Your Next Move - The PR Playbook Founders Actually Need

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

In this episode of Your Next Move: Audio Edition, recorded live at the Inc. 5000 Conference, Inc. staff reporter Chloe Aiello sits down with Ronica Cleary, founder and CEO of Cleary Strategies, an award-winning public relations firm specializing in earned media. Cleary breaks down what “earned media” really means—and why credibility, not clicks, remains the most powerful currency for growing companies. Drawing on her background as a former journalist, she explains how brands can position themselves as truly newsworthy, navigate an increasingly complex media landscape, and measure ROI in a space where impact isn’t always easy to quantify. The conversation also explores how AI is reshaping PR workflows and newsrooms, why SEO and generative search are becoming essential growth drivers, and how Cleary has evolved her go-to-market strategy beyond traditional networking. She shares candid insights on scaling a service business, building a strong remote culture, and adapting to the shift from traditional media toward podcasts and digital platforms. Looking ahead, Cleary outlines her vision for growth—doubling revenue while staying laser-focused on delivering high-impact earned media—and reflects on what it takes to remain indispensable in a rapidly changing communications industry.

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In this episode, Inc. staff reporter Chloe Iiello sat down with Rodica Cleary, founder and CEO of Cleary Strategies, a full-service public relations agency, specializing in earned media. Ronica is an Inc., power. partner award recipient and a member of the Inc. Leadership Forum, working closely with high-growth companies to help them build credibility and visibility through trusted media coverage. And this conversation begins with Ronica breaking down what earned media really is, and why credibility, not clicks, is still the most valuable currency for growing companies. Okay, so just to start us off, can you tell me your name, your company, and your affiliation with Inc?

Sure. Ronica Cleary, founder and CEO of Cleary Strategies, we're an Inc. Power Partner Award recipient and member of the Inc. Leadership Forum. And can you give me a short description of your company? Sure. Cleary Strategies is a full-service public relations agency, and we provide our clients earned media support by placing them on television, radio, print digital, and podcasts. Now, being a Power Partner is pretty special. It means that your company is one of the key players in helping Inc. 5,000 companies and other small, privately owned, or to medium to large company. grow really rapidly. So I just want to ask, you know, what is some of that special sauce that helps you actually accomplish this? Being a power partner is very special because you're right. Our work that we do every day helps other companies grow and be more prestigious and more well established. I think it's about, I'm going to say being a good partner, having good relationships

with your clients and delivering what you promise to deliver. I'm in the industry of public relations and that gets a bad name a lot of times because people often don't know what that means or they say it means a lot of things that it doesn't. We're a very niche company and agency. We deliver earned media results for our clients and we do that regularly and consistently because we do that, because we deliver on what we promise. I think we are our great partner to our clients that we serve and that was really nice to be recognized as an Inc power partner for that. And for those who don't know, what is earned media? Yeah, that's a great question. You're a journalist and I'm a former journalist. When you talk about earned media, this seems so obvious, but the distinction is to separate it from

paid media or paid advertising. So all of the clients on our roster, they come to us because they want us to help them, quote, earn media coverage for their newsworthiness. But a lot of people don't know how to do that, you know, unless you're the most obvious biggest headline. They say, well, how do I fit into other headlines and other stories in the news? I want to earn that coverage because at the end of the day people trust, whether it's unknowingly or deliberately, they trust earned media coverage more than a paid advertisement, right? You're going to believe the expert that's commenting on a news story in the news story more than maybe the commercial that's after it's saying, you know, invest your money with us. And so we help our clients figure out how to navigate that media

landscape or we do it for them, but we help them figure out where they fit into that landscape so that we can convince newsrooms, producers, and reporters that they are newsworthy and interesting enough to earn that coverage for their newsworthiness versus pay for it. So they never exchange money with the news outlet or the reporter or a social platform. They pay us to help navigate that landscape on their behalf so that they can earn that coverage, which is arguably more prestigious and venerable than a paid ad. You know, to your point, I am a journalist. I'm on the other side of this. So something I'm super curious about is when you're talking about earned media versus paid media. What does a return on investment look like? How do you quantify how well something

is performing when you're looking at something that you would have paid for versus something that, to your point, probably earns a lot more trust with your target demographic? What does that look like? Are you beginning a meeting for publicists to like open up about their biggest pain point? Because we could all commiserate over this. That is absolutely the hardest part of our job. There are tools that exist, but earn media and the value of earned media is difficult to quantify. It's a thing that you touch, you feel, you know, over time, you work on it, you develop it. However, I cannot tell my clients, just feel like you're getting somewhere with our work. So we have amazing tools and technology out there that helps us to quantify the value of our placements if they were to pay for it.

So the tools use Nielsen ratings and they will give us estimates of the potential audience for a placement or the potential reach of a digital publication. And then they'll give us the monetary value if we were to buy an advertisement at that time. of day on that network in that market and what that's cost. So that's how we can quantify it. But there's also other things that are work results in which would be like improved SEO because it's always important for us to have no follow backlinks for any of the placements where we can. But because it's earned media, not every news outlet will give them to us because we're not paying for the backlink. And they'll say, well, you're not paying for that. So it is a really complicated sort of journey to follow on behalf of our clients. And when you talk about that ROI,

it can be a little softer and harder to touch and feel, but it does matter. At the end of the day, like, you need to have an earned media strategy because the value of getting media attention that you didn't pay for cannot be denied, even if it is more difficult to quantify. Let's talk about your customer base a little bit. How has, like, obviously you've grown, as we discussed earlier, how is your go-to market evolved as you scaled, what channels get more investment, what channels get less investment? and how do you make that call in the moment? Sure. So when I started this business, it was very much based on my network. You know, I am a former journalist, and when people in my network saw that I left television news, they said, well, you must know how to navigate this space and I would like to be on TV. Your network only lasts for so long, no matter how big that it is. And then your network's network

only lasts for so long. I think like each tier that you get away from your own network, it gets a little weaker. So for me, the investment that I've really made over time is earn media for myself, but earn media for myself always with the intention of an SEO strategy. The best potential clients that we get find us through a Google search or a web search. And now generative engine optimization GEO is incredible. We closed our first client that found us on a chat GPT search. So for me, as we grow, I used to come to conferences like the Inc. 5,000 because I said, well, I have to meet people, has to be boots on the ground, I have to do business development, shaking hands. That is not a strategy for a long-term growth or a successful, significantly sized business. And so it has been a really

eye-opening experience and something that we have invested in, traditional SEO support and then earned media for our agency for ourselves to get SEO backlinks as well so that we just rank higher in searches because when people are searching for earned media support, that's what they're looking for. And then we come up and they find us and we're a great agency and we can meet their needs and meet them where they are. That has been the best strategy for our growth. I'm glad you brought up AI. I want to come back to that in a minute. And to your point, I mean, the landscape around AI is changing so quickly. We've seen just entire classes of companies kind of emerge over the past couple of years. I guess my question for you is how has your customer segment changed? Are there

customers that you're going after that are in a new category? Have you changed your strategy at all? I guess who's your biggest addressable market? Like what kind of client are you going after at this point? So that's interesting. I don't know that AI has necessarily changed our client base. If anything, you know, having a client that can talk about AI might not be as appealing because there are so many people that say they want to talk about AI or that they're AI experts. You're almost like, you know, say going through this like field of too many potential clients.

AI for getting clients, it's not really changed the space, if that's your question. But I feel like there was another part to it, and I might have lost the thread, and I'm sorry. No, that's okay. I was curious how, if at all, your customer base has changed over time, if there's a customer base that you see as being more valuable or important to your business moving forward, just given how things are changing. Oh, that's interesting. No, I don't think our customer base has changed. I think what has maybe changed, though, is for us, the biggest change, let me answer it this way. The biggest change for us is the changing face of media.

AI has changed the way print journalists and digital journalists write their news stories, right? So that is where we see AI changing how we work. And then I think, okay, well, who are we pitching then? And what stories are still being written by living, breathing journalists that need our sources and our client roster? So maybe that's the answer to your question more. So it hasn't necessarily changed our client base. They're still, you know, people, thought leaders, CEOs, authors, whoever they might be that want together or media. but it's how we interact with the news landscape and how AI is running newsrooms or supporting newsrooms,

and then how do we interact with that effectively so that our clients can still get the coverage that they deserve? That's an interesting point. I'd love to dig more into that. How has AI changed your fields? Are you using tools to automate any processes at this point? I think you said maybe not quite yet. And how has it changed the way you're interacting with newsrooms, to your point? Sure. So we do use AI. I mean, AI is a great tool for us to analyze and assess. the upcoming news landscape on behalf of our clients. So, you know, you understand these things, but maybe our listeners might not be in this space. So just the concept of like an editorial calendar, planning ahead for where our clients, based on their areas of expertise, might fit into the news

landscape in the month ahead. You know, there's two ways that you can do PR. You can anticipate a news cycle and then you can react to a news cycle. You know, reacting to a news cycle is like running around with your hair on fire. We obviously do it. And it's important for our clients. But when we can anticipate the news cycle. I think we can give them more effective and consistent results. We often use AI to say, okay, look at our client roster in full, and then look at the month ahead and what you expect to happen in dates on the calendar, holidays, whatever it might be, that cheesy stuff you hear like National Coffee Day. But those things help our clients get news. I mean, they might be cheesy, but they work. And so AI helps us sort of better assess the news

landscape that we anticipate on behalf of our clients. We don't use AI to write pitches. I don't think it's necessary. Once you write dozens and dozens of pitches, it's like it's the creative process of my job. It's the best part of my job. I don't want to give that to AI. And I don't want my team to give that to AI. But I think there are great ways to use the tool to do better work in this industry. And when we come back, Kimberly explains how her firm uses industry-specific AI.

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Is there a way that you're quantifying if AI has helped you save time, save money, or do more effective earned media for your clients? Yeah, well, it definitely saves time, and time is money for sure. Candidly, I mean, we have a team of contractors who we work with, okay? So when I think about what I need to spend based on the revenue that we bring in, if I can more efficiently give a task to AI to plan for the month ahead for our client roster, that saves me money and time.

I don't think it's a huge financial saver, though, because the majority of the work that our team implements on our behalf, right now, AI can't do that, right? AI is not building relationships with journalists or knowing somebody for 20 years in the business that's going to at least look at your pitch. So so far, AI hasn't come for those jobs yet, but I have a good head on my shoulders. I mean, we just revamped our website to be more likely to get picked up in that GEO, so the generative engine optimization. So I'm always thinking about it, but there is a lot of the work

that we do that really does rely on people. So it hasn't like destroyed the industry, right? It hasn't just decimated public relations, at least not, not yet. But I'm like looking over my shoulder, like waiting for it. I think we all are. I'm trying to have like an open mind about it and use it in a way that makes us run better and be more efficient and grow versus be afraid of it. That's all you could do. So you said you work with a lot of contractors, but I'm wondering about your company culture. What's it like? How do you? protect it? Is it important to you? And, you know, what does it look like when you're speaking with potential contractors or hires or whatever that looks like? We live in a time where a lot of people

want to be full-time contractors, right? And we live in a world where that is in many ways the future of a lot of employment. And so I don't use the fact that we have a contractor model as an excuse to not run a company with like a great culture and a great team environment. So I always say we were virtual before it was cool. We were virtual before COVID. With that, it's always been on my mind, how do I run a company that is virtual from its foundation and from its beginning that feels like a family and a team? Because let me tell you, when I started this business, I was a solopreneur, and I was really lonely, right? And that was awful. And that's not the life I wanted. You know, you want independence, you want to be an entrepreneur, but you want to have a community. So I hire,

you know, not on purpose, but I do hire a lot of people who are working parents. I'm a working mom of three. And so it's very important to me to, it's funny, I was talking to somebody about this yesterday. They said, you know, when you're in a service business, the hard thing about growth and scale of a service business is that it's you, the person that's like selling the service versus like making widgets, right, where you're just like creating more widgets. And many people who run service businesses, they say, well, I don't want to work all the time, but I'm going to just push off that time that I could be working onto my team and let them work all the time. But that's not how I run my business. It is very important to me because we are all, we're working,

Not all of us, but a lot of us are working parents. We have pickups to do. We have kids who get sick. We have snow days. I need to make sure that I run this business extremely efficiently. And I think of it like an assembly line. I actually have that visual in my mind when I run this business that we're each a piece of this assembly line. And I'm like the conductor.

I'm the person putting all the pieces together on behalf of my team so that they feel like they can be great parents and super engaged in their family as well. And work can be a part of their life and not their whole life. So that's one answer to your question. The other thing I do is, like, I mean, we have team meetings. I had a holiday party that was up virtual last year, and we all had like somebody facilitated this fun activity virtually for the whole team from across the country. Like, it's very important for my team to feel like they're a part of a community because it can be lonely and isolating to be a contractor. And I don't want them to feel lonely and isolated. So I do think about company culture a lot. And it's very important to me that the people on my team, especially the working parents, feel like they're part of a community where they matter as a whole person and not just like, oh, you're a replaceable contractor. I have limited risk with you, so I don't really care. I do not treat the environment like that at all. Contracting just works in public relations. It's just a big part of this industry. It is a way a lot of it is run. So it makes sense. You mentioned you are a solopreneur at first. And a lot of companies, when they're

scaling, have trouble with hiring, deciding when to hire, who to hire, which jobs are important to fill. Oh, it's awful. Tell me a little bit about. your strategy back then when you were scaling up and even moving ahead as you're continuing to grow. Well, when I first made my first hires, I did not know what I was hiring for. I was just drowning, right, where now it's very strategic and specific. So I've gone from the system of running my business where it's just complete chaos and I need help and it's like all hands on deck to now with the system that I have in place where I do look at it like an assembly line and we have people who develop lists, write pitches, send pitches, administrative support, video editing,

and content creation, right? So now when I'm hiring, it is very strategic and specific because I'm looking to fill a role. And it also makes it easier for me to hire very well. Because original way that I hired it was like, I just need help. Do you understand PR? Have you done this before? Where now it's like, can you write great pitches? Have you worked in newsrooms? Not only do I hire parents, I hire a lot of former journalists because they understand it. And I think that's what makes us good at our job. that has been the shift that I've made that's now hiring is exciting and it feels like a relief versus this like unknown thing that I'm investing my hard earned money in and thinking I hope this works out now that we've talked about hiring I want to talk a little about risk everyone's dealing

with uncertainty right now the companies that you serve yourself I'm sure as well what would you say the biggest external risk is to your business within the next year just sort of given the shifting landscape that we've seen. People seeing the value in earned media. My sales pitch was when I started in this business, so I'm a former television journalist, right? My sales pitch was that like, we come from TV, we know TV and we can get you on TV all the time. We can still do that, but people don't always see the value in that anymore. So we have shifted tremendously. So, so I think our shift has already happened. So the year ahead, of course, like, we'll continue to shift. But like, we have a huge focus on podcasting now on behalf of our clients. You know, they still

want digital in print, but it's very hard to get a full print or digital feature unless you are a superstar. So usually the digital and print strategy is very much like a backlink strategy on behalf of your client that it's like a more prestigious backlink than some like weird, creepy SEO strategy that's giving you back links on random websites you've never heard. But most of our clients, when they would hire us years ago, was like, oh, I want my face on TV. Well, I have to convince you that it's worth being on TV because frankly, even national daytime talk shows do not garner the same viewers that they used to. It does not transform your business overnight like it did in the past.

And so then what is the point or the value in investing in it? So we have pivoted tremendously to, I mean, we've invested in tools to help us find great podcasts for our clients, to pitch great podcasts for our clients. And the great thing about podcasting is so much of it now creates video content. I was a little disappointed there was some video here because, I mean, I know the value in that video content for our clients because even if the programming isn't getting consumed, as much as it used to be, like television programming, I can convey to them and convince them, I like to believe that I can, that that video content, whether it comes from television,

whether it comes from podcasting, even if it's a small local news program, gives you amazing content for social, for newsletters, for your own client pipeline, but that's the sort of shift in the sale that I've had to make. But we've been kind of in that chaos for like two or three years and my old sales pitch does not work anymore. And I don't come from podcasting, right? So now I'm learning a new space where before I was just resting on this years of experience I had in TV news that made my job kind of like just an extension of what I used to do. Now it's like, oh, I have to learn something completely new for my clients. And so that's what we're sort of in the midst of, I think, in the PR industry that is really transformative. Okay. Final question for you.

looking three years out, what does growth look like for you? What do you see the newest avenue? Like, is it still going to be podcasts? Is it going to be something else? Give us just a little bit of future looking for your company and the clients that you serve. For sure. You know, we do grow in revenue and we have grown in revenue anywhere from 20 to 30 percent over the past few years. I would really like to completely double our revenue in three years. I would love to see that. That's a goal I have for myself. It is a challenge with three little kids in managing the life that I have at home. and also just like being the person I encourage my team to be to have balance in my life. That's very important to me.

And your kids are only a little once. I think that goal is aspirational to do that in three years, but that's on my vision board. I actually don't know that I think I want to expand past Earnmedia, though. I think there's a real value in being a niche service and doing it exceptionally well. So while the Earned Media platforms that we may pursue may continue to change, right, whether it's going from television to podcasting and who knows, maybe it's like, YouTube lives. It could change. The media may change, but I really like that we focus so much in earned media for our clients and that we are exceptional at that. I can think of a small handful of

agencies that do what we do as well as we do for earned media on one hand. Because so many other PR agencies, it is so hard to do that. They offer all these other bells and whistles. And that's fine. But what I've kind of decided for our agency is like, let's be the best at this so that if you want this service, there's no question you're coming to us or maybe one of those smaller agencies because competition can be great. It elevates all of us. So those are my goals for the next three years to continue to grow, but to really continue to be great at what it is that we offer and provide, even if we have to shift a little in the platforms in which we get them earned coverage. I think that's a good place to end. Ronica, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

That's all for this episode of Your Next Move. Our producer is Blake Odom, editorial editing and sound design by Nick Torres. Additional editing from Sam Gibauer and Tad Wadams. And our executive producer is Josh Christensen. If you haven't already, subscribe to Your Next Move on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And Your Next Move is a production of Inc and Capital One business. Thank you.