Why Waiting to Build Your Personal Brand Is Costing You Millions | Alexandra Crabb | Ep. 14

What this episode covers

📩 Join the Friday Briefing (free newsletter): https://get.obeycreative.com/newsletter 🎙️ Free Podcast Planner GPT: https://get.obeycreative.com/podcastplanner  Alexandra Crabb just became the owner of a 28-year-old PR agency.   She didn't start it. She grew it from the inside over 14 years — joined as VP when the team was five people, helped build it to ten, and six weeks ago acquired Castor Communications from its founder, Kimberly Lancaster. Now she's thinking about something most founders never stop to consider: legacy. What does she want to leave behind? And how does she protect the reputation that was already there when she walked in?   That question runs through everything in this episode.   Alex has spent her entire career making founders visible — getting them in front of the right journalists, the right audiences, the right rooms. And she has a clear, honest take on where founders waste money, where they miss the window, and why the ones who wait until they "need" PR are already behind.   In this episode of Return on Reputation, we cover: — What PR actually does for a B2B founder  — and what it absolutely cannot do  — Why founders who wait to build their personal brand make their own lives harder  — The real cost of staying invisible while someone louder takes your market  — How AI is reshaping discoverability and why earned media now carries more weight than ever   — The owned, earned, and paid flywheel and how to think about the right ratios  — Why your whole team needs to be visible, not just the founder  — What "building in public" actually looks like when you're still figuring it out  — The AEO vs. GEO debate and why the fundamentals still win This one is for the founder who's heads down building  and hasn't looked up to ask who knows they exist yet.   Chapters:  00:00 Introduction  00:44 Alex acquires Castor Communications — the intrapreneurship story  04:45 The weight of ownership — legacy, pressure, and not screwing it up  05:35 AI and the future of discoverability — how Castor is adapting  11:10 The Wild West of social media and why LinkedIn still wins for B2B  13:45 What PR actually does for a B2B founder — and what founders get wrong  16:00 It's not magic: why PR doesn't work as an on/off switch  18:05 When a startup is NOT ready for PR  20:25 Building your personal brand before you need it — and what waiting costs  25:10 The loudest person in the room problem  27:00 Media training, story development, and the living pitch book  33:00 AEO, GEO, and the shift in how people find you  38:35 Why owned + earned + paid all work together  43:00 The whole team needs to be visible — not just the founder  49:05 AEO — the one thing every founder needs to understand right now  51:05 Rapid fire  57:10 What reputation means to Alex today — and why she's thinking about legacy   Subscribe to Return on Reputation on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.   Ready to close your Authority Gap? Visit OBEYCreative.com

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