So welcome back to another episode of The Underground. And on this week's show, we're delighted to welcome along Kimberley Hornby-George, the owner and founder of Hornby-George PR agency. Kimberley, welcome to the show.

Welcome, Kimberley. Hello.

Can you explain a bit about what a PR agency does? It's not just about crisis management, is it?

It is not. And I'm very, very pleased to report is not just about crisis management. That is not the most fun part of our job. And there are agencies specialised in that. And, you know, fair play to those people, but no, that's not wholly what we do. So our PR agency is about all aspects of communication, and largely that's based on reputation management through media relations. So the way we work with clients is both internal and external comms as well. So crisis management absolutely is an element of that. But of course it's far more broad-brush. Our toolbox that we look on is much bigger than just that. So, you know, you've got your media relations where you're building those relationships and communities with your supporting media, whether that's trade or consumer, whatever that might be. You've got your copywriting needs as well. Copywriting could be everything from brochures to press releases, speeches, it could be all aspects of that in there. We do event support as well. So whether that is running events, setting up events for people or support if they’re attending events, exhibitions, or awards and things such as that. We do networking and industry monitoring as well. So, over time we’ve built an incredibly strong book of contacts. So that's something we can share with our clients. We also look at what else is going on in the industry where our clients sitting in there, where there are gaps they could move into, competitor analysis and all those kind of things that clients would love to be able to see themselves, but they can't. They just don’t have the resources, knowledge or tools to do that. Then we obviously do things on marketing support and advertising management as well. So it is really, really, really broad-brush. It means every single client is dealt with differently. And it means every single day is different to the one and the one that’s going to come after it, which keeps it pretty interesting.

So, so apart from obviously the variety, what led you to start your own PR agency?

Well good question. I've been doing this for a long time. This is the only job I've ever had. As most of us do, we fall into these jobs post university, you kind of get that first job. And I always knew I wanted to do PR. I worked at PR agencies when I was at university. Came out and looked at, you know, getting some roles. I originally started actually in property. Yeah. And lasted about six months because I despised it. I worked in Birmingham, I was very city centre. An incredible, incredible business but just not for me. It just wasn't the right fit. So I just happened to fall into the role that I had, which has now become the role that I'm still doing 20 years later. But, yeah, it's just I've been working with a business partner for a long time. And it just this year was the year where I said this is my time to create that agency. I want to bring in my vision. You know, my team and just take in a new direction. So Hornby-George is actually a six month old baby. But before that, in our previous version, we had been ten years in that. And then whatever the remainder is, in that. So yes, I've been in one version or another, basically the same job. But yeah, Hornby-George is very much my baby to drive forward. So it's very exciting.

And just to clarify, PR stands for public relations. It doesn't stand for press release. Is that right?

Yeah. Well, it, technically it also does, but. Yes. Public relations. Yeah. So, to kind of give that a description that we did for a very, very long time. My dad thought I was a personal assistant. I mean, we had a very comical conversation, where I had to explain to him that's definitely not what I do for a living. Public relations is about promoting, whether it's people, brands, businesses, services all through the necessary media.

And that's what our job is focussed in on. So, it, it aligns with a lot of marketing work but public relations is a standalone. That's what we're here to do.

Right. Okay. Excellent. And so what sectors do you actually work in? Do you focus on particular sectors?

Yeah. We do. It's been a natural progression over the years. So once upon a time we used to be automotive and gardening, but those two things don't necessarily make a huge amount of sense sat next to each other. And my love has always been to the gardening industry. So we now have what we call garden, home, leisure and lifestyle.

So within that, it can be absolutely the core gardening stuff, that’s garden retail or horticultural side of things. Outdoor living. We've done candles, we've done blankets, home brands, pets. So everything that kind of falls under that remit of garden, home, leisure and lifestyle. But it's just it's where our strength is. You know, when you've been in an industry for 20 years, you make friends, you build fantastic relationships. And it's been such an enjoyable industry to be part of. And I think if I'd gone back to myself, you know, like my 16 year old self, you know, and said you’re going into the garden sector. I would have, you know, it doesn't sound that glamorous on paper, but it's just a great industry. The people are amazing, the stories are amazing, what people are trying to achieve. It's just you see people try and leave and you do these big goodbyes for people and two weeks later they turn up. But, you know, just in a different business in the same sector. Because you can't not. And I think that says a lot. And, you know, even my team, for instance, they've all been in this marketplace for such a long time. You know, they've been editors, they’ve worked within trade organisations, but all of us very much stayed with the sector. So it's a love. You can't help it.

We get that from nearly everybody we talk to on the podcast. Why are you still in this industry. What keeps you going. And people just yeah, people just seem to love it. They really do. And as you said, can't leave. Dragging them out, kicking and screaming.

You mentioned earlier that there's a natural relationship between PR and marketing. So can you just, describe that relationship and how you see that working best?

Yeah. So I think a lot of people, and we've seen it, we've had people ring up and say, we're looking for PR support. You go in and talk about what their immediate needs are and what prompted that original phone call? And then you start talking to them about marketing plans and strategies, etc... And I think a lot of people don’t realise that the two things absolutely work alongside each other. And indeed it's not just marketing and PR it's about one of the questions I always ask people is, you know, what's the long term vision for the business? Where are you stood right now? Where do you want to be in six months time? Or 12 months time? Because PR has to feed into all aspects of that business growth plan. So with marketing, obviously, you know, those two things, PR and marketing sit in the same job roles, so you often see PR and marketing directors, etc... But if a lot of the marketing departments aren't taking on the PR work, and that's why we've been brought in as an outsourced agency, I have to make sure that everything we are doing is absolutely aligning with what those guys are doing.

You can't have two people in the same room talking about different things at different times because it muddies your own messaging. So always try and make sure that we absolutely align ourselves with what those marketing needs are. So whether that’s advertising, point of sale, whether it's brochures when they launch etcetera, websites, whatever that might be, we will always try and support that with PR, whether it's a PR announcement to support something new that's being brought into market or talking about particular products at different times of year, all of that. So they absolutely have to work hand in hand. But I think it's really important because we do sometimes see this where I think marketing people think that we are trying to muscle in on their job, and it absolutely isn’t, it's just here about collaboration. So we're really lucky with the client retention we have. We have some of the clients I've had my entire career. It's been really nice in that sense that even as an outsourced agency, we've kind of been incorporated into those businesses. So that's where we can really see how well marketing, PR, and that sort of overall business strategy will line up together. So you have to ask those questions. That's the thing. We are pretty good at asking these questions about where are we now? Where do we want to go.

Yeah, I mean, that kind of leads me on a little bit to what advice would you give a business to be prepared before they commission a PR agency?

It's a good question. I think a lot of people think they should have PR, but they don't necessarily know what PR is or how it works or functions. Then you have the second school of people who are absolutely convinced they know what PR is and think they could do it with their eyes closed tomorrow. But I think before you appoint a PR agency it’s about understanding, are you doing it as a needs-must or are you doing it because you just think the business is growing and we need it, even though you don’t understand what it is. And do you understand what PR is and how you can measure successful PR as well? You know, we quite often have clients say we’ve not seen an uptick in sales. Now that's fine, but did you take your sales force off the road because if you've got a sales force on the road and we're also promoting with PR, I can't tell you which of those conversations converted. So it's definitely more of an understanding around how PR is measured as successful, or non-successful in some cases. But yeah, that would probably be the biggest thing. And also when appointing an outsource agency as well, it's about having an understanding about being prepared to speak to us. Share insight and information. So obviously everything that you tell us is going to be completely confidential. But often things will happen and we just don't know about them because the client will go oh, we didn’t know that would be a good PR story. And it's that thing of you've appointed us to figure out what's a good story. So you need to be talking to us. You know, sometimes it's really hard for the clients to really understand what that actually means, but we're not going to go off and just write loads of press releases without your approval. We’re not going to go off to share this information, it’s confidential. But in order for us to be truly strategic, we kind of need to understand all of the background as well. And sometimes that can be a little bit uncomfortable for people who just coming into the world of PR where they think oh, are we revealing all of our secrets?

I suppose that especially, would you say, goes with companies that have been around a long, long time. Like, as you said, no one leaves the horticultural industry. So there are some companies that have been in the family for years and years, and it must be quite hard for them to suddenly say yeah, we need PR.

Exactly. And not even just the really established ones, sometimes it’s the newbies as well, you know, they’re nervous about revealing too much, you know, but like I say, it's nothing we ever do goes out without internal approval and the client approval. So they absolutely control that narrative before it even goes out the door. But often they go, oh I didn’t realise that was a PR story. Guys come on. This could be the most amazing PR story we put out. It's just that I think it's just being prepared to have that two way dialogue is really very important. And trust your PR agency. They're not your enemy. Trust me. We're here to help.

So just going back to something you said there Kimberley, about measurable results and how would you go about, like, being able to track ROI for the PR stuff, you know, because it's not really necessarily always a tangible thing, is it?

No it isn't. And that can cause some uncomfortable conversations at times. So we always try to make sure that we are very open with our clients in the beginning of any kind of campaign. So quite often will ask them to set us KPIs. What do you believe to be a successful PR campaign, whether it's, I don't know, X amount of coverage? You know, we've got key magazines we absolutely have to be in. But for some people it is purely to get as much coverage as we possibly can get wherever we can get that. But there are a number of different metrics in that. Once upon a time, it used to be the very old school method, equivalent advertising value. We can measure out how much space the article will take up on the page if I bought it as an advert, but thankfully we've moved away from that. I mean, it's nigh on impossible to measure the online coverage anyway. But we look at things such as tone, circulation, shares on social platforms, domain authority. There's so many different metrics, and we always present those to clients and say which of these are going to be your measure of success. What do you expect us to achieve in this campaign? And that those are the parameters we work with. And of course we'll always try and get more, but at least we understand what the absolute minimum is. It enables us to build a strategy off the back of that.

So what are the biggest do's and don'ts from a PR perspective? I mean, you've mentioned about not sharing enough information, but are there any real clangers that people can do?

Yeah, it's an interesting one. I many, many moons ago, many moons ago, I did a course with the chartered Institute of Public Relations. I always remember, and I bring this up so many times to clients. I remember, they gave the analogy of imagine going to a party and Brad Pitt is there, or whoever your celeb crush is. And you think that is crazy. I'm so excited. I can't believe I'm here. If you go can speak to them, I use Brad Pitt as an example, and all night Brad Pitt just stands there going I’m Brad Pitt. I'm amazing. I'm great. After a while, you're going to want to find somebody else to speak to. And for me that analogy of there's no point just talking about yourself and saying how great you are all at the time, because everyone's going to turn off eventually. So you have to give it some context. You have to give yourself the story. You have to give people a reason to stay. Stay at that party next to you and listen to what you’ve got to say. I would say it sounds like a really, really obvious thing to say, when looking at PR content, but it's just about don’t be boring. And I know that sounds really, really simplistic, but I will explain it. You can’t just say we’re a business and we exist, great, who cares? You know, next. Those are the kind of questions. So if you're going to put PR out into the marketplace, what's your call to action? Why should I read beyond the first couple of lines. So that's why it's always believed that in PR, no matter how long your press release is, you say everything you need to say in the first paragraph because if anyone is not reading beyond that, at least they kind of got the gist of it. But yes, it's about giving things context. You know, it's about if you've got a new product. Great. But what is that new product? How has it been brought to market? Why is it being brought to market? You know, what's your R&D, what's the story behind it? How does it fit into trends? If I'm a retailer, why would I buy it? Or if I am an end user why would I buy that product? So it's it's really, really important to keep adding that context, giving it interest. And also trying to avoid too much repetition throughout your PR because you can't keep saying every two, three weeks we've got a product, we've got a product. You know, you have to keep building that story. I think sometimes that can be what can be quite hard. And I think some businesses don't really recognise how to move that story forwards, but it's about looking at the bigger picture and breaking things down into individual strengths. So whether it's people news, business news, product news, innovation, all of it. And actually when you start breaking it down, you realise you've actually got plenty of stories. It's just about how do you space them and how do you create that journey for the reader. And I think that's probably the biggest challenge, and a thing that we quite often don’t see necessarily always successfully implemented. But yeah, I mean, from a do perspective, do PR. It's only going to work for you, you know, whether you don't 100% get it effective, if there is a reason to be doing PR, just do it. Just, you know, give it a try, get your messages out there. Because ultimately nobody else is going to be your cheerleader. You only have you to cheerlead. So I’d just say to anybody if you thinking about doing it, give it a try. Trust me, you can start tweaking things as you move forward, but it's better to have something out in the marketplace than it is to say nothing.

Yeah, I can see that. And I think, what you were saying there about it being quite daunting for a company to think about. Ooh, I've got I've got to come up with something new every week to say, we don't have that many stories. I've been in the office all week. I haven't done anything, you know, or whatever it is. And so I can imagine what you were saying there about breaking it down into the different strands. It's really quite helpful for people to see that actually one action or whatever could be translated into quite a few different stories and articles and a different perspective taken on that. So that's really interesting.

Yeah, definitely. And I'll definitely say on that as well. I think, you know, PR doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be regimented. It’s not that you have to put something out on the first of every month. It's really important if you've got a key event, things to make sure that you consider that journey to the event, at the event, and post event as well.

So that's a really obvious way of thinking about that journey. But throughout the rest of the year, yeah, it doesn't have to be really, really constant. It just has to be quite consistent. And if you break things down into those different strands of the business, then it's actually much easier to identify different stories. But it's also very important to remember what you have said and do we need to track back to that and do a follow up piece, etc.? And once you kind of start seeing that, and the best way of doing this is visualising it into a PR plan of some description, you know, flow chart or an Excel document, whatever you think that might be. Visualising that will help hugely for anybody starting on PR. Definitely.

Right. So in order to do a good PR job, how important is it to have an in-depth knowledge of the sector? So do you make a distinction between knowledge of a business. So the business of the sector and the actual skills involved?

Yeah. A bit of both actually is the honest answer. And it really sort of falls down into are you doing B2B or B2C? So at Hornby-George, we do both. We do trade and consumer PR. I personally I do both. And no disrespect to any of my clients that watching this who I do consumer PR for because I love it just as much. But my real passion is the trade. So for me, it's really important that I understand my clients’ businesses and where they fit within the marketplace and what is impacting that marketplace at the movement. On the consumer side of things, it's pretty essential to understand what's going on for the skill side of things. So yes, you can talk about product, but you need to be able to talk about product in the context of how the end user will be using that within their spaces. So it's a bit of both. Like I say, it's definitely really, really important to understand the market. But it's also important to understand how those products are used, what their applications are. Or else you end up with a very bland press release that says here's a plant pot, it’s green. Not exciting is it?

So when you start working with a company, do you sort of get to understand their brand personality as well so you can sort of take on their tone of voice and yeah, that side of things.

Yeah, yeah, we absolutely do. I try not to be too annoying, but yeah, my thing is I always desperately ask them can we please have a day where we just shadow you all. I'd love to understand how it works and the scope and scale and all those different aspects of it. I don't always get to do that, unfortunately. But yeah, it's incredibly important to understand, you know, who these businesses believe themselves to be, because sometimes their perception isn't always the external perception as well. So coming in and understanding all of those aspects of business, the scope of the business, we don't need to know the finer details. You know, we don't need to know that. But understanding their market position and then I tend to do a lot of competitor analysis as well. So if you're sat here, what where are your competitors sat and what are they doing. We try not to stay too focused on competitors on an ongoing basis. Of course we keep an eye on them, but we try not to become obsessed with what they're doing and chase their tail the whole time. I think you do see a lot of that. You do genuinely see a lot of that marketplace where every single time the competitor puts something out someone’s flag is put up, and then they go to do a response and it becomes this whole thing. But no, we try and kind of keep our clients in their line. They're doing what they do. Good to see what's going on in the wider marketplace. And it’s that journey of where are we stood now and where do we want to be and what's that journey we need to go on.

Excellent. We're constantly being bombarded by PR messages. And do you find yourself sat there looking at those going, well that's brilliant. And on the flip side, well, that's terrible, why on earth did they do that?

Yeah, of course we are. Yeah. You can't help it, it’s second nature. Absolutely. I mean, that's, you know, outside of our industry as well. But then we we also retrospectively look at our own work. Well, you know, I look back on some work from a couple of years back thinking what on earth was going through our minds that week? You know, and that, you know, that's the thing, you know, as great as we are at PR and we are you know, as an agency we’re fantastic, it doesn't always land right. Sometimes we don't get it right. Sometimes the best idea that you think is going to be just, you know, we kind of nail it. It's going to be incredible. For some reason. It just doesn't work. It it's really important to be constantly, reassessing what we're doing. And we do that often.

You know, what we do is we go through campaigns. So, you know, it might be monthly. We're catching up with the client and saying is is working? Is that not working? But you absolutely have to draw inspiration from, you know, every single thing that we’re seeing out there, whether it's TV or magazines or just general campaigns. But yeah, of course we do. And we've got the WhatsApp chat with the team. Quite a lot of that gets shared. No, I mean there's some amazing stuff, even within our industry, and some amazing stuff that happens. Really good stuff. People are constantly thinking outside the box and trying new things. I think I'd like to see us innovate a little bit more from a PR perspective as an industry, because we've got some incredibly big players that, you know, are up there with those big budget budgets to spend, you know, and they're doing incredible things. And I think a lot of people do stuff fantastically well. I think there is still compared to some sectors, certainly, we’re still a little bit behind.

Do you have any campaigns that you're particularly proud of?

Yeah. I mean, we've just come off the back of a really strong Chelsea. So we represent Peter Beale’s roses. We took them on very early this year, a bit of a baptism of fire, but we had a great Chelsea with those guys, and so we've got an amazing coverage with that. I mean, you know, we all have our favourite clients. I don't want to name and shame, but no, I mean, I love, I've been working on the Glee exhibition for 20 years. The cycle of PR for an exhibition is different to anything else that we do. So whilst we work with, you know, charities and trade associations and suppliers and people, the exhibition cycle is always probably going to be it's got a special place in my heart because, you know, without question, the most stressful for our company. But it's about working towards something and, you know, it's tangible. We turn up to the NEC. And we live at the NEC for a couple of days, we get totally absorbed in that bubble. And you see all of these people even speaking to you for months on end and you put faces to names and catch up friends and colleagues. And yeah, it's just I think there's something pretty magical about exhibition PR, I have to say. And I feel very, very lucky to have been doing Glee for such a long time because it is just a joy. It's not always a joy day to day. But generally it is. I adore it.

So you have such a big part to do with Glee. So how how is it that you managed to stay on top of industry changes and trends? Because you really need to know your stuff if you're going to be so involved with with events like Glee?

Yeah, absolutely. I think the fact that we've got such strong client retention really, really helps. We've got such good relationships with our clients. You know, pretty much most of them are friends now. So, you know, it's that constant dialogue with those guys and really open, honest dialogue as well, you know, if it’s going good or bad. You know, we have those great catch up conversations. But I think for us, Hornby-George, we’re really, really lucky actually and I think we are quite unique in this fact, is the fact that we are really, really integrated into our market. So, as I alluded to earlier, PR for a lot of people seems like a necessary evil. So you see the agencies turn up to shows and things, they’re there doing their job whereas for us, you know, we've been working with Glee for 20 years. We work with GIMA and Trade Associations. So we have access to their information. We work with the Greenfingers charity, which is, you know, the charity of choice for our marketplace. So all of these different aspects of what we work on and all the brands that we work with as well, it's just that constant, involvement in those conversations and insight into what's happening. You know, if I didn't have this relationship with clients, if they weren’t honest with me, I would struggle to understand what was going on. You'd have to be looking at your media source, which, you know, and we are very lucky because we have some great media source in this sector, you know, and quick to deliver that news as well. But you can't always be sat online reading or looking at magazines so its just being out and about. And I think we feel very lucky to be so integrated into our marketplace. And that's where we do our learning, for sure.

Wonderful. So how has the rise of social media platforms influenced the way you look at public relations, communications?

Yeah. So I mean, social has been around probably longer than most of us really appreciate really. And again, a lot of people, and I'm guilty of this as well, social media has seen me get to the end of the day and go I need to do the Instagram post, or I need to put something up wherever that might be. But for us, we just treat social as another media source. But it's quicker. It ticks around a lot quicker. We're always monitoring social media for, whether it's mentions of our clients or just what general opinion is. But we do try and not get too involved into that opinion from social media because it's so fast moving. It's very difficult to filter out whether it's trade or consumer at times. So it can get a little bit confusing on what has been said, so we kind of use it as a bit of a barometer of what's being said or is there an opportunity for our clients, but maybe we're not talking about a product or service in a certain way. And actually there is a need, you know, people are looking for something like, whatever that might be so we use it for that barometer, definitely. But yeah, social is great. You know, it's a great place to like, you know, build your network. It's a great place to kind of figure out what those trends and conversations are. I think probably the biggest thing I can say is that split between trade and consumer. So a lot of the clients, not necessarily our clients, but a lot of people using Instagram as a B2B network. So it's sometimes it's just those aspects. But yeah, social. Absolutely. Is is part of the mix now. It's as normal to us now as print is and online is.

And so it hasn't affected business. I'm just wondering if some companies think, well, we can do our own social media. Therefore why do we need PR. Because we've got all this, this content that can reach so many people.

Yeah. No, I wouldn't say it has. No, I wouldn't say it has. I think the two things that have to sit alongside each other,because PR can be so much more in depth than social media, because the speed in which social media operates is much quicker than, say, if we get an article printed in a magazine, you know, like things like that. So no, I wouldn't say there's been any negative impact, but I can say the two things sit alongside each other very well actually.

You mentioned about innovation within the sector, within PR, and I was just wondering whether AI has had an effect on what you do as a business. And can you see that then having more of an effect in the future?

Yeah, I think everyone's got quite excited about AI recently. You know, of course they have. I think it's a blessing and a curse, to be honest. You know, I have moments where I think this is going to do me out of a job in five years time. But what AI doesn't have is it doesn't truly have market knowledge, because all it does is also draw from what's going on, you know, on the internet and you create what looks like quite a good article. And actually, you know, on the face of it, it probably is an okay article, it’s probably better than most people would write an article, but it's very top line. And if you only want to do top line messaging, maybe one day this will be the final answer for everybody. But I think it absolutely lacks an understanding of what's going on in the marketplace.

And if you truly want to be building strategic PR plans then AI is certainly not going to be your friend. I think it's good for those afternoons when your brain isn’t quite kicking into gear, you just need to check some of the things you've written or things like that that but we don’t use it. We don’t use it because we don’t need to and we don’t want to, and most magazines and publications run it through an AI checker anyway. So they're checking for genuine content. So like I say, blessing and a curse. I think I would urge people to, and I'm not just saying this because I want to keep my job, but I'd urge people to certainly not start relying on it because it is not fully comprehensive at all until it can think like a human and understand the market it's not going to be able to do what a human can do.

I thought it was really interesting. Your point there about magazines and publications running articles through a checker because they want sort of genuine new fresh articles. And so that's actually quite interesting and useful information for anybody who's thinking, oh, well, I'll just get gen AI to write that for me.

And yeah, I mean, sometimes it does slip through the net. The only difficult with it is if we were issuing a press release out to several magazine titles, you know, some might pick it up quicker than others, and by the time it's landed somewhere online, it is therefore not seen to be new content. So then sometimes that then gets run through a kind of like a content updater, and then we see the press release and think okay, the gist of it is there but the, you know, and there's a reason why we have to go through an approval process. So we use the voice of our client, the key messages, etc.. And yeah, you might think you’re just using, you know, a dictionary and changing the words around a little bit. But actually you can be losing quite a huge part of the key messaging in that personality of the client and that's the bit that I found to be quite dangerous because, you know, I don't really want go into the marketplace with representation for my client which isn't the one they're prepared to put in the marketplace. So we have had a few moments with some editors that have done that, and we've had to request that it gets taken down or they use the original content.

Interesting. One thing I've noticed, Kimberley, is that PR seems to be very much a female orientated industry. Is that the case? And why do you think that is? I might be completely wrong, but I've only ever worked with women in PR agencies.

No, I think you're right. I have actually only ever worked with two male PR people. I don't know. Actually. That's a great question. I don't know. Do women write more than men? I don't think so. Are we more creative? No, I don't honestly. I think there's probably for a very long time, there was a big perception around PR, you know, I mean, if I'm truthful, I went into PR because I thought it'd be absolutely fabulous. It is not, but I think that is just a general perception. You know, PR is and this whole notion of sort of champagne and, you know, quaffing at lunchtime. And so, you know, no, I get hardly any freebies so it's certainly not that way. It's always it's a lot of work, really, really hard work.

And sometimes it can be a real, real slog. You know, PR is traditionally one of those things that in a tough year, budgets have to be tightened, we’re one of the first things that goes, you know, or our budgets get drastically reduced down when you're working on an absolute shoestring. You know, the expectation is still to achieve what you did before. So it's, it's a really creative job. It's very personable job. At times it can be very, very lonely. I mean, you know, I spend most of my time on my own, you know, we we, we work from home as a business. We have had work from home offices for, goodness me, I don't know, ten, 12 years, something like that. For a number of different reasons. What the joy of that means that I can employ any talented person located anywhere in this country. So all of my team are completely networked. So they're all based in different places, and that's fantastic, mate. You know, I love, love, love being able to employ these people because they’re people I've known for a long time to be editors on magazines and things like that, I've been able to pull them in as and when we’ve been in a position to take on a new role and build an agency around people. But it's, can be quite a lonely job, but it's brilliant, really absolutely love it.

Thank you. So, Kimberley, you've talked about how much you love the industry, but do you actually enjoy gardening yourself? And there's no shame. You tell it.

Yes, well, I do, I do, you know, my mum is a huge gardener. Still is. You know, so I, you know, in my formative years it was me following my mother around with a bucket trying to be helpful and asking her what she's doing. Then I kind of had a couple of years where I didn't really particularly garden. I was just living my 20s or 30s. But a couple of years ago me and my husband bought a house, which we've done up over the last couple of years. We've got very, very lucky. We've got a couple of acres. So we literally the people that had the house for us did not garden. There was nothing. We've got really mature trees, but there was no garden as such. So we are literally at square one, trying to create a garden. So I am a head gardener, a garden designer. I'm everything. Yeah.

Oh, lovely. And do you have a plant? That would always bring a smile to your face, no matter how you're feeling.

I do. And funny enough, I was talking about this with my, my team earlier, and I've decided, sweet peas, because I’ve had a beautiful crop of sweet peas this year. Yeah, that really, really makes me smile this year. But otherwise, it's hydrangeas. I love a hydrangea. Whether it's growing or even when they're all dried, we put them in really beautiful sort of festive display. So yeah those two are my picks. Yeah.

Yeah. No, sweet peas. Absolutely. And they do seem to be really good this year as well. I think they've enjoyed all the moisture. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you.

Well, I think that just about wraps things up. I just want to say thank you so much, Kimberley, for giving us your time this week. It is really interesting and insightful to understand about a world which, you know, sometimes people have no idea what goes on.

It's been fascinating. Thank you. I think we need a PR agency Phil.

Yeah, yeah, we'll be talking to you afterwards.

We'll be bombarding you at Glee. Thank you so much, Kimberley.

Thank you.