After 28 Years, Advice To His Younger Self Before Starting Rainier Communications

Michelle McMahon: This week, Rainier Communications is celebrating its 28th anniversary. Twenty-eight isn't really a milestone, but it sort of feels like one after a long year of COVID isolating for our team. Other than the rare distanced and masked visit to the office to pick up a few things, we haven't seen each other in person for 13 months. We're celebrating over Zoom later this week, but we wanted to mark our firm's anniversary with something a little different on our blog. Our CEO, Steve Schuster, is an engineer turned marketer who started Rainier communications after being continually disappointed by PR agencies that overpromised and under-delivered. He set out to build a firm with a reputation for technological credibility and creativity.

Rainier is a four-time winner of tech PR agency of the year. So Steve has certainly accomplished that goal over the last 28 years. But like any business, there have been ups and downs and twists and turns along the way.

With more than a little perspective, after nearly 30 years in the business of tech PR, we decided to ask Steve this: "Looking back, what advice would you give your younger self before starting Rainier Communications back in 1993?" Here's what Steve has to say.

Steve Schuster: Thanks Michelle. Good question. Well, I guess one of the first things I might say is you're not going to believe this, but 20 years from now, you're going to be walking around, wearing a mask all the time. It's a long story.

Anyway, I think that the last year has taught me and the last 28 years have taught me that I would go back and tell myself to really expect the unexpected. I mean, I knew that I would make plans and things would go forward sometimes according to plan, sometimes not according to plan, but I didn't know that there would be a dotcom crash. I didn't know that there would be a 9/11. I didn't know there would be 2008 economic crash. And I certainly didn't know there would be a global pandemic. I would tell my younger self to stay very true to my vision for what Rainier was to be all about, to tell the stories of human invention. That hasn't changed at all, but to inject a huge amount of agility into that, into the approach to actually accomplishing that. That change was going to be a constant companion throughout the entire arc of this company that I had started in 1993.

I would absolutely tell my younger self not to be afraid to charge money for the services that we would bring to market over the next 28 years. I often operated from a sense of being a little embarrassed to charge money, even though there was a lot of value that we're bringing to the market and there continues to be a lot of value that we bring to the market. But sometimes I thought too much with my heart and not enough with my head. And that's another key piece of advice I would have given my younger self. You're running a business. So be who you are. Think with your heart and compassionately, but you're not a charity. Do charitable work. That's great, but this is a business and charge what it's worth. There's nothing to be embarrassed about in doing that.

I would tell myself that it's important to fail faster, recognize when something isn't going well and stop doing it. All too often I would, again, think too much with my heart and would wait and wait and wait and wait, knowing all along that something, a situation, whether it was with a team member or a client that wasn't working out or some other situation, was not going well. And I wouldn't have the courage to pull the plug on it. I would really advise any young entrepreneur to make a lot of decisions. Don't be paralyzed, but know when you've made a bad decision and pull the plug right away. It's better for yourself, it's better for the business, and it's certainly better for your team.

One really, really important thing that I would tell my younger self is don't let the business define who you are. Yes, as an entrepreneur, your heart and soul and pocketbook are all into the business that you've created, but don't let it become your personality. The answer to somebody asking you, "How are you, Steve," is not listing how Rainier is doing. It's never listing how your business is doing. Those are two separate things. How are you? How are you nurturing yourself, in addition to nurturing your business?

If I could choose just one thing to tell my younger self, it would be this: You don't need to go it alone. Throw your ego out. Yes, you're an entrepreneur. You've started the business. You're leading the business. It's on your shoulders, but you don't have to go it alone. There's a world of experience out there and a world of expertise. And you can't bring, I don't care who you are, everything to the table. So I would have turned to others, to business coaches, to mentors, to others, to bounce ideas off of. I simply would have taken advantage of resources that are out there for everybody. Some you pay for, some are free to help me run the business, to help me make decisions, to help me understand where I was going to stub my toe and make mistakes to bounce ideas off of, to brainstorm. Other agency owners who were going through similar situations, all the while knowing that those are just data points. That's just input to my own decision-making process. But to tell myself that I didn't need to go it alone ever.

And this is a key piece of advice for every entrepreneur. I know it sounds cliche, but have fun. You're doing this for a reason. You're doing this because you saw a need in the market or you wanted to be more independent. You wanted to have a better work-life balance. Just have fun. Otherwise, why do it?

And the last thing, and this is not just for entrepreneurs. This is for everybody and yet another cliche, is 32-year-old Steve, you will not believe how fast the time is going to raise by. I mean, I sit here today and I think, 28 years, how did that go by so quickly? It's practically half of my lifetime, but it goes by quickly. And so enjoy it. Learn from your mistakes. You'll make a lot of them. And even if you plan for mistakes, those are the ones you won't make. You'll make others. You'll learn from all of them and you'll do some good along the way. That's the real thing. Is make sure that you're doing good and make sure that you give back to your community, to your society. That's a really important responsibility of entrepreneurial success.

Michelle McMahon: Thanks for those thoughts, Steve. There are certainly times we all wish we could give advice to our younger selves at any rate. Rainier's 28th year has certainly been a unique one and the team is looking forward to seeing what happens next.

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About Steve Schuster

Steve Schuster is an electrical engineer turned marketer who founded Rainier Communications in 1993 with a mission to provide technology companies with a credible resource for communicating “complex” technologies to the marketplace. Steve has over 30 years of industry experience marketing and designing technology products, including analog and digital semiconductors, high-performance software, system-level products, optical systems, real-time and high-availability products from chip level through system and application level, audio systems, industrial test systems, ad-tech, and more.

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