Episode Details

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Alexandra Crabb just became the owner of a 28-year-old PR agency.

She didn't start it. She grew it from the inside over 14 years — joined as VP when the team was five people, helped build it to ten, and six weeks ago acquired Castor Communications from its founder, Kimberly Lancaster. Now she's thinking about something most founders never stop to consider: legacy. What does she want to leave behind? And how does she protect the reputation that was already there when she walked in?

That question runs through everything in this episode.

Alex has spent her entire career making founders visible — getting them in front of the right journalists, the right audiences, the right rooms. And she has a clear, honest take on where founders waste money, where they miss the window, and why the ones who wait until they "need" PR are already behind.

In this episode of Return on Reputation, we cover:

— What PR actually does for a B2B founder 

— and what it absolutely cannot do 

— Why founders who wait to build their personal brand make their own lives harder

 — The real cost of staying invisible while someone louder takes your market 

— How AI is reshaping discoverability and why earned media now carries more weight than ever 

 — The owned, earned, and paid flywheel and how to think about the right ratios

 — Why your whole team needs to be visible, not just the founder

 — What "building in public" actually looks like when you're still figuring it out 

— The AEO vs. GEO debate and why the fundamentals still win

This one is for the founder who's heads down building  and hasn't looked up to ask who knows they exist yet.

Chapters: 

00:00 Introduction 

00:44 Alex acquires Castor Communications — the intrapreneurship story 

04:45 The weight of ownership — legacy, pressure, and not screwing it up 

05:35 AI and the future of discoverability — how Castor is adapting 

11:10 The Wild West of social media and why LinkedIn still wins for B2B 

13:45 What PR actually does for a B2B founder — and what founders get wrong 

16:00 It's not magic: why PR doesn't work as an on/off switch 

18:05 When a startup is NOT ready for PR 

20:25 Building your personal brand before you need it — and what waiting costs 

25:10 The loudest person in the room problem 

27:00 Media training, story development, and the living pitch book 

33:00 AEO, GEO, and the shift in how people find you 

38:35 Why owned + earned + paid all work together 

43:00 The whole team needs to be visible — not just the founder 

49:05 AEO — the one thing every founder needs to understand right now 

51:05 Rapid fire 

57:10 What reputation means to Alex today — and why she's thinking about legacy

Subscribe to Return on Reputation on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

Ready to close your Authority Gap? Visit OBEYCreative.com