This week on the PRmoment Podcast I’m pleased to welcome founder and CEO of Lewis Communications Chris Lewis.

Chris established Lewis 25 years ago and today it is a truly global agency operating in 26 markets with a fee income of £50m and circa 500 employees. Lewis is the only current example of a British-owned PR and communications firm that has successfully scaled its business globally.

Here is the flavour of what Chris and I discuss

• Why survival was the primary objective for Lewis Communications when Chris started the business 25 years ago
• How a lucky break (literally) gave Chris the opportunity to start Lewis PR
• How Lewis PR grew in the early years
• Why in a consultancy business it is always a team of leaders who is responsible for the growth of the business, not an individual leader
• Why PR firms must change their mindset when it comes to training and staff development
• Why good leaders should not be authoritarians, but water carriers
• Why Chris wrote the book The Leadership Lab on how leaders must utilise a wide enough diversity of opinion
• Why the growth of Lewis can be tracked by the arrival of people within the business
• How Chris found the right people to help him grow Lewis PR
• Why many PR people are brilliant professional advisors, but not commercially successful
• Why there is a fundamental difference in the professional culture between marketing services firms and professional services firms
• Why no Private Equity firms have sold a PR firm for more than they bought it for
• Why controlling your own balance sheet gives you control on how you invest
• Why the current environment of rapid change in the marcomms sector means that investment in technology and people has become even more critical
• Why the model of PR firms talking to their clients everyday gives communication firms a competitive advantage
• Whether Chris fears for the future of public relations
• Whether marketing has become a tactical business function, not a strategic function
• Why protecting the reputation of a brand has become far more complicated
• Why British businesses have a tremendous advantage globally; from timezones, to travel, to law and language
• Why Chris is surprised that more British PR firms have not scaled more rapidly internationally
• The three pieces of advice Chris has if you are thinking of setting up a PR firm
• Why profits are the byproduct of a business having a healthy culture
• Why most successful people are built on a litany of failure
• What re-investment looks like in a PR firm
• Why Chris wrote the books Too Fast To Think and The Leadership Lab
• Why leaders should never feel like that they are the brightest person in the room - their job is to make their team feel like the cleverest people in the room.
• Why the providence of certainty is mediocrity
• Why humility is a vital leadership trait
• The future plans for Lewis PR