Stephanie Graves once fired a client developer mid-project because his plan conflicted with her values. Twelve years later, that same uncompromising credibility is what grew Lee Andrews Group from a local to statewide company—and keeps clients coming back.
Stephanie Graves didn't build Lee Andrews Group from scratch. The founder had passed away, the institutional knowledge was gone, and there were seven employees left holding a name. What she built from there came down to one thing: credibility. Show up, do what you said, deliver—and repeat that enough times that relationships become your most valuable asset.
In this episode, Stephanie breaks down why most businesses misuse PR, why AI is pushing her industry back toward cultural competence and human touch, and why the real measure of a PR strategy isn't impressions—it's trust.
Follow Small Business Unscripted so you never miss a conversation.
3 Takeaways:
Chapters:
[00:20] Meet PR Leader Stephanie Graves
[00:51] Rethinking Career Priorities
[01:19] From Law School to Politics
[01:45] PR Explained
[02:49] Inside Lee Andrews Group
[05:49] Biggest Lessons From Acquiring a Business
[08:22] Hiring, Delegation & Building a Team
[09:43] Avoiding Shiny Objects & AI Distractions
[10:57] Earned Media vs Paid Media
[11:39] Turning Vision Into Real Execution
[13:01] How to Build Trust & Credibility
[13:59] When to Fire the Wrong Client
[15:17] Civic Leadership & Giving Back in LA
[17:21] Boards, Community & Local Impact
[20:34] Most Common PR Mistakes
[22:59] When to Hire a PR Agency
[24:08] Scaling Smarter, Not Bigger
[25:46] Advice for Women Founders
Stephanie’s Highlights:
"Relationships are gold. No one's going to give you anything for free until you really show yourself as credible."
"He disagreed with me, so I fired him. That's not always the best business decision. But our ethos is community driven."
"You don't want someone else to tell your story. It's like a plant—you have to continue to water it, or it dies."
Connect:
Stephanie Graves: www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-graves-51b159322/
Everett Sands: www.linkedin.com/in/everettksands
Resources:
Learn more about Lendistry: lendistry.com
Learn more about Lee Andrews Group: https://leeandrewsgroup.com/
0:00:00.0 Stephanie Graves: But when he told me that he was going to evict everyone, I said, "You cannot do that." Now, that's not the best business decision.
0:00:06.0 Everett Sands: Maybe.
0:00:12.0 Stephanie Graves: But like I said, again, being credible, no one's gonna give you anything for free until you really show yourself as credible.
0:00:20.2 Everett Sands: That's Stephanie Graves, CEO and president of Lee Andrews Group. She knows what it takes to build a powerful brand and reputation. Today, she's sharing those strategies with you. I'm Everett Sands, your host and the CEO of Lendistry. This is Small Business Unscripted. Let's get into it.
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0:00:45.7 Everett Sands: Welcome to Small Business Unscripted. How are you doing, Stephanie?
0:00:47.6 Stephanie Graves: I'm great. I'm so excited for this. Thank you for having me.
0:00:50.4 Everett Sands: Absolutely. Okay. I always start with one question for all my guests. There's no wrong answer. I want you to put this in order for me. What's most important to you right now: Career, compensation, quality of life?
0:01:01.7 Stephanie Graves: Quality of life. But my career, though, I employ a lot of people, so it's very important because I know they're counting on their paychecks. So I have to continue to build my business to support my employees.
0:01:17.6 Everett Sands: Makes perfect sense. So you started in political strategy. What is that?
0:01:23.2 Stephanie Graves: Well, actually, I've had three careers.
0:01:25.1 Everett Sands: Okay.
0:01:26.9 Stephanie Graves: Was an attorney for a year, and then I opened up my own political consulting business, which, to answer your question, I ran campaigns for city, state, and federal elected officials or people trying to get into office.
0:01:45.5 Everett Sands: And now you run a PR agency?
0:01:46.7 Stephanie Graves: I do.
0:01:47.9 Everett Sands: What does a PR agency do?
0:01:50.2 Stephanie Graves: So, public relations. We have many buckets, but public relations helps projects, businesses, nonprofits, government agencies, just anyone, these glasses being sold to get their message out or if there's a crisis, to give clarity to the crisis. But every business needs PR. It is like the architecture of whatever your project or your product is, because you don't just want PR when there's a crisis. You want to be building it all the way. So it's kind of like people buy a plant and they put it in a corner and they forget to water it, and they wonder why it died. Same thing. PR, you have to continue to build. So if you don't, then your target audience is gonna build it for you.
0:02:49.4 Everett Sands: So you are the CEO of Lee Andrews Group.
0:02:51.0 Stephanie Graves: Yes, I am.
0:02:52.6 Everett Sands: Right? Did I say it right?
0:02:54.2 Stephanie Graves: Yes. Lee Andrews Group.
0:02:55.3 Everett Sands: Okay. All right, so tell me what that is.
0:02:57.5 Stephanie Graves: So Lee Andrews Group is a certified small business, minority-owned business, women-owned business PR agency. We're located here in downtown Los Angeles, and we have about 35 employees in our office. And then we have another 40 that work in the field, and we can go into that project too. But we are specialized in strategic comms, public outreach, media relations, digital strategy, crisis communications, mainly for the sectors of transportation, infrastructure, housing, environmental, and education.
0:03:45.1 Everett Sands: So you ended up acquiring the business in 2013?
0:03:49.1 Stephanie Graves: I did. So in 2013, the founder of Lee Andrews Group, her name was Donna Lee Andrews, she passed away. And I had known her. I helped her with political strategy for her projects. Sometimes with projects you need political help, so I'd worked with her. She passed away, and the board came to me and said, "Can you buy the firm? Because you fit the small business, woman-owned business, minority-owned business certification," because the owner, in order to have those certifications, has to be those. So then I purchased the firm. Then of course, started from seven employees when I purchased the firm, and they mainly focused on outreach and engagement. It wasn't really a full-blown PR company agency. And so my vision was I wanted to not just scale it to scale it, but to broaden it to more of a PR agency.
0:04:27.0 Everett Sands: Right.
0:04:53.1 Stephanie Graves: With comms and media and digital. And also broaden it, not just being... Donna Andrews was more focused on different areas in LA, more South LA, South Central LA, and I was wanting to broaden it to the state of California at the time.
0:05:12.4 Everett Sands: Got it. So, I mean, most of our audience probably started their own business from scratch. You're taking over a business. What's that like?
0:05:21.7 Stephanie Graves: It's jumping in and knowing that you're gonna be in the fire immediately.
0:05:25.4 Everett Sands: Yeah.
0:05:29.1 Stephanie Graves: But I had the opportunity to jump into a fully functioning business already, and so that really was helpful. But what wasn't helpful was a lot of the institutional knowledge was gone, so I was starting it pretty much from scratch, but the name was already there.
0:05:49.5 Everett Sands: If you could go back to 2013, any suggestions for our audience in buying a business? Maybe one or two things that you would say, "Hey, think about this."
0:05:59.4 Stephanie Graves: Well, definitely have attorneys involved looking over all the paperwork. That is definitely number one.
0:06:04.0 Everett Sands: Even if you are an attorney.
0:06:07.0 Stephanie Graves: Yeah, because there's niche attorneys that really do that. I think that you have to be bold and just do it. And I mean, it's cliché, but it definitely works out. Even though there's struggles and making payroll sometimes is interesting, but we all do it.
0:06:29.4 Everett Sands: Yeah. I think every business owner has that same moment. Even if they've grown, they could be the best business owner, operations planner, whatever it is, the moment they think about doing a new product or grow or new industry or new location, all of a sudden they're like, "Oh, there was this thing that I planned for, but doesn't matter."
0:06:48.7 Stephanie Graves: Well, you even think about the woman that started Spanx.
0:06:50.8 Everett Sands: Yes.
0:06:52.9 Stephanie Graves: She made $5,000 selling fax machines just so that she could get enough money to get her prototype going. And even like the Airbnb guys, they sold Obama and McCain cereal boxes and maxed out their credit cards because that's the ultimate. You believe in yourself.
0:07:13.0 Everett Sands: Exactly. You kind of went towards this, but your vision for transforming the agency, the agency is much bigger now. It's a statewide, national organization. And for now, how did you get from there to here? And lessons maybe learned there?
0:07:28.3 Stephanie Graves: Really, you have to figure out what your identity is and your values, and then the growth happens. But you really have to bet on your values and your identity and just stay to that. Learn, too, not to say yes to everything, because yes doesn't add to growing or scaling; it adds to your stress. So just the foundation is very important with your people, your process, and your purpose.
0:08:01.3 Everett Sands: You said a lot of powerful things there, so I'm gonna dissect just a little bit of that. So the first thing you said that I heard was a business owner doesn't have to do everything from A to Z. Right. And this is a little bit of finding your purpose and what you're good at. Right. What we find is that some business owners do try to take on everything, where they might be really good at sales or really good at operations or really good at HR. Was that an easy transition for you to say, "Hey, there might be somebody better than me at this," or someone else could do this better?
0:08:29.1 Stephanie Graves: Oh, my gosh. People at my firm are way smarter than me. So that's what you do, because you know you can't do everything yourself and you just trust who you've hired. Also, though, hire slowly and fire fast. I'm sure everyone's heard that, but really, really do that. But there's no way I could do everything, so I count on my employees. So you just get really good employees. You're gonna go through that cycle, though, of employees, but just hiring talent.
0:09:00.4 Everett Sands: Yeah, we teach people here when they go through our technical assistance business advising that they'll ask us for money and we'll say, "Well, who's gonna do this?" And they'll say, "I'm gonna do it." And we look at them very skeptical, like, "No, we don't actually believe you." We're not saying you can't do it. We don't say it's not possible. We're just saying there's 24 hours in a day. You might want to sleep, you might want to eat, you might have a family to take care of. We just don't want you to do it. Right. And sometimes it catches business owners by surprise when we're like, "What do you mean I can't do it?" But we're saying exactly what you're saying, which is, look, one, there's some smarter people out there than you. Two, it just makes good business sense to have other people on the team that you could share ideas with and things like that.
0:09:38.8 Stephanie Graves: Right. Just bet on yourself.
0:09:39.9 Everett Sands: That's right.
0:09:40.9 Stephanie Graves: But have your team.
0:09:42.1 Everett Sands: Absolutely. Second golden piece of nugget that I heard you say was stay away from all the shiny objects. Not necessarily that they're all bad, but how do you determine what might be a good shiny object and what's not a good one as a business owner?
0:09:55.2 Stephanie Graves: There's testing. You do want to test, because PR has definitely grown since 2013.
0:09:58.6 Everett Sands: Sure.
0:10:02.0 Stephanie Graves: Like I said, it started out as an outreach and engagement firm. What's interesting now, though, with AI, it's going back to the personal touch.
0:10:08.6 Everett Sands: Interesting. Explain.
0:10:15.2 Stephanie Graves: Because with AI, first drafts can be written of everything, but it takes the human to then actually really make it good and to put in... Our firm is, we work in a lot of disadvantaged neighborhoods, so we have a lot of cultural competence. That is not done with AI.
0:10:36.0 Everett Sands: Not at all.
0:10:36.7 Stephanie Graves: But testing the shiny objects, as a business, you have a bottom line. Of course you want to make money. And so I leave to the pros the earned media. So we bring on sub-consultants because you really have to know journalists. I mean, if anyone tells you they're gonna get you earned media...
0:11:04.2 Everett Sands: And what is earned media, just so...
0:11:20.4 Stephanie Graves: Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Earned media. Okay. So there's earned media and paid media. So earned media is, say, with this podcast, someone picks it up and just says, "Oh, Stephanie Graves was on this podcast." So I earned it. I didn't have to pay for it. And that just gets your brand out more and more. Paid media is when you actually pay and you say, "I want to place this article in, and this is how much it costs." So earned media is really a niche, and it really is knowing a lot of journalists, a lot of media, and there's some really good firms out there. So I said no to that, and so I bring in sub-consultants to do that.
0:11:36.6 Everett Sands: Gotcha. That's awesome. That's awesome. What were the key decisions? So you're pivoting an organization. You're saying, "Look, we do two things, now we're gonna do more." I guess I have a couple questions. One of the things I find is hard for CEOs is we have the vision before the execution. So I'd love to know kind of how do you deal with that first? Like, you see something 2026, 2028, but you got to bring the team along. What do you do when you're in those moments?
0:12:05.4 Stephanie Graves: Well, you really have to map it out so they see the vision too, because sometimes I can't even verbalize exactly what it is.
0:12:13.0 Everett Sands: That happens to me all the time.
0:12:15.3 Stephanie Graves: And so meetings, and that's why we're in office, too, except one day a week people can work from home. And that is so important with collaboration because sometimes I'll try to verbalize something and I'll need someone else to finish my sentence, what I'm trying to get to.
0:12:31.3 Everett Sands: Yeah, I call them Everett Whispers here.
0:12:33.8 Stephanie Graves: Oh, I like that. I'm gonna use that. And so it's, again, having good talent so that you really start working together and collaborating. So my vision becomes something more manageable because maybe they might hamper me down a little bit and say, "No, we're not gonna be all running marathons next year." But good, good employees.
0:12:59.7 Everett Sands: That makes sense. That makes sense. How do you in the PR world establish credibility? I know you have lots of competitors. What do you do?
0:13:03.2 Stephanie Graves: It's trust.
0:13:06.6 Everett Sands: Okay.
0:13:10.1 Stephanie Graves: And it's decades of relationships that I have, but also it's not just one campaign and you're credible. It's many that you have shown up, you've done what you said, and you deliver. And so it's over and over doing that. And so relationships are gold, and no one's gonna give you anything for free until you really show yourself as credible.
0:13:44.5 Everett Sands: And I imagine sometimes you have to talk to your client and say, "I want you to go in a different direction than they might have wanted to go to." Probably for sure with crisis management, but just in general.
0:13:56.6 Stephanie Graves: Yes. Oh, that happens. Yes. I mean, a funny story, I've only... Well, I fired this client because he was a very big real estate developer and he owned a lot of apartments in South Los Angeles, and he was gonna demolish them and get it entitled. And so I was there for him for, "Okay, I understand what you need to do," and the messaging and the entitlement process. Entitlement means getting city to agree to your new project.
0:14:15.3 Everett Sands: Yes.
0:14:34.1 Stephanie Graves: And that process takes three to five years. But when he told me that he was going to evict everyone, I said, "You cannot do that. Evict everyone now? You still have five years. Let them stay for the five years." Los Angeles, I don't know who listens to your podcast, has a very big homeless problem. You're just going to be putting people on the street.
0:14:58.4 Everett Sands: You're even gonna compound the problem.
0:15:00.5 Stephanie Graves: And he disagreed with me, so I fired him.
0:15:02.7 Everett Sands: Interesting.
0:15:04.9 Stephanie Graves: Now, that's not the best business decision.
0:15:09.3 Everett Sands: Maybe.
0:15:09.6 Stephanie Graves: But like I said, again, being credible. Because our ethos is community driven.
0:15:16.9 Everett Sands: Okay. How does civic leadership play into what you do?
0:15:20.8 Stephanie Graves: So civically, I was appointed by Mayor Karen Bass as an LA commissioner and I sit on LAHSA, which is the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. They don't always have the solution, but I really take it... I see the city in a different light because I know the problems.
0:15:31.9 Everett Sands: Yeah.
0:15:43.0 Stephanie Graves: And so I don't want to add to those problems. And again, when I was saying, as a business, I have a bottom line. But also civically, I think I always want LA to work, and so I make the decisions for that. Again, early on in my career with a new business, I don't know if I could, but later on, I've been doing this now for 12 years running this company, I have a different perspective and you know. I'm humbled.
0:16:15.6 Everett Sands: I appreciate that. Thank you, Stephanie. We'll take a quick break. Now a quick word from Lendistry's boss, our customer.
0:16:26.1 Coco: My name is Coco and I'm the owner of Coco's Lip Smacking Cupcakes, and we are located in Lakewood, California. The problem that I was facing before working with Lendistry was getting access to funding because at that time I was doing a full build-out for my bakery and we were exhausting our own funds. So Lendistry came through with a grant and it was very beneficial. They definitely look out for small businesses, so every opportunity they have to plug my business, they've done so. So I also have a great personal relationship with them. I know that if I have questions on funding or gaining an internship or trying to get employees, I can call on Lendistry. I would recommend Lendistry to other small business owners if they're looking for funding, resources, and just to have a great connection with someone that they can grow with.
0:17:20.6 Everett Sands: Okay, we're back. You talked a little bit about civic leadership, which I think is amazing. Tell us about some of the other things you're involved with, whether it be boards or committees, different things.
0:17:31.2 Stephanie Graves: Sure. And I kind of talked about it a little bit. You can't say yes to everything. So the ones I focus in on are really important to me. And so since we are headquartered downtown LA, I really wanted to be part of the business of LA. And so I'm on the board of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Central City Association of Los Angeles. They focus strictly on downtown. The Los Angeles Business Council, I'm on their board. And then I am the chair of the Steinberg Institute, which is a Sacramento-based think tank to advocate for mental health legislation, which is important to so much for your employees and to show that mental health isn't a stigma. It's something that you should really talk about. And I just joined a board. I've said no to many, but what was really important was with our recent fires in Los Angeles, I joined the board of the Altadena Housing Solutions to get more housing faster in Altadena.
0:18:42.3 Everett Sands: That's gonna be, I'm assuming, a little bit business and passion project.
0:18:44.4 Stephanie Graves: Yeah.
0:18:46.6 Everett Sands: When you're thinking about the business, I guess this is somewhat connected to PR is my question. Do you think business owners should be more local? Or how do you make that decision to be local versus maybe regional or statewide when you talk to your clients or when you give them a little bit of advice?
0:19:03.7 Stephanie Graves: Well, I would say it depends on your business, but local is always good because it then again, back to credibility. You're meeting a lot of other local businesses. You talk about what pain points each one is having, maybe within their region. I think passion boards are good too, just to feed your soul. But it's all about relationships. It really is. You never know. I always tell people never say no to a meeting because you never know where that might lead. Even it might be two years down the road, it could be potential business. But civically, I think it's very important for business owners to be on boards and just be part of the process.
0:19:45.9 Everett Sands: Yeah. One of the things that we tell people about being on boards that we think works well, specifically because we're so focused on finance, is they get to see how the board is run. They get to see the financials. They get to see various committees, maybe audit or budget or something like that, and they get to see how someone else does it. Because for some CEOs, you don't get another opportunity to see inside another company, right, or inside of how someone else might run it. And we say, "Well, what are some of the tips or tricks that you like that other organization might be doing that then you can bring in-house as kind of a learning opportunity?"
0:20:21.5 Stephanie Graves: And then on the flip side too, as you start running your business, you start knowing tricks and tips. And so you add to those board meetings and you add your value. So it goes both ways.
0:20:33.7 Everett Sands: Yeah. Tell me, what do you think some of the mistakes are that business owners might make when they think about public relations?
0:20:39.5 Stephanie Graves: I talked a little bit about it, that they think PR is just a one-time thing. PR, again, you need to build it.
0:20:46.4 Everett Sands: It's the plant we got to grow.
0:20:47.5 Stephanie Graves: It's the plant. Water the plant because it will die or someone else... You want to tell your story. You don't want someone else to tell your story. It's not that expensive. I mean, if you do go to the bigger agencies, it is, but that's... I don't know if you saw what happened with Cracker Barrel and the cheese logo and... But PR, there's a price point for everyone.
0:21:02.5 Everett Sands: Yeah.
0:21:17.4 Stephanie Graves: And with all the different techniques that we use out there now to really get your audience to look at you and the metrics and the analytics, it brings business in. And you want to continue to look at your website to see if it really has the search engine optimization. And you want to look at the dreaded impressions on your social media and it continues and continues and best practices. I think it's similar to outreach. When you have a big project and they say, "Oh, we don't want you to outreach till phase three," we're like, "No, you got to start outreaching phase one before you need people."
0:21:59.0 Everett Sands: Right. Well, I think that's really interesting. I mean, again, same thing kind of happens in capital, right? We tell people there's lenders that kind do loans at 250,000 and below, and then there's kind of 100,000 to 5 million, then there's 5 million plus. But interesting to think about that in PR, that there are different price points and, I guess quite frankly, just different services that you can get at those price points, right? But the key is to get started, to start building that brand, start building that PR.
0:22:25.4 Stephanie Graves: Right. Like I told you, we deal in education too, and that means with community colleges, we help with enrollment, so getting their message out. And we also work for the state for an association with all the superintendents where we agreed to give one hour free consultation for all the superintendents up and down the state of California. But then we give them a menu of, "Okay, after that one hour free consultation, this is what we can do for you," and different price points.
0:22:58.4 Everett Sands: Yeah, makes sense. The business owner's interested in PR. Do they need any qualifications to kind of get started in PR? Like, I suck at marketing. I can't even draw stick figures. Like, I have no artistic ability at all. I think I know the answer, but I still want to ask it because maybe someone's wondering, like, do they need anything when they walk into that first meeting?
0:23:18.0 Stephanie Graves: To interview a PR agency?
0:23:20.2 Everett Sands: What would you tell them to do?
0:23:21.5 Stephanie Graves: Well, it depends what it is.
0:23:22.8 Everett Sands: Sure.
0:23:23.3 Stephanie Graves: And with outreach and engagement, you put together an engagement plan. With a branding, you put together a... You want logo, website, social media calendar. So it depends each. So do you need to know anything? No. They should never charge you at that meeting, and you should actually feel like you are definitely gonna get your money's worth.
0:23:51.4 Everett Sands: Right. So basically come with an idea of what you want to accomplish and then start working through the plan of execution.
0:23:58.9 Stephanie Graves: Always have a goal. What is your goal? And then we can tell you more about how to get to that goal.
0:24:06.5 Everett Sands: Makes sense. Makes sense. When you think about, again, scaling businesses, whether it be PR or other things, anything kind of comes top of mind of some of the important things for our business owners to focus on?
0:24:21.2 Stephanie Graves: And scaling isn't... I started with seven employees and now we have close to 70. But it's not always about scaling more employees, but it's scaling your services and being smarter. That's what it is. So again, your foundation, know your identity, have your identity locked in and then just be good with your people, your purpose, and then see where you want to scale.
0:24:37.4 Everett Sands: Gotcha.
0:24:48.8 Stephanie Graves: And it's not always, you don't always need to scale. Sometimes less is more and you figure out a smarter way with less is more and make more money too.
0:24:57.9 Everett Sands: Right, right. Especially using the partnerships and different things that you said...
0:25:01.1 Stephanie Graves: Exactly.
0:25:01.7 Everett Sands: Outsourcing, et cetera. That makes perfect sense. If you were going to give a business advice on building kind of brand reputation, what would you say?
0:25:02.3 Stephanie Graves: Trust.
0:25:06.8 Everett Sands: Okay.
0:25:11.3 Stephanie Graves: It's all about trust. And how do you get trust is that you continue to be authentic and do what you say and also act like no one's watching and the trust comes. But it definitely is you have to be authentic and talk to your target audience or your target base with just a very, "This is who we are, this is what we're gonna do, and this is how we'll do it."
0:25:43.0 Everett Sands: Last question I have for you, and you mentioned this a little bit earlier. You're certified as a woman-owned business, but any advice you would give to our woman-owned business owners that might be a little bit different than maybe I might give?
0:25:56.4 Stephanie Graves: Well, women can do it all.
0:25:58.0 Everett Sands: I agree.
0:25:59.5 Stephanie Graves: And it's not... I mean, my whole life has gotten me to this point, so I had to do those other things to build me up. But I have no problem going into a room of whoever, reading the room, doing whatever. But I think it's a process that you go through, so if you don't feel like you have it yet, you will get it and sky's the limit.
0:26:24.0 Everett Sands: Yeah. Yeah, I think it took me a little while to learn that and I do think women actually are better at it. I'm just gonna speak for myself. But Stephanie, great having you here. Thank you so much.
0:26:34.2 Stephanie Graves: It's been great. Thank you. It's so much fun. Thank you for having me.
0:26:37.1 Everett Sands: Absolutely. Thanks for hanging out with us on Small Business Unscripted. Want more? Go to smallbusinessunscripted.com for additional episodes, helpful resources, and to keep the conversation going. Follow Lendistry @LENDISTRY on all the major platforms. See you next time.
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