Entrepreneur Day: An Interview with Kaleidoscopio’s Agency CEO

25 August 2022 | Kaleidoscopio

To celebrate the Day of the Entrepreneur we decided to have a talk with Karina Méndez, CEO of the public relations agency Kaleidoscopio. We talked about the challenges of becoming a young entrepreneur and the decisions that come with it, as well as the future of this company.

After working several years in the areas of marketing, communication and public relations for other companies, in 2009 Karina Méndez founded her own agency: Kaleidoscope.

The decision to start Kaleidoscope was born from knowing that we could do different things, from adding value to each of our clients and differentiating ourselves from other public relations options based on our own style of work.

Karina Méndez

The talented people

What Méndez was looking for with the creation of his company was "to provide a job of the highest quality through a premium public relations service." For this reason, from its inception until today, the objective of Kaleidoscope is "to make each of our clients, both national and international, feel unique with our personalized services".

This has been achieved thanks to the talented people who are part of the agency team, who have all the necessary elements to develop their creativity and plan innovative strategies always aimed at giving positive results to each of their allies.

Today, Kaleidoscope has little more than 10 years of experience and is positioned as one of the best options in terms of public relations. However, initially it was necessary to trust the instincts of its CEO, who at the time, as with many ventures, was afraid to take that first step. During this time, not everything has been honey flakes. Being an entrepreneur means facing many challenges to earn the place and prestige that Kaleidoscope currently enjoys.

[I] came from a humanities background and my administrative skills were largely reduced to managing my personal finances as best I could. Unfortunately, those of us who come from this type of training do not have much knowledge of administrative and accounting issues. It would be ideal if all of us, no matter what our preparation is, in the educational stage give us more foundations and tools to prepare ourselves for this reality, whether or not you decide to be an entrepreneur. I never imagined that there are times that clients pay in 90 days and in the interest it is you who must finance all the fixed expenses, the payroll, etcetera. Facing you to understand your income statements, your scales, how you should provision your tax payments was a challenge!

Karina Méndez

Another of the great challenges she had to face as an entrepreneur was fighting for the fair value of the work and services her agency offers:

Not only [the value] in the economic sense —learning not to be afraid to collect what is fair—, but also to give value to the service you offer to your clients; create healthy working relationships that result in successful business alliances. Part of the great learning I've had from winning or losing pitches when closing accounts, or even ending work relationships, is accepting that not all clients are for you, nor are you the perfect match for everyone. Focus on the clients you want to have. Seek to work with those who share your vision, your values and who appreciate the work.

Karina Méndez

Evolution

Throughout his career, Kaleidoscopio and his talented team have had to evolve and adapt their public relations and marketing work to new forms of communication, such as social media:

“We are entering a new decade where technology will have a prominent place in the evolution of communication and public relations are no exception. What will undoubtedly prevail will be the creation of content that is relevant and useful. Likewise, capitalizing on the talent of the spokespersons to position them as experts will continue to be key to positioning the brands and their leaders as benchmarks and consolidating their reputation”.

In addition, one of the trends that is becoming more and more relevant for brands is having a good online presence through different strategies, such as web positioning, engagement, brand building, traffic, among others. "Successful collaboration between PR and social media is vital to achieve consistent and coherent corporate communication," says Karina. “The increase in the availability of more data will enrich the information that we as communicators use for planning strategies and that will lead to a better evaluation of results. New technologies will allow advertisers to find tools to monitor media and make data collection easier and more profitable”.

In this context, the resurgence of traditional media adapted to new technologies, such as podcasts, and the birth of new content creators are already considered a key piece of public relations strategies, but the role of technology in PR is not It will stop there: “Artificial intelligence will become increasingly relevant for public relations, since it will make it possible to streamline tasks and achieve better data analysis, monitor possible crises and enhance results. In the short and medium term, public relations agencies will be able to count on new methodologies that will allow us to more efficiently demonstrate the ROI of our efforts, such as earned media, posts with backlinks, reputable and trusted media that spread our stories, influence marketing, among others ”.

What are Kaleidoscope's future plans?

Karina tells us that both she and her team of talents want to “continue strengthening and professionalizing our services and go hand in hand with the growth of our clients. We are betting to further consolidate our social media and design area, to position ourselves as best as possible in that segment and strengthen Kaleidoscope as an agency that provides comprehensive services”.

To close our talk, we asked Karina to share some tips with us for all the people who want to get their ideas moving and become entrepreneurs:

I think that to encourage you to undertake you must subscribe to the motto: Do it! And if it scares you, do it with fear! What gave me certainty in my decision is that I knew that if I was definitely not afraid of something, it was hard work. He knew me well enough to trust my tenacity. I knew that, despite the challenges and failures I faced, I could carry out what I set out to do with perseverance, and even if it were not, I preferred to stay with what I took the risk and bet on me to stay with him. Being an entrepreneur implies accepting that there will be bad-bad times, as well as good-good times; that there are times that the nature of the business (at least in which I am), implies that sometimes you are big and sometimes small. Each and every one of these moments are fine, they are perfect, if you know how to take advantage of each one of them. Here the challenge is to be resilient.

Karina Méndez