This week on How Success Happens, I sat down with Zach Rosenfield, CEO and president of RMG, a 360-degree media strategy firm that shapes the narratives for five billion-dollar brands, icons like Daymond John, and entertainers with more than two dozen Academy Awards and Emmys. Zach has spent nearly three decades in the PR trenches, evolving from a reluctant publicist to the guy who entrepreneurs call when they are ready for their big moment. We broke down his hard-earned insights to help you craft your own headline-making success story in three, two, one!
Listen Here
Subscribe now: Apple | Spotify | YouTube
Three Key Insights
1. You Can’t Force Passion
Early in his career, Zach realized his biggest problem was that he “didn’t know how to be passionate about other people’s passions.” He spent years grinding in jobs that didn’t feel organic until he began working with entrepreneurs and creators whose missions he could genuinely get behind. That shift—from “this is my job” to “this is my client’s dream and I’m all in on it”—changed everything about his energy, his relationships, and his results.
Takeaway: You won’t excel unless you care — find projects you can authentically throw your energy into.
2. Let Your Clients Hand You the Playbook
Zach admits that a major turning point came when he stopped trying to “spiritually lead” companies he didn’t control and started learning from the entrepreneurs he represented. Working closely with Daymond John, he realized “it’s amazing what will happen if you just start listening to people and what they’ll do is they’ll give you the playbook for success.” Those conversations helped him see that he was already acting like an entrepreneur for other people’s businesses—he just hadn’t done it for his own yet. That insight directly shaped how he built RMG into a 360° communications firm, from its business model down to company culture choices like paying employees’ full health insurance and hiring based on someone’s potential, not just their resume.
Takeaway: Treat your best clients like mentors—ask how they think, listen without ego, and use what they reveal as a playbook for your next moves.
3. Get Honest About Why You Really Want PR
Before you hire anyone, Zach says you have to start by asking yourself “the easiest question ever”: “Why do you want PR?” Maybe you want to be famous, get bought, raise funding — he stresses there is no wrong answer. And for those founders who insist that they don’t care about PR and are “just about the work”? The inevitable result of pretending you don’t care about visibility is waking up to find someone else winning the narrative that should have been yours.
Takeaway: Before you ever talk to a PR firm, write down—in one brutally honest sentence—what you want PR to do for you (fame, funding, acquisition, authority), so every conversation and campaign can be built around that outcome.
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Two Free Resources to Learn More
- Learn more about Zach and his team’s media strategy approach at RMG360.com.
- Read this piece on the self-sabotaging instinct that gets in the way of branding success.
One Question to Ponder
Zach talked about how dangerous it is to hide behind “I’m just about the work” while your competitors are out there telling their stories and winning the attention you secretly want.
If you stripped away any fear of judgment or failure, what is the bold, honest story about yourself or your business that you would most want the world to know—and what’s one concrete step you could take this week to start telling it?
Email your answer to howsuccesshappens@entrepreneur.com, and I’ll read some of my favorites on a future episode.
About How Success Happens
Each episode of How Success Happens shares the inspiring, entertaining, and unexpected journeys that influential leaders in business, the arts, and sports traveled on their way to becoming household names. It’s a reminder that behind every big-time career, there is a person who persisted in the face of self-doubt, failure, and anything else that got thrown in their way.
This week on How Success Happens, I sat down with Zach Rosenfield, CEO and president of RMG, a 360-degree media strategy firm that shapes the narratives for five billion-dollar brands, icons like Daymond John, and entertainers with more than two dozen Academy Awards and Emmys. Zach has spent nearly three decades in the PR trenches, evolving from a reluctant publicist to the guy who entrepreneurs call when they are ready for their big moment. We broke down his hard-earned insights to help you craft your own headline-making success story in three, two, one!
Listen Here
Subscribe now: Apple | Spotify | YouTube
Three Key Insights
1. You Can’t Force Passion
Early in his career, Zach realized his biggest problem was that he “didn’t know how to be passionate about other people’s passions.” He spent years grinding in jobs that didn’t feel organic until he began working with entrepreneurs and creators whose missions he could genuinely get behind. That shift—from “this is my job” to “this is my client’s dream and I’m all in on it”—changed everything about his energy, his relationships, and his results.
