Make it, Don't Fake it! - Sabrina Horn, Founder Horn Group

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Reich, founder and CEO of RevOp Squared, and your host of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. We talk to a wide variety of B2B, SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics-informed decisions. Now on to today's show.
Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics It Measure Up Podcast. Today, we are joined by Sabrina Horn, author of Make It, Don't Fake It, founder and CEO of Horn Strategy, and formerly the CEO and founder of The Horn Group, a Silicon Valley pioneer in B2B technology public relations. Today, we will be covering three main topics. First, the B2B technology landscape evolution from a PR perspective. Second, the founder's curse, blinded by division or the journey. And third, authentic leadership, learning by losing. Sabrina, it's so nice to catch up with you again. Please take a moment to give a brief background of your journey to becoming a guest on the Metrics Measure Up podcast.

**Sabrina Horn** (1:19)
Certainly. And thank you for having me here, Ray. It's great to be on your podcast. My background is essentially beginning with being the only child of German immigrants infused with a instinct for survival and an entrepreneurial spirit. I started my own firm at the age of 29 with four years of experience and ultimately became a PR advisor to thousands of tech executives and their companies in Silicon Valley. I'm also a single mom to two amazing daughters. And currently, now I'm an advisor to other executives, to entrepreneurs to help them navigate the early stages of their businesses.
And I am an author.

**Ray Rike** (2:01)
That is so exciting. And I just last week finished reading your book, Make It, Don't Fake It. And that's what I want to dig into today if you're okay with that.

**Sabrina Horn** (2:10)
Absolutely.

**Ray Rike** (2:12)
Well, you know, I remember being introduced to you back in the 1990s by, I think, a mutual dear friend, MR. Regaswamy. Then another friend, Bob Wright, said, Oh, you got to talk to Sabrina Horn and The Horn Group regarding PR. And they were saying that you really were the person who took PeopleSoft from a 50-person early-stage company to help them become the largest and most brand-aware ERP and HR software company I know. So let me ask you a question. So you started thinking that you were going to help software companies take advantage of the PC revolution. How has PR changed today in today's B2B Tech landscape?

**Sabrina Horn** (2:47)
Well, yeah, I mean, so that was 30 years ago, right? And things have definitely evolved since then. I would say a few things. PR was much more of a tactical marketing function back then. It was about getting ink and column inches and putting out lots of press releases. And there were probably a handful of PR firms back then that were considered strategic. I think the PR industry has figured out how to provide more value over the last several decades to the tech industry. And I would challenge listeners to think about a couple of things, right? It's much more about outcomes now than it is about outputs. It's about risk assessment and identifying threats and opportunities, not just what's happening in the news cycle later on today. Crisis, as we now have seen in the last year, is very much a part of the job these days. And that alone requires a more strategic approach. And I personally know many communications executives who've now earned a seat at the board level. So, that coupled with the fact that technology, particularly on the B2B side, has become even more complex than it was back then in the 1990s. And companies need PR to simplify their stories, to elevate their messages, and articulate a different kind of value proposition. It's not anymore about like who you are and that you're the leader of blah, blah, blah.
You have to articulate what's the problem that you solve. So it's as much about being a business person as it is about being a good communicator.

**Ray Rike** (4:28)
That's interesting, because I work with a lot of B2B SaaS founders and CEOs, and typically around 5 million at the low end, up to about 50 million is my sweet spot. And one of the biggest kind of strategic decisions I hear being discussed a lot is, should we invest in a PR firm? How could I measure the return on PR? Is it more than just getting ink with the trade press or the business press? So Sabrina, before we pivot and go into the book, how would you tell CEO to measure the return on their PR investment today?