A 12-person PR firm represents De Niro, Pacino, and billion-dollar clients. Its founder says the secret is staying small

Most public relations agencies chase scale, trying to land as many clients as humanly possible. Zach Rosenfield has built his firm to maximize quality over quantity.

The CEO of RMG, a boutique media strategy shop, has grown revenue more than fivefold over the past five years while keeping his staff at a lean 12. 

Yet, RMG’s roster reads like a Hollywood call sheet—Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Danny DeVito, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Patricia Clarkson, and ESPN’s Rich Eisen among them. Meanwhile, they have corporate clients such as The Hershey Company, Authentic Brands Group, Crash Champions, and Starkey, each of which generates $1 billion or more in annual revenue.

Rosenfield said the size is the strategy, not a limitation of it.

“We run towards the fact that we are small by choice,” he told Fortune in an interview. “We’re here to dispel the funny myth that bigger is better, and that size does not matter. Size is something that makes you feel better at night.”

The answer is always ‘no’

The secret to RMG’s success is counterintuitive. The default answer to any prospective client is no, Rosenfield said.

“The answer to everything is no. No, no. Will you represent this client? No. Will you do this story? No,” Rosenfield said. 

His reasoning is that by starting from a point of no, you can better identify red flags or mismatches early on.

“It’s almost like you pull a lever,” he said. “And within that lever, all the stop signs........

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