In early 2022, Todd Rapp had a map in his head. His Minneapolis communications firm had been around for 40 years. Its reputation, he would later say, had long been larger than its footprint. So the obvious strategy was to enlarge the footprint. Find a partner or an acquisition, add geography, repeat what worked in Minnesota somewhere else. It was neat, ambitious and wrong - at least for that moment.
Rapp tried. A few months produced what he called “a couple of failures.” The exact targets, prices and money spent were not disclosed. But the first thing to break was clear: geographic expansion itself. He stopped and looked again at the market directly beneath his feet. Minnesota was emerging from the pandemic with infrastructure arguments, public-health questions, school financing needs and organizations newly anxious about reputation. The demand was already there. His firm was simply pointing its energy elsewhere.
“We needed to make sure the home base was as strong as possible.”Todd Rapp, on changing the 2022 growth plan
A consultancy for the awkward meeting
Rapp Strategies is a public affairs firm, which is to say it works in the uncomfortable stretch between a decision and the people who must live with it. A utility wants to build infrastructure. A school district needs voters to understand a levy. A chief executive sees a reputation problem forming. A public agency has a technically correct explanation that no ordinary person would willingly finish.
The firm sells advice and execution around those moments: strategic counsel, risk and reputation management, crisis scenario planning, opinion research, community and grassroots engagement, media relations, digital strategy and the materials that make a campaign coherent. There is no app and no self-serve tier. The product is a team that knows how a policy argument, a newsroom deadline, a town-hall microphone and a Facebook rumor can collide.
The most legible example is the firm's referendum work. South Central Service Cooperative says Rapp Strategies had supported 123 local elections by November 2024, mostly in Greater Minnesota, with clients succeeding 70 percent of the time. The assignment is not merely “make an ad.” It can begin with tax impact and ballot-question design, move through stakeholder research and public meetings, and end with materials for staff, parents, residents and local reporters. In September 2026, KAXE reported that Rapp was helping two northern Minnesota districts explain referendums that could lower some property taxes - precisely the sort of sentence that makes a skeptical voter reach for a second cup of coffee.
Four names, one handoff
The company did not begin with Todd Rapp. John Himle founded Himle and Associates in 1982. Tom Horner joined in 1989, creating Himle Horner. Rapp arrived in 2001 as managing director, after jobs at Northern States Power and in Minnesota legislative and congressional politics. He became president and a shareholder in 2008. Horner retired in 2010; the sign changed to Himle Rapp in 2011. When Himle retired in 2017, Rapp became sole owner and the firm took its current name.
That slow succession explains more than the logo. The old operation, in Rapp's telling, had two owners with separate books of business who shared staff and administration. It worked as a lifestyle firm. Rapp's early instinct as managing director was to learn the financials: how revenue arrived, where efficiency hid, what made the office function. Later, he pushed toward an integrated firm with a shared mission and a common definition of financial success. The ownership transfer was not a cinematic founder exit. It was closer to learning every switch in the machine before someone handed over the keys.
The move another boutique can copy
- Learn how the firm makes money before seeking the title.
- Notice quickly when the market rejects the plan.
- Reallocate staff time, not merely the slide deck.
- Strengthen the market where trust already compounds.
Local knowledge is inventory
Rapp Strategies fits between a conventional PR agency, a government-relations shop, a research firm and an in-house communications team. Competitors can buy media, write messages or lobby. Rapp's narrower claim is fluency in public-facing complexity, especially in Minnesota. Its staff biographies read like the seating chart for an unusually productive dinner: political operatives, newsroom leaders, a lawyer, public-policy researchers, campaign managers, community organizers and an accessibility-certified former reporter.
Where the work concentrates
An editorial view of the service mix, not company-reported revenue.
Clients visible in the public record include Xcel Energy, ClearWay Minnesota and school districts across the state. The work can be politically exposed. An Xcel regulatory filing described roughly $900,000 in increased consulting spend for an expanded community-relations scope involving Rapp Strategies. Reporting later connected the firm to a utility-led coalition, and regulators disallowed recovery of related public-affairs costs from ratepayers. That figure is neither a company price list nor proof of annual revenue. It is a reminder that advising on public trust can itself invite public scrutiny.
The firm's distinction rests on a useful tension. Rapp calls his people “passionate advocates” and “dispassionate advisors.” The first half gets a consultant invited into the room. The second half keeps the advice worth buying. A client may want a press release, a campaign or an emphatic defense. The advisor's job can be to say the proposed path will not work - even when saying so puts near-term fees at risk.
The price of saying no
Rapp does not publish a rate card, and the cost of the failed 2022 expansion is not public. The more interesting expense was opportunity: months of leadership attention and staff capacity aimed at a market the firm had not yet earned. What changed Rapp's mind was not a consultant's framework. It was two attempts that failed, followed by evidence that client demand at home was rising.
The lesson is tempting to flatten into “stay local,” but that would miss the mechanism. Concentration worked because the firm already had decades of relationships, specialized knowledge and unresolved demand in its home market. It would be a poor prescription for a consultancy trapped in a shrinking region, serving one dominant client or offering work that travels cleanly without local trust. Nor does a 70 percent referendum record mean communications can manufacture consent. Weak projects, unaffordable proposals and communities that feel managed rather than heard can defeat a polished campaign.
What others can copy is the sequence. Define the work you do unusually well. Learn the economics underneath it. Test expansion without falling in love with the map. When reality answers, move people and time - not just language - toward the better opportunity. Rapp Strategies did not give up on growth in 2022. It changed the direction of travel. Sometimes the ambitious move is the one that brings you back to the room where everybody already knows your name, and still expects you to earn the next invitation.