Making a Personal PiTch

Jenny Nguyen intended to launch a design-centric public relations firm. She soon realized what she really wanted to build was an online community for creative entrepreneurs.

- ALI DONALDSON

Jenny Nguyen isn't concerned about keeping trade secrets. The founder of Hello Human, a public relations firm catering to small businesses in the design space, has scaled her customer base by teaching clients how to do her job themselves. For a onetime payment of $299, furniture makers, lighting designers, gallery owners, and other creative-minded entrepreneurs can have access to her PR playbook.

With prior branding and marketing experience and an editorial background as a contributing editor to Domino and Vogue Living, Nguyen has long understood how publicity can benefit brands big and small. The only thing was, the industry-standard retainer model-which can require six-month contracts and monthly fees into the thousandsisn't really affordable for many creative startups. To create a pricing structure that up-and-coming creatives could stomach, Nguyen went to the source. Before launching Hello Human in 2020, she called designers she knew and asked: What would they consider paying for PR? What's realistic?