Unlock the Doors to Unprecedented Business Opportunities with Karin Lohitnavy
In today’s world, building connections and developing relationships is no easy task. It’s like trying to navigate through a maze where the walls keep moving, and the path is constantly changing. With social media platforms, virtual communication, and an abundance of information at our fingertips, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and disconnected from those around us.
However, building meaningful connections and relationships is crucial for personal and professional growth. It’s important to have a network of people who can support us, offer guidance, and share their experiences. But how do we even begin to build these connections in a world that are constantly evolving?
Meet Karin Lohitnavy, a passionate advocate for forming strong connections and relationships. With her unparalleled networking skills, she is the Founder and Master Connector of Midas PR, providing clients with bold, custom-crafted communication strategies that consistently deliver exceptional results. Whether you need a liaison at a prestigious hotel for your upcoming event or an influential personality to grace your brand’s launch, Karin and her dynamic international network will make it happen.
Karin’s approach to networking is not just about connecting people but rather about establishing a community of like-minded individuals who can help each other in both personal and professional pursuits. She knows that networking goes beyond just exchanging business cards and is instead about building real relationships that can last a lifetime. Thus, Karin encourages being genuine, curious, and open-minded when engaging with others; by taking the time to get to know a person on a personal level, one can establish deeper and more meaningful connections that go beyond only the surface level.
She strongly embraced the idea of ‘Givers Gain’ and is dedicated to bridging the divide between businesses regardless of their geographic location. With an expansive network of entrepreneurs, business leaders, and media professionals, Karin’s approach to networking has opened countless doors of opportunity. Allow her to help you make the connection and open up your business to potential, limitless opportunities.
Let’s embark on her journey to discover how we can forge these vital connections in an ever-changing world!
Kindly brief us about yourself and your professional journey so far. What was your inspiration for stepping into this business niche?
I’m a bit of a global nomad; I was born in Belgium and then educated in England, Luxembourg, Germany, Spain, Greece, and France. I graduated with a double degree in Social Sciences and Political Sciences and can speak eight languages, so my background is rather multi-cultural and multi-faceted.
From moving around so much, I found that I had a talent for building connections and developing relationships, which is a crucial skill for any business but especially PR and communications. I spent a lot of time honing these skills in my life before Thailand, and then after working here for a while, I was inspired to launch Midas PR in 2007.
My ability to make contacts and connect with people is still a major part of my day-to-day—in fact, my title at Midas is Master Connector!
Tell us about Midas PR, including its mission and vision. What is your role in its development and global outreach?
Midas PR is a fully integrated public relations agency with strong local connections and international experience. It’s a cliche, but our people are our greatest asset, and our diversity and depth of talent mean we can consistently deliver results for clients worldwide.
Our mission is to provide every one of our clients with bold, tailor-made communication strategies and deliver results that always exceed expectations. We believe in transparency and attention to detail, and our key belief is listening to our clients and asking the right questions. It’s the only way to fully understand their goals and assess how we can help achieve them. Our results speak for themselves, so it’s a formula that works.
Please enlighten us about your approaches toward implementing varied strategies within the organization.
The best word to describe our approach to internal strategies is “focusing on diversity” Our team is truly multicultural, dynamic, creative, and innovative. We currently have 11 nationalities represented and 15 languages spoken fluently in our offices.
I’m also a passionate supporter of gender equality, women’s leadership, and inclusion, so this plays out in our agency policies. As many business leaders today recognize, diverse team dynamics mean you avoid echo chambers, which are the catalyst for complacency and groupthink. It also means we can connect with diverse stakeholders, no matter where they are located. We’ve executed campaigns all over, from Gibraltar to the Caribbean.
Please highlight Midas PR and its prominent features. What services enable you to open doors for opportunities?
Our main areas of expertise include integrated public relations, digital PR, strategic communications, social media marketing, reputation management, crisis communications, KOL management, and event management.
This is a relatively standard list for a PR agency, but again, what makes us stand out is, once again, our diversity and not just the personal profiles of our team members. We work with both local and international clients from a broad range of industries, so the diversity of our experience also opens doors for us.
Our capabilities are also a unique selling point; we can act as a one-stop shop, covering everything our clients need, from traditional media relations to digital campaigns, live events, and influencer management. Having one agency take care of everything does make things much simpler.
How is Midas PR utilizing technological advancements to enhance consultancy and its services?
Midas PR is a bit of a pioneer when it comes to remote working; it’s something we had implemented way before COVID forced everyone’s hand. Our team members have worked remotely from the UK, France, Estonia, India, and the USA, so we have virtual team management, which we’ve honed and perfected over the years. This also meant that when the pandemic hit, we were much better prepared than many other companies.
Today, technology is a prerequisite for serving clients, particularly with globalization progressing at the speed it is. For our business model, global operations and international collaborations are very important.
Outside of team management and client work, technology also enables us to be an essential player in the wider PR and communications industry amongst our peers. Midas is the first and only PROI Worldwide member in Thailand, the first PRCA member in Thailand, and a founding member of the PRCA TH chapter, which was established earlier this year and of which I was elected as the first chair. This simply wouldn’t be possible without embracing the technology that facilitates real-time collaboration regardless of geographical location.
Shed light on your experiences as a multi-service providing company in your professional journey.
Being a multi-service provider means wearing many hats and juggling multiple responsibilities while playing different roles, something the Midas PR team is very good at.
The key challenge is to demonstrate the variety of competencies with confidence, supported by evidence, to assure clients that we’re not a Jack-of-all-trades. What helps here is delegation. I know I keep coming back to it, but it’s all about team diversity!
I have built an experienced, skilled, and passionate team with different strengths because I can’t be an expert in everything. This means that I can bring in different individuals, play to their strengths, and give them the opportunity and autonomy to let those strengths shine. That allows me to play to my strengths and focus on the areas of the business where those strengths are of the most value.
Delegation can be a hard skill to learn, especially when you own a business; it’s like your baby, and it can be tough to devolve some of the decision-making and strategic onus, but if you want to grow, you have to recognize there will come the point where you simply can’t do it all.
According to you, how do you monitor leadership and progressive growth opportunities while providing world-class services?
It’s two sides of the same coin; providing world-class services is impossible without giving our team opportunities to lead and grow.
It’s important to recognize that leadership doesn’t just mean being an account manager or director; even an intern can demonstrate leadership skills that can be built on. That’s how you maintain a strong team that is motivated and engaged, which in turn leads to better client service.
Tell us about the challenges you have faced and how they have shaped you as a business leader.
I’d be lying if I said that it’s easy to launch and grow a business as an expat in a country where English is not the first language. It’s also a challenge we have to consider when we look at our team culture. There are definitely social and professional differences between the West and East, and navigating these differences to maintain a sense of equilibrium where every team member feels accommodated and recognized can be tricky.
I think doing this for so many years has made me both culturally sensitive and somewhat thick-skinned. That sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s probably the best way to describe it.
Where do you envision yourself and your company’s global outreach in the upcoming years?
Like many entrepreneurs, I’m a natural-born optimist, so I have big hopes for the future of Midas PR.
Over the past year, our company has become more global than ever before, with more big accounts coming from overseas and more briefs coming in for regional and global campaigns. We are extremely proud of this achievement, with clients seeing us as their preferred partner for executing communication projects in Thailand, Asia, and even on other continents. I see definite scope for us to expand our global footprint further.
Please share clientele, awards, and recognitions.
- Midas PR was named as one of the Most Trusted PR Agencies in Healthcare by Insights Care.
Our other accolades include the following:
- Best Corporate Social Responsibility Award, PRCA Award 2020
- The Golden Globe Tigers Awards 2020 for Excellence & Leadership in Branding & Marketing
- Global Business Insight Awards 2019 for Most Outstanding Public Relations Firm
- Thailand Brand Leadership Award 2018 for Best PR Company (Thailand) and Best PR Agency Thailand 2016
This year we have also been nominated for several awards, including “Best Place to Work. I hope we win this because we’ve invested a lot in our infrastructure, creating what I think is an unparalleled work environment.
We recently relocated to our own building, a four-story townhouse in a green area of the city, with a large professional-grade kitchen suitable not only for the team’s daily use but also for filming culinary shows (something Midas PR regularly does for our clients).
We intentionally chose a space that offers diverse working environments because we all have different preferences for how we like to work. We have an indoor open-air patio with green trees and chaise lounge chairs, two large conference rooms, a co-working space, private booths for taking phone calls or participating in Zoom conferences, and even “cycling chairs” for those who want to burn some calories while they work.
