With each crisis we become stronger as a team – the Founder of Perfect PR

31/ 05/ 2021

How did your career start? Where do such interests in media, PR, and communications come from? My communications path was very natural and gradual. I feel sometimes pity that there was no such event that, as in legends, turned professional life 180 degrees. By the first education, I am a political scientist, I graduated from Franko Lviv University. In university times, I started to write for regional publications with some naïve views of the world and political events in the state. From the age of 18, I found myself in politics, in youth organizations. There I came to an understanding that someone stands behind the public image, ratings, competition, popularity and that trust can be formed by communications. When I was 20 years old, I consciously participate in public and media events, conferences on the development of Ukraine. I moved constantly between Lviv and Kyiv, I organized press events and worked with the media, participated in editorial groups, and wrote reviews for publications in parallel. In 2009, I realized that I am fully in communications, that growth and formation are in this sphere. The processes in which I got into as a human and specialist continue today. This is an understanding of the work of state institutions, businesses, and the importance of its reputation, non-stop learning of different markets and business models. I had to dive deep into the sphere of reputation management and the information world. Thats how I live in them to this day. My daily work today is a PR service for the business sector, sometimes I am engaged in marketing projects on top and seasonally work on political projects. How did you come up with the idea of creating your own public communications agency? In 2010, I received a request for PR service from a large chain in the forest industry with a condition that the services should be provided by a legal entity. So, that was an opportunity to register the company. At the time, I knew nothing about running my own business, but a lot about reputation management. Morally I was supported by the closest people, they said: you need to register the company and go your way. During the year of work with this start-up client, the agency has grown with new customers. And for two years – with full-time specialists, related services, national and international contracts, and offices in Lviv and Kyiv. There were no efforts in finding customers, therefore we missed the stage of the distribution of commercial offers. In 2011-2013 Lviv lacked full-cycle agencies, and we became the ones who filled that niche. Why do you have the name Perfect PR/Perfect solutions? The name Perfect Solutions was coined by my brother. Once in the kitchen, I said to him, How should I name my company?. He answered in a second. And then we immediately defined the values and principles behind the name. Perfect solutions is the name of our first agency with the philosophy that the perfection of services is our responsibility and the main principle of work. We work on the system of service quality every day, its a constant process, and we grow in it as a team. And Perfect PR is already a trademark. Recently, we launched another company - Perfect Digital Group, an agency that develops digital projects and is specialized in marketing. Do you consider yourself a perfectionist? In your opinion, is the desire for perfection rather an advantage or a disadvantage? For modern communications, perfectionism is not the main principle. By the way, the word perfect is in name of our agency, so we are generally lucky to use it. Perfectionism is important in tasks, budgets control, finance, operational affairs. But in modeling solutions, in creative vision, in finding new wats, flexibility is whats important. This is our superpower and the energy source for colleagues. When we develop a PR strategy for the client, we tell ourselves: everything should be done in a cool way. And “the coolness” comes with the creation of a strategy not for a strategy, but for giving practical solutions that will help the client to manage his reputation. Systematic approaches are important in the work with reputation. If the consistency and practicality of solutions can be considered perfectionism, then our perfectionism is exactly the following: flexible solutions, clear rules and principles that must be adhered to, and continuous improvement of work approaches. You are the largest communications agency in Western Ukraine. How quickly did you achieve such a level and how do you evaluate the public communications market in the region? The agency has become rapid in development over the past few years. At some point, we realized that Perfect PR was probably the only one in Western Ukraine with a full cycle and a set of communication services. We are like a supermarket but in the communication industry. By the way, we recently analyzed our ongoing projects and found out that our core clients are national companies. The scale of our agency is the result of many years of systemic work. We have built network relations for years, signed agreements with media throughout Ukraine, accumulated contacts, strengthened expertise, and always adhered to the words and conditions of contracts. The most important thing is that we think of reputational categories, we consider them to be the main ones in all public stories. We monitor the market and investigate the work of different teams. We understand that the pandemic year of 2020 has affected the communications market, and it was also difficult for us because of the new format of internal processes. But somewhere we lost, and somewhere we won, I think, we outlasted this crisis. More reforms and reboots awaited our Kyiv office at the end of 2020, but this was overcome by mutual efforts. We turn to the flexibility principle and continue to work further. Too early to draw any conclusions, but the fact that with each crisis we become stronger as a team is 100% true. Do you consider yourself a perfectionist? In your opinion, the desire for perfection is an advantage or a disadvantage? For modern communications, perfectionism is not the main principle. By the way, the word perfect is in name of our agency, so we are generally lucky to use it. Perfectionism is important in tasks, budgets control, finance, operational affairs. But in modeling solutions, in creative vision, in finding new wats, flexibility is whats important. This is our superpower and the energy source for colleagues. When we develop a PR strategy for the client, we tell ourselves: everything should be done in a cool way. And “the coolness” comes with the creation of a strategy not for a strategy, but for giving practical solutions that will help the client to manage his reputation. Systematic approaches are important in the work with reputation. If the consistency and practicality of solutions can be considered perfectionism, then our perfectionism is exactly the following: flexible solutions, clear rules and principles that must be adhered to, and continuous improvement of work approaches. You are the largest communications agency in Western Ukraine. How quickly did you achieve such a level and how do you evaluate the public communications market in the region? The agency has become rapid in development over the past few years. At some point, we realized that Perfect PR was probably the only one in Western Ukraine with a full cycle and a set of communication services. We are like a supermarket but in the communication industry. By the way, we recently analyzed our ongoing projects and found out that our core clients are national companies. The scale of our agency is the result of many years of systemic work. We have built network relations for years, signed agreements with media throughout Ukraine, accumulated contacts, strengthened expertise, and always adhered to the words and conditions of contracts. The most important thing is that we think of reputational categories, we consider them to be the main ones in all public stories. We monitor the market and investigate the work of different teams. We understand that the pandemic year of 2020 has affected the communications market, and it was also difficult for us because of the new format of internal processes. But somewhere we lost, and somewhere we won, I think, we outlasted this crisis. More reforms and reboots awaited our Kyiv office at the end of 2020, but this was overcome by mutual efforts. We turn to the flexibility principle and continue to work further. Too early to draw any conclusions, but the fact that with each crisis we become stronger as a team is 100% true. You stated that the main thing in Perfect PR is people. Where do you find the right people and how do you encourage them to work in your team? We gradually switched to the growing specialist model. I am personally involved in the selection of specialists. I really like it. I was always interested in meeting and getting to know them. I cannot say that the selection of personnel in Perfect PR is something different from the selection in other modern companies. Perhaps we are not making decisions fast. We start by getting acquainted and testing (performing practical communication tasks) and finally we offer several interviews: with the head of the direction and the final one - with me. Then we make decisions. We eliminate people who do not have eyes burning from communications or those who do not feel the importance of communications. There is another lifehack. As universities started inviting me to teach courses in Crisis Communications and Reputation Management, several students passed internships with us and are now developing well as specialists of our agency. This is a healthy synergy with educational institutions. Continuing the topic of teaching. In addition to managing the agency, you are also a lecturer at Lviv Business School and UCU School of Journalism and Communications. Why did you decide to do teaching and is it difficult to combine it with your main activity? Frankly, it is very, very difficult to combine teaching with work in the agency, a lot of projects, and operational processes. But the work that you love always makes you feel that there is no limit. The same is with teaching. At first, I was a guest who spoke on certain topics, then a lecturer on courses, and now its down to semester training programs and full-fledged modules if we talk about Lviv Business School. To prepare for lectures, you have to find a time that is constantly lacking, and there are also practical works that need to be checked, evaluated. This means not just to read, but to delve into the idea of each student, keep records of recommendations and find time for consultations. But I understand and feel that I am teaching people who want to have (or already have) their own business, and need practical knowledge about reputational, public communications, media systems. The fact that I can find a common language with students adds inspiration to the process. I dont know how, but I manage to feel the audience, we quickly form trust in each other. I am a practitioner, I can limp methodological plans, pedagogical approaches. I come to the students and share my practical experience. They like it. They say, Give us more practical cases. How much time do you spend on social media? How do you use them in your work? I have an application that tracks the time spent on social media. And its about two hours a day – not a lot because its not about scrolling a friend’s timeline: Im often in social networks for a professional purpose. We manage communications for companies, public figures, and from time to time need to personally review what is happening there, track trends, reactions. Social networks do not strain me - internal filters to information have already been formed. We know a lot about the behavior of the audience on social media, so my behavior is quite modest. I love and know how to write, but it is often difficult to make a post on my Facebook page. I postpone and postpone, and then I forget. The habit of writing for customers works smoothly, but for yourself - not. Lack of time and the real, offline world for me has the highest value. But, I admit, I finally started to like Instagram. You work a lot with anti-crisis communications. What helps you to resist the negative and keep calm under stress? Oh, over the years, Ive had a lot of anti-stress practices. The calmer and emotionally positive I start the day, the less stress happens. The stress itself began to be controlled from the moment I learned to display it. Probably more than 10 times a day, I ask myself, Natalie, in what state are you now? In what state do you make decisions, go out to a meeting, to people, to students? These are very useful questions, I advise everyone to ask them. I say frankly, sometimes stress overwhelms me. But I do not hold such emotions for a long time. Usually each day – a new set of events. But “ratio” always prevails “emotio”. Therefore, what is alarming today can be a great victory tomorrow. It is possible to understand your emotions, control them and adjust them. I enjoy small victories sometimes more than big ones. I rejoice in the intermediate results and every creative idea of colleagues. In general, Perfect PR has a positive atmosphere and cool emotions, live energy. And inspiration. There is no way without it 🙂. But the main anti-crisis and anti-stress advice to companies is to nurture reputation because it is like taking care of immunity. Strong immunity is not a guarantee of absolute health, but it facilitates the course of diseases and speeds up recovery. The stronger the reputation, the weaker the crises and less effort on anti-crisis practices. We teach the client not to deal with the crisis, how to create and correctly operate the fuse system, work preventively. I can talk a lot about crisis communications. I go through this topic with my communications students during a half-year course. How do you spend your free time? Describe your perfect weekend. My perfect weekend is a lot of sleep, a lot of sports, a book, and pleasant meetings. After the run, I restart completely. If I need to be in silence - I will do it, and relatives always understand this decision of mine. In general, I am a social butterfly, I have enjoyed being around other people since childhood. I have good friends with whom I always have a good time. However, I learned to be happy alone too. I recover in the Carpathians: I ski, ride on a bicycle, plant flowers, salad, take care of them, and repeat sometimes. I admit that there are weekends when it is the only opportunity to prepare for new solutions, a new working week, or lectures, so I can also spend half a Saturday or all Sunday with my laptop. I definitely lose energy when I am on the roads and flights, but I recover quickly. Projects and people-these are what do not allow to relax. Honestly speaking, I like to work. There are habits, there are circumstances, there is a mood, there are travels. Im flexible, Ill do at the weekend what I want or what I need.

How did your career start? Where do such interests in media, PR, and communications come from?

My communications path was very natural and gradual. I feel sometimes pity that there was no such event that, as in legends, turned professional life 180 degrees.

By the first education, I am a political scientist, I graduated from Franko Lviv University. In university times, I started to write for regional publications with some naïve views of the world and political events in the state. From the age of 18, I found myself in politics, in youth organizations. There I came to an understanding that someone “stands” behind the public image, ratings, competition, popularity and that trust can be formed by communications.

When I was 20 years old, I consciously participate in public and media events, conferences on the development of Ukraine. I moved constantly between Lviv and Kyiv, I organized press events and worked with the media, participated in editorial groups, and wrote reviews for publications in parallel.

In 2009, I realized that I am fully in communications, that growth and formation are in this sphere. The processes in which I got into as a human and specialist continue today. This is an understanding of the work of state institutions, businesses, and the importance of its reputation, non-stop learning of different markets and business models. I had to dive deep into the sphere of reputation management and the information world. That’s how I live in them to this day.

My daily work today is a PR service for the business sector, sometimes I am engaged in marketing projects on top and seasonally work on political projects.

How did you come up with the idea of creating your own public communications agency?

In 2010, I received a request for PR service from a large chain in the forest industry with a condition that the services should be provided by a legal entity. So, that was an opportunity to register the company.

At the time, I knew nothing about running my own business, but a lot about reputation management. Morally I was supported by the closest people, they said: “you need to register the company and go your way.”

During the year of work with this “start-up” client, the agency has “grown” with new customers. And for two years – with full-time specialists, related services, national and international contracts, and offices in Lviv and Kyiv. There were no efforts in finding customers, therefore we missed the stage of the distribution of commercial offers. In 2011-2013 Lviv lacked full-cycle agencies, and we became the ones who filled that niche.

Why do you have the name Perfect PR/Perfect solutions?

The name “Perfect Solutions” was coined by my brother. Once in the kitchen, I said to him, “How should I name my company?”. He answered in a second. And then we immediately defined the values and principles behind the name. “Perfect solutions” is the name of our first agency with the philosophy that the perfection of services is our responsibility and the main principle of work. We work on the system of service quality every day, it’s a constant process, and we grow in it as a team.

And Perfect PR is already a trademark. Recently, we launched another company – Perfect Digital Group, an agency that develops digital projects and is specialized in marketing.

Do you consider yourself a perfectionist? In your opinion, is the desire for perfection rather an advantage or a disadvantage?

For modern communications, perfectionism is not the main principle. By the way, the word “perfect” is in name of our agency, so we are generally lucky to use it. Perfectionism is important in tasks, budgets control, finance, operational affairs. But in modeling solutions, in creative vision, in finding new wats, flexibility is what’s important. This is our superpower and the energy source for colleagues.

When we develop a PR strategy for the client, we tell ourselves: everything should be done in a cool way. And “the coolness” comes with the creation of a strategy not for a strategy, but for giving practical solutions that will help the client to manage his reputation.

Systematic approaches are important in the work with reputation. If the consistency and practicality of solutions can be considered perfectionism, then our perfectionism is exactly the following: flexible solutions, clear rules and principles that must be adhered to, and continuous improvement of work approaches.

You are the largest communications agency in Western Ukraine. How quickly did you achieve such a level and how do you evaluate the public communications market in the region?

The agency has become rapid in development over the past few years. At some point, we realized that Perfect PR was probably the only one in Western Ukraine with a full cycle and a set of communication services. We are like a supermarket but in the communication industry. By the way, we recently analyzed our ongoing projects and found out that our core clients are national companies.

The scale of our agency is the result of many years of systemic work. We have built network relations for years, signed agreements with media throughout Ukraine, accumulated contacts, strengthened expertise, and always adhered to the words and conditions of contracts. The most important thing is that we think of reputational categories, we consider them to be the main ones in all public stories.

We monitor the market and investigate the work of different teams. We understand that the pandemic year of 2020 has affected the communications market, and it was also difficult for us because of the new format of internal processes. But somewhere we lost, and somewhere we won, I think, we outlasted this crisis. More reforms and reboots awaited our Kyiv office at the end of 2020, but this was overcome by mutual efforts. We turn to the flexibility principle and continue to work further. Too early to draw any conclusions, but the fact that with each crisis we become stronger as a team is 100% true.

Do you consider yourself a perfectionist? In your opinion, the desire for perfection is an advantage or a disadvantage?

You are the largest communications agency in Western Ukraine. How quickly did you achieve such a level and how do you evaluate the public communications market in the region?

You stated that the main thing in Perfect PR is people. Where do you find the right people and how do you encourage them to work in your team?

We gradually switched to the “growing” specialist model. I am personally involved in the selection of specialists. I really like it. I was always interested in meeting and getting to know them.

I cannot say that the selection of personnel in Perfect PR is something different from the selection in other modern companies. Perhaps we are not making decisions fast. We start by getting acquainted and testing (performing practical communication tasks) and finally we offer several interviews: with the head of the direction and the final one – with me. Then we make decisions. We eliminate people who do not have eyes burning from communications or those who do not feel the importance of communications.

There is another lifehack. As universities started inviting me to teach courses in Crisis Communications and Reputation Management, several students passed internships with us and are now developing well as specialists of our agency. This is a healthy synergy with educational institutions.

Continuing the topic of teaching. In addition to managing the agency, you are also a lecturer at Lviv Business School and UCU School of Journalism and Communications. Why did you decide to do teaching and is it difficult to combine it with your main activity?

Frankly, it is very, very difficult to combine teaching with work in the agency, a lot of projects, and operational processes. But the work that you love always makes you feel that there is no limit. The same is with teaching. At first, I was a guest who spoke on certain topics, then a lecturer on courses, and now it’s down to semester training programs and full-fledged modules if we talk about Lviv Business School.

To prepare for lectures, you have to find a time that is constantly lacking, and there are also practical works that need to be checked, evaluated. This means not just to read, but to delve into the idea of each student, keep records of recommendations and find time for consultations. But I understand and feel that I am teaching people who want to have (or already have) their own business, and need practical knowledge about reputational, public communications, media systems.

The fact that I can find a common language with students adds inspiration to the process. I don’t know how, but I manage to feel the audience, we quickly form trust in each other.

I am a practitioner, I can limp methodological plans, pedagogical approaches. I come to the students and share my practical experience. They like it. They say, “Give us more practical cases.”

How much time do you spend on social media? How do you use them in your work?

I have an application that tracks the time spent on social media. And it’s about two hours a day – not a lot because it’s not about scrolling a friend’s timeline: I’m often in social networks for a professional purpose. We manage communications for companies, public figures, and from time to time need to personally review what is happening there, track trends, reactions. Social networks do not strain me – internal filters to information have already been formed. We know a lot about the behavior of the audience on social media, so my behavior is quite modest. I love and know how to write, but it is often difficult to make a post on my Facebook page. I postpone and postpone, and then I forget. The habit of writing for customers works smoothly, but for yourself – not. Lack of time and the real, offline world for me has the highest value. But, I admit, I finally started to like Instagram.

You work a lot with anti-crisis communications. What helps you to resist the negative and keep calm under stress?

Oh, over the years, I’ve had a lot of anti-stress practices. The calmer and emotionally positive I start the day, the less stress happens. The stress itself began to be controlled from the moment I learned to display it. Probably more than 10 times a day, I ask myself, “Natalie, in what state are you now? In what state do you make decisions, go out to a meeting, to people, to students? ” These are very useful questions, I advise everyone to ask them.

I say frankly, sometimes stress overwhelms me. But I do not hold such emotions for a long time. Usually each day – a new set of events. But “ratio” always prevails “emotio”. Therefore, what is alarming today can be a great victory tomorrow. It is possible to understand your emotions, control them and adjust them. I enjoy small victories sometimes more than big ones. I rejoice in the intermediate results and every creative idea of colleagues. In general, Perfect PR has a positive atmosphere and cool emotions, live energy. And inspiration. There is no way without it 🙂.

But the main anti-crisis and anti-stress advice to companies is to nurture reputation because it is like taking care of immunity. Strong immunity is not a guarantee of absolute health, but it facilitates the course of diseases and speeds up recovery. The stronger the reputation, the weaker the crises and less effort on anti-crisis practices. We teach the client not to deal with the crisis, how to create and correctly operate the fuse system, work preventively. I can talk a lot about crisis communications. I go through this topic with my communications students during a half-year course.

How do you spend your free time? Describe your perfect weekend.

My perfect weekend is a lot of sleep, a lot of sports, a book, and pleasant meetings. After the run, I restart completely. If I need to be in silence – I will do it, and relatives always understand this decision of mine. In general, I am a social butterfly, I have enjoyed being around other people since childhood. I have good friends with whom I always have a good time. However, I learned to be happy alone too.

I recover in the Carpathians: I ski, ride on a bicycle, plant flowers, salad, take care of them, and repeat sometimes.

I admit that there are weekends when it is the only opportunity to prepare for new solutions, a new working week, or lectures, so I can also spend half a Saturday or all Sunday with my laptop.

I definitely lose energy when I am on the roads and flights, but I recover quickly. Projects and people-these are what do not allow to relax. Honestly speaking, I like to work.

There are habits, there are circumstances, there is a mood, there are travels. I’m flexible, I’ll do at the weekend what I want or what I need.