR firm, Publicity for Good, from $12,000 to $163,000 a month. Austin’s diverse background includes serving as a Naval Special Operations EOD tech and achieving significant success in real estate. He’s also involved in various ventures, including a digital media outlet, three e-commerce stores, and partial ownership of 23 quick-service restaurants. Additionally, he co-founded Press Demand, a SaaS platform for media pitching. Austin, thanks so much for joining me today. How are you?
Austin Holmes 1:36
Hey, I’m doing excellent. Glad to be here.
Chad Franzen 1:39
Hey, tell me what, what was your first ever entrepreneurial experience?
Austin Holmes 1:49
This is the one I’ve been going back to, and I’ll go to my first one. I started after that, but a friend of mine a mentor at church when I was in fourth, or what’s Middle School, sixth grade, he had a salsa company, and so I would actually help him take the bottles to the local retail outlets that he had secured, and I also had a part in selling it to friends and family, and I had a lot of fun with that. Made an extra buck here there, and that was my first exposure to entrepreneurship. But in college, I really got exposed to it through school, primarily
Chad Franzen 2:33
… in what in what way?
Austin Holmes 2:38
So I I met a couple guys that were in the business world already, and I shifted from entrepreneurship to business. Had an amazing teacher who had come from the kind of the recruiting background, sold his agency there, and I appreciated him probably more than all of the rest, rest of my professors combined, because he had been out there and had done it. And seeing that, seeing kind of the values of the entrepreneurial community, those were huge parts of it that guided me in this direction.
Chad Franzen 3:12
What was it about the entrepreneurial community that was kind of appealing or attractive to you in terms of their values.
Austin Holmes 3:21
I think when you’re on the business side of things, you actually just have to be honest. And that honesty about, hey, we’re here to make money, that was an obvious thing to me. And in order to maintain business, you have to continue to be honest. The guys who are most successful have been honest for 40 years, and they’ve done the same thing for 40 years. And that consistency and that does all another part of it is the desire to get better, to continually improve yourself and make the world a better place, which absolutely carries forward to what we’re doing with publicity for good. That’s the whole client avatar we try and work with.
Chad Franzen 4:04
Do you think that that honesty of where we’re here to make money, while it’s kind of obvious, it’s hard for people to admit, even though it’s true.
Austin Holmes 4:16
I think it depends on who you are, it depends on what your messaging is. It depends on who you’re serving. Because some people don’t want to hear that. Some people appreciate it and and I think it’s a lot more acceptable here in America than many places. There’s definitely some ideologies who are very negative towards individuals owning anything. And so that’s that’s not really my flavor, and I think it’s a huge benefit for society. One of our mentors, Alex charfen, he talked about how, and I’m gonna misquote this,… but entrepreneurs are kind of the one source that has continually moved society forward throughout history.
Chad Franzen 5:12
Sure, how did your your military? Experience help you in terms of, you know, being ready for entrepreneurship or doing entrepreneurship,
Austin Holmes 5:21
that one’s pretty easy. Essentially, the military is a large business, and it’s very much run with those same management principles. And you know, you hear across that every business at the top end is all the same. Anyhow, the military is run in a similar way. You have organizational structure and dynamics and system and process and procedure. So I was exposed to that. I also my job was a tremendous amount, or tremendous part of my job was about operational planning, because we had to make sure that this wasn’t going to kill us in whatever fashion. And so that preparation, and in our community, it was preparing so much that we never got it wrong, which is a different standard to live to. So bringing those principles of preparedness, the principles of organizational management and training and leadership, absolutely, leadership is that that, to me, is the hardest skill set. And I think about eight years ago is the first time I was formally a leader, and I’m still learning like I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface eight years in.
Chad Franzen 6:37
what was it hard to transition from like that, that structured, you know, military lifestyle, into a less structured lifestyle. And how did you kind of, you know, continue to make it structured as you kind of went along through the business world? I believe in the military.
Austin Holmes 6:54
I think it’s hard for just about everybody, yeah, and I had the benefit of an organization and a mission to jump into with Heather’s company, and we she had only started a couple years before, and so we were able to build that together and create it the way we wanted it to be. If I didn’t have that mission, I think it would have been much harder. And I feel out there. I feel for the guys out there who struggle, because it’s a rough two years. I think no matter what, as you’re transitioning away,… and I had already gone through missing the team aspect earlier in life, and so I know I wanted to be a part of a team for the rest of my life. And I think a lot of guys miss that. They get out and they have no team, they have no community. The community isn’t just, hey, you’re at work. It’s every aspect of life ties into who you’re working with in the military, for most people, and that’s a huge thing to lose, and oftentimes you’re moving with that, we choose to go little wild and traveled across the US for about two years in our Airstream afterwards, and that was an interesting story by itself, while building the agency. And so I had a lot going on as a distraction from that, but it’s a real problem in society.
Chad Franzen 8:19
yeah. I’ve definitely heard, heard about it. Well, thanks so much for your service. I’m glad your transition is going, you know, as well as probably you could hope. So, yeah, thanks so much for that. You mentioned your wife’s company publicity for good. Tell me just kind of you know a little bit about it in a nutshell.
Austin Holmes 8:36
I’ll start with her background. She did three years at an ad agency as a publicist, and that’s really what she still is today. We built the business together as president and CEO from 2018 on, and that we hit our first million-dollar year in 2020 which was a very interesting year, we lost like a third of our clients in a week, and I guess you can tell why in 2020, but yeah, the agency has grown in a lot of different ways. Been around about eight years, so we’ve learned a lot of lessons, made a lot of mistakes, which I hear constantly from the entrepreneurs in our community, of like, yeah, we we made those mistakes. This is how you handle it. I was just on a call today with somebody who’s been on the software side before, and he was like, Yeah, you probably want KPIs for your developers. And like, yeah, I probably do. So the agency developed, and, you know, I was able to bring that process and procedure as well as we sought out mentorship and information everywhere we could. We, even to this day,… are intense about trying to learn everything that we can. And I can say my focus now has actually shifted from the operations side and the personnel and the management and hiring and the finances, but I honestly got most of that in college. The focus for me now is sales and ads, and so it’s a newer realm for me to play in. I do. Have a little bit of background him, but not enough to be confident yet. And Heather is, you know, she loves the delivery side, so she’s constantly digging into how to be better for our clients, how to serve them at a higher level.
Chad Franzen 10:28
So publicity for Good is kind of a like a like a PR firm for for what, like, uh, nonprofits.
Austin Holmes 10:38
So, uh, we primarily work with purpose driven businesses. Like I was talking about, this is okay, it’s it’s great to make money, but if you can go out there and be a positive impact in the world at the same time, like, why wouldn’t you do it? There’s a lot of reasons why, uh, purpose driven is the way that most businesses are starting to go. And that’s not just okay. We’re going to take 5% of our profits and throw them over to this charity. It’s how do you build it into the business model itself, so that every time that you make a sale, or every time that you get a product out there, something good happens because of that, and when you build in in like that. It’s so powerful, because you’re not making that conscious decision at the end of the day, you’re starting with that decision, we’re going to do something amazing in this world. And so that’s who we like to work with. We primarily do media relations, getting our clients in the media, whether that’s everything from digital to Good Morning America, yeah, and so everything in between. There is something that we get earned media for our clients, and a lot of people have moved to more of a paid media model, which we do on occasion for our clients, but actually earning that story by getting the messaging right and building the relationships with the media members and building the trust in our clients brands,… and then we also do influencer management and social media management for the clients who don’t want to go somewhere else for that. So that’s really more of a secondary service.
Chad Franzen 12:11
What difference did you make in the firm, or what did you bring to the firm that it didn’t had, didn’t have, prior to the time you got there? That brought it from 12,000 to $163,000 a month.
[continue to page 2]
Austin Holmes 12:26
Gosh, I didn’t bring a whole lot outside of my military background and kind of that systems side of it. I learned alongside I, I remember one of my first business events that I ever went to. I was sitting I didn’t do this on accident, or I did this on accident. His book is sitting right next to me, and I was sitting across the table from this lovely couple, and the event leader was talking about him. I’m like, Oh, that’s awesome that you guys are doing well. And ended up, years later, I’m watching a YouTube video, and Heather’s like, oh, yeah, we were at the event with them. I’m like, eight clicks in my head of who they were, and that was Alex and Layla, which was an interesting life cycle to see their success. And it’s awesome to see what they’re doing now. But I didn’t have any idea when I was coming in about real entrepreneurship. I’d learned what I had in college in my business management degree, and so I had a good understanding of, like, financial statements and the super basic stuff. But so much of what I’ve learned is from since then, of digging in, reading books, podcasts, going to events, finding mentorship like currently, we’re working with Dave Meltzer on the mentorship front, and he’s helped us a tremendous amount with sales. So the other thing I would say is the mindset like the community that I was in, that I was involved with, DOD, is a pretty high level community in the military, and the mindset of winning and of being a champion, of definitely never giving up, making sure that You work so hard that you never get it wrong, because in that community, like we’re dealing with explosives, so if you get it wrong, either you or somebody else can easily die…. And so that level of proficiency and execution is another thing that I did bring to the business.
Chad Franzen 14:34
Very nice. So you you work with your wife, and you guys also have young children. How’s, how’s all of that? How do you kind of make all that happen and work?
Austin Holmes 14:46
That is a great question. We have two kids, one just turned two, one just turned one, and a third, one that is ready to come out any day. Been waiting for about three weeks saying, Alright, where’s this kid at? Because both the other ones were fairly early at 38 and 37 weeks, and I think we’re on week 40 right now. So it’s, it’s a waiting game. It’s, it’s a challenge. The idea of we’re. Life Balance is something that I don’t really agree with. I think you’re either focusing on one thing or the other, and so you have to be good with your time, and you have to make sure that you’re taking the intentional time for each part of your life, and none of it’s ever going to be in balance, but being intentional and eliminating the things that don’t need to be there is a powerful thing to make sure that you’re getting done what has to get done. And that’s what it comes down to at the end of the day, is doing what’s required. And we very much believe in that.
Chad Franzen 15:55
And you, I think you guys have kind of a unique lifestyle. Is that, right, like you live off the land or something.
Austin Holmes 16:00
So we have a property and a house. The property is 22 acres, and, you know, we have chickens, and that’s about it right now. We used to have a little bit more. And with building our now second business with the software, which is a PR software, a lot less of my time is available, so we’ve trimmed back a little bit. Still have a garden and all that. But we’re, we’re in the health and wellness space with our brands, for the most part, in consumer packaged goods, food, beverage, beauty and fashion. That’s primarily our avatar, and that’s something we both believed in before we ever started in that space. In the military, you’re around guys that are not obsessed about their bodies, but are working very hard to perform at the highest level…. That’s really what it is. And so we know that that’s a vital part of entrepreneurship as well, of playing at the highest level, is just getting your self right and making sure that, I know I just said the contrary, but making sure yourself internally is balanced.
Chad Franzen 17:12
yeah, you mentioned the your second business, Signal Raptor. I think that’s what you were referring to. Tell me a little bit about that and how it came about.
Austin Holmes 17:19
So the idea started sometime shortly before November, and we started development with our first two developers in November, and that was an whole adventure. About two years ago, I had spent six months trying to learn how to code, figured out I was terrible at it, and I had a different idea, which was our second software play at a minimum, because press demand was definitely still in play at that time, but press man just kind of phased out. It’s it’s just not even a concept anymore. Now that AI exists, it would have been great five years ago, but Heather had worked with a partner on that right before meeting me, and we actually ended up buying out that partner and running the software for a short time and then kind of shut it down anyway. I learned code, and so we had this idea, what can we do to make PR more accessible? Because one of the most common things that we hear on sales calls is PR is expensive because you’re paying for relationship time and experience, and so that’s an expensive proposition in the traditional agency model. And Heather’s goal for a long time has been to make PR more accessible. So we looked at how we can do that, and with AI, with some of the tech advances that we’ve seen in the past four years, it’s now much more practical to make that happen, and we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing there without the agency background, either. So having the coding background, having the agency background, having previous software experience slightly, and we started working on that in November, and we’re moving along. We’re up to 20 users at this point,… kind of a closed beta testing phase, trying to get stuff sorted and right and all the pieces in place, which doing it for the second time. You almost tell yourself, okay, it wasn’t this hard before, right? But now it’s just a lot to really start a new entity.
:
Chad Franzen 19:45
Do you do you utilize something called the compare framework?
Austin Holmes 19:50
So, yeah, the compare framework is something that we came up with, and I’m writing out in my book now 90 day fame, that hopefully it’s about halfway done right now. So finding time to write during all this is also interesting. The compare framework is really every option you have in communications as a business. And it’s not that you have to do every single thing on the list, but you have to do some of them, and some people focus on one. Like there’s businesses that are completely successful and the only thing that they do is ads, and then there’s other businesses where they are purely built on the content they produce. Now Mr. Beast has moved beyond this, but Mr. Beast has built an empire because of creating content. And so you can take so many of these things and create massive businesses out of them, and it’s just, how do you communicate? And that’s to anybody, whether it’s your customers, your bankers, every piece of that we we have put into this framework, and so I already mentioned the first one of content, then you have outbound a large part of how we do our sales process is outbound communications, both on social and in email, media is the next one, which is what we specialize in. Like that is one of the most powerful ways for you to communicate your message. And it’s it’s definitely changed in the past four years, even longer, if you look back and you see how papers started to phase out, and they’re not gone, just like radio isn’t gone. I don’t think media even goes away over time, and maybe the eight track there’s definitely use cases, but it’s just shifted. There’s still media out there, and it’s still a great way to get third party validation of your message. The next one’s platforms. This both talks to social platforms and owned digital platforms, but it also talks to What are you talking about? We’re having the conventions politically here soon, and they have formed their platforms. They’re saying,… This is what we stand for. You have to do that as a brand, as an individual, and say, Hey, this is what I’m standing for. This is what I talk about. This is who I am really. Next one is advertising. You know, already mentioned this one. It’s, it’s a great business methodology to communicate. And you know, obviously you need to have that positive return, but you still get to reach a lot of people. It’s very impressive to me what Ty did a couple of years ago of being more recognizable than Obama for a short period of time, just because he had so many ads running, which is insane to me. The The next one is relationships. And this ties in, again, to a previous discussion of mentorship and getting out there and meeting people like we’ve absolutely gotten more business on the agency side from relationships than we have anything else, whether that’s referrals or just going out there being part of a community, and the last one is engagement, engaging in that community and building relationships with the people. When you have a relationship with somebody versus just somebody you’re getting an ad from, often, that relationship will make a huge difference in a buying decision. And the last one is engagement, getting out there, engaging in your community, engaging in the digital space. There’s so many opportunities, and I think this is where people fall short. Is not getting out there, not going to where people are at so that’s the conveyor framework. Okay,
Chad Franzen 23:55
very nice. How did you, how did you come up with that? Did you, did it kind of come together over time? Or was it like an aha moment?
Austin Holmes 24:02
It was pretty intentional work. We had been searching for our own platform, so to speak, for a long time, and Heather is very focused in on the public relations side, and she loves that, and she loves working with the media. And I’m looking at it as almost an outsider, if you want to call it that, and saying, Hey, how do we communicate? How it comes down to building a brand too,… like that’s that’s kind of the popular terminology for it right now. But how you build a brand as you communicate, and you can communicate in a ton of different ways. Like Red Bull built their brand through advertising. They spent 250 or three 50 million on that first campaign, and then were synonymous. And then they also, you know, added some vodka to it, and it worked out well in that regard. But there’s so many different ways to build a brand, and we wanted to set it down as far as, hey, this is everything that we can think of, that you can do, and you don’t need to do all of it. But here’s your options. And I think working from a framework in any area of life is so helpful. It’s. Making that mental shortcut, it’s saying, Okay, what are our next steps? There are so many business frameworks on how to structure your business, but there’s not a whole lot about what to do next. So when we’re trying to advise clients, let’s look at the framework.
Chad Franzen 25:33
How important is being able to tell a story when it comes to building a brand,
Austin Holmes 25:38
the first thing it is the most vital if, if you don’t have a story, there’s nothing to relate to. Fundamentally, as humans, we relate to stories, and I’m sure there’s a psychologist out there to explain why that is. But we relate to stories, and so if you don’t develop your story, everybody has a story to tell, and you have to take the time to develop that story, get your messaging in place before you can do any of the rest of it. It’s vital.
Chad Franzen 26:11
Yeah. So what do you mean? What do you mean by messaging when it comes to telling your story?
Austin Holmes 26:15
Okay, good example for messaging is storybrand, another great company out there. They take you through a process. And it’s saying this from a business perspective, there’s messaging from an individual level as well, but from a brand perspective, you know, you’re going to want to start with who you’re aiming to serve that can be developed if you don’t even have that done in your business yet. You can go out and talk to 100 people,… and you’re going to find out what people want and what their pain points are. And you can do that in any industry, and probably you’re going to get some clients out of that, while you’re going along say, hey, I’ll help you with that. And that was actually part of another framework that we had been taught was going out and talking to 100 people. But once you have that information, or if you have the personal pain point, like the software is partially from my pain point of managing an agency with software, we have, like, 15 different softwares and like, Why? Why isn’t there one software to roll them all? And so, at least from a brand communications standpoint, that’s what Raptor like features and benefits is, is, how do you manage your brand’s communications? But back to messaging, storybrand starts with, you know, who are you serving? What do they need? What’s the want? And then, okay, how are we going to help them? What’s the plan? And I think you can go through story, brands framework for free. I could be wrong on that. We did it a lot, while ago for PFG. And so it’s a powerful place to start. If you need to figure out what your messaging is, there’s also tons of professionals out there, and this is a different side of the public relations world that help you develop that messaging. They look at your backstory, they look at what you’re good at, they look at what your business is doing, and they help you develop that messaging. This is definitely more common when it’s a an established business that’s trying to re reinvent themselves and reach a new audience, or just, you know, stay current with the times.
Chad Franzen 28:21
Does a signal raptor kind of work with clients? You know, you set up the media appearances, but then do you kind of help them, like, get prepared or train them for the media appearances as well?
Austin Holmes 28:33
Yeah. So it’s still early in the project, but we have a fair amount of content at this point that allows or that trains people on that media training, the simple stuff of not wearing a green tie to an interview, because it’s probably not going to show up real well…. And Heather handles a lot of that. So I I don’t even know as many of the details there, but I do know we have that available.
Chad Franzen 29:02
I have one more question for you. But first, just tell me how people can find out more about both signal raptor and publicity for good
Austin Holmes 29:10
cool. The websites are what they say, signalraptor.com, and publicity for good.com. You can find me, A Austin Holmes on a lot of the social media platforms. LinkedIn is my most active because I do a lot of my hiring stuff through there, which is something we didn’t really touch on, but actually something I really love in the business, it’s about building relationships too. So but those are the main places to find us.
Chad Franzen 29:35
Okay, great. Hey. Last question, if somebody came to you, maybe a recent college graduate or something, and said they have this great idea for their own business and they’re going to start it, what advice could you give them for setting a vision for their business that they probably didn’t learn in business school or wouldn’t have learned unless they walked in your shoes?
Austin Holmes 29:57
One part of it that I could tell them is learn to code, or at least learn what it means to be in the software front. I, I am definitely a believer in the opportunity vehicle, uh, theory of if you’re in the wrong boat. Um. Yeah, it doesn’t matter. So pick the right boat. Software is one of the better ones, unless you’re a finance guy, and then your path is set for you. The other thing is mentorship. That’s made the biggest difference for for me, and it’s free. Now there’s tons of guys and girls online. Heather has her repertoire of people she follows, and I have mine, and that is so powerful, and you can get it in short, little snippets. Now you can spend 10 minutes a day and learn half of what’s going on in the world. So mentorship and making sure that you’re looking forward at what technology is doing.
Chad Franzen 30:55
Okay, awesome. Hey, Austin, it’s been great to talk to you. Thank you so much for your time and all of your insights…. Really appreciate it
Austin Holmes 31:03
absolutely. This is great being on
Chad Franzen 31:05
So long everybody.
Outro 31:07
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