Purpose Before Profit: Jackie Russell of Teak Media + Communication On The Benefits Of Running A Purpose-Driven Business
An Interview With Chad Silverstein
Commitment to seeing it through. Big ships don’t turn on a dime. I read once that it’s always scary in the middle of a fairy tale. It takes time and adventures to get to the happy ending. It’s like being on a rollercoaster. If you can’t take the ups and downs, don’t get on the ride.
In today’s competitive business landscape, the race for profits often takes center stage. However, there are some leaders who also prioritize a mission-driven purpose. They use their business to make a positive social impact and recognize that success isn’t only about making money. In this interview series, we are talking with some of these distinct leaders and I had the pleasure of interviewing Jackie Russell. Jackie is the founder and president of Teak Media + Communication, New England’s sole Certified B Corp public relations firm. Founded in 1997, Teak Media positions responsible companies and nonprofit organizations to achieve widespread recognition that leads to increased revenue. Russell’s company has promoted hundreds of nonprofits and socially responsible companies around the globe.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us your “Origin Story”? Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
I have always been deeply interested in finding the truth. I believed in the news and respected journalists as those who got to the heart of matters and delivered the truth to the public. I also believed in the Fourth Estate as a pillar of our democracy. I still do, although things have changed, and the news is no longer expected to be unbiased. How quaint that ideal feels now.
A few years ago, I ran into my sister’s boyfriend from high school. He told me it is not a surprise that I’ve built a company around nonprofits because as a kid, he said, I was always “spouting off about one issue or another.” In college, I was the editor of the Skidmore News, which was the student run newspaper and during the summer, I canvassed for MassPIRG. Our goal at the time was to raise money for the advocacy group’s efforts to close down what was thought to be a faulty nuclear powerplant in New England.
I had a double major in college, government and English. I once thought I’d become a lawyer because I was good at arguing a point, but my passion for journalism was stronger. I also didn’t want to go to law school.
I’ve always been passionate about causes and sticking up for the underdog, and as the founder of a purpose-driven PR agency, I still am.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
The first project I took on after I started my PR firm was promoting The Scooper Bowl, an all-you-can-eat ice cream festival held in the center of Boston. It still exists. At the time, nine ice cream companies donated tubs of their product and set up tents and tables at City Hall Plaza to dish up their desserts. The $5 entry fee would go to the Jimmy Fund, the organization that raises money for the treatment and care of pediatric cancer patients at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. My job was to secure interviews at Boston radio stations during the morning drive, between 5 and 9 a.m., for Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s. As part of the job, I packed insulated cubes with pints of ice cream donated by each of the vendors, loaded up my mother’s station wagon, which I borrowed for the week, picked up Jerry from a hotel in Cambridge, and drove him to five radio stations where he promoted the event live on air. The DJs would eat the ice cream we brought and interview Jerry about his life, his company, ice cream and the like. Jerry Greenfield is a stellar human being and extraordinarily funny. He was a radio darling, and we all had a great time. During these mornings, (I did this for two days a year, three years in a row), I had a lot of time sitting in Boston’s morning traffic with a founder of the “Business as a Force for Good” movement. What a stroke of luck for a young, inexperienced business owner with my interests and background. I absorbed as much as I could about his founding days of Ben & Jerry’s and his commitment to leading a business that did well financially while doing good for the world. I learned that the two need not be mutually exclusive. This all occurred between 1997 and 2000, 10 years before Greenfield and his partner Ben Cohen were instrumental in the founding of the B Corp movement. In later years, when I read about the B Corp movement, I called Jerry, and he encouraged me to apply for certification. Teak Media was certified as a B Corp for the first time in 2013, and we’ve been certified ever since.
We often learn the most from our mistakes. Can you share one that you made that turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons you’ve learned?
There were so many mistakes. The one I made repeatedly in the early years was my willingness to undercharge and over deliver, or worse, doing pro bono work for small nonprofits that didn’t have the funds for the services we provided. I wanted to help their causes, but I put my company’s interests second. There was always a reason, or at least I told myself there was, like the person leading the organization was influential and could lead Teak Media to other business, or the organization had a large profile and connecting to its brand would be good for our company. But the reality was I took smaller fees and over delivered because my heart was all wrapped up in their causes.
To be a solid company that talented people want to work for, profitability is key and cannot be sacrificed for purpose. That’s the bottom line and a philosophy Teak Media lives by. We want to pay our people well and be competitive with larger firms while also doing extremely good and rewarding work. I’ve found that running a purposeful and profitable company is one instance in life where you actually can have it all.
As a successful leader, it’s clear that you uphold strong core values. I’m curious what are the most important principles you firmly stand by and refuse to compromise on. Can you share a few of them and explain why they hold such significance for you in your work and life?
Teak Media’s core values are honesty, integrity, passion, persistence , awareness and respect. That may seem like a lot, but all of them are important in our work. Honesty speaks for itself. See above about being a truth seeker. Persistence is extremely important in our PR work. As we work to generate media attention for our very deserving clients, we hear the word “no” a great deal. It’s a must to be persistent and create workarounds to achieve the results our clients deserve. Our nonprofit and responsible business clients rely on us to work hard for the money they pay. The funds they allocate for PR or marketing could be used to provide services to the people their organizations exist to support. We need to be accountable and work hard in order to earn the money our clients spend. This is the foundation of our company values. We must deliver and be accountable.
What inspired you to start a purpose-driven business rather than a traditional for-profit enterprise? Can you share a personal story or experience that led you to prioritize social impact in your business?
I had been a newspaper reporter for years before working as a copy editor at a small publishing house. The publisher asked me to do PR for the books they were putting out on the market because he knew of my journalism background. I didn’t want to promote the books, but he left me no real choice. The extent of my PR experience up until that point was receiving press releases as a reporter. I went about the process by using a reporter’s sensibilities and achieved very good results right out of the gate. The publisher was surprised by the good media attention I was obtaining for the books. . I thought I was on to something, and I actually liked the work, so I told the publisher I was going to start my own PR firm. This was before I knew what running a business really entailed. He was kind and asked me to continue to promote his books, which I did, and he also introduced me to his friend who needed PR help. The friend worked as a director in the communications department of the Jimmy Fund at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She set me up to promote the Scooper Bowl as my first assignment under my new company’s umbrella. At the ice cream festival, there were pictures around the plaza of the children who were being treated at the Jimmy Fund Clinic to remind people why they were donating. It was very moving. There was a moment at the event that first year when I was managing the media, saw the children’s photos in the background, and quickly got a feeling that I had found my calling. It may sound crazy, but I felt like I knew what my life was supposed to be about. The work I was doing at Teak Media joined my love for journalism and my passion for causes. I instantly committed Teak Media to working solely for nonprofits. Once the company was certified as a B Corp, we started to promote responsible companies (social enterprises) too. We’ve been doing nothing else ever since.
Can you help articulate a few of the benefits of leading a purpose-driven business rather than a standard “plain vanilla” business?
The benefits are obvious to those of us who work at Teak Media. We help raise funds for the incredible work being conducted by our clients. This means our day-to-day work at Teak Media helps to fund solutions to the climate crisis, ocean health, social injustices, poverty, hunger and more. It funds cures for diseases and provides support for children and families. Our work raises awareness about the need for racial, gender, and pay equity, education for children with special needs, and the importance of dignity within the foster care system. When we generate media or run social media campaigns for our clients, we are raising attention for the incredible work our clients are doing to serve people and the planet. Nonprofits are led by brilliant and dedicated people. Working with them is a privilege and extremely inspiring. Being in their orbit helps all of us at Teak Media become better people. In short, the benefits to us are highly personal. The benefits of our work to society and the planet are numerous.
How has your company’s mission or purpose affected its overall success? Can you explain the methods or metrics you use to evaluate the impact of this purpose-driven strategy on your organization?
Could Teak Media make more money if we represented typical companies that have large profit margins rather than nonprofits and social enterprises that are accountable to every dollar they spend? Sure. One hundred percent.
Without a doubt. Money is one way to keep score, and we certainly use profitability as a metric to prove Teak Media’s success.
We also know we are successful when we achieve results that drive revenue for our clients’ missions and when our clients retain our services year after year, which many do. Teak Media’s longevity with its clients is something that we are very proud of. Keeping a strong client base is important for any company. Business development is expensive and time consuming. Retaining profitable clients is ideal and a great way to measure the success of a business. In PR circles, you often hear the adage that it’s easy to get a client and hard to keep them. We find the opposite. We become our clients’ partners and stay with them for years and years. Our longest standing clients have been with us for 17 years! That’s nearly unheard of. Also, our clients share our name with other organizations, so they often do our biz dev for us.
Finally, we know we are successful because our work is so personally fulfilling and rewarding. I can’t imagine doing this work for typical brands, or for companies that go to the opposite extreme and actually harm people or the planet (think Big Ag, fast fashion or junk food). That sort of work goes solidly against my values.
Can you share a pivotal moment when you realized that leading your purpose-driven company was actually making a significant impact? Can you share a specific example or story that deeply resonated with you personally?
There are many media stories we have generated for our clients over the years. One story that ran in the international edition of the New York Times has generated more than $500,000 for the New England Aquarium. There have been international stories published in Science, Nature, the Associated Press, and Politico that have raised incredible awareness and money for Health In Harmony, an organization based in Oregon and San Franscisco S that preserves the rain forests of Borneo, Brazil and Madagascar while helping its indigenous populations thrives. These funds would never have been received without such exposure.
We worked with the Pan-Mass Challenge, a bike-a-thon that raises money for cancer research, for 13 years. The organization had received limited national attention before Teak Media’s tenure. We got the organization covered in dozens of top tier media including the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and more, which raised its profile, attracted thousands more participants as well as corporate sponsors and individual donors who together raised an additional $385 million over the years.
Later, we worked with Boston Uncornered, an organization that helps the formerly gang-involved turn away from the streets and go to college to earn degrees and get higher paying jobs. This helped to reduce crime and violence in the Boston. A volunteer photographer had taken photos of previous gang-members and also large corporate leaders. The organization was going to hold a small show of these photos in a gallery on the second floor of a Boston city building. Teak Media got approval from the city to hold a month-long photo exhibit on Boston Common during the height of tourist season. Instead of small wall pictures, the photographs were produced in larger-than-life, 8 x 5 feet, stand-alone fixtures and seen by hundreds of thousands of people over the month. National media attention generated so much awareness and respect for the organization. It helped raise state and private funding for the organization and is an example of Teak Media’s passion and persistence.
Have you ever faced a situation where your commitment to your purpose and creating a positive social impact clashed with the profitability in your business? Have you ever been challenged by anyone on your team or have to make a tough decision that had a significant impact on finances? If so, how did you address and reconcile this conflict?
I’ll go back to the largest mistake question above to answer the first part of this question. My belief in the value of our nonprofit clients often got in the way of the company’s profitability. It’s so easy to overdeliver and charge less when you believe so deeply in the missions. I had to make the change, increase our rates, and track our time and experience so that each campaign we led would deliver for the client and was also profitable for our company. I worked with mentors to help me make the change and see Teak Media’s financial health as the first priority of our company. It’s similar to when flight attendants tell passengers to put on their own oxygen masks first before helping others. Teak Media learned the importance of that lesson and is better for it.
I am happy to report that Teak Media has not had an expensive clash with an employee. I think Teak Media attracts a certain type of person. Publicists who are interested in fashion, restaurants, hotels, or big brand products are not attracted to Teak Media. Communication pros who are mission driven in their personal lives come to Teak Media to find purpose in their work. They are good people through and through. Teak Media is blessed to have an honorable, dedicated, kind, smart, hardworking and respectful team.
What advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs who wish to start a purpose-driven business?
Run a purpose-driven business because you believe that business should be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Do it because you realize that if businesses are not accountable for their actions and their footprint on the earth, there could never be enough nonprofits to clean up their mess. Do it because you are called to do so and can think of nothing else that would be as rewarding, because you must, and because you would not be satisfied doing anything else. If you are not in it because you personally feel committed to the company’s purpose, there will always be a reason or an opportunity to sway and follow the dollar signs. Certainly, don’t do it because you think it will be a good selling point or market differentiator. Insincerity is visible and won’t work in the long run.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Purpose-Driven Business.” If you can, please share a story or example for each.
1 . Belief in the possibility to affect change in your community, the country or the world, and the desire to do good.
2 . Commitment to seeing it through. Big ships don’t turn on a dime. I read once that it’s always scary in the middle of a fairy tale. It takes time and adventures to get to the happy ending. It’s like being on a rollercoaster. If you can’t take the ups and downs, don’t get on the ride.
3 . A team of like-minded colleagues. You know the adage: if you want to run fast, go alone. If you want to run far, go with a team.
4 . A hierarchy of personal priorities that does not place earning money at the top.
5 . The ability and desire to learn and grow every day, to ask for help, to take advice, to learn from your mistakes and to keep pushing forward, always.
I’m interested in how you instill a strong sense of connection with your team. How do you nurture a culture where everyone feels connected to your mission? Could you share an example or story that showcases how your purpose has positively influenced or motivated people on your team to contribute?
There are many other firms that represent impressive and renowned brands that attract a certain type of person. Then there are those who want to marry their love for communications and causes. These are Teak Media’s peeps. Teak Media’s purpose of promoting nonprofits and social enterprises attracts the right people. Once they are in the door, we expose them to the actual work of our clients. They meet the people their clients serve and see the positive changes their clients are making. Some of our best days at Teak Media are spent with our clients, working with them side by side, witnessing firsthand the good they bring to the world. We also have volunteer days during which we choose an organization that is not a Teak Media client and spend a day in service. These days are so fun. Many of the people on the Teak Media team are volunteers for a number of organizations outside of their day jobs. Being involved in the community is who they are.
Those who stay at Teak Media feel connected to their clients’ missions. They are personally rewarded by being on the team that generates recognition and revenue for some of the most important causes of our time. Because Teak Media employees feel committed to their clients’ missions, they are equally committed to the company. We all work together and share each other’s successes. The team is very supportive of each other rather than being competitive among themselves. The reward of working at Teak Media comes from working for the company’s clients and generating results that help them drive revenue.
Imagine we’re sitting down together two years from now, looking back at your company’s last 24 months. What specific accomplishments would have to happen for you to be happy with your progress?
Media is changing at an incredibly rapid pace. Distrust in the media is rampant. Influencers who promote their own opinions and views can be perceived as more credible than seasoned, experienced lifelong journalists who believe in and report on the facts. Both traditional journalists and social media stars have large followings who can reach people, government, and corporations that have money to contribute to nonprofits and their causes. Teak Media is expanding nonprofits’ reach through all forms of media, short and longform, digital and traditional, as well as earned, owned, paid or shared content. Two years from now, I expect to look back on our successful journey to get nonprofits and responsible companies to embrace all credible and honest ways of informing new audiences about their good work, reach people from both sides of the aisle, and expand their base of committed donors and participants to include people from all generations. Attracting young people may not be the top priority for nonprofits, as they often seek exposure among those who have expendable resources. They need to skate where the puck is going. Teak Media is working to get them there.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I would like to inspire a movement that encourages people of all political beliefs and of all ages and backgrounds to prioritize the consumption of fact-based media and journalism. It is imperative that we all work from the same set of facts. We all need to check the sources of our “news” to make sure we understand who is driving the coverage. Following the money to grasp who is providing the information and the values they uphold is a first step in checking for bias. Apparently, many people do not discern what is true from what they want to be true. Confirmation bias is rampant. The echo chamber is real. The result is that we, more often than not, are exposed to information that makes us feel secure in our beliefs rather than inspiring us to challenge them. The result is a loss of learning as well as a divided public and an overwhelming feeling of hate for “others” in our country. I worry that many people prefer to consume news from crowdsourcing, from like-minded people who feel more relatable rather than from accredited experts such as journalists who have spent years honing their reporting skills. Opinions are not facts. A movement that motivates people to seek out information that is factual would do wonders to unify our country and support the Democratic system upon which our nation was built. Truth matters.
How can our readers further follow your work or your company online?
https://www.facebook.com/TeakMedia
https://www.linkedin.com/company/teak-media-communications/
https://www.instagram.com/teakmedia/
https://bsky.app/profile/teakmedia.com
This was great. Thanks for taking time for us to learn more about you and your business. We wish you continued success!
About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur and Thought Leader with over 25 years of business experience. He has founded, operated, and exited multiple companies and now builds into a handful of high impact CEOs. Chad has launched multiple online communities, including a recent leadership development platform, and also serves as a strategic advisor for Authority Magazine’s thought-leader incubator program.
To learn more and connect with Chad visit: chadsilverstein.io
Purpose Before Profit: Jackie Russell of Teak Media + Communication On The Benefits Of Running A… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.