Who am I? Why am I here?


Posted: May 30th, 2006 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: EndGame PR News | 2 Comments

Even though this blog is only a couple of weeks old, this post is probably long overdue. To quote the late Admiral James Stockdale: Who am I? Why am I here? There’s a bio for me on the EndGame PR website, but for space reasons it’s not terribly detailed. Since I have all the space in the world here on the EndGame PR Blog, I’ll expand it!

I grew up in western Loudoun County, which at the time was mostly rural. We lived in three towns there, and in each place we could see cows from one of the windows in the house. When I was a teenager, I thought it was a horribly boring place. Now I realize that was a GOOD thing. The county is now, sadly, an extension of Fairfax County, having added more than a million residents since I moved away.

I came to Richmond to go to the School of Mass Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). After graduating from the Broadcast Journalism Track at the school, I went straight into radio news. I truly enjoyed my time as a journalist. I spent most of my time in radio, at WLEE AM , Virginia News Network, and WVNZ AM (which had an all news format at the time, and is now Spanish language.) I also worked in TV for a couple of years as a news producer at WTVR TV, Richmond’s channel 6.

After about seven years as a journalist, I’d had my fill. As I said, I truly enjoyed it and I feel I had a talent for it. However, the money isn’t very good unless you get to be the 6 or 11 p.m. anchor on TV, and that was unlikely since I worked primarily in radio. Also, the hours you work as a journalist STINK. When you get to the top of the profession in radio, you get to work morning drive time. This means you’re up at about 4 a.m. As news director and morning anchor, this is what I did at WVNZ AM. Quite a prize, eh?

So, as many journalists do when they “grow up,” I went into public relations. My first stop was in 1999 at Martin Public Relations at The Martin Agency. MPR later became SLAY Public Relations. The Martin Agency is an OUTSTANDING place to break into the world of advertising, marketing, and PR. I learned immense amounts in a short period of time from my mentors there, and have maintained good relationships with each of them.

After Martin, I went into corporate communications, working as a Senior Public Relations Representative for Circuit City Stores, Inc. My job at the Fortune 200 company was proactive and reactive PR. Essentially, I acted as a spokesperson and also proactively tried to get the reporters to say good stuff about the company and the items it sells. This was tough at times, as the company has a habit of laying people off frequently and I was the one who had to explain why. As it turned out, this was irony, because they eventually laid me off. I finished up with the company in April of 2005. Despite the difficult nature of the work at times, I did enjoy working at CC. I’m a geek at heart, so talking about the latest tech stuff was right up my alley.

When I found myself out of work due to budget cuts at Circuit City, I started hunting feverishly for just the right job. After doing this for a time, and finding that “just right” is hard to find, I decided to just do it myself. I figured if I had to go through a workforce reduction again, it would be easier to break it to myself! And so, EndGame Public Relations was launched. It’s hard to say exactly when I went out “on my own” but I guess I’ll just set the date from the time I picked the name, which was in January of 2006.

These days I work for my own clients from my home office in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Working from home is awesome. I get to see a lot of my two young children, Hannah (4 years) and Jackson (nearly 2 years) with a LOT of help from my mother-in-law and mother.

So, that’s me in a nutshell.

I don’t want to forget about the other part of EndGame PR. My wife, Jennifer, is a very talented PR professional. She also graduated from VCU’s Mass Communications department. In fact, that’s where we met! She also spent time in journalism, working as a news producer at WWBT TV, Richmond’s channel 12. She currently works in the PR office of a large state agency here in Virginia. Her role at EPR is primarily as my editor … making sure my writing makes sense. As time goes on and we grow the business, hopefully her role will expand.

If you have any questions about EndGame Public Relations or myself, please email!

Thanks for visiting!

Steve Mullen
President
EndGame Public Relations
Email: Steve@EndGamePR.com
Web: www.EndGamePR.com

Comments

Comments for this post

  1. Dr. jeane Sheffield says:
    July 31, 2007 at 1:19 pm

    My name is jeanne Sheffield, Dr. jeanne Now………..I have taught voice, piano, performance, character , etiquette and social skills for years here in memphis. I need to know how to get my work out in the public I am on burn out right now, but i want to promote my work……fall is right at us again and this is when the fish bite!I have a great book on the net on my site at: Jacksonbooks.com/songbirdministries. Self-published for childtren and teens and I want to get it distributed into churches, organizzations and clubs………..go to etiquette and click on the book type in sheffield for author.scroll down and read 2 letters if you want to see it.

    let me know if you can give me suggestions and you don’t cost a million dollars……….I am broke!

    Dr. jeanne Sheffield

  2. Steve says:
    August 3, 2007 at 11:04 pm

    Hi Dr. Sheffield,

    I actually addressed your questions in the most recent episode of my podcast, Startup BizCast. Listen to episode 9 at http://www.startupbizcast.com. Hope I helped!

    Steve

 
 

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