How PR and a personal brand drive leads and sales | frank advice from Liza Mereshko
No Bullsh!t, June 25, 2025, 76 min, 1,510 views. Liza Mereshko, co-founder of an agency, technology founder and advisor on personal brand and communications, tells Sergey Kuznetsov about her path into entrepreneurship, the failures of her early years in hiring and working with media, and why founders need public relations and personal branding at all.
| Published | |
|---|---|
| Length | 76 min |
| Views on YouTube | 1,510 |
| Language of the episode | Russian |
| Where to watch and listen | YouTube, Spotify, Telegram |
Date, length and view count according to data from the episode page on YouTube, as of the page update date shown in the footer.
In short
The conversation covers her business partnership and how the two of them split roles and resolve conflicts, cultural differences between Russian, American, British, European and Asian business communities when entering new markets, the role of sport and sobriety in building a strong network, and practical advice: at what stage a company should bring in communications, how to pick the right person for personal branding and why it is closer to mentoring than to copywriting.
Key ideas
- A founder's personal brand lowers the cost of acquiring a client and raises conversion into sales and investment, though the effect cannot be measured as directly as advertising: it is a long game.
- An honestly told mistake can become a growth point: public storytelling about a failed exchange with an investor brought an inbound call from a major fund that had not been interested before.
- Personal branding is not writing texts, it is mentoring work: the consultant's job is to help a founder see themselves from outside and find the angle where the story holds.
- Communications are worth starting at pre-seed if there is a clear minimum product; from seed onwards the emphasis shifts from personal detail to traction, team and founder-market fit.
- In a business partnership complementary roles work: one partner can be the visionary and the source of energy, the other brings structure and grounds the ideas.
- Business culture differs sharply by region: European partners are slower and more conservative, Americans decide faster and are closer in mindset to founders from this region.
The full transcript
The episode is recorded in Russian, and the full transcript of the conversation is on the Russian page of this episode. English and Spanish subtitles for the strongest episodes are rolling out on YouTube in waves.
Open the transcript