The Angela Henderson Online Business Show · Angela Henderson

From $10,000 months to $70,000 - What it Takes to Scale Your Business with Erin Carey

November 13, 2025·40 min·3 clips

Erin Carey built a PR agency from scratch after watching a sailing documentary and living on a yacht with her family.

1. Angela Henderson's Show episode 451 features Erin Carey, founder of travel PR agency Rome Generation, discussing her journey from $10,000 to $70,000+ monthly revenue. 2. Erin Carey is the founder of Rome Generation, a PR agency specializing in travel, adventure, and lifestyle brands globally, securing placements in outlets such as Travel and Leisure, Forbes, CNN, and Condé Nast Traveler. 3. The episode's core thesis is that revenue scaling at this level requires identity change as much as strategy—specifically, moving from 'I run a small business' to 'I am the CEO of a company.' 4. Eight years ago Erin did not know what PR was; she discovered the field after watching a Netflix documentary about Laura Decker, the youngest person to sail solo around the world, and deciding that same evening to take a similar voyage with her family. 5. Two years and two months after that decision, Erin and her husband had rented their house, borrowed against it to buy a 47-foot yacht sight unseen in the Caribbean, and relocated their family with three kids. 6. The PR career emerged when the family Facebook travel page 'Sailing to Rome' attracted attention and a large sailing YouTube channel hired Erin in what they called a marketing role; she realized the work was PR and built her agency from that foundation. 7. During COVID the family returned to Australia for 18 months, and Erin was forced to go back to public service work because Rome Generation was still generating under $3,000 a month—not enough to sustain land-based living costs. 8. Erin describes hearing Angela's podcast while driving home from her public service job during COVID as the moment she found her business coach, and she had no hesitation about investing because her husband consistently deferred to her judgment on financial decisions. 9. Angela notes that Erin's revenue trajectory included $11,000–$13,000 per month when they first worked together, a jump to her first $20,000 month, and most recently hitting $70,000 per month during their second coaching engagement. 10. Erin cites a Norwegian outdoor company similar to Patagonia flying her and a colleague from Australia to Norway for a full brand immersion as evidence of the authority Rome Generation now commands internationally. 11. A key identity shift Erin credits to coaching is internalizing 'what would a CEO do?'—and specifically, not making decisions from fear, not avoiding hard team management decisions, and owning the fact that running a business from a boat is a market differentiator, not something to hide. 12. Erin made her first full-time hire, Casey, who was already contracting for the firm; the employment contract included a bonus tied to a specific revenue milestone within 12 months, and Erin was already on track to hit it before Casey's first week. 13. She attributes this pre-hire revenue acceleration to the act of committing to the hire itself—arguing that the decision created an energy shift that preceded any concrete output from the new employee. 14. Angela and Erin both reference the 'Who Not How' framework, with Angela emphasizing that Erin's willingness to find and invest in the right people—coaches, financial advisors, contractors—has been central to her compounding growth. 15. Erin's 'figureoutable' mindset is traced directly to the yacht experience: having crossed the Atlantic Ocean with no prior sailing knowledge, she now frames business problems as inherently solvable by the same logic. 16. Angela shares that she once invested $45,000 on a credit card in a business coach and generated $90,000 in return from a single decision that emerged from that coaching, as a concrete example of coaching ROI. 17. Erin notes that imposter syndrome still surfaces for her, particularly around not fitting the image of a New York power-suit publicist, but coaching helped her reframe the boat lifestyle as a credibility asset within the travel PR niche. 18. The episode is a warm, conversational interview between coach and long-term client, with a promotional segment in the middle for Jacqueline Brooker's Business of Speaking program. 19. Female entrepreneurs and service-based business owners who are scaling past $10,000 months and want a candid behind-the-scenes account of the mindset and structural decisions involved will find this episode directly relevant. 20. Listeners wanting a step-by-step PR or marketing tutorial, or those uninterested in coaching and personal development narratives, are likely to find the episode too anecdote-heavy.

As heard by us

Confidence, positioning, and execution carry the episode more than polish.

The episode pairs Angela Henderson with Erin Carey in a conversation that stays practical rather than polished. Erin's reflections on imposter syndrome, along with the thought of whether a professional can run a PR agency from a boat, give the exchange a personal edge without…

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