Impact Magazine Issue One 2017

DIALED PR/
PRTRACTION
#GirlBoss, tech whisperer, globe trotter
If there is one PR professional who understands the
lively and demanding world of the entrepreneur today,
it’s Andrea Holland. A successful entrepreneur herself,
Andrea is CEO and founder of Dialed PR, a PR consultancy
specializing in early stage B2C tech startups. She is also
co-founder of her newest venture PRTraction, which
offers PR coaching to help solopreneurs, entrepreneurs,
and consultants build authority and credibility without
having to pay the high price of a PR firm.
After graduating from UCSB in 2006, Andrea spent nine
years working for a handful of large global PR agencies
primarily in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, and New York
City. But after nearly a decade in the corporate world,
she decided that it wasn’t the world she wanted to stay in
forever. In the face of a tempting offer for a promotion at
her company, she decided instead to take the leap and start
her own venture: “I didn’t want to have to stay within the
box; I had my own ideas,” she recounts. Her vision was to
create a PR consultancy that was high-touch and less bound
by the constant pressure to keep profits as high as possible,
as she was previously required to do. She also wanted to
work more with start-ups, which is an entrepreneurial
demographic she is passionate about supporting.
In January of 2013, after exiting from her corporate job,
Andrea founded Dialed PR, and it was in Santa Barbara that
she found her first clients. She quickly got keyed into the
local tech and start-up scene here, and it wasn’t long before
business began to pick up and she decided to uproot her
life in the Bay Area to make Santa Barbara her home base.
The southward move did not, however, symbolize a settling down for Andrea Holland just yet. The
opposite was true, in fact. A few months into her new life in Santa Barbara, she found out about
an entrepreneurship program in Southeast Asia called Project Getaway. She was accepted into the
program, and later that year found herself in Bali, working and living with 20 other entrepreneurs and
digital nomads from all over the world. Due to the nature of her location-independent business, she
was able to pick up with her laptop and cell phone and move Dialed PR to Southeast Asia for a spell.
She ended up staying for three months, garnering tons of new experience and clients.
Once she returned to Santa Barbara, news traveled fast that the darling of tech and start-up PR was
back in town. Business steadily grew, and before long Andrea realized she needed to expand and hire
her first employee. Three and a half years later, Dialed PR is now a team of five.
Business #2: PRTraction
Working, as she loves to, with start-ups, business owners and solopreneurs, Andrea has unique
insight into their pain points and specific needs from a PR standpoint. Unlike startups with massive
capital, many business owners, consultants and solopreneurs cannot afford a five-figure per month
PR consultancy, but do, however, understand the value of the craft and know that it can grow their
business and help them become credible. This is the gap that Andrea wanted to bridge, and the
premise for her new venture, a PR coaching program called PRTraction.
Through the program, clients learn how to build authority and credibility in their industry by doing
their own effective PR work. “We help clients figure out answers to questions like: How can I get my
blog content read by millions? How do I get reporters to listen to me? How do I write compelling
content that will lead people back to my website?” After going through the program, clients have a full
system in place that will allow them the ability to create what their story looks like and get in front of
the appropriate audiences.
Andrea says that creating the program and figuring out how to teach what she has learned over the
past 12 years has been one of the most rewarding challenges of her career thus far. “It’s a lot harder
to teach than do! It’s been amazing to see clients getting results using the methods I have been using
for a decade.”
Thanks to Andrea and her team, entrepreneurs of today can get dialed in to the world of PR with more
proficiency than ever before.
“We help clients figure out answers to
questions like: How can I get my blog
content read by millions? How do I get
reporters to listen to me? How do I write
compelling content that will lead people
back to my website?”
Great people.
Great value.
Great printing.
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