PR—Paradise On Line 1

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Van Communications


Year Founded:

1991


Core Business:

Health care marketing and communications


Revenue in 1998:

$450,000


Revenue in 2001:

$415,000 (projected)


Employees in 1998:

1


Employees in 2001:


Goal:

An annual 10 percent increase in client load


Driving Force:

The need for hospitals and other clients to quickly and effectively communicate with diverse audiences


Sandy Van gave real meaning to telecommuting when she pulled up stakes and moved her business to Hawaii

Lots of people carp about their jobs. Sandy Van isn’t one of them. During the depths of the early 90s recession, the public relations consultant from Diamond Bar decided to take a summer rental with her family near the beach on the big island of Hawaii.

She never came back.

But eight years later, Van, who now lives on Oahu, has a thriving practice that still draws most of its business from the Los Angeles area, including a key contract with the prestigious Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

It’s just that now she does her job with a view of the warm Pacific waters that draw tourists the world over, and often times the media and others who work with her are none the wiser courtesy of modern communications.

“Nobody has to know I am working in a home office in a tank top with a German shepherd at my feet,” said Van, 44, principal in the one-woman shop Van Communications.


Cancer scare

Van’s odyssey began a few years before her decision to move out to Hawaii. A Wisconsin native who had grown up in Oregon, Van was a community relations manager for Glendale Adventist Medical Center in 1991.

Then, one Friday night she discovered a lump under her arm and had to wait until Monday to get it checked out. During the weekend, she realized she wanted to spend more time with her husband and three young children.

The lump turned out to be nothing, but the cancer scare prompted her to start her own public relations agency. Two years later, as the recession dragged on and violent crime seemed to dominate the news, she decided to try the summer rental in Hawaii.

At the time, she was on contract with Simi Valley Hospital and Health Care Services and Glendale Adventist handling media relations, but realized she was doing it all from home.

“I realized that it had been five or six weeks, since I had been to a client meeting in person,” she said. “Everything had been by phone.”

Van thought she could pull it off, but in order to calm the “perceived barriers” of her clients she set up an 800 telephone number, and forwarded her home number to Hawaii, turning the living room of the two-bedroom rental into her office. “When reporters were calling me, they did not realize they were calling Hawaii,” she said.

At the end of the summer, the system worked well enough that Van and her family decided to make it a permanent move, buying a home on the beach. She started picking up local clients in health services, restaurants and other sectors, but also traveled every few months to retain her mainland ones.

Glendale Adventist did not keep her for general media relations, but to this day she still contracts with the hospital doing graphics, design and other work for its rehabilitation unit recruitment drives.

Natasha Milatovich, an employment specialist who has been working with Van for five years, said the relationship was smooth enough early on, as the pair relied on phone calls, faxes and overnight mail. But now with the ease of e-mail and Adobe Acrobat files, it’s gotten easier.

“She is just a phone call away, but now I can see instantly what she is working on and what direction she is taking,” Milatovich.


Big contract

Three years ago, Van managed to secure her largest client yet when she was asked by a former colleague, Grace Cheng, vice president for marketing and public relations at Cedars-Sinai, to draw up a proposal to improve media coverage of the hospital.

Cheng had worked with Van after the Northridge Earthquake on a campaign to alert the media and the public about the status of a Santa Monica hospital and was impressed with the work.

The Cedars-Sinai board approved the campaign, and Van was hired to promote several departments, including the hospital’s surgery program, despite some misgivings from administrators and doctors.

“There may have been some “Gosh, why are we using somebody from Hawaii,” but I would say in every case she has managed to win over the doctors,” Cheng said.

Van regularly checks in with the doctors and others in the departments she promotes via e-mail, getting updates on new research, clinical studies, ground-breaking surgery and the like. Demetrious said Van has the ability to synthesize highly technical medical developments and translate them for the media.

News releases are sent out to reporters who eight years after Van’s move still may not be aware they are communicating with her in Hawaii. The hospital says story coverage has almost doubled since Van was hired.

“I don’t advertise the fact that I am in Hawaii. I don’t want to create the perception that I am inaccessible. I want people to feel I am right there for them whenever they need me,” she said.

Cheng said the difference in time zones, with Hawaii two hours behind Los Angeles, can be an advantage when projects come up late in the day. The disadvantage of not having her on site is overcome by having her work with one of the hospital’s in-house public relations representatives if, say, a reporter needs to visit.

Van, who flies to Los Angeles twice a year to visit clients, supports a family of three children, two of college age, along with her husband who helps her out in the business. She says she would like her business to grow slowly but is comfortable with the lifestyle and amount of business she now has.

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