Holly-Jade Page Had Three Clients Before She Had an Agency

On April 1, 2020, Holly-Jade Page lost her job at a Los Angeles lifestyle agency. Within 48 hours, she had three retained clients. The date offered an obvious joke; the three clients offered a better answer. Before there was an agency called HJ-PR, there were people willing to pay her to keep doing the work.

One client already knew her as an account manager and could no longer afford a larger agency. Two others arrived through a friend's recommendations. That is a rather practical beginning for someone whose trade is reputation: when the company name fell away, the relationships remained. She had wanted to work for herself. Suddenly, the question had become how to organise the business already arriving.

Today, Page is HJ-PR's co-founder, CEO and head of PR. She is also known professionally as Holly-Jade Landeros. The business she built with Fernando Landeros brings together press relations, creators, social media and brand partnerships. Its origin, however, is small enough to picture without a pitch deck: a lost job, three clients and two people sharing very little floor space.

A London education in getting noticed

Page studied fashion marketing in London. She attended London Metropolitan University from 2010 to 2013, earning a 2:1. Fashion provided an early professional education too. She has described its demands as formative, giving her the work ethic and resilience she would need in public relations. A creative course might teach you to make something appealing. A publicist also has to persuade somebody else to care.

Her career took her through boutique agencies and into management in London, with work across food, drink, hospitality and lifestyle. Her experience includes work with Diageo, Treasury Wine Estates, Carlsberg, Casual Dining Group and Thai Leisure Group. These are businesses with different audiences and different rhythms: a drinks portfolio, a restaurant group, an opening that has to become a destination.

In January 2019, she was recognised in the Restaurant Marketer & Innovator 30 Under 30, recognition for emerging talent in the sector. The detail suits her career better than a vague claim to being a born storyteller. Restaurants need tables filled and reasons to return. The useful story has to survive contact with the menu, the room and the person deciding where to spend Friday evening.

Two careers, one kitchen table

Moving into the US market widened Page's experience in fashion, food, drinks and events. Fernando came from another direction. Born and raised in Mexico City, he had worked in live-event sponsorship sales, operations and influencer marketing. Their professional overlap came with a useful division of labour: she brought press relationships and editorial judgement; he brought campaign operations, commercial relationships and creators.

In their West Hollywood studio, remote work made the limits of the apartment unusually clear. A 450-square-foot home had become a workplace for two. They exchanged it for a two-bedroom apartment in Mexico and launched HJ-PR together in October 2020. Lower living costs helped them offer brands a broader service at a price those brands could manage.

There is an economic idea inside that domestic move. A client buys time, judgement and execution. A prestigious address can be pleasant, but it does not write a more relevant pitch. Page and Fernando made their location part of the business model, combining PR, influencer work and social management without requiring the overhead of their former arrangement.

The partnership is still visible in their current titles. Page leads PR and holds the CEO role; Fernando is co-founder, COO and responsible for business development. A husband-and-wife business can sound like a charming biographical footnote. Here, the distinction between their skills helps explain what clients are buying.

The unglamorous trip to San Diego

Early independence also supplied a lesson no fashion show could teach. After the agency took on cannabis-sector clients, a payment triggered a problem with its business bank. Page has said the account was closed. Working from Mexico, the founders had to travel to a branch in San Diego with their documents to get it reopened.

“At least we got a holiday out of it.. kind of!” she recalled. It is a good little puncture in the usual founding mythology. Here is a company selling creativity and access, brought up short by the machinery required to receive a payment. The glamour budget, for once, had to accommodate a bank appointment.

The lesson sits alongside the traits she identifies in her work: adaptability, empathy and collaboration. Her advice to aspiring publicists includes clear communication, strategic thinking, creativity, resilience and continued learning. Those qualities become less abstract when the problem is an inaccessible account or a writer who dislikes a pitch. The next useful action matters more than the polished explanation.

“Nurturing our clients, achieving their goals, first and foremost.”

Holly-Jade Page, on what matters to her

Building a business with room for a life

When Page explains why she wanted her own agency, creative control is only part of the answer. She also wanted a working life that could accommodate a family. She has spoken about motherhood as a reason to design the business differently, and about flexibility as something that belongs in the daily operation of a company.

Her phrase for the original ambition was to “blend creativity with flexibility”. It is an appealing sentence with a demanding practical consequence. Somebody must still set objectives, answer clients and decide whether an idea deserves another round of work. Flexibility requires a way to make those decisions when the people involved are not all sitting in the same office.

Her description of campaign planning starts with understanding a client's brand and setting clear objectives. Creative ideas then have a job to do within that framework. She connects the need to adapt at work with what she has learned as a mother. The aspiration is specific: expand into new markets while building a culture in which women can pursue their careers alongside their personal lives.

There is a distinction between admiring that ambition and declaring it achieved. Page has made it part of what she wants HJ-PR to become. It gives her growth plans a personal test: whether a larger business still permits the kind of working life that made founding it attractive.

A chocolate bar can change the plan

The campaign record offers a useful way to see those ideas at work. Magno Chocolates arrived with a seasonal assignment built around gift coverage. When its Knafeh Bar attracted attention, HJ-PR changed the emphasis. The agency reports 112 press hits across five months. The revealing part is the willingness to change the story while an assignment is already running.

Other projects require different forms of translation. For Space Runners, HJ-PR describes turning Web3 and AI material into accessible angles for fashion, business and technology editors. For the Hamptons openings of N'AMO Montauk and Village Bistro, the work included invitations, first-hand visits and events. A technical launch needs an explanation; a restaurant also needs someone to experience the room.

These are team campaigns, rather than individual trophies for Page. Her position is to lead the PR work within an agency where creators, events and media outreach connect. The variety also explains why her early hospitality experience remains useful alongside fashion: the relevant detail changes, but the audience still needs a reason to pay attention.

The next brief is commercial

HJ-PR's more recent work and writing move closer to the commercial side of attention. Its 2026 guidance distinguishes coverage that builds familiarity and credibility from affiliate activity with trackable links and purchases. The agency's stated position is that the measurement should follow the assignment. A relevant feature and an attributable sale can both matter, but they answer different questions.

Its discussion of Amazon Creator Connections shows the same interest in how a pitch reaches publication. Affiliate readiness can affect whether a product fits a commerce editor's gift guide or roundup. That adds another consideration to the publicist's job: alongside the story and the timing sit the practical details of how a reader can buy.

Brand partnerships extend the work into another setting. HJ-PR's sponsorship approach emphasises audience fit, product presence, experiences and content that can continue circulating after an event. It is a natural meeting point for Page's communications background and Fernando's history in sponsorship and operations. The founders' different careers keep finding reasons to belong in the same company.

Their ambitions remain deliberately personal. They have discussed expansion into Europe while retaining a selective client list, and a longer-term hope of establishing a mentorship fund or incubator for minority- and women-owned brands. Those are plans, with the work of delivering them still ahead.

Page's story began with a much nearer problem: what to do after the phone rang. The first three clients supplied an answer because they already knew her work, or trusted someone who did. Years of publicity experience had left her with something portable. She could leave an agency, move apartments, cross a border and begin again with it.