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.
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