Lucy Rosen President of The Business Development Group & Founder, Women on the Fast Track Networking the Media Stage

STORY BY REGINA MARCAZZO PHOTO BY CARL J. SANTURO

Employing the art of networking has produced well for Lucy Rosen and her growing company, The Business Development Group. In fact, the Garden City-based public relations firm has recently started an affiliate, Legendary Events, which specializes in corporate and not for profit events. In the several months since Rosen began the new venture, she has been hired for various events, galas and fund-raisers by Southampton Hospital, Cancer Care, Visiting Nurse Services and Queens Center for Progress. Legendary Events was begun with Tracey Gittere, who is also a Business Development Group account executive.
Rosen has decades of experience in marketing and business. Her networking efforts and business savvy have gained her a great deal of attention and have reaped her a number of awards including her being honored last month as one of Long Island Business News’ top 50 business women.

“My entire business has been built on the premise of networking. My definition of networking is giving,” said Rosen, who grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She came to New York in the 1980s to join her ex-mother-in-law, Marcia Rosen, in Manhattan. The two began a public relations company with no New York contacts. Rosen later went on her own but always keeping a good working relationship with Marcia Rosen. “We still did a lot of projects together,” said Rosen, who in those days focused mainly on design and printing.

In 1993, Rosen moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn. She married and gave birth to her daughter Samantha in 1995. It was the same year that she started The Business Development Group, Inc. At the time, the new mother had a handful of clients and wanted to keep it that way. “I really didn’t want to miss the first year or two years of her life,” said Rosen, speaking of her pride and joy and by far toughest client, Samantha. She negotiated a deal with a physicians practice and worked two days a week doing public relations and marketing in New Hyde Park. “I always knew I wanted to move this way,” said Rosen, who stayed with the doctors for a couple of years.

“I was able to get my feet wet on Long Island,” said Rosen, who has since designed and implemented marketing, public relations and business development campaigns for well over 150 physician groups and individual physicians in every type of healthcare discipline. Her firm has also worked with many pharmaceutical companies. Rosen eventually moved to Long Island and worked from the finished basement of her Oceanside house. “I wasn’t willing to give up those mommy moments. I’ve always been a big proponent of let the people work when they can get the job done,” she said.

It was in the beginning of 1997 that Rosen met Mindy Alpert from Smith Barney. “Mindy was really it,” Rosen said, explaining how Alpert hired her to do her individual public relations. She also brought her to a networking group called Network Associates and the group is still a source of business for Rosen. “She opened the doors to a lot of people,” said Rosen, who became a member of Network Associates in 1998. “I joined and my business just exploded. I have always known that networking was the way to go. I was just looking for the right group," said Rosen. Networking is so important to Rosen that in 1985 she founded Women on the Fast Track, an international networking group that today includes members worldwide.

Rosen believes one of her strengths and the difference between her agency and other agencies is her ability and willingness to bring people together and to know the right fit. It was almost two years ago Rosen moved her firm to new space in Garden City. “I wanted to get out of my house. I knew if I moved here my business would double, but it tripled,” she said, attributing the growth to good networking and a then new acquaintance, Gittere. The two met at the inaugural “40 under 40 breakfast” in 1999 where they were both honored. Rosen was looking for an account executive and the fit was perfect. “Everybody loves her and she knows everyone on Long Island. She’s a terrific rainmaker. She opens doors then I go in and close them,” Rosen said.

In addition to Gittere, Rosen has what she considers to be a second to none staff. “We’re really good together. I have the best of the best, there’s no junior people here. My people have 20 plus years,” she said of the 11 on staff. Rosen also uses many freelancers including artists and advertising experts. “I have really, really good people around me and I think that’s the key,” she said.

Rosen’s company offers a host of services, with developing strategic and creative marketing campaigns that directly impact a client’s bottom line the major focal point. Product development, community awareness campaigns and business image enhancement are a sampling of areas handled by the firm. It’s of no consequence if the company or association she is working with is a so-called exciting one or one that appears rather uninteresting. The key, however, is that Rosen believes in it. Her experience dealing with an organization who services clients with severe mental illness like schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, for example, proved to be a great challenge. “How do you make mental illness a sexy topic to the media so they will write about it and cover it in a way that isn’t always negative,” she said, explaining the nature of the task and the fact that this particular organization was willing to go above and beyond the traditional scope of services helping it to break barriers with the media.

Working with a seemingly unexciting firm also poses a challenge. The approach is to find a human interest angle that exists in every company, whether it be finding the story behind the company president and how she or he got started or the impact that the company has had on a specific person in the community. “We also dig deep to find out what things the company is doing. We ask a lot of questions, we listen closely, we are involved in our clients work, their lives, their ambitions, their goals,” Rosen said. Helping clients appreciate the true value of public relations is another difficult task for marketing experts like Rosen because it’s not easy to measure the connection between publicity and increased company revenues.

Rosen also does a great deal of work pro-bono for not for profit organizations like the Nature Conservancy and the Nassau Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “I can’t say no. I love not for profit. I have a soft spot in my heart,” she said. The Nature Conservancy was the winner of Business Development Group’s “Gratitude Award” in 2001 and a 2002 winner was recently announced, Sustainable Long Island. The winner receives services from the firm gratis for one year. Working with the not-for-profit organizations has proven to be very satisfying. “We have been active participants in preserving and conserving Long Island and have educated other Long Islanders in the process. We made a difference and that’s what it is all about,” said Rosen. Besides last month’s honor, Rosen has been honored on numerous occasions. In 1999, she was named one of Long Island’s “40 under 40” by the same publication.

Rosen has been a mentor and member of the United States Small Business Administration advisory services department for their women in business program and she has taught for the American Women’s Economic Development Corporation. She is a developing member of the New York City Comptroller Department of Economic Development Task Force for Women and has served on the board of directors of the New York City chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She is a member of the Community Board of the Long Island Children’s Museum, the Women Presidents’ Organization, and was a recipient of the Multiple Sclerosis Society Long Island Chapter Class of 2000 award.

She is frequently interviewed and enjoys writing for both women’s and business media. She currently hosts the radio talk show “Business Builders” on WGBB-AM radio, and is the author of a series of business “how-to” booklets for women. She is in the process of writing an industry book. She also enjoys reading what others write. “I read every single magazine on the face of the earth. I love periodicals.

Rosen has no qualms about speaking in public. “My first love really is public speaking,” she said, explaining how she also enjoyed acting with her high school drama club and the theater group when she attended college.

The business development expert considers Long Island her home but doesn’t have much family here. She misses her mother, father, two sisters and niece, who live in New Mexico. “We go back a lot. They come here a lot,” she said.

While Rosen doesn’t have visions of being the biggest firm around, she absolutely expects to be the best. “Everything we touch has to be excellent or it doesn’t happen,” she said.