Meet Terry Rubin

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Terry Rubin. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Terry, we’ve been so fortunate to work with so many incredible folks and one common thread we have seen is that those who have built amazing lives for themselves are also often the folks who are most generous. Where do you think your generosity comes from?
Generosity was essential to my life growing up in Peoria, IL. I had a father who volunteered much of his time to different Jewish organizations that wanted to improve the world. He even volunteered every Monday morning during the school year to play guitar and sing songs for Kindergarteners 1st and 2nd graders at our local grade school. I had a mother who was a social worker and put her heart and soul into caring for every client. She worked for the Illinois Department of Child and Family Services and, at some points, had 50 or 60 cases to manage. She treated each case thoughtfully and wanted to help every one of them any way she could. One day, I came home as a teenager, and some stranger was mowing our lawn. I asked who that was, and my mother said he was one of her clients and needed extra money to pay some bills. Sometimes, she would go in the middle of the night and grocery shop for a client or give them cash to help them get by. This idea of being generous was a foundational part of my life from a young age and continues to be today. When I was a journalist, I would come across families who needed more help than the government was giving, and I would find a way to get them that extra help by using my ability to cut through the red tape and get them the aid they needed. As a teacher/coach, I would constantly stay long hours after school to work with students and even drive through a blizzard to work with a few students on a snow day. Now, in my current job of owning my own Communication coaching and training firm, I give my time to the community. I have offered pro bono services to non-profits to help them prepare for high-stakes presentations to funders or help friends or friends of friends prepare for important interviews. Generosity is an essential part of business; if you aren’t, you miss out on some of the greatest moments in life.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I believe in the power of communication and strategic stories. Communication is the key to success. If you are a non-profit, you need to communicate your mission and the value you bring to the community. As a business owner or executive, your success comes by spreading your message in the business world, selling your services and products, and having effective and efficient meetings. Communication matters to everyone’s career success, proving expertise and credibility. The mission and drive of The Professional Communicators is to work with clients, big and small, for-profit and nonprofit, and help them hone their communication skills and enhance their message with strategic storytelling, engaging organization, and impactful performance skills to make them all effective and engaging communicators. Success equals excellent communication skills. The Professional Communicators work with clients by pushing them out of their communication comfort zone and helping them reach their potential. We work with clients in multi-part, high-energy training programs and through one-on-one communication coaching. We have worked with Fortune 50 companies like Comast, startups of only 50 employees, government agencies, executives and individuals to help them enhance and improve their communication skills and messages. We do storytelling workshops with sales teams, executive communication skill-building with company leaders, and help individuals preparation for high-stakes presentations. We work with executive teams to help them prepare for management presentations when they are looking for an investor or buyer. Leadership teams come to us looking to up their leadership communication skills.

While we love all of the services and coaching we do, we are excited about two big offerings we have coming in 2025:

1) TECH TALK TRANSLATOR: A new program that explicitly aims to help improve people’s communication skills in and around technology. This program focuses on helping tech people become more engaging and effective communicators when presenting to tech and non-tech audiences. The best part of this incredible cutting-edge educational program is that it comes in three forms: an online training program that individuals can take at their own pace, live virtual workshops, and live-led in-person workshops. All three will make you and your colleagues better communicators and the ROI is off the charts.

2) COMMUNICATION HEALTH CHECK-UP: Do you have meetings that go on forever? Are all-hands meetings efficient and engaging? Do you have tangible takeaways in your weekly huddles? Are your sales calls client-centric? All these questions and more are part of our Communication Health Check-up. Whether it is a small team, department, or entire company, we do a communication health check-up by sitting in on meetings, reviewing presentations and slide decks, observing staff meetings and sales huddles, and assessing what areas need improvement. We then prescribe the steps necessary to improve your group’s communication health. This new offering helps companies change their communication culture and ensure that all communication channels are effective, efficient, and engaging. In the end, it improves productivity and sales. Clients will see an incredible ROI on this offering.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The three most considerable skills or qualities that I felt helped guide me on my work journey were, first, competitive drive. I am, fortunately, or unfortunately, competitive; thus, I strive to be good or the best at whatever I do. Whether it was a journalist trying to get the truth and tell compelling stories or working with top-level executives on fine-tuning their communication skills, I am always working hard and driven to succeed.

The second is curiosity. I have always been a lifelong learner. As a journalist for more than 18 years, my curiosity drove me to search for facts and truth to report accurate and balanced stories to our viewers. In my current role, I love getting a new client and digging into what they do and how they communicate their products, strategic plans, and services. I love learning about my clients and their work and becoming a temporary part of their team. Working with clients is incredibly fulfilling; their successful communication opportunities become our success.

The third skill is my communication skills. I was on the Speech team in high school and college. Those were incredibly formative years for me to help me build a communication skill set that set me apart from my peers. Whether it was an interview, a story pitch at The PBS Newshour, where I worked for 18 years, running a high-stakes workshop as a co-founder of the Professional Communicators or doing a keynote address in front of 500 executives. My communication skills have been the difference maker in my career. This is why I am so committed to helping others reach their potential as communicators.

Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
Our ideal client is an individual or company who has a growth mindset. A person or a firm that believes communication is one of the keys to success and believe everyone can improve their ability to communicate. We tell clients that every time they talk, they are public speaking. Whether building a better internal communication culture and having more efficient and engaging meetings or improving how they talk about their products and services externally, we have found the ideal client values communication and wants to improve it throughout the org chart. They see the value of good public speaking and strategic storytelling in helping their leaders get everyone on the same page when new initiatives or change needs to occur. They see it as essential in helping their sales and sales engineers improve their communication skills to close more deals. They see the ROI on communication skill building because it invests in their people and builds skills, thus increasing retention and loyalty. We are industry-agnostic and work with law firms, tech companies (big and small), and financial institutions, among others. Across all industries we have worked in, there is one common denominator: the individuals and companies see the value we bring once they let us in the door and work with their teams. Now, we need more growth-minded companies to reach out to us to help us develop our book of business. We are excited to partner with individuals and companies in the coming months and throughout 2025.

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