Exploring Life & Business with Courtney Sandora of Go Social

Today we’d like to introduce you to Courtney Sandora. 

Hi Courtney, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
After working at PR agencies in New York and Chicago serving spirits clients like Jim Beam, my career took me to Louisville, Kentucky, where I worked at Brown-Forman, parent company to Jack Daniel’s, handling PR for wine and spirits brands across their portfolio. I helped the company launch their first Facebook page and fell in love with the ability to tell a brand story through social media. There was something very gratifying about getting that instant interaction with brand fans and being able to tell your story how you wanted it when you wanted it. I launched Go Social, my own company, nearly 12 years ago, to help other companies connect with consumers. While our focus is on beverage alcohol brands, particularly whiskey, we do handle lifestyle brands based here in Colorado and across the country. In addition to creating content and managing brands’ social media, we also assist clients with influencer marketing and PR efforts. My team has grown and we have members based in Denver, Louisville, Kentucky; Nashville, Tennessee and Santa Monica, California. 

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I’ve taken a slow and steady approach to growing my company, in part because I became a mom to twin boys shortly after launching my business. It was really over the last few years that I decided to take a leap and expand my team and client base. In terms of struggles, the first week of shutdown (March 2020) was probably the most challenging time period in my business. We had almost 70% of our business put us on hold due to the uncertainty of COVID. While it was a time period I wouldn’t want to relive, we ended up bouncing back, grew our team, and had one of our best years to date. I think back and equate this experience to falling off the monkey bars. When your worst fear happens and you not only survive but thrive everything becomes a lot easier from there. 

As you know, we’re big fans of Go Social. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Go Social is a communications agency that helps brands connect with consumers through social media, public relations, and influencer marketing. We consider ourselves equal parts social and PR and believe influencer marketing is at the intersection of the two. It’s an area that’s not going away any time soon, and we launched a division, IPG (Influencer PR Group) to really focus on this growing marketing tactic. We also have a podcast “Eat. Drink. Social” where we connect with social influencer in the food and drink space to hear their story and how they’ve grown their audience. With more than 20 years of spirits industry experience, we’ve worked with big global players like Beam Suntory, Brown-Forman, and Sazerac in addition to craft distilleries like Colorado-based Distillery 291, State 38, and Archetype Distillery. 

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Creativity. Whether it’s the content we create, creative media pitches and events, we’re able to help our clients tell their story in a way that breaks through the clutter. 

Contact Info:

• Email: csandora@goforthbesocial.com
• Website: www.goforthbesocial.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/thegosocial
• Facebook: facebook.com/thegosocial
• Twitter: twitter.com/thegosocial