25 years in PR. Two agencies. One very big decision. Kat started out in London at Cake. Then she headed to Australia for 12 months. She stayed 13 years. At 28, she founded One Green Bean in Sydney with backing from independent ad agency Host. It grew fast, winning Google, Nike, Uber and Diageo, plus Australia's biggest bank, supermarket and car brand. At around 50 staff, Havas came on board as a shareholder. In 2015 Kat moved back to London to open One Green Bean London inside Havas HQ. Havas later bought the business outright. Kat stayed on for two more years, then in 2025 she handed over the keys. Today she's the founder of Knock Three Times, an AI-first creative PR agency backed by Common Interest. Who's this episode for? You'll get a lot out of this one if you're being approached about investment or a sale and want to know what life with a network shareholder is really like. It's also for you if you're wondering when it's time to step away from a business you founded, or trying to work out how your clients will show up when their customers ask ChatGPT or Claude for an answer. The honest bits Kat doesn't gloss over the hard parts. She explains why she brought Havas in. Australia's market caps out on budgets, and she wanted bigger work on a global stage. She admits she was the biggest skeptic about moving into a ten-storey network tower. A year in, she toured warehouses in Shoreditch and Dalston to move the team out. Her team asked if she was mad. They loved the office. It was her first real lesson in how much the next generation's expectations had changed. When she resigned, she had a six-month notice period. She refused to spend five and a half months pretending nothing was happening, so she told her team and clients within three weeks. She also admits that, looking back, she probably should have travelled instead of going straight into writing a book. PR in the age of answers The second half gets into what Kat calls the holy trinity. Editorial coverage influences AI, and AI influences people. While the network conversation about AI was all about efficiency and headcount, Kat wanted something different. She wanted to build a comms business with AI baked in from day zero, focused on capability and specialism, not size. Knock Three Times runs on a private Claude Enterprise setup, plus three tools built in-house. Audit finds the editorial sources LLMs actually draw on for a category. Architect turns that into a media targeting strategy. Readiness scores press releases out of 100 for structure, newsworthiness, data and whether they read as AI-written. She also shares why a dog walker's blog in the West Midlands gets cited by LLMs for Butternut Box alongside national titles. She explains why LLMs recommend confidently in FMCG but stay cautious in health and finance. And she shows how a Readiness score dropping from 74 to 40 after client amends gives her an objective way to push back on a watered-down release. If you're thinking about your own exit, or how your agency stays relevant now that people ask AI for answers first, this one's packed with real, candid lessons Topics Covered: 0:25 – How Kat got into PR and founded One Green Bean in Sydney at 28 2:46 – Rapid growth: winning Google, Nike, Uber and Diageo 6:48 – Taking on Havas as a shareholder at 50 staff and opening One Green Bean London 12:35 – Deciding when to leave the business you founded, and why AI was the trigger 18:07 – Resigning, telling everyone straight away and going straight into writing a book 25:15 – Launching Knock Three Times: capability and specialism over headcount 30:30 – The age of answers and building the agency on Claude Enterprise 33:47 – Audit and Architect: finding the sources LLMs cite, from national titles to a dog walker's blog 39:37 – Readiness: scoring press releases out of 100 to stop them being watered down 43:29 – The PR tactics that will matter most for eCommerce brands
