Running A Business While Living On A Boat

Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: Hi everyone and welcome to this week’s episode of No BullShit Talks. I’m pleased to be joined here today by Jo Caruana, who is the founder of PR comms agency, called Finesse Group. So welcome.
God, thanks so much for being here.
Jo Caruana: It’s fab to be here and I love your podcast, big fan of it, and I’m looking forward to delving into our combo today.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: Yeah, I’m excited too, but first tell me, are you currently sitting on your boat?

Jo Caruana: I’m currently sitting on my boat, yes.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman:
I can’t believe it. it’s so fascinating. say i find this so
fascinating like i think i’ve only ever met a couple of people before who live on boat. You run a pr agency from your boat. I find that so fascinating. So tell me how that works.
Jo Caruana: So this was a lifestyle—Change that kind of came about, and I know we planned it loads, but it kind of just happened. It feels like it just happened. So yes, we live on a canal boat in a beautiful village called Great Bedwyn, which is about an hour on the train outside of London. We do also live on a boat in Malta, as we split our time between Malta and the UK.
So, we have a sailing boat in Malta, and it was a lifestyle decision, right? So we moved from a house onto the boat to kind of readdress work-life balance, but equally bring adventure into the everyday. Both my husband and I, we love having a sense of adventure. We love being constantly on the move, constantly meeting new people, doing things that little bit differently, thinking outside the box. We both wanted to live more eco-friendly lives as well.
So now, we are completely off-grid, which is really amazing. So we produce all of our own electricity and, you know, there are days when I have to choose between the kettle or the hairdryer. Only one of them is going to be powered enough for me to actually make it work, you know. So it was just really about questioning the way we do things and seeing if we could make it work. We grow businesses, and the amazing thing is that that’s why it worked. We love it.
So yeah, the whole business is run from this canal boat now, and that’s a team of 18 people sort of collaborating, working remotely. And the beautiful thing is that it’s made no difference whatsoever to the business. If anything, it’s galvanized it, and I think it’s fun, it’s quirky, and people love hearing about it. It’s a base for the team to come and visit us, and it’s something a little bit different.
So yeah, if you said to me a couple of years ago, “You’ll be living on a boat, and you’ll be running the business from your boat,” I would have said, “Forget it. Everything has to work the way it’s always worked, the way we’ve always done it.” But now it’s really fun to kind of prove myself wrong.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: That is amazing. I think it’s exciting. I’m just laughing at the whole kettle versus hairdryer. Yeah. It’s like, well, you know, if you’ve got wet hair, at least you’ve got a hot cup of tea to deal with, and that device, that’s totally—
Jo Caruana: Fine. But it really is a manic, it really has that lifestyle. I mean, like, you know, first thing that happens in the morning is the two local swans come and bang on the side of the boat, and they get their oats in the morning every morning, you know. It’s just a totally—yeah. And they fling themselves at the boat to make sure that we can hear them. Jemima and Puddlemire are quite aggressive.
Exactly. I think Jemima might be a boy, but I can’t be sure. Never mind. Yeah. And it’s a totally different way of life, and I love it. Ah, it sounds—

Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: So exciting, although I feel I could never do that. How are you doing Wi-Fi? Like, you know, surely that—I’ll be like, “I’m talking to you like that.” Hey, and that sounds great. How do you have such good Wi-Fi?
Jo Caruana: It’s, you know, that was something that we really worried about, and there is YouTube video after YouTube video of how to choose the right Wi-Fi for the boat, but it’s probably some of the best Wi-Fi I’ve ever had. Like, it’s a mobile data thing that just proves that you can be anywhere in the world now and have great Wi-Fi.
I have better Wi-Fi on the boat than I had in my house, so I can’t believe it. It’s pretty good, and yeah, wherever we go on the boat—obviously we do live in a particular area on a particular mooring—but we travel on the boat quite a lot because otherwise, what would be the point? And wherever we go, the Wi-Fi is amazing on the canals. So yeah, if that’s what’s holding you back, do it.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman:Oh my God. And so, how do you make your own electricity? Like, times are high—
Jo Caruana: That? Well, believe it or not, even in the UK, solar is incredibly effective. So, we have solar panels on the roof, and the huge majority of the time, that is enough to power our lifestyle. So, the solar panels are up there doing everything that we need them to do, and then on the rare occasions that we can’t get enough from the solar panels, usually that will happen if we’ve got three or four days back-to-back where there’s no sun whatsoever, like that really gray—
UK Gray
Okay, gray. Then we run the engine, and we go for a cruise, and that’s enough to kind of bring the battery up. So the engine powers the battery,
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: That’s it. That’s the simplest way to explain it.
Jo Caruana: I mean, we’re aware of it in a way that I was never aware of energy before I moved onto a houseboat. I was the kind of person who always leaned towards eco-saving, the world, green, and all of that, and I was doing loads. I thought I felt like I was doing loads, but did I know the difference between, you know, charging my laptop or boiling the kettle? If I’m honest, I didn’t really understand what went into that, and I think a lot of people don’t. It’s not the kind of stuff that we just know.
So now we’ve become so aware of every little thing and, you know, what it takes to power the laptop, what it takes to charge your phone, and what it takes to run the fridge. And there are days where maybe we’ll turn the fridge off overnight kind of thing so that we can conserve a bit of energy, and that makes absolutely no difference because it’s the UK and it doesn’t even get that cold overnight or whatever, so nothing even remotely changes.
But we’ve made little shifts in our lifestyle, but I think it’s made a big difference, and I do feel like I’m starting to get it slowly.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: But I find it fascinating. It’s incredible. Like, I just think, how can you run a whole agency from a boat? And it’s exciting. You can just sail anywhere, wherever you feel like, which is so cool. I mean, where do you sail to?

Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: So, like, what do you not just get this? You feel like sometimes, you know, on a nice day, like the weather’s getting a bit nicer, you think, “Let’s sail to a spot.” Did you just do that?
Jo Caruana: Yeah. Yeah, we do. We do. I mean, obviously the agencies are really busy, so I tend to kind of, you know, whenever the team’s working, I want to be around to kind of support, make sure. But on weekends, we cruise most weekends, good weather, bad weather, and it’s really good fun.
The canal network in the UK is amazing. It’s quite limiting, so you can kind of only go one of two ways. In most cases, you go left or right. And yeah, I mean, we started cruising in a place called Newbury, which is a really lovely town, again about 40 minutes outside of London, and we’re doing the Kennet and Avon Canal.
So we’re going through all the little villages, and obviously there’s pubs everywhere you go. So you have to stop and experience the pubs and meeting people. The boating community is amazing. Super creative people all along the network. So it’s a very slow lifestyle. I think I have slowed down 100% from a mental kind of space because, like you, Jo, you’re super busy as to be, you know, you’re packing loads into your week. This lifestyle kind of removes that a little bit, and I started with that during COVID, you know.
In March 2020, I went from having like eight meetings a day, all in person, racing across wherever I was going and packing everything into a day, and then I do a bit of theater as well, so rehearsals in the evening, like everything’s just packed in, to now being fully remote and the day so much calmer. And I think that’s been the biggest change for me, that kind of shift. But honestly, that was probably COVID more than the boat. And then this lifestyle kind of emerged out of the fact that now I probably don’t need to do much in person anymore, and nobody noticed. And again, I’m trying not to be offended by the fact that nobody’s—
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: What? There must be things that you’ve missed out on because it slows you down, so that by definition, if you’re slowing down, you’re probably cutting a few things out of your life. So what have you had to cut out of your life by living on a boat?
Jo Caruana: That’s such an interesting question. I think probably if I had to start thinking it through, there’s a lot that I’ve cut out. So it’s that manicness, isn’t it? That sort of meeting. I do meet people in person a lot less, and so now it’s kind of a conscious choice. I want to meet this person for coffee. That’s the case. I’m going to go into London and do that. I need to have that face-to-face.
So I’d say the biggest thing is cutting out all non-essential travel and in-person meetings. And I’m sure probably, if I had to kind of be, you know, if I had to really analyze it, have I missed out on certain things? Probably, yes. But there’s that JOMO in there, that kind of joy of missing out a little bit. I’ve become less about manically wanting to sort of make sure I’m not missing out on anything and just really consciously choosing what I want to be there for. Also, my business was primarily in Malta before we moved to the UK.

Jo Caruana: So that’s changed a lot, not having that same lifestyle and also Malta, which is a very busy island. I think, have you been there? We know he’s—
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: Been, I have. I love traveling, so I’ve been to a lot of countries, 81 countries, yes, which is kind of random. It’s also for me, people to come with me. But yeah, Malta, I definitely visit. It’s gorgeous.
So, why Malta? What made you kind of set up there?
Jo Caruana: Well, I was partly raised in Malta, and some of my family’s from Malta, so yeah. And when I finished uni in Edinburgh, I came down to London for a little bit and was working at the BBC. And then one day, I remember seeing an ad on the Tube for Malta, and I just thought, “I’ll go. I’ll go back and see what—”
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: Happened. Well, it felt like home.
Jo Caruana: Yeah. And I booked a holiday for two weeks, and that was it. I stayed for 15 years and built the business. And it’s the kind of place where things happen very organically. You could fit a lot into your life. It’s a tiny island, and Malta was amazing for all of that. Still amazing.
So a lot of our work, probably not the majority anymore, but a lot of our work is still in Malta. There’s a lot of good stuff happening there, so it’s exciting to have multi-jurisdictional stuff. But again, I’m so impressed now, and I’m curious whether this remains, but are we going to go back to the in-person, or are we going to keep the remote?
And I think being remote allows you to pack a lot more in, in actual fact. And then you can be really purposeful about what you actually want to go and do. So yeah, I love that side of things.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: I think that, you know, remote is great. I think that even before COVID, we did a few Zoom stuff here and there, and I like the fact that more people are open to that now because it’s the norm. I just love a face-to-face interaction. I just don’t think it gets better than that.
I think that every time we’ve ever had a close of a client come face-to-face, you know, it seals a relationship, and it just works so much better. But I do like the fact that you can do anything anywhere in the world remotely.
So I love, for example, when we work with clients, I want to have that face-to-face relationship. So we will go to their offices, they’ll come to us, and we’ll do socials together, but we’ll still jump on Zoom and do a lot of the education that way. So I think it can be flexible. I just think that face-to-face is so much better.
So I would do that where I can and naturally cut down, and I think it’s great in terms of travel. And you mentioned earlier about sustainability and how it reduces carbon emissions if you’re traveling less. And I think that people used to fly to different countries all the time for meetings. It’s kind of crazy thinking about this. What they did was now just jump on a quick Zoom call and be done with it, and it’s okay to do that now, which is so big. There are big countries and some big companies who used to travel all over—
Jo Caruana: For an hour-long meeting, be on a plane to the other side of the world. Absolutely. And it was bizarre. And I think hopefully now we are moving into a new phase where, yes, the world’s opening up, so we have the option to do it. But again, we can choose to do it where we need to and want to do it, and the rest of the time we just go online, and it’s amazing.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: It’s so nice to me. I think so.
Jo Caruana: So yeah, I would not be running the business from a boat if these massive changes hadn’t taken place in the world. And so, I think, I mean, if I’m honest, yes, probably. I totally agree with what you said, that relationship-building part of any business relationship is so much better face-to-face, isn’t it? Like when you can meet people early on and you can really connect with them.
So I think now is the time to be building that back into the model and finding how we can do that in a really effective, efficient way and then enjoying the rest of the relationship as remote where possible.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman:When you go to your meetings in London, if you said you still do occasionally, do you sail there or do you—
Jo Caruana: Very much get normal transport. Cruising to London from here would probably take about two weeks.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman:Oh my God, but the concept of adversity—
Jo Caruana: Is so slow. I’ll just put you in the picture. These boats tend to go at three to four miles an hour, so you can walk faster than that. So I can walk to London in the time that it would take me to get the boat there. But the plan is definitely to come along the Thames and actually have some time in London, maybe three or four weeks, and then batch loads of in-person stuff. So, but if we come in, we’re coming, but not coming today.
When you’re actually moving along the canal, you have to do locks where you have to put the boat up and down. That takes absolutely ages. I cannot tell you how long it takes to get a boat in and out of a lock. It’s a good, I don’t know, 20 to 25 minutes to kind of get it through. So that adds to your journey, and there are hundreds of locks, hundreds of locks. So no, we’re not going to zip into London quickly.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: Ridiculous. That question stood out to me about the agency, though. Running a PR agency from a boat, which, you know, we’ve established is an incredible thing. So tell me more about what you guys actually do.

Jo Caruana: So the kind of ethos behind the agency is that we take an outside eye to the businesses that we work with. It’s so hard, isn’t it, when you’re running a small to medium business, which is the kind of businesses that we mostly work for, to kind of stay objective, to make sure that you’re bringing that outside perspective to your business, that things aren’t getting complacent, and you’re not missing things.
It’s really hard because the founders generally are very involved and are kind of in the weeds with the rest of the team. So our job is to come in and sort of finesse the whole process, whether it’s your communications, your customer care. So we go a little bit further than the PR, although PR is a big part of what we do.
We tend to come in and assess the way your customer journeys are working at the moment. Are your communications working? Is your customer care working? How’s your team? Are they engaged? Are they excited? Are they happy? Is the product working? So we do a lot of mystery shopping. That’s a big part of what we do, coming in and taking an outside eye.
And then we assess all of that data, make sure we’re clear on what we tell the client, and then we make loads of recommendations about how they can improve, from the communications. So, is your website working well? Is your social media working well? All the great stuff that you guys do, to the PR side, to actually coming in and training. I’m also a business etiquette consultant, so actually coming in and training people on the communication side of things from a front-facing perspective.
So it’s quite vast. It’s lots of fun. It’s very exciting. And I think the Great Resignation has sort of put a really interesting spin on things. It’s more important than ever to really make sure that your team are happy and engaged, and that you as the founder or the CEO are really cognizant of the process that your team are going through on a daily basis. Are all the various departments talking to one another in an effective way so that one isn’t feeling left out or one isn’t feeling like—
I don’t know about you, but we so often see with our clients that marketing is working in a bit of a silo to operations, which can mean that marketing is taking decisions that operations can’t implement, or on the other side, operations is doing amazing things that marketing don’t know about. And equally, that happens all the way through the organization. So it’s an opportunity to bring all of those together, to look inward, and make them more cohesive.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: We just help with a lot of stuff that we don’t allow. I’m just like, “Making a cake, that’s all we do as a service.” But it’s so funny, the amount of people that think that’s what we do as a business, just marketing, and they assume that’s the same stuff.
But yours is a whole experience, and it’s actually going much deeper into the cogs of how the business works. And it’s actually, you know, rather than—we kind of, I guess, hope that stuff’s already in place and the business is already working well, and then we’ll market what’s a good business. Hopefully, that’s generally what it is.
But do you also have the same thing when people just completely mix up what PR and digital marketing are? It’s all the time.
Jo Caruana: All the time. I mean, they are different, but they’re part of the same function, aren’t they? So they need each other. I think it’s very important to understand the different functions of your marketing, from the digital side of things to the more traditional side of things.
Then the PR is all about the relationships that you were talking about earlier. You can’t have effective PR if the people that you’re appearing with are not ready to go to the media, are not good spokespeople, and you don’t have a great media kit. You’re not kind of PR-ready.
Marketing is less about that. Marketing is more about putting yourself out there the way you want to be seen, whereas the PR side of things is making sure that people are talking about your business. So for me, that’s the major differentiator. Marketing is about the message you want to put out there, and then PR is how you want other people to see you and speak about you. And that can be the media speaking about you, it can be influencers speaking about you, it can be word of mouth. Word of mouth is a huge part of PR that often is forgotten.
So yeah, for me, that’s how I differentiate it. Do you agree with that? Does that—

Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: Yeah, but I think that’s where it gets a little bit difficult because, you know, we do most forms of digital marketing. Same. And there are elements of what we do that then cross over into PR a little bit, but then the company probably wants more of a PR service, which we can’t offer, and that’s when we partner up with agencies like yourselves who do offer that service.
But, you know, where would you see the biggest crossovers and all the other kind of most common requests where there is a positive between them?
Jo Caruana: I think influencer marketing is a big crossover between PR and marketing just because influencer marketing has that element of you being talked about. But of course, often there is a transactional relationship there. You’re paying for that relationship or, for whatever reason, you’ve created a collaboration with this particular influencer.
So, for me, there’s a lot of crossover there. Equally, PR is changing to having to keep up with the fact that the media is changing. Some of the most powerful media brands today are owned by individual people, individual influencers. So today, you might be just as happy, or it might be just as powerful, to get exposure on a YouTube channel that is really useful to your clients rather than to be on, I don’t know, Good Morning America or Good Morning Britain or whatever it is.
So PR is changing, and I think we both, on both sides of that, have to be very cognizant of that. And at the end of the day, for both marketing and PR, it’s about going out and reaching your audience where they are and speaking in a way that resonates with them. For me, that’s kind of the crux of it, right? Having the content that is going to grab your potential audience, your desired audience, grab their attention, and then speak to them in a way that’s going to make them take action, whether that’s PR, whether that’s marketing. There’s a lot of crossover in making sure you’re prepared to do that effectively.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: Do you get a lot of people who come to you guys as a PR agency who clearly just want to be famous and, you know, it’s sort of like really obvious perhaps? So just that, “Oh, I’m amazing. Here’s my face. Get me featured in absolutely everything because, you know, I’m awesome.”

Jo Caruana: So we have a no asshole policy at the agency. I’m quite strict about that one actually. And if I get a whiff of somebody that I don’t think is going to be fun for us to work with, or somebody that we don’t want to work with, I’m not going to put the team through that. We’ve had that in the past. It’s no fun working with people who are super arrogant and they’re in it for the wrong reasons. And they’re just going to be disappointed, right? I can’t make anyone famous, it doesn’t work that way.
So no, I would say there are no clients that come to mind who I would say are in that category. But yeah, I think if I’m out and about representing PR, then you might get that question.
You do have a no asshole policy. It was one of the best policies I’ve ever put in place.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman:It’s no big heads at all. But yeah.
Jo Caruana: Exactly. You know, this is the best thing about running your own business. And again, there are lots of things that are great about running your own business, but the best thing about running your own business is that you can decide who you want to work with, and that for me would be an instant no, thank you.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: Yes, it is. And I am so glad you said that. So funny, but yeah, we have a similar policy. We’ve had to fire clients for that reason. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, although it did get a lot easier over time. But exactly, especially when you think about the money. But then as you say, you look at how they’re treating your staff and the morale, and that money does not balance out the negative effects that it has on the company.
So we’ve learned to be more no-nonsense and fire clients, and obviously not take on clients that we know will have that same sort of impact. So we do have a few questions that we ask clients at the beginning to kind of test that “no dick policy” sort of thing. So we definitely do have that, which I love. I do think that we’ve definitely come along because a lot of people are just sort of looking for PR agents or whatever because they think they want to be famous. And I’m sure there are lots of agencies out there who will take anyone, I wish them the very best at what they do.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: What are your ideals looking like?
Jo Caruana: We’re colorful, that’s a good question. We’re thinking about that at the moment. I think as we look around the world at the moment and everything that’s going on, darkness and light and all that stuff, we want to lean towards brands that really align with us from a value proposition perspective. On a moral perspective, we want to be doing our bit to change the world, as basic as that sounds.
So we are always looking for clients doing something really good, really exciting, in the NGO space, whether that’s SMEs, sustainability space, or impact-based work. Those are the kinds of things we get most excited about because we feel like we can have a positive impact through them, and there are great stories to tell. So anything around innovation, like I said, sustainability—that’s really exciting. We love startups, but then equally we love strong, great stories.
Stories of people who have overcome adversity to run their business, who are doing something amazing for their community, something amazing for their team, or just have a really interesting story to tell. PR is really hard if you have a bland person who’s not going to have an opinion and not going to stand for something. That’s really hard to go to the media with. So our job is to find these great stories, and I think that’s one area where we want to spend more time.
We want to go looking for these people who deserve great PR and say, “Look, you do deserve to be a bit more famous, you do deserve to get yourself out there,” and then hopefully that becomes a nice flywheel for their success. So we work with all sorts of brands, we love them all, and we bring the same energy to the table, but it’s hard not to be particularly passionate about brands with a really great message to get out there.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman:How do people know if they need you? Because I feel like not a lot of “vanilla” people realize, and other brands don’t realize how great they are. So how does someone know they’re ready for PR?
Jo Caruana: So I think one of the questions is, obviously, if you’re in that flywheel where things are starting to go and your business is starting to grow, that’s a really exciting phase. And what you want to build traction on is other people talking about you.
So if you feel like your brand is going places but not enough people are talking about you, not enough people know about you—this might not necessarily relate to products, your products might be flying off the shelves—but if customers aren’t excited enough about your brand or don’t know enough about you, or don’t realize what differentiates you, that’s when somebody needs PR. When there’s a story that isn’t being told.
And self-awareness is critical to this process. People need to be able to look at themselves, look at their business, and genuinely think, “I bring something special to the table. We have a great story to tell.” And that’s when people need PR for the right reasons, as opposed to, “Hi, I just want to be famous.” That’s not a sustainable move for a successful PR campaign.
So it’s about looking inward, looking at where you sit among your competitors, what you’re bringing to the table, and genuinely saying, “Yes, I have a story to tell. I have a point. I have something I want to say to the world, and I’m ready to do that.”
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: A lot of startups are like that. They start a startup because they want attention, then they go for funding, and they spend all their time just going after funding. They don’t even have time to work on the startup because they’re working on pitch decks and VC stuff. It’s kind of crazy.
And then they land some money, and they get a press release about how amazing they are and the funding they’ve received. It just seems like a cycle where they want that exciting story of someone landing five billion pounds of investment, and they live for that rather than actually creating the product or service they promised.
I want to know, in your experience of PR, how often have you worked with companies where they were promised a lot of stuff that looked like great PR, but actually it was all a load of bullshit and they weren’t delivering?
Jo Caruana: Yeah, that does happen in the startup space, doesn’t it? And it’s frustrating as the marketing and PR team because you’re thinking, “Okay, what next? We need social proof. We need people to actually talk about how you’ve delivered what you said you were going to deliver.”
This is where we come back to a finesse approach. We need to really understand your process. We’re not going to dive into this before we know that you are ready for it, and before all the different elements are aligned for us to tell a great PR story.
Because yes, you can get PR about anything, you can pay for PR if you want to, but without a genuine story and a real person who can live that story, it’s not going to be a successful campaign.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: So you must have had people come to you and ask you to promote something that’s unethical or where you clearly feel something shady is going on. They just want press to boost themselves, but they’re not going to deliver. Have you ever had people like that?
Jo Caruana: Yeah, we have. There is a lot of work in spaces that perhaps don’t feel right to us. I’d be lying if I said we haven’t made mistakes there. Sometimes it’s really hard to do due diligence on where companies might be getting their money from, or you might see a nice CSR front, but if you look deeper there’s a whole shady element underneath it.
So we do have to be careful, and businesses in general have to be more and more careful because the world is waking up to the fact that not everything is rosy, and that it’s our responsibility where we put our money. I know people who’ve been burned because they didn’t do enough due diligence, and that’s horrible. Because you want to believe in the brands you work with, and the people you like working with, and that they are doing good things.
But due diligence is becoming so important in our space because if you can find something to worry about, the press, media, and influencers will find it too. And the world is increasingly about personal connections and values alignment. The power of the consumer is huge now, and people want to spend their money with brands they can stand behind.
So as PR and marketing people, you have to ask those questions. It’s not worth working with someone who isn’t doing something good.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: How important is it to you to really believe in the environment you’re working with? Because you can still do the job, but how important is it to truly believe in the brand?
Jo Caruana: For me, it’s more important than ever. Even what we’ve seen in recent weeks, things can come crumbling down very quickly, and integrity is something we have to cling on to.
If you asked me 10 or 15 years ago, I might not have understood the gravity of it as much as I do now. But now it’s absolutely critical that we ask the right questions as PR and marketing people, and make sure it’s a match. Because crisis management is a huge part of PR—we do it a lot for our clients.
If you can’t stand by your clients and fight their corner when needed because you suddenly see a glaring issue you personally disagree with, that’s a messy place to be. It’s happened to me once, and I really don’t want to go there again.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: I can imagine that’s a difficult situation. One of my worst experiences for sure.
What about the people listening who are in business or working with brands, like companies such as ourselves in marketing, but feel they actually need proper PR? The problem is good PR costs money. Not everyone has a big budget. What would you recommend to companies who don’t have much budget but still need PR?

Jo Caruana: So PR can actually be quite a small, easy thing to get started on. I think when you clear your mind a little bit and you think PR comes in so many different forms. One of the most powerful forms of PR, especially at the moment, is simple networking, right? It’s simply putting yourself out there in a space where your ideal client might be hanging out to become the known authority in that space.
So you might not be able to afford PR to get a front cover. You might not be able to afford to kind of build up your network to the point where you’re on live TV for a very high-profile program. But just simply putting yourself out there within your local community and becoming more well known within a small space—that’s exactly what you should be doing.
So it could be as simple as joining your local Chamber of Commerce, joining your local hotel and restaurant association, or anything that is going to put what you do in a slightly different light. So perhaps if you’re thinking about starting PR and you are a marketer, yes, it’s nice to join a marketing association. But can you put yourself somewhere where you’re going to be bringing different skills to the table from the people that are already in that space? And the answer is always yes. You can always add value PR, being your own PR, for me, is about adding value in a space.
So go to a space that’s a little bit different, whether it’s guest blogging, teaming up with an influencer who has maybe a small following—so they’re not hundreds of thousands of followers, but they’re hungry and on a similar level to you and they’re happy to create a collaboration where you add value to their followers. Again, joining an association that’s a little bit out of your comfort zone. Put yourself in a place where you are going to be seen as an added value authority. And that’s your first step here. That’s free, right? Just takes a bit of time.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: So what you just named are a lot of great things. Is that something that you would perhaps recommend? Say they want PR but don’t have the money to invest in it. Do you think they should go ahead and do some exercises to help them on their journey first? Because like you said, how can you do PR for someone who doesn’t have the right media kit, doesn’t have the right background, and doesn’t really have much to actually promote? So should they work on these little things themselves and be in a good position to then take on your services later and invest properly?
Jo Caruana: Yeah. So I think a lot of our clients come to us when they’re in a position to have a “do it with you” service rather than “do it for you” service. And that’s what we recommend. And that always starts with a simple consultancy call, where we understand the potential for their brand. And then every month we would just be making small recommendations of things that they can do within their community and their industry, then slowly, slowly starting to build up. Very few people go viral, right? Very few people get famous overnight. And if that is your goal, I can’t really help you.
But if your goal is to build up over time, start gaining confidence, maybe start speaking on your topic so people start seeing you as an authority, start getting speaker opportunities, start building up collaboration opportunities, start to become known in your niche—that’s definitely something that, with a couple of consultancy calls and a really easy-to-follow checklist, anybody can do.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: So what do you see the future of PR being? Because there are so many different ways of doing it. We’re on a podcast right now. This podcast is PR for both of us, definitely. So what do you see PR becoming in terms of where people should invest their time?
Jo Caruana: Perfect. Well, that is such a good thing that you said right there. This is PR right now because this conversation is a PR conversation, and that simply came out of the conversation that you and I had. We decided to go ahead and do this. And that is a pure opportunity right there. And both of us can double down on this. We can write content about this, put it out on social media, or send it to a local association that might be interested in PR and say, “Send this to your members and see what they think.”
So I think the first question is understanding where your audience are. For me, the future of PR is first of all: where is your audience? Because they might not be where you’re hanging out. They might be in a totally different space. What podcasts are they listening to? What YouTube channels are they watching? What influencers do they care about?
For me, it’s very different to the ones I’m interested in. When I look at where my clients are hanging out, I see something completely different. So first of all, you have to understand your audience, your ideal client. Once you do that, then it’s about creating a human connection.
The world has gone through an unprecedented period of digital connection. We’re all Zoom-connected, social media-connected, everything is digital now. But we’ve been reminded more than ever that human connection is unbeatable. There’s nothing better than a human connection.
So take your PR and make it human. Go and speak to people in person. Hold an in-person event where you invite members of the local community to come and listen to you speak. That’s all PR. Then take a beautiful photo and send it to your local media organization, or ask an influencer to come along and attend and do a little bit of filming for you.
I think the future of PR right now is human. And that basically means finding ways to connect on a very personal level with your ideal client.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: And I absolutely love that because I think this is one thing the pandemic did—it made us realize something bigger than just the advertising side of things. There are people behind the brand. People care about what companies are about, the ethics, the values, which they never really used to. I feel like that’s what’s changed a lot over the last couple of years.
And I think it’s really interesting, which makes me ask another question. It was a trendy thing—personal branding. How important do you think it is for a company to have their owner or someone high up in the company have a strong and positive personal brand that represents their company?
Jo Caruana: Huge. Absolutely huge. I think, as you said, people connect to people. I think we forgot that for a while. When I came into the industry 15 or 16 years ago, I didn’t even have my photo on my website. There was a big drive towards anonymous brands and appearing larger than you necessarily were, hiding behind a facade of a non-personal brand.
I think that’s changed completely now. You’ll see all the biggest companies are putting their key people out there. The founder story is very important because it connects you to like-minded people and also serves as inspiration and authority.
So for you to grow your personal brand, you have to be willing to put yourself out there. You have to think about what you’re comfortable talking about, and whether you want to be controversial or less controversial. What are you passionate about? Can you bring sustainability into your brand, community into your brand? What are you talking about?
I think it’s now a big part of your actual brand. It differs, of course, whether it’s the founder taking the decisions or whether you’re an employee. And that’s a company decision—who we are going to put forward—because it raises questions about building up a person and then they leave and take their personal brand with them.
So you have to tread carefully. Even if it is the founder, you have to tread carefully because if you’re going to be controversial, you have to own it. But I think personality is critical for PR today. And where there isn’t personality, media training can help build that confidence to go out there.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: So funny you mentioned controversial as an owner because that’s such a big thing. I get such a mixed response to it. A lot of people say we want to write that down, others say that’s badly done. I absolutely love what you said—you were so right—and it is always a divisive thing.
And I’m always really opinionated, but I think it’s good because we’re known as the Naval Chase agency. That’s our tagline, right? And those who love it, love it. That’s the difference. They want to work with us and respect it. So when we work with clients, we’re really honest. We tell them what we think, even if a brief comes in and we think it’s not right, we say so.
And I’m like that in general, and not everyone likes it. But this is how we filter out our clients. Same with our website—you land on it and the first thing you see is “No Bullshit Agency.” It immediately has an impact. Some people love it, others click off immediately. But you filter your leads that way.
Jo Caruana: That’s it. Do you want to work with people who aren’t a good fit and you constantly have to justify decisions? So you’re filtering them before you even start.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: Exactly. It saves time. And everything I do fits the brand anyway, so I think that’s important. Not everyone gets it, but those who do are the real fans.
And I’d love to know the difference between personal branding PR and business PR, because even though both are business-related, there must be different ways you handle them.
Jo Caruana: Absolutely. We work primarily in the B2B space, and I think that allows us to have a strong impact through businesses. There are similarities—great media kit, great photos, clear messaging, understanding your audience. That’s the crux.
In B2B, your audience is other businesses. In personal branding, you’re leaning more towards consumers. So that is the main difference. It changes where your message needs to be seen and heard, but many elements remain the same.
You still need clarity, preparation, and confidence in how you present your message. The difference is the audience and also probably the budget.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: I think you’ve just hit one of the key points—that everything in PR and marketing is about your audience. People forget that. It’s like, does your audience actually like it? Because it doesn’t matter if you like it if your target audience doesn’t connect with it. It’s all about them.
Jo Caruana: Totally. We’re actually starting a “story brand certified” journey. I don’t know if you’ve read the book *StoryBrand* by Donald Miller. He brings storytelling into business communication.
I started listening to it a few years ago and it resonated so much. We were always making the client the center of the story, but that’s wrong. The world is changing—we are the center of our own universe. We want to hear how things make our lives better, not how we make someone else’s life better.
So StoryBrand is about making the client the hero and positioning yourself as the guide. You help the hero improve their life. That’s what we don’t talk about enough in marketing and PR.
It has completely changed the way we operate. And I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the hero-guide concept.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: That sums up everything in PR and marketing. From a podcast like this, you can build a brand. It shows how small things compound over time, even if you don’t see immediate results. Eventually, the payoff is huge.
And honestly, I still can’t believe you’re sitting there on a boat having this conversation—it’s so cool.

Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: But how can people get in touch with you if they want to if they want to ask us more questions about pr
Jo Caruana: Sure. So, we’re on instagram we are at by finesse group and um our team’s on there always happy to chat and you can email me at jo@byfinessgroup.com I also very happy to chat and I’m not this. If you do, you know, this is such a nice show. It’s such a, it’s such an important sort of conversation to be having and to bringing no bullshit to this industry can only make it better.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: Absolutely, everybody’s wondering that. So many people say to me that I’ve never met someone in marketing is actually honest, it’s a refreshing take but I feel like that’s it. I want just people to realize what it’s really like, I think then people can make a judgement and again you don’t want to be lying to your customers at all, because they’ll find out eventually and they’ll just distrust you. So be honest of the start lets you know, shatter all the bullshit, the classic industries and keep going. But I’ll put that stuff in the show notes and thank you so much for today. It’s been
Jo Caruana: amazing not until my pleasure. My pleasure I really enjoyed it, lovely to see you as well.
Sabrina Chevannes-Denman: Likewise and thank everyone who’s been listening today and if you enjoyed it, then please remember to hit that subscribe button and leave us a good review and you know, it’ll really help us. Then hopefully we’ll see everyone next week for next week’s episode on No BullShit Talks.