How a Smoky Side Hustle Sparked My PR Independence
When a renegade cigarette brand—and a loud NYC office—pushed The Accidental Publicist to bet on herself.
There’s a moment in every accidental career when you realize the universe isn’t just nudging you toward your calling—it’s dropkicking you into it.
For me, that moment came in a painfully loud office across from Grand Central, where the walls were shaking (and so was I) thanks to my neighbor’s nonstop renovation. The irony? I had just signed on as a “partner” with an agency owner looking to expand into the United States. My task? Find the office space. And reader, I found it—with a central location and jackhammers for ambiance.
No one could work. No one could hear themselves think. But I had something better than a white flag: I had a press clippings notebook the size of an old Manhattan phone book. When the building manager gave me the runaround about the noise, I pulled out my media clip book and waved it in his face like a magic wand.
“See this?” I said. “I can pitch a trend story faster than you can say ‘lease default.’ One call to the real estate beat and you’ll be reading about your building's noise nightmare—along with stories from other tenants I’m more than happy to track down.”
He blinked. He stammered. He looked like he was about to cry. I got rent credits.
But I also got a hard-earned revelation: I didn’t need a so-called partner. I’d already survived the backbiting politics of the top three global PR agencies (including one where colleagues helped themselves to my client base while I was on maternity leave). I’d worked for bosses who operated more like Caesar than collaborators. What I needed wasn’t someone else’s vision—it was my own.
So, I did what any New Yorker on the brink does: I fled to Sedona.
There, surrounded by red rocks and blessed silence, I had a vision—minus the peyote. The PR world, with its smoke and mirrors, was mostly just hot air. I was done leasing expensive offices and burning cash on image. I'd rather put that money toward buying a real apartment. And with my spouse’s support handling the agency backend (and, yes, my mail—because that’s how the Grand Central office lights got shut off), we launched Vorticom, Inc. in March 2003.
By then, I’d long since earned the name The Accidental Publicist—having tumbled from classical music into the world of press releases and publicity stunts, banging out press releases on IBM Selectrics, wrestling with microwave-sized word processors, and mastering the desktop computer.
I was an early Internet adopter thanks to a stint at Bantam Computer Books, which eventually led me to write four books on cyberculture—back when most people still thought “going online” meant dialing into AOL. What came next wasn’t a pivot—it was a full-blown plot twist.
My first client as an independent agency owner? A very accidental one.
Patrick Carroll, then an employee at Access Business Centers (run by the journalist-turned-mega-entrepreneur, Rosalind Resnick), had a side hustle: an artisanal cigarette brand called LEGAL. I’d introduced him to a New York Magazine reporter during an event I organized for Access. But Patrick had his own PR agenda. He hijacked the interview to talk about LEGAL. The result? A real article and a real investor—one Greek entrepreneur with deep pockets.
Patrick tried to track me down for weeks. I’d already left the “partnership” and was setting up my own agency. When he finally found me, he had a budget, a product, and a dream. And I—ironically a non-smoker who mostly repped tech clients—said yes.
With a $25K budget, The Accidental Publicist orchestrated a PR campaign that included covert “leaner” girls smoking in NYC clubs, a speakeasy-style party at Suede, a guerrilla push around Fashion Week, and a press blitz that landed us in The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Financial Times, Fortune Small Business, Fox News, 60 Minutes, and 200M+ media impressions. We even offered free LEGAL cigarettes to any celebrity kicked out of a bar for lighting up.
We won second place in the Bulldog PR Awards that year—right behind a $1M+ campaign from the American Heart Association. And me? I was working from home before it was fashionable.
The lesson? You don’t need a “real” office or a “safe” path to make waves. Sometimes the best chapters in an accidental career begin with a bad lease, a little legal intimidation, and a whole lot of nerve.